Katherena Vermette
Author of The Break
About the Author
Image credit: www.katherenavermette.com/
Series
Works by Katherena Vermette
ndncountry 2 copies
Associated Works
You Were Made for This World: Celebrated Indigenous Voices Speak to Young People (2025) — Contributor — 30 copies, 11 reviews
A Steady Brightness of Being: Truths, Wisdom, and Love from Celebrated Indigenous Voices (2025) — Contributor — 29 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Other names
- Vermette, Katherena
- Birthdate
- 1977
- Gender
- female
- Education
- University of British Columbia, Canada (MFA|Creative Writing)
- Occupations
- poet
teacher
children's book author
novelist
editor - Organizations
- Aboriginal Writers Collective of Manitoba
Simon & Schuster Canada (senior editor) - Nationality
- Canada
- Birthplace
- Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
- Places of residence
- Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada - Associated Place (for map)
- Canada
Members
Reviews
And so we are back with the Metis family Vermette introduced us to in The Break and then expanded on in The Strangers. It is perhaps three years since we last saw them and people have tried to move on. Some have succeeded more than others.
Phoenix Stranger, who was jailed for a violent assault in the last book, is about to be released from jail. Her sister, Cedar Sage, has been dreading this event because she is sharing a house with one of Phoenix's victims and hasn't told her Phoenix is her show more sister. We move from Cedar Sage's point of view to Jake, an uncle to another victim, M. And we keep on moving from person to person in the wide circle of relationships. We see how this violent act affected so many people and some of those people have moved past the trauma and some have not. M, although still unable to go outside, has built a life for herself online and she seems content there. Elsie, mother to Phoenix and Cedar Sage, has moved out of the city to a healing center. And so on; it's like what might come out at a restorative justice healing circle which is the point of this novel structure. We even see how Phoenix has developed during her time in jail. She was seen watching her son, Sparrow, in the daycare yard and then she just disappeared. Jake was charged as a result because it was thought he had killed her. He had not and Phoenix had just taken off to Alberta but Jake was killed in lock up before anyone could ascertain that. It's not really Phoenix's fault that he died but there is a moral here. It's sort of like that chaos theory idea about the butterfly flapping its wings in the jungle causing a huge storm continents away. You never know what effect your actions will have.
For me, the structure didn't quite work. I felt like I wanted to know more of some of the stories that were shared. I think this might be a book that would benefit from a reread. We'll see. show less
Phoenix Stranger, who was jailed for a violent assault in the last book, is about to be released from jail. Her sister, Cedar Sage, has been dreading this event because she is sharing a house with one of Phoenix's victims and hasn't told her Phoenix is her show more sister. We move from Cedar Sage's point of view to Jake, an uncle to another victim, M. And we keep on moving from person to person in the wide circle of relationships. We see how this violent act affected so many people and some of those people have moved past the trauma and some have not. M, although still unable to go outside, has built a life for herself online and she seems content there. Elsie, mother to Phoenix and Cedar Sage, has moved out of the city to a healing center. And so on; it's like what might come out at a restorative justice healing circle which is the point of this novel structure. We even see how Phoenix has developed during her time in jail. She was seen watching her son, Sparrow, in the daycare yard and then she just disappeared. Jake was charged as a result because it was thought he had killed her. He had not and Phoenix had just taken off to Alberta but Jake was killed in lock up before anyone could ascertain that. It's not really Phoenix's fault that he died but there is a moral here. It's sort of like that chaos theory idea about the butterfly flapping its wings in the jungle causing a huge storm continents away. You never know what effect your actions will have.
For me, the structure didn't quite work. I felt like I wanted to know more of some of the stories that were shared. I think this might be a book that would benefit from a reread. We'll see. show less
This is a quiet book that doesn't hit you on the head with the issues it discusses; the author lets the impact of the "pretendian" sneak up on you and build strength.
I've read all of Katherena Vermette's novels and believe her strength is in writing about relationships. That is so evident in this novel, especially in the relationship between sisters lyn and June. They argue a bit and support each other a lot. They are very real people.
The sisters' relationship with their mother, Renee, and show more her false claims of Metis heritage are different. lyn's issues are long-standing and deal with abandonment. Yet she is the most like Renee in having an artistic temperament. June's concerns are more immediate relating to her status as a professor of Native Studies. She is the only daughter still in touch with her mother, albeit infrequently, and is not like her at all in terms of choosing one career path, and one husband, and seeing it through.
I liked Ms. Vermette's commentary on racial identity, which are not polemic but come through the words and thoughts of the characters. Her messages are that racial identity is about community; stealing identity is violence; the burden falls on indigenous people to prove their identifies -- ironically, some of those identities were imposed on them by colonizers.
Renee not only steals the Metis identity, she dishonours her own as a Mennonite and a French Canadian by ignoring them. I would have liked to hear more about Renee. There is a whole story there about why she did what she did in her professional life and as a mother. Since The Break became a trilogy, maybe this story will have a sequel? I hope so! show less
I've read all of Katherena Vermette's novels and believe her strength is in writing about relationships. That is so evident in this novel, especially in the relationship between sisters lyn and June. They argue a bit and support each other a lot. They are very real people.
The sisters' relationship with their mother, Renee, and show more her false claims of Metis heritage are different. lyn's issues are long-standing and deal with abandonment. Yet she is the most like Renee in having an artistic temperament. June's concerns are more immediate relating to her status as a professor of Native Studies. She is the only daughter still in touch with her mother, albeit infrequently, and is not like her at all in terms of choosing one career path, and one husband, and seeing it through.
I liked Ms. Vermette's commentary on racial identity, which are not polemic but come through the words and thoughts of the characters. Her messages are that racial identity is about community; stealing identity is violence; the burden falls on indigenous people to prove their identifies -- ironically, some of those identities were imposed on them by colonizers.
Renee not only steals the Metis identity, she dishonours her own as a Mennonite and a French Canadian by ignoring them. I would have liked to hear more about Renee. There is a whole story there about why she did what she did in her professional life and as a mother. Since The Break became a trilogy, maybe this story will have a sequel? I hope so! show less
I have a lot of issues with this book, but they all come back to two central flaws: perspective and prose.
Let's start with the former. This book is told from the perspective of nine different people, ten if you count the frame narrator whose identity becomes clear about a third of the way through. (Side note: three of them use first person, six use third person, I have no idea why.) It's not a long book, so there is a lot of perspective switching, and this amount of names and show more interconnectedness was quite hard to parse for the first half of the book or so. What makes following along all the more difficult is the total lack of distinction: everyone has the same voice.
Almost everyone talks the same way and has the same internal world. The only exception is Phoenix, who starts every chapter cursing heavily, but it always peters out in a few pages because the author seemingly forgets to be consistent and just lapses into her typical writing style. In a book that relies on braided narration, this carelessness makes the whole structure completely useless and betrays Vermette's lack of skill: a thirteen-year-old girl should not sound like a twenty-eight-year-old police officer who should not sound like a fifty-year-old artist. And yet.
The weak-to-nonexistent characterization leads me directly into my second main issue: the prose. I can't say this without sounding like a total asshole, but the writing is pedestrian. It is clichéd. It just isn't good. For a book where not a whole lot happens--mostly it's characters having the same conversations over and over ("I hope Emily is okay. Everything is so sad right now." "I'm also really sad but trying to stay strong.")--the prose really has to carry its own weight. And, well... I'll go into some examples.
This is not the evocative spareness of Cormac McCarthy. It is the halting simplicity of a fourth grade English assignment. And Vermette is not much better when it comes to dialogue. Take this passage from one of her policeman characters:
Putting aside the inelegant repetition of "solid" and "good"--unless Canadians still commonly use the word "dame," what the hell is going on here? Did we stumble into a 1940's gumshoe novel? Okay, last one, this time from Métis policeman Tommy talking to his mother towards the end of the book:
First of all, this reads like a passage from a young adult book about a high schooler struggling with being mixed race. Second of all, this man is almost thirty. And third, when the book copy says Tommy "feels caught between two worlds as he patrols the city," it just means he blurts out after school special stuff like this. I mean, come on. Can we not be a little more nuanced here? A little more specific?
Some miscellaneous quibbles that aren't terribly important but which I noticed because I was already in a state to pick apart this book:
• Almost everyone has a nickname, making it even harder to tell people apart, and some even have multiple (Alex > Bishop > Ship)
• Awkward phrasing crops up from time to time, like "She looked up from staring at the Internet and saw him." Staring at the computer--fine. Staring at the eBay home page--fine. Staring at the Internet--not fine. Hard to articulate why, but I'd say it's because the internet is too amorphous to be looked at directly.
• This is a total nitpick, but at one point a character goes into a coffee shop and orders a burger and fries. Maybe Canada works differently than the U.S. in this respect, but that just doesn't seem like what would be on offer at a coffee shop...
I don't want to rag on The Break any more, because it is a fundamentally well-meaning book. I am surprised at its high average rating; I don't want to be cynical and think that that's because it is an indigenous author writing about indigenous life and therefore some people feel obligated to rate it highly. It's also possible Vermette's strengths lie elsewhere (she won an award for her 2013 poetry collection North End Love Songs). For me, even though this one was a dud, I still want to read more First Nations literature--I'm thinking of checking out Manitowapow, an anthology of Aboriginal Manitoban writing which Vermette contributed to.
____________________
Global Challenge: Canada show less
Let's start with the former. This book is told from the perspective of nine different people, ten if you count the frame narrator whose identity becomes clear about a third of the way through. (Side note: three of them use first person, six use third person, I have no idea why.) It's not a long book, so there is a lot of perspective switching, and this amount of names and show more interconnectedness was quite hard to parse for the first half of the book or so. What makes following along all the more difficult is the total lack of distinction: everyone has the same voice.
Almost everyone talks the same way and has the same internal world. The only exception is Phoenix, who starts every chapter cursing heavily, but it always peters out in a few pages because the author seemingly forgets to be consistent and just lapses into her typical writing style. In a book that relies on braided narration, this carelessness makes the whole structure completely useless and betrays Vermette's lack of skill: a thirteen-year-old girl should not sound like a twenty-eight-year-old police officer who should not sound like a fifty-year-old artist. And yet.
The weak-to-nonexistent characterization leads me directly into my second main issue: the prose. I can't say this without sounding like a total asshole, but the writing is pedestrian. It is clichéd. It just isn't good. For a book where not a whole lot happens--mostly it's characters having the same conversations over and over ("I hope Emily is okay. Everything is so sad right now." "I'm also really sad but trying to stay strong.")--the prose really has to carry its own weight. And, well... I'll go into some examples.
The river is white and flat and wide under the bridge. She thinks about how it'd feel to jump off onto the ice and snow, how much it'd hurt. She'd probably just die. But it'd hurt first. It's a weird thought. She's still feeling a little sick, and she's sad now, and cold.
This is not the evocative spareness of Cormac McCarthy. It is the halting simplicity of a fourth grade English assignment. And Vermette is not much better when it comes to dialogue. Take this passage from one of her policeman characters:
"I hate to say it, but that's some good solid police work there. You've built a solid case. It's good. Now, all we gotta do is find this crazy little dame."
Putting aside the inelegant repetition of "solid" and "good"--unless Canadians still commonly use the word "dame," what the hell is going on here? Did we stumble into a 1940's gumshoe novel? Okay, last one, this time from Métis policeman Tommy talking to his mother towards the end of the book:
"It's like I'm different, and I am different, I'm a half breed. I'll always be a half-breed, half of both sides. Not like either... I'm not a real Indian. So what then? I'm just in between?"
First of all, this reads like a passage from a young adult book about a high schooler struggling with being mixed race. Second of all, this man is almost thirty. And third, when the book copy says Tommy "feels caught between two worlds as he patrols the city," it just means he blurts out after school special stuff like this. I mean, come on. Can we not be a little more nuanced here? A little more specific?
Some miscellaneous quibbles that aren't terribly important but which I noticed because I was already in a state to pick apart this book:
• Almost everyone has a nickname, making it even harder to tell people apart, and some even have multiple (Alex > Bishop > Ship)
• Awkward phrasing crops up from time to time, like "She looked up from staring at the Internet and saw him." Staring at the computer--fine. Staring at the eBay home page--fine. Staring at the Internet--not fine. Hard to articulate why, but I'd say it's because the internet is too amorphous to be looked at directly.
• This is a total nitpick, but at one point a character goes into a coffee shop and orders a burger and fries. Maybe Canada works differently than the U.S. in this respect, but that just doesn't seem like what would be on offer at a coffee shop...
I don't want to rag on The Break any more, because it is a fundamentally well-meaning book. I am surprised at its high average rating; I don't want to be cynical and think that that's because it is an indigenous author writing about indigenous life and therefore some people feel obligated to rate it highly. It's also possible Vermette's strengths lie elsewhere (she won an award for her 2013 poetry collection North End Love Songs). For me, even though this one was a dud, I still want to read more First Nations literature--I'm thinking of checking out Manitowapow, an anthology of Aboriginal Manitoban writing which Vermette contributed to.
____________________
Global Challenge: Canada show less
"Aberry-picking excursion turns potentially frightening when a girl wanders from her mother and encounters a wolf.
Despite her mother’s warning to stay close as night approaches, the girl finds herself lost in the woods and feeling “cold and scared.” In classic wolf-narrative style, a “tall grey wolf with big white teeth” appears, but unlike those in many traditional tales, this lupine offers help. Only by balancing experiential knowledge (identifying berries that are safe to eat) show more with instinctual trust (following the wolf’s guidance) can the girl hope to reunite with her family. Poetic descriptions and spare prose combine with simple yet textured mixed-media illustrations to create a story with a deeply cinematic quality. Readers will likely infer the girl and her mother are First Nations peoples due to illustrator Flett’s (Cree-Métis) visual cues of brown skin, black hair, and moccasins and through author Vermette’s (Métis) textual reference of tying tobacco in cloth to leave as a thank-you. Muted, earth-toned images give depth while allowing the girl to stand out in her red dress. Though similar to stories from the oral tradition or even the European canon, this is “a completely made-up story.” It’s got a worthy message for any reader to enjoy, and Indigenous and First Nations readers will especially connect with characters who nourish traditional ways of knowing while existing in an active, contemporary present.
A tale about knowledge, power, and trust that reminds readers we used to speak with animals and still do—it already feels like a classic. (author’s note) (Picture book. 3-5)" www.kirkusreviews.com, A Kirkus Starred Review show less
Despite her mother’s warning to stay close as night approaches, the girl finds herself lost in the woods and feeling “cold and scared.” In classic wolf-narrative style, a “tall grey wolf with big white teeth” appears, but unlike those in many traditional tales, this lupine offers help. Only by balancing experiential knowledge (identifying berries that are safe to eat) show more with instinctual trust (following the wolf’s guidance) can the girl hope to reunite with her family. Poetic descriptions and spare prose combine with simple yet textured mixed-media illustrations to create a story with a deeply cinematic quality. Readers will likely infer the girl and her mother are First Nations peoples due to illustrator Flett’s (Cree-Métis) visual cues of brown skin, black hair, and moccasins and through author Vermette’s (Métis) textual reference of tying tobacco in cloth to leave as a thank-you. Muted, earth-toned images give depth while allowing the girl to stand out in her red dress. Though similar to stories from the oral tradition or even the European canon, this is “a completely made-up story.” It’s got a worthy message for any reader to enjoy, and Indigenous and First Nations readers will especially connect with characters who nourish traditional ways of knowing while existing in an active, contemporary present.
A tale about knowledge, power, and trust that reminds readers we used to speak with animals and still do—it already feels like a classic. (author’s note) (Picture book. 3-5)" www.kirkusreviews.com, A Kirkus Starred Review show less
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- Works
- 26
- Also by
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- Rating
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