The Book of Small

How is it fair that a renowned painter can also be a gifted writer? Carr wrote this memoir of her early childhood when she was in her early 70s, so historical veracity is not the point of this delightful book. Carr was born in Victoria, BC, into a community that is often called "more English than the English," and many of her vignettes tell of people forging their idea of a civilized life in the western wilderness. The Book of Small is a collection of snapshots of British Colonial life through the eyes of a small girl, in fact, the "Small" of the title is Carr's nickname as the youngest daughter. Some of the stories are told in first person, and some in third, with Small as the main character. My favourite part was when Small dresses up show more a starfish in doll's clothes and then forgets it in a cupboard.

The Book of Small has been compared to the writings of Lucy Maud Montgomery and Beatrix Potter, although this is not a children's book. She does capture that world of late-Victorian childhood where one minute she's sitting on a stiff chair drinking tea in a dark parlour, and the next she's squeezing through brambles and mud to get to her own Secret Garden.

Victoria is one of my all-time favourite cities, and I know it well, so it was fascinating to read what the city was like before the imposing Empress Hotel, when cows roamed the streets and Cook St was the garbage dump. I enjoyed how the city itself is a character in this novel.

Recommended for: Anyone looking for a amusing yet detailed look at domestic British Colonial life. Also anyone who is interested in the history of Victoria. show less

She has that weird attachment to the presence of things, a propensity that means that the world will never add up, it'll never be more than the sum of its parts, but. The parts are enough. more than enough. The love of the fur, the smell, the green, the water, the buzzing of it all, leads one to renounce any thought of transcendence in favor of lying down forever with the mortal remains of what one has loved.

Gentle, richly descriptive sketches by the wonderful artist Emily Carr of a Victorian childhood (aged between about 4 and late adolescence) in Victoria, British Columbia, as the small naval outpost developed into an outpost of Englishness and the capital of a new province.

totally about her childhood memories

From the book box that dutch-flybabe sent to me.