On Isabella Street

This book is set in 1967 and 1968, years that I am old enough to remember. However, I was living on a farm in rural Manitoba and the characters were in Toronto. Perhaps that is the reason that I just couldn't identify with them. They seemed more like cartoon characters than real humans but maybe that's just me.

The two main characters, Dr. Marion Hart and Sassy Rankin, are neighbours on the fifth floor of an apartment at 105 Isabella Street. They couldn't be more unlike. Marion is very strait-laced and by the book; Sassy is a music loving flower child. They meet when the elevator they are in loses power during a storm. Exchanging confidences by playing Twenty Questions they emerge from the elevator with the beginnings of a friendship. show more Marion is a psychiatrist at the Queen Street Mental Health Centre. She deals with people with a variety of mental illnesses but she is most intrigued by a new patient, Daniel Neumann, who fought in the Vietnam War and is exhibitng signs of what we would now call PTSD. In the near future, all of the patients in this centre and others are going to be released into the community. Marion is concerned that many of them will not be able to cope. Sassy really wants to sing and play her guitar but her agreement with her realtor father who pays the rent on her apartment is that she will have a paying job outside of the music industry. So she is working as a secretary in a law firm but when one of the senior partners proposes she sleep with him in order to get a better position, she quits. At a peaceful protest she pushes a police officer and is arrested. Her one phone call is to her father who sends his partner, Tom Duncan, to get her out. Her father insists that Sassy then live up to her end of their deal by becoming Tom's assistant. Sassy's brother, Joey, is a soldier in Vietnam and when he is reported missing both Sassy and her father are put under a lot of stress. Sassy has Marion to help her through this but her father has no-one and he resorts to alcohol. One night, while inebriated, he drives his car into a building and dies soon after. At the reading of his will, Marion learns that it was Mr. Rankin who paid for her post-secondary education because he was indebted to her father for something that happened during World War II. Determined to change her life and do something to help Sassy, Marion volunteers to go to Vietnam as a surgeon for two months. She needs a body guard and she asks Daniel to accompany her. Her experiences in Vietnam are a little too dramatic in my opinion but that's fiction, I guess. Meanwhile, back in Canada Sassy is becoming more involved with the real estate business and with her boss, Tom. This is another detail I had trouble with because she leaves her music behind without a qualm.

There is certainly enough fodder here for a good book club discussion which is what I think the author and her publisher are counting on. I just wish the characters had been drawn with more human foibles, making them more realistic. show less

This book explores an area of great turmoil and uneasiness in the world. The time is 1967 and 1968. The Vietnam war is raging, therefore peace demonstrations and sit-ins are everywhere, Canada is on the verge of significant change, as is the whole world. The book demonstrates the effect of war on families and friends. It also shows the resilience of human nature and also the power of love and devotion. Genevieve Graham has a unique ability to showcase little-known times in Canadian history and inserts the stories of ordinary but remarkable people into her narratives. I intend to read the rest of her backlist because it is so important to me to find out as much Canadian history as I can right now. The characters in this book are warm and show more real and unforgettable. It would have been a perfect book but there were a little too many coincidences and a little bit too much of 60’s slang that just didn’t seem to fit in the story. I grew up in this era, so a lot of the culture and counter-culture, was very familiar to me. I think I understand myself a little more now as I relived the time of my youth while reading this book. Read it for the history and read it for the story. It’s well worth the effort. show less

Another great story from Genevieve Graham. I love that her stories focus on Canadian history.

Marion and Sassy are very different women and they manage to form a beautiful friendship. I love that Sassy brings Marion out of her shell and Marion provides a solid female role model for Sassy.

I loved the ending and I look forward to reading more of Genevieve's work in the future.

Canadian view of Vietnam War, 60s, Hippies, Women Working, PTSD, Library, Kindle