HOW TO WRITE: SHARING TIPS FROM THE MASTERS
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on how to borrow these books, generously purchased by the Kenora Public Library.
NOWW’s regional representative for more information
on how to borrow these books, generously purchased by the Kenora Public Library.
Regional Writer
Spirals by John Pringle
Reviewed by: Alex Kosoris
Reviewed by: Alex Kosoris
Though it’s been some time since I’ve had the pleasure of reading one of Pringle’s short story collections, Spirals starts in a very familiar way, with his story, A Good Boy. Not only was this the only one in the collection that I’d read previously, it’s also a contest-winning story – the 2014 NOWW writing contest, to be precise. This on its own would suggest that A Good Boy is a pretty good story, making it a great jumping-off point, but it’s also an excellent guide for what we’re in for, as it showcases what Pringle does best: thrusting us into Northwestern Ontario through vivid images, extracting lofty concepts from the seemingly mundane using realistic characters, all the while maintaining a great restraint in his storytelling.
And this is a very broad commonality between the stories I enjoyed throughout Spirals. The entirety of the collection involves character-driven narratives, and Pringle not only showcases a great empathy toward the people that populate his plots, but he also demonstrates an uncanny ability of expression, both bringing forth the heart from deep within the exchanges and triggering strong emotions from the reader – this one, at least.
The problem comes when the author isn’t able to bring together everything that makes something like A Good Boy extraordinary. When the characters don’t come alive for me, such as in Hard Paddling; when we get presented with an interesting concept, but it feels like we don’t get the chance to explore it, such as in Fringe Idiots; when we get engaging personalities, and we start to get a feel for the way they interact, but abandon them without experiencing their meaningful, growing relationship, that seems to get hinted at by the end of Revelations, it feels lacking. And then something comes along like Without Consent: it’s thoughtful, it’s well-paced, it’s populated with what feels like real people, and it’s satisfying. This is the fact that makes Spirals feel like an exercise in ups and downs. I’m not even going to suggest that the downs are particularly terrible – everything’s still competent at the end of it all. But, I think it’s more that, in being treated to such tremendous ups, the downs are simply more hard-felt.
Spotlight on Atikokan
Review of Tristan Hughes "Eye Lake"
One of the most common pieces of advice given to developing writers is to read, read, read. I have found it instructive and encouraging to see how other writers treat the same themes I’m exploring in my writing. Currently, I’m on the lookout for fiction and nonfiction that is set in northwestern Ontario. Eye Lake, a novel, is written by Tristan Hughes who was born in Atikokan and continues to live there part time.
Eli is fishing from the shore of Eye Lake when he snags his line. It’s not a rock or a log that he catches, but the castle built in the bush by his grandfather along the shore of Crooked River before the land was flooded. Sound familiar? Atikokan has a log castle in the nearby wilderness on the shores of White Otter Lake.
Crooked River was founded by Eli’s Grandfather Clarence when he built a hotel to house men that were building the railway to bring wheat from the west to the port at Thunder Bay. Years later, Clarence builds the castle for a woman with “lips redder than any woman’s in town” who visits Crooked River long before the river is diverted and damed for the Red Rock Mines.
On the day Eli snags the turret, the waters of Eye Lake are dropping due to a breach in the dam, the town of Crooked River is gearing up to celebrate its 100th anniversary and Eli’s neighbours, Sarah and her son, are in crisis. Sarah turns to Eli for support because “‘you’re one of the few really decent people I know, Eli. Do you know that?’” Eli doesn’t. He’s in a constant state of confusion over what people say “on account of the cord that was wrapped around my neck when I was born.” Despite his lack of understanding, Eli is a reliable narrator of both Sarah’s domestic trouble and two mysterious disappearances that have haunted the town for decades.
This is a novel about loss beginning with Grandfather Clarence who goes fishing early one morning, long before Eli is born, and never comes back. Crooked River is losing people because the iron ore mine and the lumber mill have closed. Everything is closing so that now it’s a town “where everything used to be.” Eli’s mother dies in child birth. His father is lost to him in grief leaving Nana and her comforting bowls of porridge with raisins “for when bad things happen” and his Uncle Virgil to guide him. While they fish, Virgil instructs Eli to “worry about the ones you get into the boat, not the ones that get away” because “what’s gone, well that’s gone, Eli, and there’s nothing to be done about it, not a damn thing!”
The details surrounding Clarence’s disappearance are revealed gradually when the narrative goes back in time. Eli visits the house he was born in and though it isn’t fit to live in anymore, he lies on the porch couch where he used to fall asleep and recalls Virgil’s conversations with friends about the old times when Clarence was building his castle and the town was thriving.
Perhaps the most poignant loss is that of George, Eli’s childhood friend who disappeared when they were eleven years old. Eli recalls being dragged into the bush to search for “exhibits” George wants to label and display. George narrates these expeditions like a National Geographic explorer while Eli follows keeping “one eye on the ground wherever else you got the other one pointed” like Virgil has advised on account of abandoned mine shafts. The narrative alternates between the mystery of Clarence and George’s disappearances and the current danger escalating against Sarah.
Equally compelling is the setting of northwestern Ontario. I relished the vivid descriptions of the landscape and the town and felt firmly placed in Crooked River surrounded by “the ragged pattern of forests and creeks and lakes.” When Eli and George get lost in the bush, Eli feels “the “empty, scary space growing in your belly, growing bigger and bigger until it seems as big and empty as the thousands and thousands of kilometres surrounding you.”
When trains pass: “you’d hear them a ways out to begin with, their horns making an echoey lonely loon cry in the dark.” After they pass, “the sound and the shaking would shuffle back into the dark and I’d lie there feeling like I’d been tucked in.”
The demise of industry in northwestern Ontario is also poignantly portrayed. Passing the old corrugated iron mine buildings full holes from where people use them for shooting practice, Eli tells us: “You couldn’t feel a breeze or flutter of wind anywhere - it was like nature had stopped breathing or something, like its lungs were full of holes like everything else here was.”
And isn’t this the truth about the end of winter: “the bugs and animals come rushing out, the plants and leaves push through in a hurry, the whole bunch of them trying to cram their living into the short summer.”
But it’s not all hard times in the bush. The small, northern town humour is delightful. Eli says, “you can always tell Minnesotans up here in northern Ontario: they’ve got bigger beards and newer fishing stuff than anyone else.” From the Police Watch in the local paper Virgil reads: “12:58 Dog in road. 12:59 Dog departed of its own volition.”
The tension of loss builds when Sarah’s son goes missing in the bush. But as the waters of Eye Lake drop and Crooked River returns to its original route, it’s not just Clarence’s castle that is revealed with “trickles of water coming out the windows and the weeds hanging from the sills.”
For this reader, Hughes nails down the feel of northwestern Ontario with brilliant sensory detail and a great respect for its rough beauty and power. I’d also become very fond of Eli and was glad to be left with the sense that there are better times ahead for him.
Are there any books or articles set in northwestern Ontario you’d like to recommend? Please share here!
Eli is fishing from the shore of Eye Lake when he snags his line. It’s not a rock or a log that he catches, but the castle built in the bush by his grandfather along the shore of Crooked River before the land was flooded. Sound familiar? Atikokan has a log castle in the nearby wilderness on the shores of White Otter Lake.
Crooked River was founded by Eli’s Grandfather Clarence when he built a hotel to house men that were building the railway to bring wheat from the west to the port at Thunder Bay. Years later, Clarence builds the castle for a woman with “lips redder than any woman’s in town” who visits Crooked River long before the river is diverted and damed for the Red Rock Mines.
On the day Eli snags the turret, the waters of Eye Lake are dropping due to a breach in the dam, the town of Crooked River is gearing up to celebrate its 100th anniversary and Eli’s neighbours, Sarah and her son, are in crisis. Sarah turns to Eli for support because “‘you’re one of the few really decent people I know, Eli. Do you know that?’” Eli doesn’t. He’s in a constant state of confusion over what people say “on account of the cord that was wrapped around my neck when I was born.” Despite his lack of understanding, Eli is a reliable narrator of both Sarah’s domestic trouble and two mysterious disappearances that have haunted the town for decades.
This is a novel about loss beginning with Grandfather Clarence who goes fishing early one morning, long before Eli is born, and never comes back. Crooked River is losing people because the iron ore mine and the lumber mill have closed. Everything is closing so that now it’s a town “where everything used to be.” Eli’s mother dies in child birth. His father is lost to him in grief leaving Nana and her comforting bowls of porridge with raisins “for when bad things happen” and his Uncle Virgil to guide him. While they fish, Virgil instructs Eli to “worry about the ones you get into the boat, not the ones that get away” because “what’s gone, well that’s gone, Eli, and there’s nothing to be done about it, not a damn thing!”
The details surrounding Clarence’s disappearance are revealed gradually when the narrative goes back in time. Eli visits the house he was born in and though it isn’t fit to live in anymore, he lies on the porch couch where he used to fall asleep and recalls Virgil’s conversations with friends about the old times when Clarence was building his castle and the town was thriving.
Perhaps the most poignant loss is that of George, Eli’s childhood friend who disappeared when they were eleven years old. Eli recalls being dragged into the bush to search for “exhibits” George wants to label and display. George narrates these expeditions like a National Geographic explorer while Eli follows keeping “one eye on the ground wherever else you got the other one pointed” like Virgil has advised on account of abandoned mine shafts. The narrative alternates between the mystery of Clarence and George’s disappearances and the current danger escalating against Sarah.
Equally compelling is the setting of northwestern Ontario. I relished the vivid descriptions of the landscape and the town and felt firmly placed in Crooked River surrounded by “the ragged pattern of forests and creeks and lakes.” When Eli and George get lost in the bush, Eli feels “the “empty, scary space growing in your belly, growing bigger and bigger until it seems as big and empty as the thousands and thousands of kilometres surrounding you.”
When trains pass: “you’d hear them a ways out to begin with, their horns making an echoey lonely loon cry in the dark.” After they pass, “the sound and the shaking would shuffle back into the dark and I’d lie there feeling like I’d been tucked in.”
The demise of industry in northwestern Ontario is also poignantly portrayed. Passing the old corrugated iron mine buildings full holes from where people use them for shooting practice, Eli tells us: “You couldn’t feel a breeze or flutter of wind anywhere - it was like nature had stopped breathing or something, like its lungs were full of holes like everything else here was.”
And isn’t this the truth about the end of winter: “the bugs and animals come rushing out, the plants and leaves push through in a hurry, the whole bunch of them trying to cram their living into the short summer.”
But it’s not all hard times in the bush. The small, northern town humour is delightful. Eli says, “you can always tell Minnesotans up here in northern Ontario: they’ve got bigger beards and newer fishing stuff than anyone else.” From the Police Watch in the local paper Virgil reads: “12:58 Dog in road. 12:59 Dog departed of its own volition.”
The tension of loss builds when Sarah’s son goes missing in the bush. But as the waters of Eye Lake drop and Crooked River returns to its original route, it’s not just Clarence’s castle that is revealed with “trickles of water coming out the windows and the weeds hanging from the sills.”
For this reader, Hughes nails down the feel of northwestern Ontario with brilliant sensory detail and a great respect for its rough beauty and power. I’d also become very fond of Eli and was glad to be left with the sense that there are better times ahead for him.
Are there any books or articles set in northwestern Ontario you’d like to recommend? Please share here!