Courage My Love: A Novel
Sarah Dearing has appropriated the name of a popular vintage clothing store in Toronto's grubby but funky Kensington Market area, Courage My Love, for the title of her second novel. (Her first was 1998's much-praised The Bull Is Not Killed. ) The allusion is meant to convey the downtown bohemian energy that's crucial to artistic creation and anathema to bourgeois suburban complacency (or at least that's the cliché that Dearing has fallen for). The story starts well, with a bored thirtysomething housewife who's constantly, and annoyingly, referred to as Mrs. Philippa Maria Donahue hearing a message from the entrails of a dead fish in the market: "Leave your husband. Leave him now. " (It's a fresh opening, even if the fish is not. ) She obeys, renting a ridiculously cheap room in the neighbourhood and abandoning her sitcom-dull husband and their upscale Yorkville condo. Rechristening herself Nova Philip, she hangs out with, and gradually wins acceptance from, the punks and painters who inhabit the market. The novel over-romanticizes Kensington Market, though, making it a crude metaphor for authentic living. Even rotten vegetables win praise there for genuineness, as if bad produce didn't exist elsewhere. And there is precious little struggle involved in Mrs. Donahue's transformation into Nova Philip, robbing the story of human complexity and dramatic tension. --Nigel Hunt Author(s): Sarah Dearing. Binding Paperback. Publisher(s): Stoddart. Label: Stoddart.
| Manufacturer: | Stoddart |
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| Lowest Price (CAD): | $17.56 |
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