RR #1

The strong point of Timothy Findley book are characters. They are developed with great care about details. Their external appearance, behavior and deep psychology compose coherent and vivid unity. Moreover they are not static, through out the book the reader can observe ongoing transformations.

The character that gained most of my attention is Jane Kincard. Young attractive woman, who seemed to be suspended between the her current idyll and the willingness for strong feelings.
Author’s most used technique to present Jane’s thoughts is the stream of consciousness. On the first glance the content of it seems to be sometimes completely irrelevant to what is currently happening. In many cases it is a combustion of flashbacks, thoughts and content which will be used in future.

“Yes. White. And delicate. His skin. His hand. Himself (…) I couldn’t help thinking of Monica Lewinsky and her goddamned panties and her goddamned blue dress and her goddamned practiced knees and fucking Bill Clinton (…) and all the world watching... But he was so beautiful- the Bell man-the angel-man. So clean. So innocent. So ready to have and lose it all … But… That isn’t what happened.” She drew herself up, as if about to accept an invitation to waltz. “I’m lady, remember ?”

This fragment clearly shows that her internal life is very rich. Her artistic soul allows to appreciate the beauty and innocence. It stands in contrary with the description of Monika Lewinsky, which seems to be a fantasy, where Jane is on her place, and Milos is Bill Clinton. The comparison of her thoughts with her real life gives very interesting results. She seems to be totally happy. She has good husband, intelligent and well behaving kid, financial resources allowing to have decent life. There comes the question why then she is overusing alcohol and have problems with painting Saint George’s face.

Those two worlds stay are completely opposite and only possible result is a conflict of values.

Reader's Response #2

The narration in the book is real masterpiece. Very often we have 3rd person narration combined with character thoughts and dialogues. Each of them gives only a piece of the plot. The perfect example of this can be found in chapter 9 of the part called “summer nights”, where Griff has just returned from his first date with a man and his sense of guilt does not allow him to enter the house and meet his wife.
The passage starts with the narrator introducing the situation. Than Griff tries to search for excuses in his own mind. He remembers the moments from his past. His father and his words. For the reader it all seams very distant and undefined. Here joins the 3rd person narrator again to give necessary facts from the past. The simple remembering evolves into the self-talk, where he is both his prosecutor and defender. During the lecture of this paragraph we slowly discover what have happened between Jonathan and Griff. Timothy Findley dosage the facts carefully to create suspense. Beginning from the general description of the past which indicates that an important event took place, he proceeds with the phrase: “Oh, Jesus. What have I done?”. In this moment reader is almost sure what have happened, but author transforms the focus point from the plot to spiritual sphere just by stating one word: ‘cocksucker’. In this point it is no longer about the character in the book, but a thought-provoking reference to readers set of values.
The similar pattern is repeated many times. The plot is just a medium through which reader can reach deeper into his own soul. This process has similar purpose to ancient plays where ultimate goal for the audience was to experience ‘catharsis’- the restoration, which could be achieved only be better understanding of oneself.