Originally written for hobby blog on 6 April 2018
I first read Lynn Coady’s Strange Heaven for a special topics English literature class. The focus was on women in literature, specifically, pregnancy in literature. We read works from the early modern era such as Spenser’s Faerie Queen all the way up to modern Canada like today’s book. It was a class of under twenty students and not a single man to be found (I wonder why). I remember the professor going out one evening and getting everyone coffee, it was lovely.
After that first initial read through, I would often describe the book as the Canadian Girl Interrupted, which got a lot of people interested in the book, but with a second read through, I don’t think that is the best thing I could compare it to. The relationship between the protagonist Bridget and Mona, daughter of a wealthy German man, did vaguely remind me of the Girl Interrupted’s Susanna and Lisa, but only half the book is spent in the children hospital’s psych ward, and Mona doesn’t have a major impact on later events. A more apt comparison would be to Stephen Leacock’s Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, but with more dark humour.
Within only a few paragraphs I was sucked into Bridget Murphy’s world. Bridget listens to her mother’s small town gossip, the CBC, and her eccentric Uncle Albert’s stories that border on believability. Even though Bridget has left her small town to recover from giving birth and giving that baby up for adoption, the small town ennui is still inescapable as, half way through the book, she must return to her eclectic and dysfunctional family as well as face her previously booze-soaked social life with equally dysfunctional friends who don’t accept that she wishes to move beyond them.
There’s this quote on page 35 that sums up my feelings on the book and makes me wonder if the book is trying to get meta:
he closed his notebook and said that once he had thought he could write a book, what with knowing so many interesting and original people, but when he tried, all he ended up with were pages and pages of overly descriptive character sketches.
(Coady)
This is not to insult the book, just that it seems more made out of emotions and moments than an overarching plot, ending with Bridget having a desire to escape her passive nature, but stuck where she was before the pregnancy. For the average reader, I think this rather abrupt end with no closure may irritate and annoy, but it reflects the authentic messiness of life in that there is no clean beginning, middle or end, just a bunch of moments and people strung along by emotion.
There are times where the book itself felt a little messy in how it swung back and forth between the psych ward and Bridget’s past and how it moved between moment to moment, but I think it goes to enhance the book and the characters in it. Though it may be jarring for some. It’s also worth noting that this book takes a running start and long jumps over the line of political correctness. If words like “midget”, “retard”, and other more creative curses leave you uncomfortable, this might not be the best book for you.
In my version of the book, there’s an interview with Coady in which we learn Coady herself was pregnant as a teenager and also gave the baby up for adoption with many of the characters in the novel being inspired by growing up in the small town maritimes, but she notes that this book is still a work of fiction. Many writers blur the line between autobiography and fiction. Many reviews of Strange Heaven speak to the book’s authenticity in capturing life in the Maritimes, but I also found the book relatable having grown up in the very landlocked Chatham, ON. Bridget’s father reminds me of my own father and many of my peers’ fathers. Margaret P., Bridget’s invalid and raving grandmother, reminds me of many people I’ve run into walking the streets, and my god, I’ve met my fair share of Alan Voorlands. Strange Heaven feels like being wrapped in a blanket by your mother while you sit with a good book and a tea on Christmas Day. Maybe the blanket is a little itchy and you can hear an overly enthusiastic euchre game going on in the next room riddled with slurs and curses, but it’s home.
Some Quick Stats:
Author: Lynn Coady
Published: 13 August 2002, Anchor Canada
Pages: 216