The River by Helen Humphreys

One of the things I'm going to have to do if I'm going to start updating again is be a little less rigid about how I update and when and for what. I used to go at this chronologically - that is, whatever I read first, I'd write about first. And I wrote about everything I read, regardless, except for the books I didn't finish. I have about 30 books I still need to write about, going all the way back to January of this year. I say "need" - but do I need to? Perhaps, at this point in my life and writing, the more appropriate criteria is "want" - which of these books that I have read do I most want to write about right now.

And right now, I want to write about The River.

The River
by Helen Humphreys
ECW Press, 2015
224 pages

I have an odd reading relationship with the work of Canadian author Helen Humphreys, and this is yet another entry into that ongoing weirdness. (The weirdness is with me, not her books.) Previous to The River I have read The Frozen Thames and loved it, and The Lost Garden and wanted to love it but had trouble with the subject matter and the prickly main character, Gwen. Humphreys tackles subject matters and writes characters that I find uncomfortable, and yet - I keep going back. I don't usually do this with authors who write characters I find uncomfortable or books that make me sad.

I'm going to keep going back to her, too. There's no question. Even though I know what I'm getting into.

I do this for the writing. Helen Humphreys is a poet and she writes prose like a poet. This will get me every time. I like good writing. A book doesn't tend to make it with me without it, regardless of how excited I am about the characters or the plot or the concept. And apparently really beautiful writing will draw me in regardless of how unexcited I am about the characters or the plot. So despite the detachment Humphreys writes with, and the often melancholy (sometimes very melancholy, sometimes downright sad) tone, and despite characters who can be hard to love, I read Humphreys.

The River itself is as odd a piece as The Frozen Thames, a book that defies cataloguers to put it in a specific place on the shelves. Our library has decided it is a biography. Of... a river I guess? Because that is what it is - a word portrait of a river. In short passages, some a few pages and some a single line, Humphreys introduces the reader to Depot Creek, specifically to a little plot of land - her little plot of land - on the banks of said Creek. Using this as a jumping off point, we are introduced to the creek itself, the Napanee River, the town of Bellrock, the people who have used the river and inhabited the land where Humphreys lives now, the wildlife that use the river, and so on. In some cases she just describes something - the river, the history, a creature on the river - and in others she has written pieces from the perspective of someone who may have existed, or who did exist. These would be fiction, but they're still trying to do the same thing that the nonfiction descriptive passages are: get to the heart of what the river actually is, what it truly means.

It's lovely. It's melancholy. It's a unique gem of a book. It's also beautiful as a physical item; the photographs and drawings strategically placed through the pages are perfect. This is not one to e-read; you will be much happier if you can have it in your hands. Recommended for anyone who loves beautiful words and is interested in history, natural history, and the attempt to peer into the heart of something so prosaic and so unknowable as a river. I didn't love it, because it's not exactly a loveable book. It's a bit prickly, a bit detached. But I will remember it and I will come back to it.

Fire: Tales of Elemental Spirits by Robin McKinley and Peter Dickinson

Speaking of authors who write stories that feel like coming home, I am always very excited to get my hands on something new by Robin McKinley. Interestingly, despite my adoration, I haven't actually read Water, the collection that predates Fire, but that will be rectified next time I head into a book store. If Water is anything like Fire, I want to own it.

The lovely thing about Fire is that I've also had an introduction to Peter Dickinson now, an author I have been meaning to try for years. His name keeps cropping up as a must-read speculative fiction author, so it's about time I got on that train.

There are five stories in Fire. None of them are connected by anything except, well, fire, and the fact that they are fantasy. Thematically each is separate, and stylistically it's really interesting to notice just how very different Dickinson and McKinley's voices are. Each has a particularly strong voice, too. I worried a little (because I worry about stuff like this) that one's voice might shine and the other might pale in comparison, but that didn't happen because they're so vastly different.

Dickinson's stories, "Phoenix", "Fireworm" and "Salamander Man" all seem to share a slightly distant, mythological quality. They read like legend, as though Dickinson is a tale-teller, passing these carefully crafted gems of stories to us from one generation to the next. In "Fireworm" he almost seems to reflect himself -- one of the main threads through this story is the power of story, and the unreal quality a tale can take on once it becomes a story versus experience. It's a story explicitly about heroes and perspectives, and though it's not the first story I've read to question what makes a hero, I think it's one of the better ones. I felt a deep-seated discomfort, even sorrow, at the ambiguity, and I was supposed to. With one exception (the main character in "Salamander Man") I didn't get as emotionally invested in Dickinson's characters as I usually like to be in a story. Normally I might count this as a bad thing, but in this case I simply can't. The stories are fascinating, imaginative, and lovely in their complex/simple way. Will be reading more.

McKinley's stories are "Hellhound" which I loved and was likely my favourite of the collection, and the longest story in the book, "First Flight". Both are very McKinley -- her voice is so clear. It's a chatty style, full of detail and sidetracks and information that may not at first glance seem relevant, but boy does it build the world. By the time I'm a page in to either story, I know the main character, and I'm curious about the world, and I'm deeply invested in what happens. The added detail annoys some people, I've found. "Hellhound" is similar in feel to her book Sunshine, which is one of my all-time favourite books, and which tends to be a bit of a polarizing book. Some people love it and some really, really don't. Sunshine is basically one of my ideal books, and because "Hellhound" feels like it I love it too. In both her stories McKinley starts a number of different threads, and ties some up while leaving others dangling at the end of the story -- it's a complete story, but not all the questions are answered; and many of them are unlikely to ever be answered. I'm okay with that, the way she does it. In fact, I think it's one of the things I like best.

Recommended collection for sure, especially for lovers of fantasy. Reading this book made me happy.

The Frozen Thames by Helen Humphreys

The first thing to recognize about this book is that it is really more poetry than prose. Not in a technical sense; but in feeling, The Frozen Thames is wonderfully, hauntingly poetic. It is structured as a set of written snapshots, one per year that the Thames river froze over in the heart of London (England, not Ontario). They are presented in chronological order. Some of them are very short, under 250 words. The only constant between them is the river, the ice, the cold. Some are descriptive, without a protagonist. Most have unnamed protagonists, some from the first person, some from the third. They are people from all walks of life, from peasants to nobles, children, adults, the elderly.

This book is wonderful, and I am in awe of it, and tremendously glad I read it. My copy was the library's, but I am considering purchasing it for myself, because it feels like something I should own.

While I was in the midst of reading the book, I took a walk along our local iconic river with a friend. The river had frozen when the levels were quite high, and as the water levels dropped the ice was draped over surfaces now a fair height above river level, including the paths alongside. The two of us walked mostly on this ice. Sometimes it was that brown milky colour of natural ice, sometimes snowcovered, sometimes perfectly clear and we could see underneath to gravel and leaves that were still green and frozen in motion. On the way back to the parking lot, we walked on a pathway that was still under waterlevel, between two ponds. We could hear the ice shifting and cracking beside us and beneath us as we passed.

I thought about The Frozen Thames the entire time we walked along the river and I think it lent me some of its mysterious, melancholy and awe-inspiring feeling. The connection turned a simple walk into an experience.

I like this book because it can do that for me. I also like it because Humphreys doesn't just focus on the very human aspects of a river freezing once per generation -- the fear, the wonder, the pain, the despair. She also invokes the reader's wonder at the event, at nature being so unpredictable, powerful, merciless, beautiful. She invokes a sense of the implacable march of time, the arc of history having absolutely nothing to do with a frozen river and yet the river is a lens through which we can understand different moments in time. It's hypnotic.