Monday, August 3, 2020

Review of Simon the Fiddler by Paulette Jiles

Simon the Fiddler by Paulette Jiles

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A fictional exploration of the upheaval in lives and society right after the American Civil War in Texas after a disastrous and unnecessary battle in the last days of it, perpetrated on battle-weary soldiers by a glory-seeking officer. Also a love story wherein dispossessed young people triumph over poverty, indentured servitude, an in-house predator, not to mention much time and distance spent apart. Bonus, this is a tribute to musicians and the authenticity of the tunes they played and the instruments they had on hand is a treat to behold. It begs for a soundtrack. An audio recording of this book would be a huge hit!

A “victory” aka end of hostilities banquet is organized after the quick and bloody battle, and former soldiers known or suspected of being musicians are rounded up to form a 'scratch band' from both sides of the conflict. They’ve been wandering around since the battle, trying not to starve or bleed to death or catch yellow fever or be asked for their discharge papers by the Union soldiers. One such soldier is a slight youth known as Simon the Fiddler, already an accomplished musician whose biggest concern is the safety of his violin in its case. Simon has a temper and a chip on his shoulder because his father’s whereabouts are unknown and parentage in that society is a major concern. “Who are your people?” meaning what sort of upstanding citizens or worthless batch of landless ne’er-do-wells do you hail from? Simon wants land and to this end he plans to save the money he can make playing music. To this he has added winning the hand of Doris Aherne, the Irish indentured servant of the vainglorious and predatory officer who caused this last unnecessary battle. Simon is a goal-oriented fellow, you might say, an officially fatherless and desperate young man with a mighty will to succeed.

Here, as always within the novels written by award-winning writer Paulette Jiles, are truly marvelous characters, depicted in writing so engaging, so embedded in that particular time and place, another masterful combination of eye and ear and language. The descriptions of the odours alone are so apt you will walk the resinous rough-lumbered docks of Galveston and avoid the pungent fellows being tossed out of the bars in Houston. Spanish music and food and language mix with new world English alike. We can feel the desperation as these starving musicians scrabble to find more work and to find the doctor “on his exhausted horse” with pain-killers to ease their afflicted friend’s painful departure. The dialogue and the action are laced with deadpan humour as in the early example where Simon is hidden from army conscripts in an ice-house, covered with sawdust and left to ‘chill’ for hours.

The plot roars and simmers with yearning and menace. The chapter with the musicians journeying out to a notorious bandit’s family wedding is a nail-biter because the musicians know they could end up being what we’d call collateral damage should hostilities break out but Simon wants the lucrative pay promised to them. Meanwhile Doris, his beloved, on whom he has fixed his hopes for matrimony, is cleverly using the small arsenal of weapons available to her to fend off the predatory officer. The lot of indentured servants is only one step away from actual slavery and not nearly as much is written about it. They are at the mercy of a family and Doris is not placed with a happy family. The modern-day parallel would be nannies, hoping for permanent citizenship. The only time Doris can leave this bleak house is to accompany her only friend to the market to shop for food and to go to houses to teach piano lessons or accompany travelling musicians for a concert. I think you can see where this might lead…

A rip-roaring historical romance written by a brilliant storyteller and apparently a veteran penny whistle player in a ‘browngrass band’ in Texas!

Review of Sea Trial: Sailing After My Father by Brian Harvey

Review of Sea Trial: Sailing After My Father by Brian Harvey

Sea Trial: Sailing After My Father

This is my choice for Father's Day this year, the perfect gift for a lighthouse keeper who loves boats, also the former owner of a sailboat, who appreciates fine writing, shares a dry, self-deprecating sense of humour with the author and whose own father was a lawyer. It's also going into the birthday stack for our son, who has sailed the VanIsle Race, the circumnavigation of Vancouver Island twice on Icon, and who worked as a sail-maker and boat rigger for seven years. He also raced sailboats, mono and double-hulls, in Canada, Europe and the US, before getting his mechanical engineering degree to add to his diploma and has now secured his dream job with a naval architect! So if doctors, lawyers, engine mechanics, sports or commercial fishing experience and sailboats figure large in your life, consider this father and son gift recommendation.

This is not to say the book, which is so well-written it was nominated for Canada's Governor-General's Award for non-fiction in 2019, is an adventurous larky sort of boat story. Far from it. It is a heart-breaker for those many sons who grew up with perfectionist, proud, fiercely intelligent fathers, the kind of fellow who thinks he's naturally topnotch at everything else in life, like sailing, because he's a neurosurgeon. Relationships come second to patients. Nurses are told what to do. Truth and justice will prevail in a legal suit which is delivered to the neurosurgeon's door ten years after he retired...and this is the legal case which the author is reading, in alternating chapters as he sails a boat called Vera around Vancouver Island with his long-suffering (there is no other kind of wife for a sailor, so perhaps I'm hearing the author's voice in my head, chiding me for being redundant) but feisty and armed with as much navigational knowledge as her husband. He seems to make the final decisions, based on "sailing all his life", about tackling potential horror shows like Dodds Narrows and the Nawhitti Bar and rounding Cape Scott and the much-feared Brooks Peninsula, not to mention the shoaling waters off Estevan Point. Thankfully, there is much love and respect for the patience and skill and hard work shared by the couple and their invincible schnauzer dog on board and the humour is absolutely wonderful, leavening the tragedy which is unfolding as the trial transcripts and other supporting evidence is revealed. The father refused to speak about any of this with his son while alive but deftly written and for this reading, convincing conversations do occur on board...


A brilliant book which deserves to join the pantheon of great sea-going books. Kudos to ECW Press for a handsome cover and design for this original trade paperback. I feel like a bookseller or publisher's sales rep again when I read a great book like this, somewhat evangelical, but there are good reads and there are great, outstanding reads and this is one of the latter, hence the five stars.