Compassion, wisdom in a small town
Love, death, family and uncharted experiences lead to the godsend of eurekas
Writing is everyday alchemy and fiction writing is maybe more so (though I’m a novelist and guilty of bias). So ordinary that it’s easy to overlook, the magic of turning words into clauses, sentences, paragraphs and entire books ought to be celebrated.
And every so often there’s a book that reminds us of that fact.
Spending a few hours with bestselling and much-lauded septuagenarian Mary Lawson’s fourth novel makes overlooking the alchemy an impossibility. “A Town Called Solace” is engrossing. It’s delightful. It’s satisfying: you’ll chuckle, you’ll grin with recognition, your eyes may well with tears.
The novel encourages hope, roots for redemption and grants enlightenment for its characters without for a moment denying life’s complexity or hardships, or forgetting about humankind’s capacity for self-delusion and misguided choices.
Though set 49 years ago (in “historical” 1972), the story’s ingredients are universally appealing: love and death and family and uncharted experiences leading to the godsend of eurekas.
And yet, Lawson’s novel begins simply, with just five syllables and four basic words: “There were four boxes.” They’re the base metal of Lawson’s artful alchemical transformation.
To winning effect, Lawson’s first novel
since 2013’s “Road Ends” (set in Struan, in northern Ontario, a short drive, we might guess, from Solace) relates its story with three sequential narrating points of view. At the centre reclines Elizabeth Orchard, ailing and hospitalized far from Solace. She’s asked Clara, a child who resides across the street, to care for Moses, her cat.
From home, Clara is happily dutiful; not only does she relish the responsibility, but she welcomes the distraction: 12 days earlier Rose, her rebellious older sister, ran away from home. Rose hasn’t been heard from since. Nearly eight, Clara’s frantic with worry and has convinced herself that keeping watch on the neighbouring house will secure Rose’s safe return. Clara’s parents are off-limits to her, as their misery has taken the form of bottling up and explosive recriminations.
When a stranger shows up at Mrs. Orchard’s house — and then appears to move in — Clara attempts to restore order. Lawson’s portrait of Clara — her innocence, agency and coping mechanisms — is charming but also superbly detailed: Clara’s authenticity jumps from the page.
Lawson keeps her characters largely apart. Elizabeth’s shorter accounts are set during her brief stay in a hospital; fully adult, she sees herself as “dying of boredom” and an “old nuisance” on the ward with limited tolerance for other patients.
Aside from hospital goings-on, matterof-fact Elizabeth (“It seems I will not be going home”) recalls her distant past, in particular “the greatest joy” she ever knew, a neighbouring boy named Liam (she easily recalls meeting him: “The Blitz on London had begun the previous night”).
Striving to quell memories and her “savage love,” she revisits the collapse of the “quiet, comfortable, sheltered life” she led with her husband.
The handsome man Clara watches and tries to outsmart is Liam, now weathered and a self-declared misanthrope escaping the misery of a marriage that sputtered along years too long. He believes he’s in Solace (“not much,” he’s decided) for a few weeks of respite.
Lawson’s plotting is deft, expert. And while the principal characters are completely absorbing, the supports — from Moses the cat and Mr. Li, the chef at Solace’s only restaurant (called Hot Potato), to Sergeant Barnes, the town’s agent of good — are rendered as snapshots worthy of their own novels.
“A Town Called Solace” pleases at every level. It’s a captivating tale suffused with wisdom and compassion. Why would anyone refuse that?