Fumbling through the brambles of memory
Novel explores the ambiguities of our past, with all its shape- shifting and unreachable frustrations
The Sun’s book club is discussing Ann- Marie MacDonald’s Adult Onset, a novel about memory and modern parenting. We will be chatting online with MacDonald at noon on Dec. 19. Plan to join the conversation at vancouversun. com/ books.
Monique Sherrett: Memory is a tricky beast, isn’t it. I’m at the chapter “Friday,” so I still don’t know what happens by the end of the book but I do remember what happened earlier in the week. So far the middle section of the book is more enjoyable for me than the beginning. I’m more familiar with the characters and there are more flashbacks and remembrances about Mary Rose’s parents, who I found most interesting early on.
Mister’s mother Dolly is a piece of work. Is she mellowing with age or is it dementia? Having had some family experience with the latter, her looped conversations are an indicator for me, but so far Dolly hasn’t been diagnosed.
Then there’s Mister herself. Is she suffering from baby brain? Post- traumatic stress? Or maybe she is just one of those scatterbrains who puts the milk on the counter and her keys in the fridge. I’d like to cut her some slack but she is also a writer, and apparently a successful one. I find it hard to believe her constant surprise when readers make connections to her life and her novels that she herself hasn’t realized. I wonder if this is an autobiographical aspect of Ann- Marie MacDonald’s experience. The writers I’ve met have incredible attention to detail and retention of those details so I’m curious if it’s Mister who has adult onset and not her mother, although how tragically young if she does.
The lovely thing about this book is that it’s all falling to pieces and being pieced together at once. Rather like real life.
Trevor Battye: LOL, I had the same thought as Monique about Mister. Part of what I thought at times during the novel is, “Well, maybe she’s just simple minded.” Obviously I’m less forgiving than Monique, though I did find it puzzling particularly as I’ve had the same experience with writers I’ve met, who are by and large very articulate, deep thinkers as a group on the whole. Yet here we are confronted with a character whose dogs are not all barking.
Tracy Sherlock: Funny. It is probably all perspective, but I never once considered that she might be simpleminded. I always went to “completely overwhelmed,” rather than dim.
Melanie Jackson: Trevor, you’ve made me giggle, but I don’t think we should classify poor, mixed- up Mister as dim. If anything, she is a little too intelligent, too fine- tuned. Her thoughts zoom all over the place, making brilliant links and allusions that leave you dizzy. And jokes! She’s Carrie Fisher on steroids. Spoiler alert: Mister calms down and comes to a resolution of sorts at the end, so that all this rapid- fire commentary and switching back and forth from present to past to imagined past becomes a finished journey, not a perpetual state, or misstate, perhaps, of mind, dim or not.
I was just thinking the same thing, Monique: Memory is indeed tricky. It’s a puzzling thicket of brambles that you push back through, scarring yourself in the process. The bramble metaphor is one that Mister keeps coming back to. She longs to push right through to the sleeping princess and dislodge the poisoned apple from the princess’ lips. ( Thus jumbling two fairy- tales, but that’s what happens in dreams, and so much of this novel is dreamlike.) The poisoned apple is the bad thing that happened to Mister as a little girl. She almost fell from a balcony. But who dangled her over the balcony? Or did anyone? Did it even happen? This is the problem with chasing down memories. They’re shape- shifting, unreachable. In the end, as she finds, all you can do is confront the fear that prompted the memory.
Daphne Wood: I found the flashbacks, partial memories and admittedly incomplete accounts by Mary Rose of traumatic events ( Dolly’s neglect of Mary Rose in Germany is one chilling example) to be the strongest elements of the novel. To me, they were more engaging and mysterious than the “real- time” segments. Perhaps this is because the past can be whatever we want it to be, steeped in ambiguity with no ultimate arbiter of truth. It is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle without the benefit of seeing the picture on the box. Mister uses scraps of first- person accounts, unreliable witnesses, photos and her imagination to piece together family secrets. Ultimately the pieces don’t fit together nicely, and a few stubbornly remain missing.
Past memories give context to Mary Rose’s volatility and troubled relationship with her parents. But in one specific case, it doesn’t go far enough to convincingly explain why her parents so thoroughly rejected her and her partner, but then did a complete about- face and become loving, engaged parents and grandparents. When so much detail was given to the written correspondence between Mary Rose and her father, as he coldly explained why she was not welcome in their home — followed by a phone conversation that left Mary Rose in pieces — I thought I must have missed something. Was a word from her younger brother all it took to bridge the chasm between Mister and her parents? The leap to forgiveness was hard for me to believe as the memories of Dolly’s hateful tirades were so particularly well- written. Of the many cringe- inducing scenes in the novel ( and by that I mean masterfully written with an emotional punch), the verbal assault of Mary Rose by Dolly while her father stared vacantly toward a corner of the room topped the list.