Author: Monique (Page 1 of 124)

The Tenants by Pat Dobie is a delight. Gosh, I have had such a string of mediocre reads that I was worried. But this little novel is charming and gritty. The Tenants is the winner of the 45th annual 3-day novel contest. The writing is tight and evocative, just like the Vancouver housing situation. Ok, maybe that sounds dull. But no! The Tenants is about three Vancouverites. Dave and Scott are partners who live in a rental off Victoria drive. Maeve is a homeless woman who is tenting near the blackberry bushes in an unattended/undeveloped area nearby. Happenstance brings the three of them together. And I think what’s so delightful is that you learn just enough about each characters in the same way you might if you too randomly met a neighbour over a few intersecting errands.

Writing a novel in three days requires an economy of language, and that perfectly suits the character of overly frugal Scott. It also suits Maeve, whose survival is too limit how much she says to anybody. Dave is perhaps the most hospitable in that he interacts with Maeve, welcomes her into the secret garden he’s developing on city land, but he too is holding back. So the writing style, the time constraints of the contest, and the constraints of living in an overly expensive city make this weirdly funny story a page turner. Maybe you have to live here to get it, but the story struck a chord for me.

First published in 1998, Kiss of the Fur Queen opens like a Greek tragedy. We are introduced to the Okimasis family through the caribou-hunter father, Abraham Okimasis, who is striving to win a dog-sled race, which seals upon himself and his family the kiss of the crowned Fur Queen.

Abraham names his next-born child Champion. And early on, Champion is a gifted musician. The next boy, Ooneemeetoo, is a gift dancer. The two boys, born in northern Manitoba, move through their world, hunting caribou with their parents and making music and dances for their family. These are well-loved boys.

When Champion is taken to residential school, he is excited to fly in the small airplane, but sad to leave his little brother. At school his hair is shaved, he is forbidden to speak Cree, and he is renamed Jeremiah. Jeremiah’s only highlight is discovering a piano and convincing the head priest to allow a nun to teach him.

Two years later his little brother joins him at school and is renamed Gabriel. Gabriel is an angel. His face is described as being so lovely that your heart aches; and of course he becomes prey to the priest.

The first part of the novel has so many Greek elements, in particular the repeating and spinning of the tale of the Fur Queen. In Greek tragedy, Athena—the bright eyed goddess—is described as the goddess of wisdom, craft, and battle. The Fur Queen appears many times in the story in different guises—perhaps meant to be a Trickster—but I think the Fur Queen is more like Athena.

More clear is that Greek tragedy deals with big themes of love, loss, pride, the abuse of power and the fraught relationships between men and gods. Kiss of the Fur Queen goes deep with these themes too.

The love between the brothers, loss of connection to family and culture, pride of personal artistic achievements, the abuse of power by members of the Catholic Church, and the fraught relationship both brothers have with god/God.

Residential school takes the boys away from their community and inserts them into melting pot of Cree children taken from across the North, who are then given new names, language, and religion. The boys are abused by the priests and this emotionally distances them from their Catholic-convert parents. As they grow up and move to the city to pursue their artistic gifts, they are away from the priests but not from the hostilities and limiting beliefs of colonialism. The triumph is that Jeremiah and Gabriel break expectations. Jeremiah becomes a concert pianist and playwright. Gabriel becomes a professional ballet dancer.

Kiss of the Fur Queen is a beautifully written novel of heartbreak and truth, told at a high cost. The mix of Cree words and mythology creates a sense of musicality that weaves through the story and echoes the life of the author.

Tomson Highway, like Jeremiah, is a playwright and musician. His brother Rene was an accomplished dancer and choreographer, who died too young. Their father was a caribou hunter. I do not know if the novel is autobiographical, but it draws on certain elements of their lives and reflects many of the traumas Indigenous children experienced.

Published by Penguin Random House Canada: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/79881/kiss-of-the-fur-queen-by-tomson-highway/9780385697217