My blog will be jumping back and forth between what I
am currently reading and what I read last year…at least for a while. This entry begins my 2014 reading journey, so
I will begin with an explanation of how the journey started.
In my blog of 7 January, I mentioned
the category system I used over the past several years to encourage reading on
different topics, by different authors, fiction, non-fiction, etc. Although the system served its purpose for at
least five years, my compulsion to fill each category sometimes sent me on a
frantic search through my collection as the year drew to a close. This year I decided to start with something
easy, recently acquired, and calling to me from the shelf: Redwork by Michael Bedard.
My first experience with Bedard was
in 2012 when I read The Green Man and
quite enjoyed it. I am still drawn to YA
books and love exploring the works of Canadian writers. I will admit the title and cover called to me
while in Fanfare Books; it was encouraged by my interest in Green Man
mythology. The book, a mystery involving
time travel and magic, stands well on its own, but I discovered it was actually
a sequel to an earlier book. Finally
this December I acquired Redwork, not
the book I was looking for, and then found a used copy of A Darker Magic, which is now out of print. And this experience is part of what I find
important about my reading: one book leads to another. Sometimes the connections are obvious, but
other times the link of cause and effect is tenuous.
Redwork
was in my hands on the first day of 2014, and so my reading year began; this
novel is the winner of the Governor General’s Literary Award, the Canadian
Library Association Young Adult Book Award, and a co-winner of the IODE Book
Award – National Chapter. I never
expected to be reading a mystery with a parent finishing up her dissertation on
William Blake and an elderly man seeking to create the Philosopher’s
Stone.
Cass is a young teenage boy
struggling to help his mother survive on her part time cleaning job. The novel begins with their move to a second
floor apartment in an old house facing a park.
Cass is immediately interested in the mysterious unseen landlord living
in the first floor of the house. A gang
of bullies rules the park, people seem to avoid walking on the sidewalk in
front of the house, and as the plot line unfolds, Cass begins to see the
suspicion surrounding the mysterious landlord Mr. Magnus. It is a world filled with pain, both physical
and emotional.
Cass connects with Maddy, a girl
down the street, and together they befriend and work with Mr. Magnus. But the novel also has well-thought out
subplots. Cass works at the local movie
theatre for another recluse who loves old films. And there are the strange connections between
Cass and Mr. Magnus; he hears old songs played on the phonograph directly below
his bedroom:
He stared up at the crack snaking its way through the
ceiling, following it from where it began as a tiny trickle of dark just above
the bed, watching it widen as it went, till by the window it disappeared down a
ragged hole in the chimney flue. It had
become a nightly ritual. Following it,
he seemed to fall asleep through that hole…but it seemed now that he was
looking down on it from a great distance, and the crack was like a cleft of
darkness snaking through a countryside.
Downstairs the music died. He
felt himself drifting downward, ever downward, saw the crack yawn open under
him, and felt the darkness draw him slowly in” (51).
It
was as I read these words that I realized how much the writing had pulled me
into that room. Bedard’s writing encourages
a visceral experience.
The physical and emotional pain in
this novel is frequently from bullying.
Perhaps I was more attuned to it having just finished reading The Fault in Our Stars, but this line in
particular heightened the importance of the pain each character was feeling: “It
was a funny thing with pain, the way it sort of wrapped you up in itself”
(131). And yet, this mystery ends
happily.
Immediately after finishing Redwork,
I began reading the mystery that inspired The
Green Man: A Darker Magic. Written in 1987, three years before Redwork, Bedard has some interesting parallels:
magic, time travel, garages used for mysterious purposes, dysfunctional
families, and a loner as the main character – quite independent and willing to
take rational risks. He obviously has the
middle school audience in mind.
But despite the similarities, this
novel has a strikingly different tone.
Emily Endicott, like Cass, is about 14 or 15. She is responsible for babysitting her three
younger siblings, but her summer is changed when her teacher, Miss Potts, calls
with a question. Did she see the old
paper in her desk advertising a magic show?
And so the mystery begins, with memories of a magic show for Miss Potts
that seemed to spell death for the children involved. And this year, August 8 is again a Saturday. Magic, a magician who apparently defies time,
and in a separate story line, two boys who know about it but are not in contact
with Miss Potts all working, wondering about, and moving forward to the special
night. Unlike Redwork, A Darker Magic
has a truly chilling ending.
Now jump forward to Emily Endicott
as an old woman learning to trust her niece, Ophelia Endicott. Ophelia, or O as she prefers to be called, is
another independent young teenager pulled into family responsibilities. Emily became a poet, and finally returned to
Caledon, where she obtained a part time job and later bought a bookstore: The Green Man. As a poet, Emily creates a strong poetry
section in the store and there are references to William Blake, Arthur Rimbaud,
Emily Dickinson, and Ezra Pound. Again
Bedard’s interest in poetry is in evidence as O’s dad and Emily’s brother,
Charles is a college professor in Italy for the summer researching Ezra Pound.
One of the things I enjoy about all
three of these books is the timelessness of the setting. Although there are references to dates, the
novels lack the obsession with mentioning every current gadget that may be
available. It works as comfortable anachronism
for me; a reviewer on Goodreads found this extremely frustrating. However, I can imagine Bedard receiving
letters from readers of A Darker Magic
asking for a sequel and his desire for the connection of an elderly person
connecting with a teenager: it is a
method employed successfully in all three novels.
And in the end of The Green Man, O learns, “It was her
business now to believe – in the power and beauty of words, in the spirits that
move among us always, in the worlds of light and dark that neighbor us – to believe
in the possibility of the impossible” (304).
Michael Bedard creates an
imaginative magical world but never loses sight of educating the reader of the
source and/or history behind the story: people trying to create the Philosopher’s
Stone, understanding the pain of a war veteran, learning the Green Man
mythology. He is an author I’ll return
to…
Bedard,
Michael. A Darker Magic. New York:
Avon Books, 1989. Print
---.
Redwork. Toronto: Stoddart Publishing
Co., 2001. Print
---.
The Green Man. Toronto: Tundra Books,
2012. Print.
