God knows what the crows are trying to say. La'es– go down to the bottom of the ocean, to get snagged in the bottom, like a halibut hook stuck on the ocean floor; a boat sinking, coming to rest on the bottom. The seiner sank? Mom and Dad are in danger if they go on a boat? I should go after him? I used to think that if I could talk to the spirit world, I'd get some answers. Ha bloody ha. I wish the dead would just come out and say what they mean instead of being so passive-aggressive about the whole thing.Monkey Beach is a very dream-like book; a story of talking crows and premonitions and a little girl who can talk with the dead. Set in the near-wilds of the northern B.C. Coast, in the heart of Kitamaat Village (the townsite of the traditional lands of the Haisla First Nation), the connection between people and nature – and the blurred lines between this world and the next – makes it seem entirely possible that you might hear the Stone Man whistling for his dogs or catch sight of a B'gwus (Sasquatch) disappearing into the woods. It is also a story of family and despair and the struggle that Natives have to straddle the competing worlds of tradition and progress.
As the book begins, Lisamarie has recently returned to Kitamaat Village and receives news that her younger brother Jimmy – off on a commercial fishing boat for the first time – is missing; the boat presumed lost. As her parents fly off to be closer to the search, Lisa flounders, and as she decides what she can do to help, her mind bounces around her memories, eventually filling in her own fascinating history and that of her family. Of particular interest are her Uncle Mick (a former radical with the American Indian Movement) and her grandmother – Ma-ma-oo – who teaches Lisa about gathering berries and traditional medicines, but who also loves to watch Dynasty and hisses advice to Krystal and Alexis.
Lisa's childhood as a hard-fighting, back-talking tomboy is gripping (Uncle Mick calls her “Monster”), but especially so because she often gets a visit from a phantom red-haired man in the middle of the night before trouble strikes; Lisa has special gifts that bring clarity and foreboding to the plot. Even so, even if it's to deal with the gifts she didn't ask for, it's uncomfortable to watch Lisa make bad choices – smoking and drinking and going to raucous parties with her peers from grade seven on – and this view of Reserve life is one I don't think I've seen before: Although some mention is made of the Residential Schools and their terrible legacy, Lisa's parents hadn't attended one, and by all accounts, they are loving and protective and hopeful for their children's futures; so how does Lisa become so lost when her family is watching over her? Coming out of seemingly nowhere, no one but Lisa herself is to blame. It is especially distressing when Lisa eventually decides to take off (true, after suffering some tragedies) and she makes her way to Vancouver's Lower East Side: just like when I read Birdie, I wish there was some clue here about what sends these vulnerable young women right into the heart of danger.
The writing in Monkey Beach has such an earthy energy; author Eden Robinson blends myth and reality in a thoroughly modern style, repeatedly capturing the essence of the Haisla people and their place in the changing world. I enjoyed the writing most when Robinson was describing hidden places:
Headstones carved into eagles, blackfish, ravens, beavers appear seemingly at random. In the time of the great dying, whole families were buried in one plot. Pick wild blueberries when you're hungry, let the tart taste sink into your tongue, followed by the sharp sweetness that store-bought berries lack, realize that the plumpest berries are over the graves.Sometimes, however, Robinson dwelt on small facts for too long – as with the fishing for oolichan and rendering them into grease – and the digressions would stall the plot. And although I found these insertions a bit frustrating at the time, I decided afterwards that if Robinson hadn't recorded this traditional knowledge in her novel, it might as well have died with Ma-ma-oo and I'm richer in the end for having learned about it. Also, Robinson inserted some modernist passages (about the structure of the heart and the mechanics of heart disease) that felt unnecessarily artsy until the final, eerie passage:
Remove yourself from the next sound you hear, the breathing that isn't your own. It glides beneath the bushes like someone's shadow, a creature with no bones, no arms or legs, a rolling, shifting worm-shaped thing that hugs the darkness. It wraps its pale body around yours and feeds. Push yourself away when your vision dims. Ignore the confused, painful contractions in your chest as your heart trip-hammers to life, struggles to pump blood. Ignore the tingling sensations and weakness in your arms and legs, which make you want to lie down and never get up.Monkey Beach is a very absorbing read, and as it addresses many of the topics that I find most interesting, it hit all the right notes for me. I will happily seek out Eden Robinson's other works.
I'm really not a tinfoil-hatted cryptozoologist -- when Lisa in Monkey Beach talks about Sasquatches, I don't necessarily take that literally -- but I did have a boyfriend once from the interior of BC, and he told me that everyone he knew believed in Sasquatches; anyone who hadn't seen one firsthand at least knew someone else who had.
In Glen's story, a friend (or friend of a friend) was spending his first summer as a logger way out in the bush. As he was working away one day, chainsawing down some old growth forest, something came down hard on the top of his head; a blow that he would later learn had dented his hard hat. As this friend fell to the ground, he turned to see what hit him, and as he did, he saw a large hairy man striding off into the woods. He knew that he had seen a Sasquatch, and that this creature disapproved of him cutting down his trees, and when he had the strength to get moving, he walked back to base camp and quit.
Glen told me this story with 100% sincerity, and even if I don't quite buy it, I do believe that Glen did. And according to Glen, everyone in BC has a story like this.
For what it's worth.
