MIRANDA
The strangeness of your story put
Heaviness in me.
PROSPERO
Shake it off. Come on;
We'll visit Caliban my slave, who never
Yields us kind answer.
MIRANDA
'Tis a villain, sir,
I do not love to look on.
PROSPERO
But, as 'tis,
We cannot miss him: he does make our fire,
Fetch in our wood and serves in offices
That profit us. What, ho! slave! Caliban!
Thou earth, thou! speak.
CALIBAN
[Within] There's wood enough within.
PROSPERO
Come forth, I say! there's other business for thee:
Come, thou tortoise! when?
In the obituary, written by yours truly, the deceased is referred to as Water Flowers. Pretty punny if you ask me. Uncle Thoby thought it was punny too. This morning, before the funeral, we were laughing so hard we had to hold on to the kitchen counter, which is a sign of real laughter. Rule Number One of Real Laughter: Are you holding on to something. Say the counter or someone's shoulder. Do you have to put down your beverage. Then you are really laughing. Or maybe crying.
I gave Come Thou Tortoise four stars at first, because, although I thoroughly enjoyed it, I want to jealously guard my five star reviews for those books which I find incredibly moving and resonating to me. Yet, as I thought about this book overnight, it became more and more moving, more and more resonating.February, by Lisa Moore, was my only 5 star review so far this year because it made me sob throughout, and I thought, by comparison, a funny book like this doesn't have the same weight. And then I realised that, like Audrey and Uncle Thoby, perhaps I was holding onto the kitchen counter, shaking with emotion, not knowing if I'm really laughing…or maybe crying.
When my older daughter was 2 or 3, we were decorating the Christmas tree and it struck me that she would never know anything but the small LED lights that we were stringing on the branches. I thought to make a "When-I-was-a-kid-we-walked-two-miles-through-the-snow-uphill-both-ways-to-get-to-school-type-statement", and as I was trying to say, "Why, when I was a kid, Christmas tree lights were as big as acorns!", it struck me as so funny and ridiculous that I could barely get it out. My husband wanted to know what was so funny, and I kept trying to tell him, but I was laughing so hard that when it did finally come out, it was just not funny. He spent the next few days getting me to tell the story of my hilarious-to-me-and-no-one-else-quip, and everyone agreed that, yes, lights are smaller now, and the big-as-acorns thing is cute, I guess. Finally, the story was repeated to my big brother, and bless him, he was the first to laugh-- the first to understand that I didn't think lights as big as acorns were funny in themselves, but that trying to present the image as awe-inducing, as wistful nostalgia, was subtly ironic. That's something you either get or you don't. And if there's one thing I've learned over the years, it's that my brothers and I just get the same things. And that's what Come, Thou Tortoise seems to be about ultimately: It's about the wholeness you feel when you return to the people who share your shorthand. And I don’t mean just verbal shorthand (like the "toidy jar" in Bill Bryson'sThe Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid) but the mental and emotional shorthand that is shared in families and other close relationships. Who but Walter and Uncle Thoby would respond to Audrey's plane crash dream by building a mock airplane in the basement, just so one day she would have the courage to have grand and safe adventures?
Remember when Christmas lights were hot and bulbous. Remember that. So hot they melted nearby ornaments. Then they got smaller. Brighter and braver. If one went out, the others kept going. They deepened to jewel tones. They were stained glass. They were a church in your hand. They didn't burn. You could put them in your mouth and make your cheeks glow. (Don't do that, Audrey. Why. What's Rule Number One of Things That Are Plugged In. Oh right.)
Okay, it may not be a coincidence that I was reminded of the big-as-acorns story, but Christmas lights loom large in this book. This quote demonstrates an interesting device in Come, Thou Tortoise-- dialogue uses neither quotation marks or question marks. It can be confusing, but I suspect that is rather the point. Audrey (or "Oddly" as she is affectionately known to her father and Uncle Thoby) seems to view the world uniquely -- perhaps she falls somewhere on the autism spectrum -- and by omitting the quotation marks, you get a sense that some statements are spoken, some thought, and maybe even Audrey doesn't know which are which. (This also makes sense of the "talking" tortoise, mouse, fruitfly, horse…) By omitting the question marks, voices lose inflection, and the flat tones in my head seemed to do justice to how I imagine Audrey would talk. And speaking of Christmas lights, I was thoroughly charmed by Audrey's relationship with Judd, the Jewish Christmas light inventor. When she confessed that she has a low IQ, he replies that he does too, and everything he does subsequent to that makes me think he's likely on the spectrum, too. This makes him perfectly suited to be the fill-in for the father and uncle who simultaneously abandon Audrey; Judd understands her shorthand. When he first tries to connect her freckles into constellations, it calls to mind the freckle map Audrey tried to create as a child. Who but Judd, upon meeting Winifred the tortoise, would knit her a cosy?
Come, Thou Tortoise is a marvel of wordplay, one of those stories in which every word feels essential and purposeful. I usually grow tired of cleverness, but this book demonstrates that "clever" need not be a bad thing; it is always true to Audrey and what you glimpse of her inner workings. Like when she insisted her father wasn't in a coma but a comma, merely a pause in normal life. And then he died. Period. Some examples of writing I liked:
I don't recognize this latest permutation of the Trans-Canada. It is wide and makes a wet sound. On either side there are pastel houses with their backs to the highway. They have that hunched look like, yuck, is that a highway behind us. Why yes, it is. And I am on it. And why did you get built out here on your fancy trebleclef streets if you did not intend to embrace your location.
There are forty-seven ducks (native) and two swans (not native) living on Wednesday Pond. When the swans put their heads underwater, they look like baby icebergs. When they lift their heads, they look surprised. Did you see the bottom. No. Did you. No. Let's check again. They have been checking for years and continue to be surprised.
If you want to know how kind someone is, here is a little experiment. Try to make eye contact with him while he is on the phone. If he is kind, he will avoid your eyes. Because eye contact is a betrayal of the person on the other end, who can't see. It is like having a blind person in the room. Would you make eye contact with a seeing person while talking to a blind person. Not if you are kind. Not if you are Mr. Earnest. If you are Mr. Earnest you turn off your eyes while you are on the phone. Because you are intent on the person you can't see. You never show irony with your eyes unless everyone has an equal chance to be in on it.
As a kid this sound -- the sound of a car not able to start -- could make me cry instantly. It was the sound of pain, of fever, of wanting to throw up and not being able to.
Someone who tiptoes either loves you or hates you.
I also appreciated that this book is unabashedly Canadian. I'm sure it's a publishing decision to make certain that everything in a Canadian author's book is relatable beyond our borders, but putting in references to Timbits and Canadian Tire and the terror of the snow plough coming just as you've shovelled out your driveway shows a self-confidence that I appreciate in an author; confidence that readers will either understand the references, investigate the references, or ignore the references-- that's up to the reader, not the author. That may not be how Canadian authors write, but I think it should be. Only because I've been to St. John's did I understand that when they went to Seagull Hill to watch the signals flying around, it meant that they went to Signal Hill to watch the seagulls flying around. I'm sure there are many references that went over my head. I was also pleasantly shocked when, early on, Audrey says she doesn't like people who read books-- what a thing for the author to put in her mouth! What confidence! This is later amended to Audrey saying she doesn't like people who read books without reading them aloud to her, like her father did.
A couple of Canadiana quotes:
The sound of Newfoundlanders on a plane: If sarcasm were generous, that is the sound.
I eagerly await more complex concentricity in our Canadian coinage.
There were mysteries to investigate in this book, and answers were found, but not all the answers. What happened between Walter Flowers and his family? Why did Thoby have one arm longer than the other? Can someone confirm that Wedge was really a series of mice, replaced every time one died? What was wrong with the serially recalled Christmastech lights? Why was Audrey told that her father was struck by a tree strapped to a truck instead of the missing side mirror on that truck? More… But I felt that the story wrapped up neatly in the end-- the answers we receive are the ones that Audrey finds and she simply hasn't found them all yet.
In the quote from The Tempest at the beginning of this review, Miranda says, "The strangeness of your story put heaviness in me". Well, the strangeness of Come, Thou Tortoise filled me with lightness, but that doesn't mean that this story is without weight. Upon closer inspection, Jessica Grant joins her fellow Newfoundlander, Lisa Moore, in receiving a full five stars.
