Starlings are not native to Canada, having been introduced by the Acclimation Society of North America in the 1800s in order to transplant to the U.S. every bird species found in Shakespeare's plays. Although they have acclimated very well -- thousands of them even spending their winters in snow-covered Canada -- many consider starlings to be a pest species, crowding out the native birds and causing a nuisance with their noise and waste. Interesting choice then for D. R. MacDonald to name his female lead, the California artist who flees her broken marriage for the isolation of Cape Breton, Anna Starling.
The Ice Bridge (also known as Anna From Away) is a meditation on loss and solitude told from the shifting perspective of two characters: Anna Starling and Red Murdoch -- a life-long resident of the area who is mourning the recent death of his one great love, Rosaire. The two are an interesting contrast: Anna's loneliness could be attributed to her own choices (a weak commitment to her marriage and a desire to run away) while Murdoch's is heart-wrenching (he took loving care of Rosaire as she wasted away from a brain tumour). They muse on and then discuss the failings of their own parents' marriages and it's interesting to consider that Murdoch had enjoyed the strongest relationship, though he and Rosaire had never married (or even lived together). They both find redemption through their art (Murdoch in his carpentry shop and forge and Anna with her drawings), and they also find healing in nature while acknowledging that the unspoiled surroundings were at risk of change: with no local economic opportunities, many residents were renting out family homes as summer cottages or selling outright to foreigners, while some of the younger folks, those who don't move away, consider riskier business (I was amused that Murdoch would be so against the drug trade when his family had tacitly supported earlier rum-running).
MacDonald's prose is lovely and lyrical, and especially when describing nature scenes, but the plot here was a little thin to me -- these were two unequal griefs and Anna's casual attitudes towards sex and drugs, along with her unrepentant disloyalties, made her fairly unlikeable; too much the pesky starling amongst the domestic sparrows. In Breagh, however, is a glimmer of hope -- she bridges the generations, remaining loyal to her roots while fashioning Celtic-themed clothes for the summer tourists to buy (and it's interesting, again, that she doesn't need a man in her life to get along).
Although The Ice Bridge updates many of the same themes, I much preferred MacDonald's Cape Breton Road, and insofar as it tells a similar tale of criminal enterprise, I preferred the plot of Lisa Moore's Caught.
I probably had more than a one star difference in my enjoyment of The Ice Bridge compared to Cape Breton Road, but such is a 5 star rating system. Other spoilery things I liked in this book was the scene where Anna witnessed the dog thrown from the bridge (and her later agony over the scene, worked out through her art) and the scene where Anna falls through the ice and Murdoch saves her. I've mused before about the disadvantage that second wives must have when it comes to not having "grown up" with their spouse during the lean and hungry years, and this scene captures some of that:
"Chet, my husband, sold his solid, safe Volvo sedan and bought a Harley-Davidson motorcycle." She could see it, smell its exhaust. A simple-minded Freudian machine, gleaming between his thighs. From those high handlebars he'd slung his thin physique. On a downtown street one morning she had suddenly seen him blare by, hearing the Harley first, the chesty accelerating stroke of its engine, then looking up to spot his ponytail flying, his chin high, and she had actually admired him for those two or three seconds, that rushed grainy image of him, a person he might have been, braver, bolder in some way that mattered, but could never be except for mere moments in his wife's eyes, she who had been his lover once, at maybe the best time of her life, of his life. Did Alicia Snow know that, would she reckon with it? Anna knew things about Chet that Alicia would never know or notice because she wasn't looking for them. But now Anna wondered how fair this memory of him was, how she might easily exaggerate its vividness, mock it. Surely he could call up selective memories of her, embarrassing, unflattering. Had he? "His girlfriend liked to ride on the seat behind him. I never would've."
I shudder at the idea of Dave mocking me, and the most vulnerable moments of my life to which only he had been the witness, to someone new. Double-edged sword, that.
