Ben ran Circles for a while. Restorative justice, they called it. Another rip-off of an old way. The concept was simple. You sit a bunch of people in a circle — everyone who hurt, everyone who got hurt, all affected — and let them share. They talk about themselves, say about how they have changed, how their lives are after this thing that happened. People who harmed others got to hear how they hurt, who they hurt, how bad it was. Those who were victimized got to hear what the people who hurt them were like, where they came from, what made them do what they did, that they’re really people. Some people, it helped them heal, for sure.
The Circle is the third volume in a trilogy (after The Break and The Strangers), and while I suppose this could stand alone, I can’t imagine it would be as impactful if you hadn’t met the characters before. As the title (and that opening quote) suggests, this novel reads like a Restorative Justice Circle — centred on the horrific crime related in The Break — with multiple characters given the space to explain and demonstrate how those events affected them over the intervening six years. Once again, Katherena Vermette shares the reality of Manitoba’s modern Métis experience — the stresses, joys, community, and intergenerational trauma — and without unduly blaming white settler culture for the destructive choices her characters sometimes make, she also shows a community getting stronger through a reconnection with their roots. There’s good stuff in here, and the plot will satisfy anyone who wants to know how the Strangers turn out, but for me, there was something missing this time around: I didn’t cry; this failed to move me. Still I’m glad I read this and am regretfully rounding down to three stars. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)
I feel like I’ve been waiting for my sister to get out of prison my whole life, and now that it’s here I don’t want it. It’s not fair. Not for Phoenix, who has waited for this, not for me, who has managed to build up this new life, one I never thought I could ever even have, just to lose it all in not even a year. I didn’t know lives like this existed.
Two years into university — and after living off-campus with a group of friends who make up her beloved found family — Cedar Stranger is informed that her older sister, Phoenix, is about to be released from prison. Cedar isn’t pleased by the news (her relationship with the volatile Phoenix has always been complicated), and as POV rotates between multiple characters with their uniformly negative reactions to Phoenix’s release, ripples are sent through the community that initiate dramatic events. Even the girls’ mother, Elsie — who is finally sober and living in the bush with an Indigenous community and their Teacher — is hesitant to meet with her troubled daughter; but when Phoenix doesn’t show up for their coffee date — and later fails to check in with her halfway house on time — the novel takes on a tenser tone. The victim of the original crime, Emily (now known as “M”), is unsurprisingly broken and traumatised; but while she continues to hide herself away in her mother’s basement, M has found success in writing and illustrating a graphic novel series. Of this work the following is written:
Her book is the third of a planned trilogy. Hardest of all. For some reason she made up a bunch of new characters, stupidest thing she could have done. The world she made broken wide open, scattered about, with no idea what to do with it all. Endings are the worst.
So, that’s Vermette obviously acknowledging that she was taking a risk with this format — there are many new characters introduced; more than I could easily keep track of — and while extending a circle further and further away from the initial crime did show how those events rippled through the entire community, this also served to distance me from any kind of emotional connection with the characters. For me: the plot works to justify the format, but the format doesn’t do justice to the story.
He didn’t know how to be a man, not really, not a good one. Not one who took care of people or loved people, and loved himself. No one around him remembered enough of the Teachings to teach him that he was valuable. That everyone together makes this beautiful Circle and each one of us is so precious and important. No one around him even knew any of that, and everyone else seemed to treat him like he was vermin. Less than vermin. Vermin at least get a role in the world. He never got a role. He thought it was something he had done wrong. That’s the worst thing of colonialization, worst in a long, long list of the atrocities and numerous genocides, that it got into their minds and hearts. All those young people who were supposed to be leading, doing, being a part were instead thinking they were wrong. Instead of feeling good about themselves, they believed those lies. So many still believe, like he did, what they said about them, and forgot, because that was taken from them too, how it was supposed to be.
In a world where hurt people go on to hurt people, it is encouraging to see characters end abuse and self-harm through a return to Ceremony and traditional Teachings. Sweat lodges and Sundances — even adapting mindfulness techniques from other cultures — lead to healing and self-love; and while that doesn’t make everything perfect in the present, it does promise a brighter future for those who are reminded of their place in the circle. And that’s a pretty good note to end on.
