Butterflies Dance in the Dark...

Butterflies Dance in the Dark is a novel by Beatrice MacNeil, which I read for Lisa's Book Club. Our meeting was tonight.

I hated it, pretty much. Of six of us there, four people liked it, two didn't. One person liked it because it's about a little girl growing up in a small town in Cape Breton Island in the 1950s and beyond, just as she did. Mari-Jen, the protagonist of the story, has a learning disability, which leads her teachers to think she is stupid.

It reminded me of Winter's Bones, in that the people around Mari-Jen are almost all nasty. In Winter's Bones the characters are nasty because they are drug dealers and addicts. In Butterflies Dance in the Dark they are nasty because they are bigoted, insular, poor, and, well, just nasty by habits. The nuns teacher at her school are bullies who seem to enjoy using corporal punishment, and humiliating the children. Her mother is shunned because she has three illegitimate children; they live on welfare. Her only friend is a Polish holocaust survivor, who is shunned by the community because he isn't Roman Catholic; and when she reaches adolescence, she is forbidden to associate with him.

So the older kids bully the younger kids, and the younger kids bully each other, and the men beat their wives, and the women beat their kids, and it's all a vicious circle. A particularly nasty example is Aunt Clara, who is delusional and irrational, and still beaten and raped by Uncle Jule on an ongoing basis.

There were three characters I liked, and enjoyed reading about: the thoughtful immigrant Daniel Peter, and Mari-Jen's two rambunctious older twin brothers.

Most of all, Mari-Jen annoyed me. She wasn't much nicer than those around her, and I found her passivity frustrating. I don't think she grows or changes through the novel, though she grows up. I wanted her to do something, or even to want to do something.

The story is beautifully written, in terms of words and phrases and scenes. My favourite moment (and it almost moved me to tears) is when the man who had survived the Nazi concentration camps is tending Mari-Jen's hands, immmobile, swollen and cut because she was strapped by the Mother Superior. "Bloody, bloody Nazis," he murmurs, and he puts on the salve.

But the story hasn't much structure; it wanders and meanders, and in the end, I didn't think it had much of a point to make.

Next month, we're discussing one of Steven Jay Gould's books.

Looking nervously out the window...

Sensationalist weather reports have been circling around me like the approaching hurricane itself. Will it strike Ottawa, or not? Apparently Eastern Ontario is in the path. Will it dissipate before it gets here? Will we lose power? ...They're saying it'll likely be mild and rainy, with 80 mph winds.

There's news about the destruction of Wawa, Ontario. How awful. My mental image of Wawa comes from the Alan Rickman movie, Snow Cake.

So far, it's a windy, dark, cold day. But that's not abnormal for late October. We're lucky we don't have snow yet.

My pictures from today:


Trees at the Rideau Canal, showing the old former convent on Echo Drive.
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( Oak leaves on the pathway. )

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( Walking alongside the Canal. )

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Captain America and Maria Hill ...

I was very, very happy to learn that Cobie Smulders will be playing Maria Hill again in Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

Now I want to hear that Clark Gregg will be back as Agent Coulson.

I see IMDb has him listed as being in S.H.I.E.L.D..