The Cave

The Sentimentalists

Being fortunate enough to live only minutes away from Gaspereau Press, I was able to stroll into a local independent bookstore and get my hands on the hottest book in the country, though it still bore a slightly out-of-date "Giller Finalist" sticker.

There was a whole box of them next to the counter and a steady stream of customers filing in and out. The lady at the counter paused regularly to answer the phone, saying, "Yes, we do. I'll put one aside for you."

Everyone in the store was talking about the book, the author, and Gaspereau's predicament.

"They can only produce 1000 copies a week."

"Andrew is on the radio right now, talking to Jian Ghomeshi."

"Gary's trying to get in touch with the author, she's in Turkey."

"No, no, I heard she's travelling on the Trans-Siberian Railway."

Getting Physical

The book itself is printed on rich creamy paper, and housed in a burly dust jacket that weighs twice as much as those from most other publishers. Anyone who's bought a book recently and been shocked by the crappy paper, which at times is scarcely better than newsprint, will appreciate Gaspereau's dedication to quality.

The typeface, in a nod to the author, is Joanna.

Getting Sentimental

The life of the narrator's father is a shambles. He walked out on his family years ago, the only clue to his problems being a stray comment by his wife about not blaming everything on the war. Years later, when the narrator has reconnected with him, she and her sister have also fled wrecked relationships.

The central metaphor of the book is a sunken town, flooded during the construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway. The submerged part of the narrator's father's life is an incident that occurred in Viet Nam. He does not speak of it until very late in his life.

The Nam segment takes up the last half the novel. Up to this point the comma-studded prose has been dense and choppy. Now it becomes smoother, takes on more of a narrative quality. Paradoxically events become even murkier. There is little of the visceral quality that most Nam novels have. There are no jungles or rice paddies. Events are blurred by culture shock, befogged by war and pot. Everything feels like it is taking place underwater. (Is this the reason the author refers to C-rations as "sea rations" ???)

The ending is unconventional but feels right -- an epilogue that includes a transcript from a military inquiry, followed by the narrator's attempt to wring some sort of truth out of it, and "Remember Me," a striking poem by war poet Keith Douglas, which provides the inspiration for the novel's title.

For me, the most memorable scene in the book is a brief but indelible account of the narrator stumbling upon an act of infidelity. It sets up the following superb passage:

It happened simply. While standing at the intersection of Dominion and Queen, on my way to work one day. In that briefest moment of repose, when the lights, lingering momentarily between red and green, had paused traffic in four directions. So that, even when I could hear again the cars lurch from their standing positions forward, even when I could feel again the thrombotic pressure of their blinking lights, now stalled, now pulsing with longing, to turn left, to turn right, I myself stood still, caught at that particular intersection from which I could go no further. The birds on the top strand of the telephone wires whose notes, which had remained always, in previous days, a background melody that I had not heard, seemed suddenly to hit precisely the chords which resonated in my own stopped heart. And though a great pressure continued to propel the earth forward, tilting it along its axis in a precise and singular direction as it went, careening through space, in another, I myself remained static and unmoving.

I can't help thinking that the fuss over this book's availability will only make it more desirable -- notwithstanding some disingenuous bellowing by the media and big bookstore chains.

Jian Ghomeshi's conversation with Andrew Steeves

James Fitzjames

The Mystery Man of the Franklin Expedition

The early naval record of James Fitzjames, third in command of the lost Franklin expedition, is confusing and incomplete. He gave conflicting accounts of his age and place of birth, and his baptismal certificate was fraudulent.

The story that author William Battersby has pieced together is this: Fitzjames was the illegitimate son of an important British diplomat serving in Brazil, while his mother was "almost certainly" Portuguese. In England, he was raised "from an early age" by a foster family, the Coninghams, and maintained a deep attachment to them for the rest of his life.

At the age of 12 he went to sea on a ship captained by a blood relative, and a few years later parlayed an ambiguously worded letter into a rating as midshipman.

After serving in the Mediterranean, he signed on with the Chesney expedition, which was endeavouring to set up a mail route to India via the Persian Gulf. As part of this expedition he undertook a 1000-mile overland journey from the Euphrates to Beirut.

He received advanced training in gunnery, which he put to use in China during the Opium Wars. His fighting there came to an end when he was struck by a musket ball that pierced his arm, entered his body via the armpit, and lodged next to his spine. It was successfully removed without the benenfit of anaesthesia.

A second unknown in Fitzjames's life is the act of assistance he rendered to Sir John Barrow's son, George, in Singapore. Whatever it was, it was enough to earn Sir John's lasting gratitude, and resulted in Fitzjames obtaining his first command, the HMS Clio, and later his place on the Franklin expedition.

The Franklin Expedition

Fitzjames harboured a secret ambition. Once the Northwest Passage was conquered, he wanted to deliver the news to England via an overland journey across Siberia. It was a characteristic attitude of the time that all one needed in a risky undertaking was sufficient pluck.

Ironically he thought Franklin reckless for piling on too much sail as they made for Greenland, and ordered the canvas reduced after Franklin had gone to bed. But he was not alone in this view, and Franklin after all had not commanded a ship in 10 years, and never in arctic waters.

Several of his crewmates were close friends or former shipmates, including LeVesconte, DesVoeux, Fairholme, and Couch.

Refutations

Battersby is at pains to correct the previous image of Fitzjames as "well-educated, aristocratic, wealthy, of good family, Church of England, fast rising in the service -- and thumpingly, lispingly, English to the core," which is Scott Cookman's description of him in Ice Blink, and one that has been generally accepted for over a century, and so entrenched that it has found its way into popular works of fiction (e.g. Clive Cussler's Arctic Drift and Dan Simmons's The Terror.)

Fitzjames, who was responsible for selecting most of the crew of the Erebus and Terror, has been criticized for choosing men without polar experience. Battersby refutes this charge, and here again Cookman is specifically mentioned.

Battersby also challenges the contention of Michael Smith (Captain Francis Crozier: Last Man Standing?) that Crozier's Irishness was prejudicial to his advancement within the Royal Navy.

Summation

This book contains an astonishing amount of original research, though some of the conclusions that Battersby reaches are speculative. He provides an interesting snapshot of what it was like to serve as an officer in the Royal Navy in the first half of the 19th century -- the hardship, danger, camaraderie, and travel to far-flung places.

Fitzjames, in the course of his career, visited Lisbon, Malta, Troy, Constantinople, Babylon, Damascus, Beirut, Baghdad, Bombay, Calcutta, Singapore, and Hong Kong -- to name some of the better-known spots. Two of his more colourful experiences: being mooned by a group of women while steaming up the Euphrates, and being clawed by a pet cheetah while aboard the Clio. (It used to climb up the rigging with the sailors.)

Fitzgerald himself was handsome, charismatic, and ambitious. He was fluent in Portuguese and French, with some knowledge of Spanish and Arabic. He was a competent artist (the book reproduces a few of his sketches) and the author of a 10,000-word naval poem. He was a lover of elaborate practical jokes, and almost recklessly brave.

In the end he left this life as mysteriously as he entered it.

Links

Updates and Corrections

Hidden Tracks (Battersby's blog)

Review by Russell Potter