The Jade Peony, by Wayson Choy

Set in Vancouver’s Chinatown in 1930s and ’40s, The Jade Peony combines the stories of three Chinese-Canadian siblings Jook-Liang (Only Sister), Jung-Sum (Second Brother), and Sek-Lung (Third Brother) at pivotal moments in their lives. These kinds of stories are often referred to as “coming-of-age” stories, though in this case they are much more. Appropriately enough for a story about new immigrants, the children’s stories attempt to sketch a detailed geography of identity — one that must be constantly surveyed, defined, and defended from invaders. Trying to escape the colonial Overlords of parents and culture, these fledgling nations are subject to no shortage of civil wars, and certainly, like our own country, suffer from an incoherent identity, one that shifts and evolves.

This is, of course, something common to all children, but much more so to those of recent immigrants. The children attend two schools (English & Chinese), and are bombarded by their Poh-Poh (grandmother) with ancient wisdom and tradition, while encouraged by their parents to be modern. They worship Shirley Temple, John Wayne, and Joe Louis, but also see the world through the stories told them by their grandmother — seeing the Monkey Man or the Fox Lady, mythic Chinese characters in a regular day in Canada. No one suffers more than Sek-Lung, the one most excluded from his Chinese heritage, the most desperate to assimilate, though he knows he will never be able to:

“But even if I was born in Vancouver, even if I should salute the Union Jack a hundred million times, even if I had the cleanest hands in all of the Dominion of Canada and prayed forever, I would still be Chinese.
Stepmother knew this and worried in her heart and feared for me. All of the Chinatown adults were worried over those of us recently born into Canada, born “neither this nor that,” neither Chinese nor Canadian, born without understanding the boundaries.”

Once again, identity is fraught with boundaries, with lines that the children are told should not be crossed. And even though Sek-Lung wishes to be thoroughly “Canadian” he is the one that stops his family from turning their backs on their anchor to China — Poh-Poh, who haunts the family home until she is given proper respect. In the book’s most tragic threads, Sek-Lung also witnesses the dangers of self-definition through villainizing others as he is unwittingly drawn into the local tensions between Chinese Canadian and Japanese Canadians during World War II.

In addition to living a hyphenated existence between cultures, we witness additional struggles for Jook-Liang and Jung-Sum as they try to define themselves. For Jook-Liang it is a matter of assessing the value of what she has, for as a girl she is repeatedly told by her grandmother that she is worthless. Though I found her story the least engaging (she had little of the charm or complexity I hope for in such a character), I could nevertheless sympathize with the need to strike out and conquer new territory. Jung-Sum is not told my his grandmother that he is worthless, but rather that he is different, that he is the moon and not the sun, a prophecy of sorts that comes true when Jung-Sum discovers his attraction for another boy at the boxing club.

Of course I would be remiss not to mention Chinatown as a character, for it is vividly omnipresent. Whether it is the dry cleaner’s where a gaggle of old ladies take their tea, the neighbour’s kitchen where she dries herbs and vegetables, or the back alleys where Sek-Lung hunts with his Poh-Poh for treasures for her wind chimes, Chinatown has is vividly depicted through all the five senses. And Poh-Poh herself is also wonderful –  immutable, domineering and a little mysterious. (Though it must be noted that I have a penchant for bilious witch-like old women in literature — my favourite being Margaret in Shakespeare’s Richard III).

My main criticism with The Jade Peony is that the three parts didn’t cohere as well as I wanted them to. The book started as a short story, and it seems to have just become a trio of novellas. The narratives are largely limited to their own narrator’s experiences, and I was disappointed to see that the narrators played very minor roles in one another’s tales considering they all lived in the same home. The book as a whole also lacks the substantial narrative arc I would expect from a novel, settling instead on smaller developments in its characters lives, as a short story collection might. It’s a testament to Choy’s characters though, that despite a lack of major plot machinations, I wanted to keep reading (though it must be said I didn’t NEED to keep reading, as, for example in Fall on Your Knees).

As I read I kept returning to the jade peony itself, a reminder of Old China “made from bits of bone and flesh,” which Sek-Lung sees as “a beautiful, cramped heart,” and I see as a more peaceful alternative metaphor to my earlier comments on battles over territory. The peony became the pendant centre of Poh-Poh’s carefully crafted wind chimes, assembled from discarded Woolworth’s necklaces and the broken stained glass of the Presbyterian church.  These disparate pieces were carefully joined with silken thread, then hung so that the wind would rattle the peony against the new pieces, releasing a delicate and unique song. And such is The Jade Peony itself, subtle, delicate, and carefully constructed. Perhaps too subtle for some who like a little more ambitious narrative (myself included), but a lovely song nonetheless, and one you might never even have known to have listened for.

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More for Canada Reads Keeners:

• Wayson Choy on his novel
• An interview of and a great essay by last year’s top-notch Canada Reads panelist Jen Sookfong Lee on how The Jade Peony affected her development as a writer (an influence evident in her debut novel The End of East.

Other reviews of The Jade Peony: monnibo [Let me know if you post a review, and I'll add it!]

Previous KIRBC Canada Reads 2010 reviews (complete with pseudo-embarrassing video content!):

Review of Fall on Your Knees
Review of Nikolski

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Annnnnd, here’s my newest video pitch! You can also check these out on the CBC Book Club blog.

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The Carnivore, by Mark Sinnett

Reading The Carnivore was an interesting experience for me, because I’ve never been so engrossed in a story centered on characters I couldn’t stand. Both of the protagonists teetered on the border of unbearable, and perhaps it was because I anxiously wanted to see what abyss they’d sink into next, but I just couldn’t get enough. Like the undertow of the flooding rivers the pages describe, each time I turned a page I was sucked further in.

This is the story of a failed marriage, a husband and wife narrating alternating chapters of reflection on their troubled past. It is a story of a shared memory lacking the capacity to heal, existing only as the point of regeneration for a lifelong downward spiral. This fictional trip through the past takes place on the backdrop of the very real Hurricane Hazel, one of the deadliest storms to ever hit southern Ontario. The metaphor of the storm tracks perfectly the course of Ray and Mary’s union; like the citizens of Toronto preparing for the floods, they didn’t know exactly what to expect, were hit with innumerable horrors but somehow managed to survive and, when it passed, felt nothing but relief.

Interestingly, Hurricane Hazel had lost most of its momentum before moving north and breaking up, dropping most of its moisture on Toronto. What hit Ray and Mary was much the same; not a passing storm, but an immense flood that did irreparable damage to their relationship.

Raymore Drive, where Ray is literally (and figuratively) swept away by Hurricane Hazel.

As a young ingénue, Mary “hoped, and trusted even, that we could share an extraordinary love, and that would set us apart.” Because her husband had already cheated on her multiple times, Mary comes off as kind of a sucker, and her resentment at committing to her sinking ship of a marriage only grows into deep-seated bitterness as she ages. The only time I sympathized with her character was in relation to Ray, a very particular kind of monster. Completely devoid of any redemptive quality, Ray is eaten by his own selfishness, trapped in memories of his past and hurting everyone along the road to the future, left only to ask himself: “Will something change if I relive it enough times?”

The most remarkable thing about The Carnivore was that, through all of this, I wanted to keep reading. Desperately. Sinnett creates such a vivid and honest picture of Ray and Mary’s world that reading the book feels something like looking over their shoulders during the course of their relationship. Because it moves along at such a furious pace, however, I never felt like I was stuck too long in a room with an arguing couple and needed to escape. Though my first reaction was that the ending was somewhat anticlimactic juxtaposed against the action of the novel, it fits; in a story where sheer, white-knuckle survival is key, the real triumph is that they survived each other.

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Bonus! Mark Sinnett reading from The Carnivore:

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Pioneery Preserves

I was reading an article in this Saturday’s Globe on the canning/preserving craze that’s sweeping the nation, and it re-ignited a simmering desire I’ve had to read a good pioneer-living novel. Because while the 18 uses of one hog or the healing properties of the cranberry make some people run for the hills, I find it completely fascinating. I have enough trouble surviving the Long Winter with central heating and the grocery store two minutes away.

I think my fascination started when I was hooked on Little

In my younger days

House on the Prairie (the books and the television series) as a kid. (Incidentally, my celeb lookalike? Totally Melissa Gilbert.) Now that I’m older, I’ve got a penchant for hist-fic that’s heavy on the how-to-survive-the-winter details. I’ve read all of Diana Gabaldon’s Jamie and Claire books, which I enjoy both for the bodice ripping and the old-timey medicines and food preparation.

In any case, I’ve been craving a little pioneer savvy lately, and want some recommendations. Should I be Roughing it in the Bush with Ms. Moodie? (I confess, by avoiding CanLit classes in university, I missed out on this classic canon fodder). So rather than recommending, I’m looking for help: Leave your recos here, I could use some of these literary preserves to get me through the Long Winter.

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