findley

I understand that reading the back of Timothy Findley’s novella, You went away, sounds like a trip down weepy-chick lane. However, a work which almost sounded too girly for me, turned out to be one of the most realistic portrayals of those attempting to deal with World War II in Canada. Reading the book shows Findley’s ability to take the genre and make it do tricks for him. He constructs a story in …

…see the seams in his construction, as the narrator makes continual references to the photographs and the subjective nature of the interpretation, but I think that is an element of his design. Findley shows how any family history is a personal fiction. You may get the book to look sensitive to that cute girl in the coffee shop, but the thing is, you might actually end up reading the book. And you will like it.