From Amazon
The Way the Crow Flies, Ann-Marie MacDonald's first novel since her bestselling debut, Fall on Your Knees, opens in 1962 when the McCarthy family moves from Germany to their new home on a Canadian air force base near London, Ontario. Madeleine, eight and already a blossoming comic, is particularly close with her father, Jack, an air force officer. Her loving Acadian mother, Mimi, and older brother Mike round out this family, whose simple goodness reflects the glow of an era that seemed like paradise. But all that is about to change. The Cuban Missile Crisis is looming, and Jack, loyal and gullible, suddenly has an important task to carry out that involves a scientist--a former Nazi--in Canada.
While Jack scrambles to keep his activities hidden from his wife, Madeleine too is learning to keep secrets (about a teacher at school). The Way the Crow Flies is all about the fertility of lies, how one breeds another and another. Although the writing flows with a strong current, the profusion of pop references, especially ad slogans, grows tiresome. The author can, however, capture a lovely image in few words: "The afternoon intensifies. August is the true light of summer" and "yes, the earth is a woman, and her favourite food is corn." At times the story is marvelously compelling, as the mystery of a horrific murder in the fields near the base is unravelled. When events lead to a trial and its outcome, the story peaks, in a conclusion with no easy answers. The last third of the book takes place, for the most part, 20 years later. Here the novel meanders somewhat, losing its ability to captivate with the same intensity. The reader longs to return to the earlier world, which MacDonald has captured in vital detail. --Mark Frutkin
From Publishers Weekly
A little girl's body, lying in a field, is the first image in this absorbing, psychologically rich second novel by the Canadian author of the bestselling Fall on Your Knees. Then the focus shifts to the appealing McCarthy family. It's 1962, and Jack, a career officer in the RCAF, has just been assigned to the Centralia air force base in Ontario. Jack's wife, Mimi, is a domestic goddess; their children, Mike, 12, and Madeleine, 8, are sweet, loving kids. This is an idyllically happy family, but its fate will be threatened by a secret mission Jack undertakes to watch over a defector from Soviet Russia, who will eventually be smuggled into the U. S. to work on the space program. Jack is an intensely moral, decent guy, so it takes him a while to realize that the man is a former Nazi who commanded slave labor in Peenemande, where the German rockets were built in an underground cave. Meanwhile, Madeleine is one of several fourth graders who are being molested by their teacher, and one of them winds up dead in that field. McDonald is an expert storyteller who can sustain interest even when the pace is slow, as it is initially, providing an intricate recreation of life on a military base in the 1960s. As the narrative darkens, however, it becomes a chronicle of innocence betrayed. The exquisite irony is that both Madeleine and her father, unbeknownst to each other, are keeping secrets involving the day of the murder. The subtheme is the cynical decision by the guardians of the U.S. space program to shelter Nazi war criminals in order to win the race with the Russians. The finale comes as a thunderclap, rearranging the reader's vision of everything that has gone before. It's a powerful story, delicately layered with complex secrets, told with a masterful command of narrative and a strong moral message.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.
From Booklist
Canadian playwright MacDonald follows up the best-selling Fall on Your Knees (1997), an Oprah Book Club selection, with a sweeping family story that often reads like a thriller. Set during the early sixties on a suburblike Canadian air force base, the novel pays homage to the optimism of the era and also exposes it as a time of dangerous innocence. Madeleine is an exuberant eight-year-old still attached to her stuffed Bugs Bunny. When her creepy new teacher begins keeping her and other girls after school for "exercises," which gradually morph into full-blown sexual abuse, she feels she cannot talk about it because it is so alien to the sunny, wholesome world of her family. Meanwhile, her straight-arrow father, Jack, has been recruited by his revered former flying instructor, who now works for intelligence, to baby-sit an ex-Nazi scientist; Jack is soon faced with a moral dilemma tinged with the cynical overtones of realpolitik. The characters, family dynamics, and time period are all sharply rendered and tightly tied to the overriding theme of innocence betrayed. But perhaps MacDonald's most impressive accomplishment is her uncanny ability, much like Donna Tartt's in The Little Friend [BKL S 1 02], to vividly re-create the wonder, humor, and fears of childhood. Joanne Wilkinson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.
Review
“The prime contender for book of the fall. [T]his is an engaging and ingeniously plotted portrait of a ‘perfect’ 1960s Canadian family coming to terms with all its imperfections.”
—Quill & Quire
“[A] richly involving novel. MacDonald … makes Jack and Mimi ring true emotionally, without cliché.”
—The Bookseller
“A little girl’s body, lying in a field, is the first image in this absorbing, psychologically rich second novel by the Canadian bestselling author of Fall On Your Knees. …MacDonald is an expert storyteller, providing an intricate recreation of life on a military base in the 1960s…a chronicle of innocence betrayed…The finale comes as a thunderclap, rearranging the reader’s vision of everything that has gone before. It’s a powerful story, delicately layered with complex secrets, told with a masterful command of narrative and a strong moral message.”
—PW Daily starred review
“Remarkable…an engrossing, disturbing and layered tale.”
—Chicago Tribune
“One of the finest novels I've read in a long, long time….Often her narrative explodes with the sheer joy of writing well….The Way the Crow Flies is a brilliant portrayal of child abuse and its consequences, but it is much more than that. It is a fiercely intelligent look at childhood, marriage, families, the 1960s, the Cold War and the fear and isolation that are part of the human condition.
—Washington Post
“[MacDonald’s] prose…is always right and true, clean and penetrating.”
—Winnipeg Free Press
“MacDonald’s much anticipated follow-up to Fall on Your Knees lives up to the hype. … MacDonald expertly takes the reader through the cold-war era and delivers a twister of an ending to make the 700-plus page journey worth the trip.”
—The Coast (Halifax)
“[A] gripping, twisty plot with powerful undercurrents of anger, abuse and even murder….MacDonald is a stunningly good writer….Her novels are fleshy books, solid as their length and heft….MacDonald doesn’t falter….The Way The Crow Flies…secures for MacDonald a place, forever, in Canadian literature.”
—The Calgary Herald
“[A] hopeful and satisfying finale….[T]his novel has close to perfect pitch.”
—The Edmonton Journal
“MacDonald’s careful navigation of the minds of her people is astonishingly accurate; so wholly formed are her characters that you may find yourself talking out loud to them as you read. She has us. ...[A] profoundly Canadian novel….This is a big, beautiful book just waiting for you to walk into its marvellous world and then walk out some days later, a slightly different, perhaps slightly sadder person.”
—The Daily News (Halifax)
“[Readers will] find The Way The Crow Flies an engaging, very cleverly written coming-of-age story about a precocious young girl named Madeleine.”
—The London Free Press
“The Way the Crow Flies [is] a mesmerizing recreation of a vanished era and a lost childhood. ... [MacDonald’s] depiction of a vulnerable girl almost destroyed by the confluence of global politics and local murder is rendered with beauty and passion.”
—Maclean’s
“Ann-Marie MacDonald’s big novel generates a strong emotional pull….suspense and the evocation of feeling on the author’s part continue to drive the reader’s interest forward to the very last page….MacDonald touches some deeply moving and insightful themes — the deliberate assertion of nothingness which is behind human evil, the effort of guilty children to shield their innocent parents from knowledge.”
—Toronto Star
“[E]xtraordinary in its scope and unerringly accurate in its portrayal of life on an air force station in the early 1960s….It’s all we could have hoped for and more from MacDonald. The Way the Crow Flies deserves the BEST accolade found in the term bestseller, while not all of the wildly popular books do.”
—The Chronicle-Herald (Halifax)
“[T]he pages practically turn themselves…irresistibly readable….[MacDonald has] written a love song to the innocence and optimism of the post-war generation.”
—Elm Street
“Neither Deafening nor Garbo Laughs…match the combination of ambition and achievement that marks The Way the Crow Flies, a mesmerizing recreation of a vanished era and a lost childhood….Her depiction of a vulnerable girl almost destroyed by the confluence of global politics and local murder is rendered with beauty and passion….Universal truth through the alchemy of writing.”
—Brian Bethune, Maclean’s
“This extraordinary follow-up to Fall on Your Knees, is both a head-spinning murder mystery and an absorbing exploration of morality, innocencelost and the lengths to which parents and children will go to protect each other. Astonishing in its depth and breadth, it artfully weaves one family’s struggles into the fabric of the Cold War.”
—People magazine, Critic’s Choice
“Every bit as luminous and poignant as Fall On Your Knees…. The Way The Crow Flies is…liberally sprinkled with small yet resonant grace notes, seemingly offhand observations about matters or sentiments or feelings that will cause you to trip, to stop dead, to smile and say: that’s the way it was, I remember now.”
—The Hamilton Spectator
“The most exciting thing about The Way The Crow Flies…is how big it is. Big as in expansive in human feeling and experience, and weighty with moral and meaning — though not ponderous or pretentious…. [I]t never drags. Its superb, cinematic crafting moves us swiftly from scene to scene…. The Way The Crow Flies…is stunning proof of MacDonald’s abilities…. [It] is a fantastic novel, not only because it is humorous, and sad and suspenseful and entertaining. It is a fantastic novel because it reminds us, as Canadians, of our citizenship in the world.”
—The Gazette (Montreal)
“A gripping, insightful cinematic tale….I could not put it down….She recreates a child’s world, with its own logic that is simultaneously completely convincing and a ghastly distortion of adult reality. The sweetness never veers into soggy nostalgia thanks to the author’s crisp intelligence…[Ann-Marie MacDonald] knows what news stories today make readers wince, then re-examine their own and their children’s lives. The Way the Crow Flies tells a gripping tale, and has the power to illuminate the way we think about the modern world.”
—Charlotte Gray, National Post
“MacDonald’s central and wonderful creation, Madeleine McCarthy…is at once sophisticated and uncomprehending, in ways that ring terribly true. Hers is the consciousness that renders this novel compelling well beyond the level of its highly competent whodunit plot.”
—Claire Messud, The Globe and Mail
“The Way the Crow Flies is a big book. Do not be intimidated. It is a totally absorbing, craftily plotted, wonderfully written saga. Building upon itself, chapter by chapter, “Crow” is suspenseful, faithful to its time period, and comes complete with a rather shocking final plot twist. It has been seven years since MacDonald’s debut novel. Let’s hope that another seven do not go by before she writes her third.”
—The Sun Times (Owen Sound)
“The story is told mostly from the point of view of Madeleine, a precocious youngster who’s in grade 4 at the school serving the children of servicemen living in PMQs….Madeleine’s story is about picking up the pieces so she can ‘reinhabit’ herself. ‘That is the journey. And that’s romance. That is the true meaning of romance, where you have quite a bit at the beginning, you lose everything, and at the end of the story you have more than you began with’ [says MacDonald].”
—Canadian Press
“[U]nfolds relentlessly…[MacDonald’s] prose has a heart-poundingly powerful effect. The book is about secrets, how hard they are to tell and how keeping them can distort intimate connections….
[E]vokes the time and place meticulously…a huge accomplishment from an awesome talent.”
—Now Magazine (Toronto)
“[T]here is something to MacDonald’s stories, to the outsize tragedy, the awful inevitability, the need to tell and be told, that draws our hunger and our hope toward her midnight visions.”
—The Georgia Straight
“The Way the Crow Flies is a beautiful, compelling and heartbreaking story of a young girl’s loss of innocence and a murder that is to haunt her for the next 20 years…. Her vivid imagination breathes life into her characters and their world: the baby powder and Brylcreem smell of a teenage boy, the vivid pink streamers on a child’s bicycle, the pale perfection of a robin’s egg.”
—Homemakers
“The Way the Crow Flies is the most disturbing piece of fiction I have ever encountered. Ann-Marie MacDonald’s second novel is a riveting story, her writing is superlative and her heroine is high-minded and intelligent, a veritable Alice in Wonderland as unforgettable as Scout or Salinger’s Phoebe. Mac...
—Quill & Quire
“[A] richly involving novel. MacDonald … makes Jack and Mimi ring true emotionally, without cliché.”
—The Bookseller
“A little girl’s body, lying in a field, is the first image in this absorbing, psychologically rich second novel by the Canadian bestselling author of Fall On Your Knees. …MacDonald is an expert storyteller, providing an intricate recreation of life on a military base in the 1960s…a chronicle of innocence betrayed…The finale comes as a thunderclap, rearranging the reader’s vision of everything that has gone before. It’s a powerful story, delicately layered with complex secrets, told with a masterful command of narrative and a strong moral message.”
—PW Daily starred review
“Remarkable…an engrossing, disturbing and layered tale.”
—Chicago Tribune
“One of the finest novels I've read in a long, long time….Often her narrative explodes with the sheer joy of writing well….The Way the Crow Flies is a brilliant portrayal of child abuse and its consequences, but it is much more than that. It is a fiercely intelligent look at childhood, marriage, families, the 1960s, the Cold War and the fear and isolation that are part of the human condition.
—Washington Post
“[MacDonald’s] prose…is always right and true, clean and penetrating.”
—Winnipeg Free Press
“MacDonald’s much anticipated follow-up to Fall on Your Knees lives up to the hype. … MacDonald expertly takes the reader through the cold-war era and delivers a twister of an ending to make the 700-plus page journey worth the trip.”
—The Coast (Halifax)
“[A] gripping, twisty plot with powerful undercurrents of anger, abuse and even murder….MacDonald is a stunningly good writer….Her novels are fleshy books, solid as their length and heft….MacDonald doesn’t falter….The Way The Crow Flies…secures for MacDonald a place, forever, in Canadian literature.”
—The Calgary Herald
“[A] hopeful and satisfying finale….[T]his novel has close to perfect pitch.”
—The Edmonton Journal
“MacDonald’s careful navigation of the minds of her people is astonishingly accurate; so wholly formed are her characters that you may find yourself talking out loud to them as you read. She has us. ...[A] profoundly Canadian novel….This is a big, beautiful book just waiting for you to walk into its marvellous world and then walk out some days later, a slightly different, perhaps slightly sadder person.”
—The Daily News (Halifax)
“[Readers will] find The Way The Crow Flies an engaging, very cleverly written coming-of-age story about a precocious young girl named Madeleine.”
—The London Free Press
“The Way the Crow Flies [is] a mesmerizing recreation of a vanished era and a lost childhood. ... [MacDonald’s] depiction of a vulnerable girl almost destroyed by the confluence of global politics and local murder is rendered with beauty and passion.”
—Maclean’s
“Ann-Marie MacDonald’s big novel generates a strong emotional pull….suspense and the evocation of feeling on the author’s part continue to drive the reader’s interest forward to the very last page….MacDonald touches some deeply moving and insightful themes — the deliberate assertion of nothingness which is behind human evil, the effort of guilty children to shield their innocent parents from knowledge.”
—Toronto Star
“[E]xtraordinary in its scope and unerringly accurate in its portrayal of life on an air force station in the early 1960s….It’s all we could have hoped for and more from MacDonald. The Way the Crow Flies deserves the BEST accolade found in the term bestseller, while not all of the wildly popular books do.”
—The Chronicle-Herald (Halifax)
“[T]he pages practically turn themselves…irresistibly readable….[MacDonald has] written a love song to the innocence and optimism of the post-war generation.”
—Elm Street
“Neither Deafening nor Garbo Laughs…match the combination of ambition and achievement that marks The Way the Crow Flies, a mesmerizing recreation of a vanished era and a lost childhood….Her depiction of a vulnerable girl almost destroyed by the confluence of global politics and local murder is rendered with beauty and passion….Universal truth through the alchemy of writing.”
—Brian Bethune, Maclean’s
“This extraordinary follow-up to Fall on Your Knees, is both a head-spinning murder mystery and an absorbing exploration of morality, innocencelost and the lengths to which parents and children will go to protect each other. Astonishing in its depth and breadth, it artfully weaves one family’s struggles into the fabric of the Cold War.”
—People magazine, Critic’s Choice
“Every bit as luminous and poignant as Fall On Your Knees…. The Way The Crow Flies is…liberally sprinkled with small yet resonant grace notes, seemingly offhand observations about matters or sentiments or feelings that will cause you to trip, to stop dead, to smile and say: that’s the way it was, I remember now.”
—The Hamilton Spectator
“The most exciting thing about The Way The Crow Flies…is how big it is. Big as in expansive in human feeling and experience, and weighty with moral and meaning — though not ponderous or pretentious…. [I]t never drags. Its superb, cinematic crafting moves us swiftly from scene to scene…. The Way The Crow Flies…is stunning proof of MacDonald’s abilities…. [It] is a fantastic novel, not only because it is humorous, and sad and suspenseful and entertaining. It is a fantastic novel because it reminds us, as Canadians, of our citizenship in the world.”
—The Gazette (Montreal)
“A gripping, insightful cinematic tale….I could not put it down….She recreates a child’s world, with its own logic that is simultaneously completely convincing and a ghastly distortion of adult reality. The sweetness never veers into soggy nostalgia thanks to the author’s crisp intelligence…[Ann-Marie MacDonald] knows what news stories today make readers wince, then re-examine their own and their children’s lives. The Way the Crow Flies tells a gripping tale, and has the power to illuminate the way we think about the modern world.”
—Charlotte Gray, National Post
“MacDonald’s central and wonderful creation, Madeleine McCarthy…is at once sophisticated and uncomprehending, in ways that ring terribly true. Hers is the consciousness that renders this novel compelling well beyond the level of its highly competent whodunit plot.”
—Claire Messud, The Globe and Mail
“The Way the Crow Flies is a big book. Do not be intimidated. It is a totally absorbing, craftily plotted, wonderfully written saga. Building upon itself, chapter by chapter, “Crow” is suspenseful, faithful to its time period, and comes complete with a rather shocking final plot twist. It has been seven years since MacDonald’s debut novel. Let’s hope that another seven do not go by before she writes her third.”
—The Sun Times (Owen Sound)
“The story is told mostly from the point of view of Madeleine, a precocious youngster who’s in grade 4 at the school serving the children of servicemen living in PMQs….Madeleine’s story is about picking up the pieces so she can ‘reinhabit’ herself. ‘That is the journey. And that’s romance. That is the true meaning of romance, where you have quite a bit at the beginning, you lose everything, and at the end of the story you have more than you began with’ [says MacDonald].”
—Canadian Press
“[U]nfolds relentlessly…[MacDonald’s] prose has a heart-poundingly powerful effect. The book is about secrets, how hard they are to tell and how keeping them can distort intimate connections….
[E]vokes the time and place meticulously…a huge accomplishment from an awesome talent.”
—Now Magazine (Toronto)
“[T]here is something to MacDonald’s stories, to the outsize tragedy, the awful inevitability, the need to tell and be told, that draws our hunger and our hope toward her midnight visions.”
—The Georgia Straight
“The Way the Crow Flies is a beautiful, compelling and heartbreaking story of a young girl’s loss of innocence and a murder that is to haunt her for the next 20 years…. Her vivid imagination breathes life into her characters and their world: the baby powder and Brylcreem smell of a teenage boy, the vivid pink streamers on a child’s bicycle, the pale perfection of a robin’s egg.”
—Homemakers
“The Way the Crow Flies is the most disturbing piece of fiction I have ever encountered. Ann-Marie MacDonald’s second novel is a riveting story, her writing is superlative and her heroine is high-minded and intelligent, a veritable Alice in Wonderland as unforgettable as Scout or Salinger’s Phoebe. Mac...
Book Description
“The sun came out after the war and our world went Technicolor. Everyone had the same idea. Let’s get married. Let’s have kids. Let’s be the ones who do it right.”
The Way the Crow Flies, the second novel by bestselling, award-winning author Ann-Marie MacDonald, is set on the Royal Canadian Air Force station of Centralia during the early sixties. It is a time of optimism -- infused with the excitement of the space race but overshadowed by the menace of the Cold War -- filtered through the rich imagination and quick humour of eight-year-old Madeleine McCarthy and the idealism of her father, Jack, a career officer.
As the novel opens, Madeleine’s family is driving to their new home; Centralia is her father’s latest posting. They have come back from the Old World of Germany to the New World of Canada, where the towns hold memories of the Europeans who settled there. For the McCarthys, it is “the best of both worlds.” And they are a happy family. Jack and Mimi are still in love, Madeleine and her older brother, Mike, get along as well as can be expected. They all dance together and barbecue in the snow. They are compassionate and caring. Yet they have secrets.
Centralia is the station where, years ago, Jack crashed his plane and therefore never went operational; instead of being killed in action in 1943, he became a manager. Although he is successful, enjoys “flying a desk” and is thickening around the waist from Mimi’s good Acadian cooking, deep down Jack feels restless. His imagination is caught by the space race and the fight against Communism; he believes landing a man on the moon will change the world, and anything is possible. When his old wartime flying instructor appears out of the blue and asks for help with the secret defection of a Soviet scientist, Jack is excited to answer the call of duty: now he has a real job.
Madeleine’s secret is “the exercise group”. She is kept behind after class by Mr. March, along with other little girls, and made to do “backbends” to improve her concentration. As the abusive situation worsens, she is convinced that she cannot tell her parents and risk disappointing them. No one suspects, even when Madeleine’s behaviour changes: in the early sixties people still believe that school is “one of the safest places.” Colleen and Ricky, the adopted Metis children of her neighbours, know differently; at the school they were sent to after their parents died, they had been labelled “retarded” because they spoke Michif.
Then a little girl is murdered. Ricky is arrested, although most people on the station are convinced of his innocence. At the same time, Ricky’s father, Henry Froelich, a German Jew who was in a concentration camp, identifies the Soviet scientist hiding in the nearby town as a possible Nazi war criminal. Jack alone could provide Ricky’s alibi, but the Cold War stakes are politically high and doing “the right thing” is not so simple. “Show me the right thing and I will do it,” says Jack. As this very local murder intersects with global forces, The Way the Crow Flies reminds us that in time of war the lines between right and wrong are often blurred.
Ann-Marie MacDonald said in a discussion with Oprah Winfrey about her first book, “a happy ending is when someone can walk out of the rubble and tell the story.” Madeleine achieves her childhood dream of becoming a comedian, yet twenty years later she realises she cannot rest until she has renewed the quest for the truth, and confirmed how and why the child was murdered.. Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, called The Way the Crow Flies “absorbing, psychologically rich…a chronicle of innocence betrayed”. With compassion and intelligence, and an unerring eye for the absurd as well as the confusions of childhood, , MacDonald evokes the confusion of being human and the necessity of coming to terms with our imperfections.
The Way the Crow Flies, the second novel by bestselling, award-winning author Ann-Marie MacDonald, is set on the Royal Canadian Air Force station of Centralia during the early sixties. It is a time of optimism -- infused with the excitement of the space race but overshadowed by the menace of the Cold War -- filtered through the rich imagination and quick humour of eight-year-old Madeleine McCarthy and the idealism of her father, Jack, a career officer.
As the novel opens, Madeleine’s family is driving to their new home; Centralia is her father’s latest posting. They have come back from the Old World of Germany to the New World of Canada, where the towns hold memories of the Europeans who settled there. For the McCarthys, it is “the best of both worlds.” And they are a happy family. Jack and Mimi are still in love, Madeleine and her older brother, Mike, get along as well as can be expected. They all dance together and barbecue in the snow. They are compassionate and caring. Yet they have secrets.
Centralia is the station where, years ago, Jack crashed his plane and therefore never went operational; instead of being killed in action in 1943, he became a manager. Although he is successful, enjoys “flying a desk” and is thickening around the waist from Mimi’s good Acadian cooking, deep down Jack feels restless. His imagination is caught by the space race and the fight against Communism; he believes landing a man on the moon will change the world, and anything is possible. When his old wartime flying instructor appears out of the blue and asks for help with the secret defection of a Soviet scientist, Jack is excited to answer the call of duty: now he has a real job.
Madeleine’s secret is “the exercise group”. She is kept behind after class by Mr. March, along with other little girls, and made to do “backbends” to improve her concentration. As the abusive situation worsens, she is convinced that she cannot tell her parents and risk disappointing them. No one suspects, even when Madeleine’s behaviour changes: in the early sixties people still believe that school is “one of the safest places.” Colleen and Ricky, the adopted Metis children of her neighbours, know differently; at the school they were sent to after their parents died, they had been labelled “retarded” because they spoke Michif.
Then a little girl is murdered. Ricky is arrested, although most people on the station are convinced of his innocence. At the same time, Ricky’s father, Henry Froelich, a German Jew who was in a concentration camp, identifies the Soviet scientist hiding in the nearby town as a possible Nazi war criminal. Jack alone could provide Ricky’s alibi, but the Cold War stakes are politically high and doing “the right thing” is not so simple. “Show me the right thing and I will do it,” says Jack. As this very local murder intersects with global forces, The Way the Crow Flies reminds us that in time of war the lines between right and wrong are often blurred.
Ann-Marie MacDonald said in a discussion with Oprah Winfrey about her first book, “a happy ending is when someone can walk out of the rubble and tell the story.” Madeleine achieves her childhood dream of becoming a comedian, yet twenty years later she realises she cannot rest until she has renewed the quest for the truth, and confirmed how and why the child was murdered.. Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, called The Way the Crow Flies “absorbing, psychologically rich…a chronicle of innocence betrayed”. With compassion and intelligence, and an unerring eye for the absurd as well as the confusions of childhood, , MacDonald evokes the confusion of being human and the necessity of coming to terms with our imperfections.
From the Back Cover
“The prime contender for book of the fall. [T]his is an engaging and ingeniously plotted portrait of a ‘perfect’ 1960s Canadian family coming to terms with all its imperfections.”
—Quill & Quire
“[A] richly involving novel. MacDonald … makes Jack and Mimi ring true emotionally, without cliché.”
—The Bookseller
“A little girl’s body, lying in a field, is the first image in this absorbing, psychologically rich second novel by the Canadian bestselling author of Fall On Your Knees. …MacDonald is an expert storyteller, providing an intricate recreation of life on a military base in the 1960s…a chronicle of innocence betrayed…The finale comes as a thunderclap, rearranging the reader’s vision of everything that has gone before. It’s a powerful story, delicately layered with complex secrets, told with a masterful command of narrative and a strong moral message.”
—PW Daily starred review
“Remarkable…an engrossing, disturbing and layered tale.”
—Chicago Tribune
“One of the finest novels I've read in a long, long time….Often her narrative explodes with the sheer joy of writing well….The Way the Crow Flies is a brilliant portrayal of child abuse and its consequences, but it is much more than that. It is a fiercely intelligent look at childhood, marriage, families, the 1960s, the Cold War and the fear and isolation that are part of the human condition.
—Washington Post
“[MacDonald’s] prose…is always right and true, clean and penetrating.”
—Winnipeg Free Press
“MacDonald’s much anticipated follow-up to Fall on Your Knees lives up to the hype. … MacDonald expertly takes the reader through the cold-war era and delivers a twister of an ending to make the 700-plus page journey worth the trip.”
—The Coast (Halifax)
“[A] gripping, twisty plot with powerful undercurrents of anger, abuse and even murder….MacDonald is a stunningly good writer….Her novels are fleshy books, solid as their length and heft….MacDonald doesn’t falter….The Way The Crow Flies…secures for MacDonald a place, forever, in Canadian literature.”
—The Calgary Herald
“[A] hopeful and satisfying finale….[T]his novel has close to perfect pitch.”
—The Edmonton Journal
“MacDonald’s careful navigation of the minds of her people is astonishingly accurate; so wholly formed are her characters that you may find yourself talking out loud to them as you read. She has us. ...[A] profoundly Canadian novel….This is a big, beautiful book just waiting for you to walk into its marvellous world and then walk out some days later, a slightly different, perhaps slightly sadder person.”
—The Daily News (Halifax)
“[Readers will] find The Way The Crow Flies an engaging, very cleverly written coming-of-age story about a precocious young girl named Madeleine.”
—The London Free Press
“The Way the Crow Flies [is] a mesmerizing recreation of a vanished era and a lost childhood. ... [MacDonald’s] depiction of a vulnerable girl almost destroyed by the confluence of global politics and local murder is rendered with beauty and passion.”
—Maclean’s
“Ann-Marie MacDonald’s big novel generates a strong emotional pull….suspense and the evocation of feeling on the author’s part continue to drive the reader’s interest forward to the very last page….MacDonald touches some deeply moving and insightful themes — the deliberate assertion of nothingness which is behind human evil, the effort of guilty children to shield their innocent parents from knowledge.”
—Toronto Star
“[E]xtraordinary in its scope and unerringly accurate in its portrayal of life on an air force station in the early 1960s….It’s all we could have hoped for and more from MacDonald. The Way the Crow Flies deserves the BEST accolade found in the term bestseller, while not all of the wildly popular books do.”
—The Chronicle-Herald (Halifax)
“[T]he pages practically turn themselves…irresistibly readable….[MacDonald has] written a love song to the innocence and optimism of the post-war generation.”
—Elm Street
“Neither Deafening nor Garbo Laughs…match the combination of ambition and achievement that marks The Way the Crow Flies, a mesmerizing recreation of a vanished era and a lost childhood….Her depiction of a vulnerable girl almost destroyed by the confluence of global politics and local murder is rendered with beauty and passion….Universal truth through the alchemy of writing.”
—Brian Bethune, Maclean’s
“This extraordinary follow-up to Fall on Your Knees, is both a head-spinning murder mystery and an absorbing exploration of morality, innocencelost and the lengths to which parents and children will go to protect each other. Astonishing in its depth and breadth, it artfully weaves one family’s struggles into the fabric of the Cold War.”
—People magazine, Critic’s Choice
“Every bit as luminous and poignant as Fall On Your Knees…. The Way The Crow Flies is…liberally sprinkled with small yet resonant grace notes, seemingly offhand observations about matters or sentiments or feelings that will cause you to trip, to stop dead, to smile and say: that’s the way it was, I remember now.”
—The Hamilton Spectator
“The most exciting thing about The Way The Crow Flies…is how big it is. Big as in expansive in human feeling and experience, and weighty with moral and meaning — though not ponderous or pretentious…. [I]t never drags. Its superb, cinematic crafting moves us swiftly from scene to scene…. The Way The Crow Flies…is stunning proof of MacDonald’s abilities…. [It] is a fantastic novel, not only because it is humorous, and sad and suspenseful and entertaining. It is a fantastic novel because it reminds us, as Canadians, of our citizenship in the world.”
—The Gazette (Montreal)
“A gripping, insightful cinematic tale….I could not put it down….She recreates a child’s world, with its own logic that is simultaneously completely convincing and a ghastly distortion of adult reality. The sweetness never veers into soggy nostalgia thanks to the author’s crisp intelligence…[Ann-Marie MacDonald] knows what news stories today make readers wince, then re-examine their own and their children’s lives. The Way the Crow Flies tells a gripping tale, and has the power to illuminate the way we think about the modern world.”
—Charlotte Gray, National Post
“MacDonald’s central and wonderful creation, Madeleine McCarthy…is at once sophisticated and uncomprehending, in ways that ring terribly true. Hers is the consciousness that renders this novel compelling well beyond the level of its highly competent whodunit plot.”
—Claire Messud, The Globe and Mail
“The Way the Crow Flies is a big book. Do not be intimidated. It is a totally absorbing, craftily plotted, wonderfully written saga. Building upon itself, chapter by chapter, “Crow” is suspenseful, faithful to its time period, and comes complete with a rather shocking final plot twist. It has been seven years since MacDonald’s debut novel. Let’s hope that another seven do not go by before she writes her third.”
—The Sun Times (Owen Sound)
“The story is told mostly from the point of view of Madeleine, a precocious youngster who’s in grade 4 at the school serving the children of servicemen living in PMQs….Madeleine’s story is about picking up the pieces so she can ‘reinhabit’ herself. ‘That is the journey. And that’s romance. That is the true meaning of romance, where you have quite a bit at the beginning, you lose everything, and at the end of the story you have more than you began with’ [says MacDonald].”
—Canadian Press
“[U]nfolds relentlessly…[MacDonald’s] prose has a heart-poundingly powerful effect. The book is about secrets, how hard they are to tell and how keeping them can distort intimate connections….
[E]vokes the time and place meticulously…a huge accomplishment from an awesome talent.”
—Now Magazine (Toronto)
“[T]here is something to MacDonald’s stories, to the outsize tragedy, the awful inevitability, the need to tell and be told, that draws our hunger and our hope toward her midnight visions.”
—The Georgia Straight
“The Way the Crow Flies is a beautiful, compelling and heartbreaking story of a young girl’s loss of innocence and a murder that is to haunt her for the next 20 years…. Her vivid imagination breathes life into her characters and their world: the baby powder and Brylcreem smell of a teenage boy, the vivid pink streamers on a child’s bicycle, the pale perfection of a robin’s egg.”
—Homemakers
“The Way the Crow Flies is the most disturbing piece of fiction I have ever encountered. Ann-Marie MacDonald’s second novel is a riveting story, her writing is superlative and her heroine is high-minded and intelligent, a veritable Alice in Wonderland as unforgettable as Scout or Salinger’s Phoebe. MacDonald’s book is brilliant on so many levels…. MacDonald creates a perfect time warped world, authentic and exact.”
—New Brunswick Reader
“This dark thriller, set mostly in the early ‘60s, is part coming-of-age story, part Cold War thriller and part murder mystery, all wrapped around a fascinating history lesson. Like her first novel, it centres on a painful secret that will pull most readers compulsively back to this book until the last page.”
—Flare
“Ann-Marie MacDonald’s…Can lit is both accessible and glamorous, two qualities for which we aren’t usually recommended and that offend all the right people. … The book itself is at once a spy intirgue and a historical melodrama…. [MacDonald] is intrepid, exploring the world’s complexity through her characters.”
—Hour (Montreal)
“[A]n engrossing read with a detective-novel appeal.”
—The Gazette
“The Way the Crow Flies…is at once informingly historical, moving, and deeply endearing. MacDonald effectively tells the story from the perspectives of a housewife, a military man, and their nine-year-old daughter. A shrouded mystery makes this fictional novel a real page-turner. MacDonald’s language is rich and full of imagery, and relevant to any reader.”
—Kitchener-Waterloo Record
“Ann-Marie MacDonald’s The Way the Crow Flies is a terrific read. … MacDonald brings back not only the temper of living on an air-base at the time of possible nuclear threat but also the past times and music that coloured the lives of those living in Southwestern Ontario.”
—The London Free Press
“MacDonald gives us a totally believable child in a series of brilliantly coloured, action-filled vignettes, kaleidescopic, fast-moving, as compelling as watching a film….Survival of the emotional rollercoaster of this long and demanding text is also a matter for celebration. However, one reader’s rejection of the haste and overabundance of the final section will be another reader’s intense satisfaction. By any standard The Way the Crow Flies is a remarkable acheivement.”
—Books in Canada
“[T]he colorful visual details of an idyllic Canadian air-force family in the early ‘60s are cinematic….Macdonald’s multiple plot lines are meticulously woven together. The book is thoroughly researched and the end result is an engaging and complex whodunnit with heart.”
—Women’s Post
—Quill & Quire
“[A] richly involving novel. MacDonald … makes Jack and Mimi ring true emotionally, without cliché.”
—The Bookseller
“A little girl’s body, lying in a field, is the first image in this absorbing, psychologically rich second novel by the Canadian bestselling author of Fall On Your Knees. …MacDonald is an expert storyteller, providing an intricate recreation of life on a military base in the 1960s…a chronicle of innocence betrayed…The finale comes as a thunderclap, rearranging the reader’s vision of everything that has gone before. It’s a powerful story, delicately layered with complex secrets, told with a masterful command of narrative and a strong moral message.”
—PW Daily starred review
“Remarkable…an engrossing, disturbing and layered tale.”
—Chicago Tribune
“One of the finest novels I've read in a long, long time….Often her narrative explodes with the sheer joy of writing well….The Way the Crow Flies is a brilliant portrayal of child abuse and its consequences, but it is much more than that. It is a fiercely intelligent look at childhood, marriage, families, the 1960s, the Cold War and the fear and isolation that are part of the human condition.
—Washington Post
“[MacDonald’s] prose…is always right and true, clean and penetrating.”
—Winnipeg Free Press
“MacDonald’s much anticipated follow-up to Fall on Your Knees lives up to the hype. … MacDonald expertly takes the reader through the cold-war era and delivers a twister of an ending to make the 700-plus page journey worth the trip.”
—The Coast (Halifax)
“[A] gripping, twisty plot with powerful undercurrents of anger, abuse and even murder….MacDonald is a stunningly good writer….Her novels are fleshy books, solid as their length and heft….MacDonald doesn’t falter….The Way The Crow Flies…secures for MacDonald a place, forever, in Canadian literature.”
—The Calgary Herald
“[A] hopeful and satisfying finale….[T]his novel has close to perfect pitch.”
—The Edmonton Journal
“MacDonald’s careful navigation of the minds of her people is astonishingly accurate; so wholly formed are her characters that you may find yourself talking out loud to them as you read. She has us. ...[A] profoundly Canadian novel….This is a big, beautiful book just waiting for you to walk into its marvellous world and then walk out some days later, a slightly different, perhaps slightly sadder person.”
—The Daily News (Halifax)
“[Readers will] find The Way The Crow Flies an engaging, very cleverly written coming-of-age story about a precocious young girl named Madeleine.”
—The London Free Press
“The Way the Crow Flies [is] a mesmerizing recreation of a vanished era and a lost childhood. ... [MacDonald’s] depiction of a vulnerable girl almost destroyed by the confluence of global politics and local murder is rendered with beauty and passion.”
—Maclean’s
“Ann-Marie MacDonald’s big novel generates a strong emotional pull….suspense and the evocation of feeling on the author’s part continue to drive the reader’s interest forward to the very last page….MacDonald touches some deeply moving and insightful themes — the deliberate assertion of nothingness which is behind human evil, the effort of guilty children to shield their innocent parents from knowledge.”
—Toronto Star
“[E]xtraordinary in its scope and unerringly accurate in its portrayal of life on an air force station in the early 1960s….It’s all we could have hoped for and more from MacDonald. The Way the Crow Flies deserves the BEST accolade found in the term bestseller, while not all of the wildly popular books do.”
—The Chronicle-Herald (Halifax)
“[T]he pages practically turn themselves…irresistibly readable….[MacDonald has] written a love song to the innocence and optimism of the post-war generation.”
—Elm Street
“Neither Deafening nor Garbo Laughs…match the combination of ambition and achievement that marks The Way the Crow Flies, a mesmerizing recreation of a vanished era and a lost childhood….Her depiction of a vulnerable girl almost destroyed by the confluence of global politics and local murder is rendered with beauty and passion….Universal truth through the alchemy of writing.”
—Brian Bethune, Maclean’s
“This extraordinary follow-up to Fall on Your Knees, is both a head-spinning murder mystery and an absorbing exploration of morality, innocencelost and the lengths to which parents and children will go to protect each other. Astonishing in its depth and breadth, it artfully weaves one family’s struggles into the fabric of the Cold War.”
—People magazine, Critic’s Choice
“Every bit as luminous and poignant as Fall On Your Knees…. The Way The Crow Flies is…liberally sprinkled with small yet resonant grace notes, seemingly offhand observations about matters or sentiments or feelings that will cause you to trip, to stop dead, to smile and say: that’s the way it was, I remember now.”
—The Hamilton Spectator
“The most exciting thing about The Way The Crow Flies…is how big it is. Big as in expansive in human feeling and experience, and weighty with moral and meaning — though not ponderous or pretentious…. [I]t never drags. Its superb, cinematic crafting moves us swiftly from scene to scene…. The Way The Crow Flies…is stunning proof of MacDonald’s abilities…. [It] is a fantastic novel, not only because it is humorous, and sad and suspenseful and entertaining. It is a fantastic novel because it reminds us, as Canadians, of our citizenship in the world.”
—The Gazette (Montreal)
“A gripping, insightful cinematic tale….I could not put it down….She recreates a child’s world, with its own logic that is simultaneously completely convincing and a ghastly distortion of adult reality. The sweetness never veers into soggy nostalgia thanks to the author’s crisp intelligence…[Ann-Marie MacDonald] knows what news stories today make readers wince, then re-examine their own and their children’s lives. The Way the Crow Flies tells a gripping tale, and has the power to illuminate the way we think about the modern world.”
—Charlotte Gray, National Post
“MacDonald’s central and wonderful creation, Madeleine McCarthy…is at once sophisticated and uncomprehending, in ways that ring terribly true. Hers is the consciousness that renders this novel compelling well beyond the level of its highly competent whodunit plot.”
—Claire Messud, The Globe and Mail
“The Way the Crow Flies is a big book. Do not be intimidated. It is a totally absorbing, craftily plotted, wonderfully written saga. Building upon itself, chapter by chapter, “Crow” is suspenseful, faithful to its time period, and comes complete with a rather shocking final plot twist. It has been seven years since MacDonald’s debut novel. Let’s hope that another seven do not go by before she writes her third.”
—The Sun Times (Owen Sound)
“The story is told mostly from the point of view of Madeleine, a precocious youngster who’s in grade 4 at the school serving the children of servicemen living in PMQs….Madeleine’s story is about picking up the pieces so she can ‘reinhabit’ herself. ‘That is the journey. And that’s romance. That is the true meaning of romance, where you have quite a bit at the beginning, you lose everything, and at the end of the story you have more than you began with’ [says MacDonald].”
—Canadian Press
“[U]nfolds relentlessly…[MacDonald’s] prose has a heart-poundingly powerful effect. The book is about secrets, how hard they are to tell and how keeping them can distort intimate connections….
[E]vokes the time and place meticulously…a huge accomplishment from an awesome talent.”
—Now Magazine (Toronto)
“[T]here is something to MacDonald’s stories, to the outsize tragedy, the awful inevitability, the need to tell and be told, that draws our hunger and our hope toward her midnight visions.”
—The Georgia Straight
“The Way the Crow Flies is a beautiful, compelling and heartbreaking story of a young girl’s loss of innocence and a murder that is to haunt her for the next 20 years…. Her vivid imagination breathes life into her characters and their world: the baby powder and Brylcreem smell of a teenage boy, the vivid pink streamers on a child’s bicycle, the pale perfection of a robin’s egg.”
—Homemakers
“The Way the Crow Flies is the most disturbing piece of fiction I have ever encountered. Ann-Marie MacDonald’s second novel is a riveting story, her writing is superlative and her heroine is high-minded and intelligent, a veritable Alice in Wonderland as unforgettable as Scout or Salinger’s Phoebe. MacDonald’s book is brilliant on so many levels…. MacDonald creates a perfect time warped world, authentic and exact.”
—New Brunswick Reader
“This dark thriller, set mostly in the early ‘60s, is part coming-of-age story, part Cold War thriller and part murder mystery, all wrapped around a fascinating history lesson. Like her first novel, it centres on a painful secret that will pull most readers compulsively back to this book until the last page.”
—Flare
“Ann-Marie MacDonald’s…Can lit is both accessible and glamorous, two qualities for which we aren’t usually recommended and that offend all the right people. … The book itself is at once a spy intirgue and a historical melodrama…. [MacDonald] is intrepid, exploring the world’s complexity through her characters.”
—Hour (Montreal)
“[A]n engrossing read with a detective-novel appeal.”
—The Gazette
“The Way the Crow Flies…is at once informingly historical, moving, and deeply endearing. MacDonald effectively tells the story from the perspectives of a housewife, a military man, and their nine-year-old daughter. A shrouded mystery makes this fictional novel a real page-turner. MacDonald’s language is rich and full of imagery, and relevant to any reader.”
—Kitchener-Waterloo Record
“Ann-Marie MacDonald’s The Way the Crow Flies is a terrific read. … MacDonald brings back not only the temper of living on an air-base at the time of possible nuclear threat but also the past times and music that coloured the lives of those living in Southwestern Ontario.”
—The London Free Press
“MacDonald gives us a totally believable child in a series of brilliantly coloured, action-filled vignettes, kaleidescopic, fast-moving, as compelling as watching a film….Survival of the emotional rollercoaster of this long and demanding text is also a matter for celebration. However, one reader’s rejection of the haste and overabundance of the final section will be another reader’s intense satisfaction. By any standard The Way the Crow Flies is a remarkable acheivement.”
—Books in Canada
“[T]he colorful visual details of an idyllic Canadian air-force family in the early ‘60s are cinematic….Macdonald’s multiple plot lines are meticulously woven together. The book is thoroughly researched and the end result is an engaging and complex whodunnit with heart.”
—Women’s Post
About the Author
Ann-Marie MacDonald was born in West Germany and spent the first few years of her life on a Canadian air force station near Baden Baden. Her father was an officer in the RCAF and the family was posted numerous times.
She attended one year at Carleton University, Ottawa, studying languages and Classics. She went to the National Theatre School of Canada in Montreal where she trained as an actor, graduating from the program in 1980. She moved to Toronto where she began an acting career. She soon became involved in creating original Canadian work in a number of contexts: collective creation, collaboration and solo writing. The work always combined theatrical innovation, politics and entertainment. She worked as an independent artist, with Nightwood Theatre and Theatre Passe Muraille as her principal theatre “homes.” Her seminal works include the collective creation This is For You, Anna, and the multi-episodic Nancy Drew: Clue in the Fast Lane. Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) was MacDonald’s first solo-authored work.
She continued to work as an actor in theatres across the country and in many independent films, including I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing, Where the Spirit Lives and Better Than Chocolate. As well, she guest-starred on numerous television series, most recently Made in Canada. MacDonald was last on stage in the spring of 2001 when she starred in a sold-out production of Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) at the Bluma Appel Theatre in Toronto. Currently, MacDonald is host of the CBC series Life and Times.
Her more recent work for theatre includes the play The Arab’s Mouth, the libretto for the chamber opera Nigredo Hotel, the collectively created The Attic, The Pearls and Three Fine Girls in which she also performed, and, most recently, the book and lyrics for the musical comedy Anything That Moves.
MacDonald’s work as an actor and writer has been honoured with a number of awards, including the Governor General’s Award, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, the Canadian Authors’ Association Award, the Dartmouth Award, the Gemini Award, the Chalmers Award and the Dora Mavor Moore Award.
Fall on Your Knees was MacDonald’s first novel and is available from Vintage Canada. She lives in Toronto with her partner, her daughter and two dogs.
She attended one year at Carleton University, Ottawa, studying languages and Classics. She went to the National Theatre School of Canada in Montreal where she trained as an actor, graduating from the program in 1980. She moved to Toronto where she began an acting career. She soon became involved in creating original Canadian work in a number of contexts: collective creation, collaboration and solo writing. The work always combined theatrical innovation, politics and entertainment. She worked as an independent artist, with Nightwood Theatre and Theatre Passe Muraille as her principal theatre “homes.” Her seminal works include the collective creation This is For You, Anna, and the multi-episodic Nancy Drew: Clue in the Fast Lane. Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) was MacDonald’s first solo-authored work.
She continued to work as an actor in theatres across the country and in many independent films, including I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing, Where the Spirit Lives and Better Than Chocolate. As well, she guest-starred on numerous television series, most recently Made in Canada. MacDonald was last on stage in the spring of 2001 when she starred in a sold-out production of Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) at the Bluma Appel Theatre in Toronto. Currently, MacDonald is host of the CBC series Life and Times.
Her more recent work for theatre includes the play The Arab’s Mouth, the libretto for the chamber opera Nigredo Hotel, the collectively created The Attic, The Pearls and Three Fine Girls in which she also performed, and, most recently, the book and lyrics for the musical comedy Anything That Moves.
MacDonald’s work as an actor and writer has been honoured with a number of awards, including the Governor General’s Award, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, the Canadian Authors’ Association Award, the Dartmouth Award, the Gemini Award, the Chalmers Award and the Dora Mavor Moore Award.
Fall on Your Knees was MacDonald’s first novel and is available from Vintage Canada. She lives in Toronto with her partner, her daughter and two dogs.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The birds saw the murder. Down below in the new grass, the tiny white bell-heads of the lily of the valley. It was a sunny day. Twig-crackling, early spring stirrings, spring soil smell. April. A stream through the nearby woods, so refreshing to the ear – it would be dry by the end of summer, but for now it rippled through the shade. High in the branches of an elm, that is where the birds were, perched among the many buds set to pleat like fresh hankies.
The murder happened near a place kids called Rock Bass. In a meadow at the edge of the woods. A tamped-down spot, as though someone had had a picnic there. The crows saw what happened. Other birds were in the high branches and they saw too, but crows are different. They are interested. Other birds saw a series of actions. The crows saw the murder. A light blue cotton dress. Perfectly still now.
From high in the tree, the crows eyed the charm bracelet glinting on her wrist. Best to wait. The silver beckoned, but best to wait.
Many-Splendoured Things
The sun came out after the war and our world went Technicolour. Everyone had the same idea. Let’s get married. Let’s have kids. Let’s be the ones who do it right.
* * * * *
It is possible, in 1962, for a drive to be the highlight of a family week. King of the road, behind the wheel on four steel-belted tires, the sky’s the limit. Let’s just drive, we’ll find out where we’re going when we get there. How many more miles, Dad?
Roads are endless vistas, city gives way to country barely mediated by suburbs. Suburbs are the best of both worlds, all you need is a car and the world is your oyster, your Edsel, your Chrysler, your Ford. Trust Texaco. Traffic is not what it will be, what’s more, it’s still pretty neat. There’s a ’53 Studebaker Coupe! –oh look, there’s the new Thunderbird. . . .
“Let’s sing ‘This Land Is Your Land.’”
A moving automobile is second only to the shower when it comes to singing, the miles fly by, the landscape changes, they pass campers and trailers – look, another Volkswagen Beetle. It is difficult to believe that Hitler was behind something so friendly-looking and familiar as a VW bug. Dad reminds the kids that dictators often appreciate good music and are kind to animals. Hitler was a vegetarian and evil. Churchill was a drunk but good. “The world isn’t black and white, kids.”
In the back seat, Madeleine leans her head against the window frame, lulled by the vibrations. Her older brother is occupied with baseball cards, her parents are up front enjoying “the beautiful scenery.” This is an ideal time to begin her movie. She hums “Moon River,” and imagines that the audience can just see her profile, hair blowing back in the wind. They see what she sees out the window, the countryside, off to see the world, and they wonder where it is she is off to and what life will bring, there’s such a lot of world to see. They wonder, who is this darkhaired girl with the pixie cut and the wistful expression? An orphan? An only child with a dead mother and a kind father? Being sent from her boarding school to spend the summer at the country house of mysterious relatives who live next to a mansion where lives a girl a little older than herself who rides horses and wears red dungarees? We’re after the same rainbow’s end, just around the bend. . . . And they are forced to run away together and solve a mystery, my Huckleberry friend. . . .
Through the car window, she pictures tall black letters superimposed on a background of speeding green – “Starring Madeleine McCarthy” – punctuated frame by frame by telephone poles, Moon River, and me. . . .
It is difficult to get past the opening credits so better simply to start a new movie. Pick a song to go with it. Madeleine starts singing, sotto voce, “Whatever Will Be, Will Be” – darn, we’re stopping.
“I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream,” says her father, pulling over.
Utterly wrapped up in her movie, Madeleine has failed to notice the big strawberry ice cream cone tilting toward the highway, festive in its party hat. “Yay!” she exclaims. Her brother rolls his eyes at her.
Everything in Canada is so much bigger than it was in Germany, the cones, the cars, the “supermarkets.” She wonders what their new house will be like. And her new room – will it be pretty? Will it be big? Que será, será. . . .
“Name your poison,” says Dad at the ice cream counter, a white wooden shack. They sell fresh corn on the cob here too. The fields are full of it – the kind Europeans call Indian corn.
“Neapolitan, please,” says Madeleine.
Her father runs a hand through his sandy crewcut and smiles through his sunglasses at the fat lady in the shade behind the counter. He and her brother have matching haircuts, although Mike’s hair is even lighter. Wheat-coloured. It looks as though you could remove waxy buildup from your kitchen floor by turning him upside down and plugging him in, but his bristles are actually quite soft. He rarely allows Madeleine to touch them, however. He has strolled away now toward the highway, thumbs hooked in his belt loops – pretending he is out in the world on his own, Madeleine knows. He must be boiling in those dungarees but he won’t admit it, and he won’t wear shorts. Dad never wears shorts.
“Mike, where do you think you’re going?” she calls.
He ignores her. He is going on twelve.
She runs a hand through her hair the way Dad does, loving its silky shortness. A pixie cut is a far cry from a crewcut, but is also mercifully far from the waist-length braids she endured until this spring. She accidentally cut one off during crafts in school. Maman still loves her but will probably never forgive her.
Her mother waits in the Rambler. She wears the sunglasses she got on the French Riviera last summer. She looks like a movie star. Madeleine watches her adjust the rearview mirror and freshen her lipstick. Black hair, red lips, white sunglasses. Like Jackie Kennedy – “She copied me.”
Mike calls her Maman, but for Madeleine she is “Maman” at home and “Mum” in public. “Mum” is more carefree than Maman – like penny loafers instead of Mary Janes. “Mum” goes better with “Dad.” Things go better with Coke.
Her father waits with his hands in the pockets of his chinos, removes his sunglasses and squints up at the blue sky, whistling a tune through his teeth. “Smell the corn,” he says. “That’s the smell of pure sunshine.” Madeleine puts her hands in the pockets of her short-shorts, squints up and inhales.
In the car, her mother blots her lips together, eyes on the mirror. Madeleine watches her retract the lipstick into its tube. Ladies have a lot of things which look like candy but are not.
Her mother has saved her braids. They are in a plastic bag in the silverware chest. Madeleine saw her toss the bag in there just before the movers came. Now her hair is somewhere on a moving van, rumbling toward them.
“Here you go, old buddy.”
Her father hands her an ice cream cone. Mike rejoins them and takes his. He has chosen chocolate as usual. “‘I’d rather fight, than switch.’”
Her father has rum ’n’ raisin. Does something happen to your tastebuds when you grow up so that you like horrible flavours? Or is it particular to parents who grew up during the Depression, when an apple was a treat?
“Want a taste, sweetie?”
“Thanks, Dad.”
She always takes a lick of his ice cream and says, “That’s really good.” Bugs Bunny would say, You lie like a rug, doc, but in a way it isn’t a lie because it really is good to get ice cream with your dad. And when each of you takes a taste of the other’s, it’s great. So Madeleine is not really lying. Nyah, tell me anuddah one, doc.
Maman never wants a cone of her own. She will share Dad’s and take bites of Mike’s and Madeleine’s. That’s another thing that happens when you grow up; at least, it happens to a great number of mothers: they no longer choose to have an ice cream cone of their own.
Back in the car, Madeleine considers offering a lick to Bugs Bunny but doesn’t wish to tempt her brother’s scorn. Bugs is not a doll. He is . . . Bugs. He has seen better days, the tip of his orange carrot is worn white, but his big wise-guy eyes are still bright blue and his long ears still hold whatever position you bend them into. At the moment, his ears are twisted together like a braid down his back. Bavarian Bugs.
Her father starts the engine and tilts his cone toward her mother, who bites it, careful of her lipstick. He backs the station wagon toward the highway and makes a face when he sees that his rearview mirror is out of whack. He gives Maman a look and she makes a kiss with her red lips. He grins and shakes his head. Madeleine looks away, hoping they won’t get mushy.
She contemplates her ice cream cone. Neapolitan. Where to begin? She thinks of it as “cosmopolitan”–the word her father uses to describe their family. The best of all worlds.
* * * * *
Outside the car windows the corn catches the sun, leafy stalks gleam in three greens. Arching oaks and elms line the curving highway, the land rolls and burgeons in a way that makes you believe that, yes, the earth is a woman, and her favourite food is corn. Tall and flexed and straining, emerald citizens. Fronds spiralling, cupping upward, swaddling the tender ears, the gift-wrapped bounty. Th...
The murder happened near a place kids called Rock Bass. In a meadow at the edge of the woods. A tamped-down spot, as though someone had had a picnic there. The crows saw what happened. Other birds were in the high branches and they saw too, but crows are different. They are interested. Other birds saw a series of actions. The crows saw the murder. A light blue cotton dress. Perfectly still now.
From high in the tree, the crows eyed the charm bracelet glinting on her wrist. Best to wait. The silver beckoned, but best to wait.
Many-Splendoured Things
The sun came out after the war and our world went Technicolour. Everyone had the same idea. Let’s get married. Let’s have kids. Let’s be the ones who do it right.
* * * * *
It is possible, in 1962, for a drive to be the highlight of a family week. King of the road, behind the wheel on four steel-belted tires, the sky’s the limit. Let’s just drive, we’ll find out where we’re going when we get there. How many more miles, Dad?
Roads are endless vistas, city gives way to country barely mediated by suburbs. Suburbs are the best of both worlds, all you need is a car and the world is your oyster, your Edsel, your Chrysler, your Ford. Trust Texaco. Traffic is not what it will be, what’s more, it’s still pretty neat. There’s a ’53 Studebaker Coupe! –oh look, there’s the new Thunderbird. . . .
“Let’s sing ‘This Land Is Your Land.’”
A moving automobile is second only to the shower when it comes to singing, the miles fly by, the landscape changes, they pass campers and trailers – look, another Volkswagen Beetle. It is difficult to believe that Hitler was behind something so friendly-looking and familiar as a VW bug. Dad reminds the kids that dictators often appreciate good music and are kind to animals. Hitler was a vegetarian and evil. Churchill was a drunk but good. “The world isn’t black and white, kids.”
In the back seat, Madeleine leans her head against the window frame, lulled by the vibrations. Her older brother is occupied with baseball cards, her parents are up front enjoying “the beautiful scenery.” This is an ideal time to begin her movie. She hums “Moon River,” and imagines that the audience can just see her profile, hair blowing back in the wind. They see what she sees out the window, the countryside, off to see the world, and they wonder where it is she is off to and what life will bring, there’s such a lot of world to see. They wonder, who is this darkhaired girl with the pixie cut and the wistful expression? An orphan? An only child with a dead mother and a kind father? Being sent from her boarding school to spend the summer at the country house of mysterious relatives who live next to a mansion where lives a girl a little older than herself who rides horses and wears red dungarees? We’re after the same rainbow’s end, just around the bend. . . . And they are forced to run away together and solve a mystery, my Huckleberry friend. . . .
Through the car window, she pictures tall black letters superimposed on a background of speeding green – “Starring Madeleine McCarthy” – punctuated frame by frame by telephone poles, Moon River, and me. . . .
It is difficult to get past the opening credits so better simply to start a new movie. Pick a song to go with it. Madeleine starts singing, sotto voce, “Whatever Will Be, Will Be” – darn, we’re stopping.
“I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream,” says her father, pulling over.
Utterly wrapped up in her movie, Madeleine has failed to notice the big strawberry ice cream cone tilting toward the highway, festive in its party hat. “Yay!” she exclaims. Her brother rolls his eyes at her.
Everything in Canada is so much bigger than it was in Germany, the cones, the cars, the “supermarkets.” She wonders what their new house will be like. And her new room – will it be pretty? Will it be big? Que será, será. . . .
“Name your poison,” says Dad at the ice cream counter, a white wooden shack. They sell fresh corn on the cob here too. The fields are full of it – the kind Europeans call Indian corn.
“Neapolitan, please,” says Madeleine.
Her father runs a hand through his sandy crewcut and smiles through his sunglasses at the fat lady in the shade behind the counter. He and her brother have matching haircuts, although Mike’s hair is even lighter. Wheat-coloured. It looks as though you could remove waxy buildup from your kitchen floor by turning him upside down and plugging him in, but his bristles are actually quite soft. He rarely allows Madeleine to touch them, however. He has strolled away now toward the highway, thumbs hooked in his belt loops – pretending he is out in the world on his own, Madeleine knows. He must be boiling in those dungarees but he won’t admit it, and he won’t wear shorts. Dad never wears shorts.
“Mike, where do you think you’re going?” she calls.
He ignores her. He is going on twelve.
She runs a hand through her hair the way Dad does, loving its silky shortness. A pixie cut is a far cry from a crewcut, but is also mercifully far from the waist-length braids she endured until this spring. She accidentally cut one off during crafts in school. Maman still loves her but will probably never forgive her.
Her mother waits in the Rambler. She wears the sunglasses she got on the French Riviera last summer. She looks like a movie star. Madeleine watches her adjust the rearview mirror and freshen her lipstick. Black hair, red lips, white sunglasses. Like Jackie Kennedy – “She copied me.”
Mike calls her Maman, but for Madeleine she is “Maman” at home and “Mum” in public. “Mum” is more carefree than Maman – like penny loafers instead of Mary Janes. “Mum” goes better with “Dad.” Things go better with Coke.
Her father waits with his hands in the pockets of his chinos, removes his sunglasses and squints up at the blue sky, whistling a tune through his teeth. “Smell the corn,” he says. “That’s the smell of pure sunshine.” Madeleine puts her hands in the pockets of her short-shorts, squints up and inhales.
In the car, her mother blots her lips together, eyes on the mirror. Madeleine watches her retract the lipstick into its tube. Ladies have a lot of things which look like candy but are not.
Her mother has saved her braids. They are in a plastic bag in the silverware chest. Madeleine saw her toss the bag in there just before the movers came. Now her hair is somewhere on a moving van, rumbling toward them.
“Here you go, old buddy.”
Her father hands her an ice cream cone. Mike rejoins them and takes his. He has chosen chocolate as usual. “‘I’d rather fight, than switch.’”
Her father has rum ’n’ raisin. Does something happen to your tastebuds when you grow up so that you like horrible flavours? Or is it particular to parents who grew up during the Depression, when an apple was a treat?
“Want a taste, sweetie?”
“Thanks, Dad.”
She always takes a lick of his ice cream and says, “That’s really good.” Bugs Bunny would say, You lie like a rug, doc, but in a way it isn’t a lie because it really is good to get ice cream with your dad. And when each of you takes a taste of the other’s, it’s great. So Madeleine is not really lying. Nyah, tell me anuddah one, doc.
Maman never wants a cone of her own. She will share Dad’s and take bites of Mike’s and Madeleine’s. That’s another thing that happens when you grow up; at least, it happens to a great number of mothers: they no longer choose to have an ice cream cone of their own.
Back in the car, Madeleine considers offering a lick to Bugs Bunny but doesn’t wish to tempt her brother’s scorn. Bugs is not a doll. He is . . . Bugs. He has seen better days, the tip of his orange carrot is worn white, but his big wise-guy eyes are still bright blue and his long ears still hold whatever position you bend them into. At the moment, his ears are twisted together like a braid down his back. Bavarian Bugs.
Her father starts the engine and tilts his cone toward her mother, who bites it, careful of her lipstick. He backs the station wagon toward the highway and makes a face when he sees that his rearview mirror is out of whack. He gives Maman a look and she makes a kiss with her red lips. He grins and shakes his head. Madeleine looks away, hoping they won’t get mushy.
She contemplates her ice cream cone. Neapolitan. Where to begin? She thinks of it as “cosmopolitan”–the word her father uses to describe their family. The best of all worlds.
* * * * *
Outside the car windows the corn catches the sun, leafy stalks gleam in three greens. Arching oaks and elms line the curving highway, the land rolls and burgeons in a way that makes you believe that, yes, the earth is a woman, and her favourite food is corn. Tall and flexed and straining, emerald citizens. Fronds spiralling, cupping upward, swaddling the tender ears, the gift-wrapped bounty. Th...
From AudioFile
Madeleine McCarthy is 8 years old when her family moves to a quiet air force base in Ontario in the early '60s. Madeleine's personal life of new school friends, Brownies, unusual neighbors, and a sexually abusive teacher is set amidst the political environment of the Cold War, the Cuban missile crisis, and the space race. Ann-Marie MacDonald reads her own work, successfully evoking the wonder and imagination of a child. Her calm, dulcet tones deepen the tragedy of a local murder and corresponding miscarriage of justice. The truth is devastating. MacDonald's male British accents are slightly wobbly, but Madeleine's mother, Mimi, has a pitch-perfect French-Canadian accent. A.B. © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine
--This text refers to the
Audio Cassette
edition.
