The Perpetual Ending [Hardcover]

An odd mix of slightly gritty realism and dream-like fairy tale characterizes this second work from Kristen den Hartog. Jane, the 10-year-old narrator, addresses the story to her sister, Eugenie, her twin but also her "exact opposite." Jane is also seen in later years leaving her boyfriend, Simon, in Vancouver to travel back to the Ontario town of Deep River where her mother, Lucy, is dying. Much of the story details the earlier years when Lucy and the girls' father, nameless until the last few pages, embark on an angry, unwanted (on his part) separation. Lucy takes the girls to Toronto where they live in poverty in a basement apartment, using furniture they find discarded on the street.

The adult Jane is a writer of fairy tales, several of which appear in the novel. Like all good fairy tales, these have a timeless quality and often echo, in a troubling, dreamy way, the difficult realities Jane faces. She's somewhat obsessed with the persistent duality conjured by her twin's absence: "I think of the ghost and our missing father, and wonder what is a ghost if not the absence of someone?" There's a commendable consistency to the story and the resonating twin theme, although several of the key characters (Uncle William, for example) never come alive. Others, especially the father, are extremely well-realized, however, and the novel has a wonderfully touching ending. --Mark Frutkin

A troubled Canadian family is the focus of this sensitive debut novel about an alcoholic man who wreaks havoc on the lives of his wife and twin daughters. Jane Ingram is the narrator who tells the story as a series of flashbacks, alternating accounts of her childhood experiences with a subplot in which she tries to cope with her traumatic upbringing through a series of children's stories she develops with her lover, Simon, an illustrator. Jane; her twin sister, Eugenie; and their imaginative and somewhat fey mother, Lucy, teeter on the edge of chaos precipitated by the violent outbursts and emotional cruelty of their father, and husband, David. The children are more or less left to themselves as their parents rage against one another. Lucy tries to explain away David's disturbed state of mind as simply a clash of personalities ("what you adore about someone will one day be the thing you try to change"). The couple splits, and their custody battles precipitate a fatal accident which lies at the heart of Jane's present-day disturbance. Interspersed through the novel are the children's stories that Jane concocts to explain her past to Simon (however obliquely); gradually, the tales build a picture of an emotionally fractured personality. Though the subject matter has been addressed many times over, Hartog handles it skillfully. Jane's memories accurately reflect the thoughts and fears of a confused and frightened child, and the plangent tone of sadness is sustained with grace.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Jane Ingrams is living a tranquil life as a writer in Vancouver. Sharing her life is Simon, a kind and supportive lover who enjoys Jane's work and, through his gift of illustration, brings her fanciful stories of tragic heroines to life. They've shared laughter and love, but there is a chapter in Jane's life she has concealed and glossed over because the secret is better kept tucked away in the past. In fact, Simon knows very little about her childhood, and he knows nothing about Eugenie, Jane's twin sister, who is a mirror image of Jane, but fearless and outspoken. When a call comes from Deep River, Jane's childhood home, she must revisit the events of the past in order to bring her relationship and the rest of her life full circle. A novel charged with the cylindrical effects of inconsolable grief and an incredible desire for closure to the tender wounds of childhood. Elsa Gaztambide
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

“Den Hartog reveals a massive imagination in [the] stories-within-stories. Reminiscent of Barbara Gowdy's We So Seldom Look on Love and Sheila Heti's The Middle Stories, the fables are both playful and horrifying, [their] characters strong and wonderful…. And den Hartog is brutally truthful with child Jane's voice…. There are some stunning turns of phrase in this novel…. The Perpetual Ending goes further emotionally than Water Wings, and…achieves a bittersweet finale that will bring many readers to tears…. Worth reading.” -- The Globe and Mail

"A poignant, dreamlike account…. A story of quiet beauty…. Den Hartog spins her tale with a deft hand." -- Kirkus Reviews

"While The Perpetual Ending is very much about loss, it is also a commentary on the resiliency of hope. It is, in the end, a pleasingly uplifting tale. God knows, we could use more of those." -- The Toronto Star

"Beautifully written, this lyrical novel tells the story of lives never fully realized. The narrative is interspersed with magical tales that teach the reader much about truth, family, and love. Recommended for all fiction collections." -- Library Journal

"This is a slow, quiet, thoughtful, sometimes somnolent novel. But one whose ending (yes, you could call it perpetual) somehow gives meaning to the rest, sending you paging back to the beginning of the book…. Kristen den Hartog [has] established herself as a powerful and distinctive Canadian literary voice." -- The Ottawa Citizen

"A troubled Canadian family is the focus of this sensitive debut novel…. [The narrator] Jane’s memories accurately reflect the thoughts and fears of a confused and frightened child, and the plangent tone of sadness is sustained with grace." -- Publisher's Weekly

"Den Hartog’s story is as elegantly simple as it is complex…. An oddly forthright and sharply moving drama of a character bringing her own chaos into order…. Den Hartog shows a serious gift for depicting, with authority, both joy and trauma, clarity and strangeness." -- Denver Post

"Den Hartog is poet-laureate of the dispossessed." -- National Post

Praise for Water Wings:
"Glorious.... A heartening study of people who play the hand life has dealt them with surprising good humour and not a little cunning.... A novel of considerable delicacy." -- National Post

"Exuberant.... A lively, funny read -- sometimes tender, sometimes mordant, often both.... Den Hartog is the mistress of the insightful non sequitur, and she writes about childhood trauma in the same surreal way it actually presents itself in life.... Her writing style is as intricate, as gorgeous -- and as reluctant to settle -- as the butterflies that are her central metaphor." -- Calgary Herald

"Magical.... Den Hartog knows well the insularity of a small town surrounded by the menacing beauty of the natural world." -- The Globe and Mail

"Kristen den Hartog's dark, tender first novel reveals her as a sort of literary younger sister to Alice Munro, plumbing the landscape of small-town southern Ontario to turn up stories of sexual discontent and childhood secrets...dropping shocks into a plot as casually as pebbles from a dock." -- Quill & Quire

From a writer acclaimed for her “probing, idiosyncratic intelligence and emotional generosity” (Calgary Herald), comes a deeply imagined novel that takes us into the lives of devoted twin sisters and their world of opposites, doppelgängers and ghosts.

Jane and Eugenie Ingrams are mirror-image twins, and thus exact opposites. Halves of a whole, they are inseparable, each understanding her world through the other. But when Lucy, their artistic mother, moves her daughters from Deep River to Toronto (leaving behind a bewildered husband), she finds she can’t entirely escape the remains of their troubled marriage.

Eugenie thrives in the jumble of urban life, but Jane is sickened by its underside: the mess of lost souls who live on the streets, the garbage, the noise and the violence. When their father eventually seeks them out, Jane is relieved for the chance to go back to Deep River. Eugenie agrees to return for the sake of her beloved sister -- a soon-to-be-tragic concession.

Years later, Jane is a writer in Vancouver, living with her lover, Simon, a gifted illustrator. Although troubled by her past, she finds solace (and commercial success) in the rich, fabulist tales she and Simon create -- which are expertly woven throughout the book -- tales of people born with extraordinary qualities: horns, the gift of prophesy, spiderweb hair or unquenchable thirst.

Wondrous, inventive and brimming with charm, The Perpetual Ending is an exploration of love and artistry that shows the world as a whole, in all its grotesqueness and beauty. And it uncovers the surprising ways we sometimes arrive at the heart of one story through the telling of others.

“Den Hartog reveals a massive imagination in [the] stories-within-stories. Reminiscent of Barbara Gowdy's We So Seldom Look on Love and Sheila Heti's The Middle Stories, the fables are both playful and horrifying, [their] characters strong and wonderful…. And den Hartog is brutally truthful with child Jane's voice…. There are some stunning turns of phrase in this novel…. The Perpetual Ending goes further emotionally than Water Wings, and…achieves a bittersweet finale that will bring many readers to tears…. Worth reading.” -- The Globe and Mail

"A poignant, dreamlike account…. A story of quiet beauty…. Den Hartog spins her tale with a deft hand." -- Kirkus Reviews

"While The Perpetual Ending is very much about loss, it is also a commentary on the resiliency of hope. It is, in the end, a pleasingly uplifting tale. God knows, we could use more of those." -- The Toronto Star

"Beautifully written, this lyrical novel tells the story of lives never fully realized. The narrative is interspersed with magical tales that teach the reader much about truth, family, and love. Recommended for all fiction collections." -- Library Journal

"This is a slow, quiet, thoughtful, sometimes somnolent novel. But one whose ending (yes, you could call it perpetual) somehow gives meaning to the rest, sending you paging back to the beginning of the book…. Kristen den Hartog [has] established herself as a powerful and distinctive Canadian literary voice." -- The Ottawa Citizen

"A troubled Canadian family is the focus of this sensitive debut novel…. [The narrator] Jane’s memories accurately reflect the thoughts and fears of a confused and frightened child, and the plangent tone of sadness is sustained with grace." -- Publisher's Weekly

"Den Hartog’s story is as elegantly simple as it is complex…. An oddly forthright and sharply moving drama of a character bringing her own chaos into order…. Den Hartog shows a serious gift for depicting, with authority, both joy and trauma, clarity and strangeness." -- Denver Post

"Den Hartog is poet-laureate of the dispossessed." -- National Post

Praise for Water Wings:
"Glorious.... A heartening study of people who play the hand life has dealt them with surprising good humour and not a little cunning.... A novel of considerable delicacy." -- National Post

"Exuberant.... A lively, funny read -- sometimes tender, sometimes mordant, often both.... Den Hartog is the mistress of the insightful non sequitur, and she writes about childhood trauma in the same surreal way it actually presents itself in life.... Her writing style is as intricate, as gorgeous -- and as reluctant to settle -- as the butterflies that are her central metaphor." -- Calgary Herald

"Magical.... Den Hartog knows well the insularity of a small town surrounded by the menacing beauty of the natural world." -- The Globe and Mail

"Kristen den Hartog's dark, tender first novel reveals her as a sort of literary younger sister to Alice Munro, plumbing the landscape of small-town southern Ontario to turn up stories of sexual discontent and childhood secrets...dropping shocks into a plot as casually as pebbles from a dock." -- Quill & Quire

Kristen den Hartog is the author of the acclaimed novel Water Wings. Her writing has also appeared in numerous magazines, journals and anthologies. She is currently working on her third novel, and divides her time between Toronto and the Ottawa Valley.

One and Tother

They were twins born seamless, joined up the sides of their bodies. And yet they were very distinctly two. Four arms and four legs, two heads of yellow hair. One loved the water and Tother did not, and that caused the skin between them to stretch and stretch. One always pulling, longing to swim. But Tother was afraid of water. Both its choppy waves and its calmness. Not knowing what lurked beneath.

"Come on!" One whined, because the sun was high and the air was thick with its heat.

But Tother shook her head. She dug her feet into the sand, searching for coolness there. And One kept pulling, walking away. The skin stretched and stretched, strangely painless. Tother put her hand on that bond of flesh. She felt it grow thin, the skin of an onion.

One was at the water now, a toe dipping in. She was looking back and laughing.

"Come on!" she cried again. "It’s warm! There are little minnows swimming!"

Tother stepped forward and back, wishing to want but not wanting.

"No," she said. "Come back."

The skin between them turned fine as a web. One had never before stretched so far from Tother. Tother dug her toes more firmly into the sand.

"Come back," she said again.

One, defiant, ran splashing through the water. It stole her legs, her hips, her torso, which once had grown from Tother. She dove and reappeared, laughing still. Wet were her clothes and hair.

"Watch!" yelled One. "Watch how long I can hold my breath!"

And she disappeared into the blue, which was not the see-through blue of sky but the dark and muddy blue of all things lost and searched for.

Tother waited. She watched the vast surface of the water, but One did not appear. Beads of water sparkled on the thinning web just above the place where it disappeared into the river. The bloated sun began its long slow slide. It sat blazing calmly on the water, and then was gone.

Still Tother waited. It might be that One could hold her breath a long, long time. Or that One could breathe in water, like a fish or a mythical mermaid. Tother didn’t know. Tother had never been in the water.

She looked and looked for the moon, for the many stars and that brighter one you could wish on. All that came was a dome of black, which meant rain, so she crept beneath the shelter of a tree and listened. Soon the sky was crying on the leaves above her, on the sand, on the water. Adding water to the water One swam in. Tother wrapped the web around her finger, a string to always remind her. She let the blacker dome of sleep engulf her, and though she had never in all of her years slept alone, she slept more deeply than she ever had before.

When she woke it was clear blue morning and the web had become a rainbow that grew from her side in bands of every colour. The bands wrapped around her finger, then reached high into the sky, arching over the water and down again. Tother stood and began to walk in the wet sand that edged the water, winding and winding the rainbow that would lead her to One, though she knew not where.