All That Matters

By Wayson Choy, 2004 

Set very specifically in Vancouver’s Chinatown in the interwar period, All That Matters is a fascinating and complex book about family, friendship and community in an immigrant community. It’s specific but the themes are universal.

The descriptive detail that Wayson Choy brings into his story make it easy to visualize the reality of the characters’ lives – especially for a Vancouver resident who can place each incident in a well-known setting.  When Choy says that someone could hear the roaring trains passing through the neighbourhood, or could sit on their back porch and watch the sun shining on the mountains, I know exactly what he means. But even for a non-resident, I think the settings would be concrete and real.

Since the story deals with specific historical events and locations, this concreteness helps set the story as the lived experience of people in a real place and time, in spite of a mystical layer that Choy also weaves in. He places things so specifically that I kept thinking the story was autobiographical, although it is not.

Choy offers an insight into an immigrant experience that helps to understand the complexity of the city’s past. Although the Chinese and Irish kids are neighbours and play together, they rarely enter each other’s houses, and their parents barely acknowledge each other over the back fences. And the Chinese immigrants want Canada to enter the war against the Japanese because they know the brutality their families face in China, and hope to take over confiscated Japanese Canadian property. Even within the Chinese community, political and social factions compete, and often resent the benefits that luckier ones have won – such as the children that the single men are unable to father because they cannot bring a wife from China.

Choy also shows the complex relationships within the family. Third Uncle, who is a clan member but not a blood relative, sponsors Father, Grandmother and Kiam-Kim (the narrator as a child) after the death of his own wife. This creates feelings of gratitude, but also obligation, When Second Wife arrives to replace Father’s dead first wife and bring up the family, resentments also grow, although over time that develops into deeper, positive emotions. Kiam-Kim’s own relationships as Eldest Son make him responsible for the adopted Second Son, although he also resents him. When Father and Second Wife have their own children, the family seems to grow together more naturally into a loving unit. Later in the story, secret relationships are revealed that explain some of the underlying family tensions.

I’m not sure what to think of the mystical elements that Choy introduces to these very concrete scenes. Kiam-Kim’s dead mother seems to hover over his life and he sometimes feels her as a real presence. His grandmother communicates with her past lover, and makes artworks that seem to be inspired by unseen forces. These elements seem to be more than the traditional spiritual practices of the community, but represent a powerful force in the lives of the characters – perhaps the weight of their past and their community’s history.

By the end of the story, Choy seems to be saying that what matters is not nationality or community or even family, but supporting the people who are important to you. This will include family, but also others who are part of your life. This perspective is unexpected in a culture where family is central, but as a gay writer, Choy knows that “chosen family” is as important as legal family, even when traditional family ties are complex and deeply part of a character’s psyche.

Moriarty

By Anthony Horowitz, 2015

This is a pastiche on 19^th-century detective novel writing with post-modern embellishments. It didn’t work for me, but I can see how it would be popular with other readers. The author Anthony Horowitz is well known as a television writer, and this book is written with scenes that would translate well to TV.

This is a plot-driven story with lots of dramatic events. Although it’s written in a pseudo-19^th-century style, the plotting is more brisk and the events more grim than a 19^th-century writer would use. We have mysterious and bloody deaths, extraordinary escapes from peril, cryptic characters and a rather thick narrator. Being a Holmesian story, there is astounding and improbable deductive reasoning drawn from minute, often ambiguous, clues.

Investigating the apparent death of Sherlock Holmes in Switzerland, Inspector Athelney Jones of Scotland Yard encounters the story’s narrator, Frederick Chase, who tells Jones that he is a Pinkerton detective pursuing a criminal mastermind from America. Naturally, they join forces to pursue various clues related to Holmes’ death and to a crime wave taking place in London.

I had hoped that the combination of American knowledge and technique with Holmesian observation and reasoning would take the story beyond the cozy English style. However, aside from introducing some new characters and a ruthlessness that the Londoners find ungenteel, Horowitz makes little of the American connection. He does introduce an interesting historical American character and set some scenes in the American consulate, which adds a jurisdictional complication for the Scotland Yard detective. I suspect that the fact that the narrator is American is intended to ensure that American book-buyers (and television producers) will be interested in an English crime mystery. (Of course, many Americans love British settings and characters, but it seems that a large portion of the American market prefers to see themselves reflected in their entertainment.)

There’s little interest in any of the characters themselves, though. By the end, the narrator explains that his role is more complex than at first presented, but he doesn’t change at all. Nor do the other characters, although we do find out how Inspector Athelney Jones was inspired by an encounter with Sherlock Holmes. The only female character of note is Jones’ wife, a smart woman who expresses her deep concern for Jones’ obsession with Holmes. Essentially all the characters are white men. Possibly this is realistic given the Victorian setting, but will a contemporary TV producer allow it to go into production without more female characters or characters of colour?

I have enjoyed reading Sherlock Holmes stories, and last year enjoyed a collection of Arsene Lupin stories that spoof Holmes while using similar 19^th-century conventions. The Moriarty novel updates the style with brisker pacing, new characters and more extreme scenes. Coming from an experienced writer, I felt that this would be an effective new approach. But too much of it felt contrived and over-done. It wasn’t truly 19^th century, and as a result I never bought into the characters or the situation. I think that if I want to read 19^th-century detective novels, I’ll stick to the originals.

Silas Marner

by George Eliot, 1861

While this story has some of the wit and satire that I enjoy in George Eliot, it’s mostly so moralistic and sentimental that I found it tiresome to read.

Eliot’s description of village life initially sets things on a promising track. She sees it as devoid of any knowledge beyond the village or any imagination to think further. And her later description of life among the gentry, especially at the squire’s ball, show the limits of their self-satisfaction and pettiness. Eliot lampoons them with her descriptions of their lives and her comments on them.

However, her descriptions of characters of a lower social status show them as stereotypes of good honest folk with humorous foibles. They may tell endless pointless stories in the pub in their funny dialect, but they support each other and save each other from harm. And when the young ones who are clearly destined for each other declare their love, everyone celebrates.

Only Silas is drawn with any depth. His mates in the city robbed him and stole his girlfriend, so he retreats to the village where he builds a small fortune in gold to replace the love that is missing in his life. When he loses the gold and finds an orphan child to care for, his feeling is restored and he re-enters the world of warm human relations. While his lost gold was a secret and solitary pleasure, raising orphan Eppie brings him into the community and restores his peace of mind. This is schematic and superficial, but has at least a little psychology behind it.

The other character who has a surprising development is Nancy, a daughter of the gentry who marries the decent young landowner, Godfrey. While their intended marriage was threatened by a secret complication in Godfrey’s life, they eventually overcome the obstacle, although they have no children of their own. Nancy is portrayed as a superficial, if good-hearted, young woman with conventional views, but when they talk about adopting the orphan Eppie, she shows a surprisingly thoughtful and open response. This seems to reflect Eliot’s own very unconventional life as a woman in nineteenth-century England.

It’s hard to believe that high schools used to assign this novel as classic English literature when surely any reader beyond the age of 12 would be able to say that they could find more depth of character on a television sitcom. After the pleasure of reading Middlemarch, with its wit, complex characters, social and political complication, Silas Marner is a disappointment.