Krishna
We have reviewed some of this author’s books earlier: See Alias Grace or The Robber Bride for examples.
The narrator Joan initially seems to be romantic. Arthur, her husband, is rather stiff. She is Joan Foster, in disguise in a small town, and she is a famous poetess in Toronto, from where she has run away to this small town.
She tries to disguise herself as a different person, and we learn that she is hiding from Arthur too. What is more, she has been leading a double life – she has been writing romantic pulp fiction behind her husband’s back. He never will approve of the trashy pursuit.
While young, she was plump, much to her mother’s chagrin, and stubbornly decided to be so in a defiance against her mother. She played Elvis records at just such a volume to tick of her mother but not excessively loud enough to warrant a scolding.
Her father counsels the suicide prone and saves them. He is an anaesthetist in a Toronto hospital. However, he has been in espionage in the war and does not want to talk about it.
Meanwhile, Joan has a friend in Aunt Lou – who has a great equation with Joan and who, she learns, was in PR in her younger days for a rather ‘degenerate business’. Joan goes and sees tearjerkers with lots of candy and popcorn, always accompanied by Lou. They develop a bond.
When Aunt Lou dies, she leaves some money to Joan with the condition that she should lose weight and reach a pre-specified weight before she can get it. Joan gets hit by an arrow in the Ex (one of those shows where you win money by hitting the balloons with an arrow) and gets severely ill due to poisoning caused by the arrow.
She then is determined to get thinner and her mom, instead of glad, gets frantic and even stabs her (lightly on the arm) with a knife. Joan leaves home that night, without informing anyone.
Now Joan runs away and makes her own life in London, England. She first lives with a Polish power and when it gets weird, meets David, an idealistic young man who fights against injustice in all its shades and has rejected his rich parents’ offer to fund his study in University of Toronto for a cheapish existence.
Joan falls in love but David does not seem to have any intention of moving their relationship forward. So she ‘maneuvers’ to be thrown out of the apartment and goes to David, who takes her into his house and then to his bed.
When Joan learns of her mother’s death, she returns to Toronto and when David follows, she is delighted to have his love for her confirmed. They marry.
She finally is being blackmailed by a man who has discovered all her secrets and in desperation she arranges her own death in Lake Ontario with Sam and Marlene and escapes to a village near Rome.
The housekeeper finds out that she had buried her clothes and also suspects that she is hiding and comes to demand money. When she tries to sneak out that night, she finds that her car tank is empty, as if someone had deliberately drained it.
The story moves on – the last few chapters get up to the level of the usual Margaret Attwood magic in terms of a story within a story and with various possibilities in the substory. Nice. But it spoils it all by its abrupt and unsatisfying ending.
This is definitely not up there in the list of Margaret Attwood books.
4/10
== Krishna