Krishna
We reviewed her other books earlier here – The Blind Assassin and The Robber Bride for instance. Her style, so impressive in those two, has not lost its charm even a bit in this book, which is again an excellent read. The story is based on a real life story in Toronto that happened a long time ago.
Thomas Kinnear and his housekeeper Nancy Montgomery were murdered. James McDormatt, the stable hand and Grace Marks, the serving maid were accused. Grace was only 16. Grace loved Thomas (as a master) and James loved Grace.
In the penitentiary, Grace behaves well, and serves as a maid to the jailer, hoping for early release due to good behaviour. But when she sees a doctor who came to measure her skull circumference for physiognomic studies, she loses it.
Tracks back to the past where the doctor abuses her in the guise of ‘checking her’ just because she is in an asylum and declared insane. Finally a psychologist meets her and gets her to tell her story.
That was Simon, who is trying to establish himself as a psychologist and has come to Kingston, Ontario from the US. He lives in a rented apartment whose landlady seems to have been well off earlier and fallen on bad times.
Simon goes to see Reverend Verringer. He is convinced Grace is innocent just as the earlier doctor who was looking after Grace was convinced that those who are ‘foaming at the mouth should be confined and disciplined. They can never be cured’.
He talks to Grace about dreams and about vegetables, bringing one each day. Finally he gains her trust and her story.
She is one of the nine children (living with three more dead and one stillborn) of the daughter of a preacher and a drunk husband who was an Englishman and who seduced her and made her pregnant at 15 and married her. Her mother’s sister Aunt Pauline married an ugly man and was ugly too. Grace’s mother was beautiful and Grace inherited that beauty but they were always dirt poor.
When the father’s dependency (and nine mouths to feed apart from the couple) became too much, Aunt Pauline sends them to Canada and on the way the mother dies. The father takes to drink again while Grace manages the household and he forces her to work for a family (she was fifteen) and her nine year old sister to manage the household. Luckily, Grace is asked to move out since she has to live with the house members she has to serve.
In the meanwhile, Simon, the doctor discovers that his landlady is destitute and sets out to help the attractive middle aged lady who has come down quite a lot in this world (and hence forced to rent out her house to make ends meet).
Mary Whitney becomes a friend of Grace and takes her under her wing to teach her the ways of the world. They have a lot of fun as maids in the house and Mary Whitney surprises Grace by presenting her with a hand knit box and in turn cherishes Grace’s hand made gift as well.
Two sons of the owner come in and one of them falls ill and misses a term in the college and has to stay back. Meanwhile Grace discovers that Mary is pregnant; while Mary refuses to disclose who it is, she reveals that she got a gold ring and a promise of marriage, which now he is flouting. She is quite desperate about her future as Mr xxx the mistress of the house is strict and will turn her out – to low level prostitution as no one now will marry Mary – if she found out that Mary is pregnant.
She goes to a quack doctor and comes back very weak. She dies and the things are hushed up since Grace suggests that the son may be to blame. After Mary’s death she could not stay there but she gets persuaded by a visitor called Nancy to work in Mr Kinnear’s Toronto farm which turns out to be a mistake.
If you live in Toronto, the descriptions (accurate for the time period) of travelling through a forest on Yonge Street into Richmond Hill may amuse you. Today all of it is part of the sprawling metropolis. The unpaved rickety roads and the house on the outskirts of the Richmond Hill “village” all makes you smile. It is always fun for a Torontonian to read Attwood with its descriptions of the familiar in the book. I guess Maine residents feel the same about Stephen King’s books.
Nancy Montgomery and Kinnear, the landlord are living “in sin” and McDermott is given notice that he is no longer wanted. Meanwhile Grace is attracting the attention of Kinnear. When Jeremy the peddler tries to lure her away McDermott comes in angry. Jeremy warns that she is surrounded by danger here. Grace sees that Nancy is pregnant and is ruined as Kinnear does not care for her at all except for sex.
Then the story moves forward quickly with the murders and you don’t realize it is Grace’s own version until she is hypnotized, which is an amazing scene with touches of what looks like supernatural and contradicting versions of the story, and then this story becomes rich with details and allusions that Margaret is famous for in all her books.
Then the story takes a sudden turn again, where Simon is manipulated by his housekeeper cum mistress who tries to persuade him to kill her returning husband and live with him forever in America. He runs away and goes to Europe. Grace is devastated.
The story moves forward through letters and is vintage Margaret, gripping, intelligent and full of turns. We learn that Simon goes first to Europe but enlists in the War out of a sense of duty, returning to US to serve as a military surgeon. He loses his memory in an attack, as told by his mother to a persistently nagging housekeeper who is now a widow having found her husband, who let alone return, had died of excessive drinking many years ago. We learn Jeremiah the peddler has not taken on another face as a carnival owner, and has assisted Grace in that bizarre neuro hypnosis. Dr Samuelson is as opposed to releasing the cunning devil Grace through a pardon and equates doing so with the other drivel like Universal Suffrage. We also learn that Grace has been finally pardoned by Sir John A MacDonald, the first Prime Minister of the newly self-ruling Canada.
The ending is not entirely satisfactory and there are some things that were just hinted at, and in fact, worse, left to the reader’s imagination. This is unlike Margaret, who ties in all the loose ends meticulously
But excellent storytelling, great descriptions, the story stays with you for quite a while – all hallmarks of an excellent author and is also present in her earlier books we have reviewed earlier.
8/10
– – Krishna (Feb 2019)