Forests of the Heart - Charles de Lint

I didn't plan on reading this for Carl's Once Upon a Time challenge. After seeing Kailana and Carl write about their shared read of Spirits in the Wires last week, I wanted to read it, but don't own it and it wasn't in Chapters when I looked. I had Muse and Reverie put aside for this challenge, but it's a collection of short stories, and I wanted a novel to sink my teeth into and be absorbed by.  So, I looked for something by him on my shelf, and thought, ok, I'll try Forests of the Heart.  I'm not sure why I was resisting it, I think it was because it opens in the desert, which is not the place I associate with Charles' writing.  This time, it was magic.  I really enjoyed the Spanish and Mexican flavours of Bettina  San Miguel and her family, and especially the myths that are touched on in this book.  Mostly, the stories of being a curandera, a  healer, and shapeshifting.  Los cadejos were my favourite, the dancing half goat, half dog in rainbow colours that are the oldest dogs in Bettina's culture, laughing dogs that have such joy - clown spirit dogs, almost.  They were delightful and funny. 
                                             
Forests of the Heart does take place in Newford, the city de Lint invented where his fantasy for the most part takes place.  Newford is a bustling city with room for ghosts, spirits, myths, and legends to go walking in the shadowy places of the city, as well as in the parks, and in this book, in the bars and in an artist's retreat called Kellygnow.  Forests of the Heart is a blend of three different cultures - difficult to to do two, almost impossible to do three, though it works well in Forests of the Heart.  It works because de Lint writes about mystery and spirit as if at the same level, it moves in the same way - that a healer is the same no matter what culture one comes from, that spirits come to us in the same way no matter where we come from, and the way that spirits talk to us and that we have to be careful what we say to them, is the same.  Even some of the way the myths work - the basic seed - is the same, as in only some people can see into the spirit world, only some people are artists, though as one character says, everyone carries a bit of mystery in them.  This is how the aboriginal elders, the Creek sisters, are able to recognize the latent power in Ellie, a sculptor, who is not interested in anything but art, and in Bettina, whom they meet for the first time in the spirit world.  Bettina is not able to see it in others yet, though it comes to her as she gets more comfortable with her power.  This bridging of cultures through seeing the links in myth and magic, through the basic way that people approach spiritual power and medicine, is wise and profound in de Lint's  writing as a whole, as well as Forests in the Heart in particular.  Mexican, Aboriginal, Irish/Gaelic - the book blends the three cultures, and it works.  If you want a glimpse of what it is like to walk between the worlds in the timeless place where the world began, then de Lint's books - and Forests of the Heart - are a wonderful place to visit.

On to the book itself:  Bettina finds herself in Kellygnow, unsure of what she is doing so far north from her desert, except that she was called there after she could not get over the disappearance of her grandmother.  Her grandmother, her abuela, teaches her everything Bettina knows about being a curandera which has as its source a spiritual power and gift that runs in their family.  There is also another gift, that Bettina discovers in the book, a shapeshifting skill that I wish we could have gotten to learn  a little more about.
   
Bettina is one central character - much of the book is from her point of view, a grounded healing point of view that centers the book in plain speaking from the heart.  This kind of wisdom lets the fantastical  story unfold as completely believable - that there is a mask, that other characters want Ellie, with her gift of sculpting, to make, to bring back a myth to life.  They think they can control the myth.   At the same time, we have Ellie herself, who is  a white girl who had a normal upbringing, who wants to help others when she is not sculpting, and rides around in a van helping the homeless at night.  She works with Tommy Raven, a recovering alcoholic aboriginal man who is nephew to the Creek sisters on the Kickaha reserve just outside Newford. Like all skilled storytellers, everything is connected, in Forests of the Heart. 

Donal and Miki are the two siblings at the center of the book for the Newford side, along with Hunter, the owner of a record store in Newford.  You knew there would be music in this book, right?  There always is.  I've always wished I could play an instrument the way de Lint's characters do.  They have such a fabulous time making their music, playing, dancing and singing to folk and celtic music, and musical names are dropped all the way through this book. I always come away with thinking I have to know a lot more about fiddling and celtic music before I dare to write a celtic fantasy!  and that there is whole lot of music out there, music and groups, that I have never heard of.

Forests of the Heart is also about using your creative gifts properly.  Miki is afraid to reach out for her touring life she wants to do, to bring her music to a wider audience.  Bettina discovers that she needs to heal herself before she can claim her real power, and fill the empty space inside her.  It's what happens to Donal that makes the darkness in this book:  Donal never is able to let go of his melancholy even as an artist, and this gloom hides a darkness in his spirit that eventually eats away at him until almost nothing good is left.  No one understands what is happening,not until it is too late. It is he who works with the Gentry, and starts the mischief that quickly turns dark and nasty.  The Gentry are the homeless spirits who cause much of the problems in this book. This is a dark fantasy, and there is some violence and death.  The Green Man, when he is finally brought to life, is nothing like what any of us would imagine, tainted because Donal's reasons for summoning him are for the wrong reasons - for hatred, revenge, power.  The way that the Green Man is finally defeated is using a combination of all the energies and power of all the three cultures combined, through Aunt Nancy, Bettina and Ellie. 

And may I just say here, that speaking as someone who's family is not from here, but from away, that it is really good to read a story that deals with what happens when myths and spirits from other lands meet up with the native spirits here.  The Gentry can't settle because the manitou, the original aboriginal spirits who guard the land here, are already here and won't let them in.  The manitou are facing their own problems, with the growing city of Newford cutting into the virgin land of the forests. 

Everyone is lost, in Forests of the Heart. It's a book about finding your home.    Both Aunt Nancy of the Creek girls, and Bettina of the Mexican people, discover that they share a common way of saying, the secret place in your heart that you go to, that is your home.  It's a lovely way of saying it,' in the heart of my home.' Because they are connected to power and spirit and are powerful medicine women, they find their  home of their heart in that spirit world they cross over into.  And each is different unto the person, which also shapes the cross-over place.  (We return to this world in The Onion Girl and Widdershins, later books.) Donal and Miki are lost, orphans except for each other.  Bettina is far from everyone she loves, Hunter has just broken up with someone, and long ago, Donal and Ellie dated.  Everything connects.....

I really enjoyed Forests of the Heart.  When Bettina says to the corderjos near the end, that she is welcoming them into the forest of her heart, I cried.  She had struggled so hard to heal herself.  that was a beautiful moment in the book. I cried because I've been trying to answer what is my home, where is it, and who do I let into it?  so the themes of this fantasy really struck a chord in me.

I highly recommend this fantasy.  I read it for the myth section of Carl's Challenge.  It is deep and funny and bittersweet and true, and there is room for love and magic, too. Plus an ice storm, and an artist's colony that I'd love to go to!  I've always wanted to visit Newford, I love how de Lint is blending fantasy and myth and magic with city living.  5/5

Canada 3 Challenge - first book done!!

I am a

I took the 43 Things Personality Quiz and found out I'm a

Spiritual Romantic Tree Hugger

Fun! Not many people are like me, only .14%! Well, of those who took this quiz, anyway. I also made my list up, 43 Things To Do in My Life, it's on my sidebar now. Rhinoa at Rhinoa's Ramblings has had something similar up on her blog for quite some time now, and I'm in awe of everything she has accomplished, as well as what is on her list. As I do things,I will cross them off, though some are ongoing, for every year. Like read 100 books a year!

As to that, well, I've made it to 50! Hurray! I'm still behind, but after reading 12 books in July - this is an all-time high for me, I think! - it's not looking quite so bad now.

Canada 3 Challenge



It's about time I posted about the Canada 3 Challenge! Hosted by John at The Book Mine blog, this is the third year of this challenge which celebrates everything good about Canadian writing. This year I am taking a different attempt to get to 13 books - 13 because we have 13 provinces and territories that make up Canada - I am reading a wide variety of authors and kinds of writing that interest me. Thus, I already have poetry - Slip/Strike, by Don McKay, from Newfoundland; a play - The Rez Sisters, by Thomson Highway, and for the first time Aboriginal writers are represented - not because I haven't read any, but because I had wrote much of what had been in print already, and now there's new books come to my attention: Monkey Beach, by Eden Robinson, Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden, and the aforesaid The Rez Sisters. The Rez Sisters is a reread for me, and I found it both hilarious and tragic the first time I read it, long ago in univerity. I have listed the books on my sidebar, and have left blank spaces for books to come to my attention this year. I might read some Lucy Maud Montgomery, or some Robert Munch with my kids, and catch up on Tanya Huff's fantasy series, as well as some books by Charles de Lint that I didn't get to last year.

Despite the fact I have not succeeded yet at this challenge, every year I am determined to, and this year is no different!

And to that end, I am very proud to say, I have already read one book!!! I am so delighted.

Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada, by Anna Brownell Jameson



This is not my cover, as I found a used edition that is out of print now. It is the journal of a woman who came to Canada in Dec 1836 to Sept 1837, to join her husband the Attorney General of Upper Canada. Their marriage was not a happy one, and this was one of her attempts to make the marriage look good. When she went back to England, it was with a settlement from him; they never divorced, but their marriage was over. While she rarely refers to him - at least in this abridged version - there is an air of painful loneliness relieved by the friendly people she met on her travels. The journal wasn't written to him, and it is full of matter-of-fact observations of everything she saw around her. It is now an invaluable record of early pioneer life in Ontario, and a glimpse of what the largest cities first looked like.

For those of us in Canada, there are those who are from Toronto, and those who are not. I'm one who is not, and I really loathe it. I've been several times, and it's one of the most unremarkable cities in the world. I was so happy when I read the very first paragraph of Winter Studies:

"Toronto - such is now the sonorous name of this our sublime capital - was, thirty years ago, a wilderness, the haunt of the bear and deer, with a little ugly, inefficient fort, which, however, could not be more ugly or inefficient than the present one. Ten years ago Toronto was a village, with one brick house and four or five hundred inhabitants; five years ago it became a city, containing about five thousand inhabitants, and then bore the name of Little York; now it is Toronto, with an increasing trade, and a population of ten thousand people.
What Toronto may be in summer, I cannot tell; they say it is a pretty place. At present its appearance to me, a stranger, is most strangely mean and melancholy. A little ill-built town on low land, at the bottom of a frozen bay, with one very ugly church, without tower or steeple; some government offices, built of staring red brick, in the most tasteless, vulgar style imaginable; three feet of snow all around, and the gray, sullen, wintry lake, and the dark gloom of the pine forest bounding the prospect; such seems Toronto to me now. I did not expect much; but for this I was not prepared."

Two months later she writes:
"There is no society in Toronto", is what I hear repeated all around me - even by those who compose the only society we have. "But," you will say, "What could be expected in a remote town, which forty years ago was an uninhabited swamp, and twenty years ago only began to exist?" I really did not know what I expected, but I will tell you what i did not expect. i did not expect to find here in this new capital of a new country, with the boundless forest within half a mile of us on almost every side - concentrated as it were the worst evils of oour old and most artificial social system, with none of its agrements, and none of its advantages. Toronto is like a fourth- or fifth-rate provincial town with the pretentions of a capital city."

The bold last sentence is mine. Because, that pretty well describes Toronto ever since. Even after the capital of Canada was moved later to Ottawa - chosen by Queen Victoria when she was blindfolded and picked out the capital with a pin, or so one legend goes - the more real version is that Kingston was too close to the US, and so was Montreal, both of whom were more logical choices due to their water proximity, but we had just fought two separate battles with the US, (1812, and the Rebellion of 1837) so Ottawa, which was far enough away that it couldn't be attacked within a day's march or so after landing on Canadian soil - was picked. I do wonder what she would have made of Ottawa, but she never came back to Canada. And despite becoming the provincial capital of Ontario, Toronto still acts like it is the central body of Canada, the most important city, through which all news and views of Canada should come. There is Toronto, and then there is the rest of Canada. Of course, in every province, there is that feeling! But Toronto is proud of the TV and movie industry centrally located there, the stock market located there, the big Bay Street Firms, and still imagines itself the center of Canada. So the rest of Canada hates it.

There, a quick lesson in Canada! Back to the book:

Anna spends a long cold winter in Toronto. The first part of the book is entitled Winter Studies because from Dec to April it is, of course, winter in Canada, and she could not really travel far. She takes one trip to Niagara Falls, but other than that she is house- and city-bound until spring finally, at last, arrives. As soon as the first steam-boat arrives from St Catharines and the south side of Lake Ontario, she is off exploring more of Upper Canada, and this is where the books becomes an absolute wonder and joy to read. From darkest coldest depths of winter, Canada changes to hot, humid summer days with frequent storms. Anna is tormented by mosquitoes and black flies as she journeys down to London, to Windsor, Detroit, and then up to Fort Michillimack, Sault Ste Marie, Manitoulin Island, and back down again to Toronto. She did this in four amazing months of traveling, mostly by canoe. This was an extraordinary voyage. She is witness to meetings between Indian agents and different Aboriginal tribes, and records the speeches, what the different kinds of people wore - she noted that Cree were different from the Huron, and from the Chippewa. She made friends easily wherever she went, and she is interested in everything she saw, and tried to record it as accurately as she could.

This is an interesting record of Upper Canada in 1837, as it was still being settled. I highly recommend it for anyone who enjoys history, who is curious about the early days of Canada, who likes reading journals, or enjoys travel books. It is filled with Canadian beauty - our forests, our rivers and lakes, our lovely islands in the Great Lakes that are synonymous with images of Canada, especially as painted by The Group of Seven, the most famous artists to come out of Canada.

And for those of us who love books, I was heartened to read that in the depths of her only winter in Canada, Anna Brownell Jameson turned to books to get her through the darkest and coldest days.

It's a holiday Monday here in Ottawa, and it is rarely, a sunny day! So I'm off to my garden before I do some more reading: Book #52: In the Woods, by Tana French. Over half-way to 100 books now!!

I leave you with one of my favourite passages from Winter Studies and Summer Ramblings:

"We breakfasted this morning on a little island of exceeding beauty, rising precipitately from the water. On front we had the open lake, lying blue, and bright, and serene, under the morning sky, and the eastern extremity of Manitoolin Island; and the islands all around as far as we could see. The feeling of remoteness, of the profound solitude, added to the sentiment of beauty......Our island abounded with beautiful shrubs, flowers, green mosses, and scarlet lichen.....
This day we had a most delightful run among hundreds of islands; sometimes darting through narrow rocky channels, so narrow that I could not see the water on either side of the canoe; and then emerging, we glided through vast fields of white water-lilies; it was perpetual variety, perpetual beauty, perpetual delight and enchantment, from hour to hour."