Shadow
of Ashland
by Terence M. Green
A Forge Book, Paperback Edition, 2000
Reviewed by
Michael Bryson
Originally
published in 1996, Terrence M. Green's Shadow of Ashland
was republished this year in paperback. And it's a good thing,
too, since this slim novel is as timeless as any fiction can be.
It's the kind of book so timeless it presents the reviewer with
a problem - how to summarize the plot without giving away its
most delightful details.
Let me just
say this: there is time travel involved. If that's indeed what
it is, for it may not be. It may be something else. The reader
will have to decide.
The story
begins in Toronto circa 1984, where the narrator, Leo, is waiting
for his elderly mother to die. Before she passes away, however,
she tells him (in what he imagines to be her delirium) that her
brother and father had come to visit her in the hospital. After
she passes away, letters from Leo's uncle, Jack, start arriving
at his parents house. They are dated from the 1930s and posted
from the mid-west USA.
Spurned into
action by his mother's deathbed comment and the flow of 50-year-old
letters from his supposedly dead uncle, Leo begins to investigate.
Ultimately, he takes a vacation from his job at the Toronto
Star and travels south to see what he can find out about his
uncle's past and/or present.
Questions
about the nature of time are prevalent, though Green does not
revert to paraphrasing quantum physicists the way Margaret Atwood
did in Cat's Eye. Instead, Green's tone and phrasing have
more in common with W.P. Kinsella, particularly the short story
"Shoeless Joe Jackson"; later a novel; and later the
movie "Field of Dreams."
Like Kinsella,
Green might be accused of leaning a little towards the sentimental
side of life. There is a small town hominess to the characters,
and Leo, the narrator, is at times almost incredulously naive.
At times he is confronted with awesome feats of unreality, and
he remains unastonished. This may, however, be part of the gift
of the book. Green takes his readers to kingdoms full of magic,
kingdoms which look - and feel - remarkably familiar.
Northrop Frye
reminded us to think of all literature as existing in the same
moment. Literature itself reminds us that the mysteries of life
remain constant from age to age.
An TDR interview
with Terence M. Green is
included in the features section.
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