Sarah
Bastard's Notebook
by Marianne Engel
Insomniac Press, 2006
Reviewed by Anne Borden
Insomniac Press has re-released
Marianne Engel's first novel Sarah Bastard's Notebook, originally
published in 1968.
Best known for her groundbreaking 1976
novel Bear, Engel quickly established herself as a feminist
writer who crossed into the mainstream with a prolific body of novels
and children's books. Engel's writing developed profoundly in the eight years between
Notebook and Bear. The latter won the
Governor General's Award; the former received only mixed reviews.
Nonetheless, Sarah Bastard's Notebook is a fascinating read for
students of Engel's life and work. It is also a compelling character
study of a writer in 1960s Toronto, enchanted by Europe's literary
traditions and embroiled in the personal/political battles of the sexual
revolution.
Sarah Bastard's Notebook
was originally titled No Clouds of Glory, an apt description for
narrator Sarah Porlock's situation. Thirty years old and alcoholic,
Sarah was once a promising academic whose downward spiral is
precipitated by her father's death and five rounds of drinks with a Toronto
Star feature writer the next morning before class. Sarah's comments,
critical of the university, are published in the paper and she receives
a warning from her department chair. Her lawyer and good friend exhorts
her: "Sair, don’t drink in the morning!" But a few days
later, after another breakfast cocktail, Sarah resigns from her position
at a college in Toronto. Now what? To Europe! she cries. To
become a great writer. Farewell! But, she wonders, where are
the clouds of glory in her wake?
Much of the story revolves around the
few days before Sarah is set to head across the pond, as she meets to
say goodbye to her ex-lovers (emotionally distant male writers, all),
and her family and friends. Everyone, including her department chair,
tries to convince her to stay in Toronto. She contemplates her failed
past relationships, an abortion she now regrets and her relationship to
her mother ("Now that I am grown up, I weep to see her from the
outside, frail and opaque. You could light candles to her and make
incantations. Now we have all expiated her, like a sin."). Finally,
she takes a bleak, midnight walk through the streets of TO ("hoping
every passing car contains a friend"), which leads to a dramatic
turn in her fortunes.
Engel's daughter writes in the book's
afterword: "Sarah desires beauty, inspiration and love, but cannot
overcome her own insecurities," nor can she reconcile the gender
gap in Toronto's literary scene. As hard as she argues and as hard as
she drinks, Sarah's sexual/romantic relationships with male writers
never translate into that creative, professional simpatico she
yearns for. Sarah, according to Engel's daughter, was "a vehicle
for my mother's frustrations with Toronto." We catch a glimpse of
this in Engel's early journals as an emerging writer: "Men will
give me hell, [Master's Advisor Hugh MacLennon] said, because I have
talent. They will want mothering I can't give."
Sarah Porlock makes dramatically
different choices than her author, who married Canadian mystery writer
Howard Engel in 1962, had children shortly thereafter, and spent the
bulk of her career turning out successful novels in Canada. As Engel's
collected letters and half-century of journals illustrate, she was both
determined and effective in dealing with the literary establishment.* In
many ways, Engel – wife, mother, working writer – appears to have
avoided the self-destructive pitfalls of her generation, while fostering
the feminist values that informs her rich literary legacy.
*Christl Verduyn and Kathleen Garay,
eds. Marian Engel: Life in Letters. University of Toronto Press,
2004. Christl Verduyn, ed. Ah Mon Cahier, Ecoute, Wilfred Laurier
University Press, 1999.
Anne Borden lives in
Toronto. |
