Rick Meier report on Lily Faichild

The writing is exquisite. Don Gutteridge

writes with a poets care. The manuscript
has a classic feel, and is I think quite
consciously epic in the classical sense.
Fate, prophecy, war, civilization, and the
extremes of human nature are rolled
operatically into one sweeping narrative
but anchored by one clear hero (in this
case, Lily). In both tone and scope, it
reminded me in many ways of Lavinia by
Ursula K. LeGuin, only instead of novelizing
a hazy, mythical past, Gutteridge is
sculpting against the terra firma of
relatively well-known historical
information.
As sweeping as it is, Lilys interior life is
complicated, full, and poignantly drawn.
The intelligent and empathetic orphan
coming of age in rough circumstances is
an efficient if familiar conceit. However,
Lily is also the vehicle for an affecting but
clear-eyed portrayal of the myriad
physical, emotional, and political
challenges facing women in the towns and
backwoods of 19th- and early 20th-century
Canada.
To support Lily, Gutteridge manages a
massive cast, and he sketches the
evolving politics and polyglot culture of
mid-to-late-nineteenth century Ontario
with a steady hand. As one of his blurbers
mentions, the novel is about Lily, but it is
also about the land itself: about how land
is carved up and repurposed; how the wild
space of Ontario becomes legally and
culturally defined on its way to becoming
a nation. In this way, the goal of the
novel resembles Wolf Hall in the way it
focuses on a single personality,
surrounded by a large cast, to create a
world through details, but also to tell a sort
of parable about the complicated birth of a
nation.
The personalities as well as the landscapes
of pioneer life do indeed throb with

vitality, as the agents description claims.

Along with his numerous compelling (and
convincing) characters, he is also very
good at landscapes and costumes. There is
a degree of detail here (exhaustive,
immediate, and often elegant) that could
only come from a lifetime of study. And
indeed, the novel is as vividly drawn as it
is well-researched. To his verdantly
imagined world Don adds the texture and
authority of contemporary documents,
excerpting bits of journals and letters and
maps and surveys, which he manages to
incorporate rather seamlessly. Looming
figures of Canadian history appear,
including Louis Riel and Major John
Richardson. History buffs would swoon (or
maybe fall to historiographical nitpicking,
no doubt) over this book.
All of this is expertly and lovingly done.
And while I admire the writing very much,
the lush, poetic style can be so thick at
times that the prose borders on purple,
giving things a rather precious tone
something of another time, perhaps?
Where the book has an edge, it gets it
from its verisimilitude: its unwavering
portrayal of the brutal, inhuman work of
colonialism and nation building. The
writing, on the other hand, is smooth and
flowery, swerving often toward
sentimentality.
As capable, consistent, and erudite as DG
is, he does not entirely transcend the
perennial challenges of pulling off a period
piece. We are at times aware that we are
being lectured, or that a bit of detail is
coming to us directly from an archival
moment. I personally dont find the
pronounced erudition here to be a huge
problem: as an erstwhile student of
history, I enjoyed the documentary texture
DG layers over the human saga (and
others probably would, as well). But it adds
heft to an already hefty narrative.

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