Ysabel by Guy Gavriel Kay

"The knife of the wind - the mistral - ripped down the Rhone valley...making each olive or cypress tree, magpie, vineyard, lavender bush, aqueduct in the distance stand against the wind-scoured sky as if it were the first, the perfect, example in the world of what it was."

Although Guy Gavriel Kay masters his art - an intriguing blend of sci-fi and literature - this story, although historical, fantastical, exciting and character-driven, does not stand as his perfect example. The obvious references to his magnum opus, the Finovar Tapestry, underscore the depth and maturity that Ysabel lacks in comparison, largely due to the narrative voice of Ned.

Having a teen-aged narrator allows for some interesting exploration. Ned's experiences of sexual tension in his relationships with Kate, the nerdy girl he meets in the cathedral, and Melanie, his photographer-dad’s super-organized assistant, provide good character development and allow the reader to empathize with the excitement and awkwardness that brings. When Melanie is teasing him by offering to tie his shoelaces for him, she says, “You should be so lucky as to have me kneel before you.” Ned flushes, and later thinks, “That had actually been a really sexy line, what she’d said.” Immature sexual tension runs through the novel, cropping up in random spots, just as it might in real life.

However, the youth and naivete of the narrator sometimes paint the world in broad brush strokes, which a more mature narrator, such as Kay employs in the Fionavar Tapestry or The Lions of Al-Rassan, might have nuanced a bit more. After a stand-off between Ned and Cadell, Ned thinks, “A week ago... [I was] worrying about [my] frog dissection in biology and a class party at Gail Ridpath’s house and the hockey playoffs....What did you say to any of this, anyway?” Granted, he is a young person in the midst of a very bewildering situation, and he does mature a bit by the end of the story. However, being inside the head of a confused teenager isn’t the most enlightening or enjoyable way to experience an ancient love story.

References to the Fionavar Tapestry abound, in the recurrence of key characters (no spoilers!) as well as the triangular love affair theme. As in the Fionavar Tapestry, where Guinevere, Arthur and Lancelot live and die in cycles, playing out their drama time and time again, in Ysabel the same story occurs. This time Ysabel, Phelan and Cadell, locked in a pattern throughout history, play out their own story of passion and violence. In both cases the characters are eventually released from their regime, in the denouement following the pivotal battle (in the Fionavar Tapestry) or quest (in Ysabel). Kay’s fascination with the triangular figure of a woman eternally choosing between two men illustrates the complicated relationships that arise out of love and jealousy. In the final scene between the three lovers, Cadell says, “We have a different arc, we three,” including his rival, and partner in questing, Phelan, in his use of “we.” Although they are sworn enemies through their competition for Ysabel, there is also a sort of brotherly camaraderie, evident when Phelan lodges a knife in Cadell’s shoulder, then injures himself the same way so that all is fair.

The symbolism of dawn/dusk, another evocative theme in Ysabel, highlights the differences in historical contexts and lends a general edge of darkness to the tale. Kay occasionally steps back from the immediate narrative to paint the picture of a sunrise or sunset, and then interprets that image for us. On the last night of Ysabel, Ned looks down the mountain after sunset and sees headlights, thinks of the Riviera an hour away with bars and cafes and yachts. And then he remembers tales Phelan told of a ship sailing from Greece long ago, passing dark harbours and mountain ranges, visiting peoples of rituals and forest gods and goddesses. The sky “blood-red with sunset” used to mean something different for people without brightly-lit restaurants and homes, to people who were visited by spirits. And dawn, “exquisite, memorable, almost a taste,” once a relief from the domain of night, is now under the purview of alarm clocks and showers.

The Take Away: If I ever have the good fortune of visiting Provence, the terrain will become a palimpsest where the past shows through a little more, thanks to this book.

Page References from Penguin Canada’s 2007 paperback edition:
"knife of the wind" - 2
“you should be so lucky” – 84-5
“frog dissection” – 259
“different arc” – 485
knife in shoulder – 370
last night of Ysabel – 497-8
“blood-red” – 3
“dawn, exquisite, memorable” - 4

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

“Americana” typically elicits Technicolor images of kitschy tin lunchboxes and old movie posters. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah, an intellectual book despite protagonist Ifemelu’s claim that she’s “not an academic,” works within an understanding of Americana as a study of American culture, especially by non-Americans. Ifemelu, Nigerian born and raised until constant university strikes impel her to study in the United States, starts a blog to dissect American culture, specifically along the borders of race. Blog posts punctuate episodes of her life, interspersed with chapters following Obinze, her first love. The result: a thought-provoking, enlightening, absorbing and enjoyable novel, complete with the good kind of gritty details – the kind that let you know that you and the author live in the same world.

Adichie’s details serve to anchor the story in the real world. About a boyfriend, Ifemelu says “there was something in him, lighter than ego but darker than insecurity, that needed constant buffing, polishing, waxing.” When Aunty Uju finally decides to leave a partner she is unhappy with, it is the “thick blob of toothpaste…. soft and melting” in the sink that makes up her mind. As a new returnee to Lagos, Ifemelu perks up when someone mentions a new vegetarian restaurant, and then “an unease crept up on Ifemelu. … This was what she hoped she had not become but feared that she had: a ‘they have the kinds of things we can eat’ kind of person.”

We first meet Ifemelu on her way to a hair salon, where she prepares for her upcoming trip back to Lagos, Nigeria by getting her hair braided. The reader’s introduction to the backstory of her relationship with Obinze, her journey to the United States and through hunger and poverty to becoming a successful, highly-functioning “Americanah” and insertions of her blog posts happen as she sits in the salon, annoyed with her Senegalese braider, Aisha. About 3/4 of the way through the book, the timeline catches up to that salon, and that’s when plot becomes important. So no spoilers.

What’s the point of meeting Ifemelu in that salon? It’s one of the big before-and-afters of her life. You know, before the move, after the move; before that relationship, after that relationship. She is poised between the life she has created for herself in America and preparing for a return to Lagos. While at the salon, she takes time to reflect on her past: what brought her to America, how she survived and blossomed, her relationships, her observations on American culture; and she wonders about her future: what will happen when she meets Obinze again, whether she will be able to “handle” Lagos, whether there is any future for her in her birth country. We meet her in this liminal, in-between time, the turning point of her story, the point from which the past stretches back and the future stretches forward. We meet her in the present.

Through Ifemelu, Adichie does a terrific job of explaining why race is still an issue in the United States. Most white people (myself included) are eager to move beyond race. It’s easy for us to do this when we don’t have to deal with it on a personal level. Through many small examples tucked into the text, Adichie shows that black people have to deal with it, whether they want to or not. Therein lies the difference: white people can ignore race if they want to, but black people can’t. Whether it’s the white carpet cleaner who is hostile to Ifemelu when he thinks she is the black owner of a large and expensive house, or the patient who takes their business elsewhere when they find out their doctor (Ifemelu’s Aunty Uju) is black, or the camp leader who wouldn’t give the black child (Ifemelu’s cousin Dike) sunscreen because he “didn’t need it,” or that Ifemelu can’t get makeup tips from conventional women’s magazines because none of the colours are right for her skin tone, Adichie helps readers who haven’t experienced this themselves to realize how pervasive issues of race are and how exhausting it can be to have to deal with them.

Ifemelu includes a little “white privilege questionnaire” in one of her blog posts which helps to drive the point home. For example:

When you go shopping alone at a nice store, do you worry that you will be followed or harassed?
When you apply for a bank loan, do you worry that, because of your race, you might be seen as financially unreliable?
If you do well in a situation, do you expect to be called a credit to your race? Or to be described as ‘different’ from the majority of your race?
If a traffic cop pulls you over, do you wonder if it is because of your race?
When you use the ‘nude’ colour of underwear and Band-Aids, do you already know that it will not match your skin?

Going down this list of 14 points and answering “no” to every single one helped me to understand one of Adichie’s central points about race in the novel: white people may not always have it easy, but our skin colour saves us from a whole other universe of problems, a universe which black people have no choice but to inhabit.

As a white person who was born in and grew up in West Africa, actually in Benin, which borders on Nigeria, I had my own response to this listing of white privilege. I am not saying that this is in any way comparable to the discrimination that black people face in North America. However, I wonder if Adichie has ever thought about what it’s like to be a white person living in Africa. Here are a few of my reflections, from personal experience, on what “white privilege” looks like in Africa.

- never being able to “blend into the crowd” on a street, always being obvious, sticking out like a sore thumb
- all the marriage proposals and general harassment while walking down the street (this being specific to being a white woman)
- everyone assuming that you’re rich
- everyone wanting to touch your hair (especially if it’s long and blonde)
- being taken advantage of at the market by having to pay prices that are 2 to 3 times what a local would pay
- the un-asked for and perhaps undeserved honour that is pushed upon you

The Take Away: I now see people at the bus station slightly differently. No one’s story is the same, but hearing Ifemelu’s story gives me some sense of what immigrants from Ethiopia or Ghana or Cambodia or Guatemala may have faced or may still be facing in an unfamiliar country, especially around issues of race. It just gives me a little bit more compassion, born of greater understanding, and a renewed determination to try and treat everyone I meet first and foremost as a human being.

Page references (from Knopf hardcover edition, 2013)
"not an academic" - 341
"lighter than ego" - 209
"blob of toothpaste" - 229
"unease crept up" - 409
carpet cleaner - 168
is the doctor coming - 184
sunscreen - 186
magazines - 297
white privilege - 348