Those Are Pearls
This sprawling tale of generational trauma begins in South Africa where Harry Short, a Boer War veteran, aspires to marry a woman above his station. Desperate to escape her stifling family, Margaret marries Harry but ends up emigrating to Canada and finds herself in Winnipeg, still a backwater town on the harsh Canadian prairie.
Their miserable marriage drives Harry to enlist in the First World War to escape his growing family. As is the norm in Canadian historic works, he returns broken and a shell of himself. Both parents pass the unhappiness and trauma on to their children. One narrator is a rebellious daughter, a communist and free-thinker whose account exposes readers to the most important events of that part of Canada: the aftermath of the Rebellion and the bloody Winnipeg Riot of 1919; another narrator takes us through the Great Flood of 1950.
Narbonne’s writing is engaging, emotional, and occasionally beautiful. However, the story is bleak and unrelentingly dark. The most well-written characters are complex to the point of being unlikable, while the few pleasant characters are reduced to cardboard victims or props to drive the story. Those looking for a feel-good look at Canada’s tumultuous growth into a modern country won’t find it here. Canadian and international readers will find an intriguing, dark look at the country’s history that’s often ignored or glossed over in a part of the nation that seldom gets literary attention.
