Leaving Now edition by Arleen Paré Literature Fiction eBooks
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In Leaving Now Arleen Paré, winner of the 2008 Victoria Book Prize, weaves fable, prose and poetics to create a rich mosaic of conflicted motherhood. Set in the volatile 1970s and '80s, when social norms and expectations were changing rapidly, Leaving Now is the emotionally candid story of a mother's anguish as she leaves her husband to love a woman. In this second book, Paré masterfully blends aspects of her personal journey with her own version of a well-loved fairy tale. Gudru, the five-hundred-year-old mother of Hansel and Gretel, appears hazily in the narrator's kitchen—presumed dead, all but written out of her own tale, but very much alive. Gudrun spins a yarn of love, loss and leaving, offering comfort and wisdom to the conflicted young mother.
Raising children is not for the faint of heart; all parents know the anguish of parting from a child, even if for the briefest moment. Leaving Now is for mothers, fathers, sons and daughters. It is for anyone who has ever lived in a family.
Leaving Now edition by Arleen Paré Literature Fiction eBooks
Arleen Paré's protagonist, an unnamed wife and mother of two, falls in love with a woman during the consciousness-raising seventies. The coming out story with its freshly discovered expression of lesbian sexuality would have been a delicious adventure. This story though, as told by Paré in Leaving Now, is about the emotional cost of living that passion in the world.Paré's character, let's call her Mum, tells her story in prose, poetry and fairy tales. The boundaries of genre are stretched just as Mum stretches the possibilities of life. As with our memories that appear in a mysterious and circular way, events don't unfold chronologically in Leaving Now. Are we here? Have we left? Are we just planning to leave? The white space in the book offers a kind of relief. Separating from one's husband and children requires some deep breathing and is always heart-wrenching. That's true for anyone I would say. In my case, I did exactly what the character in this book did and at the same time.
The story begins with the first leaving when Mum and Dad take turns living with the two boys one week on, one week off. It was 1980, a Saturday. "An ordinary day--but with a suitcase in it." (The second leaving is in 1983 when Mum leaves for good.)
We don't know what life is like for Mum away from the family home. We do learn about the heartbreak of leaving: the guilt, the regret, the remorse and "[T]he restlessness these words can cause."
Mum calls herself an urban archaeologist as she lists what's in the garbage: "...eggshells; a hand-knit mitten unraveling at the thumb." Paré, throughout the book, notes domestic objects of every day to create a pattern, "a kind of ordinary before, before everything went off the rails." The objects act as metaphoric touchstones along the way: the wishbone on the sill, the onion, and even the "spongy dip in the kitchen floor near the sink."
In the kitchen a disembodied voice begins to speak to Mum. Outside, a shapeshifting guide called Gudrun materializes and tells Mum, "It's going to be alright" and "you will need a companion. There's a lineage, a litany of us, you know, Cinderella's mother, Snow White's mother..."
"In any fairy tale the mother is gone," Mum points out. But not all fairytales end happily. "Not for everyone." This gone-mother was "...gone-off-the-straight-and-narrow-rails, gone-off-with-another-woman." We hear a little bit about the other woman: "...her tilting head, her smile, magenta lit." Mum describes the unexpected love that fell over her as "a sudden August rain."
As for the children, Mum says "they tolerate the story's arc." And there's the grief of the husband too; the transition takes its emotional toll on everyone. I didn't weep until half way through with the question: "How does a woman leave?" With great care and courage which are the same traits needed to have written this book. It offers an opportunity for reflection and it lets others in the same circumstances know they're not alone.
Mum regrets she took away her constancy and hopes one day there will be "enough forgiveness." As for her boys, all grown up by the end of the book, they say they were lucky. "It was okay." Also at the end, the protagonist, whom I've called Mum, has been living with her beloved for thirty years. Every time she hears the phone ring, she's wishing it's one of the boys calling to say hello.
Arleen Paré has an MFA in poetry from the University of Victoria, British Columbia. Her novel, Paper Trail, won the Victoria Butler Book Prize. Before beginning a career in writing, Paré worked for over two decades as a social worker in Vancouver. Paré lives in Victoria with her partner, and has two sons and two grandsons. Visit her website.
by Mary Ann Moore
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women
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Leaving Now edition by Arleen Paré Literature Fiction eBooks Reviews
"In the fairytale the mother is almost always absent, missing from the action."
Part memoir, part poetry, part fairytale, Leaving Now is a privilege to read. The narrator makes the difficult decision to leave her two boys and husband in the 70s after discovering that she is a lesbian. The novel follows the process of leaving and the cobbling life back together as the one who did the leaving. Incredibly honest and compelling, a must read.
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Arleen Paré's protagonist, an unnamed wife and mother of two, falls in love with a woman during the consciousness-raising seventies. The coming out story with its freshly discovered expression of lesbian sexuality would have been a delicious adventure. This story though, as told by Paré in Leaving Now, is about the emotional cost of living that passion in the world.
Paré's character, let's call her Mum, tells her story in prose, poetry and fairy tales. The boundaries of genre are stretched just as Mum stretches the possibilities of life. As with our memories that appear in a mysterious and circular way, events don't unfold chronologically in Leaving Now. Are we here? Have we left? Are we just planning to leave? The white space in the book offers a kind of relief. Separating from one's husband and children requires some deep breathing and is always heart-wrenching. That's true for anyone I would say. In my case, I did exactly what the character in this book did and at the same time.
The story begins with the first leaving when Mum and Dad take turns living with the two boys one week on, one week off. It was 1980, a Saturday. "An ordinary day--but with a suitcase in it." (The second leaving is in 1983 when Mum leaves for good.)
We don't know what life is like for Mum away from the family home. We do learn about the heartbreak of leaving the guilt, the regret, the remorse and "[T]he restlessness these words can cause."
Mum calls herself an urban archaeologist as she lists what's in the garbage "...eggshells; a hand-knit mitten unraveling at the thumb." Paré, throughout the book, notes domestic objects of every day to create a pattern, "a kind of ordinary before, before everything went off the rails." The objects act as metaphoric touchstones along the way the wishbone on the sill, the onion, and even the "spongy dip in the kitchen floor near the sink."
In the kitchen a disembodied voice begins to speak to Mum. Outside, a shapeshifting guide called Gudrun materializes and tells Mum, "It's going to be alright" and "you will need a companion. There's a lineage, a litany of us, you know, Cinderella's mother, Snow White's mother..."
"In any fairy tale the mother is gone," Mum points out. But not all fairytales end happily. "Not for everyone." This gone-mother was "...gone-off-the-straight-and-narrow-rails, gone-off-with-another-woman." We hear a little bit about the other woman "...her tilting head, her smile, magenta lit." Mum describes the unexpected love that fell over her as "a sudden August rain."
As for the children, Mum says "they tolerate the story's arc." And there's the grief of the husband too; the transition takes its emotional toll on everyone. I didn't weep until half way through with the question "How does a woman leave?" With great care and courage which are the same traits needed to have written this book. It offers an opportunity for reflection and it lets others in the same circumstances know they're not alone.
Mum regrets she took away her constancy and hopes one day there will be "enough forgiveness." As for her boys, all grown up by the end of the book, they say they were lucky. "It was okay." Also at the end, the protagonist, whom I've called Mum, has been living with her beloved for thirty years. Every time she hears the phone ring, she's wishing it's one of the boys calling to say hello.
Arleen Paré has an MFA in poetry from the University of Victoria, British Columbia. Her novel, Paper Trail, won the Victoria Butler Book Prize. Before beginning a career in writing, Paré worked for over two decades as a social worker in Vancouver. Paré lives in Victoria with her partner, and has two sons and two grandsons. Visit her website.
by Mary Ann Moore
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women
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