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A review by ncrabb
The Way the Crow Flies by Ann-Marie MacDonald
1.0
The fictional Madeleine McCarthy was eight the summer the family moved into the house on the air force base in rural Canada. Her dad is the new base commander, and she’s moving to the new place with her parents and older brother. The new school year promises to be fulfilling indeed.
But the new school year turns into a nightmarish experience for Madeleine. She is one of the girls singled out by the instructor to stay after ostensibly to improve their standing in the class. They learn instead to do back bends while he clinches their hips between his knees. He teaches them to do any number of other things involving what he calls his “muscle.” If you read this, you’ll get the picture; if you don’t, you won’t miss a thing. Not a thing.
There’s a little American girl on the base, too. She’s there because the U.S. sends its members as part of a military exchange program to Canadian installations apparently. No one points the finger at this despicable teacher, and the little cadre of fourth-grade girls remain his victims off and on throughout the year.
Before this ends, someone strangles the little quiet American girl, and a young man in the community is wrongly arrested and pays a terrible price for something he didn’t do.
This is a story that could have been far more effective told in a third of the space and time this took. There are long rambling passages in here that make you want to scream. To her credit she captures the time nicely. You learn more about the Cuban Mistle Crisis than you ever want to know, especially from a dubious fictional perspective. This felt like some kind of never-ending political hate rant. The Apollo program was evil because it harbored and used Nazi war criminals. Ok. But is it necessary to make that point over and over throughout the book? (Massive yawn and frustration abundant here.)
Madeleine grows up to be a character I mostly detested. I didn’t think she was all that funny as a standup, and I sure didn’t need to read about her tedious lesbian love affairs. For the record, they were tedious because they were tedious, not because of any sexual preferences. No one should have been subjected to her interminable therapy sessions and her breakup with a neurotic lover.
The book was barely interesting enough that I needed to read to the end to see how it finished. But just barely. It’s extremely rare when I celebrate the deletion of a book from my phone or Victor Reader device. But I relished making good use of the delete button for this. It was actually cathartic and satisfying on so many levels. After nearly 12 and a half years on my hard drive, I finally got to wipe it off there. It most emphatically never should have been there in the first place!
But the new school year turns into a nightmarish experience for Madeleine. She is one of the girls singled out by the instructor to stay after ostensibly to improve their standing in the class. They learn instead to do back bends while he clinches their hips between his knees. He teaches them to do any number of other things involving what he calls his “muscle.” If you read this, you’ll get the picture; if you don’t, you won’t miss a thing. Not a thing.
There’s a little American girl on the base, too. She’s there because the U.S. sends its members as part of a military exchange program to Canadian installations apparently. No one points the finger at this despicable teacher, and the little cadre of fourth-grade girls remain his victims off and on throughout the year.
Before this ends, someone strangles the little quiet American girl, and a young man in the community is wrongly arrested and pays a terrible price for something he didn’t do.
This is a story that could have been far more effective told in a third of the space and time this took. There are long rambling passages in here that make you want to scream. To her credit she captures the time nicely. You learn more about the Cuban Mistle Crisis than you ever want to know, especially from a dubious fictional perspective. This felt like some kind of never-ending political hate rant. The Apollo program was evil because it harbored and used Nazi war criminals. Ok. But is it necessary to make that point over and over throughout the book? (Massive yawn and frustration abundant here.)
Madeleine grows up to be a character I mostly detested. I didn’t think she was all that funny as a standup, and I sure didn’t need to read about her tedious lesbian love affairs. For the record, they were tedious because they were tedious, not because of any sexual preferences. No one should have been subjected to her interminable therapy sessions and her breakup with a neurotic lover.
The book was barely interesting enough that I needed to read to the end to see how it finished. But just barely. It’s extremely rare when I celebrate the deletion of a book from my phone or Victor Reader device. But I relished making good use of the delete button for this. It was actually cathartic and satisfying on so many levels. After nearly 12 and a half years on my hard drive, I finally got to wipe it off there. It most emphatically never should have been there in the first place!