It’s late-ish on a Monday evening, but I wanted to get a quick post written before another week goes by. I was reading Silver Birch contenders last week, which I can’t mention, but the week before, my book group discussed Katherina Vermette’s The Break, which I can talk about.
So The Break is the story of a young Indigenous teen who was raped after going to a party. This incident was witnessed by another Indigenous woman who called the police but didn’t go out into the winter storm to check on the girl, choosing to stay inside to care for her two young children instead. The two police officers who took her statement were not completely convinced that she really saw what she thought she saw, but the young Indigenous officer was more inclined to believe her and pursue the investigation, while the older white officer just wanted to close the case. What follows is details of the official investigation and the response, processing and acceptance of this horrific event by the Indigenous community (mainly women). Told from many varying points of view and including stories and memories spanning generations, this novel was heartbreaking and hopeful, horrific yet necessary. My book club ladies found it so sad and difficult to read, but we all agreed that, while we knew about the stats regarding the increased likelihood of Indigenous women being sexually assaulted, we admitted that we didn’t really know much about it at all. It’s the kind of book that needs to be written and read, but it was certainly not uplifting. We found it confusing because there were so many characters who were all related, mothers and grandmothers, daughters and grand-daughters, and they were not always referred to by their proper names, so that, along with the fact that there were multiple points of view, made for a challenging story to follow. I think that we had it all figured out by the end of our discussion, but we each had points that needed clarifying as well as each adding information that led to clarification for someone else. It was a great book club selection, but I don’t think I’ll be reading the sequel, The Strangers, at least not any time soon.
And this weekend is the big CFUW’s book sale, Friday from 9am-9pm and Saturday from 9am-1pm: https://www.cfuwkw.org/book-sale. I’ve got the afternoon off work and am looking forward to leisurely browsing the aisles and checking out the thousands of books on offer.
That’s all for tonight. Have a great week!
Bye for now... Julie
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