The Sentimentalists
by Johanna Skibsrud
Norton Books
(May 2011, 224 pp, $23.95 hardcover)
Johanna Skibsrud's Giller Prize-winning novel The Sentimentalists
travels down a trail of bewilderment to ponder, rather than pinpoint, a resolution for the subject
matter offered. This novel's purpose is buried in mounds of Skibsrud's
winding poetic prose and Skibsrud is able to dig so deep into an event's significance
conclusions are either slyly hidden, or so euphoric they can be
infinitely interpreted. The result is a drawn out unravelling of why
Napoleon Haskell, the narrator's father, is such a distant, comi-tragic
enigma.
The first half of The Sentimentalists flashes back to the nameless (hint) narrator's youth until her parents' split when she is twelve. The memories are recounted while driving Napoleon back to Casablanca, Ontario, where the Haskells' sit-in-grandpa, Henry Carey, lives and where most of the memories take place. The odd thing about Casablanca is that the town was once located down the road, but was flooded due to poor dam infrastructure and moved to the shore of the resulting lake. Alas, hovering over this novel is a perfect missing link symbol. It's never directly asked, but what does a sunken town mean anyway?
Then the first layer is peeled back. Left in her own state of perpetual meandering triggered by a cheating partner, the narrator promptly flees a cozy nine-to-five, a presumed writing job in the city, for Casablanca. She chooses this escape because Napoleon is nearing death: "I'm gonna die in Casablanca," he tells his daughter, and she can't help feeling "responsible, at least in part, for this eventuality." Back in the nostalgic town, a little more about Owen Carey, Henry's son whom Napoleon fought alongside with in Vietnam, is revealed. Owen died in the war, and no one talks about that.
Then, as if the first half of The Sentimentalists is a fake-out, you're in war-time Vietnam. Napoleon's wavering health, newly introduced morphine addiction, and rehashed alcoholism push the narrator for explanation and throw the novel into Napoleon's perspective.
At first it's a clashing juxtaposition: new landscape, a different time. But after the shock wears off, the Vietnam scenes amount to more filler. Napoleon wanders around order-less, smoking pot and having laughs with Owen and the rest of his platoon-mates. There is, like before, sheer focus on meaninglessness: "No one requires anything of him [Napoleon], after all, except for the movement of his body from one place to another"; "Sometimes he couldn't even tell the difference between himself and the rest of them"; and so on. Okay, Skibsrud, what's the point?
One scene, a mere eight lines, lets you in. Napoleon witnesses, and abstains from taking part, in the murder of innocent Vietnamese citizens, the destruction of their village, and the murder of Owen by one of the company's men. Suddenly the digging becomes reasonable ― this pinnacle moment in the past defends Napoleon's life in the present. Your view shifts from judgment to empathy. No wonder he struggles for purpose, and the rest of this story's prose follows suit.
In more symbolic, tangible absence, the climactic scene does not provide full closure. And the book's epilogue, twenty-five pages of Napoleon's testimony on the event in military court, brings up more questions. For thinkers, realisation hits hard with these moments that the nucleus of The Sentimentalists really is about absence ― of fact and meaning. It's a theme of misleading, seemingly unimportant build-up; technically, a story about something other than what it's about. Tricky, I know. But with the most depressing things in life, sometimes we don't always get the closure we're looking for, if anything at all.
- John Coleman
by Johanna Skibsrud
Norton Books
(May 2011, 224 pp, $23.95 hardcover)
The first half of The Sentimentalists flashes back to the nameless (hint) narrator's youth until her parents' split when she is twelve. The memories are recounted while driving Napoleon back to Casablanca, Ontario, where the Haskells' sit-in-grandpa, Henry Carey, lives and where most of the memories take place. The odd thing about Casablanca is that the town was once located down the road, but was flooded due to poor dam infrastructure and moved to the shore of the resulting lake. Alas, hovering over this novel is a perfect missing link symbol. It's never directly asked, but what does a sunken town mean anyway?
Then the first layer is peeled back. Left in her own state of perpetual meandering triggered by a cheating partner, the narrator promptly flees a cozy nine-to-five, a presumed writing job in the city, for Casablanca. She chooses this escape because Napoleon is nearing death: "I'm gonna die in Casablanca," he tells his daughter, and she can't help feeling "responsible, at least in part, for this eventuality." Back in the nostalgic town, a little more about Owen Carey, Henry's son whom Napoleon fought alongside with in Vietnam, is revealed. Owen died in the war, and no one talks about that.
Then, as if the first half of The Sentimentalists is a fake-out, you're in war-time Vietnam. Napoleon's wavering health, newly introduced morphine addiction, and rehashed alcoholism push the narrator for explanation and throw the novel into Napoleon's perspective.
At first it's a clashing juxtaposition: new landscape, a different time. But after the shock wears off, the Vietnam scenes amount to more filler. Napoleon wanders around order-less, smoking pot and having laughs with Owen and the rest of his platoon-mates. There is, like before, sheer focus on meaninglessness: "No one requires anything of him [Napoleon], after all, except for the movement of his body from one place to another"; "Sometimes he couldn't even tell the difference between himself and the rest of them"; and so on. Okay, Skibsrud, what's the point?
One scene, a mere eight lines, lets you in. Napoleon witnesses, and abstains from taking part, in the murder of innocent Vietnamese citizens, the destruction of their village, and the murder of Owen by one of the company's men. Suddenly the digging becomes reasonable ― this pinnacle moment in the past defends Napoleon's life in the present. Your view shifts from judgment to empathy. No wonder he struggles for purpose, and the rest of this story's prose follows suit.
In more symbolic, tangible absence, the climactic scene does not provide full closure. And the book's epilogue, twenty-five pages of Napoleon's testimony on the event in military court, brings up more questions. For thinkers, realisation hits hard with these moments that the nucleus of The Sentimentalists really is about absence ― of fact and meaning. It's a theme of misleading, seemingly unimportant build-up; technically, a story about something other than what it's about. Tricky, I know. But with the most depressing things in life, sometimes we don't always get the closure we're looking for, if anything at all.
- John Coleman
