⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This is the second book I’ve read by this author. Both were resounding 5 star reads. My favorite kind of book!

Madeline is 8 years old in the early 1960’s when the story begins. It is told mostly from her point of view. She lives with her mother, father and brother in Centralia, on a fictional Canadian Air Force base in (I think) the province of Ontario. This is a wonderful coming of age tale, a murder mystery, and lest I forget to mention, some Cold War espionage has been thrown into the mix.

I’ve had this paperback copy on my shelves for a few number of years and was delighted to find an audio on Hoopla. It was a great listen in the car but easy to find my place and read in the evening as well. The author is the narrator. And she’s really good at it! Come to find out she had her start in the performing arts with a good number of credits to her name. She occasionally sings in the audio, which I found to be delightful. She is also an awarding winning playwright.

I just discovered that a third book of hers was published in 2022 and you can be sure I’ll be acquiring a copy soon! You can’t go wrong with this author.

The 52 Book Club Challenge - 2024
Prompt #4 - Lowercase letters on the spine

This book is really incredible. It is rich with history and the prose is beautiful. The real crime case of Canadian Steven Truscott, who was wrongfully incarcerated in Ontario in 1959, is the context on which the plot is built, though, of course, it is a fictionalized version of what happened, and the story contains so much complexity-the mystery that unfolds regarding the crime is only a part of the whole work. But, because the crime involved the sexual assault and murder of a young girl the details in the story related to that are really disturbing to read-so much so that I didn't know if I could continue to read this novel at about 200 pages into it. I am truly glad that I did. Ann Marie Macdonald is an amazing writer-I loved her novel Fall On Your Knees, which I read a couple of years ago-also containing dark and disturbing content. The writing reminds me of Margaret Atwood and Toni Morrison. Dark, twisted, important stories about the lives of girls and women amidst the paradoxical beauty of life, relationships, and the natural world. All of the richness of the natural world as described as becomes this redemptive backdrop to the stories-it's such a necessary resting place-ingeniously providing hope and, I guess, courage. There were so many passages in this book that were breathtakingly beautiful (i am overusing that word, wise, and insightful. I wanted to extract them and send them to my sisters, my mother, and remember them forever. Also, the historical time period that this novel covers is fascinating; what an important transition in society and politics. I appreciated the perspective on the U.S. government's policies and actions during this time told through a Canadian lens.

Wow! What an amazing, immersive read.

Whilst the context is the Canadian Air Force in the Cold War, the fulcrum is a class of 8 year old girls, changing allegiances, secrets and the consequences of telling the truth or not. The story of the young Madeleine is paralleled by her father and the silence he keeps, placing political expediency above personal connections. Both of them and the rest of the family segue into different forms of self-destruction over the subsequent decades.

MacDonald maintains the tension by having a febrile finger on the pulse of adult and child emotions, the contradictions within us all intertwined with the grey world that is subjective morality.

The Way the Crow Flies is not, in my opinion, a 'murder mystery, spy thriller' as is printed on the back of the novel. Yes, there is a murder, a mystery and cold war spy drama, but the most memorable moments, and the majority of the novel, is made up of a coming of age tale and a reflection on morality and lost innocence.
The novel begins with a taste of 'the murder'. Then proceeds to set the scene for a hundred and fifty pages, with no inkling of any murder to come, I kind of forgot what the book was about and considered giving up several times before any action hit. Once it finally began to take shape, in the form of Madeline's (and her classmates) abuse, the revelation of Froelich as a German Jew who had survived a concentration camp, and finally some action involving Freid, it takes off like a freight train. MacDonald effectively makes your skin crawl with her depictions of Madeline's torturous experience in the fourth grade. She also lays some great ground work and develops a lot of interesting characters. And teases the readers with hints towards twists and turns in the 'murder mystery', forcing the reader to jump to conclusions; which I did as well. Turns out I had some right and failed to guess the final twist, which became a redeeming quality of a novel that was just far longer than it needed to be to tell what really is a great story.
Had there been a few hundred pages less, the story could have been just as effective. The chapters featuring Madeline as an adult seemed somewhat u necessary. True, important revelations occurred, and the novel wouldn't be the same without them, but so much seemed to drag on and on to me. Almost as though Macdonald was trying to reach a word minimum.
Good story if you have the patience to wait it out.
I much preferred Fall On Your Knees.

Loved this book! It was based on an actual event/murder that took place in Ontario in the mid-20th century. After reading this, I had to research the story!

Loved the first part, thought the second part was totally out of whack with the first section, not a great ending, kind of disappointing, actually.

[spoilers]

I really enjoyed Fall on Your Knees, which really suited MacDonald's style: grandiose, quasi-mythological, almost-magic realism. But I pecked away at this follow-up forever -- stopping to read other things -- and sometimes thought I would just give up. The main problem is that it is WAY too long -- really two books in one. The first story, set in the early 1960s is slow, but well crafted, and builds a nuanced, complicated morality tale about the War generation trying to get used to peace. Jack, a Canadian Air Force man who takes a plum posting at an Ontario air base with his family, gets involved in a plan to help relocate a Nazi scientist and war criminal (who is thinks is a Soviet defector) to the US to work for NASA. Then the community is rocked by the (unrelated) murder of a schoolgirl and the police fixate on Jack's neighbor's son as the culprit. A combination of Jack's responsibility to keep the operation covert and the post-war gender and provider roles that limit communication within his family, prevents him from providing an alibi for the boy...and worse. Compounding the theme of shell-shock, naivety and broken communication, Jack's daughter Madeleine suffers sexual abuse at the hands of her fourth grade teacher, a crime that neither Madeleine nor her parents can fathom and therefore recognize and address before it happens again to others.

As a complicated take on the post-war generation and its failures, this part of the book is compelling. The second part unfortunately shatters all the nuance and moral subtlety of the first half: it follows Jack's daughter Madeleine as an adult in 1980s Toronto trying to come to terms with her past. I felt like MacDonald wants us to see adult Madeleine as the true protagonist of the book: a hero, a survivor, and able to see right and wrong in the way her parents were not. But she comes off as entitled and neurotic, able to be "good" (and righteous) simply because she was not faced with the sorts of trade-offs, social barriers or existential fears that her parents were. Worse, at times the second (Madeleine) part of the book reads like the script of a Hallmark movie -- it's easy payoff after easy payoff with lots of tears as tough-but-sensitive Madeleine slowly owns up to repressed memories and emerges a better person, including finally being able to communicate with her mother who seems to undergo a convenient personality change for this purpose. (As an aside I simply don't believe Jack, as drawn, would have told Madeleine about his role in the tragedy before dying. His wife yes, but Madeleine no.)

After all this, there is a "shock" ending involving who was responsible for the murder. But while gruesome and shocking, it doesn't really change anything or lead you to reassess the various characters' culpability. Instead, the book ends with Madeleine receiving one more example of unlikely -- and seemingly undeserved -- forgiveness and closure from the victimized family.

"צער חדש מחריד מרבצו צער ישן. אנחנו באים להתאבל אצל אותה באר, ובכל פעם היא מלאה יותר."

בשנת 1962 מגיעה משפחת מקארתי לבסיס חיל האויר סנטראליה שבקנדה. אב - ג'ק טייס לא פעיל, האם - מימי עקרת בית ושני ילדיהם מייק ומדלן בת ה- 9. מלחמת העולם השניה הסתיימה ואחרי שירות של כעשור באדמת אירופה, זה בדיוק הזמן הנכון לחזור לקנדה. מה שהמשפחה אינה יודעת הוא, ששנת השירות הזו של ג'ק בסנטראליה תשנה את חייהם לנצח ותותיר בהם משקעים עמוקים שעימם יאלצו להתמודד במהלך שני העשורים הבאים.

שני שלישי מהספר מתארים את האירועים בשנת השירות והשהות של המשפחה בסנטראליה. התיאור נע בין נקודת מבטה של מדלן בת ה -9 ובין נקודת הראות של מספר יודע כל, שאינו חושף בפני הקורא את כל הפרטים שמצויים בידיו. השליש האחרון של הספר עוסק במה שנותר מחייהם של הדמויות ובהתמודדות שלהן עם האירועים בשני העשורים הבאים.

בגאוניות וביד אמן הסופרת טווה פסטורליה אידילית. כשהקורא נמצא עמוק בתוך הפסטורליה המשפחתית הזו, היא מ��חילה להתערער. קודם באירועים קטנים ולא משמעותיים כך שקצב היווצרות הסדקים איטי, אבל עם התקדמות הספר לקראת עמוד 180 הסדקים מעמיקים ואז בקצב מסחרר הם הופכים לבורות אותם לא יהיה ניתן לטייח.

הספר מורכב, איטי ומתגמל. בחלק האחרון שלו לא הפסקתי לדמוע. מעבר לתיאור התקופתי שאותו הסופרת מקפידה לטוות ביד אמן (משבר הטילים בקובה, מרוץ החלל, המלחמה הקרה ומלחמת ויאטנם), במרכז העלילה עומד סיפורה האישי של משפחת מקארתי ובפרט של מדלן. כדי לא להרוס למי שמתכוון לקרוא את הספר יתר הפרטים יהיו בספויילר.

מדלן וחברותיה עברו התעללות מינית בידי המורה שלהן שאימץ קבוצת בנות אותה נהג להשאיר ל"תרגול" לאחר שעות הלימודים. במישור המידי תיאורי ההתעללות, למרות שאינם בוטים, קורעים פיסה מהלב של כל מי שהוא הורה לילד. ההורים של מדלן, ג'ק ומימי הם הורים קשובים, מטפחים ואוהבים. אבל גם הם לא עומדים על האירועים הנוראיים שעוברים על בתם בשעות בית הספר. מספר פעמים ג'ק כמעט מגלה שהבת שלו עוברת התעללות, אבל איכשהו הגילוי תמיד מתפספס וחומק ממנו.

אירועי ההתעללות המינית מובילים לתוצאות שונות ובינהן רצח של ילדה. בנוסף הסופרת מציבה סימן שאלה על המיניות של מדלן, שבבגרותה מסתבר שהיא לסבית.

רשת השקרים שנטווית סביב ההתעללות והרצח מובילה להרשעה של בחור מאומץ ממוצא אינדיאני. ילד טוב שחייו נהרסו בשל מצבור שקרים. חיי כל הדמויות ששהו בסנטראליה באותה השנה מושפעים מאותם האירועים.

אחת מהסוגיות המרכזיות בספר, היא שאלת המוסריות בהכשרתם של פושעי מלחמה נאצים ע"י בנות הברית תוך שמדינות כמו קנדה וארה"ב נתנו מחסה וזהות חדשה לרוצחים אכזריים, כדי לאפשר למערב להתמודד עם העליונות המדעית הרוסית, מרוץ החימוש והמרוץ לחלל.

גיבור הספר, ג'ק מסייע להסתיר מהנדס שהיה אחד מהאחראים בפנמינדה ותרם באופן ישיר לרצח של אלפי אסירים ועובדי כפייה. הוא כמובן לא מודע לכל סיפור הרקע של הדמות אותה הוא מסייע להסתיר.

שכנו של ג'ק מזהה את המהנדס, שמאוחר יותר כאשר פרשת הרצח והאונס תתפוצץ, יוברח לארה"ב וישמש כפתיון למרגל רוסי שמועסק בנס"א. כאשר ג'ק מגלה את פרטי הפרשה, שהוסתרה גם מעיניו, הוא מבקש לעשות צדק עם הילד ולמנוע את האפשרות שיגזר עליו עונש מוות. המפעיל של ג'ק משתמש בטיעונים של בטחון המדינה, עליונות מדעית והטיעון הכי מטריד, שלמעשה אותם רוצחים ארורים לא רצו לעשות את זה, כפו עליהם. בשום שלב של הטיעונים, לא עולה בעיני המפעיל של ג'ק הטיעון המוסרי, ההשחתה המוסרית העמוקה שמהלך כזה מוביל והכיליון שבהעדפת מרוץ ההתחמשות על פני חיו של נער צעיר.


ספר נפלא, שלא זוכים לקרוא הרבה כמותו במהלך החיים.

I really loved this book and had to read her previous novel, _Fall On Your Knees_, the minute I finished _The Way the Crow Flies_. One thing that struck me about her writing was the fact that in both books, I came to a place fairly soon in each (maybe a third of the way through?) where she related an event that had me literally sobbing and choking with sadness and anger, and then -- after I blew my nose -- furious at McDonald herself as the author! Both times I felt like putting the book down (no, more like thowing it violently) and going straight to Google to find an address to write to her so that I could say, "You just can't do that to your characters! That's so needlessly, gratuitously awful that I can't stand it! I will not read any more!"

Fortunately, both times I just couldn't feel right about leaving the story at that horrible point and picked the books up again to read a few more pages. And both times I was rewarded to find that there was a kind of recovery, and a literary justification and resolution for the horribleness inflicted, so I was glad I hadn't stopped before I got there. The second part of _Crow_, especially, which catches up with the little girl as an adult, was really well-connected. I was put off by the jump at first (just as I had been with the painful shock earlier in the book -- McDonald *does* that), but ended up really admiring the way that she connected the older woman with the young girl -- you could see them both in each age, sometimes obviously, and sometimes very subtly.

Anyway, I definitely recommend this book, with this admonition to reactionary readers such as myself: "Don't throw it against the wall! Just keep going and you'll get through the agony to reach the understanding!" (Hmm...I guess that's good advice in many circumstances, eh? ;)

4.25 stars

It is the early 1960s. Jack, Mimi and their two kids, Madeleine and Mike, are moving home to Canada from Germany. Jack is part of the Royal Canadian Air Force, and is moving to Centralia, Ontario to train new pilots. They are a happy, normal family, and are able to fit into their new community fairly quickly. After they are there for some time and have all made some good friends, something happens in the community that shatters their lives, as well as the lives of all the families around them. Jack and Madeleine, in particular, have secrets they are keeping, but it’s becoming more and more difficult.

I thought it was very realistic, right from the first few pages with Mike and Madeleine fighting in the backseat of the car. Most of the story was told from either Madeleine’s or Jack’s point of view, but there were parts that were from other character’s points of view, as well. I have to admit that I found my mind drifting through parts involving politics and the military (some of Jack’s part of the story). But overall, a very, very good book.

Onvan : The Way the Crow Flies - Nevisande : Ann-Marie MacDonald - ISBN : 60586370 - ISBN13 : 9780060586379 - Dar 848 Safhe - Saal e Chap : 2003

“The Way The Crow Flies” is not as straightforward as one might anticipate from the title. Rather, it twists expectations on its unflinching journey through the demon-haunted world of little girls, a domain that has never been as innocent or violence-free as our cultural delusion would have it. In this evocative second novel by the acclaimed Canadian author of “Fall On Your Knees,” there are few direct routes.

The crow flies a triangle around its nest atop a rusting air raid siren on a Cold War air force base in southern Ontario. Its domain encompasses a few square miles of field, stream, and military family houses, where a microcosm of domestic and political drama plays out before 8-year old Madeleine McCarthy. This gem of a child character is true to her time and her place. Her thoughts and observations are limited to those things a child finds comprehensible; all things beyond her reasoning are simply walled off. Ms. MacDonald’s spare, beautiful language and avoidance of sentimental illusions breed a purity of perspective too often absent in adult portrayals of children.

The McCarthy family has just returned from a base in West Germany, gladly leaving behind the new-built ‘Wall of Shame’ in Berlin. They settle efficiently into their new home and re-establish their social round. This is the norm for military families: move, make new friends, and then repeat the process in a year or two. Attachments are immediate but always temporary. Only the surroundings endure. Independent of geography, the sameness of air base architecture underlines the family’s internal unity within its ordered demi-world while emphasizing its social and emotional distance from settled, civilian towns and villages.

Other inhabitants take form, their tortures and tender moments observed by Madeleine and her parents. Mysteries multiply with the falling leaves. Mysteries for Madeleine: Who will occupy the last empty house on their street? Who will be her new best friend? Why does the nice teacher have a number tattooed on his arm? How does the creepy teacher compel his female students with candy? Mysteries for her mother: How does drab neighbour Karen manage five children and a job? Do other officers’ wives hide from their husbands the icky old clothes they wear for housework? Will she have another baby? Mysteries for Daddy: Who is the defecting Soviet rocket scientist he will babysit? Will President Kennedy’s blockade of Cuba succeed? Will Prime Minister Diefenbaker put Canada on military alert? Will the Russians drop the Bomb?

Time is fluid, portrayed as a child sees it: drifting onward with a marvelous spaciousness, punctuated by the highs and lows of Madeleine’s childish existence. As the year turns and the snow falls, however, the simmering pot of the Cold War unsettles the base. Skating and socializing and homework are a thin patina of normalcy laid upon a frightening underbelly of nuclear brinksmanship and deadly espionage. The school’s nuclear duck-and-cover drill is subverted to something personally shaming and creepingly evil. Madeleine’s growing emotional isolation is misread by parents preoccupied with wider concerns. Their misguided reassurances compound problems they don’t know exist. The reader watches disaster honing in on a target area, guessing and second-guessing the point of impact although, inevitably, praying for a ‘miss’ on one character must fate the destruction of another.

A child dies. A crow, braver than his fellows, steals her name from the charm bracelet on her delicate, dead wrist. A nuclear winter of suspicion, arrest, and trial dissolves the artificial unity of family and community. Lies are told, truths omitted, spies protected, and a terrible burden of testimony falls on shoulders too young. In typical military fashion, the families transfer out to other identical air bases, to other standard-issue houses and other interchangeable schools. Their internal damage merits merely a fresh coat of paint to hide the cracks as they carry the fallout of their secrets away with them.

But crows are scavengers. They eat death and treasure its tangible reminders. They hold in their nest atop the air raid siren the collective memory of the devastating events in their small kingdom. Fragments of memory fly out at intervals to disturb the adult Madeleine, drawing her back to the peeling paint of her childhood. The soul-wounds and enduring mysteries of her solitary year on the now-closed air base are exposed. People have died and moved and lost themselves. Resolutions are messy and incomplete. Parents tumble from shadowy pedestals. As the Berlin Wall comes down, the only homecoming possible for a Cold War military child is to find those few key survivors who shared with her that year when the Bomb did not actually fall and yet changed all their lives forever.

Compelling as the overall tale is, there are places where the book slips. Both parents’ inner monologues reflect too readily both the stereotypes of the 1950’s and the one-dimensional parental images carried by their young daughter. They seem not complete people. After the gradual, horrifying buildup of the trial, the switch to Madeleine’s adult self seems rudely abrupt. Hoping for reassurance about the wrongly-accused boy, we don’t much care if Madeleine has turned out gay; her adult lifestyle neither adds to nor subtracts from the story. This may be deliberate on the author’s part, a way to emphasize how Madeleine’s family’s next move deprived them all of the opportunity for truth. For the reader still emotionally bound to the fate of other characters, the brief gloss over the intervening years detracts.

These minor flaws are not enough to spoil the journey through a book that, in addition to beautiful storytelling, induces byways of thought about childhood, parenthood, and militarism with a few scattered, simply phrased philosophical observations. “The Way The Crow Flies” is a flight from the illusory 1950’s innocence of children through the dark hinterlands of sexual abuse and patriotic secrets to healing, love, and standup comedy. It is a passionately felt and beautifully written ‘Lord of the Flies’ for girls.