Watermark, the story collection from Christy Ann Conlin, is striking in many ways, but I was not prepared for the emotional resonance that sprung forth from its pages.
The collection is made up of eleven stories, many taking the reader into the Annapolis Valley, but it is not the place many of us may feel familiar with. This is a stark and sometimes dark place, hiding mysteries and threats that we may only be mildly aware of until it is too late.
It is a place of family legend, misty shores and family homes and secrets abandoned in the forest.
Eyeball in your Throat takes us through the broken communication lines of a mother and daughter, neither living up to the other’s expectations. Watching from the reader’s perspective is a harrowing perch.
The woman at the heart of The Diplomat is a wonderful example of the indecision of not only youth but life. As she takes us through her observations and choices, we see that every step can send us in a different direction, but that journey should not be something to fear. Love and longing can send us across oceans, but what we find when we arrive can be different than what we expected. I was moved nearly to tears by her possible love interest’s resignation to his exile and existence outside the light of society or the reach of his loved ones.
There have been few stories that gripped me with more dread and foreboding than Full Bleed. My sense of Alister MacLeod’s presence in the language and stoic reasoning of the failing elderly, was then overwhelmed by the sound of Cormac McCarthy’s whispers as the young widower was led into the dark woods in search of a family home and what the past had brought to bear.
In reading these stories, there is a clear and vibrant sense of place, of hands reaching deep into the earth, fingers stained by history, time and saltwater in the blood.
From the story Desire Lines, “I loved this path that cut through the tall grasses. In the meadow, purple vetch threaded up through the grass stems and touched my mother’s round belly. The grasses grew so high they were taller than me, but I could look up and see how they touched my mother’s breasts. I drew pictures on her stomach with icing coloured with beet and carrot juice. Then she’d let me lick it off. The acreage was mostly forest, except for the clearing around a large, rickety barn. They put a sandbox in the clearing where I played with my pail and shovel.” This intertwined connection between people and the land they live and die on, the soil reaching up to connect with our emotional resonance, was present everywhere in these stories.
It was, however, the lives of the characters that touched me most. The fractured geology of family connections in tatters, broken lines of communication, it all felt like a beautiful and complex jigsaw puzzle. One that I had no picture to build with, just clues divined from a shoreline’s description, a character’s remark, a child’s memory.
Her views of a child’s observations of her parent’s relationship, infidelities and eventual breakdown and aftermath, were so on point and clearly drawn I was fearful of asking the author how close to her own experiences these were.
Conlin hints at outcomes with beauty and a full tool set. A sailboat is described as “a coffin with standing room.”
In Occlusion, where the mechanics of family and friendship are explored in deep and unsentimental ways, we are told, “It was the summer grief pressed in upon me in the way a watermark imprints paper, permanent and imperceptible in certain light.” Reading that on a page is one thing but catching that line where it falls within the story is grace in motion.
Conlin’s visual vocabulary is also striking, and her moments stayed with me for weeks after. The image of a father reciting Wordsworth while driving his bleeding daughter to the emergency room, a neighbour carrying a dead cat back to its owner in the wee hours, grab you and leave a trace of your reading them. They are images I will await and anticipate, even though I know they are coming, on future readings.
This collection is an achievement, and the stories reach further than they would have in someone else’s hands. A couple of the stories start in places that readers of Canadian writers may feel they have walked this road before, but be patient, Conlin is taking you somewhere you have not been. You will be moved, frightened and perhaps even lightly scarred, but the journey is the what makes this worth it. And the scars show you have made it.
Watermark, Stories by Christy Ann Conlin, is published by the Astoria imprint from House of Anansi Press, and is available at all Independent and Major bookstores.