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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

A bit of everything in tasty local stew

Reviewed by: Jonathan Ball

Posted: 08/21/2010 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

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Arnason has produced a moving, engrossing novel, not a history textbook. (JON GUSTAFSSON)

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Baldur's Song
A Saga
By David Arnason
Turnstone, 236 pages, $19

In this bold and stirring novel, a young boy from Gimli finds himself in Winnipeg during its boomtown days at the turn of the 19th century.

Baldur is temporarily separated from his family and forced to make his way in the unfamiliar city. He's something of a naïf, and relies on his honesty and integrity more than his wits.

This serves him well. As his father says to him late in the novel, "You are like Olaf the Peacock in Laxdaela saga. The world gives you everything you want without much effort. You should be grateful."

It becomes clear that it's not the world, but Winnipeg author David Arnason who grants Baldur's humble wishes.

Arnason, one of our most accomplished writers and a fixture as a professor in both the English and Icelandic departments at the University of Manitoba, appears himself in a frame narrative, claiming Baldur as his great-grandfather and that the novel consists primarily of Baldur's journals: "I am a writer and can believe what I want and make it happen in my writing."

These are the kinds of typical, postmodern games that Arnason has delighted in playing in his numerous short story collections and novels, although he's talented enough to maintain this complex structure without disrupting his narrative or otherwise frustrating readers wanting a strong story.

His previous novel, 2001's King Jerry, was nominated for the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour, and although Baldur's Song isn't primarily comic, it's still very funny in parts.

The story blends a few genres -- it's a love story, a coming-of-age story, a picaresque (a story where a character travels and has comic adventures).

The tone swings between light-hearted comedy and sombre drama, and the novel both mourns and celebrates the lives of the early Icelandic settlers.

The story is also a saga, in the tradition of the Icelandic sagas, stories of worthy men told in a mythic manner but with realistic plots.

In another writer's hands, such a book could become a mess, but Arnason's writing is clear and crisp.

Recounting his earliest memories, Baldur says, "I remember next that the house was filled with people. The cows lived at one end of the house and the people lived at the other end. Everybody except my mother, my grandmother, my brother and me were sick. Every few days, somebody disappeared and never came back."

Elsewhere, Arnason writes, "The lake was filled with fish and everything promised joy."

These bare, lyrical descriptions are a refreshing change. Most writers of historical novels can't resist the temptation to rain down interesting but insignificant details until the reader is drowning.

Jane Urquhart this isn't. Arnason doesn't try to impress you with his research, just engross you with his tale. He's more likely to make a joke than trot out a date or statistic.

As a result, the novel might not satisfy readers primarily interested in learning more about the historical setting.

No, Arnason will only satisfy readers who want a moving, engrossing novel. Instead of suffocating us with interesting but unnecessary information, he describes Winnipeg as it must have seemed through the eyes of its early entrepreneurs.

Jonathan Ball is the author of the poetry books Ex Machina and the forthcoming Clockfire. He teaches creative writing in Winnipeg.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition August 21, 2010 H9

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