Wonderful tribute to a ‘fairy’

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 03/02/2002 (8889 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Kingfisher Days, By Susan Coyne (Random House Canada, 170 pages, $26)

Reviewed by Linda Rosborough

KINGFISHER days are those calm, halcyon days when the kingfisher’s eggs hatch from nests floating on waveless waters. This dreamy image sets the stage for Kingfisher Days, a beautiful childhood memoir by Toronto actress Susan Coyne, set at the family cottage.

A prominent, privileged family, the Coynes made the two-day trek by train to the family’s Lake of the Woods home every summer. The family were Winnipeggers (a fact not mentioned in the book) living in the East at the time.

In the summer of 1963, something special happened to young Susan, the family’s sensitive child who seemed left out of the daily business of siblings, parents and nanny.

This lovely wee book, with its small black-and-white illustrations, is based on Coyne’s childhood correspondence with R. C. Moir, a good-hearted, elderly neighbour at the cottage and friend to young Susan.

After she discovers an old stone fireplace hidden beneath some leaves and moss, five-year-old Susan is captivated by the prospect of meeting a real fairy. Her father tells her that it was the home of an elf, who ran a boarding house for fairies.

Delighted, she leaves tiny gifts for the fairies — strawberries and wildflowers — which disappear overnight. Soon, letters appear, letters from the proud and banished Princess Nootsie Tah, who writes to Susan on behalf of Queen Mab, “her serene and illiterate highness” and also known as Titania. (Moir, a retired high school inspector, is the secret author, leaving the letters for Susan. Together, they would read from Mr. Moir’s library, which had many books about fairies.)

Fanciful

The letters — a small girl’s introduction to fairies, but also to Shakespeare, Keats, Shelley and Blake — are fanciful and full of personality and humour. Although he was writing them for a five-year-old, Moir’s correspondence to Coyne never condescended. The letters, which had to be read to Susan by an adult, are presented in the book in delicate script writing.

“I am very beautiful and a great princess; I am very proud, but it irks me, Susan, it irks me extremely when people forget how great and beautiful I am, so when you talk about me call me Princess,” reads one letter from Nootsie Tah, the princess scribe.

The reader senses that Moir, too, had a great deal of fun that summer, posing as the diva princess.

Even as she grew up, attending theatre school, marrying and becoming a mother of two, Coyne retained the memories of that magic fireplace, the letters written on pink paper and sealed with wax and the tales of elves, fairies and pixies. (Coyne’s father saved the letters for her.)

Fittingly, she would even play Titania in her acting career.

This sort of book could have been a too-sweet, sticky mess. But Coyne finds just the right tone. She conveys a little girl’s sense of wonder without being cloying or childish. It is whimsical and lyrical, but also has a straight-forward, matter-of-fact quality.

This is the story of the fairy world, of a child’s innocence, of a special friendship and the interconnectedness of life. It’s also about gratitude. What a wonderful tribute to Moir.

Linda Rosborough is a Free Press copy editor.