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Patrin (Mother Tongue $17.95)
The Romani-or Roma-are not from Rome or Romania. They are nomads with no homeland of their own. Until recently they have mostly been called gypsies. They originated on the Indian subcontinent. For centuries Roma have been persecuted and hounded from place to place, mainly in Europe.
In Theresa Kishkan's compelling novella, Patrin (Mother Tongue $17.95), a Canadian narrator named Patrin Szkandery uncovers her ancestral past via her Roma grandmother, a woman who left with her family, bound for Canada, from Moravia in Central Europe.
Sailing from Antwerp to Saint John, N.B. aboard the Mount Temple (the same ship that brought the author's non-fiction grandmother to Canada in the same year), Patrin's grandmother, in her late teens, fell in love with a gadzo (non Roma) man, and was cast out of her tribe for this taboo violation. Her mother gave her a quilt as a parting gift.
The young couple married, settled outside Edmonton, and had one child-Patrin's father.
From her grandmother, Patrin inherits the old quilt. As Patrin restores the quilt, it begins to mean more than a warm coverlet, redolent with the smells of sheep and wood smoke, under which she slept with her widowed grandmother. The fabric tells a story.
Patches of loden and homespun cloth alternate with scraps of rich velvet, remnants from the cast-offs of a landowner with whom her great-grandfather found temporary work.
Then, her close attention to the intricate pattern of leaves brings a further revelation. They come from various trees, clearly differentiated and botanically exact. As her fingers trace the stitches around them, she learns that the quilt was fashioned as a map by its creator-her Roma great-grandmother who wept when she had to leave behind the graves of her dead babies.
Behind one leaf, Patrin finds a scrap of paper bearing eight words in a language she doesn't understand.
The leaf design of the quilt is replicated in the imagery and structure of this intricately wrought novella, as well as on its book jacket.
The narrator-who was named by her grandmother-learns that Patrin not only means 'leaf' but also refers to the bundles of twigs that Roma left as signs for their fellow travelers. The leaves of the quilt become signs that guide Patrin as she travels through the region of former Czechoslovakia where her ancestors roamed before their journey to Canada. Her geographical quest is the outer manifestation of an inner journey of self-discovery.
The novella is made up of fifty-nine fragments, various in length, dated in the 1970s, and woven together in a non-linear pattern. They describe the episodes in Patrin's life that culminate in the discovery of her Roma family's camping grounds in the Beskydy Mountains, situated along the borders of the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland.
One segment describes her solitary journey to Europe as a teenager. On a ferry bound for Crete she hears music played on an unfamiliar instrument. Drawn to the musician, she learns that he is part Roma, and that his instrument is a zurna; the two become lovers. This affair resembles her grandmother's own intimate adventure.
Other segments take place after Patrin returns home to Victoria. While working in an antiquarian bookstore on Fort Street, she hears a poet (who can easily be viewed as the late Robin Skelton) read from a collection of ancient folklore. When the poet intones an ancient poem for the consecration of cloth, Patrin seems to hear a voice speaking to her across the decades. She feels a strange nostalgia for something unknown that lurks in her DNA.
Ever since her childhood, Patrin's dark skin tone, her unusual name and solitary habits have given her a sense of alienation. She is a reader and a writer-and yet, when Patrin attends a salon in the poet's home, and a session of his creative writing class at the university, she feels little affinity with the articulate members of the creative writing class.
It is the incantatory voice of the old folklorist that guides her towards the tradition to which she belongs. For all the temporal and geographical differences between Patrin and her forebears, the atavistic connection between them is strong. Like her Roma great-grandparents, she is a wanderer.
Mirroring the stitched framework of the quilt, Kishkan deftly weaves an account of Patrin's early years, and the life story of her grandmother, in and around Patrin's first journey to Europe, and a final one to what was once known as Czechoslovakia. The gateway to her appreciation of her racial heritage is that threadbare quilt-the legacy of her Roma grandmother-like a map with roadways to her heart. 978-1-896949-51-2
Novelist and critic Joan Givner reviews from Mill Bay.
In Theresa Kishkan's compelling novella, Patrin (Mother Tongue $17.95), a Canadian narrator named Patrin Szkandery uncovers her ancestral past via her Roma grandmother, a woman who left with her family, bound for Canada, from Moravia in Central Europe.
Sailing from Antwerp to Saint John, N.B. aboard the Mount Temple (the same ship that brought the author's non-fiction grandmother to Canada in the same year), Patrin's grandmother, in her late teens, fell in love with a gadzo (non Roma) man, and was cast out of her tribe for this taboo violation. Her mother gave her a quilt as a parting gift.
The young couple married, settled outside Edmonton, and had one child-Patrin's father.
From her grandmother, Patrin inherits the old quilt. As Patrin restores the quilt, it begins to mean more than a warm coverlet, redolent with the smells of sheep and wood smoke, under which she slept with her widowed grandmother. The fabric tells a story.
Patches of loden and homespun cloth alternate with scraps of rich velvet, remnants from the cast-offs of a landowner with whom her great-grandfather found temporary work.
Then, her close attention to the intricate pattern of leaves brings a further revelation. They come from various trees, clearly differentiated and botanically exact. As her fingers trace the stitches around them, she learns that the quilt was fashioned as a map by its creator-her Roma great-grandmother who wept when she had to leave behind the graves of her dead babies.
Behind one leaf, Patrin finds a scrap of paper bearing eight words in a language she doesn't understand.
The leaf design of the quilt is replicated in the imagery and structure of this intricately wrought novella, as well as on its book jacket.
The narrator-who was named by her grandmother-learns that Patrin not only means 'leaf' but also refers to the bundles of twigs that Roma left as signs for their fellow travelers. The leaves of the quilt become signs that guide Patrin as she travels through the region of former Czechoslovakia where her ancestors roamed before their journey to Canada. Her geographical quest is the outer manifestation of an inner journey of self-discovery.
The novella is made up of fifty-nine fragments, various in length, dated in the 1970s, and woven together in a non-linear pattern. They describe the episodes in Patrin's life that culminate in the discovery of her Roma family's camping grounds in the Beskydy Mountains, situated along the borders of the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland.
One segment describes her solitary journey to Europe as a teenager. On a ferry bound for Crete she hears music played on an unfamiliar instrument. Drawn to the musician, she learns that he is part Roma, and that his instrument is a zurna; the two become lovers. This affair resembles her grandmother's own intimate adventure.
Other segments take place after Patrin returns home to Victoria. While working in an antiquarian bookstore on Fort Street, she hears a poet (who can easily be viewed as the late Robin Skelton) read from a collection of ancient folklore. When the poet intones an ancient poem for the consecration of cloth, Patrin seems to hear a voice speaking to her across the decades. She feels a strange nostalgia for something unknown that lurks in her DNA.
Ever since her childhood, Patrin's dark skin tone, her unusual name and solitary habits have given her a sense of alienation. She is a reader and a writer-and yet, when Patrin attends a salon in the poet's home, and a session of his creative writing class at the university, she feels little affinity with the articulate members of the creative writing class.
It is the incantatory voice of the old folklorist that guides her towards the tradition to which she belongs. For all the temporal and geographical differences between Patrin and her forebears, the atavistic connection between them is strong. Like her Roma great-grandparents, she is a wanderer.
Mirroring the stitched framework of the quilt, Kishkan deftly weaves an account of Patrin's early years, and the life story of her grandmother, in and around Patrin's first journey to Europe, and a final one to what was once known as Czechoslovakia. The gateway to her appreciation of her racial heritage is that threadbare quilt-the legacy of her Roma grandmother-like a map with roadways to her heart. 978-1-896949-51-2
Novelist and critic Joan Givner reviews from Mill Bay.
Submitted on March 1, 2016 in By David.
