Madeline Sonik's collection of linked stories, Fontainebleau (stories) (Anvil 2020) is set in a troubled city on the Detroit River full of noxious substances and curses where people struggle to free themselves from bad situations. Then a rash of killings occur that a lovesick policeman tries to solve. There are plenty of suspects.

Afflictions and Departures (Anvil 2011) is Madline Sonik's collection of essays that explore personal experiences from her youth, spanning from the late 1950s to the 1970s, was shortlisted for the Charles Taylor Award in 2012. It later received the ninth annual City of Victoria Butler Book Prize at the Victoria Book Prize Society gala in October, 2012. According to promotional materials, "This is not your traditional memoir. Instead Sonik gives the reader a sense of history how it was lived rather than how it was set down in the history books."

Madeline Sonik is a black cord priestess of 13th House Mystery School and a practicing witch. Her first collection of short fiction, Drying the Bones (Nightwood, 2000), was followed by a first novel entitled Arms (Nightwood, 2002), a tale of healing that doubled as her MFA thesis. Combining Wiccan ritual magic, Gnosticism, and alchemy, Arms is a magic-realist novella that opens with the escape of two teenagers from their warzone of a family home. In a nutshell: When their house blows up, shingles tear off the girl's arms, the brother and sister move into the woods, the boy hides his sister in a shack, he goes back to look for her arms, he gets lost in a city and captured by a man who collects boys and treats them like dogs. A hunter rescues his sister and she follows an extraordinary path of enchantment, marriage, agony, ridicule, ritual and self-realization. Healing comes through words. The girl is told by her arms, "Go. write our story."

Madeline Sonik has co-edited several anthologies including When I Was a Child (Oberon, 2004), Entering the Landscape (Oberon) and Fresh Blood: New Canadian Gothic Fiction (Turnstone Press, 1998). Her children's book is Belinda and the Dustbunnys (Hodgepog Books, 2004), illustrated by Grania Bridal. Sonik's fiction and poetry have appeared in Event, Grain, Pottersfield Portfolio, The New Quarterly, Descant and elsewhere. Born in 1960, she holds an MA in Journalism from the University of Western Ontario and has taught at UBC's Creative Writing department while working towards a doctorate in Education.

Fontainebleau: Stories by Madeline Sonik
(Anvil Press $20)

Review by Heidi Greco

Fontainebleau should come with a warning—not the one we so often see at the start of a tv show, though violence and coarse language certainly play a part in these stories.

The warning should be a caution that you won’t be able to put this book down, because these characters and their complicated lives will get into your head and won’t go away.

We’ve become familiar with volumes of linked stories, though it’s rare to find one where the links are as unconventional as these. And it’s worth noting that this book works best by reading it from front to back, something that isn’t always the case with such collections. Dropping in on a story in the middle of the book could leave you gasping, or at least confused, though some will likely leave you gasping anyway.

Victoria-based Madeline Sonik has a raft of degrees: an MFA in Creative Writing, a PhD in Education, and no less than two distinct MAs. But that doesn’t keep her from writing characters who speak in a down-home vernacular, like Hal, in Transition.

“‘Yeah,’ Hal says… ‘It was real fun ‘til this dip-stick got on my case for jumping the line at Space Mountain.’ ‘Y’all know where the end of the line is?’ he asked. ‘Sure do,’ I said and showed him.
“Everyone knew Hal had a spur-of-the-moment temper. He never let on what he might do next. Even way back in grade school, he scared all the teachers.”

Hal isn’t the only character in the fictional town of Fontainebleau who can get hot under the collar. Violence and abuse seem to be the standard way of life there.

Sonik offers a disclaimer at the beginning of the book, explaining that this creation is not the subdivision in Windsor where she grew up, even though like that place, it’s situated on the banks of Detroit River not far from the Ambassador Bridge with the city of Detroit just across the water.

Even the river plays a role in these stories, carrying some of the town’s dirty secrets in its swirling brown currents. “Margaret waded out from the grainy shore and set the boat afloat. The water was sticky and opaque with effluent, and although Margaret attempted to scrutinize its depths, her feet inevitably scraped against sharp metal and other vestiges of life’s wreckage, deposited in the river’s bed.”

Like so many subdivisions that sprang up in the mid-twentieth century, this one seems to have been built in a hurry, with projects and houses popping up helter-skelter. Fields and wild spots still prevail—hiding places for frightened girls, dreamers, deviants or rogues.

Fountainbleau is a town where itinerant carnivals stop, their ill-tended rides an attractive distraction. When children experience the death of a peer, the pain and confusion long endure, leaving a distinctive scar.

The people in these stories bear such scars, left by their experience with the hardships of the world. There’s a woman who takes refuge in a metal cup filled with booze—a talisman, her link with small possibilities. These are people who argue about crop circles and UFOs—men who hide in darkness, or hoot at topless dancers. Crows with shining wings abound and are often the only witnesses to crimes.

Characters we’ve met in one story will show up in another, disjointed as broken Barbie dolls, yet recognizable—and above all, interconnected.

Madeline Sonik’s writing is textured as nubbed corduroy, with visuals that sparkle: “A stoplight beats through his frenzied wipers, a simple streak of red.” Sounds also reverberate throughout these pages: a metal trolley clatters, trains rattle past; these are echoed by a girl dragging herself along with a walker. Voices of the dead intrude, offering advice or a scolding or sometimes even love.

This book has much in common with Winesburg, Ohio, the classic collection of short stories by Sherwood Anderson in 1919. Both are non-linear in nature and offer a raft of troubled characters. Those in Fontainebleau experience problems that are magnified and more brutal, often complicated by stolen cars and steaming wrecks.
Anderson’s book was considered an early example of Modernist writing when it came out. It’s hard not to think of Sonik’s book as a kind of homage to his. Even the style of the map on the inside of the book’s covers looks to be patterned after the one in the Winesburg stories. As at least one character in Fontainebleau points out, “Nothing ever really disappears.” I suspect that the characters in these stories are much like that, in that they too will never disappear. 978-1-77214-148-1 [BCBW 2021]

Heidi Greco lives and writes in Surrey.

SEE PRISM INTERVIEW:

http://prismmagazine.ca/2010/12/14/prism-interviews-madeline-sonik/

BOOKS:

Drying the Bones (Nightwood 2000) 978-0889712409. short fiction

Arms (Nightwood 2002) 9780889711815. novel

Belinda and the Dustbunnys (Hodgepog Books 2004) illustrated by Grania Bridal. kidlit

Stone Sightings (Inanna 2008) 978-0-9782233-9-7. poetry

Afflictions and Departures (Anvil 2011) $20 978-1-897535-67-7. personal essays

The Book of Changes (Inanna 2012) 978-1926708683. poetry

Fontainebleau (stories) (Anvil 2020) $20 978-1-77214-148-1. short fiction

[BCBW 2020] "Fiction"