We may be making progress on the houses mentioned in the Jane Rule novel. They may have been houses along by the bridge on the left hand side, or they may have been removed for the building of the Aquatic Centre. I am settling on that stretch because in the novel when they move, they move up to Beach Ave (is it?).

The last part of the novel was virtually unreadable, verging on Enid Blyton territory, except for a very interesting moment (a paragraph on p216) when Ruth returns from Galiano to the city and her description could have matched any number of “looking up” moments in the city since the five ring bling behemoth arrived and left and continues.

I especially liked these concrete legs:

“there above her head were giant legs of concrete growing up out of the soil that must have been her garden. The road would lift up on them and flow over the bulbs, the bones of birds and Willard’s blood, just as she had dreamed it, just as it had happened before.”

A few lines later we read:

“Ruth did not go on to the beach, nor did she buy anything for Clara. She took a bus to the terminal and sat there on a bench to wait the hours until she could catch a bus to the ferry.”

There’s always something remarkable when the ordinary and unremarkable is appropriately captured. The hundreds of disappointed legs who’ve taken a bus to a terminal and sat on a bench, all there in that sentence. Or for that matter the ones who’ve been left waiting on a bench.

In any case much to be said for an uneven novel, since you can pay attention to the parts that matter or interest and investigate them closely. Bookcases need to even structurally, books less so.

***

I am struggling co-incidentally with a most unreasonable shelf who refuses to go onto my kitchen wall.