{"id":1285,"date":"2012-05-17T00:51:09","date_gmt":"2012-05-17T00:51:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue12\/?page_id=1285"},"modified":"2012-05-17T00:53:01","modified_gmt":"2012-05-17T00:53:01","slug":"amanda-tripp-2","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue12\/writings\/reviews\/amanda-tripp-2","title":{"rendered":"Amanda Tripp"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fiction Review<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Amanda Tripp<\/h6>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Time We All Went Marching<\/h1>\n

by Arley McNeney
\nFredericton: Goose Lane Editions, 2011
\n236 pp. $19.95<\/h6>\n

The Time We All Went Marching is, by far, the best and most satisfying read I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve had all year. I fear that not nearly enough people will happen upon it, or have the sincerely good fortune of reading it, and this would be a real shame, because the novel deserves national and lasting recognition. Arley McNeney\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s voice is true and her story is both tender and thrilling. Discovering the subtleties of the lives she slowly and carefully reveals is both a strange and familiar process:\u00c2\u00a0 by the end, surely we are reading about ourselves in a life we never knew. Indeed, this is our history. McNeney\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s narrative investigation of it is so honest and well-wrought that by the end of this incredible novel, the long-lasting and national psychological impact of the nearly cross-Canada On-To-Ottawa March, and of all the personal striving and struggling for empathy that are echoed in it, are abundantly clear. Moreover, by the end, the March seems suddenly crucial to remember, and to learn from, if we are going to move forward.<\/p>\n

We meet Edie through her stories, as she wrestles with and justifies her escape from her ruined husband. Her stories about Slim are, like the man himself, a tumbled blend of fact and fiction, memory and what she seems to need to believe is true. With her two-year old son in her lap, Edie rides away from a life that is both a personal and intimate war, and an important, if difficult, slice of Canadiana. They journey by train across a frozen landscape, away from a life of alienation and despair, towards one that is even more uncertain.<\/p>\n

The Time We All Went Marching is a rare and exciting blend of historical education and investigation, vibrant and compelling characters, important emotional excavation, and stylish and innovative poetics. Told largely from the perspective of a miner\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s wife who is escaping a life destroyed by the ravages of labour and poverty, McNeney\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s novel blends historical hardships with the intimacy of personal experience in a way that is rarely achieved with so much grace. This may only be Arley McNeney\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s second novel, but it has all the makings of a timeless classic, and is as compelling and rich as any masterpiece I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve ever had the pleasure of reading.\u00c2\u00a0 Perhaps the most impressive aspect of this wonderful story is the multitude of legitimately interesting voices, and their sharp accuracy. McNeney\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s control of language is such that not a word is wasted, and the effect is utterly organic. The novel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s emotional intelligence is surprising and delicate: McNeney never overstates the point, or waxes poetic beyond her characters\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 scope. Her restraint is very perfect, and as such the world of the novel is absolutely absorbing – indeed, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s very hard to leave.<\/p>\n

As they across the snowy lands, Edie and her son Belly each glide in an out of storytelling and memory, so that we see them not only as they see themselves, and their worlds, but how they see each other. Though it is only one facet of this deep little novel, the extreme and conflicted intimacy of the relationship between mother and son is one of McNeney\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s many successes in this powerful work. Despite the psychological and geographical distances that threaten to the characters\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 opportunities for the escapes and connections they want to make, there is a real closeness in the humanity of the novel. Indeed, perhaps it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in so acutely expressing the desire to run away, to be apart, and to not longer be indebted – to each other, and to histories both personal and national – that The Time We All Went Marching does its most important work<\/p>\n

Arley McNeney is an author who absolutely deserves a national following, and whose name will no doubt start appearing in classrooms and graduate seminars, hopefully sooner rather than later. Upon finishing The Time We All Went Marching<\/em> I immediately sought out her first novel, Post<\/em>, and I will anxiously await her next piece of work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fiction Review Amanda Tripp   The Time We All Went Marching by Arley McNeney Fredericton: Goose Lane Editions, 2011 236 pp. $19.95 The Time We All Went Marching is, by far, the best and most satisfying read I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve had all year. I fear that not nearly enough people will happen upon it, or have the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":77,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1285","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue12\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue12\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue12\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue12\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue12\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1285"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue12\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1285\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1290,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue12\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1285\/revisions\/1290"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue12\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/77"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue12\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}