THE LITTLE SHADOWS by Marina Endicott (Doubleday), 525 pages, $32.95 cloth. Rating: NNN
I have been known to mock the Governor General’s fiction jury when it appears to worry more about its mandate than about the quality of the work. Because the GGs want to honour the regions, for example, the fine but not spectacular Cool Water, which came out of the Prairies, took the prize last year.
This year I’m feeling the opposite. Marina Endicott’s novel The Little Shadows has made the short list, and though it’s not, literarily speaking, a knockout, it does exactly what a worthy GG entry should: shed light on a part of Canada’s history that otherwise would’ve stayed in the dark.
The novel begins several years before the First World War, when Aurora, Clover and Bella are trying to survive on Canada’s vaudeville circuit under the wing of their widowed mother.
Endicott’s plumbed the canon to recreate entire acts by some of the great stage players of the time, reproducing song lyrics and stunts to take the reader right into their world.
Before she started writing fiction, Endicott was herself an actor, and you can tell. She describes the thrill of performance as only someone who’s been there can. And as the sisters develop as artists, she demonstrates her deep knowledge of what it takes to become skilled at stagecraft.
The book is long but told in brief episodes, so it can be read in snatches without getting lost. And that brings me to a tiny weakness in Endicott’s fiction. Like her fine Giller-shortlisted novel Good To A Fault, The Little Shadows, despite its frank treatment of menstruation, pregnancy and sexual assault, is a gentle read. But though it’s not exactly gripping, it is absolutely absorbing.
And, as a work evoking an underappreciated phase in Canada’s stage history, it’s infinitely worthy of its spot on the Governor General’s short list. We find out who wins on Tuesday (November 15).
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