My mother was happy that day, we did not know why. And if she was sad the next, we did not know why. And if she was gone the next, we did not know why. It was as if she righted herself continually against some current that never ceased to pull. She swayed continuously, like a thing in water, and it was graceful, a slow dance, a sad and heady dance.
This quote, from the end of the book, is talking about the main character’s mother, but it could equally be talking about her aunt, or the main character, or the book itself. It’s a sad, slow book but it quickly pulls you into its current so that you join the characters in their heady, but sombre, dance
They say that this book breaks with conformity, depicting drifting as an alternative to the usual settled life. I suppose it does in a way; the protagonist, Ruth, eventually breaks with her conventional sister and joins her aunt in a vagrant life, travelling by rail and working when she feels like it. But it in no way glamorizes this life, and to me it seemed like her choice was similar to choosing death. Her sister indeed must presume her dead, since she is reported as being so after their disappearance when they were last seen crossing a precarious rail bridge across a deep and often fatal lake. Ruth’s own grandfather lies at the bottom, trapped forever in the carriage of his runaway train, and her mother is too, sitting at the wheel she drove deliberately (it seems) over a cliff. And her episodes of running away, starting with just to the lake shore and going further afield until her final disappearance, are always linked with fear, and cold. I was all for the heroine to turn from her career and start trying to fit in like her sister.
It seems though that the point of this book is not really the story, although it fascinated me despite it’s gentle and predictable trajectory. The writing, and the meditation on life and death, is the focus. It takes you to another place and another state of mind, a cold, dismal place but one that draws you in, just as Ruth is drawn. It’s a book that deserves rereading to understand fully, although I think I’ll wait for sunnier weather to revisit the foggy world that Robinson has so beautifully and compellingly created.
