6/01/01 

A Forest Burning by Carole Giangrande

I have a passion for Canadian women writers. I find their work to be based on a refreshing brand of feminism that seems to have transcended consciousness-raising, gender acrimony and activism. It writes a discourse in which patriarchy is all but invisible, its values ignored, its expectations of action and plot flouted. Canadian women portray worlds in which women have taken their rightful place and live lives in which socially assigned gender constraints are irrelevant. That is entirely, of course, my subjective and unsubstantiated opinion, but Ms Giangrande does nothing to disabuse me of my bias in her A Forest Burning.

The novel has as its central character, air pilot Sally Groves, whom life does not treat at all kindly. In fact, we meet her just as a passenger in her helicopter jumps to his death whilst she is flying him above a devastating forest fire in northern Ontario. Her story spans three countries, two of America's wars and a period of more than 60 years in which she (and the reader) struggle to make sense of, and come to terms with, the cards that fate deals her.

One can read a rather dramatic synopsis of the plot on the website, but for me, the charm of the work is in its characterisation and deft construction. Giangrande disregards linear notions of time and place and instead, builds her story with the randomness that one would a jigsaw puzzle. As each piece of narration is offered and fitted into its niche, so it adds to the meaning of those already placed, and so too, it makes more compelling the need to find and fit another bit in.

If you enjoy A Forest Burning as much as I did, you will also look forward to the publication of her recently completed, Here Comes The Dreamer, a trilogy of novellas set at the beginning, middle and end of the last century, in which she explores the power of the imagination.

Publication and purchase information is on Carole's website, http://www.forestburning.com/ as are the texts of the cover blurbs and excerpts from the book.

Carole Giangrande is a prolific writer of non- and short fiction, and reviews of some of her other work can be read online:

Short Stories

Missing Persons

Non-Fiction

The Nuclear North

Down to Earth