The picture on the cover of The View from the Lane by Deborah-Anne Tunney shows tire tracks in a snow-covered lane leading to a large, old house. It is night time and a street light illuminates the entrance to the yard. Even in darkness, the house feels welcoming. One can imagine it teeming with life in the daytime, full of tales of everyday life like those contained in this debut book of connected short stories.
Amy is the link in this collection. The nineteen stories follow her life as a child in Ottawa in the 1950s, as a wife and young mother in a small Ontario town, and her later years back in Ottawa. The stories span a time frame from the early twentieth century, when Amy’s mother is a child, to the early twenty-first century.
Overture, the first piece, provides a short two-page introduction. It contains two scenes. In the first scene Amy is a four-year-old girl looking out the window as the snow falls and her father lies dying. In the second scene, fifty years later, Amy stands at the window of her mother’s nursing home room. Again snow is falling. The room is described as “warm, and crowded with memories and shadows.” Those memories and shadows fill the subsequent stories.
The stories are told from multiple perspectives and points of view, more than half from Amy’s perspective, some in first person, others in third person. Several stories are told by an omniscient narrator with focus shifting among several characters. Amy’s mother talks to us as she nears death in “Visitations”. “Evandie” is from the perspective of her caregiver.
The second story “Nelson Street” is about the lives of the four Howard girls, starting with their childhood in Ottawa in the 1920s. The Howard family also has five boys, but they are barely mentioned in the story and all but one move away during the Depression. The story tracks the lives of the four sisters as they marry, have children, divorce, remarry, and become widowed. The youngest of these sisters is June, Amy’s mother. In the latter years of their lives, they reminisce and remember fondly their time on Nelson Street. “When June spoke of her sisters and the years they lived together, a softness would come over her face, a contemplation, the look that let Amy know she was really talking about love.” The scenes in “Nelson Street” go back and forth in time and change focus from one sister to another. It can be confusing at times, but worth the reader’s attention. These women re-appear in other stories and are prominent in Amy’s life and memories.
Most stories in the book are comprised of several short scenes. They do not follow a chronological order, but weave back and forth in time. Individual stories also cover several time periods. The reader discovers Amy and the people in her life much the same way we get to know people in real life, learning bits and pieces about their life and history over time.
One story in the collection feels out of place. “Us Dogs” is a poignant story about domestic abuse told from a dog’s perspective. It takes place in the neighbourhood Amy grows up in, but the humans in the story, never mentioned by name, seem to have no connection to Amy.
The author provides glimpses into characters’ thoughts, but doesn’t dwell long in their minds. The stories unfold through actions and dialogue. Descriptions are vivid, but not lengthy. For example, small details scattered throughout “Her Mother’s Daughter” combine to create a familiar picture of an ordinary post-World War II household: stairs off the kitchen leading to the rec room in the basement where the family watches television, the picture window in the living room, the hallway plastic mat for wet galoshes, the hiss of the radiator, and children eating Sunday dinner in the kitchen because there are too many people for the dining room. At times, descriptive detail is packed into one sentence rich with clauses, as in the following, also from “Her Mother’s Daughter”:
Winter suited us: the howl of wind, the frost as thick as calluses on the window, the sleet we could see blowing along the icy sidewalks in long, crystal strands, all served to isolate us in our home that creaked under the weight of all that winter snow.
The manner in which Amy is revealed to the reader is a sharp contrast to the way Olive is revealed in Elizabeth Strout’s Pulitzer Prize winning book Olive Kitteridge. Portraits of Olive and other recurring characters are also painted through a series of stories. Olive, not a particularly likeable character, looms large. She is prominent in most of the stories, as is her impact on other characters. In The View from the Lane, Amy remains more in the background, often an observer. The focus is more on the effect these other people have on Amy than her effect on them.
In “Toadhead,” when a conversation between Amy and her mother, now in a nursing home, turns to remembering when Amy was a teenager, Amy’s mother says, “And secretive, so secretive. I never knew what you were thinking.” The reader may feel the same way. We learn what happens to Amy throughout her life. Her thoughts and feelings are sometimes shared, but there is still a part of Amy which remains hidden. In spite of this, the reader is likely to feel a connection with her. The reader may ache at her paternal grandmother’s dislike in “Her Mother’s Daughter,” feel Amy’s pain, anger, and confusion when her husband leaves her in “Worst Snowstorm of the Year,” and hope for her happiness in “Toadhead”.
The View from the Lane feels like a memoir, with a sense of looking backward in time, a feeling of remembering. The shift in time periods contributes to that, as do the occasional references to the future. In “Studebaker,” for example, when talking about the care her sister and mother took in choosing clothing and doing their hair, Amy states, “In later years it would be my inability to care about such rituals that would define me as a different sort of woman.”
Each story stands on its own, but woven together in one book, the stories become richer, revealing a woman’s life through memories and the people who influenced her. The View from the Lane is a satisfying read.
Enfield & Wizenty | 208 pages | $19.95 | paper | ISBN # 978-1927855027
‘The View from the Lane’ by Deborah-Anne Tunney
Book Reviews
The picture on the cover of The View from the Lane by Deborah-Anne Tunney shows tire tracks in a snow-covered lane leading to a large, old house. It is night time and a street light illuminates the entrance to the yard. Even in darkness, the house feels welcoming. One can imagine it teeming with life in the daytime, full of tales of everyday life like those contained in this debut book of connected short stories.
Amy is the link in this collection. The nineteen stories follow her life as a child in Ottawa in the 1950s, as a wife and young mother in a small Ontario town, and her later years back in Ottawa. The stories span a time frame from the early twentieth century, when Amy’s mother is a child, to the early twenty-first century.
Overture, the first piece, provides a short two-page introduction. It contains two scenes. In the first scene Amy is a four-year-old girl looking out the window as the snow falls and her father lies dying. In the second scene, fifty years later, Amy stands at the window of her mother’s nursing home room. Again snow is falling. The room is described as “warm, and crowded with memories and shadows.” Those memories and shadows fill the subsequent stories.
The stories are told from multiple perspectives and points of view, more than half from Amy’s perspective, some in first person, others in third person. Several stories are told by an omniscient narrator with focus shifting among several characters. Amy’s mother talks to us as she nears death in “Visitations”. “Evandie” is from the perspective of her caregiver.
The second story “Nelson Street” is about the lives of the four Howard girls, starting with their childhood in Ottawa in the 1920s. The Howard family also has five boys, but they are barely mentioned in the story and all but one move away during the Depression. The story tracks the lives of the four sisters as they marry, have children, divorce, remarry, and become widowed. The youngest of these sisters is June, Amy’s mother. In the latter years of their lives, they reminisce and remember fondly their time on Nelson Street. “When June spoke of her sisters and the years they lived together, a softness would come over her face, a contemplation, the look that let Amy know she was really talking about love.” The scenes in “Nelson Street” go back and forth in time and change focus from one sister to another. It can be confusing at times, but worth the reader’s attention. These women re-appear in other stories and are prominent in Amy’s life and memories.
Most stories in the book are comprised of several short scenes. They do not follow a chronological order, but weave back and forth in time. Individual stories also cover several time periods. The reader discovers Amy and the people in her life much the same way we get to know people in real life, learning bits and pieces about their life and history over time.
One story in the collection feels out of place. “Us Dogs” is a poignant story about domestic abuse told from a dog’s perspective. It takes place in the neighbourhood Amy grows up in, but the humans in the story, never mentioned by name, seem to have no connection to Amy.
The author provides glimpses into characters’ thoughts, but doesn’t dwell long in their minds. The stories unfold through actions and dialogue. Descriptions are vivid, but not lengthy. For example, small details scattered throughout “Her Mother’s Daughter” combine to create a familiar picture of an ordinary post-World War II household: stairs off the kitchen leading to the rec room in the basement where the family watches television, the picture window in the living room, the hallway plastic mat for wet galoshes, the hiss of the radiator, and children eating Sunday dinner in the kitchen because there are too many people for the dining room. At times, descriptive detail is packed into one sentence rich with clauses, as in the following, also from “Her Mother’s Daughter”:
Winter suited us: the howl of wind, the frost as thick as calluses on the window, the sleet we could see blowing along the icy sidewalks in long, crystal strands, all served to isolate us in our home that creaked under the weight of all that winter snow.
The manner in which Amy is revealed to the reader is a sharp contrast to the way Olive is revealed in Elizabeth Strout’s Pulitzer Prize winning book Olive Kitteridge. Portraits of Olive and other recurring characters are also painted through a series of stories. Olive, not a particularly likeable character, looms large. She is prominent in most of the stories, as is her impact on other characters. In The View from the Lane, Amy remains more in the background, often an observer. The focus is more on the effect these other people have on Amy than her effect on them.
In “Toadhead,” when a conversation between Amy and her mother, now in a nursing home, turns to remembering when Amy was a teenager, Amy’s mother says, “And secretive, so secretive. I never knew what you were thinking.” The reader may feel the same way. We learn what happens to Amy throughout her life. Her thoughts and feelings are sometimes shared, but there is still a part of Amy which remains hidden. In spite of this, the reader is likely to feel a connection with her. The reader may ache at her paternal grandmother’s dislike in “Her Mother’s Daughter,” feel Amy’s pain, anger, and confusion when her husband leaves her in “Worst Snowstorm of the Year,” and hope for her happiness in “Toadhead”.
The View from the Lane feels like a memoir, with a sense of looking backward in time, a feeling of remembering. The shift in time periods contributes to that, as do the occasional references to the future. In “Studebaker,” for example, when talking about the care her sister and mother took in choosing clothing and doing their hair, Amy states, “In later years it would be my inability to care about such rituals that would define me as a different sort of woman.”
Each story stands on its own, but woven together in one book, the stories become richer, revealing a woman’s life through memories and the people who influenced her. The View from the Lane is a satisfying read.
Enfield & Wizenty | 208 pages | $19.95 | paper | ISBN # 978-1927855027