Clara Callan [Abridged, Audiobook] [Audio CD]

Richard B. Wright (Author), Anne Twomey (Performer), Joanna P. Adler (Performer)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 24, 2002

Two sisters, small-town Ontario, 1934. Canadian author Richard Wright tells their story, from the ordinary to the extraordinary, with an eye for the commonplace and poignant sense of the larger undercurrents that change people's lives.

Letters and journal entries form a portal into the desires and passions of two very different women, underscoring the larger tableau of an era stirring with great events--the Depression, rumblings of another world war, and the infancy of radio and show business entertainment. Love and betrayal, friendship and family, hope and deception are the forces that temper the lives of Clara, the spinster schoolteacher, and her sister Nora, "whose enter life is a performance."

Wright, a master of revealing the drama of seemingly unremarkable lives, constructs a powerful, mesmerizing narrative. Clara Callan is a deeply moving portrait of two women and of an age heralding seismic changes that will alter the fabric of their inner lives and the world as they once knew it.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

A finely detailed depiction of the Depression era, Richard B. Wright's Clara Callan is told entirely in the letters and journal entries of two adult sisters, Clara and Nora Callan, and their older lesbian friend, Evelyn. The novel, Wright's ninth, made a surprising sweep of Canada's major awards for best novel--the Giller Prize and the Governor General's Award--in 2001. Wright has the gift of making the reader care deeply about these characters and their worlds, which include small town Ontario, where Clara is a sensitive schoolteacher, and New York City, where the younger Nora has moved to become a radio soap opera star. Since both sisters are still "on the shelf," their roller-coaster love lives--Nora's in worldly Manhattan and Clara's in the more restrictive atmosphere of small-town spinsterhood--are a primary subject of their letters and Clara's journal.

This is a quiet book, studied and well researched, but thoroughly engaging and readable. Numerous references to period music, political events, and the looming war quite successfully place the reader at both the centre and the periphery of life in the 1930s. Side trips to Italy and to view the Dionne quintuplets feel entirely authentic. With deceptive simplicity, the author creates a world of clear images: "Nora came in from her shuffleboard game with a sweater tied across her shoulders, her hair damp from the rain." Most importantly, Wright has realized characters that come alive on the page--quite a feat considering the self-imposed limitations of this novel's form. --Mark Frutkin, Amazon.ca --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Canadian author Wright (The Age of Longing) has published eight novels, but remains unknown to most readers in the States. His most recent offering, which won Canada's 2001 Governor General's Award and the Giller Prize, could change that. The story's conceit is simple enough: Clara Callan is a single "schoolteacher who likes to write poetry," left to fend for herself in the tiny town of Whitfield, Ontario, after her father dies and her sister, Nora, takes off for New York City. The novel is made up of a series of letters and journal entries written between 1934 and 1939. During that time, Nora becomes a radio soap opera star, while Clara loses her faith in God, is raped by a vagrant, has an abortion, engages in an affair with a married man named Frank and finally gives birth to a daughter. Nora and the lesbian writer of her soap opera, Evelyn Dowling, are Clara's main correspondents, but the news she relates in her letters (such as "grippe and calloused hands"-although she also shows concern for the world's more serious injustices) contrasts with the darker events recorded in her journal entries. Wright has accomplished an amazing feat by allowing his characters to emerge, fully formed and true, without authorial intrusion into their intimate psychological world, revitalizing the epistolary form in the process. This novel will remind some readers of the American poet Elizabeth Bishop, herself an avid correspondent, and of the way in which the elegant surfaces of her letters sometimes cracked open to reveal demons lurking below.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Audio CD
• Publisher: HighBridge Company; Abridged edition (October 24, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565117611
• ISBN-13: 978-1565117617
• Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,859,354 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars SISTERHOOD, ROMANCE AND FRIENDSHIP IN THE "GOOD OLD DAYS", February 1, 2008

By 

Red Rock Bookworm (St. George Utah) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Clara Callan: A Novel (Paperback)

Clara Callan provided its readers with a nostalgic return to the days of yesteryear when housewives escaped their humdrum existence by fulfilling their romantic dreams and fantasies via serialized radio programs and having a child out of wedlock was akin to wearing a scarlet letter.

Richard B. Wright has managed to capture the emotions and morals of the late 1930's and early 1940's in this epistolary morality tale of two sisters, Clara and Nora, one a teacher residing in small, clannish Canadian town and the other a "soap opera" actress pursuing a career in New York City.

Wright's look at the plight of females of this era, attempting to maneuver through the social expectations of society while pursuing their own goals, is startling in its insight and accuracy and almost makes one feel as if this novel were written by a woman. (High praise indeed).

When all is said and done, Clara Callan shows us freedom to pursue ones dreams comes with a price, and that perhaps things were not really so good in the "good old days".

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An unremarkable life?, November 27, 2002

By 

Friederike Knabe (Ottawa, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Clara Callan: A Novel (Hardcover)

Clara Callan, the protagonist of Wright's novel, is a small town spinster in the 1930s. She lives a reasonably comfortable life thanks to the inheritance of her father's house and a job as a local schoolteacher. Through her diary entries and exchanges of letters, mainly with her more glamorous younger sister Nora, Clara reveals herself to the reader. Wright has created a believable character that "grows on you" as her personality emerges little by little. Life's difficulties during the Depression years, in particular for a single woman in rural Southern Ontario become apparent through the description of daily events. However, a very dramatic personal incident and its aftermath force Clara to confront her new circumstances in a very direct manner. While she was accustomed to express her daily experiences and reflections in poems, events interfere and poetry becomes impossible. She recognizes "how suddenly a life can become misshapen, divided brutally into before and after a dire event." Her beliefs are challenged and so is her self-contained whole-ness as a person.

Clara's personal story is embedded in the realities of the mid-thirties where unemployment is rife and poverty spreading. Although at the periphery of the main thrust of the book, Wright alludes to the emerging pre-war anxieties. He touches on the contrasts between city and rural living, utilizing Clara's reluctance to accept such innovations as the telephone, as an example. Yet, the regular Saturday trips to Toronto, perceived by her as a necessary escape from the village, lead to a new, important phase in her personal development, giving her also a new taste of independence. She visits her sister in New York, although in rather difficult time in her life. Cleverly, Wright lets her visit pre-war Italy as a third party to her sister's vacation. It allows the author to add impressions of the growing political conflicts in Europe as a backdrop without losing the focus of the story.

The counterweight to Clara is Nora, who could not bear small-town Ontario and leaves for New York to "make it in radio". She becomes successful as a radio voice in daytime "soaps" and her personal life seems to take on some aspects of a soap opera itself. Nora is privileged in finding a solid rock in a glamorous female friend, Evelyn, while her on and off affairs are far less successful. Clara, always concerned about her sister and her superficial lifestyle, attempts to remain the firm family base for her sister, but her own life story places her more and more on a shaky ground. She finds advice and empathy through her correspondence with Evelyn.

Clara Callan is a very engaging story indeed. Wright successfully places himself into the mind of a woman: Clara's personality quietly and gently takes hold of the reader as one follows her in the exploration of the multifaceted realities of her time and place.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Canadian Literature at its Finest, October 16, 2002

By 

Kelly Budd (Alberta, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Clara Callan: A Novel (Hardcover)

Richard B. Wright has penned a novel that is written with poetic style and grace. Clara Callan centres on the two Callan sisters - Clara and Nora. Nora, the younger sister has set out for New York to advance her career as a radio performer. The subdued Clara, remains in Whitfield were she continues on as a school teacher. Both of the Callan parents have died and all that remain are Clara and Nora.

The novel is compromised of letters that are sent between the two sisters over the period of 4 years - 1934-1938. In between the letters, Clara keeps a journal that details her life in her small Ontario town. Through the journal entries and the letters, the reader will become part of the Callan sister's lives. Clara Callan will have the reader look beyond the ordinary to the complexity that makes life. Each sister will face numerous challenges and obstacles that strengthen their hold on themselves and each other.

Set at the time of the great depression and the onset of World War 2, Wright was able to make the 30's come alive. Aside from the pending war, he details the events of the time with such description and authority. The reader experiences the marvel that `Gone With The Wind' incited and the fist color movie, `Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs'. We experience the telephone and the amazing birth of the Dionne Quints.

Richard B. Wright is truly a master of his craft. Clara Callan is a novel that is destined to reach further than just a Canadian audience.