Customer Reviews

Ravensong: A Novel

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Set in the 1950's, Ravensong is a story of a girl trying to find her place in the world. It is a difficult task as she is divided between the white society that educates her and her own native village.

Stacey, the heroine, feels the changes of approching adulthood as she finishes her last year of high school and prepares to attend university. She struggles with a major epidemic in her community, deaths, and the realization of what she has and does not have. She matures throughout the book, learning to take her power for herself.

Canadian Lee Maracle writes from the perspective of a seventeen year old as though she was still there herself. She captures the confusion and excitement, the questions and the fears experienced by everyone who feels their childhood sliping away.

Maracle provides a critical look at the division of white and native cultures. She also examines such issues such as spousal abuse, literacy, lesbianism, predjudice, and the roles of women in a thought provoking way.

My only criticim was the lack of development of Celia, a lesser character in the novel. Celia starts out with great potential that is never fully realized, and infact, she disappears at some points in the story.

Dispite my criticizm, this book illustrates how you can be loved, smart, brave and driven, but that does not change the fact that life is full of questions and is not always easy.

Ravensong is a short, thoroughly enjoyable read.

I agree with the other reviewer who rebuts the idea that Celia's narrative is not fullly developed. I think that Lee Maracle did this deliberately. While I don't know Maracle's exact intentions, and can't say whether Celia represents assimilation, I'm pretty sure for a fact that Celia's disappearing narrative is meant to illustrate marginalization - perhaps marginalization of women (especially the women in white town), and most probably marginalization of the Salish community. Similarly, the fragmented nature of the narrative throughout this book represents a feminist challenge to the logo-centric and linear dominance of other forms of literature.

"Ravensong" is a powerful book about what it means to be the marginal "other". It is also a book that gives a little bit of Salish history, and perhaps First Nations history in general. In other words, "Ravensong" especially through the use of the flu (both literal and metaphorical) shows how the natives throughout Canada have been treated by whites. This book also begins to re-appropriate identity through the main character, Stacey. Stacey at first yearns for the material wealth of the whites in white town. She also doesn't value her own culture. But as the book progresses, Stacey begins a transformation. She begns to decolonize her mind, and finally reaches appreciation for where she has come from.

I am writing in reaction to the other two reviews that claim that Celia's potential as a character is never fully realized. I strongly believe that Maracle chose to portray Celia in this way to comment on how spirituality is lost in the midst of assimilation. Celia imparts visions from the past and appear in the beginning to have a prophetic potential. However, she seems to gradually fade away throughout the novel. Her gradual dismissal should hint to the reader of the gradual dismissal of Natives in history. Since the book deals with the process of losing one's innocence through maturation, it makes sense for a spiritually intuitive young girl like Celia to be neglected in the end.

I started this book wanting to like it but found myself consistantly disappointed. Lee Maracle's writing style is stiff and disjointed. The perspective of the character Stacey is supposed to be from the perspective of a naive, confused, 17 year old girl. Instead it reads like a grown woman reflecting back on being 17 with all the knowledge she has gained since then. The comparisons between the white world and the Native were stiff and contrived. The lack of development of Celia was disappointing and the additions of Raven and Cedar seemed tacked on and under developed. I recommend Tomson Highway's "Kiss of the Fur Queen" over "Ravensong". The characterization of Wesagechak/ Fur Queen is much more compelling and the story is much more interesting.