40. The Young in One Another's Arms by Jane Rule

I found this in the free box on Esplanade and just had to take it.  So many factors contributed to this decision:  classic 70s painted cover, Canadian lit and finally it takes place in Vancouver where we were heading for "vacation".  I was wary, believe me, I mean just look at the title.  I was hoping that the location and period trappings would maintain my interest if the narrative got too cloying.  Fortunately, it is not an overly sentimental read, though spent too much time in the main character's head constantly fretting.  Unfortunately, I suspect the author was American and though living in Canada, didn't really seem to either want to or was not able to give it any real Canadian or B.C. or Vancouver flavour.  I wonder if this was a deliberate choice to try and make the setting approachable to potential American readers, like so many films shot in Canada but pretending to be the U.S.

The story is about Ruth Wheeler a middle-aged woman who owns a large house that she manages as a boarding house.  Her daughter died in a car crash a few years earlier at the age of 22 and her husband is away most of the time working on road projects up north.  She is effectively a den mother for a disparate group of what I guess is supposed to be a representative range of the youth of the late 70s, including a draft dodger and a young military runaway.  The neighbourhood they live in has been slated for development, all the houses to be demolished.  Hers was purchased and the dilemma is what to do next.  She plans to move into a condo with her older mother-in-law (also a tenant) and Warren, the shoe salesman with some kind of mental disability that she knows she can't leave him on his own.  Much of the book is the dramas of the various members.  There is a love triangle, then a quadrangle.  The deserter gets arrested.  The husband comes back from time to time and is a chauvinist jerk, though mainly in rhetoric as he doesn't actually block Ruth from doing what she wants.  It's all semi-interesting, though I never felt a strong emotional connection to any of it, beyond admiration for Ruth and her mellow approach to her charges.  Later, a Black character arrives, an educated gay guy whose shtick is to parrot stepinfetchit language and parody the racism around him.  This portrayal is very 70s, though he ends up being a cool and interesting character, about as well fleshed out as the rest of them.  What I did enjoy about the book is that none of the drama was exaggerated or hyped up to create fake tension in the reader.  It just happens and that made most of it feels quite realistic and natural.  There was one false where she recounts a childhood memory where a neighbour smashes all her watermelons because she wanted to taste them before they were ready which just seemed utterly false.

As I read this book, it reinforced the simplistic yet somewhat truthful idea that one could argue that every book is a genre book, with specific conventions that appeal to specific demographics of readers.  The Young in One Another's Arms is ostensibly just a novel, but ultimately it feels targeted to a certain type of semi-progressive but ultimately bourgeois female.  Just as I take pleasure in reading about men preparing equipment and calculating the odds of climbing a snowy mountain pass, I suspect women want to read about other women's constant inner monologue on their changing emotional state in reaction to their past and current events.

I read about Jane Rule and she was indeed an expat and a significant voice of lesbian rights and fiction back in the day.  She spent most of her life with her partner on Galiano and sounds like she was quite a nice person.  I have expanded my CanLit knowledge!