Holding My Breath: A Novel
by Sidura Ludwig
THE CHRONICLE HERALD, HALIFAX
31 March 2007, review by Mary Jo Anderson
Click Here to see the original review in context.
Women's lives of last century revealed in trio of novels
Constrictions of society, family form memorable characters
ONE OF THE JOYS of reading is the serendipitous journey from one book to another. Sometimes, unintentionally, reading follows its own linked path. Such was the route between one novel and the next in the three works of fiction I read for this week's column.
Holding My Breath (Key Porter Books, $22.95), a debut novel by Sidura Ludwig, a young writer originally from Winnipeg, is a polished work from a new voice in Canadian literature. It is evident why Ludwig was a recipient of the Canadian Author and Bookman Prize for most promising writer.
Beth Levy, only child of Saul and Goldie Levy, tells her story of growing up within the constrictive embrace of her extended family in post-war Winnipeg. The constricted plot echoes the restrained life offered to each of the women of the Levy family. A claustrophobic atmosphere is created by the story's very structure.
Goldie, from the very beginning, has dreams, of a particular house, of what she wants for her family and of achieving a certain status within the community. Saul works hard at his pharmacy to attain the goals Goldie has set for them.
Beth reveals that she was burdened with these hopes from childhood. "I have grown to understand that expectations can develop very early in a person's life, even before they are born."
Beth says as she thinks of her parents, "I see them sitting on that bed and the promises they are making to each other. They know, should they not fulfill them, then their children will and that is nearly as good."
When Beth's grandmother becomes ill and dies she moves with her parents into her Baba's house. Goldie's two younger sisters are still living at home and Beth comes to spend considerable time with her aunts. It is more like the young woman are Beth's sisters.
Beth absorbs the family melancholy stemming most recently from the grandmother's death but also from the earlier death of Goldie's brother, Phil.
Phil was a pilot during the Second World War and Beth listens endlessly to her Aunt Carrie's stories of him. Phil was passionate about the stars and Beth takes this subject to heart as well, so much so that in her university years, Beth is a serious student of astronomy.
"How do you reach out to someone who is reaching in the other direction?" is a question Beth poses about her Aunt Carrie. But this question reverberates throughout the entire novel.
The characters yearn for something lost or forbidden to them. Each turns from the ones closest to search for what she thinks she needs. Of her Aunt Sarah, Beth may well ask, "How do you reach out to someone who is gone?"
Ludwig is adept at creating the cultural landscape that hems in Beth as much as her family.
The social expectations of the '50s and '60s asked that Beth, and her aunts, should only aspire to being wives and mothers.
As the story unfolds, Beth learns that following your dreams can have as great a cost as not following them.