Review: Celia’s Song
By: Christine Smith McFarlane
Celia’s Song is a complex but richly woven story
that involves a Mink who is a shape shifter and serves as a witness to Celia
and her family. Mink chronicles the experiences of Celia’s family on Nuu’chahlnuth
territory over the course of several generations.
Celia’s Song brings to life the destructive legacy
of colonial times and shows a community’s capacity to heal. The characters are
vivid, especially the main character Celia, who is a seer, unconvinced of her
abilities. In several scenes readers can feel the torment that Celia encounters
in her ability as a seer when at one point she is cleaning her house and stops
to “pull the curtain down, turns down the volume of voices off, and lets
herself drift into her private world of scattered moving pictures, disconnected
from current time.”
I love how Celia’s memory is explained. “Her
memories have no order. They roll forward of their own volition in a series of
scenes that slip and slide across the floor of her mind,” because while reading
you can literally feel Celia’s thoughts and what she is going through.
Lee Maracle, is a master at weaving the stories of
Celia and her family and the mink. I also find it intriguing the role of the
sea serpent and how it dislodges itself from a longhouse and the chaos it
brings to the village Celia resides in.
Celia’s Song is a read you will not easily forget.
It sticks with you long after you put it down. It makes you think of the power
of ceremony and how it can get you through the toughest of times
Celia’s Song is
published by Cormorant Books and is 269 pages. ISBN: 9 781770 864 160
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