Choral

Cynthia Whissell is a psychology professor at Laurentian University.

When a book demands a good deal of hard work from its readers, it should
give something in return. Choral—“a balled-up story of mothers and
daughters and sisters and aunts”—does not. A sentence from one of
its pages could be applied to each of its many narrators: “All my own
words slid out of my mouth and sprawled wherever they could but they
were so stretched out I don’t think anyone could shape them.”

Discontinuity in narration is no guarantee of deep insight; nor is lack
of punctuation a sign that the author has tapped into a true
stream-of-consciousness. Manipulations of language at multiple levels
(chapter titles, subtitles, and running phrases) annoy by their demands
that the reader engage in continual attempts at clarification. After
referring some two dozen times to the genealogical chart in the front of
the book, this reader gave up trying to establish beyond a reasonable
doubt who was saying what about whom. Reviewers quoted on the back cover
describe this book as dazzling, glorious, gut-slicing, and
unforgettable. It certainly has enough death and sex in it to qualify
for such praise. Its loves are either despairing or perverted, and its
hates inveterate. What it lacks is meaning.

McLaughlin is a visual artist, as well as being a writer. One assumes
that she has selected some significant shapes (words) and colors
(events) and arranged them on her canvas (book) in a manner that might,
if the reader knows enough about the author’s frame of reference,
eventually generate meaning.