You Went Away

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian studies at
Concordia University, and the author of Kurlek, Margaret Laurence: The
Long Journey Home, and As Though Life Mattered: Leo Kennedy’s Story.

Timothy Findley uses the novella form brilliantly in this lyrical tale
of a tragic wartime romance. The time is 1942. The main characters are a
married woman nicknamed Mi (“Mi as in my blue heaven”); her
11-year-old son Matthew; her philandering, hard-drinking husband; and a
handsome young RCAF pilot. The story begins with a shoebox full of
photographs, some torn and fragmented like the cover image of a man and
a woman walking together in the rain: “They are leaving together, but
not for the same destination. Even as she touches his arm, something in
the woman’s gesture says: at the corner, we will part.” Findley’s
description of the anonymous photos evokes three decades of Canadian
pre-war history and haunting relationships.

Findley has earned numerous literary awards, including Knight of the
Order of Arts and Letters from France in 1996. You Went Away, with its
delicate probing of the human heart and its rich evocation of time and
place, can only add to that reputation.