The Strangers
Adult Fiction
Reviewed by Janine from the Winkler Branch
The Strangers is the follow up novel to Katherena Vermette’s bestseller, The Break. The novel follows the women of the Stranger family as they navigate life, family relationships and loss. The story is told by three generations of Stranger women, who, throughout their struggles, show that the bonds of family can never really be broken. Margaret has always been smart and responsible, but life, including her oldest daughter Elsie, has been disappointing and she struggles with bitterness and anger as an older woman. Elsie, coddled by her Mamere (Margaret’s mother), never really learns to be responsible and can’t live up to the high expectations of her mother. She struggles with addiction and the desire to prove to herself that she can be worthy of her children and a better more responsible person. Elsie’s oldest daughter Phoenix gives birth to a son while in a detention centre and knows she will probably never get to see him grow up. She struggles with controlling her emotions and dealing with life in lock up. After spending time jumping from foster home to foster home, Elsie’s younger daughter Cedar goes to live with her dad, who finally seems to have straightened his life out after dealing with his own struggles as a young man. However, Cedar struggles to fit in with her new family and although they have more than she could have ever dreamed of, it doesn't make up for the fact that she is separated from her mom and her sister.
The story is told over a five year span, with each of the four Stranger women getting one chapter per year. I read this book in less than a week because it was so interesting. While at times hard to read, Vermette is an amazing story teller who paints a vivid picture of what life is like for the Stranger women. I also enjoyed the familiarity of the Winnipeg setting, which helped me to better visualize what was happening. Admittedly, I had a very hard time reading Margaret’s chapters. She had so much bitterness and anger over all the things that had gone wrong in her life that it clouded her perspective and affected the way she reacted to everything in her life. She was unable to enjoy anything good because she was so focused on the negative.
I read The Break a few years ago when it was one of the selections for Canada Reads and I remember being surprised at how much I liked the book. It wasn't something I would have normally read, but I was trying to read all of the Canada Reads books that year so I picked it up. When I saw that Vermette had a new book coming out this fall, I knew I had to read it too and it definitely did not disappoint. She captures the family dynamics so well and it is easy to empathize with the characters. Her writing style really brings the story to life and kept me captivated until the very end.
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