River Reel

This is a fine portrayal of the mother-daughter relationship. It expertly conveys the tension, love and impatience one suffers with the other. And yet there is the undercurrent of caring and the notion that each must submit a little to the other's demands and faults. It also handles past loves of both women in a believable fashion, allowing the reader to understand and relate to each of these women's past lives that define them in the present. An engaging, fine read.

— by Iris Nowell
Amazon.ca  May 24, 2006

River Reel is a powerful portrayal of a relationship between an aging, very ill mother and her middle aged daughter when the daughter becomes the caretaker of the mother. The book sensitively captures the love, tensions, impatience, memories of past conflicts and ultimately deep caring that is so typical of such a relationship. As someone who recently was required to provide care for my ailing mother, I found River Reel very poignant and true to life.

— by Elizabeth D. Bohnen
Amazon.ca  Aug 28, 2007

A new book by Canadian novelist Bonnie Laing explores mother-daughter relationships. River Reel is a poetic debut novel from Bonnie Laing, a promising writer from Eastern Ontario.

There have been thousands of books devoted to mother-daughter dynamics and every popular chick lit novel is sure to explore modern women's relationships with their mothers ... but this is not chick lit: this is literature, at its finest.

There are no bells and whistles in River Reel, published last fall by Sumach Press. No ferocious female socialites wearing Manolo Blahniks, no Prada-clad power-hungry career women. What you find in Bonnie Laing's first novel are real women whose problems are not in the least bit glamorous. Yet River Reel is a page-turner, a book that whispers bittersweet truths and seduces the reader not with flash and high drama, but with the slow, steady pace found in traditional story-telling. This is what happened. This is how it happened.

People love; people get hurt.

When her mother, Annie, suffers a devastating stroke, out-of-work actress Helen reluctantly moves to Glengarry — a remote town in Eastern Ontario — to become her full-time caretaker. Helen is portrayed as a loving daughter to a demanding woman, whose real life has been shattered, making room for half-sketched memories of the way things used to be ... or were they?

Helen dreams of fame, of being the center of attention, the object of her public's — and her mother's — adoration. Annie reminisces about heartbreak and spends every waking hour blaming one person after another for every failure she has ever encountered ... but it is Helen, by her very presence at her mother's side, who gets targeted the most by the older woman's incessant emotional abuse.

River Reel is a simple story, well told ... and well worth reading.

A 2004 Statistics Canada study found that about 712,000 Canadians between the ages of 45 and 64 fall within the ranks of the 'sandwich generation' the home, and taking care of a senior citizen.

In her novel River Reel, Canadian author Bonnie Lain explores the relationship between 'sandwich generation' poster child Helen and her mother Annie, two women whose roles became reversed when the nearly 80-year-old Annie suffers a debilitating stroke and Helen returns home to perform the duties of primary caregiver.

"My mother did have a stroke and I was aware of the changes that took place," Laing said in an interview. "She was 80 when she had the stroke and she had been extremely healthy and vibrant and people always thought she was younger than she was so it was quite devastating for her. And then I have a number of friends who have gone through the same thing personality change and the fact that they can't look after themselves the way they used to."

The majority of these adult caregivers are women. As Laing put it, "the daughters get stuck. In a way, it is logical in the position of caregiver so it tends to fall more on the women, of course."

In fact, Statistics Canada study shows that women in the 'sandwich generation' spent an average of 29 hours each month providing care to seniors, as compared with only 13 hours each month for their male counterparts.

Depending on the nature and intensity of the care required, these adult caregivers are sometimes forced to put their careers and personal lives on hold while they tend to elderly relatives.

They forego vacations, postpone evenings out with friends, jump every time the phone rings past 10 o'clock in the evening. Their stress levels rise, their patience levels drop, and their own health, well being and quality of life diminish.

But of all the figures put forth by Statistics Canada, perhaps the most telling is that 95% of 'sandwich generation' caregivers felt satisfied with life in general.

It's not something usually discussed in polite company, but it's a condition all too familiar to the dedicated reader: Professionals (well, this professional, at any rate) refer to it as 'premise fatigue.' My personal premise fatigue usually flares up when faced with another wry coming-of-age story set in a Canadian small town. There is nothing inherently wrong with [this premise], but undue familiarity does breed fatigue.

Which is why it is such a pleasure to be faced with four utterly distinct novels from four of Canada's finer small presses, each a window into unique and surprising landscapes, both physical and emotional.

River Reel [is] the debut from Ontario short story writer and playwright Bonnie Laing. The story is solid enough: Helen, a Toronto journey-man actor and director, moves into her mother's farmhouse on the banks of a small river in rural Ontario to care for the woman who has suffered a debilitating stroke. In their solitary moments, the two separately explore their memories, attempting to understand themselves and their pasts, and to piece together meaning from their fractures lives and relationships. Both women are well drawn, and their relationship rings true.

Formally, the novel is too regimented and regular: Chapters are written alternately in Helen's and Annie's voices, each with an awkwardly cued flashback. The dialogue, on the other hand, is convincing and realistic, and despite its difficulties River Reel is emotionally affecting and, on balance, satisfies.