Molly Fire (eBook)

A Memoir

Michael Mitchell (Autor)

eBook Download: PDF

2005 | 1. Auflage
264 Seiten
ECW Press (Verlag)
978-1-55490-676-5 (ISBN)

Infos

Molly, an eighty-year-old artist, drowns in her bath while living alone on Vancouver Island. When her son, Toronto writer and photographer Michael Mitchell, arrives the next day he finds a studio full of her paintings and a treasure trove of family papers that take him on a romantic journey to the far corners of the world and back as far as the early 18th century. Illustrated with Molly's art and her son's evocative photographs of her empty house and studio, The Molly Fire collages dance cards, war diaries, menus, naval dispatches, and news reports to create a vivid and moving memoir as well as a poignant meditation on loss and identity.

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Molly, an eighty-year-old artist, drowns in her bath while living alone on Vancouver Island. When her son, Toronto writer and photographer Michael Mitchell, arrives from the east the next day he finds a studio full of her paintings and a treasure trove of family papers that take him on a romantic journey to the far corners of the world and back as far as the early 18th century. Illustrated with Mollys art and her sons evocative photographs of her empty house and studio, The Molly Fire collages dance cards, war diaries, menus, naval dispatches, and news reports to create a vivid and moving memoir as well as a poignant meditation on loss and identity. Shortlisted for the 2005 Governor General's Award, the 2005 Drainie-Taylor Biography Prize, and a Globe & Mail Top 100 Book of 2005.

Textauszug

PLATE 1 so small and pale house is merely orderly: her studio is entropic. There is a most terrible silence behind that door. For a couple of days I am alone. After the first day, I begin to see photographs. I imagine.what she saw out the window, glances from the kitchen sink, silhouettes and shadows on the sheers, light lozenges on the floor. I find myself following in her footsteps. Where she would have drawn, I take simple pictures. It's a comfort. It's clarifying. I touch nothing. Bad weather breaks on the third day - an angry, blaming, recriminating black whirlwind of emotion-driven efficiency. Within an hour my mother's closet is empty, her clothes bagged and at the curb. Bottles and jars are inverted over the sink, dishes clatter into boxes. My father's tools, untouched since his death nine months earlier, are packed and whisked away. Cupboards are purged, drawers are pulled, a life's underwear is exposed by my sister's cyclonic rage at death. By day's end the little world that I have spent three days learning to accommodate has vanished. Molly's life has become a mess to be tidied up. My eldest son rescues me. He calls from New York. 'Do you need company? I think I should come. I'm not leaving you and your sister alone.' He arrives and spends two days quietly working and absorbing a litany of complaints against his father. In the evenings he takes me out to Molly haunts and buys the drinks. A few days of this and then my sister, her husband, and my son, begin to leave - catching planes or driving cars back to their lives. I am left alone with a deadline. The house will be sold and must be emptied. I pack carefully, make reasoned choices, giving each selection a bubble-wrap surround. My mother'sfriends and neighbours come by to reclaim loaned books, pick over paintings or take a plant. Last day. I walk through empty rooms, satisfied, and then retreat to the little studio building in the garden. I despair as I realize that hundreds of pictures remain after all the picking and packing. I sort and pack new piles. More boxes are filled but many more paintings remain. Soon I am stuffing her drawings in with my socks and lining my bags with watercolours. I find still more pictures. My ticket is for the last flight off-island. Are there enough eyes in all the world to look at so many images? Finally I build a fire. The piles surround me - sheaves and sliding stacks - the legacy of a life of looking. Many of these pictures are unfinished. Some are failures. Still I feel as if I am torching the traces of her hand and the eyes and mind that guided it. Her ideas and observationsbecome heat and light before curling into black ash on the cooling stone. The pictures burn before the mats, leaving receding windows into the flames. I close the door and leave. PLATE 2 a most terrible silence PLATE 3 the traces of her hand _______________________________ THE ROYAL DRAWING SOCIETY 18 Queen Anne's Gate, Westminster S.W. Patron His Most Gracious Majesty The King President H.R.H. The Princess Louise Duchess of Argyll This Full School Certificate is awarded to Molly Greene 1935 For obtaining Honours in all six Divisions _______________________________ They thought it strange. So unlike Molly, said the neighbours. She went into her backyard that early spring morning and sat in the sun leaning back, looking, quietly smiling for the entire day.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 7.1.2005
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
• Themenwelt: Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Kunstgeschichte / Kunststile
• Themenwelt: Schulbuch / Wörterbuch ► Lexikon / Chroniken
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung
• ISBN-10: 1-55490-676-8 / 1554906768
• ISBN-13: 978-1-55490-676-5 / 9781554906765