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isa Moore has only ever vis-
ited Frankfurt briefly, stop-
ping on her way to India, but
even a quick layover left an im-
pression. As she walked, jet-
lagged, through the German city,
she saw a bridge covered with
combination locks – the symbols
of everlasting love that now cover
bridges around the world – and
the image stuck in her head.
That image made its way into
the Newfoundland author’s short
storyLovers with the Intensity I’m
Talking About– and soon the story
itself will be available in German,
when a collection of Moore’s
short fiction is published in trans-
lation next year (her novels have
already appeared in German).
With luck and a bit of a push from
the federalgovernment, 2020
should be a good year for other
Canadian authors in Germany:
Canada will be the guest of hon-
our at Frankfurter Buchmesse,
otherwise known as the Frank-
furt Book Fair, the international
publishing world’s biggest shin-
dig.
Moore returned to Frankfurt
this week in more inviting cir-
cumstances, as part of the delega-
tion that kicked off Canada’s year
of playing host with a media con-
ference and presentation at this
year’s festival. Canada 2020’s slo-
gan is “singular plurality,” and it’s
the chorus of different voices that
makes Canadian literature ap-
pealing to overseas audiences,
Moore says. “All these voices, all
these writers in Canada, we’re all
sharing this effort of bringing a
place into being, and influencing
each other. I’m not sure there’s
anything that binds Canadian lit-
erature except that diversity.”
The Frankfurt Book Fair bills it-
self as “the world’s most impor-
tant marketplace for print and
digital content.” For five days ev-
ery October, it is the place where
buzz around new books and au-
thors builds to a deafening pitch,
agents buy and sell rights, pub-
lishers look for new homes for
their writers and foreign titles to
put in their own catalogues, and
authors give talks to sold-out
crowds (among this year’s stars
are Margaret Atwood and Jo Nes-
bo, the bestselling crime novelist
who hails from this year’s host
country, Norway). Nor is the fair
only about books: Digital plat-
forms are the subject of much
buying and selling, and there’s a
special zone for cosplay.
When Canada received the
Guest of Honour scroll from Nor-
way at this year’s fair – think of it
as a bookish baton-passing – it
began a year of Canadian cultural
content in Germany. There will be
performances, art exhibits and
talks, culminating in a full literary
program at Frankfurt 2020 that
will be housed in the Canadian
pavilion. This year, the Canada
Council is sponsoring a transla-
tion program – German houses
publishing Canadian authors can
have up to half the cost of trans-
lation subsidized.
For Quebec publisher Caroline
Fortin, president of Canada
FBM2020, next year presents a
singular opportunity to show off
Canada’s francophone, Indige-
nous and anglophone writers on
a global stage.
“There have been other host
countries that have seen a huge
increase in sales,” she said. “It will
bring authors into the forefront
and help them have a career inGermany and around the world.”
And it almost didn’t happen.
Seven years ago, when Fortin was
running the publishing industry
association Livres Canada Books,
she was approached by Juergen
Boos, director of the Frankfurt
fair, with the idea that Canada
should play host to in 2017, the
year of the sesquicentennial. Can-
adian publishers rallied behind
the idea, but the Conservative
government in Ottawa refused
the invitation, which came with a
request for $6.5-million in federal
funding. It was unclear whether
the invitation would be offered
again, but it was, and in 2016, Can-
ada’s role as 2020 host was an-
nounced.
The public is invited to the
Frankfurt Book Fair, and nearly
300,000 visitors and publishing
professionals gather for a full
slate of talks, performances and
workshops. That’s unusual for
most industry conferences, but
perhaps not surprising in Germa-
ny, a country of book lovers.
Some 30 million Germans, or 36
per cent of the population,
bought books in 2017 – and theybought an average of 12 books
each, according to a report by the
German publishing industry.
(Compare with Canada’s 21 per
cent.) Of the new titles published
that year, nearly 14 per cent were
works that had been translated.
“German readers are really in-
terested in foreign literature,”
Quebec novelist Christian Guay-
Poliquin says. “I don’t think
there’s another country that’s so
interested.” Guay-Poliquin is part
of the Canadian authors’ contin-
gent, alongside Moore and J.D.
Kurtness, appearing at this year’s
Frankfurt fair. His 2016 novel,Le
Poids de la Neige(The Weight of
Snow), which won the Governor-
General’s Award for French-lan-
guage fiction, is being translated
into German and will be released
next year by the publishing house
Hoffmann und Campe.
By this time next year, many
other Canadian authors will have
joined him. Fortin hopes that 200
works will be picked up for Ger-
man translation, and a full slate
will be revealed over the coming
months as Canada takes its place
in the international spotlight.Achorusofdifferentvoices
Canadatohighlightits
literarydiversityasit
preparestoplayhostto
theFrankfurtBookFair
ELIZABETHRENZETTI
FrankfurterBuchmesse,
otherwiseknownas
theFrankfurtBookFair,
istheinternational
publishingworld’sbiggest
event.Everyyearatthe
event,buzzaroundnew
bookspeaks,agents
buyandsellrightsand
publisherssearchfornew
homesfortheirwriters
andforeigntitles.
ANETTWEIRAUCH/
FRANKFURTERBUCHMESSEWhenCanada
receivedtheGuest
ofHonourscroll
fromNorwayatthis
year’sfair,itbegan
ayearofCanadian
culturalcontent
inGermany.E
ven among recent novelistic
portraits of the artist as a
young woman (Eileen My-
les’sThe Infernocomes to mind,
as do Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan
Novels and Elif Batuman’sThe
Idiot), Wendy McGrath’s Santa
Rosa trilogy feels radical.
It has to do with voice, which
is about character. McGrath’s
heroine, Christine, is just literate
in the first book (“She was learn-
ing to read and learning to write.
An! meant excited”) but preco-
cious in her creative sensibility,
navigating her parents’ crum-
bling marriage in 1960s working-
class Edmonton.
I loved the first two books in
the trilogy, which, at fewer than
130 pages each, are gemlike in
their size and the way they re-
fract images through the con-
sciousness of this child. These
same qualities made them diffi-
cult to talk about in a review,
however, beyond their strange,
mesmerizing narrative style and
the sense they were developing
toward something on the hori-
zon. As a result, the Santa Rosa
trilogy and McGrath as a writer
likely haven’t gotten their due.
Now with the trilogy’s conclu-
sion,Broke City, published this
September, it’s time to fill that
critical gap. McGrath makes it
look effortless (you could read
all three books in a day), but this
is a complex work about a series
of hauntings. A family haunts a
house, a neighbourhood haunts
a city, a young girl “with no idea
of the world but all the ideas in
the world” haunts the woman
she becomes.
The first book,Santa Rosa,
opens with adult Christine, preg-
nant. She craves the taste of dirt,
“her sense of smell of taste of
touch was keener than it had ev-
er been.” The writing is impres-
sionistic and sensuous, in keep-
ing with Christine’s heightened
perceptions.
The first chapter then shifts to
a more conventional prose style
offset by a surprising simile:
“The bathroom of the house was
like the inside of a camera.”
The bulk of the trilogy is like
this, full of unexpected compari-
sons and jumps in thought; we
are now with a much younger
Christine. Here she is at a lun-
cheonette: “Red and white tile
floors like teeth or piano keys
from a piano and the keys could
be any colour she chose. The
music would be hers and would
taste the colour of the keys. The
sound: the colour. Would red
keys really make the music
sound different? She could taste
each letter their sound their mu-
sic.”
One of the ghosts of this tril-
ogy is the Santa Rosa neighbour-
hood in northeast Edmonton,
where the novels are set. You
won’t find Santa Rosa on an Ed-
monton map today, because
nearby Montrose engulfed it inthe 1980s. Part of the fascination
of these books is how McGrath
revivifies the now-lost Santa Ro-
sa, which is distinctly working-
class. With the father’s work in
construction, Christine’s family
is a step above the rural poverty
Christine’s mother was raised in.
They have a house and a car, but
at the end of some weeks, the
kitchen cupboards are empty
and Christine’s world is marked
by local stinks: the meat-packing
plants, the plastic factory, the
city dump.
There’s tension in the house
between Christine’s parents. This
story of marital decline is the
closest thing to a linear narrative
in the books.
We don’t read straight down
this line, however, instead swir-
ling around images that hold
young Christine’s attention, such
as knives or the colour red, with
all the associations these accrue
through Christine’s synaesthetic
melding of senses. In these nov-
els about Christine’s develop-
ment as a visual artist and a writ-
er, these images hold equal
weight as a plot point about a
spat between spouses at the
beach.
In the recently releasedBroke
City, the central image is a pine
tree, which comes to represent
an artistic crisis of communica-
tion.
Already, inNorth East, Chris-
tine realized her parents are es-
sentially strangers to her: “she
didn’t know them and they
didn’t know each other and the
girl felt alone even though they
were in the same car and all go-
ing to her grandmother’s house.”
How can the artist be sure she
has gotten through to another
person when even those closest
to us are unknowable? While her
mother scrubs the floor, seven-
year-old Christine wonders how
people could talk if they didn’t
have words.
“Mom, see that picture of a
pine tree? If I just showed youthe picture would you know
what I meant?” Christine asks.
“I honestly don’t know what
you’re talking about half the
time,” her mother replies. “You
think about things too much. It’s
just a bottle of Pine-Sol.”
Even though it’s child Chris-
tine whose perceptions shape
this story, she’s not the one who
tells it. Instead, we are in very
close third-person.
This narrator that is almost
Christine, but not this child, has
been a puzzle for most of the tril-
ogy – where is that voice coming
from? It’s whenBroke Cityzooms
out, back to the frame that
openedSanta Rosa, that every-
thing snaps into place.
Her family, Santa Rosa, even
her child self are like ghosts to
Christine now: “This was the
place she had become herself. Ithad made her, whether she
wanted to admit it or not. Santa
Rosa would always be the invis-
ible part of her. Just as Santa Ro-
sa was invisible now....Christine
is the girl that used to live here,
but the girl has disappeared. Her
ghost is here, existing parallel to
the person she is now.”
I felt a pang as Christine in-
voked this last ghost, which says
everything about McGrath’s skill
in portraying this girl, who has to
fight for her artistic sensibility
from a young age, in an often
hostile environment, among
people who don’t understand
her.
With her now-complete por-
trait of the artist as a young girl,
McGrath proves why she’s a writ-
er to pay attention to.Special to The Globe and MailJADECOLBERT
BrokeCity
BYWENDYMCGRATH
NEWESTPRESS;128PAGES
PreviousentriesinSantaRosa
trilogy,publishedbyNeWestPress:
Santa Rosa(2011, 128 pages)
NorthEast(2014,126pages)
BOOKREVIEWAhauntingfinaletoMcGrath’sSantaRosatrilogy