What it Takes to be HumanMarilyn Bowering’s haunting new novel What It Takes to Be Human, is set largely in an asylum for the criminally insane in British Columbia in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Sandy Grey’s version of reality may not match those in the world within a world in which he finds himself, but he does know what it is ‘to be human’—unlike those, beginning with his parents, who have treated him cruelly. The world outside is disintegrating in war, and within the confines of the asylum, the same war with its automatic hatreds and racism continue to play out. Sandy’s allies—the tragic and beautiful Georgina, the ‘Jap’ Kosho and others such as Karl, the German alien and Winchell the Spanish Civil war veteran have human qualities that the inhumane attendant Pete Cooper could never even imagine. Even the ghostly insistent presence of the unjustly executed Alan MacCauley finds Sandy’s ear sympathetic and a means of achieving recompense from beyond the grave. With the good doctors Frank and Love and the reappearance of the girl who was the love of his childhood, Sandy may have a chance—but what can innocence do against the blunt tools of psychiatric experimentalism and a world from which both the good and the rational have been excluded? Marilyn Bowering re-visions everyman’s history in archetypal terms, and what’s at stake is whether life is worth living at all.
"Once into it, I read almost without stop, fascinated with
her narrator and the world he found himself in. Continuously inventive,
it was also totally (frighteningly) believable. The whole novel
seemed to imply that to find hell (with its monsters) we need only
look to the fairly-recent past and not very far from home. One of
its biggest successes for me is that this visit to a kind of hell
is conducted by a generous heart that guides us from somewhere just
slightly behind the visible narrator. It's a superb novel." "Who among us does not feel nowadays that we are in a madhouse,
locked into an insane world in which anger, ignorance and cruelty
are winning the war? But help is on the way—we have a new
hero, unlikely though he may seem. Young Sandy Grey reminds us that
imagination and language are the tools we need to break free and
Marilyn Bowering proves it, by writing an astonishing novel through
which optimism carries us forward and makes us believe that, in
Sandy's final words, You can always count on love." "Marilyn Bowering explores the relationship between innocence,
injustice, and motiveless malevolence in a story that is so layered
and compelling that you will be dazzled by her wisdom and huge talent.
The characters will break your heart, renew your faith, and remind
you what it takes to be human." "Marilyn Bowering is one of our whistle blowers. Her new book
tells us What it Means to be Human—something we seem on the
brink of forgetting. Classic in form, this white knuckle book leads
us through a contemporary underworld before bringing us up, once
again, to the light. Required reading!" One of Canada's most eloquent story tellers has given us a compelling
and exquisitely crafted tale about hope, love and creativity, in,
of all places, a Canadian mental asylum. Bowering...has written a wise and unforgettable book. She has indeed
masterfully managed to distill the essence of what it takes to be
human into a little over 300 pages. This novel lays bare for the
reader heaven and hell, angels and devils, good and evil, the results
of betrayal and lies, and the power of truth and hope. What It Takes
To Be Human is a book we need now more than ever.
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