Advance praise for
Brighten the Corner Where You Are
“‘Do you ever suppose what makes a picture look pretty might be the parts of it you can’t see? The hardship behind it, I mean.’” Spoken by a woman who knew how to love an unlovable man and find happiness in an almost unlivable life. What stays with the reader long after they have finished Brighten the Corner Where You Are is the brilliantly captured voice of Maud Lewis—as innocent and tender as it is knowing and tough. Carol Bruneau’s depiction of the artist and her world is as joyful and colourful as a Lewis landscape.”
–K. D. Miller, author of Late Breaking
“Dazzling! A poignant imagining of Maud Lewis’s life; as colourful and joyous as Lewis’s art, as bleak as an abandoned garden in February. Bruneau’s vivid imagery and deceptively simple prose create a portrait of a woman so full of pluck, talent, humour, and compassion that it will never leave me.”
–Lauren B. Davis, author of Our Daily Bread and The Empty Room
“Brighten the Corner Where You Are convincingly and beautifully illustrates the world of Maud Lewis, as told from the artist’s perspective. Singular, strong, and remarkably observant, she narrates her story with wit, agency and spark, holding beauty above all throughout the successes and challenges of her lifetime. An unforgettable character portrayal, Maud’s companionable voice will stay with readers long after the last page.”
–Emily Urquhart, folklorist and author of Beyond the Pale and The Age of Creativity
“Everyone who has known Bruneau’s stunning work from her award-winning beginnings, who has admired her unwavering commitment to her art, marvelled at her characters, her ability to get to the heart of relationships, to explore, to reveal the complexity of our humanity, has been waiting for this book. In this masterful telling, the world will get to know Maud Lewis as never before…. We’ve badly needed a vision like this. Bruneau holds both beauty and sadness in her magical hands.”
–Sheree Fitch, author of Kiss the Joy As It Flies
“In Bruneau’s talented hands, the story becomes a fully realized narrative…. Lewis is presented as a woman of strength and sass, a chain-smoker who detested being seen as a victim (even when she clearly was), and who desired romance and simple pleasures. But perhaps most importantly, it is clear that Bruneau respects Lewis as an artist and a human. Brighten the Corner Where You Are is a welcome addition to the Lewis legacy.”
–Quill & Quire, starred review
“Read Brighten the Corner Where You Are, slowly, listen quietly! It is a gem of despair, of hope for those who believe they can’t face another day of adversity. The writing is as kind as it is painful, as beautiful as it is sorrowful, as dark as midnight footprints. Bruneau has Maud in the palm of her hand, holds her there lovingly like a summer rose until her dying day. And lets her bloom again for all to see the beauty we may have missed.”
–Beatrice MacNeil, author of The Girl He Left Behind
“Carol Bruneau’s new novel really is a “wildwood flower”—plain and beautiful, tough and tender. And her Maud Lewis is a joy to keep company with.”
–Cary Fagan, author of The Student
Praise for Carol Bruneau
A Circle on the Surface
Winner, 2019 Jim Connors Dartmouth Book Award
“A quietly brilliant novel.”
–Quill & Quire, starred review
“Told with a meticulous eye for detail, Bruneau’s voice is simple, elegant, arresting. A portrait of a partnership in peril, A Circle on the Surface lingers for days after its final page is turned.”
–Toronto Star
“Reminiscent of Kate Chopin’s The Awakening in both style and approach, Carol Bruneau’s A Circle On the Surface captures the complexities, right up through to its tragic, memorable ending, of a woman’s role in 1940s Nova Scotia.”
–Donna Morrissey, author of The Fortunate Brother
“A compelling, unforgettable story of how World War II came to Nova Scotia, A Circle on the Surface reveals the sea changes for Enman and Una, a couple about to start a family. Delving into the depths of their lives, Bruneau gives us a powerfully haunting novel.”
–Anne Simpson, author of Speechless
“Carol Bruneau’s latest novel holds your heart right to the last, devastating sentence. In the tender lives of Enman and Una, naïve love and profound loneliness are infused with universal questions: peril and mortality, how and why we love, and the unknowable mystery of a human soul. A compassionate and beautiful read.”
–Carole Giangrande, author of All That Is Solid Melts Into Air
“A Circle on the Surface is a vivid, sensitive, often aching, imagining of a small Nova Scotia community looking fearfully out to sea during the Second World War. The sense of period and place is impressive, but the characters and situations are timeless. Bruneau mines each minute, observing in exquisite detail. The book is an unsparing but nonjudgmental portrait of a community and of a marriage facing threats from without and within. Bruneau creates memorable characters, presented in all their complexity and contradictions in a clear-eyed way, and then she goes that important extra step of truly inhabiting them.”
–Mark Blagrave, author of Lay Figures
“A Circle on the Surface brilliantly explores the complexities of family dynamics with well-crafted characters and a most engaging story. She deftly portrays the lives of Maritimers affected by World War II and after as they emerge from a time of darkness into an ever-changing modern world. Once again, Carol Bruneau proves herself to be one of Atlantic Canada’s finest novelists.”
–Lesley Choyce, author of The Unlikely Redemption of John Alexander MacNeil
“Bruneau’s novel abounds in rich language that is often connected to the emotional state of the characters…. The author’s use of imagery also creates a profound sense of place: the sea in particular is ever-present in the lives and dreams of the characters.”
–Understorey magazine
A Bird on Every Tree
Shortlisted, 2018 Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Prize
“Bruneau’s writing rarely calls attention to itself, but this is a bravura performance…. This is no mere exercise in voice: this is a reflection of a writer utterly in touch with her stories—not only what they are, but how they are, overlooking nothing in her craft. Bruneau is a master.”
–Quill & Quire, starred review
“Each of Carol Bruneau’s stories is not so much told as meticulously shaped with exacting and mesmerizing attention to every gorgeous detail. Bruneau submerges the reader entirely in the physical and emotional worlds she so vividly evokes.”
–Lynn Coady, author of Hellgoing
“Carol Bruneau is the Mavis Gallant of the North Atlantic. Her narrative voice is an extraordinary blend of elegance and grit, the characters and their observations both pragmatic and elegiac. These are stories of a diverse range of people…all told with startling detail, lyrical prose, and uncanny insight into those moments which break us apart and those which hold us together.”
–Christy Ann Conlin, author of Watermark
“12 beautifully crafted short stories. Her exceptional prose reveals how much there is to discover in the everyday…. Bruneau does not settle for cliché. Her prose is accessible and lean as she flits into her characters’ lives.”
–Publishers Weekly
Copyright © Carol Bruneau, 2020
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission from the publisher, or, in the case of photocopyi
ng or other reprographic copying, permission from Access Copyright, 1 Yonge Street, Suite 1900, Toronto, Ontario M5E 1E5.
Vagrant Press is an imprint of
Nimbus Publishing Limited
3660 Strawberry Hill St, Halifax, NS, B3K 5A9
(902) 455-4286 nimbus.ca
Printed and bound in Canada
NB1544
Editor: Whitney Moran
Cover and interior design: Jenn Embree
Cover image: Original notecard by Maud Lewis. Copyright © Bob Brooks. Used with permission.
This is a work of fiction. While certain characters are inspired by persons no longer living, and certain events by events which may have happened, the story is a work of the imagination not to be taken as a literal or documentary representation of its subject.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Title: Brighten the corner where you are : a novel inspired by the life of Maud Lewis / Carol Bruneau.
Names: Bruneau, Carol, 1956- author.
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200264982 | Canadiana (ebook) 20200265024 | ISBN 9781771088831 (softcover) | ISBN 9781771088848 (EPUB)
Classification: LCC PS8553.R854 B75 2020 | DDC C813/.54—dc23
Nimbus Publishing acknowledges the financial support for its publishing activities from the Government of Canada, the Canada Council for the Arts, and from the Province of Nova Scotia. We are pleased to work in partnership with the Province of Nova Scotia to develop and promote our creative industries for the benefit of all Nova Scotians.
For Jen Powley and to the memory of Maud Lewis
“Do not wait until some deed of greatness you may do,
Do not wait to shed your light a-far,
To the many duties ever near you now be true.”
–“Brighten the Corner Where You Are” by Ina Duley Ogdon
and Charles H. Gabriel, 1913
1.
I’ve Been Everywhere
The first thing you need to remember is that I’m no longer down where you are, haven’t been down your way in years, in what you people call the land of the living. You could say I’m in the wind, a song riding the airwaves and the frost in the air that paints leaves orange. As the rain and the sunshine do, I go where I want. The wind’s whistling carries me, takes me back, oh yes, to when the radio filled the house with Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys singing “My Life’s Been A Pleasure.” Though I’m not sure I would go that far. Freed of life’s woes, these days I see joys that, in life, I just guessed up. If you know anything about me, you might be thinking, oh my, that one’s better off out of her misery. Which might be true, but, then again, might not. But I dare say, without the body I dwelt in and the hands that came with it, I wouldn’t have gotten up to half of what I did in your world; I’d have spent my days doing what you do. Where’d be the fun in that?
The best thing about up here is the view. Now, I’m not so high up that folks look like dirt specks and cars like hard candies travelling the roads. Nor am I so low down that you can reach up and grab a draught of me in your fist. Up here, no one gets to grab on to anybody, or be the boss. No shortage of bossy-boots down your way, folks only too certain they know best. So it was when I lived below, in a piece of paradise some called the arse-end of nowhere. I wouldn’t make that kind of judgment myself. Mostly I kept to myself; for a long time doing just that was easy. Out in the sticks there are lots of holes to hide down, until someone gets it in their head to haul you out of yours. Next, the whole world is sniffing at your door, which isn’t always a bad thing. Like living in the arse-end of nowhere isn’t a bad thing, pardon this habit of speech I learned down your way. Habits die hard, even here. Except here I get away with whatever I want, which is a comfort and a blessing. Comforts and blessings mightn’t be so plentiful where you are. Here, for example, a gal can cuss to her heart’s content and who is gonna say boo?
And that view! Now I can see backwards, forwards, straight up and down instead of sideways or tilted, I can look at things face on the way, before, I just guessed things up and painted them in pictures. When it suits me, I hover at gull-level where hungry birds cruise the shore for snacks, or at crow-level where the peckish seek treats spilled by roadsides. Food aside, it’s grand up here. I see the fog tug itself like a dress over Digby Neck and the road travelling south to north, pretty much tracing the route that took me from birth to this spot up here. Apart from the coastline’s jigs and jags, as the crow flies north to south is a fairly straight line from the ridge where my bones lie to where I grew up.
Those who don’t know better call this otherworld “glory.” But, looking down at the green of Digby County stretching into Yarmouth County, a patchwork of woods and fields set against the blue of St. Mary’s Bay, I’d call this part of your world “glory.” If I were the churchy type, which I am not and never was. Though I did enjoy a good gospel song if it was the Carter Family singing it. Some days a good old country song was my lifeline to the world. Each melody crackling over the airwaves got to be a chapter of my life, its sweet notes looped in with the sour ones.
Churchiness aside, I know attention when I see it. Folks flocking to see my paintings, paying big dollars for them. Imagine if they’d paid me back then what they pay now, travelling from all over to see my home. Though that would be pissing in the wind, wouldn’t it? For you can’t take nothing with you. You land here as naked as when you land where you are. All the money in the world won’t change it. Yet I wouldn’t have minded being sent off properly. Wearing my ring, I mean, all polished and shiny and on the right finger, and everything right with the world. A badge of honour, say. Maybe if I’d heeded my aunt’s Bible talk—not about turning the other cheek to have someone smite it too, but about being wise as a serpent, gentle as a dove—things would’ve played out different. My husband had serpent-wisdom galore, I was the dovely one. But if I’d got the serpent part down pat, who’s to say I mightn’t have turned half cur and bitten the hand that fed me?
But, about that wedding band. Marriage means where the one party flags the other party takes up the slack, making the couple one big happy serpent-dove. According to such logic, my man and me ought to have been two sides of the same dime tucked in a jar for safekeeping: equals. I let on that we were. Why I did is for me to know and you to find out. Your world will always have folks who take advantage of those with no choice but to let them. Up here, things even out. No one owns a thing; not the earth, sunshine, rain, or fire, and most certainly not the wind.
And in the end, what sweetness it is to enjoy a blue moon and just paint it in your mind’s eye, no need to fumble with a brush! It’s easy to love something named for a colour. Though other things about being up here mightn’t be to everyone’s taste, people don’t exactly line up for tickets to get here, do they. If you’re the type that’s all go go go, the pace is hurry up and wait. As for reunions with loved ones, well, I am still waiting, but I haven’t given up hope, no sirree. And there are other things to like about this so-called glory. The insects don’t bite, unlike the no-see-ums that plague you every season but winter. And there are cats aplenty, don’t let anyone tell you cats aren’t allowed, as if up here is your chesterfield. You just can’t see or pat them. Their purr might be what you hear when a motorbike goes by or a boat with a make-and-break puts out to sea.
Even better than the view is the moon’s company, as steadfast as memories you cannot shake. The moon doesn’t care who tramps over her face or journeys to her dark side. Let her keep her secrets, I say. Though she doesn’t mind shining her light on ours, and under her shine things buried and thought missing come to light, even things we reckon are gone for good—with an exception. For I have been searching high and low for that ring, the gold band I once put on with pride. When I could still wear a ring. The ring that belonged to me, even if it wasn’t always mine. What a shitload of stories it would tell if it could, if anyone laid their finger
s on it. Where it got to is a mystery, the way here is a mystery. Then again, where you are might be a mystery too, memories the only things we have that are certain. Bearing a weight all their own, they wax and wane. Like my pal, they hang around, old and full-blown or new and shy, whether they are pictures we paint of ourselves or pitchers of us that others pour out.
If only I could put my finger on when and where I last saw that ring. Thinking of it takes me back to a bright March moon, a night more than fifty years ago now, a night so long ago those men that first walked on her still had three years to go before stepping foot there. The moon pouring down her light is what springs to mind first. Pretty as that March night was back in 1966, I’ve spent a long time trying to forget it, and to forget about mud and dirt and footsteps and things on and in the ground. Buried things. For, as you will learn soon enough, things buried and unearthed are the undoing of us all.
All around me that night the county slept sound as a bear in winter, so it was in the wee hours beneath that moon. It was one of those cold, clear nights after a thaw, when frost silvers the meanest buds and you think the pussy willows have got a jump on April—until a snowstorm blows in and covers everything.
One step forward, two steps back. That was spring in our neck of the woods, never mind where you found yourself.
To this day, I have no clue what time it was I awoke. My husband had brought me upstairs hours before. From the nearby woods an owl screeched, but that was the only sound. It was either too late or too early for the crows to be up, not just any crows but the ones setting up house in our yard. The lady crow had recently stolen my fancy.
My man got up. His sharp, sudden moves near pitched me from the bed. Wide awake, I listened to him scuttle across the floor and shimmy down through the hatch. The stairs shuddered under his weight. I heard him scuffling about below, heard the rustle of him grabbing his jacket and his boots left warming by the range. The door creaked open and banged shut behind him. His footsteps stirred the gravel out front, slouched along the side of the house before they grew faint. Off to wake the crows and lure my favourite with a crust of bread, set to win her affection? (I do believe Everett envied my friendship with Matilda, never mind she was just a crow.)
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