Simplexity

It's one of the new terms of 2010. A term coined to describe how one describes an impossibly complex idea or phenomenon in a paradoxically simple way. For example, the simple fact that I've entitled this entry as "simplexity" means that it will become a part of complex web of blog entries using the term, and thus adding to its  place on the web, and perhaps in the lexicon. A simple act contributes to, even creates, or complicates, a complex situation. Whatever. I heard the word used today, and thought I'd use it too. But I was thinking of reviewing MacEwan's The Cement Garden, which I finished a week or so ago.

The book is a simplexity. Begin with a lower middle class English family of six: four children (girl, boy, girl, boy) - the oldest three play doctor in their pre-teens, while the youngest wants to cross dress. Make the father a distant, eccentric loner who dies when the oldest is just finishing high school, and then, as if this is not enough, give the reclusive mother cancer, and have her pass away too, in the house, with the kids fending for themselves. It's an epic tale in that it riffs off of the children's story fantasy nightmare narrative of the dangerous, yet absent father, and negligent, absent mother. Add to this the father's near final act of buying 15 bags of cement in order to cover the gardens in his yard, so that he has less work to do. When he dies before he can use all of the concrete mix, the eldest two children, on the mother's death in the home, encase her in concrete in a trunk in the basement, and then go on with their lives.

It's over-simplifying to attempt to unpack the metaphor. The father's garden, hardened over. The mother's burial, or rather encasement. The children living on in this new "garden". The odor that finally gives away the secret of the seed they've planted. MacEwan takes risks here that I can only admire. The narration is clear and simple, the story deep, complex, and resonant. It is a remarkable novel, that begins, continues, and ends in a way that you know it must. Like the distant recollections of a family vacation, with its beginning, and visitations along the way, the return home is inevitable. The memories of the rancour, the love, and the transgression will shape you forever.

The ride in:        Temp 3'C Wind 6 ks SE
The ride home:  Temp 1'C Wind calm