Amour fou, amour fou, amour…
Love’s Lonely Pursuits
by Marina Sonkina
Garden Bay: MW Books, 2025
$24.95 / 9781069534606
Reviewed by Candace Fertile
*
In Love’s Lonely Pursuits Vancouver writer Marina Sonkina presents ten stories and one novella that range widely in setting. Sonkina’s characters are citizens of the world in many ways as they tend to be multilingual, educated, and interested in culture whether they are in Canada, Russia, Mexico, France, or the USA. And they are obsessed by love or what they think is love, often mistaking desire for love.
Sonkina (One Thousand and A Night as Told by Larissa, Construction Shock Worker) was born in Moscow emigrated to Canada as an adult. The stories often have an autobiographical element, in that characters leave one country in search of a better life in another. That better life may be because of love—either moving toward it or escaping a useless relationship. A quotation by Ivan Turgenev opens the collection and alerts readers to the contents: “Great are the mysteries of human life and love is the greatest of them all.” What love is to the characters certainly remains a mystery, and in most cases, the characters are quite lonely. In a way, the stories are the opposite of romance even though love and connection are the prevailing desires.
The first story, “Philosophy Lessons,” sets a pattern for some of the later stories. A retired philosophy professor spends his days walking in Vancouver. His wife has been dead for two years, and his long-time lover no longer interests him. He is solitary and miserable until he meets a little boy in a park. Giovanni delights the old man he calls Santa Claus, and the two become friends over charming childish conversations that the philosopher regards as meaningful. But the friendship can’t last as the two have such vastly different lives.
The story demonstrates Sonkina’s typical style. And character with specialized knowledge tends to share that knowledge, either in a conversation or, as in the case of this first story, with the direct comments of the narrator, the retired professor. The tactic means that several stories drift into short lectures, which break the pace of the story. Another overwhelming aspect of Sonkina’s style is figurative language that again slows the pace. For example, the narrator of “Philosophy Lessons” describes maple leaves falling: “I enjoy the way they slowly spin in the air before settling on the driveway’s damp cheek with what look like open hands. The day it snowed, they were cold, and that made them curl their fingers like living hands—or so it looked to me.” This description is one of the more restrained passages.
Sonkina’s exuberance in description may strike many readers as excessive, but it matches the huge feelings of the characters. Emotions tend to be all or nothing in this book. Characters feel very little like the professor, but once the heart has been activated, sentiments take over, and any middle ground vanishes. Extremes of emotion are delineated in “Rapture,” in which a woman named Maya leaves Montreal to get away from Ralph, a married man who thinks he’s in love with her. Ralph follows Maya to Vancouver, in an effort to save her from her financially precarious life, but then the story jumps to the past when Maya was involved with Al, a composer and conductor. Maya believes that she can devote her life to Al. She thinks,
He confirmed what I had intuitively known all along: The torture of hunting for the elusive light was not worth it, if you could live by the reflected light of the beloved. Love was more precious, more essential, than the eternal yearning for the ephemeral. Love was life; the rest, a chimera.
At forty-five with two grown children, Maya has the emotional maturity of a lovesick thirteen-year-old. She abandons her desire to write poetry and clings to Al, who is happy with the situation—until he isn’t. It’s no surprise to anyone that the relationship cannot last. Al has his own issues as his creativity is waning, but being the reason for someone’s life is a burden much too heavy. Both characters engage in a temporary insanity of passion.
The oddest story is “Salmon King,” which tackles salmon spawning, a draft dodger who has First Nations friends, and the narrator, a woman who gets lost on the Sunshine Coast. As she has a degree in biology she treats readers to a long explanation of the life and death of salmon, along with much personification of the landscape: “The sky turns sombre, the water in the lakes darkens, and the slow-witted firs shake their beards of lichen and shrug their shoulders, as if to say, ‘What is this to us? We’ll stand here just as we have always stood….’” Her name is Marina, and she is from Moscow. The man she meets delivers a long speech about the salmon nation, a story he learned from the Salish. I confess to utter confusion regarding this story apart from the inclusion of First Nations content.
The novella, Cassandra, is set in Moscow. The narrator returns after a long absence to visit her former professor, Sasha. Sonkina explains much twentieth century Russian history, and it’s all terrible. People suffered. Many were tortured, and many were killed. The awfulness of the various corrupt and controlling governments over time is evident as is the endurance of the people. But then, what can they do but endure. This novella is unpolished, perhaps an early draft. The issues raised are certainly worthwhile, but the text isn’t living up to them.
Overall, Love’s Lonely Pursuits is a wildly variable collection. Unfortunately, it needs better copyediting. Inconsistency in font is a problem. The ideas presented have promise but the overwrought prose and peculiar focus on unhealthy kinds of love make this book a challenge.
*
Candace Fertile has a PhD in English literature from the University of Alberta. She teaches English at Camosun College in Victoria, writes book reviews for several Canadian publications, and is on the editorial board of Room Magazine. [Editor’s note: Candace has recently reviewed books by Terence Young, Bill Gaston, Heather Ramsay, Leslie Shimitakahara, Hannah Calder, M.V. Feehan, S.C. Lalli, Rebecca Godfrey with Leslie Jamison, Ian and Will Ferguson, Shashi Bhat, Carleigh Baker, and Kathryn Mockler for BCR.]
*
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Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.
“Only connect.” – E.M. Forster