Butterflies Dance in the Dark edition by Beatrice Macneil Literature Fiction eBooks
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Shunned as an outsider and mistreated due to an undiagnosed learning disability, the young and imaginative Mari-Jen Delene retreats into silence. Around her, the fictional community of Ste. Noire, Cape Breton, hosts a vividly drawn cast of characters the uncompromising and bitter Mother Superior; the dangerous Uncle Jule; the kind-hearted holocaust survivor Daniel Peter; and Mari-Jen’s rebellious and powerfully intelligent brothers, who sleep next to a map of the world they yearn to explore. Elegantly written and profoundly touching, Butterflies Dance in the Dark stands as a testament to the vibrant resiliency of youth and the enduring powers of the imagination.
Butterflies Dance in the Dark edition by Beatrice Macneil Literature Fiction eBooks
Others love this book, I'm sure there is a literary device at work here that they find appealing but what I consider major points in the story were too vague for me: more inference than description. I didn't care for any of the characters (except possibly the protagonist), once again, that may have been by design. Just not my kind of book..Product details
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Tags : Butterflies Dance in the Dark - Kindle edition by Beatrice Macneil. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading Butterflies Dance in the Dark.,ebook,Beatrice Macneil,Butterflies Dance in the Dark,Breakwater Books Ltd.,FICTION Literary
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Butterflies Dance in the Dark edition by Beatrice Macneil Literature Fiction eBooks Reviews
This novel grabs you by the throat right off the start ( when a storm caused by the Virgin Mary battling for newly deceased souls with the devil steals a five year old's birthday cake) and never lets go. On first read, it's a tricky book with multilayered subtexts cloaked in a dark pastoral setting that is usually best served in short story format. But I just couldn't get over the beauty of the passages and how they so easily moved from the surreal to the everyday and then back to the surreal again as if it was the most natural thing in the world. And in the beauty of this gem, it is. There's a lot of pain here and far too much injustice, but in the end acceptance is as good as forgiven. Fabulous!
This is a stunning tale of redemption set in the murky past of the north atlantic's Cape Breton Island. It is the story of a young handicapped girl against the forces of shame, sin, social stigma and her own descent into seemingly familial madness. The beautiful imagery juxtaposes the brutality of the odds, running from haunting to hilarious with such ease and with characters so richly drawn in natural quirkiness that the book often reads like a Fellini take on rural Irish tragedy. Though the tale of a young innocent overcoming great hardship is familiar ground, on this particuliar ground it happens to be enchanted. The girl as a young woman's take of her now dead mother is one of the most sorrowful passages I have ever read.
This book has humour and tragedy, strong characters and great dialogue. Set in the 1950's, the story follows Mari-Jen Delene from her fifth birtday to adulthood. She is a little Acadian girl who has trouble at school, the words dance around on the page when she tries to read. A cruel Mother Superior only makes things worse.
But Mari-Jen has very clever twin brothers, Alfred and Albert who help whenever they can. To teach her take-aways, they draw six nuns on six pieces of paper and set fire to five of them,
"How many are left?" asks Alfred.
There is also a strong positive influence in her life, a Polish Jew, a Displaced Person, the twins call Daniel Peter. He takes the boys and Mari-Jen under his wing and teaches them things they'd never learn in school.
Mari-Jen is a powerful character, more intelligent than Mother Superior expects. I couldn't wait to see how she solved the many problems of her upbringing. Her mother, Adele, is a single parent; Mari-Jen and her bothers have different fathers,fathers they have never met. Adele lives with the shame of her sins, her children. The relationships and how they are developed are unpredictable. "Butterflies Dance in the Dark" is a great read. I highly recommend it.
So this Butterflies Dance In The Dark book by Beatrice MacNeil I read recently was interesting in that though it was a modern book, its tone seemed very Dickensian to me. The story takes place in 1950s St. Noire, Cape Breton area, Canada. Nearly nothing happy happens to anyone in this story and yet I was compelled to keep reading out of hope that things might turn around. There were a number of elements I like in my books in this one. There was the good nun / bad nun element (Mari-Jen, the main character, spends the majority of the book being berated in Catholic school), the mysterious, sad, foreign neighbor -- everyone wondering what his story is, the kids desperately seeking love from a distant mother, the mother with her own sad story, and a surprising sort of turnaround near the end, brief as it was. For having so little cheer, I was surprised this book kept me reading til the end.
The good nun / mean nun idea that I've read in other books before was actually presented a little differently here. It's not really like "good cop / bad cop", where the behavior is meant to get information or damning behavior out of someone in the hopes of helping someone else. The Mother Superior puts Mari-Jen through strange interviews in her office, but there's no clear reason for it. The Mother Superior just seems like she's full of bitterness, bitterness about the path her life has taken, bitterness against God. She and Mari-Jen's born-again mother both feel God is making them pay penances for something so they oddly feel vindicated in taking everyone down with them in a way. The penance deal is how they explain the patterns of bad luck in their lives. They both seemed to like to play the martyr card. But I always tend to wonder, as far as "bad luck" goes, how much of it we bring on ourselves? I liked that this book had me thinking about how when we meet people that seem chronically angry and bitter, how much of that is due to a past experience they can't get over or let go of? Are they truly that mean-hearted on the inside, or is there someone sweet in there inside of the screaming to get out but they don't know how to flip that switch? See what I mean about Dickens?
Mari-Jen finds comfort in the company of "good nun" Sister Therese, her older twin brothers, who seem to let everything roll off their backs, and her neighbor, Daniel Peter, a Polish immigrant who came to Canada after having lost his entire family in WW2 concentration camps. Sister Therese encourages Mari-Jen's talents (while Mother Superior insists Mari-Jen has a learning disability and is somehow unteachable). Mari's brothers keep her laughing and Daniel Peter gives the kids reprieve from their depressing upbringing by reading them Gulliver's Travels, letting them dream of better days, encouraging the fantastical thinking all children should be allowed.
I felt for Mari-Jen when her brothers decide to leave home, remembering when my older brother (my only sibling) did the same when I was little. It's a tough feeling being so young and feeling like it's you against the world. It's hard to watch your siblings move on, leaving you to feel like you're losing those that understand what you're going through better than anyone because they're the only other people that had that same situation in just the way you did. Of course you get past the hurt, the sense of abandonment, and you learn it's all part of life. And so does Mari-Jen here, but reading that part, I did remember those days and feel for her there.
MacNeil has a real talent for words here. She presented what I think is one of my favorite metaphors I've ever read -- "lonely as a Sunday morning dog". LOVE that! The image it creates!
A quick read and worth a look, some really stunning writing here.
Beatrice Macneill is a fabulous desrciptive writer. Even if one has never been to Cape Breton and is not a product of Convent school,this story will ring bells in your heart. The change in the tone of the book from childhood to adulthood is amazing.
The book is fine. The problem is that I tried to order 7 for my Book Club. 4 arrived in timely manner but the other 3 did not arrive at all. tried to track them and finally issued a refund for them. Of course, this was appreciated but didn't help my Book Club members who needed a book so we shared the copies we had. I'll know better than to order so many books when each comes from a separate third-party source.
Others love this book, I'm sure there is a literary device at work here that they find appealing but what I consider major points in the story were too vague for me more inference than description. I didn't care for any of the characters (except possibly the protagonist), once again, that may have been by design. Just not my kind of book..
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