Etta and Otto andRussell and James (2015) is set in a farming area of Saskatchewan, Canada, in
contemporary times. There are three main characters: Etta, Otto, and Russell –
they are all 83 years old. James is a coyote.
Two people love Etta –
Otto and Russell. Etta is married to Otto, and on the farm next door is
Russell. Otto and Russell are childhood friends, and they remain friends,
always helping each other and Etta.
Etta Kinnock leaves
the farm one morning after writing a letter to her husband: Otto, I’ve gone. I’ve never seen the water,
so I’ve gone there. Don’t worry I’ve left you the truck. I can walk. I will try
to remember to come back. Yours (always), Etta. She has left to walk 3,200
kilometres (2,000 miles) to Halifax, Nova Scotia.
The novel flashes back
to the time Etta arrived in the farming community. Etta was the new teacher, and
she taught Otto and Russell, even though they were all the same age. When Otto
and Russell turned 16 they applied to join the military to fight in the war.
Otto was accepted, but Russell wasn’t because he had a lame leg. So Russell and
Etta went ‘dancing every night’ while Otto was fighting overseas. Otto was
‘dispatched with injuries’ and sent home. That’s when Otto proposed to Etta.
Now at 83 years of
age, when Etta commences her walk to Halifax, Otto and Russell react differently.
Russell gets in his car to find her. Otto stays home and bakes, using Etta’s
recipe cards. He also makes papier-mache animals – lots of them.
Etta writes to Otto
and he responds, but he doesn’t post them because he does not know where she
is. He puts his letters in an envelop in a ‘neat stack on the corner of the
table, beside the letters that came in from her.’ In one letter, Otto writes, ‘In
case there are other reasons you’ve left … you can always tell me … and we can
never mention it outside of paper and ink (or pencil).’
Etta meets a coyote,
which accompanies her along the way – she calls him James. A newspaper reporter
writes a story about the ‘coyote-woman’ and soon everyone knows about her trek
to the sea.
During the novel, each
of them reminiscence – they have different memories about the same events. So
the novel constantly flashes back and forth in time for all three characters.
The tone is gentle and
unadorned. However, I found it over-simplistic. The same tone is used when they
are five, 16, and 83 – writing as if they are illiterate farmfolk with
forgetfulness and dementia who can’t differentiate the past from the present –
and stuck in a child-like state of innocence and naivety. I found the style and
tone to be condescending – and irritating. I continued reading, hoping that the
characters would develop through maturation and understanding, but this didn’t
happen.
The ending is
deliberately ambiguous and vague, with the author (in an interview) telling
readers to ‘trust their instincts’ when they figure out what happened. While
attempting to create a sense of the simplicity of older people, the novel loses the
impact of its intentions. The ending just peters out … like an older person
forgetting the end of their train of thought and never finishing the sentence –
leading nowhere and without resolution.
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