Carolyne J Montgomery - Reader & Writer

Carolyne Reads and Writes

What I'm Reading

It’s A Dickens

by Leave a Comment

Watermarked

Welcome to the February edition of my short story collection, Watermarked. This month’s story, “Webbed Feet,” is a tale of an endangered bird, the marbled murrelet and Claire and Michael’s threatened marriage. I hope you enjoy this installment. Please feel free to share it with anyone who might be interested.

Dickensian Echoes in Recent Reading

George Saunders’ Vigil

Many of you know that I’m a George Saunders fan, a member of his Substack Story Club and will tell anyone who will listen to read A Swim in the Pond in the Rain. Ezra Kline’s interview with Saunders discusses the moral dimensions, anger, ambition and sin in Vigil.

I tucked into a library copy of Vigil. At under two hundred pages, you could make the case that it’s more of a novella. Despite being number one on the New York Times best-seller list this week, it has received mixed reviews. If you enjoyed Lincoln in the Bardo, then Vigil may be your cup of tea.

Spoilers Follow

Vigil riffs on Charles Dickens novella, A Christmas Carol, which the Story Club did a close read of during Christmas 2024. The Ebenezer Scrooge character, an unlikeable protagonist, K.J. Boone,is a dying billionaire oil tycoon and climate denier. He is visited on his deathbed (not even in the best bedroom of his mansion) by spirits, including a repentant French inventor of the combustion engine who demands that Boone confront his past actions. In Vigil’s speculative world, guiding spirits function as a type of death doulas, returning to the earthly realm to comfort the dying as they transition, helping them acknowledge and repent for their sins. But despite a noisy cast of various spirits challenging the oil tycoon, there is little movement towards repentance.

The guiding spirit in Vigil is Jill “Doll” Blaine, a pro at the death-doula business, having guided over 300 souls to the other realm. How Victorian and a playfully Dickensian character name, invoking chillblains—the damp and cold and the sulfuric coal fires scorching the damp wool clothing and exposed skin placed before them.

The interesting part of the story for me was the backstory of Jill “Doll” Blaine, how and when she died. As she waits for her recalcitrant charge to die, she visits her old town and discovers some difficult-to-accept changes. She is tempted to punish the person responsible for her young adult death. These actions are prohibited in the speculative world’s rules for visiting spirits.

This is not a simple redemption, happily-ever-after story like A Christmas Carol, where, after the ghosts’ visitation, the transformed Ebenezer Scrooge makes amends. Can people be held responsible for their harmful actions if they believed they were right? How much compassion does an unrepentant person deserve? Give the book a try and see what you think.

John Irving’s Queen Esther

Before Vigil, I read John Irving’s sixteenth novel, Queen Esther. Irving, another Dickens admirer, crafts a complex family saga centred on the coming-of-age of Adam Brewster and the mystery of his biological mother, Queen Esther. Themes of adoption, identity, anti-Semitism, and family structure echo Dickens’ influence.

Adam and his grandfather read alternating chapters of Great Expectations as a moral guide. Adam is a seeker like Pip. Like the Great Expectations character, Joe Gargery, Esther lurks in the background, steadfast in her Zionist ideology, influencing Adam’s expectations and identity.

While the coming-of-age struggles, quirky characters, and atypical families are classic John Irving (including wrestlers and wrestling), I found some of the elements tiresome—cafe playlists, the dog, the thugs. The plot centres on Adam fathering a child to avoid the American draft of the Vietnam War. The themes of abandonment, poverty and benefaction are eternal.

Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead

Dickens most autobiographical book, David Copperfield, was revisited thematically in the coming-of-age journey of Damon Fields in Barbara Kingsolver’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Demon Copperhead. I’m sorry to say that I didn’t get past the oppressive hardships of the first one hundred pages. Perhaps I should try again?

But I was inspired to watch the 2020 film The Personal History of David Copperfield starring Dev Patel (as David Copperfield), Tilda Swinton (as Betsey Trotwood), and Hugh Laurie (as Mr Dick). Because who doesn’t love those actors?

A Quick Splash into the Dickens Pond (but not in the rain)

Dickens was a master of self-publishing and serialized storytelling. His journals Household Words and All the Year Round were hugely popular, becoming, in Dickens’s words, “a good property” that yielded “a good round profit.” Great Expectations, his thirteenth novel, was serialized in weekly installments in All the Year Round.

 He published A Christmas Carol, one of his five Christmas novellas, in a range from a collector-worthy, leather-bound, gold-embossed limited edition to mass-market prints.

Like many creatives, Dickens’ personal life was tarnished. At age 45, he fell in love with an eighteen-year-old actress and tried (unsuccessfully) to have his wife, Catherine, the mother of his ten children, institutionalized for a mental disorder. Can this misdeed be countered by his innumerable acts of philanthropy and activism for the basic rights of the poor? Can one separate the art from the artist?

As in Shakespeare, the humanity of the characters and conflicts in Dickens works continue to influence culture and literature in the English-speaking world and are always worth revisiting.

Until Next Time

Happy reading and writing. I look forward to any comments. See you in March for the third installment of my colllection.

January in Comox

by

Watermarked Series

This year, I’m publishing my series, Watermarked. Twelve interlinked stories, one each month, will be posted HERE. It’s a simple way for me to get them “out there.” To celebrate what I’ve learned from writing them and move on to new writing projects.

Subscribers will get an email notification. By December, the whole series will be accessible using the Watermarked link on the home page. You can subscribe HERE.

Woodcut Picture of Loon on lake with fall Maple.

This month, you will meet Claire and Michael in the story, “The August Regatta.”

I hope you will enjoy Claire, Michael, Brianna and Stéphanie’s coming-of-age experiences. Achieving maturity isn’t age-related.

Please invite anyone you know who might be interested in joining us. I look forward to your comments. Please remember that all these characters and situations are fictional.

Writing and Conferences

War Resisters: Standing Against the Vietnam War

With the short days and long nights, it’s is a perfect time of year to update my website and read and learn more. The ninth annual North Island Writers Conference is next weekend, January 16th to 18th, at North Island College. Catch an interview with Susan Juby, our keynote speaker, being interviewed by the fabulous Sharon McInnes, for our local radio station, Dig FM (formerly CVOX), on the program Beyond the Page. Susan is a terrific example of the many roads to “adulthood.” She is a prolific and funny writer.

I’ll be taking the short story session, led by Claire Mulligan, who is currently the Haig-Brown writer-in-residence in Campbell River. She has an MFA in screenwriting. I’m curious to learn about the “Mulligan Method.”

An hour up the Island Highway, the Campbell River writers’ conference, Words on the Water is on March 13th-14th. I’ve never been, so a new adventure. The delightful Michael Crummey and Vincent Lam are among the speakers.

What Am I Reading

This fall, NIWC chair and my writing group member, Joline Martin, published War Resisters: Standing Against the Vietnam War. Joline alternates interviews with resisters with chapters on the political context of the times. I was in high school in the GTA in the mid-60s, but I remember the street scene outside Rochdale on Bloor Street, a haven for dislocated resisters. It’s a history worth revisiting in 2026.

I hadn’t read Alan Hollinghurst since The Line of Beauty, where nearly every sentence is rich, dense, and exquisite like a dark chocolate hedgehog. But the nights were long, and I got lost in the life of Dave Win, a biracial boy, growing up in 1960s Britain in Our Evenings. He has a white, single mother, a seamstress (which I loved). He endures public school, racism, sexism (he’s gay) classism and the Thatcher era on his journey to become an actor. It’s long, detailed and delicious.

That’s all for now

Thanks again for dropping in. I hope you’ve enjoyed this post and will read the first story of my series, Watermarked.

See you again in February. Meanwhile, I’m listening to the rain pounding the metal roof and the southeaster that’s rattling the front windows.

A Swimming Adventure in Barbados

by

Comox Valley Sharks Masters — The Jellyfish Division

A year ago, during a challenging time, I was offered an escape to the Caribbean this November to the Barbados Open Water Festival. Honestly, this time last year, I would have agreed to just about anything—sanding floors in Sidney, dry-walling in Duncan, coal mining in Cumberland. But it turns out, the 2025 Barbados Open Water Festival was an excellent event.

I trained harder over the summer, encouraged by the more accomplished swimmers in my group, improving my technique and endurance, and met my goal of completing the 3.3-kilometre event despite the swells and gusting winds that are unusual for Carlisle Bay. Three of our members placed in age group categories on both days. And the answer to the classic travel question, Would you do it again? Absolutely.

Eight of us stayed in a share house like it was 1976 again. It worked perfectly, lubricated by rum punches. Each day, we took the public shuttle bus, a ZR, to the beach. The ZR is a privately owned white van taxi service that stops at official stops but can also be hailed. They are a cultural microcosm—packed, pumping out loud tunes and usually speeding. As one taxi driver explained, “When I tell the tourists about the ZR, half are excited to try them and half are terrified.” I loved them.

Each ZR trip is a minestrone of tourists, commuters, and school kids, transiently sharing the same goal—being at a specific destination at a certain time. This shared goal promotes an efficient and kind co-operation. Experienced passengers direct the tourists. Passengers sum you up, exchange places and find the exact best spot for each traveller. Jump seats are flicked open and closed. Somehow, the passengers make intuitive adjustments for all the body types and abilities. Four abreast on seats that I would have thought could only fit three or even two. On occasion, there is a little impatience with uninitiated tourists.

Cash ($3.50 B) is given to the driver or the person acting as a conductor. You can’t miss your stop if you announce your destination as you board. The crowd will guide you off at the correct stop.

If only for a twenty-minute ride, it was a privilege to be included in such a cooperative community. And it was weird doing up a seat belt when I got into a private vehicle to ride to the airport.

What I am reading


Louis Jean François Lagrenée (French, 1725 – 1805)Mars and Venus, Allegory of Peace (Mars et Vénus, allégorie sur la Paix), 1770 Source Getty’s Open Content Program

When I walked into the Comox library after I got back from Barbados, to return my overdue books, I noticed the 2025 Booker Prize Winner, Flesh by David Szalay, was displayed for short-term borrowing. This is my lucky day, I thought and one of the advantages of our excellent Vancouver Island Regional Library service. So slightly jet-lagged, but mainly riveted, I swept through the spare, tense prose. “OKAY” working hard as dialogue in each chapter.

The story is a merciless study of an unlikeable, passive male protagonist, Istavan, drifting through life, dependent on external circumstances. Chance, class, nationality, education, and male physicality (and sexuality) determine his fate. The transitions between the ten chapters are abrupt and disorienting. but the author skillfully drops the reader into the new time and scene, confirming the evolution of major events. The plot is tense, and the protagonist is infuriating. The dialogue is spare but loaded, uncluttered by embodiment or action. “Okay.” There is little exposition. Yet, this reader couldn’t stop reading. For a more detailed review, see Keiran Goddard’s review in the Guardian.

A much longer book with an eight-year-old, albino protagonist, Edgar, that stuck with me for days, is
Edgar and Lucy by Victor Lodato. Travel with Edgar after his caring grandmother dies, and he tries to understand the harmed and harmful adults remaining in his life. The perfect point of view of this intelligent, sensitive child is heartbreaking.

North Island Writers Conference — Save The Date

And if you are in the neighbourhood, consider joining the Comox Valley Writers Society and North Island College for the ninth annual North Island Writers Conference.

Thanks for reading

Carolyne