The Perpetual Ending
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
From a writer acclaimed for her “probing, idiosyncratic intelligence and emotional generosity” (Calgary Herald), comes a deeply imagined novel that takes us into the lives of devoted twin sisters and their world of opposites, doppelgängers and ghosts.
Jane and Eugenie Ingrams are mirror-image twins, and thus exact opposites. Halves of a whole, they are inseparable, each understanding her world through the other. But when Lucy, their artistic mother, moves her daughters from Deep River to Toronto (leaving behind a bewildered husband), she finds she can’t entirely escape the remains of their troubled marriage.
Eugenie thrives in the jumble of urban life, but Jane is sickened by its underside: the mess of lost souls who live on the streets, the garbage, the noise and the violence. When their father eventually seeks them out, Jane is relieved for the chance to go back to Deep River. Eugenie agrees to return for the sake of her beloved sister -- a soon-to-be-tragic concession.
Years later, Jane is a writer in Vancouver, living with her lover, Simon, a gifted illustrator. Although troubled by her past, she finds solace (and commercial success) in the rich, fabulist tales she and Simon create -- which are expertly woven throughout the book -- tales of people born with extraordinary qualities: horns, the gift of prophesy, spiderweb hair or unquenchable thirst.
Wondrous, inventive and brimming with charm, The Perpetual Ending is an exploration of love and artistry that shows the world as a whole, in all its grotesqueness and beauty. And it uncovers the surprising ways we sometimes arrive at the heart of one story through the telling of others.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A troubled Canadian family is the focus of this sensitive debut novel about an alcoholic man who wreaks havoc on the lives of his wife and twin daughters. Jane Ingram is the narrator who tells the story as a series of flashbacks, alternating accounts of her childhood experiences with a subplot in which she tries to cope with her traumatic upbringing through a series of children's stories she develops with her lover, Simon, an illustrator. Jane; her twin sister, Eugenie; and their imaginative and somewhat fey mother, Lucy, teeter on the edge of chaos precipitated by the violent outbursts and emotional cruelty of their father, and husband, David. The children are more or less left to themselves as their parents rage against one another. Lucy tries to explain away David's disturbed state of mind as simply a clash of personalities ("what you adore about someone will one day be the thing you try to change"). The couple splits, and their custody battles precipitate a fatal accident which lies at the heart of Jane's present-day disturbance. Interspersed through the novel are the children's stories that Jane concocts to explain her past to Simon (however obliquely); gradually, the tales build a picture of an emotionally fractured personality. Though the subject matter has been addressed many times over, Hartog handles it skillfully. Jane's memories accurately reflect the thoughts and fears of a confused and frightened child, and the plangent tone of sadness is sustained with grace.
