10/02/2023
Memoirist Porter (Scratching River) imbues her well-crafted debut novel with her Métis culture’s storytelling traditions. Among the many characters who narrate are the spirit of matriarch Mamé, who’s having trouble getting settled in the afterlife; her octogenarian daughter Geneviéve, finally dealing with her alcoholism; Carter, Geneviéve’s great-granddaughter, a young woman who was given up for adoption as a baby and is now coming to terms with being Métis and getting to know her biological mother and grandmother; Dee, a young bison who ignores her elders as she searches for the male bison that fathered her calf; and Bets, Geneviéve’s car, who cares for Geneviéve as they drive to a rehab facility. The author juggles the myriad story lines with élan, touching on family relationships in the human and animal world, the pull of the living on the spirits of the dead, and the stories and songs passed down from generation to generation. This brings a web of interconnected voices to vivid life. (Nov.)
Shortlisted for the Atwood Gibson Prize
“A Grandmother Begins the Story will leave you forever charmed and soulspun. What a vision. What courage to blow a hole through all expectations of what a story can be and how it's told, and what a masterwork from a voice I'd follow anywhere. This is why we read and this is why we write: to discover places and voices and visions like these.”—Richard van Camp, award-winning author of Godless but Loyal to Heaven and The Moon of Letting Go
“Deeply imaginative and utterly captivating. Michelle Porter’s storytelling pushes genre boundaries in a way that will surprise and delight readers. The prose is tight, and the characters are unforgettable. I don’t think I understood the term “unputdownable” until now.”—Carleigh Baker, award-winning author of Bad Endings
"Michelle Porter’s novel, A Grandmother Begins the Story, is charged with huge blasts of imaginative force—magical in every way. In this novel, divided families come together, there are wise bison, and dogs with opinions, an Indigenous family history spanning generations. Here is heaven and then, what the rest of these vivid characters must contend with, life on earth, with all its splendor and heartbreak. Porter is sometimes knee-slappingly funny, sometimes wry, poignant, nuanced, and gleefully irreverent. But this novel is full of reverence for the most important things: music and stories. Porter’s characters are tough and tender, courageous and flawed, and so true to life you’ll go back to the beginning as soon as you turn the last page, because you can't stand for it to be over. Michelle Porter’s voice is unique, uber-alive, utterly gorgeous. Just, WOW!" —Lisa Moore, award-winning author of This is How We Love and Caught
“This is a work of vocal magic. Through richly drawn characters and vibrant echoes of oral traditions old and new, Michelle Porter shows us the true breadth and resonance of Métis kinship, complete with the gifts and the hurts that move up and down the generations. There is simply no other story like it.”—Warren Cariou, award-winning author of The Exalted Company of Roadside Martyrs and Lake of the Prairies: A Story of Belonging
"A weeping birch grows in front of my house. Its leaves hang down on long, thin branches that, leafless, look like hair. When the sun is out and the winter air stirs, the sun’s rays passing through these branches break into shifting patterns of shadow and light over the house. When I was reading A Grandmother Begins the Story in my front room, that moving light passed through the prismed edge of the front door window and broke into rainbows across the page and they danced with each other and the darkness between them over the writing. I don’t need to find the words to tell you that a story can change the way you belong to the world. Nature and Michelle Porter have done that for me. And they will for you, too."—Richard Harrison, award-winning poet, author of On Not Losing My Father's Ashes in the Flood
“Unique. . . . Heavy ties of interdependence energies run through these characters, both human and more-than-human, simultaneously. These are exciting stories attached to the land with identifiable characters that could be one's family members, and it's the land that holds the story and hand of the grandmothers who lead the herd and hold space for life and story after them.”—Marilyn Dumont, award-winning poet, author of The Pemmican Eaters and A Really Good Brown Girl
“Michelle Porter’s A Grandmother Begins the Story blows the doors off the typical family saga... Beautiful and daring.”—2023 Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize Jury
"This singular and visionary debut spectacularly reimagines the epic family saga novel. Touching, evocative and kaleidoscopic."—Ms. Magazine
"Michelle Porter weaves an intricate story out of sparse, interlocking poetic fragments in her fiction debut. … [A] beautiful meditation on the interconnectedness of spirit, land and family."—BookPage
"[A] beautiful and affecting debut."—Shelf Awareness
"This brilliant debut novel… explores the importance of intergenerational connections and Indigenous storytelling."—Electric Literature
"I totally fell in love with Porter’s masterful storytelling… Told with the unique musical cadence of a Métis jig… A Grandmother Begins the Story is a stirring ode to the rhythms of generational exchange."—Audible
“In this lyrical book, we follow five Métis women confronting the wounds in their relationships with one another… Their many voices shine through in snippets of a few pages at a time to build a family chorus… This choir really drives home the point that no story stands alone, even when an individual storyteller might feel like no one is listening.”—Shondaland
A “searingly captivating debut… The tender, tough, funny, and heartbreaking voices of the characters will seep into readers’ souls.”—Library Journal
“Many points of view come together in this haunting, gorgeous tale that traces the roots of an indigenous Canadian family through several generations... Porter has published memoir and poetry, and she plays with the beauty of language and the rhythm of music here. The pulsing heart of the Métis people underlies every short section, creating a patchwork of beads not unlike those the women make."—Booklist
“Memoirist Porter imbues her well-crafted debut novel with her Métis culture’s storytelling traditions… [and] brings a web of interconnected voices to vivid life.”—Publishers Weekly
"Through lyrical, spiritual storytelling, we see five generations of women in Carter and Allie’s family determined to maintain the thread of their connections to each other and grow their legacy into the future."—BookRiot
“A Grandmother Begins the Story is a testament to the living, breathing process of passing stories and songs along across the years. A stirring ode to the rhythms of generational exchange, Porter's debut novel shimmers.”—Audible
“[Porter] expertly weaves together voices and stories like a master.”—Debutiful
★ 10/01/2023
DEBUT Memoirist, poet, and scholar Porter's (creative writing and Métis literature, Memorial Univ.; Scratching River) searingly captivating debut novel takes shape around five Métis women on seemingly divergent paths. Told beautifully in each of the women's voices, as well as from the perspectives of bison, dogs, and the land they inhabit, each woman's journey comes to intersect with another's until the story is fully woven. Mamé is in the afterlife but remains tethered to this world until she can settle her ties to her girls left behind. Carter has just been asked by the grandmother she's never met if she'll go help kill her, and she thinks she's agreed. Geneviève decides maybe it's a good idea to get sober in what are likely her last months to live. Allie tries to hold on to everything so tightly she just might break it all, and she's the reason Carter didn't know she was Métis until she was a teenager and never met her Gramma. VERDICT Highly recommended, especially for fans of stories of generational relations and the connections between women. The tender, tough, funny, and heartbreaking voices of the characters will seep into readers' souls.—Julie Kane
Sixteen narrators, many Indigenous, join their voices to deliver memoirist/poet Michelle Porter's haunting debut novel. Matriarch Mamé, voiced by actor Tantoo Cardinal, has passed on but can't settle in the afterlife as connections to her daughter, Geneviève; granddaughter, Lucie; and great-great-granddaughter, Carter, keep her tethered to this world. Geneviève, grittily voiced by Jani Lauzon, is seeking treatment for alcohol abuse, while her daughter, Lucie, boldly portrayed by Monique Mojica, tries to convince her own granddaughter, snarky but wounded Carter (narrated by Jenny Pudavick), to help her die. These vibrant, determined women are surrounded by others--including bison, two dogs, a car named Bets, and even the prairie itself--and are supported by them. Porter's dreamlike writing is enhanced by a delicate soundtrack interwoven with a playful fiddle and gently thrumming drums. S.A.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine
2023-09-21
Family stories echo each other, for good and ill, from one woman all the way down to her great-great-granddaughter.
The stories of five generations of Indigenous women weave through this novel, set in western Canada. Mamé has already died but is struggling to negotiate the new norms on the other side. Her daughter Geneviève has checked herself into a rehab center at age 81 after decades of alcoholism. Gen’s daughter, Lucie, is dying of cancer and has long been estranged from her own daughter, Allie. But Lucie has asked Allie’s daughter, Carter, to help her die by suicide even though Carter and Lucie have never met. All of their stories, past and present, overlap in an intergenerational sweep of families fractured by racism, poverty, misogyny, and substance abuse. But family bonds persist, and for this family the strongest bond is music. The book’s structure moves from one character to another, one time period to another, so often that some shifts are confusing. The most interesting stories, and those that get the most space, are Gen’s and Carter’s. Gen used to play piano at dance halls while her charismatic sister, Velma, played the fiddle, but Velma died years ago. As Gen detoxes, she has visions of Velma visiting so they can play together again. Carter is in the midst of divorcing her husband, a Croatian immigrant, and deciding what to do about her 3-year-old son as she battles addictions of her own—and whether to grant Lucie’s request. Some of the book’s elements of magical realism work, like Mamé’s version of the next life and Gen’s visits with Velma. Others, like chapters from the points of view of Gen’s dogs and car, seem extraneous. But the book really bogs down in a long, repetitive, intermittent narrative about a lovelorn bison that never clicks with the rest of the story.
Several intriguing characters and insightful story lines struggle to emerge from this overstuffed novel.
