The settings for Centre/Center are West Sonoma County, California of the late '60s; frozen northern British Columbia of the mid '70s; Vancouver, B.C. and the Oregon coast of the mid '80s.
Centre/Center's cast of characters include: a daughter whose cultural, political choices put her at odds with her mainstream suburban family; pot-smoking hippies with anti-science attitudes and neo-pagan rituals; anti-war protesters; a LSD casualty who liberates a motorcycle from an owner who doesn't respect it's need to be ridden; a woman who permanently borrows without permission her friend's truck because she thinks he can get along without it; a drug dealer; an abandoned child searching for her mother and coming to terms with an uncomfortable truth about her father; a disillusioned and angry Vietnam veteran who lives in isolated northern wilderness and fathers a child with a woman stronger than he and another Veteran burn-out lost to a hobo life.
The novel is in three sections, in the first section the omnipotent narrator drifts through the thoughts and histories of a group of young people challenged by the stresses of the Viet Nam War Era. The second section's narration is tensely focused on a couple in a wilderness cabin. The third and final section is the first-person narrative of a determined, capable 20 year old girl.
Of course, I'm not an unbiased reviewer, Mary Burns is a friend of mine, my partner on this blog. I first knew her in Sonoma County, California of the late '60's. Although this book is not strictly auto-biographical, several people we both knew are recognizable, in composite and it is dedicated to the mutual friend who introduced us.
The settings, social attitudes and interactions of the first section are all quite familiar to me, she thoroughly manifests the era and illustrates the way we were. The thoughtfulness, the self-seriousness, the moral dilemmas we tackled, all ring true. The shifting, drifting narration of the section accurately evokes the mood of the hippie life-style we enjoyed.
I'm a stranger to the wilderness setting of the second section, though it is clear from the writing alone that Mary is not. Though Mary and I have been in correspondence for decades, I last saw her in 1970 as she and her young daughter drove away, headed north. They continued until they reached the far northern wilderness. Again, she brings authority to this northern wilderness story of a strong woman and a troubled man.
With intimate knowledge from observation, Mary clearly narrates the third section through the voice of a character of the same generation as Mary's daughter. The character's adventures while on her quest have the truth of fiction and brings the novel to an enlightened completetion.
Mary's my friend. She also wrote a great book that gets it right.
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