Absence of Wings by Arleen Paré

Arleen Paré’s Absence of Wings is a beautiful remembrance and biography for A., the eight-year-old child Paré’s younger sister adopted from Brazil.

From the very start, there is a sort of pall that hangs over the carefully and beautifully written, lines of Paré’s book. The reader is invited into the scene where A., in her purple coat, sits huddled against the car door, looking at her first-ever snowfall in Ontario, on her way to her new home. The sense of a fresh beginning is clear but then Paré writes:

“April is the month the 13^th and yet snow”

And I am reminded of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land: “April is the cruellest month,” the first line of that poem, from the first part entitled, I. The Burial of the Dead. That, along with the date, the 13^th, a number so often associated with superstition and bad luck, and I can’t help but think that Paré is readying her readers for a fall with A.

The poem itself is split into two parts. Part One, A. arrives, and we learn of A.’s history—at least, the history the nuns who had charge of A. have told Paré’s sister—and we see the first of several repetitions of the phrase, “keep her safe bring her home,” as said to Paré by her mother about her younger sister. Still applicable, but now also something Paré’s sister certainly feels for A.

Part Two, the first part of which is entitled, 1. With No Good Place to Land, begins the “sudden not so unexpected slide as if someone had just upended a table her life in slow motion…” and the pall that hung over Part One quickly becomes heavier.

There is a growing sense of the failure of a system that doesn’t protect A. from the cruelty of her peers, from the unkindness and dismissiveness of medical professionals and the world at large; failures that not even a mother’s, or aunt’s, love can protect A. from.

There are lovely moments, too, and all of them about A.: her big heart, her big voice, her generosity. A. lives and breathes in these pages, and the love her family has for her resonates throughout.

This is a beautiful and contemplative read, and one I will definitely return to.

Arleen Paré has graduate degrees in Social Work, Adult Education and Creative Writing (Poetry). Originally from Montreal, she worked for over two decades in Vancouver in Social Service bureaucracies. Paré has published 10 books. She now resides in Victoria, where she lives with her partner, Chris Fox. She has two adult sons.

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Caitlin Press (Oct. 13 2023)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 144 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1773861239
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1773861234

Mara McTavish

Mara McTavish hails from Kjipuktuk, Miꞌkmaꞌki (Halifax, Nova Scotia) and is a writer of poems, short stories, and sometimes technical things; she’s also an avid knitter, reader, and drawer of snarky little stick people comics. You can follow her on Instagram @mara.e.mctavish. (www.instagram.com/mara.e.mctavish/)