Ana Historic

There is a suppression of history, arguably the personal narrative is wiped from the slate and factual ideas and events tend to be unrevealing. Daphne Marlatt focuses on the suppression of women's histories as Ana Historic explores history and narration.Novels should raise questions, as Ana Historic does successfully. Marlatt gives a voice to women by questioning the conventions and rules of writing. She mixes history by exploring different eras and making connections between the 1980's and 1870's with the characters Annie and Ana. The different historical voices of the novel bind these women together and the astounding poetics of Marlatt's own voice. Ana Historic is an enchanting meld of the poem and the novel. Marlatt's words flow into one another, even the form of the novel itself breaks conventions and takes a more poetic route to align the words on the page. She has a feminine approach to language and a soft pensive order to the way she writes. It's a challenging book that deserves a close read as the movement of time is sometimes difficult to follow. Dapne Marlatt takes the reader into a dark lost place and it's fascinating to go there with her.

Ana Historic, in a nutshell: -is written in non-conventional prose, free of the common uses of character development, punctuation and linear plot movement -attempts to include the impossible- to write women into history -Daphne Marlatt uses evocative imagery and detail to portray small moments of time that revolve and fold in on itself-forming a whole for the gap that cannot be filled in "normal"patriarchical writing

Ana, a Vancouver wife and mother, becomes obsessed with the character of Mrs. Richards, an early resident of Vancouver whose legacy consists only of a few unsatisfying references in a history book. Ana struggles to come to terms with the exclusion of women from traditional "history", and converts this lack into a potential for endless imagination. As she reimaginves and rewrites Mrs. Richards' history, she comes to a new kind of personal freedom and self-knowledge. Daphne Marlatt is primarily a writer of poetry, concequently the style in Ana Historic is lovely and poetic, although not too hard to follow. The book is thoughtful, but so compelling that I found it impossible to put down.