…Cynthia Flood’s Remarkable First Novel…

In Cynthia Flood’s remarkable first novel, there’s no tidy shuttling between present and past, no chronological storytelling. . . . The complex narrative demands that you pay attention, and it works; like the lives of its characters, this novel is complicated, passionate, and genuine.Back to Top

The Period Detail Here is Impeccable

We first see Dora and Owen in the nursing home where they spend their last days, defanged and depressed. Working backwards, Flood takes us to the time when they were at the peak of their powers, and back further to their childhoods.In the process, she gives us a crash course in the Vancouver that was newly energized by the union movement in the 30s and that brought women into the workforce during the second world war. The period detail here is impeccable.
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…an undeniably moving and impressive work from a mature talent…

Cynthia Flood’s first novel is a boldly experimental historical fiction that excavates the tragic, crossed lives of three Vancouverites: (Dora Dow (1900-1996), Owen Jones (1902-1997), and Jonathan Smyth (1902-1967).

Dora Dow, a woman extraordinarily overweight and wilful, suffers a loveless childhood and sexist marriage. Her one moment of erotic joy comes with Owen, first a delinquent schoolboy, later a rugged iconoclast, thief, womanizer, and deliberate drifter.

The narrative’s dark secret devolves from their one act of illicit love. A kind medical doctor, Jonathan Smyth, meets Owen only a few brief times. But it’s the doctor’s failure to rescue Dora from the grotesque obstetrical consequence of her love–to prevent the mysterious stone-making anti-miracle–that leaves him permanently haunted by her. A hint at the secret here: Marjo, Dora’s best friend, pleads with her, “You should take it out. You’re a walking talking coffin, and that’s not normal.”

Casual readers beware: Making A Stone Of The Heart is not easy going.  Flood’s anti-chronological narrative structure moves unnaturally backwards.  Chapter one opens with the report of Dora’s death, then the scene of her birth; we next see Owen’s death, then birth; Jonathan’s death, then birth.  Chapter two features some accounts in the 1990s, chapter three some from the 80s, and so forth backwards until the century’s turn. Flood thus keeps our beastly Aristotelian appetite for beginning-middle-end fare on a short leash. We learn the story by way of fragments, gradually excavated by an austerely absent narrator.

Making A Stone Of The Heart remains, nonetheless, an undeniably moving and impressive work from a mature talent. It is a must-read for anybody interested in imagining Vancouver’s past, and should certainly endure as a classic of British Columbian fiction.

Flood’s narrative sets loose, too, a dazzling medley of narrative voices.  The diatribes of Dora’s vengeful daughter Mary shock; the regretful confessions of her best friend Marjo intrigue; the bitter complaints of her husband Ned unsettle. Nor are the character perspectives limited to Owen, Dora, and Jonathan. We see Dora’s parents set up house, for example, through the eyes of a calculatingly snobbish 1900s Vancouver landlady; we first meet the hilariously crude Owen through the eyes of his squeamish 1980s teenage niece, Cheryl.

Flood shifts lenses and voices so effortlessly that we might not immediately notice the impressive frequency of the shifts, the delightful breadth of the novel’s variety. It works subtly, but the result is a fully populated fictional world–a rich evocation of a whole century of Vancouver social history. Indeed, with this painstaking work, Cynthia Flood performs for Vancouver what Michael Ondaatje did for Toronto with In The Skin Of A Lion:  she romances the city’s history while respecting real archives.

This novel’s experimental challenges might alienate faint-hearted readers, though. Author and publisher should give readers a genealogical chart at the front, in future editions. The virtues of experimental bravery aside, the backward-moving technique may be neither necessary nor wholly effective.  Following the framing first chapter with more straightforward plotting might work as well: Dora, Owen, and Jonathan would continue to fascinate us. The quantity of narrative jamming creates big expectations for the final chapter’s disclosures–expectations bound to be disappointed. The account of “that day” (2 August 1918) on which Owen and Dora and Jonathan all cross paths cannot help but feel overburdened. Nor does the new information it gives deeply alter our sense of the sufferings and decisive experiences governing their tragically isolated lives.

Making A Stone Of The Heart remains, nonetheless, an undeniably moving and impressive work from a mature talent. It is a must-read for anybody interested in imagining Vancouver’s past, and should certainly endure as a classic of British Columbian fiction.
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Naomi Brun, Hamilton Spectator – 25 May, 2002

Cynthia Flood has created a profound first novel…

Established short-story writer Cynthia Flood has created a profound first novel in Making A Stone Of The Heart. This book is truly outstanding and qualifies as literature rather than as a light Saturday afternoon read.On the cover is a stone figure bent over at the waist, head on the ground.  This posture could be interpreted one of two ways. The figure could be in the fetal position, or the figure could be in the yogic pose of the child.  In either case, the posture implies vulnerability, healing, and growth. The fact that the figure is not made of flesh but of stone indicates hardness of spirit and permanence.

The cover design introduces the reader to themes found in the novel and their expression in the symbol of stone.

Similar in tone to The Stone Angel, Flood writes about harsh life with grace and humanity. Dora Dow, Owen Jones, Marjo McEwan, and Dr Jonathan Smyth all begin life in a state of vulnerability.

Dora has a terrible relationship with her mother and is constantly chastised for her weight. Owen’s father abandoned him at birth, his mother turned to prostitution to earn enough money to raise her child, and Owen never knew stability or kindness. Marjo had to terminate a teenage pregnancy; Jonathan’s mother died at his birth and he was always blamed for it.

These four characters are integral to each others’ lives, and whenever paths cross, each one’s direction becomes more clearly defined. Some characters calcify in spirit as a result of all the scars they have collected, while others manage to retain some softness and some openness to the possibilities of life. Their individual journeys lead them to become the elderly people we first meet.
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