Snowball, Dragonfly, Jew
Ben is a performance artist about to enter his forties. His father and mother are both dead, and his brother, Jake, is a lousy source of information. So when he begins to struggle with a particularly nagging memory, he doesn’t know where to turn. The memory: the assassination — by his mother — of a prominent neo–Nazi.
In a non-chronological montage of memories, Ben travels back and forth through the events of his life, some of which seemed trivial at the time but are important now: his childhood summers at a cottage in central Ontario, his teenage years in a Toronto suburb, his disastrous university career, the calamity that precipitated his brother’s institutionalization.
Stuart Ross’s first novel is a blend of suburban realism and out–of–body surrealism.
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The montage of memories in Snowball, Dragonfly, Jew is lyrical and beautifully constructed. I loved following the images of the snowball and the dragonfly through the sequence of memories.
Unfortunately, the whole work left me wanting more. The memory of his mother assassinating a neo-Nazi became as trivial as the other memories in the narrative. There is a question in the narrator's mind about the accuracy of the memory - did this really happen? The spiraling of images around this central memory does nothing to resolve the question. I yearned for the other memories to gain poignancy through linkage with the more substantial memory, but the opposite occurred.
The narrator doubts the memories of the assassination but is fully certain of the other memories, thereby raising questions for the reader about memory and the creation of meaning. Because the narrator has no way of verifying the accuracy of the memories, the reader is left as uncertain as the narrator.
The use of such a provocative image for the questioned memory calls for a more emotional charged response than Stuart Ross provides. Watching one's mother kill somebody should be big stuff. But it gets a very light treatment here. The whimsy of the related memories left me feeling as though the narrator did not care to resolve his uncertainty, and yet there was text that suggested otherwise.
I loved Ross' use of language and imagery. There is some beautiful evocation of the way time changes in memory using a hat. The experience of reading Snowball, Dragonfly, Jew was light, engaging and thoroughly enjoyable but I finished the book ultimately wanting more serious emotional engagement.
We all have dreams that mix with reality. We wake up and wonder if something really occurred, or whether it was “just” a dream. Such is the underlying premise of Stuart Ross’ novella Snowball, Dragonfly, Jew.
Ross’ character Ben shares out of sequence memories of his life, beginning with an assassination of a former-Nazi by Ben’s own mother. Throughout the book, Ben continually questions whether this event actually happened, almost to the point of asking someone else if it did...but not quite. Considering that there is no memory of an imprisonment of his dying mother, as well as the fact that the chapter detailing this so-called memory is titled “The Dream”, shows the reader that this memory is probably, in truth, just a dream; the most realistic and horrifying dream of his life, true, but still a dream. It is Ben’s attempt to give meaning to his mother’s all too short life. Yes, she resented and was obsessed by the existence of the Nazi while she was about to die herself, never mind that because of him, or at least people like him, much of her family had “turned to smoke over Poland”.
This confusion between reality and fantasy could have been distracting if not for Ross’ skilful stream of consciousness writing style. His uniquely Ontarian references instantly brought me back to my own childhood of the 1970s with a pure, clean and honest nostalgia rarely felt in novels. It is more than a coming-of-age story as Ben doesn’t ever really come of age, despite becoming the last man standing in his own family. He is obsessed with his past and the ephemera of his childhood, as many of us still are...at least in our dreams, if not in our daily lives.
Ross’ book beautifully captures a dream-like state of memory that haunts his character’s everyday existence, and is a perfect summer read (despite the snowball in the title). As Ben “swims slowly, with steady strokes”, the reader’s only wish is to hear the tale of his destination and to experience, with him, what happens next.
That this is Stuart Ross' first novel after a history of writing short stories shows up very plainly in the text - the chapters are short, and for the most part, disconnected.
The book's heart is a memory unearthed (dreamed?) by Ben, the protagonist, about his mother assassinating a Neo-Nazi when he was a young boy. However, I say this because this is the incident that the back cover of the book focuses on the most. In the book itself, the significance of the event is given little weight, and Ben does very little to confirm whether his memory is truth or fiction. The novel takes place across several time periods, but Ben explicitly mentions doing a piece of performance art in the days immediately following 9/11 - surely in that day and age, he could have done a quick internet search to reveal whether his mother really killed another man?
Ben is a curiously passive character throughout the novel, especially considering his chosen path as a performance artist. Most people in that line of work tend to be provocateurs and relentlessly critical, but Ben still thinks like a child.
Other episodes and people come and go throughout his novel - his brother, living in a mental institution after an unexplained medical episode; a brief interlude watching George Chuvalo show off his boxing skills in cottage country; his relationship with his brother's girlfriend after the former's breakdown - all of these events, and more, are described, but given little narrative weight or connective tissue.
Perhaps the fault lies with me in that I am unused to surrealism in literature. But I found that the novel attempted to discuss matters of great import - love, loss, the Holocaust - with too light a touch.
Very engaging and interesting. Ross doesn't waste a single word. Travelling non-sequentially through Ben's memories, thoughts, and reflections, I came to feel as if I knew this person, knew his brother, and their lives. The memories unravel so beautifully, it is as though the reader is remembering them, reaching for them, striving to discern what is real, what really happened, and what might just be a distant dream or memory.
I found this book to be very interesting. It took me to many places that I recognized when I lived in Toronto and area. It was interesting how the author jumped back and forth between the past and the present
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Snowball, Dragonfly, Jew is a curious little book. It's a fast and mostly easy read (I read it in one sitting, on the train from Manchester to London - which is a journey of a little over two hours), which is not to say that the writing is flat and boring. Far from it. Ross is a deft craftsman, and there's little excess baggage here. Each passage is a perfect little jewel. But what makes the book curious is the format with which Ross has chosen to tell his story. It's told as a series of discrete and only tangentially related 'chapters', through which the main protagonist weaves memories, impressions, dreams and philosophical musings. The effect of this fragmentary narrative is to disrupt and subvert the reader's usual expectations of story arcs, conflicts and resolutions, rising tension and final release. It's a little like juggling fish. You have it, but it keeps slipping away from you, and the harder you grasp at it, the faster it eludes you. It's not that the reader doesn't know if he should trust the narrator, it's that the narrator doesn't trust himself.
Which explains, I think, the odd format of the book (which other reviewers have remarked and found difficult to stomach at times). We're not supposed to know quite what is remembered, and what imagined, so the story is fed to us in tantalizing and ultimately unresolved little nibbles which suggest at versions of the truth, but which never really offer up a coherent three course dinner of it. I take it this is what Ross set out to achieve, and he has done a remarkably good job of it.
Which leaves the question, is this subverting of literary conventions a worthwhile exercise? I'm on the fence. It could have resulted in an arid and annoying little book, and that it didn't is both surprising and ultimately a testimony to Ross's craftmanship. Did it make me think about the art of storytelling, and unfold new possibilities I've not previously considered. Yes it did. Was the writing tight and well crafted - enjoyable to read in and of itself? Yes it was. Did the storytelling transport me to Ross's world, and engage me with the characters he moves though it. At times, that certainly happened. Did I really care, in the end, if his mother had pulled the trigger or not. Not really. But I sure that's almost entirely the point.
Phew! Snowball, Dragonfly, Jew by Stuart Ross is one heavy read. You wouldn’t expect an unassuming little paperback (only 175 pages, and smaller than your average book) to pack such an emotional punch, but this book made my heart heavy. That’s not to say I wouldn’t read it again though; Stuart Ross is a masterful writer and I very much enjoyed his poetic prose.
To me, Snowball, Dragonfly, Jew is about mourning. Mourning the loss of childhood, mourning the loss of two parents, and mourning the loss of a brother. The book is set in Toronto, and each chapter could almost stand as a short story on it’s own. Ross weaves these chapters together into an exploration of past where the lines between what really happened and what the narrator remembers are heavily blurred. Snowball, Dragonfly, Jew has one of the most memorable opening sentences I have ever come across: “To it’s surprise, the bullet sailed out of the gun my mother clutched unsteadily in both hands, and a moment later the big man’s yellow hard hat leapt from his thick head, into the air.” How awesome is that?! Beginning a novel from the perspective of a bullet, especially a bullet that is involved in an incident that haunts the narrator throughout the work, seems brilliant to me. I’d recommend Snowball, Dragonfly, Jew to anyone interested in serious literary fiction, poetry (it’s very poetic), or a view of a Jewish childhood (fascinating).
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Did the storytelling transport me to Ross's world, and engage me with the characters he moves though it. At times, that certainly happened. Did I really care, in the end, if his mother had pulled the trigger or not. Not really. But I sure that's almost entirely the point. pancakes from scratch
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Ross' book beautifully captures a dream-like state of memory that haunts his character's everyday existence, and is a perfect summer read (despite the snowball in the title). I saw a review about this at last minute rhodos weak ago and that's made me interested, As Ben "swims slowly, with steady strokes", the reader's only wish is to hear the tale of his destination and to experience, with him, what happens next.
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I found this book to be very interesting. It took me to many places that I recognized when I lived in Toronto and area. It was interesting how the author jumped back and forth between the past and the present, but still kept the story flowing. It was not difficult to follow.