One of the authors I’d been advised to look out for in Canada was Helen Humphreys. I did find a few of her novels, but they were almost all set in England, and I’d much rather read a Canadian writer writing about Canada. So I decided to buy some of her non-fiction instead – Nocturne (2013) from ABC Book Store in Toronto, which looked a little unpromising from the outside but had an amazing stock inside. The book itself is beautiful – a lovely covered, and deckled edges. It is just under 200 pages, and something rather special.
The subtitle tells you what the book is going to be about – ‘on the life and death of my brother’. I’m not going to write a very long review, but I do want to communicated what a wonderfully written book Nocturne is – both as a tribute to a brother and best friend, and as an examination of love and loss that perfectly combines the poetic and the grounded.
Fairly late in the book, Humphreys shares the short obituary she wrote for her brother, Martin – saying she never chose words more carefully. And it is evident from the writing in Nocturne that choosing words carefully is at the core of her being. I’m quoting the obituary first because it really tells you who Martin was, and what happened to him:
Brilliant, talented, passionate and compassionate, kind, handsome, disciplined, elusive, and stubborn, Martin loved music, art, new places and experiences, his friends, the West Coast, connecting with life in all its forms, having a beer, and watching the Maple Leafs (even this season). He hated cruelty, intolerance, stupidity, and Toronto winters.
He died too soon, from pancreatic cancer, and is deeply missed by his parents, Frances and Anthony; his sisters, Helen and Cathy; his many friends in Vancouver, Toronto, England, and Paris. We are lost without his beautiful spirit.
Through Nocturne, Humphreys moves between present and various pasts. She tells us about Martin’s life and his illness – the talent he had for music from an early age, and his triumphs and limits as a composer. His friendships, and his movements around the world, and his flawed relationships. And then his diagnosis and the cruelties of cancer. And, winding through it all, the grief and shock of losing your brother and closest ally. I think what I found most moving in Nocturne is the portrait of how you can know someone deeply and still not know everything about them. How you can live in different parts of the world and be deeply close, and be in the same room and not know how to communicate. But what comes across most is the great depths of love Humphreys has for her brother. Not enough fiction and non-fiction talks about this bond between siblings, and Humphreys honours it so beautifully.
And, my goodness, this woman can write. I’m keener than ever to read her fiction, particularly the one or two that are set in Canada. I noted this down on p.8, but there are so many examples of the same exceptional, reflective writing:
I come to the cemetery in a kind of ad hoc fashion. Sometimes I pick up a coffee and drink it out there, standing with my back to your gravestone. I like how the sun warms the stone and how the stone keeps the heat a little way into the evening, keeps it longer than the air. It’s strange, but when you died and the heat started leaking from your body, it left you at exactly the pace that a stone cools after being in the sun all day. It makes me think that we are made of the natural world after all, attached to it more securely than I had realized.
I am often drawn to books about grief – perhaps because they are the purest way of describing love. Nocturne is up there among the best I’ve read.