All Times Have Been Modern

All Times Have Been Modern by Elisabeth Harvor
Viking Canada
368 pages

A page or two into Elisabeth Harvor's All Times Have Been Modern, I thought, "What a fabulous novel I'm reading." A few pages later I thought: "What a fantastic time I'm having." And indeed, Harvor's second novel, about a bookish, dreamy woman torn between her passion for writing and her passion for, well, passion, is so entertaining it could have come out in pocketbook paperback. And yet it truly deserves its hardcover status, for with this edgy recreation of the female artist's life, Harvor has committed literature.

All Times Have Been Modern is a brilliant novel that is nevertheless determined not to take itself too seriously. We meet the heroine, Kay, when she is 13, aboard a ferry on the Kennebecasis River. She is flirting with a young soldier -- this is around the Second World War -- warm with the discovery that she has found an activity she enjoys as much as reading. Kay and her parents are on their way to pick up the teenage Derek, a family friend, who will stay with them during the summer. Back at home, the sexual tension mounts between Derek and Kay. One day, finding themselves home alone, they make out. How lightly and naturally Harvor renders the humorous desperation of these scenes. It's impossible for the reader not to chuckle. We are not laughing at Kay and Derek so much as we are laughing at recollections of our teenage selves.

Kay's youth flies by in a few paragraphs. There are scenes depicting her involvement with a high school drama -- the thrill of minor stardom and costumes and sets -- and suddenly, she is 20. It is the last day of summer and Kay has been working at her parents' studio (they are both well-known artists), giving guided tours. The last visitor of the day is Alexander Olenski, an architect. They spend the evening together. He gives her a French kiss. Some brief paragraphs later, they are married.

Harvor's plot moves so fast the reader is breathless in the effort to catch up. The long, lean, lines of her sentences are rarely slowed by commas or semi-colons, or other mechanisms of restraint. Her voice is poetic -- but in the most unselfconscious way. She never strains for profound metaphors. There is only Kay's authentic, individual, slightly kooky, way of seeing. When it comes to issues of technique, such as plotting, diction, dialogue and especially timing, few writers share Harvor's extravagant gifts.

Elisabeth Harvor

We know Kay would make a good fiction writer because of the information she resists sharing. For instance, about a year after her marriage, she and Alex travel to Europe. Then they settle in Ottawa and join a quasi-radical organization. They also have children, two boys. But this is something we are not told until later. Even then, the children are mentioned so casually, we suspect Kay of hardly caring. But after an anonymous writer sends her a nasty note condemning the family's politics, we watch her burn with maternal solicitude.

Similarly, we are well into the book by the time we discover Kay is already an accomplished novelist who has published one acclaimed book and had a story appear in the New Yorker.

Harvor spoons out her characters' actions and sentiments in manageable doses: Ingesting this new information requires us to rethink various scenes. This perpetual uncertainty ought to annoy the reader. But it doesn't. Instead, we accept Kay as a reticent new friend, one who will share more information once she feels comfortable. And besides, we like her, even though she is annoyingly insecure about her appearance, her accomplishments and her literary abilities. At the same time, she whole heartedly pursues her goals, mainly because she can't think of anything else to do. She is also wittily ironic, a devoted mother, a disastrous housekeeper and a deeply sexual being.

Fortress of Chairs by Elisabeth Harvor
Signal Editions
84 pages

Kay eventually divorces Alexander, moves to Montreal and attempts to get serious about her writing. Here, she falls for a younger man. Michael becomes her first true love and their affair interferes with her commitment to writing.

Kay keeps track of her thoughts in a notebook. That's significant because if I was going to compare this novel to any other, it would be Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook. As in Lessing's novel, Harvor explores the social and psychological blocks that hinder a woman's creativity. The technique of both books operates as a critique of contemporary writing. But that's as far as I would take the analogy. Harvor's style is completely her own and makes her one of Canada’s most eloquent and entertaining writers.

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Elisabeth Harvor passed away October 10, 2024, at the age of 86. She wrote several acclaimed books, including Let Me Be The One, nominated for a Governor General’s Award for Fiction, and a poetry collection Fortress of Chairs for which she won the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. This review appeared previously in The Globe and Mail.