For me, this was almost a perfect book. I love how Endicott writes and the characters she creates. Everyone is presented in a warts and all manner that makes them feel so real and fallible. Great stuff. ( )

Open Arms, Marina Endicott’s beguiling debut novel, chronicles the unsettled early years of Bessie Smith Connolly, from childhood to young adulthood. The source of her troubles and the focus of much of Bessie’s angst is her impulsive, beautiful, unreliable mother Isabel, who was very young herself when Bessie was born. To add to her chaotic upbringing, Bessie’s father, Patrick, an award-winning poet, left Isabel and his daughter in pursuit of his muse, subsequently marrying twice more. When Bessie was small, her mother was picked up in a drug bust and ended up serving time in prison. Bessie was raised in Nova Scotia by Isabel’s parents, a time she recalls fondly as idyllic, filled with love and, given her background, uncharacteristically stable. However, when we meet her the placid years are behind her and Bessie, in her teens and following the death of her grandfather, is living in Saskatoon with her mother. Isabel shares a house with Katherine, Patrick’s second ex-wife, and brings in money with odd jobs and by singing at a local bar. The novel is constructed in three sections. “With the Band” is set in Saskatoon and draws a vivid portrait of Isabel’s fluid moods and capricious nature as she takes up with a much younger man and seems to go out of her way to avoid the messy complications that making an emotional commitment to her daughter would entail. In the second section, “The Giant Doreen,” Bessie and her younger half-sister Irene, Katherine and Patrick’s daughter, travel to British Columbia to stay with Patrick and current wife Doreen, the dramatic complication being that Patrick is absent and Doreen is pregnant and on the verge of giving birth. The final section, “To the Top of the World,” is constructed as a quest, as Bessie (now in her 20s) and her grandmother chase across country after Isabel, who is moving in a seemingly random fashion from place to place, involved in a personal quest of her own and, as usual, giving no thought to anyone else’s wishes or needs. Open Arms is in many respects a meditation on motherhood: its various forms, the pain and joy, the push and pull, the unrealistic expectations, the limits on what some woman are able or willing to give. The women we meet in these pages are uniformly strong and courageous, used to hard knocks, accustomed to picking up the pieces left behind by their men and carving out an independent path in the world. Their story is a captivating one, emotionally persuasive and dramatically resonant. Bessie Smith is an endearing narrator who relates events in a clear, rational voice, pulling no punches, telling it like it is. The ending, where we witness the author’s hand somewhat obviously at work, might seem a bit convenient. But this does not change the fact that fans of Endicott’s later novels who might have missed or overlooked this book will find much to enjoy here. It can also be stated with something close to certainty that anyone who appreciates fiction that features strong female characters will find that Open Arms, written with grace, wit and confidence, is well worth seeking out. ( )

(Fiction, Contemporary, Canadian)
Marina Endicott is a multi-award winning Canadian author who read her work at the 2013 Read by the Sea festival in River John, Nova Scotia. When I heard her, I realized that I’d completely missed reading her work, so I determined to begin with her first book and read on!

Open Arms, a finalist for the 2003 Amazon.ca/Books in Canada First Novel Award, centres on Bessie Smith Connolly, 17, who has been living with her grandparents in Nova Scotia, but has come to live in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan with her renegade mother Isabel. Isabel delivers newspapers in the early morning to pay the rent, and haunts the clubs at night, hoping to have a chance to “sing with the band” (any band). When Isabel goes missing, Bessie and her Nova Scotian grandmother go on a road trip to track her down. I loved Endicott’s writing and am definitely going to continue in her canon.

Read this if: you enjoy stories that explore the relationship between mothers and daughters without unnecessary sentimentality. 4 stars ( )

Full review:

http://readingthroughlife.ca/open-arms-review/

Short excerpt:

There’s something very “Canadian” about this novel, aside from the geography. The story drew me in and made me hope for good things for Bessie and her strange family, connecting us in a way very like the strained connections between the characters in the novel.