Memoirs about women on solo trips that lead to their transformation have become ubiquitous in both memoir and film. The plot arc typically begins with a female protagonist travelling to an exotic location. She is a stranger to the place just as she is a stranger to herself. As her journey unfolds, she befriends unfamiliar customs, places, and people just as she befriends what is unfamiliar or undesirable within herself. It’s a compelling arc meant to intrigue its readers or viewers. Susan Fish’s book Renaissance has similar hallmarks of this genre, yet she does something decidedly fresh. For one, her book is fiction, not memoir. This choice allows her to break with some of the expected conventions.
In brief, Renaissance centers around a protagonist named Liz who is a recent empty-nester and an executive director of a not-for-profit. Life had its difficulties, but she was able to weather them, that is, until one of Liz’s adult sons makes a choice that so profoundly disorientates her, she is unable to continue her roles as mother and director. She travels to Florence, Italy from Waterloo, Canada to spend fifty days pruning ancient olive trees at a convent. During her time in Italy Liz reflects on her experience of motherhood. She writes:
When they put Timothy into my arms, nothing had ever felt so purely right. I clearly remember peering into that small, scrunched-up face and thinking, Oh, I can totally be your mother. That was followed by a period of postpartum bliss, despite my new parent fears. I liked children before I had my boys, but my heart found depths I had never dreamed of before the babies were mine. At times it felt almost idolatrous and all consuming (Fish 19).
Her reflections on what motherhood means to her causes her to reflect on motherhood more broadly, offering a thoughtful glimpse into different types of mothers—from Mary, the mother of Jesus, to women trafficked from other countries—not to offer judgements or ready-made cliches about motherhood, but to add a piece of coloured glass to the mosaic-like examination of motherhood.
Fish is at her best in her creation of memorable characters, and they’re everywhere in Renaissance. When Liz first arrives at the convent, she meets two other guests, Honey and Cecy, who share a bawdy and mischievous sense of humour. Cecy nicknames Liz’s guest room Our Lady of Perpetual Constipation, after the somber picture of Mary that hangs on the wall. Cecy similarly titles her own room after another painting of Mary, Of Course I’m a Virgin, How Dare You.
While Renaissance has a lot going for it, one weakness of the book is that important information is withheld until the last third of the book. Fittingly, Liz quotes Dante several times, saying, “Midway on life’s journey I found myself alone in a dark wood where the right way was lost” (74). While it’s clear that the protagonist has traveled to Italy because of a wounding experience, it is not clear what this experience is. Like Dante, Liz has obviously found herself in a dark wood, but what that particular wood signifies is hidden from the reader. Both Liz’s place of work and the wound at the heart of her family remain largely unknown. This seems to be intentional, and indeed it does build suspense. That said, when the withheld information is finally revealed, the direction of the novel slants toward the newly revealed, sensational information and away from the slower-paced, character-driven reflections that preceded it. As a reader, I found myself wanting greater access to the fullness of Liz’s story at the outset of the novel so that I could better understand the heart of her ambivalences around her experiences as a mother. The revealed information is an important piece of the conversation, and one that could have been revealed sooner.
In an attempt to contend with the wound at the heart of her family, Liz prunes olive trees for the convent, receiving lessons from a brother from a local monastery. The metaphor of pruning is apt, as pruning cuts away the branches that obscure light while preparing trees for new life. Similarly, Liz travels to Italy to reflect on those aspects of motherhood that have left her wounded and cut open. Yet, the novel doesn’t end with a reflection on woundedness, but with ambivalence. In the final chapters, Liz leaves Italy to return home. She does not know what she will find when she returns, but her time in Italy prepares her for the unknown and unfamiliar within her own family and suggests that she might emerge from the dark wood, ready for whatever awaits her.
Jessica Walters was a hobby farmer in the Fraser Valley where she raised chickens, foraged for turkey tail mushrooms, and pruned apple trees. She has an MFA in Creative Writing and teaches at Trinity Western University in British Columbia. Her work has been published in Mockingbird, Foreshadow, The British Columbia Review, Still, Scintilla, Solum, and her short story “Glass Jars” was shortlisted for the Mitchell Prize for Faith and Writing. She is the fiction editor of Radix.