Book Review: When Madeline Was Young by Jane Hamilton - Page 2

Perhaps it is Hamilton's way of drawing in the debates and politics of today. When Madeline Was Young is full of history. Whether it is the political debates between Julia and her sister-in-law, Figgy, or the arguments between Mac and his younger sister, Louise, about whether Russia is simply hired help or a slave, Mac's remembrances of the past provide a glimpse at how things have changed over the last few generations.

The most important of these references is war: the war in Vietnam, the Gulf War and the Iraq War all figure prominently. With all this history, the book sometimes felt like The Wonder Years, using current events as counterpoints to the lives of the characters, creating a soft-focus view of the past that illuminates the present. These didn't always work for me, possibly because it is not my past, me being neither American nor a boomer, but I was struck with the idea that Hamilton was drawing parallels between Vietnam and today's war in Iraq, about how the debate now reflects the debate then, about the way that the more things change, the more young men still march off to far-away places in the name of freedom.

In fact, as I started writing up my notes for this review, I found myself in full-fledged last-minute English paper theory mode. Not only was there the juxtaposition between Vietnam and Iraq but, I realized, the names of the characters themselves had meaning! Two main characters, Mac and Buddy: why, their names are really just the generic stand-ins we tend to use when we want to be personal with someone with whom we are not. Could these generic names reflect their status as generic American archetypes, the right and the left, the pacifist and the patriot?

And then, as I tried to remember why I had put a sticky note on a page near the book's denouement, I developed another thought: Could Madeline herself be America? Buddy rushes in to her physical defence, without fully understanding what is going on. Mac understands, but does nothing. And Madeline, well, she's lost her memory of who she is, what she was, and when she is brought back to it (when Mac returns Madeline to the one place he knows from her past), she fails to recognize it.

Article Author: Bonnie

Bonnie writes about books every Thursday at Fourth-Rate Reader, about everything else at Signifying Nothing, and sometimes she resorts to pictures. She lives in Toronto.

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