Butterflies Dance in the Dark

December 7, 2009
MacNeil's novel, a bestseller in her native Canada, begins in 1953 with five-year-old narrator Mari-Jen Delene weathering a storm in the rundown family house on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. A frightened, quiet child haunted by ghosts and inner voices, punished in Catholic school by the Mother Superior, and burdened by her illegitimacy (she and her older twin brothers, Alfred and Albert, are viewed as her mother Adele's “mortal sins”), begins to withdraw into silence. Her mother is distant and dismissive; her brothers, while smart and supportive, long to escape the restrictions of their small Acadian village. Thrown into the mix are the delusional and crass Aunt Clara, who sees saints through her window, and perpetually drunk Uncle Jule. Mari-Jen exists in a limbo that is painful and ominous as well as affecting. Her savior is a neighbor, Daniel Peter, who helps her to read and sets her on the path to recovery and adulthood. MacNeil's characters are imaginative and well realized, while the novel makes an effortless full circle.