June 26, 2023
Leaving Wisdom, by Sharon Butala
Leaving Wisdom is the latest from Sharon Butala, author of over twenty books of fiction and nonfiction whose vision of the Canadian west has always made me think of her in the company of Joan Didion, and she continues to remap her familiar terrain in this story of aging and coming to terms with one’s history (and history in general) set in the fictional Saskatchewan town that her protagonist, Judith, decides to the return to in a post-concussion fog.
The concussion occurs after a fall at what was supposed to be Judith’s retirement lunch after a long career as social worker in child protection/family services. In the days that follow, Judith’s brain is confused, her head aches, and she’s overwhelmed by considering the threads of her life, in particular her four daughters, who all continue to occupy her attention in different ways, her two late husbands, and the family she left behind as a teenager when she fled their piety and the suffocating small town of Wisdom, a place in which she realizes she has unfinished business still and so she decides she must return.
Once re-established in Wisdom, Judith tries to ease her way into a relationship with her estranged siblings, continues to worry about her daughters, and discovers her father’s own traumatic history in World War Two, which becomes connected in her mind to a local act of antisemitism. Meanwhile there are strange and troubling goings-on at the house next door which suggest one can never travel far enough to escape the world—let alone family histories and one’s own past.
Leaving Wisdom is quiet, thoughtful and utterly absorbing novel about families, aging, trauma and history, and how all of these factors happen to intersect.
