Review: What it Takes to Be Human by Marilyn Bowering
What it Takes to Be Human by Marilyn Bowering Toronto: Penguin Random House Canada (2006) My Quick Take: Deep and thoughtful literary fiction that moved me and challenged me to think about how story matters in understanding a life. *** “...I recall that life is a story and it is full of turning points. Something happens and you’re shunted off in a new direction. There is no bad or good, there is only how well the story is told.” I’ve just finished reading Marilyn Bowering ’s 2006 novel What it Takes to Be Human , and I’m left with a heady, emotional feeling, the kind that reading a really excellent book leaves me with. It’s a novel that features a compelling character who finds himself in a most interesting and challenging circumstance, who only has his mind–which may be the tiniest bit unreliable– and his extraordinary humanness to make sense of a world gone insane. This is a book with sharp edges, the kind that I love. It’s 1941, and the world is at war. In Victoria, BC, young Bible...
