The Matter of Sylvie by Lee Kvern
Brindle & Glass (2010) $19.95
Published in FreeFall Magazine, Winter 2012
There is something wholly tangible and wounded about brain damage – like a skinned knee beneath your pressed palm. Out of sight but never out of mind. (Pg. 3)
It’s the Wednesday that changed the life of a family on a summer day in 1961. Jacqueline, stands on her porch watching her three children play. Lesa, Nate and Sylvie. It would be like any other summer day except Jacqueline has just learned she is expecting another child. How will she cope with four small children, all under the age of six, one mentally handicapped?
In The Matter of Sylvie, the first novel since the novella, Afterall, (Brindle & Glass, 2005) by Canadian writer Lee Kvern, we follow the impact of having a mentally ill child on different members of the family and the ramifications of a single decision. Like any mother, Jacqueline feels she can do it. But when Sylvie is almost abducted, and having an absent husband, no one else to turn to, Jacqueline feels the burden bearing down on her.
My daughter is about the same age as Sylvie in this book. She is now going through that stage where everything is NO and if
she doesn’t get her own way, a temper tantrum ensues. Simple things like getting dressed, going to the potty, putting on shoes, going to bed…it’s a constant struggle while she tries to find her place, exerts her growing independence. There are days I want to rip my hair out, want to run as far away as I possibly can. But I hold on to the knowledge that she is a smart little girl and will one day grow out of it. Jacqueline does not have that shred of knowledge to hold on to. Sylvie is brain damaged, mentally challenged and all those phases most of us know we will get through, Jacqueline never will.
Twelve years later, also on a Wednesday, we meet Lloyd. Sylvie’s father, Jacqueline’s RCMP husband who can’t admit he has four children. Though his heart tells a different story, in his mind Sylvie is not one of his offspring.
Almost every lone moment he has, even now on this cold Wednesday morning, the dead and the living sit side by side like passengers in the back seat of his cruiser: Sylvie, like a live wire buried deep beneath the surface of his skin, the disquiet of an unfinished errand he can’t bring himself to attend to. And all the others? Like blood that doesn’t congeal. (Pg. 9)
That is, until the day Lloyd chooses to help a mentally ill man who keeps getting beat up and comes face to face with his gone, but not forgotten daughter.
And then there is Lesa. The oldest of the four children, also affected by the challenges brought on by having a mentally ill sister. We meet her on a Wednesday, fourteen years after Lloyd. Lloyd passed away a few years earlier, and Lesa is back to see her mother and brother. As the memories of her past surface she does not want to face her mother yet. So she drives, at first, with no particular
destination, but eventually ending up at the hospital where Sylvie has lived for 26 years.
Sylvie is here, she can feel it, as if Sylvie’s warm, moist breath is once again on Lesa’s bare child-neck. Sylvie’s stringy arms clung tight round Lesa’s sturdy waist on the tricycle. Sylvie’s heart racing in her chest, the thudding echo in Lesa’s ear. Sylvie read to bolt at any given moment, but Lesa, faster, always able to catch, calm Sylvie, rein in her aberrant impulses where her mother couldn’t. (Pg. 152)
The Matter of Sylvie is an artfully crafted novel, written with almost lyrical prose, examining the effects on a family from an illness few understand. A decision made in the best interest of all involved, resulting in a broken family where each member is unaware of the shared pain and turmoil brought on by that single decision. And eventually, a family brought back together by the same child who inadvertently tore them apart.
A Brief Interview with Lee Kvern
RVE: What inspired you to write The Matter of Sylvie?
LK: The initial impetus for Sylvie came from something that happened to a mother and her special needs son years back, which I can't talk about in any proper way without giving the book away. But really I wrote this book because I thought I could. I have a severely
challenged sister who spent the first six years of her life with us, but then when her medical needs increased, she went to live (and still lives) at the Michener Centre in Red Deer, which is a government-run institution that cares for the severely disabled. Not much choice in the early 60's in that regard. Outside of writing, I work with special needs kids in the school system. So in essence I've spent my life in and around persons with developmental disabilities. That and the fact that I am a mother myself, so could easily
imagine the challenges and inherent difficulties in not only raising a child, but a child that is outside the normal perimeters of growth and development.
Oddly, as well, something I've just realized since my mother passed away last year, that even though the story is not my mother's, I think I wrote the book out of empathy for her and what it must have been like being a young mother of three children all under the age of six, a fourth one on the way, one of those children with severe special needs.
RVE: How long did it take you to write from initial idea to publication? How much research was involved?
LK: From start to book shelf, it took five years. I finished the book in about 3.5 years, and then my publisher, Brindle& Glass, who published my first book Afterall, added it into their line-up of forthcoming books, hence the year and a half.
I was lucky enough to spend a couple weeks up in Red Deer at the Michener Centre. Because
I'd spent my whole life visiting my sister and because my sister has spent her whole life there, I was granted access to areas of Michener that have otherwise been closed down to the public, but which I had vague childhood memories. The
biggest bonus for me as both writer and sister, was that I got to see my sister's day-to-day life, something I had not witnessed prior. I got to hang out and eat lunch with my sister and the ladies, go for coffee(me), brown pop (her) at the rec centre across the way, where my sister and I did what we both like to do, and that was sit and watch people. We got to walk and go for car rides,
essentially hang out. That was huge for me in that I had always viewed my sister's life as tragic but in spending that time with her, I see that her life is not that dissimilar from my own. A comfort to say the least.
My father, who is no longer alive, was in the RCMP as a younger man when I was a child. So while I didn't have firsthand adult experience with the everyday activities of the RCMP, I had both childhood memories in combination with a lifetime of being
surrounded by my parent's RCMP friends.
RVE: Did you deliberate over different structures before choosing to tell the story from three POV and decades apart? Why did you choose this particular structure?
LK: The structure came out of the need to tell a wider story, ie. the mother's story came first but then I wondered how the father might feel in regard to the circumstances and the ultimate choice that the mother made on that one fateful Wednesday in
1961, which in real life, did not turn out as well. What were the repercussions on both the father/husband over the course of time? His absence in a marriage, family that so required all the support it could muster. And then, ultimately how did that play out? As well, in regards to the older sibling, who is Sylvie's self-proclaimed guardian angel, I pondered how that role in combination with her mother's actions and Sylvie herself, how that might affect her from childhood to adult hood. I was enormously interested in the psychology of the three characters, a behind-the-scenes look at what makes us all do the things we do over the course of a lifetime
Published in FreeFall Magazine, Winter 2012
There is something wholly tangible and wounded about brain damage – like a skinned knee beneath your pressed palm. Out of sight but never out of mind. (Pg. 3)
It’s the Wednesday that changed the life of a family on a summer day in 1961. Jacqueline, stands on her porch watching her three children play. Lesa, Nate and Sylvie. It would be like any other summer day except Jacqueline has just learned she is expecting another child. How will she cope with four small children, all under the age of six, one mentally handicapped?
In The Matter of Sylvie, the first novel since the novella, Afterall, (Brindle & Glass, 2005) by Canadian writer Lee Kvern, we follow the impact of having a mentally ill child on different members of the family and the ramifications of a single decision. Like any mother, Jacqueline feels she can do it. But when Sylvie is almost abducted, and having an absent husband, no one else to turn to, Jacqueline feels the burden bearing down on her.
My daughter is about the same age as Sylvie in this book. She is now going through that stage where everything is NO and if
she doesn’t get her own way, a temper tantrum ensues. Simple things like getting dressed, going to the potty, putting on shoes, going to bed…it’s a constant struggle while she tries to find her place, exerts her growing independence. There are days I want to rip my hair out, want to run as far away as I possibly can. But I hold on to the knowledge that she is a smart little girl and will one day grow out of it. Jacqueline does not have that shred of knowledge to hold on to. Sylvie is brain damaged, mentally challenged and all those phases most of us know we will get through, Jacqueline never will.
Twelve years later, also on a Wednesday, we meet Lloyd. Sylvie’s father, Jacqueline’s RCMP husband who can’t admit he has four children. Though his heart tells a different story, in his mind Sylvie is not one of his offspring.
Almost every lone moment he has, even now on this cold Wednesday morning, the dead and the living sit side by side like passengers in the back seat of his cruiser: Sylvie, like a live wire buried deep beneath the surface of his skin, the disquiet of an unfinished errand he can’t bring himself to attend to. And all the others? Like blood that doesn’t congeal. (Pg. 9)
That is, until the day Lloyd chooses to help a mentally ill man who keeps getting beat up and comes face to face with his gone, but not forgotten daughter.
And then there is Lesa. The oldest of the four children, also affected by the challenges brought on by having a mentally ill sister. We meet her on a Wednesday, fourteen years after Lloyd. Lloyd passed away a few years earlier, and Lesa is back to see her mother and brother. As the memories of her past surface she does not want to face her mother yet. So she drives, at first, with no particular
destination, but eventually ending up at the hospital where Sylvie has lived for 26 years.
Sylvie is here, she can feel it, as if Sylvie’s warm, moist breath is once again on Lesa’s bare child-neck. Sylvie’s stringy arms clung tight round Lesa’s sturdy waist on the tricycle. Sylvie’s heart racing in her chest, the thudding echo in Lesa’s ear. Sylvie read to bolt at any given moment, but Lesa, faster, always able to catch, calm Sylvie, rein in her aberrant impulses where her mother couldn’t. (Pg. 152)
The Matter of Sylvie is an artfully crafted novel, written with almost lyrical prose, examining the effects on a family from an illness few understand. A decision made in the best interest of all involved, resulting in a broken family where each member is unaware of the shared pain and turmoil brought on by that single decision. And eventually, a family brought back together by the same child who inadvertently tore them apart.
A Brief Interview with Lee Kvern
RVE: What inspired you to write The Matter of Sylvie?
LK: The initial impetus for Sylvie came from something that happened to a mother and her special needs son years back, which I can't talk about in any proper way without giving the book away. But really I wrote this book because I thought I could. I have a severely
challenged sister who spent the first six years of her life with us, but then when her medical needs increased, she went to live (and still lives) at the Michener Centre in Red Deer, which is a government-run institution that cares for the severely disabled. Not much choice in the early 60's in that regard. Outside of writing, I work with special needs kids in the school system. So in essence I've spent my life in and around persons with developmental disabilities. That and the fact that I am a mother myself, so could easily
imagine the challenges and inherent difficulties in not only raising a child, but a child that is outside the normal perimeters of growth and development.
Oddly, as well, something I've just realized since my mother passed away last year, that even though the story is not my mother's, I think I wrote the book out of empathy for her and what it must have been like being a young mother of three children all under the age of six, a fourth one on the way, one of those children with severe special needs.
RVE: How long did it take you to write from initial idea to publication? How much research was involved?
LK: From start to book shelf, it took five years. I finished the book in about 3.5 years, and then my publisher, Brindle& Glass, who published my first book Afterall, added it into their line-up of forthcoming books, hence the year and a half.
I was lucky enough to spend a couple weeks up in Red Deer at the Michener Centre. Because
I'd spent my whole life visiting my sister and because my sister has spent her whole life there, I was granted access to areas of Michener that have otherwise been closed down to the public, but which I had vague childhood memories. The
biggest bonus for me as both writer and sister, was that I got to see my sister's day-to-day life, something I had not witnessed prior. I got to hang out and eat lunch with my sister and the ladies, go for coffee(me), brown pop (her) at the rec centre across the way, where my sister and I did what we both like to do, and that was sit and watch people. We got to walk and go for car rides,
essentially hang out. That was huge for me in that I had always viewed my sister's life as tragic but in spending that time with her, I see that her life is not that dissimilar from my own. A comfort to say the least.
My father, who is no longer alive, was in the RCMP as a younger man when I was a child. So while I didn't have firsthand adult experience with the everyday activities of the RCMP, I had both childhood memories in combination with a lifetime of being
surrounded by my parent's RCMP friends.
RVE: Did you deliberate over different structures before choosing to tell the story from three POV and decades apart? Why did you choose this particular structure?
LK: The structure came out of the need to tell a wider story, ie. the mother's story came first but then I wondered how the father might feel in regard to the circumstances and the ultimate choice that the mother made on that one fateful Wednesday in
1961, which in real life, did not turn out as well. What were the repercussions on both the father/husband over the course of time? His absence in a marriage, family that so required all the support it could muster. And then, ultimately how did that play out? As well, in regards to the older sibling, who is Sylvie's self-proclaimed guardian angel, I pondered how that role in combination with her mother's actions and Sylvie herself, how that might affect her from childhood to adult hood. I was enormously interested in the psychology of the three characters, a behind-the-scenes look at what makes us all do the things we do over the course of a lifetime
