Book Review: The Version We Kept by Nicole Pigeon

 

The Version We Kept is told from the viewpoint of Eliza Vale who, at the beginning of the novel, is sitting in her car in the parking lot of a funeral home. Inside, the services for Bennett Vale are about to begin. We are introduced to several people all at once, although the relationship between them all is not always clear.  The cast of characters is large—about twelve people—and not all of them are still alive. The author does a good job letting us know that this is a tight knit family, and they are gathering to say goodbye to Bennett. The fact that they are all related is the relevant part, and later, the relationship between a couple of them becomes the heart of the whole story.

Every summer, the Vale family travels to Alder House on Lake Bellweather in Ontario, Canada. Alder House is old and weathered. It is filled with a bunch of bedrooms, a big kitchen, a front porch and an archival room. This room is filled with shelves stacked with boxes of negatives, photographs, cassette tapes containing the voices of the Vale family, videos and files of important documents such as birth certificates, deeds to property, contracts and other necessary things. These things have been meticulously kept over the years, mostly by Eleanor—who is no longer living—and Evelyn. Bennett played the part of archivist sometime in the past, and this year, Eliza is the one who is chosen for the job. She arrives at the lake and prepares to continue the tradition of familial archiving—but finds that negatives have been altered, tapes spliced and several different copies of documents, each one with small differences. It becomes obvious to Eliza that the Vale family history has been carefully edited over the years.

When Eliza finds a cassette tape from Bennett, she realizes that it's not part of the archive but left for the next person who is elected to tend to the collection. Tears came to my eyes just like they did Eliza's. "Promise me if I die, you won't make me prettier than I was. People always do that. I don't want it. If you have to choose, leave the rough parts in. That's what's real." This is the whole idea behind this powerhouse of a novel.

There are other details I'd love to share in this review, but to do so would be revealing too much. This is really a book a reader needs to experience on their own. Pigeon did not simply tell a story, she also created atmosphere. You can hear the sounds of the old hardwoods creaking and feel the way the grain of the wood might feel to the soles of bare feet. You can smell the cedar of the shelves in the archive room and smell the petrichor after a storm while the cooler air surrounds you and envelops you in a cloud of humidity. She is good at pulling in all senses and immersing the reader as she writes.

This was an emotional read. Events that have taken place in the Vale family find no real conclusion—at least not while the reader is part of the story. A bigger revelation, however, is discovered, and the end of this tale brings a quiet kind of satisfaction.