I have been meaning to read this books for years now. I really have no excuse. The Vancouver Public Library gave away several copies, after their One Book, One Vancouver was over and I snagged a copy.
Then, at the beginning of this month, John over at The Book Mine Set, who hosts The Canadian Book Challenge, gave us an extra challenge. He presented us with a list of Canadian authors who no one has read for the challenge so far this year. Patrick Lane is one of the authors on the list. Thanks John, for the extra push I needed to finally read There is a Season.
There is a season is the memoir of Victoria, British Columbia author, Patrick Lane. It is not only a tell all memoir of his life but a garden meditation as well. Mr. Lane has been writing since 1961 and has published 20 books of poetry. He has been an alcoholic pretty much all of his adult life but finally became clean and sober and decided to write this book.
He is famous for his garden at his home in Victoria, in fact it was on a television show about the greatest gardens. Lane wrote of his garden in such a way that I thought of Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson. He went through the seasons of his garden while include stories of his childhood, adulthood and his addiction. Sometimes he found bottles of alcohol hidden in various hiding places in his garden after he became sober. They were so well hidden that he didn’t remember where they were.
He grew up in more rural areas in British Columbia. His father left the family to go off and fight in WWII.
The family didn’t have much money and at times Patrick would beg for some money from soldiers passing through but he also let them fondle his privates for more. Like the man who gave him a couple of quarters and bought him an ice cream sundae. Patrick also saw much that a boy shouldn’t have to witness such as murders and rapes. He lived in a town where such things weren’t talked about and he never told he parents for fear of getting whipped for sneaking off at night.
His mother had been sexually abused several times as a child and Lane wrote that she carried on the tradition but did not elaborate on how or to whom, except for one scene in the book where she saw him pleasuring himself.
As a teenager he had gotten a girl pregnant and he went to his father for help. The reply was the standard reply back in those days, “you made your own bed.” There was a shot gun wedding. Him and his young wife and child lived in cramped conditions in a mining village, where he worked but at night he wrote poetry. He wasn’t educated beyond high school but he read all of the greats, including Dante.
His two brother both had the same shot gun weddings before him and they didn’t fare much better. Lane got divorced after a few years and went to another remote mining town where he worked and wrote. He remarried but later, divorced again.
Patrick Lane currently lives with his wife Lorna. He had lived with her a number of years but they eventually married when he was writing There is a Season. He has travelled all over the world. He won the Governor General’s Award for this moving and beautifully written memoir.
4.5/5
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