Polar Vortex by Shani Mootoo
When Shani Mootoo’s new novel, Polar Vortex, was published earlier this month I bumped it to the top of my “to read” pile and devoured it within 24 hours.
This was a month ago now – and the world has dramatically changed since then. Today I am thinking about how we are all “isolated” at home with our spouses, and about what might happen to marriages in this situation. Relationships can, I think, prosper. Without outside pressure and distraction we can become closer. We need to be kind to each other, and supportive, as we all in our own way manage our emotions, our fears and worries. I am grateful to be isolated with my long time spouse in a large space, two old people rattling around in the house where we raised a family.
I am also wondering how the characters in Polar Vortex would have managed if they had been isolated from other – and if the end of the novel might have been very different!
Polar Vortex takes place, mostly, in the kitchen of Priya and Alex’s home in a small town in Prince Edward County. Both are more or less in middle age, and have been living together for six years or so. Each have had previous relationships, but it seems this is the one to last a lifetime, as they make a home in a place they have chosen as their own, together.
They are both creative people, Priya a painter and Alex a writer. We meet them just as an old friend of Priya’s, Prakash, is about to visit. Priya and Prakash met during their first year at University, in Toronto. Priya, of East Indian heritage, was born and raised in Trinidad, and came to Canada to pursue her education. Prakash, also East Indian, emigrated from Uganda with his parents, and grew up in New Brunswick. Their loneliness and their skin colour brought them together, and a friendship developed. Though Prakash wanted more, the friendship remained platonic at Priya’s insistence. And, although they stayed in touch after Prakash’s marriage Priya cut ties completely when she moved out of the city with Alex.
Through memory and conversation the past is slowly revealed, as Priya and Alex prepare for a weekend visit from Prakash. A visit that awakens memories, some pleasant, and others disturbing, for Priya, but fills Alex with apprehension, distaste, and even animosity. Each is concerned, in their own way, that this old friend of Priya’s will disrupt the life they have created together.
What we have in Polar Vortex is a pitch perfect examination of a relationship, of a love that held two people together in spite of the differences in personality, that sometimes cause irritation in even the strongest of marriages. Each of the characters thinks and feels much that is not expressed - except to the reader. Just as none of us know what the inside of anyone else’s marriage is really like, there may be times we do not even know about what is going on inside of our own most intimate relationship. So often it seems, when a relationship is struggling, or comes to an end, the one doing the leaving seems to have had their desire to exit planned for a very long time. Blind-siding the one who is left behind, and all of those who care about them. The partner with undisclosed plans has often made decisions without consultation with, or the knowledge of, the other. I often thought while reading this novel, that it is not what is said that matters, but what is not, as body language belies the spoken words.
Polar Vortex is a completely delicious work by a beautiful writer. It is a perceptive examination of love, and the desire and the need we each have to love, and have another love us, completely for all our faults and foibles.