Decomposing Maggie

Ann Eriksson’s first novel, Decomposing Maggie, is as heart-wrenching as it is life- affirming. When Maggie’s dying husband expresses his final wish—“take me to the forest ... let me lie down and decompose”—she chooses instead to ease his pain with an overdose of morphine. Upon his death, Maggie falls into a mourning and a guilt so deep that she pushes away her grieving children, her closest friend and a way of life that sustained her for years. She turns to collecting kelp, sea lettuce, fragments of shells and bits of driftwood from the more isolated beaches of Vancouver. Out of this precious alluvium, she weaves baskets— baskets to hold the ashes of her husband. The novel is itself a fine weaving. The lateral bits and pieces of first-person memories give way to the more linear, horizontal, third-person point of view. But even the omniscient perspective is not enough to hold a broken life together. Maggie’s memories, good and bad, have to work their way to the top, become whole, before she can get a handle on them. She has to return to the tiny isolated Gulf Island where she and Peter built their life and their love. In order to let go of Peter, of the ashes she has held onto for years, she has to let herself literally return to the earth, to become part of rock, sea, moss and soil. Eriksson is adept at painting a picture of small island life and the community that supports it. Her island is an island that weeps as Maggie weeps, an island that rejoices in itself and lends strength to those who understand and respect its heartbeat, its bluffs, its chocolate lilies, sea blush and camas. Eriksson’s background as a biologist permeates the book, in the same way the arbutus, Douglas fir, sea, wind, storm and eagles seep into Maggie’s soul and bring her back to life. Many of us dream of owning our own island, of returning to the land. Decomposing Maggie reminds us that the land, like the human soul, belongs to no one. It gives and it takes, as sure as the tides rise and fall.