Missing the Ark by Catherine Kidd
There are certain authors whose books I will read purely based on their past work’s intensity, and Catherine Kidd’s Missing the Ark is one of those books. There are bits and pieces of her previous book/CD collaboration Sea Peach strewn throughout the work, along with Kidd’s signature wordplay and ever-present curiosity about all creatures in the animal kingdom—human beings included—whether the characters are interacting with them, studying them or eating them, animal cracker style.
The story is both funny and sad by turns, following Agnes Underhill throughout her life in snatches of her memories. She’s recently had a baby, and the Buffalo Man in her life is absent. Indeed, most of the men in the book are absent, whether they are family members, friends or lovers. They seem mainly to complicate things by their presence, and the women at the book’s centre all appear to be a bit more in control once they depart. They’re complicated, realistic relationships, with Agnes struggling to make sense of them all in order to relate to her child, Rose.
Flashbacks to Agnes’ own childhood often present the reader with traumatic scenes, like when two daycare managers tie her to a tetherball pole and she falls face-first against concrete, breaking two of her front teeth. Although Agnes has a darkly humorous interpretation of the scene, describing herself as Joan of Arc and explaining how her dentist’s exclamation of “Well, I’ll be double-damned” suddenly makes sense, these are obviously painful memories that make her want to be a better parent to Rose, yet leave her wondering how she ever can be.
Agnes admits both that she is unprepared to be a mother and that she mainly elects to go through with the unintended pregnancy because she chooses not to do anything about the situation. Abortion is subtly suggested when she and Buffalo Man see a veterinarian to discuss their chimpanzee, Mae West, wondering if she might be better off with her tubes tied. The parallels between Agnes and Mae West’s lack of reproductive choice are startling, especially when considering commonly held beliefs about what differentiates humans from other animals.
Agnes chooses not to engage her free will, and we might wonder what makes her any different than a chimp freed from an animal testing lab. Of course, the entire story is told from her point of view, allowing us to access all the things she thinks about during her willful silences. This seems to give her some advantage over the mute, but physically unpredictable, Mae, though of course she is an unreliable narrator.
It’s curious to see how firmly Agnes rejects any comparison between herself and “lower” animals, despite her interest in biology and constant musings on animal life. What does make us so different from the rest of the animals? Weren’t we, too, once aboard Noah’s mythic ark? Kidd’s novel asks these questions most elegantly, under the crash and buzz of everyday life.
(Originally published in The Link)
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