Corner Store by Bess Kaplan

The Limitations of Innocence

The cover design of Bess Kaplan’s Corner Store is an interesting guide to its contents. In a semi-impressionistic style a young woman’s head is superimposed on the sun which is in turn superimposed on a wood frame store-front. Because that portion of the young woman’s head which overlaps the store-front has been left transparent, the building is seen through her head. And because there is only partial overlap, part of the storefront appears in the background above her head. The impression this creates is that of an intimate relationship between the young woman and the building; the overlapping suggests that the building we see has (at least in part) been created by the woman’s mind; and obversely, that the woman’s mind that we see has (at least in part) been created by the building.

Corner Store covers several years in the life of two children, Becky (Rebecca) Devine, and her younger brother, Simply Simon (Saul). Becky is approximately nine when the action begins; Simply Simon, seven. They live with their devout Jewish parents, who run a corner store in the north-end of Winnipeg. The time is the mid-thirties, and life, as we would expect, is hard.

We share in that time through the mind of Becky. For her it is an important time because she is developing her first substantial emotional relations and becoming aware of her own puberty. Moreover, it is during this period that Becky confronts the issues of life and death in all their beauty and chaos; first, she experiences the knowledge and joy of her mother’s pregnancy; and then the utter despair of the death of mother and child in delivery. The novel offers a barometer of Becky’s emotional and intellectual responses to these events and the subsequent disorder they create in the family life. Much of this is touching; all of it is rendered with an eye that captures the everyday details of characters in a lower-class social milieu, and an ear that is sensitive to their language.

The strength of Corner Store is the central character, Becky. From the outset we are immersed in her world and see things through her eyes. The consciousness of this adolescent as she confronts the problem of adulthood and navigates her way through the world of adult values is nicely rendered. Her response to all of the life around her is given in detail and with subtlety. There is charm in Kaplan’s presentation of her anxious moments with school authorities; there is pathos in the evocation of her feelings for her suffering mother. Her sensibility is rendered in her response to nature: “I sat on the wooden veranda steps and looked at the stars. It was a warm night, and in the dark l could see our elm tree standing on tiptoe, trying to touch the telephone wires that were strung past the houses on Boyd. Each leaf seemed to tremble with the effort, although it would be years before they even came close.” The anxiety and perplexity of childhood are captured in her meditation on the corruption of human flesh: “I tried not to think about germs … but the picture of the horrible shiny germs crawling all over the dead bird came back into my mind. In about the same instant I saw germs all over Mama and the baby. Superimposed over them I saw myself lying dead in a coffin, germs eating away at me.” In these moments Kaplan shows psychological insight into her character, and a depth of understanding about the compulsions and motivations of young minds.

Mama and Papa could deny it all they wanted, but I knew in my heart that they loved Simply Simon better than they loved me. They didn’t deny it, of course, because I didn’t ask them, and I wouldn’t. Mama would probably look at me and fold her plump arms in front of her. Her eyebrows would go up and her mouth would go down.
“A silly question,” she would say. “What a thing to ask.”

This is the opening of the novel. It illustrates Kaplan’s effective use of drama and her ability to create character. From this brief exchange we know something of the maturity, the anxieties, and the curiosity of this character. And we sense the drama of the family relationships from the interaction. But the passage also tells us something of the major weakness of the novel, its limited point of view. Much of the charm of Corner Store is attributable to the naivete of Becky. We are sympathetic to the child’s situation, and we identify with the blunders (especially as regards sexuality) that are related to adolescence. Reading, we recreate the helplessness that characterizes this period — we re-experience it in all its humiliation as it is reawakened. Yet all that we see, and all that we know exists in the mind of prepubescent Becky. This gives us credible and moving insight into the developing mind. But it also binds us to the intellectual understanding and emotional response of a nine-year old. The innocent eye which Kaplan exploits to evoke pathos, sentiment, and compassion, is finally only that of an innocent; and the limitations of such a perspective for adult readers clearly involve sentimentality and nostalgia.

Many novelists writing in the tradition of the bildungsroman have faced this problem. In Huckleberry Finn, Twain was occasionally frustrated by having chosen to speak from the point of view of Huck; this led to some glorious lapses. James Joyce flew by the problem in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by skipping over Stephen’s pre-puberty years rather quickly. I invoke these examples not to compare Corner Store to the classics, but to note that even the very best writers have stumbled over the problem of imitating the consciousness of an adolescent. Sentiment, pathos, and indulgence are always hovering near. This is especially true when the issues are those of life and death. Corner Store renders accurately and beautifully the anxieties and perplexities of early adolescence; for this reason its appeal to adolescents, who can identify directly with its protagonist will be great; its appeal to adult readers, even those who enjoy the journey back to the sources of personality, will be more restricted. For most it will be ultimately a less satisfying book than others free of the limitations of the innocent eye.

-Wayne Tefs