Margaret Craven - the evolution from short story writer to novelist
I've just reread Margaret Craven's novel, 'I heard the Owl call my name.' I last read it 25 years ago, where I read it in one sitting. I finished this reading yesterday and turned the book over and started again.
It has particular meaning for me right now, as my husband who is an Anglican priest, has just been diagnosed with cancer. But it's more than that.
Craven wanted to write a novel all her life, but stuck to short stories for magazines for almost all her career until, in her sixties, she heard about the plight of the village of Kingcome and wrote the novel in response to the dying of the village and traditional way of life of the indigenous people.
The book is flawed; it's sentimental and would have been improved if the editor had put a red pen through every use of the word 'lovely'. It's too short too, at around 45 000 words. If she'd taken another 15 000 words to develop the characters as well as she has described the surroundings it would have been meatier. But as a treatise on the art of dying gracefully it's unbeatable.
Because of the length and writing style I'm inclined to classify it as a teen novel.
Her next novel was not nearly as successful. It's interesting that she was a one book writer. But she waited to write her novel until she really had something to say to her readers, and although its not great technically, it touched hearts, and because of that made it to the top of the bestseller lists.
