Always Someone to Kill the Doves: A Life of Sheila Watson

by F.T. Flahiff

Crafted from archives, interviews, memories, and bankers' boxes of papers sent to the author during the years before her death, Always Someone to Kill the Doves: A Life of Sheila Watson, is the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1896300839
• ISBN13: 9781896300832
• Release Date: April 2005
• Publisher: NeWest Press
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.8" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Deep Hollow Biography

My mind is still spinning like a whirlybird having just finished "Always Someone to Kill the Doves" by author F.T. Flahiff, which came out about five years ago. I have to agree with the other reviewer, Midwest Book Review, who commented on the fact that Sheila Watson entrusted author Flahiff with her life. She called him on the phone and said she was sending him eighty boxes of papers, "I am sending you my life," she said. She had a way of issuing commands over the phone--cryptic commands. At another time she called him and said, "I want my story told." Many of us in the USA know next to nothing about the late Sheila Watson, but she was the author of Canad a's great modernist masterpiece THE DOUBLE HOOK (1959), which apparently has still not been published here. Like the great modernists she could be uncomfortably vatic and demanding and would not brook misreading of her mysterious novel, set in the Cariboo country of western Canada, which must be a very weird place. Author Flahiff follows his own biographical logic and pretty much cedes the territory to Sheila Watson. If she destroyed her journals about a particular time in her life, he takes that to mean she would not want that part of her story told, so he refrains from investigating further. Thus the period when she taught a one room schoolhouse in the Cariboo, even though it is extremely important for her development, Flahiff leaves alone pretty much. Ditto when romance comes into her life in the person of former lumberjack then top professor Wilfred Watson. What attracted the two of them to each other? Flahiff judges that information private, so I got a little frustrated. But what is clear is that in later years their marriage was a living hell like something out of Sartre's No Exit. Wilffred cheated on her when they were separated, sleeping with one of his students in the early 50s and creating a crisis state for the marriage that, incredibly, she never resolved. For some reason Flahiff does not give the name of the student, just calls her Wilfred's young friend, which is OK I guess, except the same thing happens ten years later and then Flahiff calls the new girl, Wilfred's new young friend, and it's coy. Why should she not be named--either one? He goes to town on Shirley Rose, who made the mistake of alienating Sheila Watson when both women were full professors at University of Alberta in Edmonton. To listen to Flahiff, you'd think Shirley Rose was crazy for calling Sheila Watson on her bad behavior. I do like the way a new generation, Bowering, Atwood, Marlatt, Ondaatje, "discovered" Sheila Watson and made her into an icon of Canlit. This annoyed Wilfred terribly: he had always been the prizewinner in the family, and Sheila was more or less his typist like Colette. When she began to be idolized, Wilfred suffered the tortures of the damned. Whenever Sheila would get an award, she would have to go back home instantly for Wilfred was suffering a stroke, literally. Ge

A captivating look into the mind and experiences of a resilient human being

Always Someone To Kill The Doves: A Life Of Sheila Watson is a keenly written biography, peppered with diary excerpts by a remarkable woman. Written in Paris in 1955-56, the entries portray a woman of the era, affected by her troubled marriage, genius intelligence, and the moral weight of her Catholic upbringing. A serious-minded account by F. T. Flahiff, who knew Watson personally and placed her in the highest regard, Always Someone To Kill The Doves was written expressly to honor Watson's wish from late in her life: "I want my story told." Her courage and intellect distinguish her, rendering her worthy of the author's decision to "assume rather than argue for her importance". A captivating look into the mind and experiences of a resilient human being.