Cargo Of Orchids - Hardcover

Musgrave, Susan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0676972853 ISBN 13: 9780676972856

Verlag: Knopf Canada, 2000

Inhaltsangabe

Acclaimed writer Susan Musgrave's first novel in over ten years is a brilliant mix of poignant humanity and black humour in the gripping story of a woman living on Death Row for the unimaginable crime of killing her own child.

To pass the time remaining to her, while waiting for the results of her last appeals, the narrator writes the story of the events that resulted in her incarceration. Her work as a translator draws her into an underworld of family-controlled drug cartels operating out of South America, and she falls in love with a son in one such family. Pregnant, she is kidnapped to an island off the coast of Colombia and slowly tricked into a dependence on cocaine. Her narrative - violent and bizarre, but also riveting, erotic and filled with the heady flamboyance of orchids - runs parallel to her account of life in "Death Clinic," as Death Row is called at the Heaven Valley Facility for Women. It is a moving story of friendship amongst three female inmates - portrayed with devastating wit - who share only the fact that they each have a date with the executioner.

Cargo of Orchids swings through comedy and tragedy to shed a gradual, eerie light on the questions of guilt and innocence and moral ambiguity that lie at its heart.

Excerpt from Cargo of Orchids:
"Despite the freight of anger she carries, Rainy seems so frail it is hard to imagine her giving birth to anything heavier than tears. Rainy gave birth to twins and six months later left them on the railway tracks. She claims it prejudiced the jury. If she'd smothered them or driven them off a pier, it would have been more socially acceptable.-- But abandoning your kids on the tracks wasn't in fashion. She wishes now she'd gone out drinking for the evening instead, but she didn't have enough money to hire a babysitter and pay for the beer."

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Susan Musgrave is the award-winning author of two previous novels, The Charcoal Burners and The Dancing Chicken, as well as several acclaimed works of poetry, most recently Things That Keep and Do Not Change and What the Small Day Cannot Hold: Collected Poems 1970-1985. She is also one of the seven Canadian women writers included in the recent anthology Desire in Seven Voices. She lives near Sidney, British Columbia.

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"In the annals of death house literature it's rare that a novel leans on stand-up comedy. Susan Musgrave's Cargo of Orchids does so brilliantly. Set in the near future, when executions are broadcast on television, Cargo of Orchids is wonderful fun; terrifying, unforgettable and sui generis." —BC Bookworld

"Musgrave shares with Tom Robbins a talent for redeeming mundanity by bringing in the lunatic fringe. Like Robbins, she is a verbal cartoonist, though her satire is more effervescent…" —Ottawa Citizen

“…a lyrical narrative sliced with dark graphic humour…Musgrave artfully turns up the tension as she twists the plot, humanizing the characters despite their ugly underbellies. It’s a disturbing but eloquent argument against incarceration and capital punishment.” —Chatelaine, November 2000

“…she inhabits her subjects like a second skin, injecting them with a sad wisdom and complex sympathy.” —Elm Street Magazine, September 2000

Praise for Things That Keep and Do Not Change
The poems here are often about loss and violation, but Musgrave's characteristic mirth and penchant for harmless mischief keep breaking in. She conjures ghostly or violent images, but the comic muse is never far away." —The Globe and Mail

Praise for The Charcoal Burners
A riskier novel than Atwood's The Edible Woman, more ambitious and visionary. When there is humour, it is blacker than charcoal." —The Globe and Mail

Praise for The Dancing Chicken
A nasty, rambunctious little book — wickedly realistic. Read and laugh. Nervously." —The Montreal Gazette

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

When I first came to the Row, they made me sign forms saying that in the event of death or injury sustained during my incarceration, I would not hold the institution responsible. I can't say they haven't been taking care of me.

When they escort me to the chow hall, they attach a trip chain to my leg shackles so the guard behind me, holding the chain, can pull my feet out from under me if I make a break for it and try to vault the seventeen-foot-high fence of electrified wire-assuming I make it through all six electronically controlled doors and across six hundred feet of open yard first. My wrists are handcuffed too, although they undo the cuffs to let me eat. Then they just watch me extra hard.

I have been classified as an escape risk, among other things. It doesn't take them long to classify you. They read your file, look you over, ask your age, race and religion, and then write down whatever Representation of Female Evil they figure you most closely represent.        


a) Cold Calculators: Women who ruthlessly kill their husband(s) or loved one(s) for financial gain.
b) Black Widows: Serial murderers of husbands, male lovers and next
of kin. Some killings seemingly have no motive. Most common modus operandi is poisoning.
c) Depraved Partners: Highly charged, (hetero)- sexual, violence-loving young women who link up with an evil, murderous male partner to commit serial murders, often involving the kidnapping and torture of young white women.
d) Explosive Avengers: Manlike or lesbian women. Premeditation is far from clear.
e) Robber Predators: Women who murder while committing or covering up financial-gain felonies.

My classification officer got excited when I asked her to read again the definition of an Explosive Avenger. When she reread it, watching my face this time, I asked for clarification on "Premeditation is far from clear." She said "premeditation" meant you had planned your crime in advance; it wasn't just something you did because you lost control of your reason in a moment of passion. I said I understood what the word meant, but I didn't understand the meaning of "Premeditation is far from clear." Did that mean it was unclear whether the crime was  premeditated, or that the premeditation itself was not very well thought out? My CO looked at the words, frowned, then admitted it must be a mistake, that the line ought to read "Motivation is far from clear."

I went back to my house, feeling I had made one small step for Female Evil. However, nothing changed. My CO wrote that I probably had a "lesbian-type affiliation" with Consuelo de Corazón, which is why I maintained the illusion I was being held hostage. In her opinion, I had clearly murdered my child, "though premeditation is far from clear." Rainy says that if it is any consolation, she too has been classified as an Explosive Avenger/Cold Calculator, even though she never made one dime from killing her twins.

Everyone here gets classified as a Something-American.

Rainy. Age: 32; Mexican-American; Explosive Avenger/ Cold Calculator.

Frenchy. Age: 35; African-American; Robber-Predator.

Yours Truly. Age: 47; Canadian-American; Explosive Avenger/Cold Calculator.

I appealed my classification, saying I did not have U.S. citizenship, but the classification officers who reviewed my case could not conceive of a nationality that wasn't at least half American. "Everybody's got to have some good in them," they said.

Once you have been classified, that's what you have become. And you go to your grave here with your classification papers stuffed in your hand like a diploma.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Knopf Canada
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2000
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0676972853
• ISBN 13: 9780676972856
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 392
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar