The Diamond House By Dianne Warren
2020, Harper Collins, 384 Pages, $24.99
Fiction, Family Saga
Winner, Glengarry Book Award, City of Regina Book Award
This story starts in the Ottawa Valley, but quickly migrates to Saskatchewan, with a brief stopover in England. It’s more like three intertwined novellas than a single novel, which didn’t really work for me. It was recommended to me as a story of Ottawa, which really wasn’t the case. I won’t hold that against it, though.
This is the story of the Diamond family, which moves from a base in the Ottawa Valley to a new settlement in Saskatchewan, and the family dramas that touch on five generations. The story of the family is driven by the patriarch of the family, Oliver Diamond, but the story of the book is propelled by his daughter Estella. While these two characters are both introduced early on in media res, the first third focusses on Oliver and his first wife, the middle third on his second and more significant venture into family, where Estella comes to prominence, and the final tier is with Estella as an old woman, and some long-lost relatives.
The story is a deep character dive into family members and family dynamics, how they change and how they refuse to change, even when the individual members do. It was frustratingly realistic. That being said, the only characters that the reader really has close insight into are Estella and Oliver, with a venture into the first wife, Salina.
It starts in the Interwar Period and goes into the 2000s, and offers a glimpse into life at the times in Saskatchewan and Canada, but I don’t really know of anyone to whom I’d recommend this book. I see that the author has her enthusiasts online for previous books, but I think that this one must not have been up to the standard to deserve such a following.
★★★☆☆
