I actually finished reading this book a couple of weeks ago. And I took my time reading it. And rereading. I savoured each page and backtracked to sections, not because I'd forgotten what happened but because I wanted to see each passage from a different angle. The book is a thoughtful one and skillfully presented, a heartbreaking yet joyful look at the misfortunes and fortunes of a small close-knit group of seemingly different people. Right from the opening preface, Wagamese had me firmly in his hold: Is it you? Yes. Where have you been? Travelling. Yes Of course. Where did you get to? Everywhere. Everywhere I always wanted to go, everywhere I ever heard about. Did you like it? I loved it. I never knew the world was so big or that it held so much. Yes. It's an incredible thing. Absolutely.-prefaceFrom the "ache of colour" on page 53 to holes on p. 161,162 to what love is like on p. 196 to story writing on p283, 284 to friendship on p 304,305 to the definition of time on p322,323 to happiness on p359 to the final page of "quite the story, quite the journey, quite the life", I was riveted. And it was timeless. Time doesn't exist. Pardon me? Time, it doesn't exist. Did you know that?-p 322Now I can't wait to go to the library to get another book."When I'm in the library, surrounded by all those volumes, all the stacks, I feel like I'm in the company of a great many friends. Friends who never leave and friends who are always there when you need them to offer comfort and warmth. I feel anchored there," she said.-p 202Yes. This is it exactly! I feel anchored.Other favourite passages from "Ragged Company":(view spoiler)["How'd you like that, mister?" "The movie?" "Yes." "The movie was fine," he said. "Very, very fine." "Fine?" She looked at him an' then the three of us with that arched eybrow that always told me she was gonna have some fun with one of us. "Fine like what?" "Well," he said kinda slow, playin' with the buttons on his coat. "Fine like . . . like, like . . . you know, I don't know."He laughed then. Shy kinda laugh like how I laugh sometimes on accounta I kinda know where I wanna go in my head but I can't get there. [...]"Fine like rain somethimes," he said. [...] When we all just stared at him, he went on. "There's days when the colour and the light of things are perfect for how you feel," he said. "Or at least you think so. Grey days. You look out your window and you stand there feeling like there's no separation between how you feel between the ribs and the shade of the day in front of you." "Monochrome," I said. He looked at me for a moment and I saw his puzzlement. "Yes. Once cold, flat, ache of colour that's not really sadness, not really regret, not really sorrow but maybe a shade or two of them all." "Yearning," I said quietly, and he nodded. "Yes. All you know is that the day, the day that's all around you, is inside you too, and you think that it's a perfect fit. But you go outside and you walk in your woe. [...] And then it rains. Not a real rain. Not a downpour or even a shower. A mist. A thin sheen of rain that doesn't really hit your skn so much as it passes over it."Like a hand, he saie, and I knew what he maent. "That's how the movie felt," he said. "Fine. Fine like the rain sometimes."p. 52, 53 We drove through the dark streets slowly, both of us keeping an eye on the sidewalks as we passed. I'd never had to look for anyone on the street at night and it amazed me how different it looked when you really pushed to see it. There was a depth of shadow there that was spectral. There were holes. Impossible holes that streetlights couldn't penetrate, and if someone were in there they couldn't be seen. [...] The holes. They're everywhere: behind a stairway, in a doorway halfway down an alley, beneath the lowere branches o fa pine tree, behind a wall. Holes in the city. The holes where the lonely go, the lost, the displaced, the forgotten. The holes that lives disappear into. The holes that daylight's legerdemain makes vanish so that we come to think of the geography of the city as seamless, predictable, equal. It's not. The holes in the streets told me that as we drove.-p. 161,162 "You been in love, Miss Margo?" Dick asked. "Yes," she said. "It was some time ago now but yes, Dick, I was." "What was it like?" he asked. She smiled wistfully and looked off down the street. Then she crossed over to the railing, leaned on it, and looked up into the sky. "It was like blue," she said finally. "LIke the blue you see when the light changes from day into night. A deep, eternal blue that gets put in your heart and then, when it's gone, for whatever reasons, you discover that it lives in teh sky, right there where you can see it every night. An eternal, haunting blue. That's what it was like."-p 196 "So you're going to tell me that a store walked up and introduced itself, aren't you?" Mac asked. [...] But what do you have? What do you want to do with it? And most importantly, do I get it?"The intuitive sense of the journalist. Mac Maude had always had it and he knew our meeting was about a story, [...] my story, the one that had walked up and introduced itself just like he said it would a few short years ago. "You get it all right," I began. "I just don't know exactly what it is I have. I mean, I've been there for all of it. I watched it all happen. But we don't have denouemant. We have ho closure. We have no ending." "Do you need one? he asked. "Don't I?" "I don't know. Sometimes you don't. Sometimes stories are better when left hanging in the wind. The flapping is what makes them memorable. Why don't you tell me what you have. We'll eat. I'll listen. We'll talk."-p283,284 I carved at night. While the others lespt, I worked on the man in the chair. In the flicker of candle light I seemed to be able to see him in sharper detail, the shadow moving like a hand telling me where to chip, scrape, slice and etch. I never knew how much shadow he lived in, how much the darkness haunted him, how twilight never held the romance it sometimes graced other people's lives with, how it only talked to him of another vigil to be maintained, another gathering of hours huddled like bandits waiting to waylay the unprepared. [...] I thought about how I had failed him. How my secret had taught him how to keep his own. My pain granting his permission to fester and growl away at his guts too. I thought about how easy it is to hide in the company of oterhs, allowing the motion of lives to obfuscate your inner workings so that what's presented becomes mor a bas-relief than sculpted image. I had failed him then. Failed to let him see me. Failed to let him know me inall the corrugated chips and racture lines. Failed to let him know that friends are impprefect replicas of the people we think we choose and that imperfection is the nature of it all. We come together in our brokenness and find that our small acts of being human together mend the breaks, allow us to retool the design and become more. I never taught him that. I let my hands feel our friendship. Those moments when our less-than-perfect selves hold the adze we shape togetherness with. -p 304,305 Time doesn't exist. Pardon me? Time, it doesn't exist. Did you know that? No. Sometimes it seems like it's all that real. Like time is the only thing we have to keep things together. Well, it's not. [...] Well, if time was real, it would leave some reisdue behind. Something tangible, some evidence of its passing. But it's invisible, so there's no residue. All ther is, is now, this momment, this instance, this time. Then it's gone. Like a firefly in the night. Winking out, becoming invisible again. I see that. But where does it go? Inside us. Time disappears inside us. It becomes real through memory, recollection, and feeling. Then, only then, can it last forever. When it becomes a part of us, a part of our spirit on its never-ending journey. Journey to where? To completion. You're losing me. Don't worry. You'll come to understand it all too. When? In time.- p322,323 [...] He didn't need much to be happy, and I believe him. I wonder what kind of a world this would be if we all shared that sentiment. I wonder how different we all would be if we learned to see beyohnd what we think we know. I wonder how poor the rich would become and how wealthy the poor would be if we could do that for each other. I wonder if we can.-p359 (hide spoiler)]
What is the meaning of home? Is it a roof, shelter from the rain, four walls and a bed? Is it a feeling of belonging, knowing that there are people who support you? Is it as simple as a physical place, or does it need to evoke some sense of emotional or spiritual well-being as well?Ragged Company follows the story of four chronically homeless people. Home-less. Stop right there. We're not quite sure what a home is yet, we just know that these four people don't have it. Even if they huddle in the same doorway every night, or stake their claim over the same blessed hot air vent for years, their spirits are wanderers, searching for a sense of home that eludes them both within walls and without them.Richard Wagamese is no stranger to his subject matter. He begins his acknowledgements with the following: "I am sincerely grateful for the help of all the workers in all of the drop-in centres, missions, shelters, and hostels I ever stayed in through the years." He knows his characters inside out because he was one of them, and the authenticity comes through in his writing.I know these guys too, but from the other side of the glass wall called privilege that we like to pretend doesn't exist. I spend my days at a drop-in centre listening to heartbreaking stories, trying to find a shred of hope in what sometimes seems like a desolate personal landscape. Fuck, I'm so lucky. I know the tales Wagamese tells are not far-fetched, even when you want to cry out, "God damn it, hasn't she suffered enough?"It is easy to dismiss homeless people, to not even see them, to let them blend into the shadows. We've trained our eyes not to look at them, until they show up where they're not wanted. Not wanted. They're not wanted. People are scared of what they don't understand, and quite frankly, most of us don't understand how a person could survive on the streets - for years or even decades - without managing to lift themselves off the concrete and into an apartment. Or we blame them for the mess they've gotten themselves into, treat them like lit fuses, drunks, crazies. So when these four (homeless) people wander into a movie theatre on an icy cold day and ask to purchase four tickets, security is alerted in a flash. Imagine wearing an Unwanted sticker on your forehead every single day of your life. Wagamese plays with different voices, telling the story in five alternating viewpoints. Digger's got the sort of talk that'll punch you in the gut: "The street's got an edge to it that'll slice you like a fucking razor if you're not tough enough." Meanwhile, Timber's erudition is enough to unsettle your preconceived notions of the intelligence of homeless people. (Hell, some of them even manage to climb out of that stigmatizing hole to publish books!) I applaud Wagamese's attempt to diversify the picture of homelessness, rounding it out with Dick, who is slower than most, and One for the Dead, a spiritual native woman who serves as a maternal figure for "the boys". The fifth voice belongs to a man about as acquainted with homelessness as your average person.Ragged Company begins on the street and never really leaves it, because the main characters have concrete in their bones. The pivotal point in the plot is when they (gasp!) win the lottery. As the life stories of the characters are gradually drawn out of them, Wagamese gets to his point - that it was never really about money in the first place. Don't get me wrong, money is a huge factor is determining someone's living conditions, but there are generally deeper, more complex issues underlying homelessness that can't be waved away with a few generous cheques. Four walls don't make a home. My frequent digressions betray my interest in the subject, and let's face it, I was made to like this book. So I can't pretend that I had the critical distance necessary to judge the novel for its literary merit. But who cares. Whether or not you ever lay hands on this book, I challenge you to make a greater effort to acknowledge the presence of homeless people whenever and wherever you see them. Because they fucking hate being invisible.
What do You think about Ragged Company (2008)?
WTFTHIS BOOKSo I was liking it and it was sweet and everyone was happy.But then Timber shares his emotional story of a lover lost to a car accident. It's especially cruel for him as she lives without memory of him.BUT THEN DICK DIESAND HE WAS SO SWEET AND INNOCENT AND ADORABLE AND CHILDLIKEAND THIS BOOKThis book was just wonderful
—Korina
Ragged Company is both a collection of first person short stories each chronicling the life of a "rounder" and a novel that affirms humanity and community by reconciling their lives through incredible changes in circumstance. The format is a complex braiding of the stories of 5 street friends wherein each strand strengthens and illuminates the overall action, not by repeating it but by passing the torch to the most appropriate member of the "team." Wagamese at times lost me and the action drifted into the predictable and the mundane, but in the end he put it all together. He managed a retelling of A Christmas Carol with characters that rarely star in novels, with multiple Scrooges, and a thoroughly modern setting. He occasionally waxes poetic, occasionally drifts too deep into religion for my taste, but above all he knows how to create characters that a reader can care about and action that is interesting. Bravo! It's truly a shame more people haven't read it.
—Brian
This book was recommended to me over a year ago but it took it being one of our two book club selections for this month for me to get around to reading it. I am so glad I did. It's a hard book to describe. I laughed, I cried, and then I cried some more. To put it simply, it's a story about 4 homeless people who win a lottery. It is so much more than that though. It's a story about 7 people who form the most unlikely connections. It's a story about the demons, decisions, shadowed people, and memories that haunt all of us and make us who we are. It's a story of how we are who we are regardless of how we dress, where we live, or how much money we have in the bank. It's a story of hope, despair, love, redemption, trust, loyalty. It's a story you just have to read.
—Pam Rivera
