Gaining Ground
Originally published as Abra in 1978
Winner of the 1978 Books in Canada (now Amazon) First Novel Award (as Abra)
“A haunting book, with an outstanding sense of place and inner space: unsettling as well as memorable.”
—Margaret Drabble
I swear I loved them all, and I did the best I could. And then I left them, left all of it.
Abra has a perfect-seeming life as a wife and mother: until one day, she walks away, leaving only a note asking her family not to look for her.
In a woodland cabin, her new life alone begins. There are no mirrors, no clocks, no memories: just the squirrels breathing in the forest, and silence of vegetables growing.
Years later, a young woman arrives, and the past-flashes begin. Daughter? A strange word. Is this her? And what will this mean?
Rediscovered after almost half a century, Joan Barfoot’s Gaining Ground (1978) is a both a radical meditation on living on your own terms and an exquisite work of art. It calls to anybody who has ever wanted to escape – who has asked what it costs to be wild, to be sane, to be free.
Praise
“A wildly original novel. I’ve never read a book so authentically frightening, so rationally subversive and so intuitively exposing … The story is a painful inquiry into motherhood and alternate necessities, our truer natures — it isn’t a rejection of maternal love; it’s a rejection of social entrapment and the damage of stultifying roles. Beneath the narrative’s radical disquiet is a beautiful hymn to the undeniable hearts and minds of women.” —Sarah Hall
“Gaining Ground felt to me like a kind of strange love child of Marlen Haushofer’s The Wall and Claire-Louise Bennett’s Pond … Barfoot shows us the beauty and terror of being alone with our actions, but in doing so she opens up the possibility that we can face up to who we are, make peace with disappointing others and create a life for ourselves that diverges from the templates we’ve been given.” —Amy Key
“A modern masterpiece: provocative, radical and deeply moving on motherhood and how we choose to build our lives.” —Doireann Ní Ghríofa
“I absolutely loved Gaining Ground: so thought-provoking and complex, but also full of moments of grace and peace. It veers deftly between the radiance of the seasons and the hollowing despair of a stifled existence. Abra’s dilemma electrified me. An extraordinary novel.” —Katherine May
“I was gripped by this radical, deeply felt novel, finding myself increasingly immersed and moved by its fresh, insistent narrative of loss and becoming. I know this book will be discussed, recommended and passed from friend to friend.” —Megan Hunter
“If you want to pick a fight with yourself, pick this book. This is what the best writing does: makes you think, think again, think better.” —Claire Kilroy
“A joyful and generative novel about running away to make a true home for a true self.” —Sarah Moss
“Beneath its glassy surface, the currents of this book are vast and dark and dangerous. Weeks after finishing it, I still feel caught in the vortex of its oppositions; still hear the silent howl of its inarticulable pain.” —Lucy Caldwell
“A searing reminder of what we owe to ourselves.” —Saba Sams
“I was blown away. Gaining Ground has been a guiding light for my work and I’m delighted that her prescient novel is having a new life.” —Alice Vincent
Praise from the 1978 edition
Globe and Mail: “An impressive first novel…a compelling story”
Calgary Herald: “Abra is the book of the season, a novel to be savoured for its fine writing, its perceptions, its feelings, its moral and emotional dilemmas…a gripping missing persons story”
Publishers Weekly: Abra is “a strangely haunting character”
London Free Press: “Joan Barfoot has an enormous story-telling capability, and it’s impossible to put this, her first novel, down until the very last page.”
Hamilton Spectator: “Abra is an absorbing story of a woman who found undiscovered strengths, a new identity and her very soul, and it will be appealing reading to anyone who has ever dreamed about taking a trip to freedom”.
Ottawa Citizen: “appealing in its relevance and timeliness”
Books in Canada (Sandra Martin): “Abra is a strange and important book… It is a risky book, exploring new territory, and it works.”
Toronto Star: “an honestly felt passage through loss and chaos to discovery”
Sheila Fischman (Toronto Star): “Abra Phillips is one of the best realized, most appealing (and troubling) women I’ve met in a novel since Margaret Laurence’s Hagar Shipley.”
U of T Quarterly: “an exceptionally accomplished first novel: skilfully structured, very well-written, intelligent”
Times Literary Supplement: “above all a novel about personal integrity”
