Dazzle Patterns

By Alison Watt

Beginning the day of the devastating Halifax Explosion of 1917, Dazzle Patterns is an unforgettable story about resilience, the power of art, and the casualties of war.

Halifax, 1917. Clare Holmes, a flaw checker at the local glassworks, is saving up for passage to England, to work for the Red Cross and be near her fiancé, Leo, who is fighting in France. But one normal Thursday morning, a deadly explosion in the Halifax harbour shatters the city – and Clare is caught up in the blast.

As Clare struggles to recover from her injuries, she stumbles upon the School of Art, where she finds solace in drawing, and a mentor who encourages Clare’s burgeoning artistic ambitions. But how can one be an artist when the whole world has gone mad? When her own city is half-destroyed? When she’s not sure if Leo will ever come home?

Meanwhile the city, weary from the seemingly endless war and torn apart by the devastating explosion, is wracked with fear and mistrust of foreigners. Clare’s new friend Fred, a glassmaker from Germany, is pulled into a web of suspicion, causing Clare to question everything she thought she knew.

Dazzle Patterns is an unforgettable story about resilience, art, and the casualties of war, abroad and at home. With extraordinary vision and clarity, Alison Watt’s remarkable debut novel brings the past to life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Freehand Books
• Release date: Oct 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9781988298207

Alison Watt

Alison Watt is a writer and painter. She works and teaches out of her studio on Protection Island, near Nanaimo, BC, and leads workshops internationally (alisonwatt.ca). Originally a biologist, she has an MFA in creative writing and is the author of The Last Island: A Naturalist’s Sojourn on Triangle Island, winner of the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction, and Circadia, a poetry collection. Dazzle Patterns is her first novel.

Reviews for Dazzle Patterns

[icolford · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Reviewed from advance reading copy. Alison Watt's moving and elegantly written novel, Dazzle Patterns, is set at the time of the Halifax Explosion, which took place on the morning of December 6, 1917, when a munitions ship collided with another ship in Halifax Harbour, killing and injuring thousands and completely obliterating the city’s northern district. Clare Holmes, a young woman working in the glassworks, is injured—as were countless others—by a window shattered by the blast. A co-worker and master glassmaker, Fred Baker (a German immigrant who anglicized his name), is commandeered to help the injured and takes Clare to the hospital. Clare, alone in the city, longs for her fiancé, Leo, who is fighting in France. Clare and Leo grew up together in rural Grafton, in the heart of Nova Scotia farm country, which is where her family still lives. Clare returns home to recover, but quickly tires of her mother’s smothering attention and anxious solicitude and, seeking independence, returns to the devastated city at the first opportunity. In the meantime, Watt takes us to France, where Leo is dealing with trauma of his own, narrowly surviving the darkest days of a brutal war, toiling in pervasive damp and filth. When he is captured by the Germans, and then escapes and finds refuge on a farm outside the occupied zone, his life changes forever. Back in Halifax, another thread of the story follows Fred Baker, whom some suspect unreasonably of harbouring German sympathies, as his life becomes closely intertwined with Clare’s. With the glassworks closed, Clare and Fred sign up for art classes, and over several months of frequent interaction a relationship that was always mutually supportive deepens, and a tentative and trusting intimacy springs up between them. Alison Watt, an artist, is a careful and observant writer who brings her interest in the visual experience to her debut novel. The writing is filled with memorable phrases and stirring moments of great beauty, particularly regarding the interplay of light and dark and the affect of the natural world on her characters’ moods and emotions. Her three main characters—Fred, Clare and Leo—are full-blooded, multi-dimensional individuals whose fates and struggles matter. The writing is understated. Watt the author has a light touch, evoking the historical setting with the subtle and effective deployment of period detail. Despite the tragic detonation that sets the story into motion, Dazzle Patterns does not attempt to blow the reader away. Instead it quietly seduces, drawing you into its world until you realize that there is nowhere else you would rather be.