July 26th, 2011

#53 – The Retreat

This may be hyperbole, but I think David Bergen is a national treasure. It’s quite a statement to say that over the course of reading four of his novels, his Giller winner (The Time in Between) remains my least favourite. People, it won a major prize! Overall, I devoured A Year of Lesser and See the Child, and thought they were both excellent. But The Retreatmight just be my favourite Bergen novel so far — but I haven’t read The Matter with Morris(just the first 50-odd pages for work), so I am reserving judgment until then.

The majority of the action in The Retreat takes place at a camp, the retreat of the novel’s title, near The Lake of the Woods, just outside of Kenora. The landscape, having spent about a week there at a cottage of an old ex-boyfriend way back in the way back, is beautiful. The Lake of the Woods itself is huge, with crisp blue waters, but the pond close to the property isn’t. It’s murky, filled with reeds, and just as dangerous — it’s an important distinction, because major accidents and/or incidents happen throughout the book on or close to the water, and Bergen’s ability to weave such an archetypal theme (man vs. nature) within his more specific, personal story, remains one of the book’s true accomplishments.

But let me digress. Raymond Seymour, an 18-year-old Ojibway boy, finds himself embroiled in an love affair with niece of the local police. Their relationship — hot and heavy — burns out quickly, and not just as a result of the intervention of her father and uncle but, because, it’s just not meant to last. Alice’s uncle takes Raymond out onto the Lake and dumps him on an island — expecting him not to return. This dynamic, bad cop/good kid, feels familiar, and it should, the relationship goes exactly where you expect and the penultimate action remains utterly heartbreaking. It’s 1974, and Bergen chooses as a secondary background of sorts, to wrap The Kenora Crisisaround his story, even though Raymond and his brother, who has just returned from being “raised” (read: forcibly removed) by a Mennonite family in the south, are tangentially involved in the uprising.

When Lizzie Byrd (17) and her family arrive at The Retreat, a quasi-commune run by “the Doctor,” a self-important, psycho-babbling fool who cons people into believing he can heal their souls by “talk” and the simple life of camp, she’s reluctant to participate. The births of her younger siblings have been hard on her mother, and her father desperately tries to save his family and her sanity by granting her every wish — in this case, it’s to spend the summer at The Retreat. Lizzie meets Raymond and a cautious friendship evolves into something more substantial. As the summer progresses, their feelings grow deeper, regardless of whether they truly understand one another’s complex situations (her crazy family; his unfortunate situation with the cop that never seems to end). But as the season comes to an end, the novel finds its conclusion — the characters, distraught, damaged and utterly changed by the events of the summer. It’s an amazingly quiet novel for the amount of emotional damage that is wrought on the people within, which remains Bergen’s exceptional ability as a writer — to place people in crisis and not let them entirely recover.

This is my favourite kind of book, a great setting, a complex, real issue that meant something in history, family dynamics that remain complex and difficult, and action that’s both believable and well-paced. In short, it’s an excellent read, probably one of the best books off my shelf. The Bs have been utterly kind to me (Barnes, Bergen, brilliant!).

May 15th, 2011

#43 – Last Night In Montreal

Before sitting down to write about Emily St. John Mandel’s first novel, Last Night in Montreal, I wanted to do a pros and cons list of my own pre-conceived notions about fiction in general. My innate likes and dislikes, if you will. There are cliches in writing that I just can’t stand — easy things that authors fall back on because they are such a part of our collective unconscious, if you will, that even if one doesn’t realize you’re writing a trope, you’re still writing a trope.

Circus performers. The idea of running away to the circus. And as prevalent and innovative, even successful as the modern day Cirque du Soleil might be in Canada and around the world, sentences like, ‘they were part of a circus family when that was still something that could be done,’ or the like, make me cringe, just a little (read: a lot). It’s not that good books can’t be written and/or good stories can’t be told about circuses (case in point: Water for Elephants, which I have not read, but has been on bestseller lists for almost four years) or great drama created out of the idea of someone walking a tightrope (case in point: the excellent Colum McCann novel, Let the Great World Spin). Yet, in this novel, when the circus performer characters are dropped in, it feels forced and full of anguish — like an imagination that’s had too much caffeine and is trying to finish an all nighter — something just isn’t right and someone probably should have started cramming earlier.

Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself. Lilia, a distinct but also wispy and beautiful young woman, has trouble staying in one place. She was raised by her father who kidnapped her away from her mother one cold winter’s evening and she hasn’t stopped running since. Lilia’s an interesting character — she’s bright, can speak several languages (taught to her by her father on the road) and has to work through her past by constantly moving on to the next location. She doesn’t normally give her lovers any warning. She simply packs up her stuff, stashes it away, and then leaves when she feels she can’t stay any longer. Her safety — mentally, physically — is at risk, and so she must go. Eli, her current Brooklyn-living boyfriend, can’t accept that she’s gone, so he goes on the road to try and find her. He doesn’t necessarily want her to come back. No, he just wants an explanation, and to know that she’s okay. So off Eli goes to Montreal. Why Montreal? Well, Eli receives a missive from someone named Michaela, who claims to know where Lilia is…

In tandem with the current-day storyline that follows Lilia, Elia and Michaela, the novel drifts back in time via different characters to fill out the novel. The most engaging parts of the book take place on the road with Lilia and her father — there’s a wonderful dynamic between the two, and even if I do find Lilia kind of twee for my liking, I can see how kidnapping her both saved and damaged her at the same time. But here’s also where the book goes off the rails a little bit, there’s a private detective, Christopher (paid by whom, who knows? It’s never explained.) who becomes obsessed by the case (he’s Michaela’s father; this is the circus stock family). These two families are now intertwined, and their complex relationship forms the crux of the novel.

There’s no doubt that St. John Mandel is a terrific writer. She has a gift for description and the book hums along — it’s just not, from my point of view, entirely believable. There’s a ‘movie of the week’ element to it that I just couldn’t shake and I will hold any “damaged” girls up to Baby in Lullabies for Little Criminals and always find them wanting. And the circus performers. Of the entire novel, I appreciated the ending, but the penultimate scenes and resulting action, well, that also falls into the “tired” category — to spell it out would be to completely spoil the novel, so I’m not going to do that here, as per usual. On the whole, it’s a terrifically uneven first novel, but it’s also just that — a first novel, and I do actually look forward to reading more from St. John Mandel in the future.

WHAT’S UP NEXT: The last of my library books for a while — Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. Then it’s back to the shelves for sure — I am very behind in my challenge, and by alphabetized books are just mocking me, mocking me!

April 5th, 2011

Notes From A House Frau XVIII

At this very moment, my RRBB, after an exhausting few minutes of rolling over, fussing because he can’t get himself back again (like a turtle on its back only in reverse; it’s quite funny), has spent the last fifteen or so minutes looking at himself in the mirror on his activity mat. His concentration skills are hilarious. I’m not sure at all what he sees in the mirror but he’s absolutely enamoured with whatever it is…

Here is our wee boy at five months (five months!) [And this picture is already three weeks old because he's 26 weeks tomorrow]. He’s starting to have quite the little personality. My temper, my RRHB’s response to anything traumatic (to go to sleep), and a lovely happy smile that belongs to him alone. Everyone keeps telling us that this is the best of the baby stage — when they get to this age, five or six months, but I’m enjoying every baby stage these days, if only because it’s all so new to me, and just so damn fun. That’s not to say that I’m not exhausted, because I am, beyond words, and that I’m not frustrated by how the disease still refuses to calm down, because I am, but I’m trying to be calm and collected, find a quiet routine we can settle into, and make the most of the time that I have before heading up to the cottage for the summer (without plumbing!).

We gave the RRBB some sweet potatoes this afternoon. His very first non-cereal food. He decided about four bites in that enough was enough and he’d really just prefer to breast feed. It’s a slow, patient process, this real-food business. Like anything, I am excited for him and want to record every little thing that happens — but I can’t be sure that when he’s older, he’ll actually want to know.

Over the last few days, I’ve seen many doctors: SFDD, kidney doctor, gastro doc, and had some blood work done today. I’m not going to lie — I’ve been panicking inside a whole lot about the state of my poor kidneys. I have tried to be positive, tried to look at the bright side of it all (that my condition is essentially unchanged since two weeks before having the baby), and yet regardless of all the drugs, of all the “resting,” of all the not working, my creatinine is still sky high as is my blood pressure. In all the years I’ve had the disease, I’ve never had high blood pressure — and I hate taking medicine for things that my body should just do right — and it scares me when I put the cuff on and get a reading like 146/98. We can’t afford any more restorative yoga at the moment, and the money I thought would last us a year barely made it through six months. Such is life, right?

Last time, I promised I would stop complaining about being sick. Or tired. Sick and tired. A lot of residual shock and awe about how everything turned out led me to try and read other birth stories. Helen left a comment letting me know about a collection called Great Expectations: Twenty-Four True Stories About Childbirth edited by Lisa Moore and Dede Crane (#31). And it’s excellent (thank you Toronto Public Library for loaning me a copy). I whipped through it in just a couple of hours (over a few days) and came to the conclusion that not a single birth plan goes according to, well, plan. For something that women have been doing since women were, well, invented, childbirth is as complex and ever-changing as people are themselves. I needed to read this — I needed to know that despite all the best laid plans (birthing tubs, doulas, midwifes, home births, drugs, no drugs) that a women might set out before her due date, chances are something dramatic will change in the minutes when she shouts “it’s time” at her husband and/or significant other. It’s a bright, fascinating collection — not a single one of the writers fall back into cliche to describe their experiences, which I felt was a revelation considering most pop culture birth stories coming to us via television and the movies aren’t remotely realistic. Like firefighters heading into a blaze without their masks, they’re all panting and fake screaming, with babies popping out looking six months old already. But this collection is painstakingly honest, achingly real and just what I needed to read.

Anyway, I don’t have much else to say. I’ve been trying to write this blog post for over a week now and the RRBB hasn’t let me get much done. I’ve got two book reviews to get to and a to-do list that is as long as my arm. So, I will stop rambling, for now.

March 21st, 2011

Notes From A House Frau XVI

RRBB has been hitting some very fun milestones lately. He had his first taste of solid food (if you can call it that) as the picture here depicts. He slept through the night: twice (even though in the few hours preceding the long sleep he was over-tired and ridiculously manic, but not upset). He visited a sugar bush and an antique mall (or, rather, his bored parents dragged him to said sugar bush and said antique mall). And he was babysat for the second time while my RRHB and I went to see the Elephant 6 collective at Lee’s Palace on Friday night. Shockingly, he’s still the happy, well adjusted, easy baby we’ve brought into this world.

Of course, I’m still not sleeping from the drugs. But the odd night isn’t so bad here and there, I can handle it. It’s funny, I get poetic about it in a way: the sun rises and it sets, the moon comes out, but without that deep hours-long pause — time passing in an instant because you are, well, unconscious, everything blurs into one, breakfast feels like a late night snack, lunch disappears, and dinner is always rushed, trying to cram the day in before the bedtime routine starts. As always, I am at a loss for spoken words. Friends came over for dinner yesterday and I just couldn’t finish my sentences, kept forgetting words, used the wrong words, filled up the space with malapropisms — when does the ‘baby brain’ end? Perhaps when I get more consistent, consecutive rest, or perhaps when the RRBB turns 18 and heads off to university. Who knows. For now, I’m struggling with simple sentences while complex thoughts careen around my brain like snowflakes — always melting before they necessarily land.

We went to the Bloor/Gladstone library last week, and it was glorious. It really is a beautiful building and I’d forgotten how much I enjoy libraries. I haven’t truly visited one on a regular basis since being in grad school, and now that we’re pinching every penny, I simply can’t afford to buy books. I’ve been wondering a lot about other birth stories, wanting to compare experiences, wanting to maybe experience a little catharsis too in terms of my own trials and tribulations. So, one of the books I picked up was Rebecca Eckler’s Knocked Up (#27). I didn’t read anything other then What to Expect When You’re Expecting while I was pregnant, and now that I’m no longer pregnant (although still with-pooch), I am curious to know about other mothers-to-be. I mean, not everyone ends up on the special pregnancy ward of Mt. Sinai hospital with their lungs bleeding before giving birth, right?

In short, I wanted to know what normal was like, in a way. Granted, there was a little too much: “is my ass fat????” throughout Knocked Up, and I don’t know that I would have chosen a c-section had one not been chosen for me (I was oddly looking forward to the experience of giving birth). But I did laugh in various places, and while I know Eckler takes a lot of flack for her self-involved, me-first, examination of both pregnancy and parenthood, I actually enjoyed the lighthearted nature of the book. More chicklit than the nauseating “motherhood makes me a saint” stance of so much that I find online relating to this situation we’re in (yes, motherhood), Knocked Up gave me a bit of a mental break in terms of contemplating all that happened to me, and that’s all I’d ask of it. It was an easy-breezy read and I’m jealous of her ability to stay so completely focussed on not changing in the midst of such a huge change.

That’s not something I’ve been able to do — none of my clothes fit, in fact, I can’t even seem to find three-quarters of my wardrobe, having packed things away to who knows where in the house. My body is so very different and I barely recognize myself in the mirror. The shock of the naked self in the shower is enough to give up food forever, and were it not for the prednisone encouraging my stomach to crave every baked good on the face of this earth, I just might. I need to get more exercise, and I was actually jealous when the Rebecca in Knocked Up went out on a girl date barely two weeks into her daughter’s existence. There’s a level of guilt that I feel the moment I am away from the baby — that I am being a bad mother in a way by not constantly being in his company. I know that’s crazy, and ridiculous, and that doesn’t mean that I don’t hand him off to his father for hours at a time, but it doesn’t seem to be getting any easier leaving him. But to get back to my point, the physical changes — shorter hair, chubbier me, bloating from the meds — feel so much more permanent these days than the mental ones.

The mental part of being a mother seems easy these days. There’s love. You give it out, a lot of it. There’s patience, which sometimes gets tested. There’s joy. There’s boredom, and there’s bliss — but it all comes together in a pretty awesome package. So, I don’t blame someone for obsessing about the size of their ass — it’s overwhelming to contemplate all of the physical and mental changes at the same time, something’s got to give. I was remembering way back in the way back this week. An old boss I had at an evil corporation that I used to work for (which no longer exists) took us out for lunch within the first few months of her assuming a position she later proved she was utterly unqualified for. She had just finished mat leave for her second child and we were talking about babies. At some point, and I can’t remember what preceded the moment, she crinkled up her face and said that she really didn’t like babies, not even her own. Perhaps she likes her kids when they get out of the difficult infant stage, who knows, but all I’ve been thinking this week is how awesome babies are. I know I shouldn’t be so judgmental but as if I didn’t need another reason to post-actively hate the woman, now I even think she’s kind of inhumane. I’ve already forgotten the witching hour, the exhaustion, the frustration of the first little while, and moved on to complete and utter adoration.

I know it won’t always be like this — and we’re so lucky that we have an extremely easy going baby — but, for right now, I’m wallowing in the fun of it all. Charging ahead with crazy vampire kisses and holding that baby high up in the air to hear him squeal. Suffering through the whining when he’s in the car seat to enjoy a beautiful spring day where it neither rains nor snows — where the sun actually feels warm. Staying up far past my bedtime to enjoy a moment of non-couch (baby STILL only sleeps on me for long periods of time) freedom to watch reruns of Law and Order. Listening to him giggle uncontrollably downstairs as my RRHB plays with him. Even sobbing uncontrollably because of the hormones and whatever else is coarsing through my system because of the meds. It’s all awesome in a traditional sense of the word — it inspires awe in me that this is my life now, that my life contains another’s so completely at the moment, all things that I didn’t know when I was just pregnant and hoping to live. I am thankful that I did. I wouldn’t want to miss any of this.

Other library finds for this week: Blink, A History of the World in 10 and 1/2 Chapters, West Toronto Junction, Christina Rossetti: Selected Poems, as well as Knocked Up. I’ve been reading a poem a night before I go to bed, just dipping into them, and found this delicious line that somewhat sums up my last couple weeks: “O clamorous heart, lie still.”

As if it could. As if.

March 19th, 2011

#26 – Light Lifting

Light Lifting, Alexander MacLeod’s remarkable book of short stories, was our book club selection this month. I have to admit I did complain a little about reading yet another short story collection. In my mind, I’d grown a bit weary of the format and wanted something a little juicier, a little longer, to dig my teeth into. The women in my club are the smartest book people around and we have amazing discussions about books but this was our third story collection in a row and I had very mixed feelings about the other two.

But I’ve come to a very different conclusion after reading Light Lifting. I’m not tired of the short story. I’m tired of reading uneven collections where the stories are too dependent on quirks for them to be plausible and/or plot-worthy. With Light Lifting, and like The Lemon Table, I was ridiculously impressed, not only by the quality of the writing, but also by the cohesiveness of the stories themselves within the book. MacLeod hasn’t written a linked book of short stories but each of the pieces includes are complete in a way that many lesser writers, some of whom we’ve read over the last few months in our book club, fail to achieve with any consistency.

There are real people between the pages of Light Lifting and while they all undergo some sort of life changing event, the writing around it remains subtle, metaphors don’t stick out like sore thumbs, nothing supernatural happens, there’s nothing ‘put-upon’ in terms of their suffering — things just happen. Neighbourhoods change. Plants shut down. Fights break out in bars. But it’s the intersection of these events and the places where his characters in his stories are in their lives that combine to create a remarkable moment. Someone at book club described it as pivotal — something you don’t realize at the time, or you do but it takes some time to reflect — and one is forever changed.

I would hate to single out one story as my favourite among such rich bedfellows. But, as I always read so personally, the last story, “The Number Three,” about a man who killed his wife and son in a tragic car accident, ripped open my heart and splayed it out — I bawled. I mean, of course I did, even from the very first sentence, I knew I didn’t have an emotional chance against this story: “The single fried egg might be life’s loneliest meal.” The psychological ramifications of the accident, regardless of whether or not it was his fault, are deep. And ironic, as he was a career man working for GM, and story’s title plays on ideas of the big three, and the decline of the industry in general. So much is taken away from this protagonist, and even when there’s a moment where he might take a step forward, the palpable pain that prevents the step is achingly apparent. It’s just damn fine writing.

And in another bit of fine “life equals art” moments: there’s a part in “Wonder About Parents” where the dad takes the baby, five months old or so, into the change room and discovers she’s pooped so much that it’s easier just to throw her outfit into the trash and carry on. They’re on a road trip, heading home for the holidays, and the baby isn’t well. His wife makes him go back and retrieve the clothes, they were a gift, they can be washed — clothes are expensive. He does. Well, we were discussing that particular moment when the RRBB had his own, ahem, explosion at book club and I contemplated throwing all of his clothes out, but didn’t, because he was wearing a pair of pants that I adore, that were also a gift. But, goodness, the child had poo IN HIS HAIR.

Overall, it was a wonderful book club brunch, and every single one of us loved the book. It’s up there in terms of one of the best I’ve read so far this year (but The Illumination still holds the crown thus far, I think). But I’d highly, highly recommend this book — in fact, I’d be happy to pass my copy along to anyone who might want to read it, I loved it that much. Light Lifting needs to be shared, discussed, and celebrated — it’s that good.

March 13th, 2011

#25 – The Incident Report

Sometimes, there’s a clear reason how and why books end up on my shelves. Mainly they’re inherited from friends in publishing, rarely they are gifts, and often they are books that I’ve purchased for some reason or other. But when the time comes to actually reading and reviewing them, I can’t remember the impetus — the review, the award nod, the discussion — that precipitated the book collecting dust over the months and months it lingers on my shelves. Such is the case for Martha Baillie’s The Incident Report. I know it was long-listed for the Giller in 2009, and the Globe review must have intrigued me, but having never read The Shape I Gave You (it’s on the shelf; don’t worry, and I know exactly where it came from), I’m surprised I’d have two books by one author unread…usually I’ll at least try to read something by an author before buying another work.

Annnywaaay.

At first, I didn’t know what to make of the book: is it a novel, a collection of linked short stories, the dreaded micro-fiction? Instead, I’m choosing not to put a label on it or to define it in such a way because I think it takes away from what Baillie was trying to do. I enjoyed the book very much overall, especially the vignette-esque parts to the story — those little episodes that took place outside of the main character’s life itself (they reminded me of the interviews in Up in the Air with the employees who had been let go; that was my favourite part of that film, I think, also, the most original). Each morning, Miriam Gordon rides her bike to the Allan Gardens branch of the Toronto Public Library, where she works as a newly rebranded “Public Service Assistant.” When anything untoward or out of the ordinary happens at the library, said “PSAs” are required to fill out an Incident Report, which is how the collection is organized. Short, snippets of incidents that make up a life — both in terms of work (the strangers that come in and request and/or do strange things) and her personal life (a burgeoning relationship with a younger cab driver named Janko, with whom she falls in love).

Because this is a Canadian novel, there’s a lot of tragedy, which to expand upon would ruin the book, so I won’t say anything beyond the fact that, as a reader, I have grown a little weary of reading about “damaged” people. I know pain makes for exceptional sentences. Yet, I am craving a little everyday in my books these days…maybe because I’m living so much in the day-to-day myself, and have had enough tragedy in my own to fill fourteen lifetimes that I am sometimes exhausted with it in novels. However, the nature of the narrative in Baillie’s book isn’t exploitative — it’s simply stated, matter of fact, even — and that helps to dampen the emotional overbearing nature of the events themselves within the incident reports.

Some of the novel remains unresolved. Miriam’s finding notes in various places around the library — hidden in books, left behind on the photocopier — that have echoes of a Rigoletto opera that her father once loved, and she’s reimagined as the heroine. This was the weakest part of the book from my point of view. The mystery isn’t necessarily solved nor is it suitably explained but, in a sense, that’s okay, because it’s more about how Miriam perceives what’s going on than what actually happens that seems important. It’s a way for her to explore her relationship with her father and for the reader to know more about the background of her tragic life — how she ended where she is emotionally.

The love story is sweet, and Janko and overwhelmingly lovely character. Some of the passages had echoes of Ondaatje for me, “The Cinnamon Peeler”-type stuff, and I didn’t mind it at all (only rolled my eyes once, and for those of you counting, it was, yes a “ride-me-like-a-stallion-Morag-moment within the book”). In a way, Janko was such an innocent character, consistently reading children’s books, living in a small, small apartment, someone displaced by the ideals of a better life — there was a story behind his life that we never got to know, only because this is Miriam’s life, and so we know him only in relation to her. Had the novel been more traditional, I’m sure we would have known far more of his back story but then I think we would have lost the beautiful sense of wonderment that comes across throughout the sections of the reports dedicated to their relationship.

So, I wouldn’t say I was swept away by The Incident Report like I was with the next book I read, Light Lifting by Alexander MacLeod, but I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it, and how much I appreciated its brevity. Also, it’s another book off the shelves and into the box of books to be donated, shared, shipped off, and/or sent away to anyone who might be interested.

March 4th, 2011

#20 – Turtle Valley

I really must confess that the last couple books have really been not up to snuff in terms of the quality of reading that I’ve been finding on my shelves — I mean, I’ve discovered some truly excellent authors I had never read before (Julian Barnes) and inhaled the backlist of others that I had come to love (Elizabeth Strout). I really wanted Turtle Valley by Gail Anderson-Dargatz to turn things around for me. Alas, it did not.

Sigh.

Turtle Valley has to be one of the most frustratingly erratic novels I have read in a long time. The narrative suffers from a distinct lack of focus and can’t really decide what it is — a ghost story, the tale of a woman’s marriage falling apart, a story of seemingly never-ending family tragedy? Instead, all of these plots and themes are muddled up together in a rushed, convoluted, awkward book that had so much promise.

But let me digress. I really loved The Cure for Death by Lightning. And, if I can remember, I enjoyed A Recipe for Bees too. Anderson-Dargatz is a talented writer, no one is denying that fact, but this is not a cohesive novel that shows off her storytelling ability. Kat, short for Katrine, arrives home to Turtle Valley with her preschool-aged (I’m imagining; his age is never given) son Jeremy and disabled husband Ezra in tow (he suffered a stroke; tragedy #1) to help her aging parents pack up their house as a forest fire rages in the area. The natural disaster provides an excellent backdrop to the story, and allows a sense of natural urgency and drama to inhabit the narrative — this is the good stuff. But where the novel falls completely apart is how Kat unravels the mysteries of her family’s past, hidden letters, hidden stories, unforgiven truths, and a ghost that haunts them all.

There’s no straight shooting in this novel. Anderson-Dargatz wants to tell things slowly but then there are places where the book just doesn’t make sense, where it would have benefited from a serious sense of grounding just so the reader can believe what’s going on. In one scene, Kat’s lifting dinner out of the oven (wha?) and then discovering her grandmother’s letters and racing off to the neighbour she once had an affair with (tragedy #2, lost love) and then suddenly the fire’s on top of them and her father’s dying (tragedy #3). Then she’s telling her older sister about a moment of tenderness between she and her husband (marital discord and eventual divorce; tragedy #4), which is a scene we READ, that had nothing to do with the retelling or any of the moments she described, and this goes on throughout the entire novel.

Far too many scenic moments and heavy-handed imagery plague the narrative (how many times can we be told about the ladybugs, how many!!!) and, in places, the dialogue is terrifically awful, and I found myself doing the patented eyerolling, yelling in my head, “people don’t talk that way!” as I was reading. The whole book would have benefited from a far more dedicated sense of time and place, and there needed to be far more attention to detail. Maybe if there wasn’t so much going on — ex-lovers and dying fathers and dead grandfathers haunting the place and half-bonkers mothers and angry husbands and ever-looming fires getting closer — the book wouldn’t feel so all over the place. In a sense, I felt overwhelmed by the trouble in the novel, by Kat’s inability to actually cope with one aspect of her life at any one time — she’s racing around like a firebug, jumping from thing to thing, and we barrel along with her, much to the novel’s disadvantage.

The real fire in the Shuswap happened in 1998 and, like I said, Anderson-Dargatz uses the event well, but I often wonder if so much tragedy feels or reads realistically — it all felt so forced: her husband’s stroke (how old was he, how did they explain the stroke, what was his prognosis, how long has he been sick, none of this is explained); their marital problems (which, of course, led to her wanting to rekindle a relationship with the hot potter next door whose own wife suffers, OF COURSE, from MS); the drama surrounding her grandfather’s death (that’s the big family mystery); her father’s cancer and her mother’s increasing dementia, that there are just too many awful things happening in this novel.

I know life is like that sometimes, terrible tragedy upon terrible tragedy, but I just didn’t get Kat. She pleads with her husband to let her in, to let her love him, and then she cheats on him; her family keeps secrets upon secrets from her, and then they spring the truth on her at the very moment the fire’s about to take all the proof away. And when they finally discover the love letters between her grandmother and her great-uncle (her mother’s mother; her father’s uncle), she races off with them even though, as I said above, she just took a pot roast out of the oven. And no one says ANYTHING. All in all, the erratic, convoluted nature of this book disappointed me throughout. I wanted to love it. I wanted to be swept away in the scenery and the shock of the fire — I wanted to believe in the ghost story, the haunting, and I wanted Kat to redeem herself by the end, but there’s too much in this novel for it to be wrapped up quickly, and yet, that’s what Anderson-Dargatz attempts to do. The end of Kat’s marriage is glossed over in one sentence, and then wrapped up awkwardly, as if it was simply a tool to insert even more drama into an already conflict-heavy, relationship-based family story.

All in all, I’m not sure how I feel about the book. I sped through it, so it definitely grabbed my attention, but I definitely expected more from this book, and this author.

READING CHALLENGES: Off the Shelf, and if I was doing a Canadian challenge, it’d be one for the books there too. I skipped the 1001 Books section of the shelves this time around, I really want to save those chunky books for the summer at the cottage, so I am trying to power through the Canadian, American, International and British sections over the winter/spring. Also, I only have one Austen left, Mansfield Park, and I don’t want to read it just yet. So I might skip the “As” and come back around to it when I’m not so disappointed in my reading. Thank goodness for Julian Barnes. I’m reading his short story collection, The Lemon Table, now and it is excellent.

February 20th, 2011

#16 – Showbiz

I’m not going to lie — I cursed my “I am totally determined to read everything on my shelves” challenge a little bit with Jason Anderson’s Showbiz. Part-fan fiction, part faux-history, and part “journalist that gets caught in a thriller,” the book, well, simply felt implausible to me. I’m not saying that Anderson isn’t a good writer, and that he doesn’t have one wickedly fun imagination — both of these things are true, but this book wasn’t for me.

Nathan Grant’s a Canadian ex-pat journalist attempting to make it in NYC. He’s broke, needs to find a job, a girl, a life. And when he stumbles across an old comedy record by a fellow named Jimmy Wynn — he finally thinks he’s getting somewhere. See, Wynn used to do an impersonation, a really good act, based around his contemporary president — Cannon (who bears a thinly veiled resemblance to Kennedy). After Cannon’s assassination, Wynn’s act is ruined and he’s on the run, disappeared into pop culture oblivion, because of a “secret” the president apparently imparted to him.

What Nathan knows he’s got is a story he can sell to the magazine where his friend Colin works: The Betsey. It’s dedicated entirely to the life and times of President Cannon. Bingo, he’s pitched it, it’s accepted and all of a sudden he’s in Vegas trying to track down an aging comedian among bucket loads of aging stars all kicking out their last legs on the strip.

But where there’s Cannon, there’s conspiracy, and where the book turned into a strange film-like mess for me. I just didn’t believe it, and that’s my fault. I couldn’t get passed the whole “faux” world in which it was written — and Anderson heads off on a lot of tangents. The reader doesn’t necessarily need to know the plots of every single B film that Wynn, in one of his many disguises after being disgraced, and nor do we need to read every single article or have each clue spelled out so exactly. The pop culture stuff within the novel was interesting but I’ve never been one for conspiracy theories and prefer to read my history straight — not that I don’t believe that fan fiction, which I kind of somewhat consider this to be, isn’t a worthy enterprise, it completely is, but you have to accept and believe the action for it to work, and I just didn’t with this book.

In the end, I finished it, but I did a lot of complaining while reading. I knew when my RRHB said, “What a great cover,” that the book probably wasn’t going to be for me — and even though I enjoyed Nathan’s almost hapless way of finding himself in the middle of the action and, like I said, am in awe of Anderson’s amazing pop culture inventive imagination, on the whole I wanted just a tad bit more resolution and reality within this book. He could have gone even further with the satire and I would have enjoyed it more. I guess, that’s what I’m trying to get at — this book just didn’t know exactly what it wanted to be (from my perspective). So, I have mixed emotions about this book. I want to support the writer, I think he’s got an interesting talent, but the novel, overall, didn’t really work for me.

But I think I’m a better person for reading it. It’s important to read out of your comfort zone (literary fiction) and see what other kinds of novels are being published. See what other writers are coming up with in the wee hours of the night when their imaginary characters are being chased down by men with not-so innocent motives. If I were to give a good comp for this book, it might be the film St John of Las Vegas, which I actually enjoyed a great deal. It’s got the same quirky, “mis-happenstance” feel to it that the novel strives for.

WHAT’S NEXT: I’ve started the utterly delightful Arthur & George by Julian Barnes, and am already enjoying it immensely. Then, we’re into the Americans: Amanda Boyden’s first novel, Pretty Little Dirty I think it’s called.

January 12th, 2011

#2 – The Guardians & #3 – Making Light of Tragedy

A friend at Doubleday sent me a galley for Andrew Pyper’s The Guardians way back in the way back, and then asked that I not post until closer to the book’s pub date, which was the beginning of the month, I think. Regardless, I put the book on my shelf and forgot about it until one day last week when I was searching around for something BETTER to read than the Joyce Maynard I had just finished. I described the book on Twitter as such: “The Guardians = Stand By Me + River’s Edge / Mystic River without the Boston setting.”

And I stand by these comps. The book, about a group of hockey-playing young men, friends since grade school, who end up embroiled in a tragic situation involving their hockey coach, a young woman and a haunted house, was seriously not what I expected. As you know, I have little faith in “haunted” stories. Blame my reticence on Sarah Waters, I think The Little Stranger ruined it for me forever, and maybe it’s because I don’t think any book can do “haunting” better than that Alejandro Amenábar film, The Others, I’ve given up finding satisfaction in being scared in print. Also, I really hate being scared so why would I put myself through days of it versus 1.5 hours of a film.

Yet, I found myself inexplicably drawn into to Pyper’s narrative. He has a cool way with character, they’re masculine, very Lehane-esque, but that’s not off putting to me as a female reader. The main character, Trevor, suffers from Parkinson’s, which, while the disease isn’t remotely the same as mine, I can kind of relate to — simply the idea of your body not cooperating with itself. When his childhood friend commits suicide after years of protecting both the secret the group of four boys harbours and the house across the street (the haunted house), Trevor and Randy (the second of the foursome) head home for the funeral. The truth unravels from there, and I didn’t even mind the “memory diary” device that Pyper uses (Trevor’s therapist insists he keep it as a way of dealing with the disease; should my shrink ever do such a thing I would terminate treatment immediately; who wants to be constantly reminded of what the farking disease has taken away from you, seriously?). The narrative switches back and forth between Trevor’s diary and the action in the present tense.

There are all kinds of interesting things that happen when someone goes home, especially someone who made the conscious choice, after the tragedy, that Trevor did to never go back. The small-town Ontario setting adds to the nuance of the novel — things like this couldn’t happen in a big city, someone would tear the house down, raze the trouble before it even started or simply not notice, walk on by. But in this town, a hockey town, the house stands for over forty (I think) years creating havoc for not only the four boys who are deliciously intertwined in its grasp, but a few other tragic souls as well. It’s a terrific book, a perfect read for a snow day if there ever was one, and I’m glad that I read it in the deep, deep hours of the night, just for those extra chills.

The other title I read last week was Jessica Grant’s Making Light of Tragedy for my book club. The cover sucks so I am refusing to put it up here on the blog, and Kerry’s done a wonderful job of wrapping up our meeting. Everything she says about the book, well, that’s what I think about the book too. I fell on the Grant’s writing was a little bit too twee for my liking, and kept thinking of that old-school writing class line that if you’re in love with your prose that’s the stuff that should be cut right away, and there were many, many, many loved lines in these stories that could have been sliced to the benefit of the writing. However, there were also some amazing metaphors — and this coming from a girl who actively removes every single metaphor from her own writing she finds them so distracting — where I found my breath catching just a bit at her turn of phrase it was so beautiful. So, uneven, but enjoyable. The company, however, and our meeting, was a serious breath of fresh air. I even managed to feel like I was using a part of my brain that a) doesn’t sing everything I’m doing, b) actually considers thoughts before they come out of my mouth, and c) had nothing to do with talking to or about the RRBB.

WHAT’S UP NEXT: I’m reading The Keep right now, as recommended by a few friends, but am actually spending far too much time playing iPad Scrabble during the late-night feedings. It’s scrambling my brain a little so I am going to stick to just the book tonight, we’ll see how that goes at 2 AM.

November 30th, 2010

#50 – The Beauty of Humanity Movement

Camilla Gibb’s previous novel, Sweetness in the Belly, truly, is one of the best novels I’ve ever read in my life. Pitch perfect with an amazing story, the novel honestly moved me in ways that books are supposed to, breaking your heart and pulling tears from your eyes. So, you can imagine the kind of pressure I was putting on her latest novel, The Beauty of Humanity Movement. But a good friend had told me that the novel wasn’t as good as her last, and that’s what I went in thinking. You shouldn’t have preconceived notions before you read a book, truly, it changes your perspective.

When I first started reading, I couldn’t get Kung-Fu Panda out of my head. Jack Black chasing his dream of being a Kung-Fu artist while working hard in a noodle shop. It was all about the noodles. The pho, and its integral part of the lives of the men who devour the soup made by one of the novel’s main characters, Old Man Hung, takes a central role. And I couldn’t stop seeing a giant panda balancing a bowl of pho on his head. It took a while to get passed that silliness that my brain created, and it took a while for me to get into this novel. Vietnam makes for an interesting setting, its customs, the after-effects of the war, the divided nature of the politics that define the modern state, they all combine to create something exotic (and I hate to use that word but it fits) that balances the very real and human interests of the novel with something different, something more.

The unrequited love that Old Man Hung has for the neighbour, Lan, was the thread throughout the book that I most appreciated. His love for her lasted decades, and she wronged him in a way that couldn’t be forgiven, and how it all comes together in the end was fitting, strong and ultimately lovely. The novel is about generations, fathers and sons, respecting your elders, daughters searching for stories of their fathers, and about how politics turns into something so much more real when one is faced with the colossal change over the last forty years. Change comes quickly and change sometimes shows the utter strength of all of the people in this novel. Hung, his adopted family in Tu and Binh, Maggie, a Vietnamese-American trying to find her father, and Lan, their lives intertwine in ways that you don’t expect when the book opens, and it ends in ways you don’t expect. It’s a solid journey in between. It’s not Sweetness, but it’s a very good book, even if it feels uneven, and even maybe unfinished in certain ways. It’s almost as if the book needed something more to pull it all together, the human relationships work on one level but I was looking for something a little deeper. Maybe I was expecting too much.