Author: Deanna

Oprah, o wise sage, picked James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces as her latest book club pick. A good friend in my office highly highly recommended the book to me, loving it so, so much that we launched into a fairly funny conversation about why we both enjoy reading addiction books. Maybe because it’s an experience that’s so richly human, the loss of total control in the face of something that utterly consumes them.

It’s a richly addictive memoir, which I think was Frey’s intent, to echo the feeling and rush of his experiences as an addict, and fully explore his time in rehab. The book is written in almost a pure form stream of consciousness, with little additional punctuation other than a basic periods and commas. It’s a swift read, and one that takes you right into the fever of the moment. From the instant that James wakes up on a plane missing his four front teeth, with two black eyes, a whole in his cheek and broken nose not knowing where he’s going or where he’s coming from, you get the feeling that it’s not your typical memoir. It’s an interesting choice from Oprah, who might be reeling from the lack of support her last choice failed to garner (Summer of Faulkner, wha?).

It’s funny how the books in your life start to create clusters, or patterns, as you read through them. I’ve read three solid books about addiction this year: The Hungry Years by William Leith, Dry by Augusten Burroughs, and now A Million Little Pieces by James Frey. All three by men, all three detailing a deep and private part of their lives that forced them to change, and come out extremely different on the other end. Surprisingly interesting books whose authors have next to nothing in common except their shared experience with some form of addiction (food for Leith, alcohol for Burroughs, and drugs and alcohol for Frey).

I would highly recommend all three books, but maybe not to read them in succession for fear of falling off the high cliff of very serious topics into a pit of despair over your own addictions, be they as slight as my own addiction to sugar or more serious. All three make you think, and more importantly, make you feel.

So I’m as pale as a cloud on a summer day. My head is foggy, my chest is thick and wet (yum!), and I’m coughing up lots of icky stuff. Hooray! I’m sick, AGAIN. So I spent yesterday morning trying to go to work, giving up by around noon, coming home and watching movies. For hours. I felt too bad to even read for that long.

I watched Things Behind the Sun, directed by Allison Anders. It’s a wonderful independent film about a woman who was gang raped (I know, sounds uplifting) when she was fourteen, and has never moved past the event in her life. She’s a musician, and when her record starts moving up the charts, a music magazine wants to interview her. Only the journalist is the brother of the ring leader of the boys who raped her.

The movie frankly deals with the broken nature of Sherry, and Owen, the journalist, has his own troubles sexually as a result of what happened when he was a kid. There are deep psychological implications, and they reverberate in everything the two have done since they were fourteen; the broken souls are intelligently and almost wistfully explored in the film. It stars Kim Dickens as Sherry and Gabriel Mann as Owen. Oh, and Don Cheadle, the most underrated actor in Hollywood (IMHO), plays Sherry’s manager / lover, and he’s excellent as well. I’ve been wanting to see the movie for ages, and I’m glad it was as good as I’d read it was.

Then I watched Maria Full of Grace, and it was okay, very disturbing, but good. By then I was almost dizzy from too much television and sort of blacked out until after dinner. Annnywaaay. I’m starting to use this crazy Zip.ca membership, but I’m not sure if it’s worth the money I’m paying for it. I’ll give it another couple of months and let you know.

An important anniversary passed last Friday that I forgot to note here: it was the 1 year ‘birthday’ of my bionic hip. I can’t believe that my tragic right hip (the body part, not the blog) is a year old already. And it’s one of those rare events that sort of give pause to how much has happened in the short twelve months since I was lying in the Toronto Western Hospital puking from the anaesthetic, worrying about my job because The Boss From Hell had made my exit less than pleasurable and fretting over my creatinine levels that kept rising.

So here’s a summary of what my tragic hip has endured over the last 12 months: a new house that needs serious renovations; getting fired on the first day back while still using a cane and essentially still recovering; getting a new job that’s a world different from the old miserable one; finishing two abridged books for Sterling; getting contracts for two more; having the disease come back and taking the meds; going to Ireland and surviving the walking; and having more grey hair than when I started it all.

It’s kind of crazy when you look at everything that happens in a year, and then reflect upon the fact that your bionic hip has managed to carry you through it all.

Happy Hip Day!

My review of Flightplan is up at Chart. They edited out my favourite paragraph, and my line about how the airplane has obvious Titanic overtones, but that’s cool.

Because I really, really want these boots.

But right now, I’ve got a grand total of $43.86 in my bank account until payday. It’s so tight right now that I actually bought some groceries on my credit card, something I swore I’d never do.

Damn British Airways for holding my $700.00 hostage. Don’t they know mama needs a pair of Frye boots?

So, my RRBF had his record release party on Friday night. They played the Supermarket in Kensington, and it was a good show, but it’s a lousy venue. T-minus two weeks before he goes on tour for a month. I’ll be super lonely — anyone have any suggestions as per what I can do with myself?

As you know from my previous gushing post about Joan Clark’s new book An Audience of Chairs, I had a chance to meet her last week and was absolutely thrilled. She’s a lovely, intelligent and kind woman who said in response to my question, “How long did it take you to write the book,” the following:

“Four years. I actually started thirty years ago, but couldn’t finish. It just wasn’t the right time. And then I started again twelve years ago and found the same thing.”

All in all, she’s been thinking about those characters, that story, and that tale for thirty years. Thirty years of having the characters talk back in her head, bash around with real life, and wait to really settle. It’s a wonderfully inspiring thought that time only makes the idea grow stronger, and will brings it forth, but its really the characters themselves that take time coming to life.

I went on a bit of a Lori Lansens bender. But I just couldn’t help myself, her books are like a big pile of Halloween candy, super sharp, wickedly sweet, but have a sadness to them that breaks apart like Rockets in your mouth. Rush Home Road tells the story of Addy Shadd, an elderly woman who lives in a trailer park near Chatham, Ontario, who fosters a young girl named Sharla Cody when her mother up and leaves her for a boyfriend with better opportunities. Addy comes from Rush Home, a community built on the edge of the Underground Railway, and her life meets tragic circumstance after tragic circumstance before she finally finds her way back home.

In comparison, The Girls is a novel about conjoined twins who have existed for almost thirty years attached at the head. As the world’s longest surviving craniogapus twins, Ruby and Rose are now writing their autobiography. It’s a wonderful bittersweet tale, and like Sharla, Ruby and Rose are abandoned at birth by their mother, left to be taken care of by an older nurse, Lovey, and her Croatian husband, Stash, they live a remarkable life in Leaford. In fact, their tale is ever-more remarkable by how different and distinct they are from one another, and yet their relationship is both tender and careful at the same time.

Both books are ridiculously well written, ridiculously addictive and are wonderful examples of storytelling at its best. I almost missed my RRBF’s sister’s baby shower because I started reading Rush Home Road and didn’t want to stop. What good books to almost reach 50 with!

Over the past few days I met an author I’m a huge fan of, found a pair of boots that I almost spent over $400.00 on, watched Flightplan for an online review I have to write, finished two more books, and carried on with my full-time job.

So much to say, so little time.

I finished Wolves in Chic Clothing and The Journal of Mortifying Moments. I know they count towards the final number of books I’ve read this year, but it’s like reading air, there’s almost no substance although they do keep you going. They’re both terrifyingly predictable, but at least the JMM had some cute segments about the main character, Kerry’s, most embarrassing moments—and believe you me, I could relate.

Ahem, I once asked my grade school almost-boyfriend if he liked reading Agatha Christie (because he was really a fifty year-old housewife?), tripped and/or dropped something whenever I saw him or he walked by (including a total face/nose plant over a chained driveway on the way home as I tried to act cool), and this coming from a ballet dancer, and then convinced myself that he liked this girl Kathryn who totally tried to steal him from me and then he moved away thinking I was a total freak.

Oh boy, did I just say all that out loud?

Jason Hughes, if you’re out there, I did like you when we were in Grade 8, and I was kind of a freak, but you can’t blame me, I was “creative.” Heh.