Category: ragdoll reads

#26 – Rilla Of Ingleside

When I was creating the list of books for The Canadian Book Challenge, I thought it would be prudent to include a title from L.M. Montgomery because of the whole 100th anniversary of Anne celebration. The book I originally picked was Anne of the Island, which I had chosen because I thought it was the one about the First World War. Obviously, my memory’s a bit murky, considering I read all these books when I was about 10 years old, because the book I really wanted to read was Rilla of Ingleside (as I discovered in the bookstore).

Of course, I remembered next to nothing about the book, so the whole reading experience was quite a surprise. It’s easy to see how all of the Anne books are so beloved, Montgomery has a way with characters and plot that flow like good conversation. You don’t care if the point of view flops all over the place, aren’t bothered by the funny little quirks in her writing, don’t mind that people float in and out of Ingelside with alarming frequency. There’s a heart to the books that’s so warm, inviting and, frankly, comforting that they act like the best of one’s childhood memories. You know those parts of you that were shaped by the person you were when you read Anne in the first place.

Rilla of Ingleside follows Anne’s youngest child, a free-spirited, surprisingly (in her words) unmotivated young woman from just before the war starts, through her miraculous changes otherwise known as growing up, to the months following the Armistice. Rilla’s adventures, her war baby (adopted), her Junior Red Cross moments, the lively cast of characters that inhabit her family home, they all combine to create a whimsical world I was happy to be lost in this week. The landscape reveals as much about the book as the spirit of the people in it, and I think it’s a huge part of the success of these novels.

I was listening to the CBC on Saturday afternoon when Ian Brown and guests were talking about Allison Pick’s poetry collection, The Dream World. While I haven’t read it, I was intrigued by their discussion around a line in one of the poems that describes the narrator knowing how she all about condoms and but not trees (I am doing a terrible disservice to Pick’s work right now and I do realize that; I’m sorry), and that idea stuck with me. It’s exactly the opposite in Montgomery’s work. She knows the plants, the trees, the hills, the water, the birds, the flowers, the bushes, the rocky paths, and that’s what brings the landscape to life, what makes it seem alive. In truth, it’s the heart of the books.

PHOTO IN CONTEXT: Just the cover, I’m afraid, and how very 1983. Awesome.

READING CHALLENGES: As I mentioned, it’s PEI, and the 8th book I’ve read for The Canadian Book Challenge. That means 5 to go!

#25 – Bringing Home the Birkin

My, my, my, my, my, the lives some people live! They are absolutely fascinating, and Michael Tonello’s is certainly no exception. His witty, charming, and butter-smooth memoir, Bringing Home the Birkin sucked me in and wouldn’t let me go until I had finished the very last page. No word of a lie, I started the book on the subway ride home last night and read the rest throughout the day (I had to send the author questions for an interview we’re doing).

After Michael makes a drastic change in his life, giving up his lucrative and stable life in the United States for Barcelona, Spain, he finds himself making an eBay auction living buying and selling rare Hermès products. From scarves to pottery, if he can find it and it’s rare, he’ll sell it. But it’s not until he realizes the desperate need for the rich and richer to own a Birkin that his business flourishes. Waiting list? What waiting list? Tonello discovers a fool-proof method for buying Birkins, and works it around the world. Literally. The man travels to major cities all around the globe that contain Hermès stores, makes connections with other bag-buyers, and becomes an industry in and of himself.

There’s little not to love about Tonello’s warm, chatty writing style, his adventurous spirit, and his entrepreneurship. Bringing Home the Birkin is that rare piece of nonfiction that zips along like the best commercial novel, and it would make perfect summer reading, whether you’re urban-bound or lazing about at the cottage, it’s so easy to get caught up in his world you’ll be transported either way.

#24 – Consolation

Consolation, Michael Redhill’s compelling novel with its story within a story, was the book all of Toronto should have read back in February. I think it was part of that whole “Keep Toronto Reading” promotion that went on for the month. As I am generally behind when it comes to city-wide celebrations, I have just managed to finish Consolation, which is also my Ontario selection for The Canadian Book Challenge. I realize it’s April. I hope that it still counts.

The book starts off with a bit of a shocker, one that I don’t want to spoil, so I’ll skip talking about it, and go straight to what I liked best: the balancing of the story of old Toronto, with its central character an apothecary named Hallam who comes from England in the mid-1850s to open up a pharmacy here in the city, with that of the modern day (well, 1997) as told around an urban geologist named David, whose family becomes involved in the very last project he was trying to unearth, a set of very early photographs of the city taken by our historical hero. Is that confusing? It shouldn’t be — the book’s epic storytelling makes it quite easy to flow from one time period to the next.

The history in this book, the detail, and the exquisite storytelling, all had me on the edge of my seat more than once. In both cases, the parts of the book that takes place in 1997 and that in the 1850s, the narrators are outsiders. Men on the cusp of something, of success, of family, of their own careers, which make their experiences unique and engaging. It’s a hefty book, but the pace is swift, and Redhill’s obvious skill as a poet means his prose is both lyrical and inventive at the same time.

I did find the ending a bit muddy but by that point I didn’t care as much about the perfection of the story; I was already embroiled in the absolutely delicious tale of Hallam and his cohorts. In the end, I’d say that I enjoyed the historical parts of the novel a touch more than the parts set in a more modern age. But Redhill’s book can absolutely stand the test of time in terms of becoming a quintessential novel about this city in which we live. It’s up there with In the Skin of a Lion, with Fugitive Pieces, with Cat’s Eye, and others. Highly recommended.

READING CHALLENGES: As I mentioned, I’m through Ontario! That leaves six more books to go before July 1st. Goodness, I’d best pick up the pace.

#23 – The Age of Innocence

Edith Wharton’s classic might have just moved onto my “best books I’ve ever read in my life” list. I’ve been quoting from the novel for days. The Age of Innocence won the Pulitzer in 1921, and it’s easy to see how and why the book is included in the 1001 Books list.

Newland Archer, our hero, devotee of upper class New York society in the age following the Civil War, finds himself torn between the life he imagined, the proper life, the expected life, and his passion, which comes in the form of his fiance May’s cousin, the mysterious Countess Olenska. Already standing outside society, the Countess has left her brute of a European husband and returned to the bosom of her family. Archer, a lawyer and all-round saviour of a man, becomes enlisted in the cause to resurrect her standing, and falls in love with her along the way.

Wharton’s tone is pitch perfect, and her narrative shows no signs of age, but it’s still as if the book is frozen in time, the descriptions are vivid, the characters redolent of the period, and the story heartbreaking. It’s great storytelling told by a master of the form.

Two more quotes, and then I’ll spoil no more of the book for you:

“…[F]or a moment they continued to hold each other’s eyes, and he that saw her face, which had grown very pale, was flooded with a deep inner radiance. His heart beat with awe: he felt that he had never before beheld love visible.”

“Something he knew he had missed: the flower of life. But he thought of it now as a thing so unattainable and improbable that to have repined would have been like despairing because one had not drawn the first prize in the lottery.”

Ah, if only the goal of self-satisfaction was so still utterly admired as unachievable in our post-post modern thoughts.

PHOTO IN CONTEXT: The book on top of its 1001 Books entry on my desk.

READING CHALLENGES: The first of the two 1001 Books Challenge titles I’m supposed to read in April, which brings my score to 154. Yee-haw!

WHAT’S UP NEXT: Consolation by Michael Redhill and The Ravine by Paul Quarrington. And maybe I’ll get back to War and Peace. But really? Who am I kidding? Anyone have recommendations for Summer reading?

#22 – The Private Lives Of Pippa Lee

I’ve been banging on about Rebecca Miller for days now, ever since I started reading her new novel, which is coming out in August, for work. The Private Lives of Pippa Lee tells the story of a woman, the protagonist of the book’s title, who marries a much older man, Herb, and starts a new life with him. Of all of my favourite things about this novel (and that list is endless), the fact that the narrative is so utterly surprising and goes in places you absolutely would not suspect endlessly impressed me as I read.

Here are 2 things that happened to me on my journey with Pippa Lee: I read in the elevator. Yes, I realize it’s silly as I’m only on the 20th floor, but that’s at least 2-3 minutes, which can be pages. I not only missed my floor but didn’t notice the elevator was heading down instead of up before I realized I forgot to get off. “Oh well,” I thought, and kept on reading. The VERY SAME day, I almost missed my subway stop and barely made it out of the doors before they crushed me in an iron grip, brushed myself off, and continued to read as I walked up the stairs and out on to Lansdowne. The book is that engrossing and entertaining.

It’s just my kind of novel: swift, smart, acerbic, completely unpredictable and kind of kooky. I love Pippa. She’s adventurous and damaged, a mythical combination, and I didn’t want it to end.

Here’s an interview with the author, Rebecca Miller. She rocks. She’s talking about the filmed adaptation of the book coming out in 2009 starring Robin Wright Penn:

Edith Wharton On The Way In Redux…

Oh, Newland: “He had married (as most young men did) because he had met a perfectly charming girl at the moment when a series of rather aimless sentimental adventures were ending in premature disgust; and she had represented peace, stability, comradeship, and the steadying sense of an unescapable duty.”

But then: “He simply felt that if he could carry away the vision of the spot of earth she walked on, and the way the sky and sea enclosed it, the rest of the world might seem less empty.”

And you’d guess that he’s not referring to his wife. Such is the way of love.

#21 – The Outcast

For a first novel, Sadie Jones’s The Outcast is remarkably accomplished. However, I’d say that the novel is much richer in character development than in plot, which wasn’t necessarily cliched, but it was a bit predictable. Regardless, Jones’s tale remains captivating from start to finish. It caught me enough to keep me awake one night far, far into the hours of the early morning, and the book’s amazing ending (which I will not spoil here) made me cry so much I had to go back and read it again the next day to make sure I didn’t miss anything.

Set in England in 1957, the outcast of the title is Lewis Aldridge, a teenager just out of jail, and the back story about how he got there in the first place, and what happens upon his return, fills in the richness of his tortured soul. With as much of the story taking place behind the closed familial doors, where personal tragedy seems to reign supreme for all of the characters, The Outcast richly imagines the social constructions that worked to keep it there in the decades where the novel takes place.

I don’t want to say much more except the book is definitely worth reading, and I’d be curious to see if other people were as taken by the ending as I was, feeling like it’s the hardest part to write of any bits and pieces, and getting it right must just seem like such an accomplishment.

READING CHALLENGES: I have this book down as England in my Around the World in 52 Books challenge, and really feel like Jones captures the spirit and essence of the setting extremely well. You could feel the upper-crust clutching to their conventions, feel the classicism that almost destroys not one but two families, and it made me wish my grandmother was still alive so we could talk about the book together.

WHAT’S UP NEXT: Considering I read this book a couple of months ago but couldn’t blog about it until it was actually in stores, I’m halfway through The Age of Innocence and absolutely obsessed with Wharton’s masterpiece at the moment. Then I might take up Denis Johnson’s massive Tree of Smoke, simply because I think it’ll become my book for the USA in the aforementioned challenge.

#20 – The Turning

How have I made it this far in my life and not read all of Tim Winton’s books? Seriously? I don’t think there was a single story in The Turning that wasn’t ridiculously successful, and his writing is so full of angst and ambiance that it’s impossible not to get a sense of both character and place, often within the first few sentences. I’d have to say my favourite stories were “Family,” “Boner McPharlin’s Moll,” and the title story, “The Turning.”

While not all the stories are linked, some have characters that appear in more than one, and many take Angelus, a small town on the coast in Western Australia, as the main setting. One of the neat technical aspects to the collection that I enjoyed was how Winton ordered the stories. We’d read about one character as an adult, and then the next story would be him as a child, exploring how something in childhood led him to the man he was, but in reverse. I also felt like it takes a deft, dedicated hand to describe adolescence so well, and this is a quality The Turning shares with Winton’s excellent new novel coming out in a few months, Breath.

I read Winton for Australia in my Around the World in 52 Books challenge. And I have not note that I’ve had such a visceral reaction to both of his books that’s kind of akin to how I felt after finishing Peter Carey’s ridiculously good Theft. Winton’s writing is so urgent, so driving, so gut wrenching that I think it’s impossible not to relate to it on that kind of level. And while I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I would crawl up into bed with any of these characters, I could certainly understand why Jackie gets in the car with Boner McPharlin, and how it turns out exactly the opposite of what she wants and needs, scarring her for life.

One line from “Commission” sent a rock-and-roll-style reverb right through me: “Drunks and junkies take everything out of you, all your patience, all your time and will. You soften and and obscure and compensate and endure until they’ve eaten you alive and afterwards, when you think you’re finally free of it for good, it’s hard not to be angry at the prospect of dealing with the squalor again.”

See? Angst and ambiance. Brilliant.

PHOTO IN CONTEXT: I’m at work this morning so a book cover will have to do. Love the colours and the image of the surfer.

READING CHALLENGES: As I said, it’s all about Australia, and the novel does encapsulate a world that I’ve never been to, which makes it rich for the imagination.

WHAT’S UP NEXT: The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

#19 – The Sea

While not at all typical in its writing style or its telling, John Banville’s The Sea is a book with a familiar story. An older man suffers a tragedy that stops his life short and in the process looks back at a particular point in his youth, another moment that he realizes far too late that defines him. It’s the story Richard B. Wright told so well in October, that Per Petterson’s Out Stealing Horses explores so deftly, and that Banville toys with in The Sea. His protagonist, Max Morden, has just watched his wife die from an insufferable illness and simply can’t cope. He leaves his life (and even refuses to go back to the house they shared together) and returns to the small sea side town where he used to vacation with his parents before they split up.

The small village of Ballyless, miles away from a town ironically called Ballymore by Max, holds sway over him. It was the site where he fell for his first love, a tempestuous, temperamental and even bullying tomboy of a girl named Chloe. As Max grieves for his wife, he rolls back over the motions of his life, the summer he spent with Chloe and her (I’m assuming autistic) brother Myles, their governess Rose, and their parents, Mr. and Mrs. Grace. Much more than a symbol, the sea itself governs all of his actions that summer, he shows off swimming, they play at the seaside, and every character changes during the time they spend by the water, some for better, some for worse.

With both of his defining relationships now behind him, his marriage and his definitive first love, Max seems unable to move beyond either. Moored to both experiences as a boat to a dock, he can’t cast himself off from the past, even though his daughter desperately wants to save him from himself. An art critic, he can’t help but look at everything with the same discerning eye he would apply to a painting, pulling his life apart strip by beautiful strip, setting it under the same disturbing light he applies to his professional life.

I dogeared so many of the almost-200 pages of this novel and constantly wondered about Banville’s impressive vocabulary, his superb ability to create suspense within a story without the reader ever expecting the tale’s many twists, and how he packed so much into such a short novel. I can absolutely see how and why he won the Booker for this novel in 2005.

PHOTO IN CONTEXT: The book sitting on top of my book, that I printed out in its entirety yesterday, shocked and kind of thrilled at the size of the manuscript.

READING CHALLENGES: Tackling two lists: Around the World in 52 Books, The Sea counts toward Ireland, and it’s also a 1001 Books book.

WHAT’S UP NEXT: Tim Winton’s The Turning.