Category: ragdoll reads

#25 – Hallucinating Foucault

I’ve been wanting to write about this book all day. Last night I was about 20 pages from finishing but I was so tired after my new dance class (I’m taking a Thursday night class at the School of the Toronto Dance Theatre; it’s just a beginner class, but it’s perfect for me right now), that I finished it on the subway ride to Writer’s Group tonight. I hate that, leaving 10 or 20 pages to the next day instead of finishing a book, but sometimes your body just says that’s enough reading for now.

So, Patricia Duncker. She’s my born-in-Jamaica author, but according to the most basic Google search, Duncker now lives and teaches in the UK. Again, the theme of authors no longer living in their homelands comes up in my Around the World in 52 Books challenge. I guess, in a way, I’m not really reading as many countries as I imagined I would, trying to balance the 1001 Books list (page 856) and my quest to broaden my reading base, but I have I’ve ended up reading a lot of good books by authors writing about Europe and/or the States. Mainly, I haven’t spent as much time trapped in the lovely and deliciously wonderful world of Can Lit, and that’s actually okay.

(Oddly, I’ve been reading a lot of novels, like this one, set in Paris and in France, which makes me think the world is trying to tell me something…like it might be time to book a ticket or something?).

Regardless, Hallucinating Foucault brought up a lot of memories of undergraduate and graduate school. The book tells the story of a young man working on a thesis of an imaginary French writer named Paul Michel, who has been institutionalized and utterly forgotten by the establishment. After a particularly intense affair with a young woman called The Germanist, he sets out to save his idol from utter decay in a psychiatric institution.

The title comes from Michel’s relationship with the French philosopher, who is described by the author himself as his perfect “reader.” Intertwining all kinds of post-modern themes with a very basic coming of age story, Duncker’s prose remains sharp throughout. In fact, I’d like to note that the epistolary aspects of the novel,the letters between the novelist and the philosopher that the student uncovers while in France are especially lovely.

The story is very much about the insular life of a student studying for an advanced degree. Not unlike Possession but without the Victorian overtones (Byatt even blurbs the book), Hallucinating Foucault has a central literary mystery to solve: why did Michel stop publishing books? And is he really, truly crazy? Part love story, part philosophical tribute to the work of Foucault, it’s a short, intense novel that I feel lucky to have discovered.

However, it’s told me nothing of life in Jamaica. I have to admit that I would have much preferred to read Michelle Cliff, oh how I loved No Telephone to Heaven, but my challenge isn’t about re-reading books I already know I like, but about finding gems I never would have noticed had it not been for a little guidance.

My favourite quote is from one of the letters that Michel has sent Foucault:

My writing is a craft, like carpentry, coffin-building, making jewelry, constructing the walls. You cannot forget how it is done. You can adjust, remake, rebuild what is fragile, slipshod, unstable. …You can say anything, anything, if it is beautifully said.

#24 – American Youth


Prior to writing a review of this book, I’m going to take a moment and note the passing of Kurt Vonnegut. I will forever add him to the list of authors that I smile and nod in response when he comes up in casual conversation. I’ve never read a Vonnegut novel, and even though there are a few on the 1001 Books list, I’m pretty sure it might take years for me to get to them. In fact, over the course of entire educational career (high school, two lit degrees), I was supposed to have read Slaughterhouse-Five, at least four times, and I avoided it like the plague. And it’s a shame that so much of the context of Vonnegut’s later life got caught up in that awful email forward that claimed he had just done a commencement address at MIT.

Annnywaaay. As I’m ever trying to find aspects that actually relate to one another during these blog posts, I think that Phil LaMarche’s American Youth, which I read in ARC format in Cuba (see photo), is kind of a fitting book to talk about on the day of Vonnegut’s death. Not to relate the iconic status of Vonnegut to LaMarche in any way, but rather to suggest the themes highlighted in some of the former’s outspoken politics can be found bouncing around the novel, as American Youth tells the story of a young man whose life changes irreversibly after a gun accident in his home.

With it’s overtones of American History X, and the right-winged dogged politics that swell underneath like silt in the ocean, American Youth is very much a compelling coming of age story in a time where you’re already expected to have grown up before adolescence if only to regress for the next 20 years (how many times have I heard 40 is the new 30 over the last few days? Too many). The unnamed narrator (from what I can remember) and the cold, removed voice were almost too affected for me as a reader, but the heart of this book, the story of a boy so lost after a tragedy with no clear way of making his way back, rang true.

I’ll say one thing for sure, it was quite an odd book to be reading on a beach chair on Cuba.

#23 – Good Morning, Midnight

I’ve been listening to Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black, one of the girls in the car up to conference brought it along, and it’s lovely, aching, heartfelt, broken, all the things a good record should be (there are a couple of songs that are just okay but for the most part, the whole album is really crisp). And I just finished reading Good Morning, Midnight by Jean Rhys. For some reason, the two fit so well together, the lonely, rough voice of Amy’s music echoes exceptionally well the narrative voice of Sophia Jansen, the protagonist of this strange little novel.

Rhys wrote Wide Sargasso Sea, which is one of my favourite books, and I’ve also read Voyage in the Dark, but years ago, so it’s not as fresh as the latter, which I’ve read three or four times in my lifetime now. But this novel isn’t as coherent as the other two, Good Morning, Midnight‘s stream of consciousness narrative is hard to follow sometimes; it’s as confused, pained and as troubled as the narrator herself.

Faintly the story of a struggling single girl who has escaped a tragedy only to attempt and drink herself to death, there’s little in Paris for Sophia (or sometimes Sasha) beyond the cafes and the chicken scratches of an everyday existence to keep her alive. Abandoned by life itself, she wanders through the days in a wine-soaked state and drowns her dreams in Luminol in the evenings. Profoundly sorrowful, Rhys’s novel vacillates between the utter beauty of modernism and a very true feeling of drowing. French inter-mixed with English, past mingled with present, real life confused with the stuff of dreams, it’s hard not to ache when following Sophia stumbling down the street or listening to her rant hysterically to the men who become her companions.

As with all the books I read in my Around the World in 52 Books challenge, a trend seems to be evolving, where displaced (or replaced, or happily emigrated?) authors tell stories not of their native land (in Rhys’s case, Dominica) but of their adopted homelands or even of places wild in their own imaginations. The setting for this novel is post-First World War Paris, just before the onslaught of the next devastating conflict. There’s evidence of many displaced persons within the book, refugees from life like Sophia herself, who find themselves all searching for money and acceptance. But all in all it’s the ache in Rhys’s writing that holds me tight in my place, her delicate way of describing situations, and her flighty use of metaphor, which makes me want to give up writing all together, find a bottle and romantically walk the streets of Paris wearing chunky heels and a new coat, and then fall into a shabby hotel only to wake up the next day and do it all over again.

Wholly deserving being found on page 402 of my 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. Fully captured in the feeling of heartbreak and ideal reading on the plane ride to Paris.

There’s a bookshop next door, which advertises second-hand English novel. The assistant is Hindu. I want a long, calm book about people with large incomes – a book like a flat green meadow and the sheep feeding in it. But he insists on selling me lurid stories of the white-slave traffic. ‘This is a very good book, very beautiful, most true.’

#22 – April in Paris

I’m glad to be back from conference—it was a long week. Since I haven’t read anything new, I’m really happy that Michael Wallner’s April in Paris has finally been published. The German entry in my Around the World in 52 Books challenge, I finished this novel while we were on vacation in Cuba. It’s not saying much, considering how awful certain parts of that trip were (ahem, the hotels), that I preferred to be reading rather than watching yet another Dirty Jobs marathon on one of the two illegal American television stations in our room at night.

Anywaaay, behind-the-scenes reading aside, I really enjoyed this novel. It’s captivating and engaging without being overly wordy (it’s a relatively short 256 pages). Set in Paris during the Second World War, April in Paris tells the story of Michel Roth, a German soldier stationed in French capital who falls in love with Chantal, a resistance fighter.

Roth speaks impeccable French, and his post in the German army is that of an interpreter. Knowing that he could be charged with treason or worse, he sneaks out at night in a white suit, changing in bombed-out Parisian buildings, and walks the city, long to pass for anything other than the enemy. On one of his walks, he sees Chantal, and begins to follow her. She resists him at first, doesn’t trust his perfect French, his made-up story, and as the truth comes out, on both sides, they do fall in love.

When a tragic act of the French Resistance finds them out in many different ways, the inevitable reality of the war breaks apart any chance they might have had, in other circumstances, to be together. There’s an aspect of a good thriller in this novel, and Michel is a thoroughly sympathetic character, despite the fact that he was an officer in the German army. In a sense, the novel reminded me of that one scene in Band of Brothers where the Germans were singing across the line on Christmas Eve, about how despite the politics and the absolutely evil actions of the company of men in charge of Michel’s existence, he’s still human. He still has feelings; he still has a story worth telling, worth hearing.

The setting, occupied Paris, evokes such powerful images, and similar to Nemirovsky, but without the overtones of her giant Russian-like writing style, Wallner’s novel brings the time alive through his sharp prose and tight narrative. And not to be unbearably cliched, but the ultimate tragedy of the situation is Shakespearean and completely doomed from the beginning, which somehow makes the story utterly satisfying.

#21 – The Hopeless Romantics Handbook

Gemma Townley’s latest novel The Hopeless Romantic’s Handbook is finally out in stores. I read the book months ago when the galleys came in to work, took it home, and tossed it back in one night. Chicklit is so addictive! Anyway, the heroine of the novel finds a lovely old book entitled, you guessed it, The Hopeless Romantic’s Handbook. The unlucky in love Kate decides she’ll follow the steps and see what happens. And faster than you can snap your fingers Joe, a handsome American actor, shows up on the scene and she’s smitten.

Only the book gets a lot more complicated as Kate’s career (she’s a television decorator working on a fairly low-rated cable show) sort of careens off track. And, as is the law of chicklit, her love life follows suit. The more Kate listens to the book, the worse things get, and soon her two best pals, Sally and Tom (and especially Tom), are quite worried for her.

There’s a happy ending, of course. But Townley has such a knack for creating life-like characters within the fantasy setting the genre demands that you don’t mind that the plot might be a bit predictable. She always manages to add a little extra bit of inventiveness, a little something or other that pulls the books slightly off-centre of the stereotypes. Anyway, you all know how much I adore Gemma and her writing, so if you’re looking for a bit of mental escape this Easter long weekend, I do recommend picking her up.

#20 – Platform

Wow. Is it hot in here or is it just me?

Ahem.

Don’t look now but I’m probably blushing bright red and feeling somewhat uncomfortable to be seen in public having just finished Michel Houellebecq’s Platform. It’s the French entry in my Around the World in 52 Books challenge (changed from Nemirovsky) and it’s also on the 1001 Books list, which is also why I made the swap, I don’t mind killing two lists with one title.

Platform is a spicy, sensual, almost-porn-like novel about, well, a man named Michel who finds himself completely cut off from life after his father’s death (he was murdered). Despite the fact that he has very little in the way of human contact, no friends, etc., he has a lot of very graphic sex between these covers. Just after his father’s murderer is caught, Michel leaves Paris and takes a trip to Thailand, where he sleeps with many nubile prostitutes and also meets Valerie, who will later become his lover, then the love of his life, and then a catalyst for the rest of the story.

It is through this relationship with Valerie, who works for the travel company arranging the tours, that Michel redeems himself. They are well suited: he loves getting pleasure; she loves giving it. Aw, a match made in heaven. Oh, and she’s into women, so my goodness, it’s one steam room fantasy away from Pay-Per-View. Yawn.

I know I’m being flippant, and even though Michel doesn’t necessarily use the word love, his feelings for Valerie result in his happiness and in his feeling a connection for a member of the opposite sex that he has never before felt in his life. As their relationship progresses, Valerie’s career takes off as she and her boss, Jean-Yves, move companies and launch a series of high profile resort holidays. While checking out one of the hotels in their roster, Michel has a brainwave to capitalize on the sex trade aspect of vacationing in places like Thailand, among other countries, including Cuba, and a new type of resort is born.

What keeps the novel from trailing off into Harlequin romance for men territory is Houellebecq’s razor sharp prose. One part life story, and two parts love story, Platform also deals with a number of political, racial and societal issues. And while the main character seems motivated by his sexual relationships, it seems he’s also wildly aware of the problems that this brings to the human psyche. It’s a strangely prophetic novel, especially as its central tragedy comes about as a result of religious terrorism.

Houellebecq’s not afraid of saying things that may not be politically correct; it seems, he just wants to point out the odd ironies that life seems to keep throwing in his direction. And yes, there’s the sex: it’s rampant, violent, open, honest, often and sometimes even strangely compelling. It becomes a crucial way for Michel to tell his story. But in a way it’s also kind of gratuitous, often over-exposed and a little over the top. Maybe that’s just my own Western prudishness coming out, but there’s a fine line between porn and art, and maybe I’m just not one to tell the difference?

One review I read over at the Guardian (which gives away the ending, shockingly, so don’t read if you don’t want it spoiled), insists that Houellebecq is writing back to L’Etranger, in a way bringing those kind of existential concerns into the modern century, when it’s not just the human condition, but the human condition in the world that seems to result in a crisis of consciousness.

And I kind of agree, there’s a depth to this novel; it’s bookish at the same time as it’s somewhat bent. I enjoyed Platform, but I most certainly wouldn’t be giving it to my grandmother for Christmas. Or to anyone else who might blush at the mere mention of the word sex in print (fingers pointed right at me).

Not having anything around to read is dangerous: you have to content yourself with life itself, and that can lead you to take risks.

#19 – Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

As anyone can plainly see from the myriad of book entries, I don’t really read a lot of non-fiction, and I read even fewer memoirs. Trust me, then, when I say that Barbara Kingsolver’s lovely and amazing Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life both surprised, delighted, and scared the crap out of me.

Kingsolver and her family (husband, two daughters) packed up their life in Arizona and moved east to Appalachia, where they owned a farm, used mainly for their summer vacations. The impetus for the move? A dedicated and inspirational move towards eating food that grew on their land and/or animals that were raised on their farm. In short, they gave up being dependent upon fossil-fuel run foodstuffs and decided to try their hand at being self-sufficient.

No stranger to farming, Kingsolver, her husband Steven L. Hopp, and her two daughters, Camille and Lily, commit to one full year of eating locally. Not just food grown from their gardens, but produce bought from local farms, meat raised and butchered by their neighbours, and making a priority to purchase anything else (like coffee) from fair trade organizations.

Seems idyllic, doesn’t it? Or even ambitious? The idea of local eating had already caught fire in my virtual world as I was eagerly awaiting The 100-Mile Diet, but as I left before the book was published, I was actually surprised to hear about Kingsolver’s own experiment at eating locally.

The memoir, which also contains seasonal eating advice from Kingsolver’s elder daughter Camille and relevant essays in each chapter by her husband Steven, is very much a family affair. The chapters, arranged chronologically from one March until the next, in addition to documenting their local food trials, each deal with a particular issue facing the world, farmers, environmentalists and anyone who might be concerned about what’ll happen to the next generation.

The main thrust of the book being that many, many people don’t know what out of season means. We have no idea that the poor cantaloupe has travelled upwards of 3,000 kilometers to land from its farm to our tables in or out of its own growing season. Many people buy bananas from the grocery store and pay no attention to the fossil fuel that’s been used to get them there. A girl I used to work with would say that was the joy of living in our modern society: being able to get pineapple whenever and where ever she might like. While it’s hard to disagree that’s true, what’s even harder is to imagine a world where we’ve used up all the gas to get the pineapple from one place to the next without ever thinking in terms of the costs beyond the ding-ding of the grocery clerk’s scanning machine.

It always feels a bit melodramatic to claim that a book has changed your life. But in this case, Kingsolver’s book brought a lot of things to light that I hadn’t maybe thought of before (how much are those bananas I’m addicted to hurting the earth?) and made me think that it’s not a bad idea to plant up a section of our backyard into an urban garden. I also signed us up for Green Earth Organics so that we can better support our local farmers, as neither of us has time to shop at a farmer’s market proper.

My favourite parts of the book involve Ms. Kingsolver helping her heritage turkeys to breed (as natural mating has been bred out of turkeys) and the adventures of using up pounds and pounds of zucchini. All in all, I would highly recommend this book as the natural companion to what’ll certainly become a media darling, The 100-Mile Diet.

#18 – Getting Rid of Matthew

The first thing I found out about Jane Fallon’s Getting Rid of Matthew had nothing to do with the novel and everything to do with the author’s personal life. For Jane Fallon lives and loves UK comic sensation Ricky Gervais. Ah, The Office, how awesome you are. She’s also a successful British television producer in her own right and this first novel, in my opinion, gives Gemma Townley a run for her money in terms of being my self-appointed queen of British Chick Lit.

Now, not to disparage Gemma, of course. Because no one can actually replace the soft spot I have for Gemma in my cold, Canadian heart; but for a first novel, Getting Rid of Matthew, while it’s about 100 pages too long and has a real problem with switching POVs, was actually charming, witty and somewhat surprising. Fallon takes a fairly stereotypical soap-opera plot (husband-stealing woman finally gets her man) and sort of turns it on its head.

The main character, Helen, has been having an affair with the Matthew of the novel’s title for four years now. Married with two pre-teen girls at home, he finally, after Helen sort of breaks up with him, leaves his wife Sophie. But life with Matthew around 24-7 is very different from life with Matthew three times a week for a quick shag.

Almost as soon as he’s arrived on her doorstep, Helen decides it’s just not right. After a number of slapstick attempts at getting him to leave on his own, Helen takes some pretty drastic measures: she befriends his ex-wife (at first by accident) and works from the inside out to get them back together. Of course, as it tends to, all of Helen’s plans go tits-up before the novel’s conclusion.

Why did I like it? Because despite Helen making exceptionally bad decisions, she manages to change her life from the inside out. She’s a character you can relate to, a character that has flaws, and one that truly grows from the beginning of the novel to the end. Like I said, it’s chicklit, so it’s graded on the curve, but it’s not as predictable as say a Sophie Kinsella novel, which is already a plus in my books.

Perfect for subway and/or beach reading. Also perfect when you’ve see every single Sandra Bullock movie, are tired to death of Drew Barrymore’s rote comedies, and need a dose of girlish fun that Gilmore Girls can certainly no longer supply.

Oh, and the cover is awesome, by the way. Check it out when you’ve got a chance on Amazon.

#17 – Theft: A Love Story

Peter Carey’s magnificent Theft: A Love Story is the Australian entry in my Around the World in 52 Books challenge. Set in the early 80s, the novel tells the story from the perspective of two brothers, Michael and Hugh Boone, who each swap the narrative point of view back and forth like thunder and lightning.

Michael “Butcher Bones,” an infamous artist who is both in and out of favour, is on the edge of his own sanity throughout most of the novel. Defeated by an acrimonious divorce, he falls in love with Marlene, a mystery woman who turns out to be the daughter-in-law of a famous artist, Jacques Leibovitz. The master is long dead, and the central theft of the novel’s title revolves around one of Leibovitz’s paintings going missing from northern New South Wales where Butcher and Hugh are staying.

Hugh, or “Slow Bones” as he’s called, piledrives his way through the novel breaking baby fingers and using capital letters. Always in his older brother’s care, Hugh provides a dissenting voice in the book, at once within the narrative but decidedly outside most of the story. Not unlike Benjy from The Sound and the Fury, Hugh’s most poignant moments are when he’s storming around New York City noting the inherent differences between it and Bacchus Marsh in Australia where he was born.

Before I even picked up this novel, so much of what I had heard about Carey’s book revolved around the explosive portrayal of his ex-wife, Alison Summers. For a moment, that turned me off, a literary revenge, despite how enduring, grows tired after a while. Thankfully, the love story of the novel’s title doesn’t refer to the Plaintiff, as Butcher’s ex-wife is referred to, but to Marlene, the younger, Australian-bred, New York living lover he picks up part way through the novel.

Through her courtship to Leibovitz’s son, Olivier, and subsequent marriage, Marlene has developed quite an eye for art. She exploits her connections and broadens Butcher’s own horizons, as the novel moves from rural Australia to Japan, where he has a show. From Japan, they’re in New York, and when the penultimate moment of the novel arrives, Hugh and Michael make their way back to Australia.

Like a bucket of cold water dropped on your head on a hot day, Theft shocks you into submission with its bold, slashing strokes of brilliant prose that belt out the story. The novel burns on the way down just like the whiskey that seems to be Butcher’s constant companion. One part mystery, one part obsessive love story and two parts good, old-fashioned yarn, I can’t begin to tell you how hard I fell for this book. If I were indoctrinating new titles into the 1001 Books list, this one would be at the top of my list.