ragdoll reads – Page 3 – my tragic right hip

#55 – Bossypants by Tina Fey

Summer reading generally means three things to me: extremely popular bestsellers, chunky classics that I never get around to finishing, and chicklit. I know I shouldn’t consider Bossypants chicklit, but, in a way, to me, it was. I am not downplaying Tina Fey’s obvious feminism or her ability to spin a good yarn — but it’s more the sense of where her comedy comes from, a deeply funny, incredibly awesome redefinition of girlie. She’s confident without being boastful, extremely thankful of all of her hard-won opportunities, but also wickedly aware of her own limitations, and the limitations of a “Hollywood” life. Maybe I’m reading too much into it — because it’s really more of a series of vignettes than narrative nonfiction, which made for incredibly easy reading. Perfect for a week at the cottage by yourself with an infant.

I laughed out loud and I found so much of Fey’s self-deprecating humour, her voice, and her ability to find a positive message for women in just about every situation that it’s hard to remember what a force for change she remains in the “industry” (I say that like I am actually “in” any “industry”). I never found the read tedious like so many celebrity “memoirs” (and yes, it deserves air quotes, come on, you know it does). It doesn’t feel ghostwritten or contain any deep-seeded confessions that turn my stomach a little even though I’m dying to read them anyway, ahem, Ashley Judd (let me tell you, when I was a tween, bedtime reading was Mommie Dearest; I know, it says a lot about me. In fact, Mommie Dearest coupled with Sweet Valley High, Louisa-May Alcott and Anne of Green Gables — not much has changed all these years later).

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#54 – Suddenly

First, I am going to preface this review with a statement: I adored Bonnie Burnard’s The Good House. It’s a novel I picked up on a whim from Book City when it was first published and sang its praises to everyone who would listen for years. It’s a classic, right up there with The Stone Diaries, Clara Callan, and Away (book I read all around the same time), and so I was excited to read Bonnie Burnard’s latest novel Suddenly, if only because it’s the first one she’s published in 10 years. That’s a long time to wait.

Sadly, I probably never should have read this book. It’s neither the right time of my life (it’s a novel about truly middle-aged women) nor am I in the right frame of mind (having spent the last nine months battling my own life-threatening disease, I couldn’t quite cope with the breast cancer victim at the centre of the novel) to appreciate the gift of Suddenly. There’s no doubt in my mind that Bonnie Burnard’s a wonderful writer. She has an ability to bring the everyday to the page that’s unparalleled by many of her contemporaries. It’s a unique gift, and her voice reminds me deeply of Carol Shields, which is why I was so very disappointed in this book.

Sandra, our heroine, finds an evil lump in her breast at the end of the summer — her grandchildren have just gone back to the city with her husband, and she sits alone after a swim contemplating the hard reality of her future. Of course, her friend Jude has battled breast cancer and survived, and Sandra hopes she will too. Alas, it is not to be, and the majority of the novel takes place on her deathbed, that awesome Canadian-woman-writer-trope, where the family rallies around and all of the action takes place in reverse as the dying go through their lives, their relationships, their happiness and their regrets with a fine-toothed comb.

But one remains easily lost within this book because the point of view isn’t that simple, it switches from Sandra, to her best friend Colleen (who is beautiful, but childless, natch, and married to Sandra’s brother, the surgeon Richard), to her other best friend Jude (the ex-hippie, jilted by a Texan lover who left her on a farm to go fight the Vietnam war after casually fathering her son), to her husband Jack, and back again. It’s all over the place and the pronoun “she” doesn’t help matters when all three main characters are women…

It’s a tedious book, with tedious, unbelievable characters: Sandra’s a saint; so’s Colleen only she’s beautiful too, Jude’s “wild” but reformed, and they all feel so old they’re covered in a layer of dust. These are the women of my mother’s generation, one of them could have been my mother, and yet they have no sense of humour, no sense of adventure and really no life in them at all — even when it’s “flashing” before them as their best friend fades away in a cloud of morphine and horrible pain from an awful disease that takes far too many women. The title confused me for nothing happens quickly in this book — Burnard takes pages and pages to describe the most mundane aspects of everyday life, episodes that would have been best excised, and the whole novel would have been better for me if it read chronologically, if I got to see these women through their lives and not just as flashbacks in Sandra’s journals, which, of course, she kept religiously her entire life.

But I feel bad being so critical, which is why I think that my original statement, that it’s neither the right time of my life nor am I in the right mindset to contemplate a novel about someone so willingly giving in to a disease — not fearing death is one thing but Sandra’s utterly unrealistic in terms of her approach to illness; no one is as saintly as she’s portrayed on the page, no one. There’s no anger, and even when there is, it’s slightly ridiculous — two women having slight “words” during a winter storm and then poof, it’s back to celebrating Sandra and her ability to hold the other two women together. Yawn.

I much prefer Lionel Shriver’s approach to illness: frank, honest, angry, and also accepting — there’s something raw and real to how she writes about sickness, and I appreciated it. There’s tedium to being sick, to having tests, to being stuck in a bed, and anger, relentless, unceasing anger about the fact that your body just isn’t doing what it’s supposed to. And I’d hope that Sandra would have a glimpse of this throughout the book, that someone, anyone, might rage against the dying of the light just a little before rubbing more lotion on her cold feet or recalling some other wonderful thing she did during her abnormally normal life and marriage.

So don’t blame Burnard — it’s a great book club book for women of my mother’s age, it’s a terrific book to give your mother-in-law for Christmas, and it would have done wonders if Oprah’s Book Club still existed and ever considered that Canada has a literature from which to choose reading material. But Suddenly, with its long, drawn-out conclusion (Sandra dies! People mourn!) just didn’t cut it for me, a girl of a certain age who has battled a mean-ass frustrating disease for months.

#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!

#42 – Bullfighting

There’s just something about Roddy Doyle’s writing that reminds me of The Pogues song “Bottle of Smoke.” It’s just so quintessentially fast-paced, direct, and full of great storytelling. These short stories speed along like a day at the races, and reading them feels like you’ve come ahead a winner — ‘like a drunken f*ck on a Saturday night, up came that Bottle of Smoke.’ All thirteen stories are from a man’s point of view, that’s not to say that there aren’t female characters, but these men, some older, some younger, have all reached middle age. They’ve watched their kids grow up, they’ve watched their parents grow old, they’ve had jobs, they’ve lost them, they’ve lived and loved, but most of all, they’ve survived.

Doyle’s writing, so succinct, so of the moment, and his dialogue and the entire demeanor of the stories remains so refreshing, that you feel like you’re sitting next to the author in a pub as he tells the story. Despite their similarities, the characters are all still so distinct — and it reminds me of a great writing lesson that I was once told by a teacher who really, really disliked me and what I had to say — they each have something that defines them, that stops them from becoming a stereotype, whether it’s a reaction to a situation or a particular thing they love about the woman that became their wife.

I enjoyed each and every one of these stories, so it’s hard to pull one or two out as my favourites. They all blended together so nicely, like an evening of conversation at a pub with a group of old, familiar friends, and the writing is so controlled that there isn’t a sense of unevenness that I generally find with short story collections. I enjoyed “Teacher” and “Bullfighting” — as both dealt with interesting situations — the former, a man’s struggle with alcoholism; the latter, a group of friends who take a trip to Spain. Male friendship isn’t always explored in the books that I read on a regular basis. It’s either there as a crutch, a necessary side-kick and/or reason to move the plot along in a mystery, but in “Bullfighting,” it’s the central theme of the story. These four men have know each other forever, and they don’t have to talk about their feelings or share their inner secrets, they can just sit around and shoot the shit. And Doyle knows just how to write it to ensure that there’s a poignancy to the everyday that can’t be avoided, that needs to be celebrated.

It’s a wonderful collection. And for all my ranting about reading far too many short story collections these days, I have to say that I’d take one by Doyle over a novel just about any day. It’s just excellent.

#41 – Must You Go?

Antonia Fraser’s memoir of her life with Harold Pinter could not have been more delightful had it actually been delivered to my door as ice cream, toffee and chocolate sauce. Sweet, but not saccarine, sharp but not severe, it’s simply an account of two people who met, fell in love, and then spent the rest of their lives together. Fraser, well known for her biographies of Mary, Queen of Scots, all of Henry’s wives, among other writings, met Pinter, the infamous playwright, while both were ensconced in other long-term marriage (each had been with their spouses for eighteen years). Neither expected to leave their marraige. Neither expected to fall so deliciously in love with one another — but that’s exactly what happened.

Fraser’s elegy to her late husband opens with the explanation of the book’s title — Fraser, having met Pinter in passing, was about to leave a party, when she stepped over to say goodbye, he said, “Must you go?” She didn’t, and they spent the rest of the night and a good part of the next morning talking. Thus setting the tone for not only their relationship but for how the two would build an exceptionally happy marriage. Taken almost exclusively from her Diary writings, the book’s construction remains remarkably linear, a story told from beginning, to the middle, and to the end, which might feel tedious in the hands of a lesser writer. Even Fraser’s everyday notations are fascinatingly witty, endearing and utterly full of heart. The entire book has a sweetness to it but, at the same time, it’s also an incredible glimpse into the private lives of two very famous writers. How they work seems almost secondary to the everyday goings on — the lunches, the friendships, the travelling, their children — and the creative process is never discussed in any depth, simply mentioned in passing as a part of the rest of their lives.

Diary entries seem so private. And I’m sure a solid amount of sculpting and editing has gone into shaping them so that they make sense in a more public way. This isn’t a traditional memoir, and even though it’s so very different stylistically, it’s just as moving as Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking. Yet where Didion almost collapses under the weight of her loss, Fraser seems to be more intent upon writing a celebration of their lives. I’m certain that Fraser deeply mourned the loss of the love of her life but she’s got a wonderful attitude towards life — always enjoying the experience, always looking for the next bit of history to capture her attention, always celebrating her immensely happy marriage — that’s infectious. It’s a great book to be reading when your own life isn’t necessarily going in the up and up, especially health-wise, especially to see that Pinter was still acting, still writing (but not necessarily new plays; more poems and short pieces), and still incredibly active politically even when he was suffering from cancer, yet another disease, and then the painful side effects of all the medication.

I’m consistently amazed at the amount of true work that they both managed to accomplish, especially in the middle years of their lives, what with seven kids (Fraser had six; Pinter, one) to raise and plenty of drama (Pinter’s ex-wife had a hard time accepting that he had left and refused on numerous occasions to grant him a divorce). In the truest sense of the word, for me, this was a book that proves that love triumphs, that a good attitude can battle any adversity, that it’s worth standing up for your politics, for your love, for your life, and that visiting dead writers’s graves always makes for an excellent photo opp. I had a library copy, which I had to return, or else I would have quoted from the book directly — but what I would have loved, as well, is a bibliography of everything that Fraser and/or Pinter read over the years, an addendum to their writing lives — what a fascinating study that would have made as well. Regardless, it’s an excellent read, and one that I’m so happy I found.

Also, Must You Go? REALLY makes you want to keep a daily diary, but knowing my life isn’t remotely as exciting as the Pinter/Fraser household, perhaps I’ll refrain and just steady on here as I’ve been doing the last few years.

#40 – The Troubled Man

This novel was incredibly bittersweet — not 100% mystery, not 100% your typical Swedish thriller, and there’s an element of incredibly honesty about aging throughout these pages. So often, male authors of a certain age (ahem, John Irving, Rushdie, ahem) tread and re-tread their same themes: men sleeping with younger/older women, ridiculous novels that they’ve written thrice before, and the banner of “literary fiction” seems to save them from ridicule. They rest on their laurels. They rest on the fact that they’ve written great works before. But I call these novels “mid-life crisis on the page.” They generally frustrate me critically and as a reader — they aren’t pushing any boundaries and there’s not a lot of honesty going on. I respect honesty on the page, from a writer, from their characters.

Mankell’s The Troubled Man, which is not without its problems (the dialogue, in particular, between Wallander and his daughter Linda is rather painful), but at its heart, the theme that touched me most was seeing how such a vibrant, aggressively distinctive man reacts to getting older. And not just middle age, but old age, as Wallander starts forgetting things, losing time and generally suffering from the first symptoms of dementia. It’s actually quite heartbreaking — yet, it doesn’t stop Wallander from solving the novel’s key mystery — the disappearance of Linda’s quasi-father-in-law.

The mystery in the novel seems straightforward at first, Håkan von Enke, a highly decorated, extremely respected naval officer (he was the captain of various Swedish submarines) simply disappears on day while on his daily walk. There’s nothing missing from his bank accounts, he has taken no clothes, and it’s as if he vanished into thin air. And when, a few weeks later, his wife also vanishes without a trace, the entire story becomes more complex. Are the von Enke’s what they seem? Are they alive? Are they dead? Wallander does his best to solve the mystery — looking at things from a different perspective, turning them over in his mind, until the book comes to its penultimate action, and the case is solved.

Mankell writes in tangents, suddenly Wallander’s making steak or doing something that simply appears in the story, and there are a lot of characters that seem to show up to tie up loose ends — both in terms of the detective’s life and of the central mystery. It’s interesting that much of this novel takes place outside of Wallander’s actual police duties. He’s on sick leave and/or vacation for most of the book, but like many hero’s of crime fiction, he just can’t stop working. The case sits before him, eating away at his subconscious, until he finally figures out the answers. Taking the focus away from traditional police work allows the novel to pay attention to Wallander’s personal life — his old relationships, the loss of good friends, the general sense of melancholy he feels about aging, about what’s happening to his brain.

Again, the tangents that Mankell intersperses throughout the text are sometimes daunting, they pull away from the story and allow the narrative to wander. In a way, it feels as if Mankell, by consistently pulling Wallander in all these different directions, is narratively representing the state of his mind — disjointed, sometimes confused, sometimes razor sharp, agile, angry, yet always on the cusp of discovery (and eventually he does solve the crime). All in all, like I said at the beginning of the post, it’s a bittersweet read — but one that challenges the idea of “genre” fiction, more ‘end of life’ (is there a word for this, like the opposite of buldingsroman?) novel than anything, and there’s nothing that makes you think more than the mortality of one of your favourite characters on the page.

#32 – Committed

Dear Elizabeth Gilbert,

Should you have ever come to one of my book club meetings, you will have discovered that I am not a fan of the epistolary format. It makes me a bit crazy unless it’s Mary Shelley, actually. Yet, I feel the need to speak to you directly. Perhaps it’s the personal nature of your book or perhaps it’s my own selfish need to write a bit differently today — regardless, here we go, an open letter to you.

An apology to start: I really and truly hated Eat, Pray, Love. I didn’t give it a proper chance, however, and threw the book across the room halfway through India. The voice, the whining, the lack of appreciation for your life’s gifts, it all annoyed me to no end. And then I watched the movie (why oh why does Hollywood insist upon making movies about writers where they never, ever write? Aside from an email or two — to break up with a boyfriend none the less — the Liz Gilbert in the film never picks up a book or a pencil. Annoying. Didn’t that bother you?) and it affirmed my every action in terms of not finishing that book.

Cultural zeitgeist aside, I was weary to read Committed. In fact, I’m not sure why I did — and it took some effort, an extra trip to the library, a hold, actual dedication to read your book while caring for an ever-increasingly needy infant. But am I ever glad that I did. I’m going to say it loud and clear: I’m so very sorry. I was Judgy McJudgerson when it came to EPL, I couldn’t abide by the stories I was hearing of groups of women having themed parties and giving up their own lives for a year of self-journeyment. Maybe I was jealous. Maybe I wanted to be out there too — travelling for year and then writing about it. I mean, it sounds delicious. Yet, something in Committed, maybe it was the word “skeptic” in the book’s subtitle that caught me, or maybe it was the subject matter (being a happily married lady myself but ever-curious about the social and political implications of the institution itself), but I was hooked by the first chapter.

In fact, despite the odd pairing of the more anthropological aspects of the memoir with your own personal experiences, I was somewhat taken in by your obsessive/compulsive need to research just about everything you could possibly about marriage before wearily entering into your own second union. I know Curtis Sittenfeld pointed out that some of the connections between your own research and experiences in limbo while waiting for Felipe’s immigration situation to be sorted stretched thin across your narrative, but I didn’t mind. I enjoyed learning about the people that you met, the marriages you came across, the kind of social history that seems to only be discussed between women but not necessarily written down. Women need to talk more about their differences. Or, rather, women need to be better aware of the social and political implications of marriage around the world — if only to appreciate and understand our own particular wants, needs, and biases.

But what I adored about your book, and what made me feel like a heel for being so judgmental about your first book, was the story about your grandmother. I, too, grew up with a strong natured, extremely intelligent, ridiculously amazing grandmother — a war bride who bravely left her family behind in England to start a new life in Canada with a difficult man, who held her family together tragedy after tragedy, and whom I loved so much that I still think about her every single day. Your grandmother, with her sassy fur coat and her determination, her happiness in that tiny farmhouse with her small kids and everything that she gave up — there’s a richness to her story that I felt was missing from the bits of EPL that I read. Maybe I should have been more patient. Maybe more Maud-like stories would have shown up in the “Love” section of your book. Alas, I didn’t wait around to find out.

I did, however, rip through to the end of this book and was pleased to see that the legalities of your situation worked itself out. That your skepticism still allowed you to take a brave step down the aisle and I could absolutely relate to the idea of wanting to be married but not necessarily needing a “wedding” (we called ours a “non-wedding” for a long time and got married at city hall; it took less than 15 minutes. In fact, the actual “wedding” means so little to either of us that we a) forget our anniversary just about every year and b) neither can remember exactly how long we’ve been married. Some people might think this strange — but for me, and for us, it’s about the relationship, not the piece of paper, about building a life together, not about the institution. In a way, why did we get married at all, one might wonder. But it was important to me to be married and I’m sure it’s exactly as you explore throughout your book — the way I was raised, the example of my parents’ marriage, my grandparents and aunts and uncles.

Also, you have such a grand sense of humour throughout this book that perhaps I missed completely while being so annoyed with EPL? The tone of this book was whip-smart yet still with a questioning when it came to having to do something you were both so against from the beginning of your relationship. Lastly, I can absolutely relate to the obsessive/compulsive way you went about coming to terms with having to get hitched — the research, the restlessness, the ideas of how to still be the “you” that you had discovered after your first failed marriage. And as one who obsesses and has their own compulsive tendencies when it comes to many aspects of my life — it made me feel better to see someone else put it down in writing so eloquently.

So, in short, here’s my apology for being so flippant and, well, cruel. I’m sorry.

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.

#30 – The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

In the hands of a lesser writer, the meticulously researched, exceptionally complex story of this novel would have probably spiraled out of control. Such is not the case in The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet where David Mitchell masterfully crafts an intricate look at life in a remote Japanese “exit” island (Dejima) at the turn of the 19th century. As a part of the Dutch East Indian Trading Company (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie, VOC), de Zoet arrives on Dejima with an honest heart and an even more moral eye. He has one job set out for him: to meticulously revise the company’s records to ensure they are correct and therefore stop the corruption. This job, however, proves difficult when it’s discovered that just about every rank and file of the men serving the VOC on Dejima, and even those tasked to clean up the corruption, are themselves corrupt.

If de Zoet is the moral heart of the book, then the soul of this novel is absolutely Orito Aibagawa, a midwife, who despite terrible odds, furthers her career despite both gender and class discrimination. De Zoet falls easily in love with Orito but his feelings are secondary to what she must endure when she’s taken captive by an evil Abbot and forced into servitude alongside numerous other women. The abuse of the women (each month a few women are chosen to receive the “gifts” of the monks [pregnancy] and then told absolute lies about what happens to their newborn children when they are immediately taken away post-birth) coupled with the maniacal, strange beliefs of the Abbot remain a fascinating thread within the novel.

There are so many characters in this novel that to recount what happens to all of them, or to truly give justice to Mitchell’s mammoth undertaking (the attention to historical detail; the fascinating intersection of the two different cultures; the actual events that propel the narrative forward), would be impossible in a blog review. What I would like to say, though, is that the historical detail never gets in the way of the story — it doesn’t insert itself like an awkward metaphor. Instead, it provides a rich, robust backdrop to a time and place that isn’t exploitative. It felt very timely, given the recent, tragic, and devastating events unfolding in Japan, to be reading a book that I felt was extremely respectful of both its culture and heritage. Perhaps I’m wrong, but with nothing to compare it to, I’m going to go with my gut instinct and commend Mitchell for allowing this reader into a world she had never had any idea even existed.

I kept imagining writing rich and robust essays about this book while reading — applying all kinds of post-colonial analysis to both Mitchell’s narrative structure (fairly straightforward but by placing “Jacob de Zoet” in the title one would assume he’s the “main” character so it’s interesting to note how little of the book actually revolves around him) and to the failed attack by the British that propels the novel to its conclusion. All in all, it’s a deep, meaty novel that deserves all of the accolades (Commonweath Writer’s Prize regional win, Booker nom, tonnes of “best of” lists from last year). It was completely worth the $1.80 that I had to pay in late fees upon returning it to the library this afternoon.

READING CHALLENGES: Because Mitchell is British, I can’t count this towards Around the World in 52 Books. Sometimes, I think I should revise the challenge to include the actual settings of the novels instead of just the nationality of the authors but I’ve done it this way for so long that I don’t want to change it up now just to include more books. And I’ve absolutely abandoned my shelves for the moment. I have way too many library books and publishers titles to get through over the next few weeks. It’s actually a relief because I was getting bored, bored, bored of my shelves — despite how very dedicated I am to getting through as many of the books as possible this year. Right now I’m halfway through Elizabeth Gilbert’s Committed and I have a lot to say about it…plus a little to rant about EPL & its movie adaptation.

#29 – Cleaving

Yes, I am skipping #28, Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink, because I’m not particularly inclined to write and entire post about it. It was interesting, as everything he writes is, but not really book-length fascinating. And I certainly didn’t find it as impactful as The Tipping Point. In a way, the book seemed a bit contradictory — the thesis was all about trusting your first instincts, but the arguments and/or examples were all people who had massive amounts of experience in a particular area that gave them the freedom to trust their first impressions (if that makes any sense). I mean, I realize it’s also about unpacking prejudice and other social innuendos (I found the section on marriage and reading faces particularly interesting), but overall, I don’t know if this book changed my perspective on, well, life and business etc. the way his first book did. Regardless, I am now going to put Outliers on my library holds list because I do like his writing so very much.

So, Blink is my trailer — now for the feature, Julie Powell’s Cleaving. I read and adored Julie & Julia, and came to this book with the same wide-eyed wonder of yet another deserving blogger becoming a published writer — expanding and solidifying their skills on the written vs. the virtual page. But, not all books can contain the wonder of first books when they are particularly successful, and Cleaving suffers a little from the sophomore slump.

The first half of the book deals specifically with Powell’s apprenticeship with a butcher shop in rural New York. She writes passionate and obviously well-learned passages about her experiences, and I found these sections of the book the most intriguing. They were riveting — bones cracking, wrists aching — and you can immediately tell the passion she feels toward the art of butchery, a profession that few women enter. But where the book falls down are the “life is messy” bits in between. Her marriage, oft-described as ‘like breathing’ or something equally life-sustaining, has, well, lost its oxygen — both she and her husband are having affairs; Julie first, then Eric in retribution, perhaps. And yet, despite hurting each other to the core, they stay together, they love each other, even if, at that moment, it means a lot of anger and trial separations. Powell’s lover, referred to for most of the book as “D,” is passionate, dirty, and a little rough, which is what she needs. In a way, it fulfills some sense of anger (or I’m totally reading into it) and self-destructive behavior that Powell feels deep down.

Yet, the narrative itself, the Julie Powell contained within the book’s story, doesn’t actively analyze her behaviour — sure, she over-“metaphorizes” it (there are only so many meat metaphors one book should contains). She flails around drinking too much, and somewhat laughing off claims of alcoholism, sex addiction (not really but she does participate in SOME dangerous activities in certain parts of the novel), and actively tries to stalk “D” once he tells her he can no longer see or speak to her. In a way, it’s the same obsessive behavior that made her dedication to the Julie & Julia project work, and you can’t fault Powell for her extremely open, balls on the table, writing style. In a way, though, I did wish she came closer to finding out some answers — or at least looking deeper at the roots of the problems.

The constant comparison between her husband, the meat, and her lover grew tiresome, and then she lost me completely in the second half of the book when she leaves Eric (the husband) to take numerous trips to explore meat culture around the world. Not saying that self-discovery is wrong, or that her experiences don’t sound magnificent, but the whole book felt smacked together in a way that didn’t necessarily work from a narrative point of view. The sinews, forgive my own meat metaphor, grew far too thin between the first part and the second.

In a way, it’s impressive that Powell writes so openly and honestly about her experiences. And I’m not even claiming it’s “TMI” as some of the other criticisms I read around the internet claimed — it’s more that there’s a lack of style to the project, the style was there in her first book, this one feels rushed, repetitive and kind of “shock for shock value.” There’s no denying she’s a talented writer of memoirs (memoirist?) but, on the whole, I wanted there to be a central focus, sometimes, that wasn’t Powell, her actions, her feelings, or her explosive.

Not to make a comparison, but I’ve started Elizabeth Gilbert’s Committed (another library book!) and, while I hated Eat, Pray, Love (threw it across the room half-way through “Pray”), I’m rather taken with it so far. Gilbert sets out, upon learning that she’ll have to marry her lover (so he can live in America, with her), whom she promised never to marry (they both had spectacularly awful divorces), to learn everything she can about the institution to see if she can uncover her preconceived notions and move forward. That’s what Cleaving is missing — context — something beyond the vivid descriptions of butchery (which, I’ll repeat, are excellent) that grounds the memoir in something other than Powell’s own heaving emotions.

That said, the package is fantastic — I adore the cover; think the title is brilliant, it brings up all kinds of great word associations; and ripped through the first part in an afternoon. So, I’m on the fence when it comes to the book as a whole, but felt spectacularly sorry for her husband, her lover and Powell herself, the emotional train wreckage they all went through was so messy — it can’t have been easy to relive it on the page. And sometimes, the rawness of it all comes through so clearly that I’m surprised Powell had the gumption not to edit herself, even if the book suffers for it.

I read this great opinion piece on NPR’s MonkeySee blog about the book. And agree, too, with the Globe’s review. In case anyone was thinking of reading this book, too.