Category: ragdoll reads

#16 – Helpless

No, not the Neil Young song that’s part of my soundtrack, but Barbara Gowdy’s latest novel. I devoured Helpless (which could have been in one sitting if that necessary evil called “work” hadn’t gotten in the way) in just over 24 hours, somewhat echoing the breakneck pace of the police on the hunt for a missing child, which forms the central storyline of the novel.

Rachel, the uncommonly beautiful daughter of Celia, a single mom who plays piano and works in a video store, is taken during a blackout. The man who whisks her away in the night, Ron, is an overweight, hapless mechanic who works on small motors. He sees Rachel by chance one day and falls deeply in love with her. Nancy, Ron’s girlfriend, a former crystal meth addict with a spasming leg, becomes his reluctant accomplice as they hold Rachel in his basement for an extended amount of time.

Gowdy portrays all of the characters brilliantly, from the angelic and even mystical voice of Rachel herself, to the deeply troubled and supremely frightening man who loves her enough to silent her away in the night, the novel is both suspenseful and terrifying at the same time.

I don’t know if I’ll ever fall as much in love with Gowdy’s work as I did when I finished The Romantic, a book whose characters stay with me and that I still recommend to people to this day. But I did enjoy Helpless thoroughly, and think that she has such a lovely way of approaching subjects that might be too hard for other writers to put their heads into, like Ron. Gowdy manages to get so deep into him where regardless of how wrong his (for lack of a better term) impure thoughts are, you still feel sympathetic.

I hate to compare Gowdy’s lovely written book to the film Happiness but it kept coming to the top of my mind as I was reading yesterday. I kept hoping for Ron to redeem himself because I couldn’t endure the crushing weight of the worst in human kind as that film demonstrates. Thankfully, the novel is richer and softer at the same time than Solondz’s film. In a way, it’s like comparing apples to oranges, where Helpless explores the mind of a pedophile on the verge of betraying everything he knows to be right, Happiness simply wants to squeeze you with the violence and betrayal of the molester’s actions. It’s an interesting distinction.

Annnywaaay. This book broke my heart in so many different places, not the least of which was the mother Celia, who while listening to the police around her talk about the mundane details of their private lives, “…reflects without resentment or envy—it’s simply a stray thought—that these are people whose lives have never hung, as hers does, by the thread of a single human attachment.”

And I thought, quite simply, that I am the luckiest girl in the world to be surrounded at all times by more than one person, if I were to go missing, that would miss and/or worry about me. I have entire spools of human attachments that may come unraveled from time to time but never go missing entirely. I don’t want to give away any of the novel, so forgive me if even this is too much detail, for the pacing and the thrill of it all is really the book’s core power, so that’s all I’m going to say…

#15 – Don’t Move

Margaret Mazzantini’s critically acclaimed and prize-winning Don’t Move is an apt book to have finished today, as a great snowstorm falls upon Toronto rendering the city motionless. Well, truth be told it’s just the title that’s fitting because the guts of the novel have little to do with either snow or Toronto…

Annnywwaaay. Told in something akin to exposition, Don’t Move lets the narrator and main character, Timoteo, a successful, married surgeon tell his own story. His daughter Angela has been involved in a very serious accident while riding her scooter to school, and Timo sits and waits for her to come out of surgery. He’s a cold, exacting character; and if I were being completely honest, I’d admit that I found him utterly unlikeable.

In fact, despite the obvious and real tragedy of his daugther’s accident, I ended up feeling little for Timoteo past disgust as the main thrust of the novel involves a very abusive affair he has with a poor, thin, wisp of a woman named Italia. The two meet just after his car breaks down in a rural area of Italy, and their surreptitious affair begins shortly thereafter.

Including as selection from Italy on my Around the World in 52 Books challenge, I felt that I got little from the story about the setting. With the exception of the time Timo and his wife Elsa spend at their summer beach house, very little of his surroundings are described in detail. With the majority of the action taking place in Timoteo’s mind as he sits in a hospital waiting room, which is by its nature both cold and sterile, and uncomfortable and bland, much of the other settings take on this same atmosphere.

This is a novel that tells you everything, that leaves little to conversation, and forces the reader into the position of the dying daughter by his consistently addressing her within the story. And I really didn’t like being coerced into a sympathetic position where I had to like the main character, after all, who can despise a man who is obviously in so much pain?

“Dear Angela…let me tell you about the time I cheated on your mother and ruined a poor, desperate girl’s life…just because you don’t have anything else to worry about as you lie there on the operating table half-dead already.”

But, alas, I am paraphrasing.

On the whole, I struggled through this book, forcing myself to finish it, and wondering why Don’t Move was included in the 1001 Books list. It tells it is a “multilayered novel of love, loss, and desperation, set upon the affluent backdrop of Northern Italy.” Beside the write-up is a giant picture of Penelope Cruz, who starred in the, again award-winning, film adaptation.

For me, it’s an intensely cold novel, and a lot of the times, I had a hard time believing the character was even a man. In places, the author uses odd metaphors that just didn’t work: “A rain as fine as face powder was falling.” Not that metaphors need to be gender specific or should even be so, it just felt wrong in this case, something that this man wouldn’t notice and/or care to know. Anyway, it’s a small point, and maybe not even a relevant one, but things like that pulled me out of the novel time and time again.

Mazzantini is obviously a talented writer, and moments of the novel are really quite brilliant, but I prefer to take my cold, calculated protagonists with a bit of redemption, which should never be confused with pure confession.

#14 – Blind Submission

I missed yesterday and the day before I think with my Book A Day challenge. I’ve got one for today though: Blind Submission by Debra Ginsberg. Angel Robinson (seriously, that’s her name) finds herself out of a job when the bookstore she works for in Southern California shuts down (damn the fate of independent bookstores everywhere). She ends up, upon the insistence of her aspiring novelist boyfriend, landing a job with Lucy Fiamma at her literary agency.

There’s a lot of bookish insider stuff going on in the novel, the role that agents play, how they do a good deal of editing and building up the books before they get pitched, how it’s like being a salesman, etc. But Angel finds herself really good at it, until Blind Submission arrives. Written by an anonymous author and strangely echoing Angel’s own life (the main character is called “Alice” for heaven’s sake), it’s the central mystery of the book, who wrote it and why?

As Angel goes somewhat mad trying to figure it out, the Devil Wears Prada-esque relationship with her boss escalates. Oh, and there’s some aspects of chicklit thrown in too, will Angel choose Malcolm, her gorgeous but somewhat unstable boyfriend or will she end up with a fiery Italian writer-slash-pastry chef? (It sounds so ridiculous when I write it out here…)

In the end, I enjoyed the insider-type stuff with the book, and I did read it quickly; it’s that kind of novel, where the prose isn’t particularly inspired (and the sex scenes are embarrassing, as were the setups, dropping towels in hotel rooms, you get the picture, yawn) but I got sucked in regardless. Anyway, it’s a good vacation book, perfect for beach reading and/or something light and fluffy for when you’re tired from a long day of real life. But no hearts were broken, squished or otherwise, which is okay sometimes too.

#13 – Shopaholic & Baby

Kinsella returns to her mainstay character, Becky Bloomwood, who enters the Yummy Mummy phase of her life in Shopaholic & Baby. With an incredibly predictable plot, the series (and I must confess, I’ve only read one other of the books), feels like it’s waning a bit. Becky runs into a few problems on her way to the delivery room: her OBGYN is her husband’s ex, he’s acting all shifty and stuff, and they’re trying to buy a house. Becky’s usual antics, well, shopping obsessions, are all there but there’s just not as much spice to this book as to her last couple of non-Shopaholic titles.

And while I’ll confess to loving a fair bit of chicklit, this series just isn’t up there as my favourites. However, I do completely appreciate the wit and humour in Kinsella’s writing, even if this book wasn’t right for me.

#12 – Lion’s Honey: The Myth Of Samson

David Grossman’s Lion’s Honey, part of Canongate’s esteemed series The Myths, is the entry from Israel in my Around the World in 52 Books challenge. More of a meditation than perhaps a true retelling, Grossman dissects the myth of Samson like a teacher approaching a poem. Taken apart piece by piece, the overlived* existence of the hero is explored both in an historical and in a modern context.

My feelings about the entire project are mixed: I’m not sure what the purpose of The Myths in these short, concise little books is, but I enjoyed reading Lion’s Honey, if only because it gave me a glimpse of how interesting it might be to study the stories of the Bible. In Samson, a man truly at odds with his destiny, Grossman is able to present a “character” with a keen eye to the subtle differences between the original text and the sense of the myth as it’s been studied by hundreds of thousands of people over the course of its lifetime.

This brings forward a real sense of how the myth itself is played out both in religious studies and how it has evolved over the years, finding its way into pop culture, poetry, modern novels and Talmudic study. In some ways, as Grossman relates the very real landscape of Samson’s story to the modern-day Israeli state, you get a true sense of how myth combines with history, which in turn combines with story.

Many of the books in my 52 countries challenge didn’t give me a sense of what life was like in the country of the author’s origin. The Ireland of Tóibín is found more in how he constructs a story than in the narrative itself in The Master (but felt a great deal in his marvellous Mothers and Sons). The Canadian Arctic of Consumption is one that’s utterly foreign to me, which was kind of the point. But in this book, I felt the landscape, the lush trees, the hills, the dust, the imprints of civilization on the caves, and it made quite an impression.

There’s a bit where the graves of Samson have sort of popped up, no one thinks they’re the actual resting spots of the man and his father, as Grossman says, they can’t be, but believers are there anyway, faith prevailing over common sense as it should. And that’s kind of an apt metaphor for this little book as well: Samson the hero, whose story has been told and retold over thousands of years, that despite his shortcomings, despite his inability to come to terms with his gift from God, finds a way to act, even if those very actions will bring about his own death. His own faith prevailing against reason, betrayal, even love.

Anyway, it’s a bit deep for a Tuesday morning when I’ve got a wicked cold and a big foggy head, so if the above makes no sense, go ahead and tease me for it. But I’ve managed to keep to the first day of my Book A Day challenge. I have a feeling I might not make it tomorrow, Lion’s Honey, after all, is a mere 145 pages.

*overlived was today’s OED word of the day. Shockingly the first one, like, ever, I’ve actually used in a sentence the day it arrived in my inbox.

#11 – Breakfast At Tiffany’s

They would never change because they’d been given their character too soon; which, like sudden riches, leads to a lack of proportion: the one had splurged herself into a top-heavy realist, the other a lopsided romantic.

We read Truman Capote’s novella as a part of our 1001 Books club at work. I finished it while at the spa with my stepmother a few weeks back, but it’s taken me a bit longer to complete the other short stories included in the collection.

I enjoyed “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” immensely, both because of Capote’s power as a storyteller and his ability to create characters that may be have questionable moral cores but are still utterly fascinating. I’m going to confess that I’ve never seen the film, but I have got it at home now to watch this week, so using that as a reference and/or point of discussion will have to wait. Holly Golightly, iconic, ironic, desperate even, is such an electric character that it’s impossible not to sympathize with her, regardless of whether or not you like her and/or support her actions.

The Norman Mailer quote on the back of my Vintage edition, states that Capote ‘is the most perfect writer of [his] generation. He writes the best sentences word for word, rhythm upon rhythm.’ There is no way I can say this any better or agree any more heartily. If I were still in grad school, I would have loved to have studied Capote’s style: the grace and impact of his sentence structure, his use of language, his ability to create compelling metaphors. The skill in his writing seems unparalleled in modern American fiction, but maybe I’m making sweeping generalizations, because I haven’t read ALL of the writers of his generation.

I loved Holly Golightly. I loved her sass and her style, her unsympathetic actions, her selfishness, her drinking habits, her large sunglasses and her ability to attract and repel attention on a whim. I loved how the narrator love, love, loves her but can’t really get it out, or maybe he doesn’t want to. I got caught up in the world in which she lives and ultimately escapes from, thinking, again, how magical it must have been to live in NYC at that time.

And on the whole, I’m still as in love with Capote as ever, especially after reading “A Christmas Memory,” with its haunting sadness, rampant poverty of everything except imagination, and its sad sense of tragedy. I highly recommend this collection; even if it’s not heartbreaking in the traditional sense, the writing is just so delicious that it makes your heart ache—in that good way.

So many books I read these days feel rushed and unfinished. They feel like they need time and attention, focus and re-edits, and not once when I’m reading Capote do I feel this way. I feel like he’s paid particular attention to every single word, to how it sits in a sentence or feels on the page. For once, I feel like the fable, as 1001 Books refers to the story, was included because it’s a little bit of a revolution on the page: a freethinking, feeling and sexually explicit woman makes her own way in the world free of society’s structure, which must have been shocking at the time of publication? Regardless, I think I am a better person for having read this book, which I would imagine is the true test of the 1001 Books list.

So where I am I now on the list? I’ve added two more I think, which takes me to 124. A very, very long way to go still.

#10 – The Master

Finally, after weeks of reading, I have finished The Master. The Irish entry in my Around the World in 52 Books challenge, Colm Tóibín’s majestic and utterly compelling novel reads more like a series of interlinked short stories that follow the life of writer Henry James through the latter part of his life. Told in a strikingly engaging yet cold third person, the narrative, as 1001 Books states, is episodic. The fictionalized biography, like Mothers and Sons, highlights Tóibín’s unparalleled storytelling ability.

I savoured this book like sipping fine wine, reading it in small parts rather than gulping it down like a pint at the pub. I got a little further each night, slowly working my way backwards and forwards through James’s life, having never read a single one of his novels (successfully avoiding them both through my undergraduate and graduate degrees), I can still feel like I know his style, form and function simply because Tóibín is so adept at working his way into the head of a writer.

An exercise that satisfies both my own curiosity about the writer (having always been more interested in the lives of the great writers than their work itself), and leads me to an even greater understanding of the scope and structure of James’s work, The Master truly deserved its 2006 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. This book made me long for a provincial life, to buy a small piece of property in France somewhere, made me long for a time when one “moved” in intellectual circles, and spent days in conversation. Of course, I would have to be a member of the terrible upper class, and all of the other less appealing things about the fantasy, including marrying for money and the like, but hell, let me wallow in a Merchant-Ivory fantasy for a moment. Like someone always says, you never imagine your ancestors to be of the lower classes, the same goes for my imagination…

Annywaaay. Spending so much time with one book means I’m well behind in my reading for this month, but it’s been a bit hectic too, finishing one job, finding another, finishing off my next Classic Starts with what’s beginning to feel like never ending edits, and watching way too much television (damn you Jack!), there never seems to be enough time in the day.

So, to sum up, while aspects of the novel were certainly heartbreaking, the book on the whole wasn’t. But that doesn’t necessarily mean I wouldn’t highly recommend it to anyone who might care to listen to be ramble on about the genius that is Colm Tóibín.

#9 – Havana Best Friends

As much as I didn’t want to, I had to put down The Master and pick up Havana Best Friends this weekend. There was a slight chance that I might get to interview Jose Latour for work and I needed to be prepared just in case (which also included reading his latest book Outcast, which comes out in February, review tk).

For any of you more familiar readers of MTRH, you’ll know that I don’t read a lot of mysteries and/or thrillers. It’s not because I don’t enjoy them, it’s more because my tastes tend more toward the literary and less toward the commercial in fiction, which isn’t meant to imply anything at all in terms of the quality of the writing. However, I think that Latour manages to cross over the boundary from the commercial to the almost-literary exceptionally well, and this book is a mixture of all kinds of influences.

I think the recipe for Havana Best Friends starts with a few cups of good spy fiction like John le Carré, it’s flavoured slightly with a bit of the bombastic nature of Robert Ludlum, then all the ingredients are tossed around with Law and Order for a minute to see what sticks, and to taste, just add a hint of Mankell. Presto! You’ve got the novel. Yet, even though you can compare it to many titles, the style is Latour’s own: brazen, bold and sometimes funny (with a wickedly blush-worthy sex scene), the book takes you along for a ride and never really leaves you behind, and I think that’s his key skill as a novelist.

The implausible plot actually works and there wasn’t a moment where I said, “Oh come on!” In short, there’s a fortune hidden in the walls of an old Havana apartment. Put there by a wealthy follower of Batista before Castro’s revolution, the son of the man wants to reclaim his treasure. But it’s not as easy as it seems because there are people living in the apartment, and now the question becomes: does the fortune exist and, if so, how do they get it?

What follows is a tense, even chilling, thriller that winds around the central mystery until the book’s satisfying conclusion. As the Cuban entry in my Around the World in 52 Books challenge, I’m happy to say that Latour’s descriptions of the place, of the people, and of the country itself did give me a sense of what life is like there. And I did enjoy that some of the places Latour talks about, I’d seen, so it felt real to me in that way too. This book didn’t pass the heartbreak test, but I enjoyed it anyway. It was perfect reading for a cold January afternoon.

#8 – Mothers and Sons

Colm Tóibín’s new short story collection, Mothers and Sons, took me completely by surprise. I must confess that I don’t read a lot of short stories with the exception of Alice Munro and the ones in Taddle Creek. Like so many aspiring writers, I have drawers of unfinished short stories that I’ll cull one day for ideas and sharp sentences, but that doesn’t mean I seek out the art form. It’s a shame because when they’re done well, like here, they really are exceptional in the way they convey so much in so few pages. Anyway, like I said the other day, I have tickets to see him read at Harbourfront on February 7th, and I wanted to at least have read one of his books.

And wow.

The stories are magnificent. Each one so utterly and entirely complete, and even though Tóibín’s narrative style is somewhat removed, even emotionally distant, you still get to the heart of the characters as quickly as if you were hit by lightning. The first story, “The Use of Reason,” reminded me so much of Flannery O’Connor’s “Everything That Rises Must Converge,” and even though there’s no Southern grotesque in Tóibín’s writing, there is an element of human desperation that finds its way into each of the stories defining a relationship on some level between a mother and a son. And I think the first one, of all of them, remains my favourite. I don’t want to give anything away so I won’t go into the plots of any of the stories except to say that reading this book was a true pleasure. So much so that it spurned me into my next Around the World in 52 Books read, which is Tóibín’s The Master.