Category: ragdoll reads

#15 – The Wig My Father Wore

I had wanted to finish either The Wig My Father Wore or The Third Policeman by St. Patrick’s Day as my monthly “themed” reading. Oddly, both books are truly absurd, which is why I only finished one of them. I’m not sure if absurdist fiction is necessarily for me — in a way, I don’t like to be confused or feel like a story is convoluted just for the sake of making a point. Sure, I read Beckett in university and enjoyed it at the time but these days I just don’t have the concentration it requires to read something that deems the absurd a necessary plot point. Hence my abandonment of The Third Policeman.

And while Anne Enright’s The Wig My Father Wore dips its toes into the same kind of storytelling, there’s at least somewhat of a plot to keep you motivated. Grace, the novel’s protagonist, opens her door one evening after work (she’s a producer for a Dating Game-style show in Ireland) to discover an angel on her stoop. Stephen lives with her for a time. They have cryptic conversations and an even stranger love affair all the while he’s changing her body — literally.

There are parts to Enright’s writing that are almost unbearably beautiful. Grace finds herself in a difficult time in her life — her job’s in peril and her father’s dying — and it seems the angel has come along at just the right time. He helps her to come to terms with her life, but he also comes with a bit of havoc (imagine your body disappearing before your eyes, imagine!), and as Grace looks back at her childhood, at her father’s strange, inappropriate wig, the story makes sense.

But often, aspects of this book just don’t come together in the same way, and its far too convoluted for my tastes. Imagine a chicklit scenario (young woman trying to find herself working for a dating television show), with a bit of Legion (except he’s not a wicked angel, but someone in between trying to earn his wings), and BBC Drama (the dying father) thrown in — the book simply doesn’t make sense.

It’s a shame because I adored, adored The Gathering. I felt like all of Enright’s formidable talents, her sharp perception, her angst with family life, was put to good use. In The Wig My Father Wore any good will I had about the former book is lost the moment I reread sections where Stephen the angel attempts to become a contestant on her dating game show. I mean, really? That said, I marked more than one passage as I was reading, especially the more domestic sections with her mother.

But in this one sentence, squeezed my heart as well: “I woke up grateful and sick with grief, as if I could not carry my heart anymore; it had burst and spread, like an old yolk.”

Keep those sentences and toss back the rest.

WHAT’S UPCOMING: Still going to trudge to the end of The Third Policeman, if only because it’s on the 1001 Books list and I hate not finishing books. There’s always something good in them, even if it’s just one sentence that sticks with me. Then I’m going to read for work, and maybe finish the third Stieg Larsson galley that a friend sent over. It’s awesome. I think the charges he’s anti-feminist are bollocks, BTW.

Whew, that’s enough rambling for today.

READING CHALLENGES: Enright’s Irish, so that’s one for Around the World in 52 Books.

#14 – Cool Water

Dianne Warren’s new novel, Cool Water, tells the story of good people, a whole town full of them. That’s not to say their lives are easy or to be taken for granted, sure her characters have strife, but they also have substance and decency. Set in Juliet, Saskatchewan, the multi-perspective novel takes place over the course of about thirty-six hours. When I first started reading, and especially because the book opens with a horse race between ranch hands, I thought the book definitely had tones of Annie Proulx, all windswept, sand, and sorrow. But while the introductory vignette introduces us to the setting, the small town (population 1,100 or thereabouts), none of the characters reappear, except in story, during the rest of the book.

The intertwining stories of Norval, the bank manager; Blaine and his wife Vicki, a couple losing everything; Lee, a young man who just inherited everything; Marian and Willard, wife and brother of the deceased Ed; and Hank, an ex-rodeo cowboy-slash-farmer, unfold slowly, in delicate increments. Many have trouble sleeping and the whole book rolls out like those long hours in the night when one feels as though they’re the only person on earth awake. Warren has a delicate touch, but that doesn’t mean her writing reads overtly flowery or painfully self-aware (like so many Canadian novelists sometimes come across). In no way is this novel overwritten, either.

In fact, there’s a patience to these stories, and the truth of the lives of these characters comes out in the details of the day-by-day. There’s a beautiful line midway through the book that goes something like this — that the nature of the day can change easily over night, day separate from night, like how one breath separates life from death — I didn’t mark it so I can’t find the exact phrasing, but it struck me as unbearably true.

Lee’s story resonated especially with me. Both of his quasi-adoptive parents have passed away and he’s left behind on the farm; it’s where he wants to be, but he’s finding life alone in the house a difficult transition, dust collects, clothes go without being mended. When a grey Arab horse magically arrives in his front yard, he sets off for a marathon ride that echoes the book’s first chapter. It’s not even that the journey is epic — 100 miles — it’s more what it signifies for Lee, a final transition from boy to adult, a man on his own farm, a man with his own horse. Lee’s not the only one making a transition to a new chapter in his life throughout the book.

Cool Water remains full of characters whose lives are changing, sometimes irrevocably, but the novel’s also about the small decisions that make up a day: whether to go to town or do your chores, whether to finally finish your to-do list, whether to round up the cattle immediately or get back together with a nincompoop ex-boyfriend. When you put them all together, the picture that unfolds isn’t epic but human, and there’s something utterly familiar throughout the pages — but at the same time, interest in the story never wanes. It’s a hard balance to strike.

The other parts of the book that I truly enjoyed were the will-they / won’t they between Marian and Willard. They’ve been living together, without Ed, the actual person who brought Marian into the house in the first place, for nine years. She’s desperate to tell him something; he’s desperate for her not to leave now that her husband has passed away. Their stories are full of feelings that go unspoken and unleashed potential — it’s truly delightful.

I’m not going to lie, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this book. My intern, Amanda, who’s reading it too, said that it’s Annie Proulx meets Alice Munro, and I think she’s right, except much of the story lacks the latter’s biting sense of humanity, if that makes any sense. When one reads Alice Munro, and I’m not for a minute suggesting she isn’t the best short story writer in the history of Canadian literature, there’s always an underlying toughness, a sense that life always takes a wrong turn, disappoints. In Cool Water, life’s disappointing for some, but that cynical streak isn’t as present. I’m rambling, I know. Let me finish by just saying that Warren’s novel was a truly lovely surprise this week.

READING CHALLENGES: Well, indeed, this title would count towards this year’s Canadian Book Challenge. I’m not even sure where I am with that one…maybe this weekend I’ll take a moment to figure it out.

MOVING ON: I’m still trying to get through The Third Policeman and The Wig My Father Wore as my Irish reads for March. I’m also compiling poetry for April. Happy St. Patrick’s Day peeps!

#13 – Then We Came To The End

Oh, I fell hard for you from the very moment I cracked open your spine. Your story, about a collective of young people who work at a Chicago advertising agency during a time when the country was facing tough economic times. You have such a way with words, with storytelling, that’s unique, modern, and terribly engrossing. Sometimes, you’re sentences were so lovely, my heart ached a little in turn.

Sometimes, because your story was so much like events in my own life, I could recognize myself in your characters — the close-knit working quarters, the ambitious feeling of being young, in your first or second real job, and having routines. I’d imagine it’s hard to write a convincing novel about something as mundane as work, but you manage to make it feel relevant, current and interesting. I think, in a way, anyone who works in an office environment can relate to the trials and tribulations of being “walked Spanish down the hall.” Of the resentment and anger you feel, of the pressure to move on maybe before you’re ready, of the way life sometimes forces you in a direction you never imagined.

Your story rolls along, and you feel like you’re sitting on the dock on a hot summer’s day, being lulled by words instead of waves. Even when you are writing scenes, stories, thoughts that have been said so many ways before, your story still feels original. Maybe it’s your voice. Your use of “we” throughout. Maybe it’s how you never give in to the apparent. How you continuously surprise us with your narrative — sure you deal with topics that can be construed as “well trodden territory” (breast cancer; angry, belligerent ex-employees pulling a Michael Douglas) — but your book never takes the easy way out, you never write what’s expected.

Thank you.

#12 – Invisible Man

My goal for February was to read a couple books for Black History Month. Not surprisingly, I managed one: Ralph Ellison’s classic, Invisible Man. The novel is substantial, both in its scope and narrative approach. It took me ages to read–and I abandoned it at one point and picked up a different book, read magazines, anything really to escape the relentless story.

The title, metaphorical, not literal, refers to the narrator’s lack of identity as a black man. He can walk down a street and no one sees him. He can stand on the street and people will pass on by as if he wasn’t even there. Invisibility — blessing and a curse — defines his life. And what a troubled life, kicked out of school (not his fault), and settling in New York City, things go from bad to worse for the man. The novel, which was first published in 1952, and it was interesting to read it now, over fifty years later. Ellison’s writing style, while imbued with the tone and tenacity of the time, doesn’t feel dated. In fact, the book reminded me a lot of The Best of Everything, not in its subject matter, characterization or plot, but more because of its uncanny ability to bring the story to life and embed in a very particular time and place.

My 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die tome suggests the novel has existential themes, and I’d agree, the narrator can’t help but contemplate his existence; it’s the purest form of a Manichean dialogue, race goes beyond allegory, it’s essential and he’s essentially being defined against it by just about everyone he comes into contact with him. There were moments when the cruelty of the world became almost too much for me to bear — I turned away like I did when I watched Inglorious Basterds, when the violence, meant to be too much, shocked me into tears.

I was first supposed to read Ellison’s masterpiece in university. At the time, I was too wrapped up in Faulkner, a writerly obsession I carried with me from high school. Since then, I’ve carried my same copy around with me from apartment to apartment, keeping it on that metaphorical ‘to be read’ someday shelf with many other books from school. Slowly but surely, I’m working my way through a lot of them. Because I read so much modern Can Lit, and let’s face it, books that are published by the houses where I worked over the last five years, I’ve been rebelling a little. When I go to the shelf I’m inspired to pick up big, heavy books like Invisible Man and give my brain a work out. I imagine writing a paper filled with literary theory, can smell the air in the library as I do research, and think that Invisible Man does exactly what a classic piece of literature should do, it lasts.

READING CHALLENGES: 1001 Books, natch.

WHAT’S UP NEXT: I can’t blog about the book I read this week, Emma Donoghue’s Room (#13), because it’s not out until Fall 2010. But I will say this, it’s exceptional — a literary page turner of the likes I’ve never read before, and it’s become one of my favourite new books of the year. I can’t wait to talk to people about it once it’s actually published. So I’m going to try to finish the totally absurd The Third Policeman (also a 1001 Book), and a couple other Irish writers because it’s March and my theme is, well, Irish writing this month.

#11 – The Girl Who Played With Fire

So, being in the book business and all means that sometimes it’s a good idea to read something everyone else reads. That can be an incredibly painful experience (see: Twilight and The Da Vinci Code), but sometimes the masses, they surprise you. Sometimes, the masses just get it right (see: The Book of Negroes) — which is exactly the case with The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stiegg Larsson.

I could not put this book down, I kid you not. It’s a traditional “good whack on the head” Swedish mystery starring a politically charged magazine editor, Mikael Blomkvist, a brilliant but psychologically damaged computer hacker, Lisbeth Salander, and the cops — each racing to solve the same case. The murders in question, a couple, one a journalist and the other a PhD student, and a lawyer, happened relatively at the same time and all evidence points to Salander, wait, let me rephrase, all circumstantial evidence points to her, which is the point that Blomkvist and Lisbeth race towards, proving her innocence. Of course, they come up against many obstacles along the way, and it all makes for very good reading.

Larsson’s internationally bestselling books have surrounded me while on the subway. And I resisted. I tried as hard as I could to ignore all the good things people were saying. All the recommendations, and it’s not as if this review is free of criticism. There are elements to Larsson’s writing that betray his journalistic roots — he uses way, way too much extraneous detail and often digresses to make points, get out a history or fill in details that are simply unnecessary. I think, had he written the whole 10 books as he planned before his untimely death, a lot of this would have cleared itself up. You learn from doing — novels don’t need to be 500 pages long unless they’re Russian, right?

But I like the characters so much, Salander’s damaged but brilliant, which is always a good combination in a mystery novel. Blomkvist’s principled and determined, and he reminds me of Henning Mankell’s Kurt Wallander, a character I enjoy so very much because he’s simply who he is, if that makes any sense. He’s just well written, and that’s the way I feel about Blomkvist too. Also, there are twists I didn’t expect, and that does not happen often. On the whole, it’s no wonder that so many other crime novelists are feeling a bit of a pinch — the entire world seems to be reading these books, and I don’t blame them.

Oh, and I’m pretty excited that I can use this as perhaps the one and only Around the World in 52 Books entry for 2010, as Larsson’s Swedish and that totally counts. So much for not having reading challenges this year.

WHAT’S NEXT: I’m going to finish Invisible Man for Black History Month, try to squeeze in a little Zora Neale Hurston, although I’m not sure what to read of hers since I’ve already read There Eyes Were Watching God and my experience of that book (when I read it) was so perfect that I don’t want to ruin it with a reread.

#10 – The Parabolist

Because I was reading an ARC for The Parabolist, I didn’t get a chance to see the book’s package (the cover, right) or know anything about it beyond the fact that a friend from the publishing company sent it over to me. For the first half of the novel I didn’t even realize it was a mystery — or thriller, I should say — and thought Nicholas Ruddock’s writing reminded me of a Canadian Nick Hornby with a little Mark Haddon’s A Spot of Bother tossed in.

I’ll have to admit that when I discovered Ruddock’s writer/doctor angle, it did make me a bit weary — I felt that Vincent Lam’s debut was heavily over-praised, he’s a good short story writer but I’m not sure that book was worthy of the Giller, and it certainly makes for a terribly mediocre, melodramatic, rambling, muddled television show. I honestly thought, “oh, yet another doctor who writes. Yawn.”

Annywaauy, I’m happy to say that Ruddock won me over. Treading over familiar Lam territory, The Parabolist follows a group of first-year medical students. The narrative spins around itself, and around its characters like tidal waves. Time moves forward and back, perspective consistently shifts, and yet, I never lost my way. I enjoyed the fact that the book was set in Toronto in what I assumed was the ’70s (it cost $.10 to use the telephone!), and the medical students were cloyingly interesting, their interests far ranging past the core science they’re learning for their degree into poetry, writing, and social issues.

John and Jasper Glass take their first year classes with the beautiful Valerie Anderson. The Parabolist, Roberto Moreno, a disaffected young Mexican poet, lives next door to the Glasses — he’s staying with his aunt and uncle in Toronto, and after a series of coincidences, begins teaching the first years poetry (something about them having to be well rounded to be good doctors). A number of mishaps unravel their expectations and form the novel’s central plot, slowly pulling in new characters, quietly dispelling of those who are no longer needed. There’s a strange subplot that involves Jasper and John’s odd professor of a father but that’s really the only string that didn’t get tied up or become terrifically unraveled by the end of the book (he’s trying to publish an odd book on French phrases with a small university press).

In addition to the series of mishaps, there are also serious crimes. From the fun, flirty nature of the book, I didn’t expect the violence. It’s not your stereotypical crime novel, it’s definitely a hybrid — more Nick Hornby meets Law and Order Toronto with a sense of humour, poetry and some sexy students thrown in. Ruddock’s pace is relentless, the book hums along combining the antics of the younger kids with the developing mystery (whose crime work is lead by Detective Andy Ames [If I have one complaint it’s with the names, sheesh “Andy Ames,” “Roberto Moreno,” they’re all a bit too neat, in a way]) until it reaches a slightly shocking conclusion.

As per usual, I’m not going to spoil anything by revealing too much of the plot. Let’s just say that I actually read the last bit of the book a couple of times so I could be sure that I understood exactly what happened and even then, it’s not 100% clear. That’s not a bad thing — the ending kind of balances what Ruddock tries to achieve throughout the entire book, that equilibrium between the obvious and the interesting, the cliched and the adventerous, the apparent and the surprising. On the whole, I enjoyed the book, with its focus on medicine and poetry, life and death, love and hate, obsession and compulsion, and look forward to seeing what Ruddock comes up with next.

#9 – The Value of Happiness

The subtitle of Raj Patel‘s The Value of Nothing questions ‘why everything costs so much more than we think.’ It’s an intelligent, dense book that explores our modern society, its economic context, and the very real implications of our lifestyles. Patel sustains his main thesis, that the true value of goods and services are completely at odds with their prices as set out by the market, while people never give it a second thought. Patel wrote an amazing piece of added-value content for our Book Guide here that explains, in short, the kinds of material things we pay heavily for but that are relatively cheap.

I’m not going to lie, this isn’t an easy book to read — Patel looks at everything under a microscope, he digs deep into economic theory and pushes the reader to think hard about what he’s saying. The very idea that, as a society, we are blind to the terrible impact our consumerist ways are having on the world around us despite seeing it, literally, every day, is compelling. In ways, it’s easy for me to support Patel’s work. I believe in his politics, sit slightly to the left, and have already been convinced that we need to change as a society before we ruin everything. Like Patel, I believe the first step to change is concerted dialogue about the issues, exactly the kind of thinking that is represented here.

However, what really struck me about the book concern post-colonialism. It’s not surprising to me that issues with modern economics are so essentially tied up in old colonial models. We don’t think about it everyday. We don’t turn on our work blackberries and think, “hey, I’m exploiting the Congolese today.” Has anyone else out there read King Leopold’s Ghost? Hasn’t the Congo been through enough? But I can’t stop it — I don’t have a personal cellphone but I do have my BB and I use it all the time, every waking moment, and I don’t think twice about what went into building it or sourcing it or the power that it takes to use it. I send money every month to David Suzuki and the WWF to try and balance out my consumption. Somehow, I feel ashamed that I’m not doing enough.

You can’t be faint of heart when you read this book. You can’t expect to be unchanged. And you can’t imagine you’ll keep living your life as you had been living it. Once you know the true value of what we consume, the cost to human life, the cost to the planet, you’ll think hard and then you’ll think twice.

READING CHALLENGES: The Better You Read The Better You Get. Oddly, I’m, um, not actually finishing the books from my shelves. However, I do feel like reading more nonfiction has reminded me that it’s important to challenge yourself with smarty-smart material every once in a while. School’s good.

Read an excerpt of The Value of Nothing here.

My David Bezmozgis Weekend (#8 – Natasha)

Ever since we did the Summer is Short – Read a Story promotion at work, I’ve had David Bezmozgis’s Natasha and Other Stories on my TBR pile. You can read one of the stories from the collection here, at the Globe, from when we expanded our promotion in their online books section. The stories are sparse but not sparing, swift without feeling rushed, and amazing portraits of a family in flux — immigrants new to Toronto managing to balance their lives on the cusp of old and new.

The collection contains seven linked stories and you simply fly threw them. His prose manages to get to the heart of the human condition without feeling preachy. In style, his writing reminds me a little of Alexander Hemon, although I couldn’t put my finger on why. The central characters in Bezmozgis’s stories, Bella, Roman and Mark Berman, are Russian Jews who have come to Canada from Latvia, leaving behind their home, their family (although by the end of the book many have migrated as well), and trying to make their way in Canada. I find these in-between stories, from the perspective of first generation immigrants, absolutely fascinating. There’s something about the in-between perspective that illuminates parts of Canada, of being Canadian, that those of us born here take for granted. I always liken it to the idea of speaking another language — it’s as if it’s a different world.

There are deep similarities between Victoria Day, Bezmozgis’s first feature film, which I also watched this weekend on TMN, and the stories. An only child, Mark (the stories) and Ben (the film) struggle with adolescence, balance parental expectations and eventually find a way to define themselves by being inclusive of everything they are. Victoria Day‘s more of a coming-of-age tale than is contained within the stories. The film resonated because I was a teenager then, and even remember the news stories surrounding the disappearance of Benji Hayward disappeared after a Pink Floyd concert. In the film, Ben loans his hockey teammate some money and then deals with his conflicted feelings once it surfaces that the teen too has gone missing.

The movie has echoes of The Ice Storm and other atmospheric films about teenagers finding their way. Far, far less “teen” than say John Hughes (and I LOVE John Hughes — it’s a comparison point not a criticism), the picture manages to feel Canadian without the earnest-ness of so many of our native pictures (I did love One Week, but man, holy Canadian batman). There are moments of pure beauty within the film making — even if the performances feel a bit stiff at moments. Regardless, I very much like the ambiguity within the picture, something that Bezmozgis imbues in his fiction as well.

If I had to pick a favourite story, it would be the title tale, “Natasha.” But coming a close second would absolutely be “Minyan,” the story that closes the collection. Annywaay, I truly enjoyed my David Bezmozgis weekend, I’d highly recommend you give it a try, maybe next weekend?

READING CHALLENGES: I’m counting this towards this year’s Canadian Book Challenge. At some point I’ll tally up exactly where I am with this but there are other things to write at the moment.

#7 – Burning Bright

As I’ve been, well, telling just about anyone who’ll listen, I’ve had a whopper of a cold since last weekend. I abandoned my Reading Nonfiction for January for a few days only because my head, eyes and nose hurt so much it was impossible to concentrate on the written word. However, I did manage to finish Tracy Chevalier’s Burning Bright.

When the novel opens, the Kellaway family, after suffering through the tragedy of the death of a son, move from the country to bustling London. Tom, a chair maker, his wife, daughter and son, Jem, eventually settle in Lambeth near Astley’s Circus, and next door to William Blake. The other prominent family (of scallywags) includes Maggie Butterflield, her elder brother Charlie, and their parents. Their lives intersect with one another over the course of the novel, both because they’re neighbours, but also through the burgeoning relationship between Maggie and Jem.

Life in London isn’t easy at first for the Kellaways. Jem’s mother Anne, at first, stands at the window watching the fine dresses and hats wander by, afraid to conquer the streets on her own. But when their patron (of sorts), Mr. Astley, sends them tickets to the circus, her life is transformed. Thomas and Jem start to work for Astley (who has a scoundrel of a son) as carpenters and soon everyone’s smitten with London life, in a way.

But the good tidings can’t last, and events put pressure on both families. Whether it’s the shock of what Maggie did in Cut-Throat Lane or Jem’s sister’s disasterous love affairs, soon personal issues send the Butterfields and the Kellaways reeling. Set against the fiery London just before and after the start of the French Revolution, it’s interesting to see how history and famous people (William Blake) intersect with the presumably “real” everyday people who would have lived during 1792. While I’ve yet to read a novel by Tracy Chevalier that captures the emotional resonance and lasting power of Girl with a Pearl Earring, I totally enjoyed Burning Bright. It’s very good historical fiction and it really was just what I needed last week.

#6 – A Year In The Merde

Colour me foolish: I finished this whole book thinking it was a memoir before realizing that a) the author and the protagonist have different last names and b) wondering why I didn’t hear about the political/social events in the news. Sigh. It’s been a long week.

Stephen Clarke’s cute, engaging novel follows Paul West, an upstart, up and coming restaurateur who moves from London to Paris to accept a job to open a series of tea rooms for France’s largest meat producer. Paul finds it hard to settle into life in Paris. Of course, it’s difficult to move to a new country, and his learning curve along the way remains hilarious. Having never been anything but a tourist in Paris, I admire how hard he works to fit in — stepping in all kinds of merde along the way.

The narrative style of the novel reminded me of Nick Hornby — Clarke has an easy-going way of telling a good story. Even when things go wrong for Paul, and they do (or else there wouldn’t be a book), it’s still a lighthearted read. Something perfect for a sick day spent at home on the couch with a hot water bottle and some Vick’s vapour rub. I’ve been thinking a lot about what it would be like to live somewhere else, even for a year. And this book gave me some wanderlust — it was also lovely to read a novel set in a Paris I know and understand, from the perspective of someone who obviously just wants to (eventually) fit in.