Category: reading challenges

#14 – The Sad Truth About Happiness

First, a confession: I read Anne Giardini’s book because I love the title so much that even before I started, I had already made up my mind that I would enjoy the novel. As Maggie, the narrator, tells us from the beginning, she’s the sober, well-adjusted middle child caught between two stormy sisters, who has never made a misstep in her entire life. For most of her thirty-two years, she’s done the right thing: got good grades, found a stable job (as a mammogram technician), had a few misguided love affairs, and lived her life responsibly. Her older sister Janet and her younger sister Lucy are the drama queens in the family and no one expects Maggie to get up to anything remotely considered wayward. That is until her sister Lucy’s ex-lover comes over from Italy to try and take her newly born nephew back with him (I’m not giving anything away; this fact is in the back cover copy!). Maggie’s actions are rash and the consequences everlasting.

The Sad Truth About Happiness is by no means a perfect novel. Deeply flawed in many ways, the story feels a little far fetched, too movie-of-the-week, especially when it gets into the meaty middle section. Giardini’s writing is often messy at times, she repeats bits and pieces that have no real relevance to the story, and there’s a lot of “telling” in this book.

But, by the end I didn’t care. I didn’t care because life is messy. I didn’t care because there’s so much heart in this book that it’s impossible not to get caught up in Maggie’s life, in her insomnia, in the way that she looks at the ideals of happiness that seem to drive our modern society. I didn’t care because I was hooked from the very first paragraph. I simply couldn’t (and didn’t want) to put the book down. Particularly poignant parts of the book are found within Maggie’s relationship to and description of her aged parents, their eccentricities and obvious love for one another; of her deep understanding and explanation of how she came to her profession, the clarity and emotion from which she writes of disease, especially cancer; and of the tipping point when Maggie is spurned into action and how she copes with the aftermath.

In the P.S. section of the book, Giardini describes her sister Catherine reading some of her work and exclaiming, “put a fire into it,” and you can see the spirited way that the author has interpreted this idea throughout the book. The prose has fire to it and, to add in my own overused cliche, it certainly burns from beginning to end. In the end, I picked up the novel as I said because the title is just so striking and I am so very glad that I did. This is the perfect book for book clubs, for women to hand over to one another over lunch, for best friends to talk about late into the night.

READING CHALLENGES: Anne Giardini is Canadian (and the daughter of Carol Shields) and obviously a woman so I’m counting The Sad Truth About Happiness as the 11th book in my Canadian Book Challenge. And for those of you still looking for titles for your own challenge, it’s good to note that Giardini lives (and writes about) Vancouver. The setting is a very real and very solid backdrop for this book in particular. So, two more to go!

#11 – Got You Back

Jane Fallon‘s latest novel, Got You Back, retreads familiar territory — the novel starts off, like Getting Rid of Matthew, with a cheating spouse (him) and the two women who are left to deal with his emotional wreckage. But even if the situation feels similar, the new novel is wholly different than her first book, the characters are fresh and new, and she never lets her writing fall down or stumble into the well-trodden clichés of the Sophie Kinsellas of the chick lit world.

Stephanie’s husband of the last ten years, James, is leading a double life. He spends half his time in rural England tending to his veterinary practice — and living with his mistress, Katie. He’s got the best of both worlds: savvy, stylish Steph at home and comfy, cozy Katie while he’s away. The trouble for James begins when Steph and Katie discover one another (and the fact that he’s been lying to both of them) and they vow to get revenge. And let me just say: poor James. But also let me say that the book doesn’t go or end up the way you’d think that it would. All of the characters grow and change and none in expected ways. Fallon’s prose is light and frothy but she has such a knack for keeping the reader engaged. Also, her dialogue sparkles right off the page — I know, it’s a little cheesy, but it’s true. Got You Back is a like a vacation — warm, sunny, and always entertaining, and I’d highly recommend it for that one weekend you really wish you could just get away.

READING CHALLENGES: Fallon’s British and the novel takes place in London and even though it’s not the kind of book that I’d usually pick for Around the World in 52 Books, I’m counting it for now. Don’t judge me.

#9 – Once

I think I tweeted last week about being so caught up in one of Rebecca Rosenblum’s stories from Once that I completely missed the fact that our VP was standing right next to me on the subway. He laughed and said, “Good book?” when I finally realized he’d been there for almost my entire ride. And they are just that addictive, drawing you in from almost the first sentence, creating a world that sits slightly askew of the one you live in everyday, and then finishing completely.

I’m consistently amazed by the innovative ways young writers have when looking at the world. Rosenblum’s characters — people waiting for the bus heading to awful jobs, young immigrants, a family struggling to make sense of their situation — are atypical. And yet, how often do you sit on the bus completely oblivious to the girl wearing three inch heels who carries on up Landsdowne after we all pile off and into the subway? But those people, sometimes lonely, sometimes burdened, always intriguing, make up the core of her characters. There’s always something to explore in Rosenblum’s world, and her keen writer’s eye leaves little untold.

In the end, I suppose picking out one or two favourite stories might be the way to go, but it’s hard when they’re all so different and so, well, good. If I had to choose, I’d say my absolutely favourite would been “Linh Lai.” A young immigrant girl who lives with her relatives tries to navigate her new world, holding tight to some very special talents, she gets a part-time job at a restaurant that is frequented by more than a few characters in the book. Charming, whimsical and full of great sneakers, the story stood out for me. But I honestly enjoyed every single story, their sad undertones, their slightly awkward protagonists, and the thorough ache of lives bursting with the kind of promise that never seems to quite bubble to the surface as it should.

READING CHALLENGES: Rebecca Rosenblum lives and writes in Toronto, so I’m counting Once as a part of this year’s The Canadian Book Challenge. I’m way off in terms of books I picked at the outset but I don’t think it matters as long as I’m still within my “for the ladies” theme.

WHAT’S UP NEXT: Blogging Lee Gowan’s Confession, which I might leave until tomorrow so I can think about the book a little more… For now, I think I might start my Harlequin assignment for this week and then watch a movie. Foggy-cold-head makes for very poor book reviewing.

#8 – The Almost Archer Sisters

I’ve been felled like a giant dead tree these past two days by the same nasty virus that took a hold of my RRHB last week. I slept ALL day yesterday. Didn’t move from the couch, ran a fever, and read when I could keep my eyes open for more than fifteen minutes. I did manage to crawl out from under the duvet, have a shower, and accompany my family to the Marlies game, which was piles of fun. After we got home, I crashed on the couch again and was in bed two second after Lost was finished (does anyone understand what’s going on with that show?). So, on top of disease crap I’ve caught whatever bug is going around. It’s winter, it’s to be expected. But I’m telling you, the only thought that’s been going through my head all week is quitting my job and living in California for the next three months to write. Annnywaay. Three books. Three reviews. Here’s the first.

#8 – The Almost Archer Sisters

Way, way, way back in the day when I actually went to a book club (a terribly scarring experience, truly), Lisa Gabriele came to meet with us and talk about her book Tempting Faith DiNapoli. She was lovely and it was a really nice experience (I, of course, had not read the book, but I did go back and read it afterwards). Fast-forward many years and I have been thankfully freed from book club for some time now. But I did want to read The Almost Archer Sisters for a few reasons: 1. the fond memories of talking with her about her first book; 2. the great review the novel got in the Globe and Mail and 3. because of the lovely note my friend Randy had attached to the book when it showed up in my mailbox. He said, “it’s just the ticket when these cold winter months are upon us.”

Peachy has always lived in the shadow of her older sister Beth. Both scarred by the death of their mother from a young age, how they’ve grown up and around the gaping hole left behind by her non-presence rolls itself out predictably: Peachy clings to safe and stable things, she wants to be a social worker, she’s got a solid marriage (even if she did get knocked up at 20), and two great kids (one of whom suffers from seizures). Beth rumbles around her life like a constantly breaking wave, causing trouble for all the swimmers in her wake, ruining lives and always hurting those who love her the most. All of this leads to the action (plot device?) that spurns the rest of the novel: Peachy stumbles downstairs late at night to find her husband and sister having sex. Peachy’s husband, Beau Laliberte, was once Beth’s boyfriend, and she left him behind all busted up and broken, too. Peachy decides then and there that Beth needs a dose of reality — she leaves her sister behind with her family while she goes off to enjoy a weekend in New York alone.

The novel’s premise, while terribly contrived, enables the author to explore the ins and outs of Peachy’s life from an emotional standpoint that could only be accessed after the kind of shocking event that tends to force someone into change. Her insights are open, honest and heartbreaking at times. And there are parts of the novel where you couldn’t find a better writer describing the inner workings of long-term relationships and motherhood. The novel remains cinematic from start to finish and even includes a ‘big city shopping montage’ that makes it impossible for me not to compare The Almost Archer Sisters to some of the better chicklit out there, think Gemma Townley and not Sophie Kinsella. I will, however, say that there’s a part of the novel I liked so much that I read it through about six times before finally closing the book. Yes, you can imagine it’s the end, so I’m not going to spoil it except to say that Gabriele’s story was just what I needed this week.

READING CHALLENGES: Lucky for me that Gabriele is Canadian, which means I’m counting this novel towards my Canadian Book Challenge. That makes nine books (and I’m just about to write up #10 too!).

#6 – The Picture Of Dorian Gray

Like so many of the classics on the 1001 Books list, it’s easy to know the premise and/or general story of the books, but be utterly ignorant of the details. I’ve never read an Oscar Wilde play, but seen quite a few, enjoyed the films (both Wilde and The Importance of Being Earnest), and had only heard of Dorian Gray because my RRHB dragged me to the truly horrible The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. What a surprise it was to read The Picture of Dorian Gray. It’s different from what I expected, full of Wilde’s infamous wit even if the writing is a little melodramatic, but it’s also wonderfully spooky and even a little surprising in places.

A young, beautiful man becomes the subject of a painter, Basil Hallward. The blush and brilliance of his youth inspires the artist as nothing ever has before and the resulting piece contains a bit of magic he’ll never achieve again. Dorian Gray, the subject, learns of his own beauty, through the painting and makes a vain wish to never suffer the indignities of losing his youth. The painting, once it hangs in Dorian’s own house, starts to degrade each time he acts wickedly. It shoulders the burden of age. It withers, wrinkles and bleeds. Buoyed on by the psychology and philosophy of his best friend, Lord Henry Wotten, Dorian leads a life of purely hedonistic endeavors. He ruins women. He collects icons without any thought to their religious values. Society adores him, but he has enemies, women swoon, and men wish they were him. Sound familiar? Yet throughout it all, the painting haunts him, and makes it impossible for Dorian to completely forget his actions. The lives he ruined haunt Gray and by the end of the novel he questioning whether or not redemption is even possible.

The novel has gothic overtones, which I enjoyed immensely, as well as a character who’s driven to act in ways he may not have had he not been celebrated for his external qualities. In a way, the novel reminded me of Woody Allen’s film Match Point. There were so many quotable pages that I wished I had a physical copy of the book (instead of an ebook) so that I could earmark all the pages. And I was intensely curious about Wilde’s decision to imbue the book with luscious and sometimes over the top descriptions of the natural world in which they live. Flowers, the smell of winter, the pine trees, lovely blossoms, everything compliments the glorious state of utter hedonism throughout. The malcontent Dorian feels towards the picture gets locked up in a dusty old schoolroom, closed off from his everyday life. The violence in the novel is contained and away from good society, as Lord Henry says, crime is beneath them. The moral of the story utterly apparent by the time the novel ends and, in a world where Hollywood images of ageless people rule the magazine stands, I’m surprised more references aren’t made to the book in pop culture. A whole generation of Dorian Grays inhabit our modern world, raised up by millions wishing they too were young, beautiful and apparently indestructible.

READING CHALLENGES: The Picture of Dorian Gray is on the 1001 Books list, and is one of the 66 titles that I’ve highlighted for the year. Really I’m just trying to clean some space off my Sony Reader so that I can put some more classics on it. Truly, it’s the best gadget I’ve ever owned. It’s replaced my blackberry forever in my heart.

OSCAR WILDE SIGHTINGS: Left some lipstick behind and visited the statue in Dublin with Tina. Now I don’t feel so much like a tourist.

#4 – Babylon Rolling

Shall I be honest? I mean utterly, unflinchingly honest? I almost put this book down after the first page after the prologue. Amanda Boyden’s second novel, Babylon Rolling starts off with a love letter of sorts to New Orleans, beleaguered already prior to Katrina and devastated afterwards, and it’s touching if a bit affected, the use of the pronoun “we” and all that, and then the book itself carries on like a thunderclap before a storm. She’s a powerful writer — there’s no denying it. When I finished the novel on the way home, there were tears in my eyes.

Now I’m going to digress. I know I’m sick of how much I’ve been talking about The Wire lately so I can only imagine how sick the rest of the world must be (listen me, the world, pshaw). For someone who doesn’t live in the middle of a raging gang war or a city almost overrun by crime, I always feel there’s an authenticity to The Wire that could be horribly misplaced. It’s an ivory tower appreciation for something I have never experienced; the “realness” of it makes me feel like I’m involved in some way in the defeat of human society, if we’re being honest. ‘It’s not a war,’ The Wire keeps reminding us, ‘because no one wins.’ And this theme, the decay of civilization, in a way, pervades much of Babylon Rolling: people cheat on their spouses, horrible and traumatic accidents happen, dope slingers and their gangster counterparts reign in some corners, and tragedy seems to define a place that hasn’t even seen the worst of it, the hurricane hasn’t even hit yet.

But I felt like Fearius, the self-given nickname of a young boy christened Daniel, whose voice is written much like the dialogue in The Wire, wasn’t as authentic as I would have imagined he could and/or should have been. So I found him and his bad grammar and his lack of punctuation and his misapprehension of vocabulary a little off-putting in ways that I would have never criticized had I watched him in the television show. Yet, the other characters, some mentally challenged, others simply lost, were so completely whole that it kind of made up for Fearius’s terribly annoying everythingness.

I loved Cerise, a 70-year-old grandmother who loves her husband so fiercely she endangers her own life to save him, and her voice broke my heart all over the place. The simplicity and wisdom from which she lives her life is inspiring. The troubled marriage of Ed and Ariel reminded me a little of Tom Perrotta, and their actions not only underscored the main themes of the book, but they heightened the whole sense of troubled America in microcosm. But like Fearius, I felt Philomenia was a little over the top at times. The idea that all of these people live on the same street and that so much happens to them felt contrived, a little too Crash for me. But I can’t say I didn’t get caught up in the story and I can’t deny that there’s a powerful strength of voice to the book. I’m glad, too, that I didn’t put the book down after the first few pages. It certainly showed me, didn’t it?

READING CHALLENGES: Babylon Rolling is one of my Cleaning Out the Closet challenge books. That’s one down and 19 more to go, and since Boyden was born in Minnesota, I’m counting this book as the United States for Around the World in 52 Books too. I’m sure as sh*t not going to get stuck reading so few countries this year. It’s not exactly cheating to knock off all the easy ones first, is it?

WHAT’S UP NEXT: Blogging “The Fall of the House of Usher” for 1001 Books, I finished it too this evening. And reading? Who knows. I’ll wait until something calls for me.

#2 – Shakespeare

Years ago when I worked at History Television, I wrote a series of articles about Shakespeare. For a few weeks, I was obsessed by the Shakespeare question and read a pile of books both for and against the Bard’s “real” identity. I’ve seen Shakespeare in Love about a million times and even wrote an article for the now-defunct Chicklit.com (I wish I had a copy of it to share; it was a fun article to write) about the differences between the writer’s life and how he was portrayed in the film, tying everything back into the research that I did for my job at the time. Needless to say, I think I’m more obsessed with the idea of all the controversy around Shakespeare’s identity than I am by the man’s work. Is that a bad thing? And let me just say for the record that I believe, as does Bill Bryson, that Shakespeare was the author of his work, not Francis Bacon or any number of other writers put forth in the years since his death and ultimate canonization.

Part of the Eminent Lives series, Bill Bryson’s excellent Shakespeare: The World as Stage contextualizes the little known facts of the Bard’s life into a compact and utterly readable package. As Bryson continually reminds us, there are very few known facts of Shakespeare’s life: the date of his baptism, his marriage, the number of children he had, how many signatures exist (6), his will, etc. The rest is conjecture, scholars over the years uncovering new evidence, failing to prove their theories, and wishful thinking. What Bryson does so ingeniously is fill in his own spaces with interesting bits of history from the time period, padding Shakespeare’s life with surrounding information, giving the reader a spirit of the age rather than trying to pull a biography from thin air. He addresses the Shakespeare question toward the end of the book, and I enjoyed reading about the interesting characters who contributed to seemingly never-ending debate.

I have to admit that I found the chapter about the plays themselves a little dry, but then he grabbed me again by making the point that part of Shakespeare’s lasting impression on literature goes so far beyond the plays. So much of the language we use today, so many expressions that hadn’t been used before are attributed to him, parts of our speech that we take so for granted that we barely give a thought to the fact that he wrote “be cruel to be kind.” The book is full of information that could give anyone an edge should they end up on Jeopardy faced with a Shakespeare category, but it also has a grand sense of humour and a calm approach to sifting through what must have been miles upon miles of scholarship. By the nature of the lack of information about Shakespeare’s life, it must have been hard to write a biography about him, but I think that Bryson’s done a smashing job of it: a little Tom Stoppard, a little The Professor and the Madman, and a lot of what Bryson does so very well, write history so that it’s engaging, interesting and utterly compelling.

READING CHALLENGES: The first book I’ve finished in the Shakespeare Challenge. Next up I think I’ll read Shakespeare’s Wife by Germaine Greer, but who knows when I’ll get to it — the master list for 2009 is a little overwhelming.

#1 – A Hard Witching

Happily celebrating the new year, I read most of this book in between bewitching viewings of The Wire and during a sleepless night on the day before New Year’s Eve. I enjoyed Jacqueline Baker’s novel, The Horseman’s Graves for my Canadian challenge last year, and when I was cleaning off my shelves (have you noticed the trend?) I found a copy of her book of short stories. We were at writer’s group yesterday discussing the merits of short books, quick reads of under 200 pages — books just like A Hard Witching.

Comprised of eight stories, surprisingly not-interlocking, the sharp edges and hard lives of the characters are softened only slightly by Baker’s expert eye when it comes to detail and storytelling. While the easiest comp that one could make about Baker’s writing would be to Annie Proulx, but A Hard Witching lacks the “gothic” edge that colours many of Proulx’s stories (this is not a bad thing; I count Annie Proulx among one of my favourite writers). Set exclusively in or around Sand Hills, Saskatchewan, it’s impossible for the people within not to be affected by the landscape. It’s a popular, familiar Canadian theme, but Baker allows herself to take it a little further, to flush out the emotional lives of her characters in ways that feel fresh and not simply a reaction to their environment.

In terms of my “favourites,” I’d have to say that I enjoyed the title story most of all, for its somewhat strange, utterly compelling main character, a widow caught between the idea of how to lead her life post-her husband’s death and who she was while she was married, and for its stark, captivating ending. I loved this line to death: “Oh, trouble comes in threes all right, Edna would say generously, but it’s the weak who let it stay.” As Omar from The Wire would say, “Indeed.” An echo of sadness runs through many of the stories as well, not that it becomes overwhelming and certainly not to the detriment of the writing. They’re real honest people within these pages and Baker tells their stories without unnecessary frills. In a way, a nice compliment to A Hard Witching might be Tim Winton‘s The Turning and I’m so glad I found this little volume just waiting to be read on my newly organized bookshelves.

READING CHALLENGES: As Jacqueline Baker is Canadian and a lady, A Hard Witching counts toward my Canadian Book Challenge. I’m going to swap out Gil Adamson’s Help Me, Jacques Cousteau because my copy is buried in our closet and my RRHB convinced me those books would be out in the open soon enough that they didn’t need to all be pulled out for the sake of me finding it and Moby-Dick. I’m also going to count this as Canada for Around the World in 52 Books because it’s so evocative of our prairie landscape.

COMPS AND OBSERVATIONS: Baker has a talent for writing adolescent characters and their stories, similar, I think, to Kate Sutherland’s excellent All in Together Girls. Not exactly YA, they do capture the awkward and utterly alienating time one spends as a teenager and both explore how your teenage years stick with you well into adulthood.

OTHER REVIEWS: Melanie also read A Hard Witching for her Canadian challenge last year.

WHAT’S UP NEXT: I finished Bill Bryson’s Shakespeare this morning and pulled Sometimes a Great Notion off the shelf to start this evening.

#76 – Enduring Love

I remember reading an interview with Ann Patchett this past year (and please don’t ask me to find the reference; I have no idea where I found it) where she said something about each of her novels being somewhat the same in terms of their plot and premise. In a sense, she said, she keeps writing the same books over and over again. When it comes to writers as skilled as Patchett, exploring the same themes, working through similar plots, doesn’t detract from the quality of her prose, and I feel like this is the same with Ian McEwan.

So many of his novels begin with an event that forever impacts the lives of his characters, and you can see that pattern in Saturday, On Chesil Beach, and Atonement. The set-up for Enduring Love would fit as well: Joe Rose steps out of his everyday life to jump into action (a balloon accident; a boy hovering towards death; a helpless tragedy) and this act of altruism ends up changing the course of his life forever. It was a happy moment, a reunion, Joe’s lover, Clarissa, had just returned from a trip to the US and the two were in the park for a picnic. They were about to pop the cork on the champagne when the pair noticed the trouble with the giant helium balloon. The novel starts: “The beginning is simple to mark.” And it’s true: a hulking, and at times literal, metaphor dropped into the beginning, middle and end of the novel in the form of this balloon, meant to symbolize the tenuous state of life’s expectations: they’re blown off course, trumped by tragedy and then chased by a slightly insane man.

As the balloon teeters away, Joe loses hold of it, and runs to help the one man left hanging on (who soon falls to his death), but before he gets there, he’s faced with the odd character Jed Parry. Joe’s life, up until this point, was happy with the usual adult disappointments (his career isn’t what he expected). But the moment Jed becomes fixated upon him, the constructs that kept Joe tethered to his reality, his relationship with Clarissa, his work, his own grasp on his particular existence, fall apart. The further obsessed Jed becomes with Joe, the more Joe copes in ways that feel unnatural to his personality.

One of the blurbs on the cover of my edition says, “Utterly thrilling… as riveting at the finish as it is at the start,” The Globe and Mail, and I’d have to agree. I read the novel in about three hours and simply couldn’t put it down. I loved Joe’s work as a science writer, found Clarissa’s work with Keats reminiscent of one of my favourite good/bad movies of all time, Possession, and didn’t once feel at all like the action was either forced and/or contrived. McEwan, one of the English language’s most skilled novelists, has a way with these dramatic situations, he can use an almost clinical eye to pull them apart from every direction, exploring the impact upon his characters like a coroner would do a cadaver. Enduring Love wholly deserves its place on the 1001 Books list. I’m not sure every single one of McEwan’s novels should be there (I do question Amsterdam but only because I think it’s an utterly forgettable book) but I’m glad this one is, if only because it gave me the chance to read it.

READING CHALLENGES: Another of my “lost” 1001 Books from the master list for 2009. We’re still 12 hours away from the new year and I’m already two books into my 66 book challenge. The odds are looking good for me to make quite a dent in it over the year! Fingers crossed, indeed.

WHAT’S UP NEXT: I’m about to clean out the last upstairs closet (finished the one in the bedroom yesterday) where boxes and boxes of books are hidden. I want to go through these ones too for 1001 Books that I know I have an haven’t finished (Moby-Dick, I’m looking at you) so that I can put them all on the right shelf and update the online list. God, I am LOVING this week off.

#75 – In The Heart Of The Country

There are a few authors I turn to, in a sense, innately. Writers that I know so intently that I might mistake them for old family friends. People I’ve known all my life. Uncles that sit to my right at the holiday table and make intellectual conversation. J.M. Coetzee remains one such author, as does Peter Carey and Jack Kerouac (albeit the latter two are never related to me in my mind, for, ahem, complex and quite strange reasons of an overactive, um, “romantic,” imagination).

Annnywaaay, as I feel I’ll be alive for many, many years (wishful thinking and anti-disease positivity), I tend to stagger books by my favourite authors so I’ll don’t run out, so that I’ve always got something to read during weeks like this one, rare time that’s not jam-packed with everyday life, days I like to spend with people who put words together in the best possible ways.

I finished In the Heart of the Country a couple of days ago. It’s an older novel, first published in 1977, about a lonely spinster named Magda who lives in the heart of the South African veld on a farm with her aging father and a black sheep-herding servant named Hendrik. When Hendrik brings home a beautiful young woman to be his bride, the divisions of race and class rear up and bring to a head the psychological and even psychotic nature of poor Magda. The novel is written from her point of view. The short, diary-style entries waver back and forth between truth and fiction. Magda makes up as much of her life as exists in reality, driven to this madness by desire, by the lack of intensely human experience, and a strange, stilted relationship with a father from whom she desires inappropriate emotions.

When her father takes up with Hendrik’s wife, Magda’s life goes off the rails. A desperate and violent act pushes her further into insanity but it’s never clear what actually happened and what Magda makes up. The fanciful way of creating a life on paper that she could never lead in life. As with all of Coetzee’s novels, the writing is sparse, the violence unexpected and bloody, and the conflict coloured by the unique and systematic effects of colonialism. Of all the Coetzee books I’ve read in the last little while, I have to admit that this is the one that I enjoyed the most. In tone and texture, it’s a lot like Waiting for the Barbarians and a lot less like Elizabeth Costello, thankfully, as I still remember how frustrated I was when reading that book.

There were so many narrative aspects to the novel that intrigued me — how Coetzee has a talent for ensuring that the landscape matches and even mimics the vast, lonely nature of Magda’s own mind. But at the same time, nature mocks her — coupling all around makes the cold, dry experience of her her lack of sexuality utterly apparent. And when race and class fall apart, when the world turns itself on its head, she clings to her gender, to her reedy sexuality as a way of at least trying to stay a conscious member of the world, even if her society soon becomes a population of just one. For such a short book (my copy runs 149 pages), In the Heart of the Country demands attention and reflection. I’m glad I waited a couple of days to blog about it so I could set my thoughts somewhat straight. Magda’s the ultimate unreliable narrator and I have to say sometimes that I really enjoy novels with such protagonists.

READING CHALLENGES: This was one of the 1001 Books titles that was lost on my bookshelves and I didn’t even realize it was there. So it’s on my master list for 2009, and I guess this puts me a little ahead of my reading for next year. I can already cross off two of the titles from that massive list of 66 (review of Enduring Love coming up next!).

STRANGE ASIDES: After finishing up the abysmal The Almost Moon a few days ago about a slightly crazy woman who commits matricide, it’s funny that one of the next books I should pick up is about a seemingly nutty woman who commits unspeakable acts of violence against her father.

WHAT’S UP NEXT: More book lists and more closets to be cleaned out before I’ll really make this decision.