Category: trh books

#81 – Mudbound

I set out wanting to love Hillary Jordan’s novel, Mudbound, for one simple reason: the cover art is deliciously beautiful. The story of an almost-spinster, Laura, who marries late in life (at the ghastly age of 31), and soon finds herself on a mudbound farm in the Mississippi Delta caring for a cantankerous, racist father-in-law, a broken drunk of a beautiful brother-in-law, as well as her husband and two daughters.

Torn apart by two wars, Laura’s husband, Henry, having endured the First World War, and his brother Jamie barely escaping the Second, the family tries to hold itself together in the face of adversity. It’s always been Henry’s dream to have land, and so when he buys a farm in the Delta and announces that’s where they’re all moving, Laura tries her best to remain positive and supportive. But when tragedy after tragedy forces them to live in the broken-down farmhouse with no indoor plumbing or running water, the true natures of everyone involved soon becomes apparent, which sets the story on its inevitable course.

Being a landowner means taking responsibility for the share croppers, and Henry, while fair, isn’t one to rock the boat. Legions of racism, deeply embedded in the small-town South, cause all kinds of problems that are exacerbated by the return of Ronsel, a Sergeant in the Black Panther tank brigade, he’s the eldest son of Henry’s best farmer, Hap. When Ronsel and Jamie forge a clapped together friendship shook out over the lid of a bottle, the entire community turns against them, and it’s this relationship that truly propels the conflict in the story.

Tragic, sad, moving, and inevitable, the novel captured my attention from its first page and I didn’t put it down. It’s one of those “read the whole book in one shot” kind of novels, and I highly recommend it.

#80 – Now You See Him

Eli Gottlieb’s new novel Now You See Him, which I read in ARC format, comes with a note from the publisher that says, “I simply ‘couldn’t put it down’ — and you won’t be able to either.” And while I would agree that it’s a literary page-turner, an elusive form of the popular novel that’s so hard to get right (see Laura Lippman’s excellent What the Dead Know as an almost perfect example), I’m not sure it’s 100% effective all the way through.

The first two-thirds of the novel, where it deals with the untimely murder-suicide of Rob Castor, a writer from Monarch, New York who killed his ex-girlfriend, Kate Pierce, before taking his own life, are quite good. Told from the perspective of Rob’s best friend Nick Framingham, whose having a hell of a time reconciling the absence of such a fury of a man from his life, the novel unravels layers and layers of untold stories, family secrets and hints to the obsessive nature of the crime. The novel rips along and I was quite taken by Nick’s mid-life crisis.

But somewhere in the middle it gets kind of lost, and sort of muddled. There are obvious influences on Gottlieb’s novel, namely John Irving, and if you’re a fan of the former than I have no doubt that you’d enjoy this novel. While I read the novel primarily in transit back and forth from work, it never grabbed me the way I thought it would, despite the quality of Gottlieb’s prose. And by the end, I have to admit, that I was rolling my eyes at certain plot twists towards the end, but that’s no comment on the novel, but rather my own cynical nature. We’re offering the book up in our Facebook group later next month, so I’ll be curious to see what other people think too.

Best Books of 2007

So, all tolled I think I’ve probably read about 85 books this year — the ones I haven’t counted here have been Harlequins, and mainly manuscripts, so I don’t want to review them here before they’re finished and published. So, of the 80-odd books that I’ve read this year, here are the 10 that have stood out in my mind, books that I’ve thought of again and again, and books that I’ve recommended to maybe dozens of people, maybe even gone so far as to push a copy into someone’s hands:

1. Consumption by Kevin Patterson
The very first book I finished in 2007 has resonated with me throughout the entire year. An impossibly sad yet utterly redemptive book, Patterson’s novel might be one of the great overlooked Canadian books of last year.

2. Mothers and Sons by Colm Tóibín
Of the two Colm Tóibín books I read this year, this collection of short stories took me, as I said, “completely by surprise.” They are magnificent, and I fell in love with them even more after hearing the author himself read at Harbourfront a few weeks after finishing the book.

3. Theft: A Love Story by Peter Carey
The Australian entry in my Around the World in 52 Books challenge, Carey’s latest novel might just be his best. What I wrote about the novel way back in March when I read it still stands as an apt description for how I felt about it: “Like a bucket of cold water dropped on your head on a hot day, Theft shocks you into submission with its bold, slashing strokes of brilliant prose that belt out the story.” And I’m only a little embarrassed to admit that Butcher Bones remains the one literary character that, should he have existed in real life, I would gladly sacrifice a little marital, ahem, angst for…if you catch my drift.

4 & 4.5. The Road & No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
What more needs to be said about Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road? It transcends Oprah, won the Pulitzer, turned the words “post-apocalyptic” into watercooler conversation, and firmly established McCarthy as one of the greatest living American writers working today. None of this is surprising to a girl who includes All the Pretty Horses in the her top 10 Best Books of My Life list.

I also read McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men this year, and am calling it number 4.5, and remember that I said this at the time: “Now, as you know, I was completely captivated by The Road. But No Country For Old Men blew me away. No one writes violence like McCarthy, and turns something that’s often mocked in the popular media, or blown out in ways that ensure any impact of it gets lost between big guns and lots of useless fake punches, into literature.”

5. Run by Ann Patchett
Critics were on the fence about Patchett’s novel: EW hated it; the Globe didn’t, and so on. Many people commented on the utterly contrived nature of the story. And yet, many people fell in love with Patchett’s “snow globe”-like world within its covers. But I just adored this book from start to finish, couldn’t put it down, and cried like a baby when it ended.

6. October by Richard Wright
While not on any of the other big Canadian lists this year, Wright’s novel is probably my favourite work of Canadian fiction in 2007. Taut, blissfully traditional, canonic, and with touches of The Watch That Ends the Night, one of my all-time favs, I read this book in manuscript format on a streetcar ride home weeks after starting my new job.

7. The Accidental by Ali Smith
Another book that had tonnes of online buzz that before I finished it thought it might be slightly overrated. Boy was I wrong. It took me a couple of tries to get into it, but I am certainly glad that I did.

8. Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones
Utterly heartbreaking and stirringly original, it’s a post-colonial novel that I would have loved to have studied at university.

9. Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name by Vendela Vida
Vendela Vida’s book entirely surprised me. From the opening pages, you think you’re reading a certain kind of novel, one that you’ve read many times before, and yet, by the end, you’re utterly convinced that it’s one of the most intriguing stories you’ve read in a long time.

10. The Gathering by Anne Enright
This novel hit me like a punch in the stomach, and I loved every word. As I said, “The narrative that spills out over the next few hundreds pages fights with itself at every turn, angry, raw, overwhelmed, Veronica [the protagonist] takes hold of what’s left of her life and shakes it, pulls all the pieces down around her and then can’t really tell how to put them back together again. In the end, I’m not clear if she has or not, but it doesn’t really matter because this book is so painfully honest about life, about family, about tragedy, that becoming ‘normal’ again isn’t much the point.”

But I’d have to say that my all-time favourite book I read all year might just have to be Per Petterson’s Out Stealing Horses. I’m pulling it out of the top 10 and saying that it’s the book that I would least recommend, but it’s the novel that I think in terms of skill, in terms of story, in terms of pure power of its prose that I adored the most out of all the books that flew past my hungry eyes this year.

And if the top 10 could include more books, I’d have to say these are my honorable mentions: Kate Sutherland’s All in Together Girls, Half a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, The Septembers of Shiraz by Dalia Sofer, and Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay.

Good Grief

Certainly hasn’t been the weekend I expected. We went to see Christine Fellows on Friday at the Music Gallery, and it was a lovely show, as always. I took my needle, and then we went to bed, nothing unusual, right? Until about 4 AM when I woke up and was so very sick that I proceeded to throw up once every forty-five minutes to an hour until about 2 PM the next day.

I’m still not 100% better.

It’s been years since I’ve been that sick. Sure, the occasional cold or lung infection, no biggie, I can handle it, but drop down fever so you can’t even leave your bed and feel woozy to the point you can barely stand up barfing up all kinds of gross things in your stomach, well, that’s not a way to spend the holiday season.

So, we’re quarantined.

Which is okay because it’s a snow day. And who doesn’t love a snow day? At least today I can read, I couldn’t even do that yesterday. I finished Jennifer McMahon’s new book Island of Lost Girls (#79), which comes out in May 2008, so I don’t want to say too much except I liked it, and it reminded me a lot of Laura Lippman’s What the Dead Know.

And now I have to go back to bed.

Sigh.

#79 – Pretty Little Liars

Okay, I hate secrets. I have a hard time keeping them and even harder time not knowing if someone whispers, “I have a secret.” There’s just something in me that has to know. It’s gotten much better the older I get, and obviously, I’ve learned to keep as many secrets as I’ve maybe leaked, but Sara Shepard’s book Pretty Little Liars certainly understands girls like me when it comes to the whole idea of a mystery: I simply have to know what happened and why.

For years, I’ve read the ends of mysteries half-way through. I am not unapologetic about this — I certainly know it ruins the surprise, but goodness, I just can’t help myself. I read spoilers. I know what’s about to happen on Corrie Street because, let’s refrain here, I just need to know. So you can imagine what happened when I read an entire YA novel based on the idea of secrets: I almost imploded.

Who is the mysterious “A” that keeps tormenting the girls? Why is she doing it? What happened that set the four girls apart in the beginning? There are so many mysteries and secrets running amok in this book that it’s almost impossible to keep them all straight, which is kind of half the fun. So if you’re looking for a pure guilty pleasure, I’d say give Pretty Little Liars a try. Not as addictive as The Luxe, but just as fun.

TRH Updates – December Madness

There are reasons why I hate starting every post with, “Goodness, I am so busy I barely have time to sleep these days.” Firstly, it’s boring, no one cares how busy I am. In fact, I don’t even care, and I’m the one living this manic life. Secondly, being swamped with work doesn’t count as almost every single person I know professionally and personally is in the same boat. Thirdly, I miss the comments, the emails, and frankly, the love, that I get from my blog and when I don’t post, I don’t get anything back. After all, you get back what you put out in the world, right?

So, I apologize in advance for the brief list-post detailing what’s gone on in the past few weeks. I know it’s just not the same.

1. Sales conference sucked up a good chunk of my life in the last couple weeks. However, it introduced me to Tim Winton, an Australian writer who has written a beautiful, lyrical and utterly compelling novel called Breath that I devoured in a 24-hour period (#77). It’s not coming out until next year so I won’t go into too much detail except to say that I would urge anyone and everyone to pick up his book of short stories The Turning and let me know what they think. It’s the book that’s top of my list now.

2. Another book I read before conference made me think that the subject matter of stories doesn’t matter as long as the telling is compelling. (Am I rapping? Take it to the break! Yeah.). The Art of Racing in the Rain (#78) has a dog for a protagonist. A dog obsessed with race car driving. Do you think that deterred me? No, it did not — it’s a charming, engaging and sweet book that proves, much like Friday Night Lights, the power is in the storytelling and not the subject matter. This is an interesting lesson so late in life.

3. Zesty and I went to go see Atonement. I think she had a greater emotional response to the film than I did, having read the book and remembering how heartbreaking the story ends up being. It’s a beautiful movie with an interesting soundtrack, and I think James McAvoy is simply delicious, but on the whole I’d give it a solid B, maybe moving on to B+ in certain parts. There’s a scene when Robbie’s at Dunkirk filmed in one long, gorgeous shot that truly brings home the destructive, debilitating experience for British soldiers in the Second World War. With none of the Hollywood-style American touches of huge explosions, instead showing a choir of rag-tag men battle weary and broken who are singing, the film takes a totally different point of view than that which we’re used to in terms of exploring the war.

4. Awww, Enchanted. I was so glad that Tara was home for a whirlwind weekend that we got to see this film together. It was the perfect girlie movie. Amy Adams is delightful, and will probably get nominated for an Oscar. I can take or leave McDreamy. You get the feeling that his giant head wobbles a bit from walking around with all that hairy ego.

5. Dirty Dancing: The Stage Show? So not worth the money. The Evil Empire (where we were all employed three years ago, before half of us were unceremoniously fired) Ladies and I got together for a lovely pub dinner and set out to get our hearts broken by Baby. Only it never happened. Because the show is awful. Not even good-bad like Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights which was awesomely bad, and hilarious. The stage show truly sucks, despite its lovely art direction: the dialogue is painful, the performances beyond wooden, and the leads don’t sing. In a musical. And there’s no dirty dancing except one very small part at the beginning. Trust me, it’s not worth it, even for the laughter factor (we cackled through the entire performance). It’s troublesome because we were laughing at the actors and not with them, which is never a good thing.

So that’s about it in terms of my latest cultural indulgences. Lots more to come in terms of reading challenges, my top 10 books of 2007, my top 10 movies, and all kinds of other delightful lists that I adore making. And I promise, more regular updates.

Canada Reads

Goodness, is it just me, or is the Canada Reads list this year somewhat uninspired? I love both Timothy Findley (and I count Not Wanted on the Voyage among my all-time favourite books) and Mavis Gallant, but I’d have to say that the majority of Canada may have already read both of those authors? For my money, I’d love to see Icefields win, as it’s the only title on the list that I read and thought, ‘now that’s an interesting choice.’ And, it’s not often that I link over to the Q&Q, but they’ve kind of hit the nail on the head with the opening sentence, “There’s a distinct last-century feel to the next Canada Reads lineup, which CBC Radio unveils today.”

#76 – Late Nights On Air

Elizabeth Hay’s lovely, Giller-winning novel took me quite some time to read. Set in Yellowknife in 1975, the novel follows a group of CBC radio people as they make their way through an informative part of their lives. Touched by the presence of two relative strangers, Dido from The Netherlands and Gwen from small-town Ontario (if I’m remembering correctly), the station’s manager, Harry, finds his life categorically changed from the moment he meets both women. Their presence in his life and at his station act as a kind of impetuous for change for many of the other people these two come into contact with, and in his own way, Harry falls for both, with differing results.

As the novel drifts in and out of the lives of the various characters, you can tell that Hay feels out each and every one with an intensity that can do nothing except inform the story. As the life in the station exists both on and off the air, it becomes apparent that each person in her narrative has come north and stayed for different reasons. There’s something so subtle about Hay’s writing, and about this story in general, that builds up over the time spent engrossed in the book.

And when the four main characters, Gwen, Harry, Ralph and Eleanor, set off into The Barrens for a trip of a lifetime, you know that they’ll come back changed. It’s a novel about that moment in life that you only realize later has come to define your entire life. While all the characters are too close for this to become clear, the narrator gives little hints throughout the text (meant to serve maybe as suspense; in my opinion not entirely necessary), and on the whole it works well structurally.

While I haven’t read many of the other shortlisted titles (just two Effigy and Divisdero), I do think that Hay’s novel has the scope, the emotion, and the heartbreak to be a novel deserving of the prize. I adored Garbo Laughs, and I felt this novel taught me many things, not only about life north of sixty, but also about the idea of radio, the importance of it in the lives of these characters, how sometimes a career isn’t necessarily built but its found, and that love can move in many forms within a person’s heart.

It’s interesting that two of the more intriguing books in Canadian fiction this year have been set in the North, Kevin Patterson’s brilliant Consumption, and now Late Nights on Air. Maybe it’ll get more people thinking about how different the landscape will be in the next fifty years if we don’t make an effort to preserve it. Every inch of Hay’s novel is full of the scenery, not just to set the story, but to inhabit it, like we do our desk chairs every day, from the flora, the fauna, the wildlife, it’s a world that demands attention, and not just on a fictional level.

PHOTO IN CONTEXT: I finished the book in bed this week, and so a picture of it on my bedside table taken from the perspective of my head laying on the pillow.

#75 – The Luxe

What a completely and utterly guilty pleasure this book turned out to be. Anna Godbersen’s The Luxe takes place in New York in 1899, and many around the office have declared it’s Gossip Girl meets Edith Wharton, but even more addictive. I have to say that I set aside the last 100 pages of Late Nights on Air, this year’s Giller winner, just so I could read this book uninterrupted over the past couple days. It’s that addictive.

As many of you know, I’m not one who does well with moderation (she says after watching the entire first season of Friday Night Lights again), and after a couple of really heavy movies, I needed something light and fluffy to bring me back down to a happy place. The Luxe was just the book. Centering around society girls Elizabeth, her sister Diana and her “best” friend Penelope, The Luxe imagines a world where beautiful gowns are hand-made, husbands are arranged from other good families, and under no circumstances does one get involved with the help, regardless of how dishy they might be.

It’s a sweet book that melts teen romance into historical drama, and if you’re at all into reading YA fiction, you’ll enjoy it immensely. Once you get sucked in, I guarantee it’s impossible to stop. Kind of like Friday Night Lights. Sigh.

NY Times Notable Books

I was blogging over at Savvy Reader this morning about the NY Times Notable Books list. A few years ago, I printed off the list and tried to read every single book on it, but got stalled somewhere around the first five. But that’s not to say that there aren’t wonderful books on the list, just that I, once again, got sidetracked by something shiny before truly getting through the before-blogs-even-existed challenge.

But this year, without even trying, I’ve already read quite a few of the titles (The Gathering, Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name, Mothers and Sons, On Chesil Beach, and Out Stealing Horses). And there are quite a few books on the list that are currently sitting on my bedside table waiting for some attention, and I love that there are so many literary biographies on the nonfiction list.

I’ve decided I’m going to do my own top 10 list of books that I’ve read this year, but I probably won’t get to it until the beginning of January, as I’ll be counting the very last pages that get read towards my end of year goal.