Category: trh books

#26 – Out Of Africa

The romantic notions I had regarding this book stem, obviously, from seeing the film, where I assumed Out of Africa would echo the autobiographical elements of Sydney Pollack’s adaptation. For years, I’d wander past it on the shelf and think to myself, ‘man, I really do need to read that book,’ ashamed, that in six years of studying English, with a focus on post-colonial literature, I had never had the courage to actually conquer Isak Dinesen’s work. It was quite a shock, then, to discover how different the book actually is from how I built it up in my imagination.

After almost two months of reading it on and off, I’ve finally finished the real Out of Africa. Sometimes majestic, sometimes upsetting, sometimes painfully dated, and sometimes downright brilliant, the book is described in the 1001 Books as “perhaps the greatest pastoral elegy of modernism.” Telling the story of Dinesen’s time running a coffee plantation in the Ngong Hills, it’s almost anthropological in much of its intent, and the parts of the book that are so distasteful now, racist even, are contained in her attempts to categorize life in Africa. But the parts of the book that soar are when she’s exploring her very real connection to the land, to her farm, to her life as she built it around her. For example, when the book captures her very human emotions, it’s some of the most wonderful writing; yet when she attempts to “explain” away Africa to her European counterparts, perhaps her imagined audience, it’s almost painful to read it’s so offensive.

Yet something makes you hang in there, and there are subjects you almost wish that she released herself, and/or her voice, enough to write freely about: her true feelings toward Denys Finch-Hatton; her absolute heartbreak with the failure of the farm; her obvious anger toward her husband (who gave her syphilis, as we all know from the film). All of these aspects of Dinesen’s life are explored in passing, as if she could only express herself when truly looking at the landscape, as if the descriptions of Africa and the farm could somehow intuit how she felt on an emotional level about the rest of her life.

There are so many wonderful passages in the book that it would be impossible to list them all here, and as the Denmark entry in my Around the World in 52 Books challenge, I find myself once again confronted with the fact that the author I’ve chosen has once again transplanted themselves elsewhere to tell the story of an adopted land rather than his/her homeland. Perhaps in the end, it doesn’t matter at all where you’re from, all that matters is that you find your heart in the place you choose to write about. There’s no denying Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen) left her heart behind in Africa when she was forced to return to Europe.

My own books I packed up in cases and sat on them, or dined on them. Books in a colony play a different part in your existence from what they do in Europe; there is a whole side of your life which there they are alone take charge of; and on this account, according to their quality, you feel more grateful to them, or more indignant with them, than you will ever do in civilized countries.

…I had consented to give away my possessions one by one, as a kind of ransom for my own life, but by the time that I had nothing left, I myself was the lightest thing of all, for fate to get rid of.

Alissa York Effigy Launch


On Tuesday night, my RRHB and I, along with a bunch of our friends, went to the Toronto launch of Alissa York’s Effigy. For the first time in many, many months, I attended a literary event where I hadn’t had the pleasure of reading the book first. Usually, it’s Zesty and I at these kinds of things, but it was so fun, and I had such a good time that I was triple-upset that we were too late to get into the Michael Ondaatje launch on Friday night—I was looking forward to more literary-inspire good times.

There’s no getting around how lovely and friendly Alissa York is—she’s smart, charming and utterly fascinating. My favourite thing about Pages’s This is Not A Reading Series is the fact that the authors are on stage with another person, sometimes a fellow writer, and sometimes a media personality, another journalist, it all depends on the book. In this case, it was Elizabeth Ruth, and in all honestly, I think the two were perfectly matched. Ruth’s questions were smart, probing, and always on topic. It’s a hard balance to achieve especially if anyone’s been to Harbourfront lately and endured some of the “interviews” they’ve got going on at that reading series (Zesty, I’m looking at you).

Some of the conversation I pulled out and wrote down was really inspiring, especially considering I admire York’s writing (Mercy and Any Given Power, both wonderful, both moody and both delicious) but also because I’ve got quite a crush on her spirit. One of the more intriguing things that she said had to do with separating the writing mind and the everyday mind. And I think this was a lot of what Gowdy was trying to get at too, aspects of humanity, dark and desperate places, just because your imagination goes there (and bravo that it does) doesn’t necessarily mean that she’ll go out become a a taxidermist, like one of the characters in Effigy.

It’s such a common thing for people to mistake actors for the roles that they play, but people do the same with fiction: they’re always plugging through the depths to find the autobiographical elements, when as York points out, that there may be wide gaps between what a writer is thinking and feeling and what he/she is writing.

The other point she made that has stuck with me over the past few days is how when she’s writing, her goal is to make people feel things versus simply thinking about them as their passively reading. I can’t help it: I feel everything. That’s just the kind of person I am, hell, Al Gore’s slide show made me a puddle for days afterwards, and the key to a great book in my mind is its heartbreak factor. All in all, it was a bloody brilliant evening.

#25 – Hallucinating Foucault

I’ve been wanting to write about this book all day. Last night I was about 20 pages from finishing but I was so tired after my new dance class (I’m taking a Thursday night class at the School of the Toronto Dance Theatre; it’s just a beginner class, but it’s perfect for me right now), that I finished it on the subway ride to Writer’s Group tonight. I hate that, leaving 10 or 20 pages to the next day instead of finishing a book, but sometimes your body just says that’s enough reading for now.

So, Patricia Duncker. She’s my born-in-Jamaica author, but according to the most basic Google search, Duncker now lives and teaches in the UK. Again, the theme of authors no longer living in their homelands comes up in my Around the World in 52 Books challenge. I guess, in a way, I’m not really reading as many countries as I imagined I would, trying to balance the 1001 Books list (page 856) and my quest to broaden my reading base, but I have I’ve ended up reading a lot of good books by authors writing about Europe and/or the States. Mainly, I haven’t spent as much time trapped in the lovely and deliciously wonderful world of Can Lit, and that’s actually okay.

(Oddly, I’ve been reading a lot of novels, like this one, set in Paris and in France, which makes me think the world is trying to tell me something…like it might be time to book a ticket or something?).

Regardless, Hallucinating Foucault brought up a lot of memories of undergraduate and graduate school. The book tells the story of a young man working on a thesis of an imaginary French writer named Paul Michel, who has been institutionalized and utterly forgotten by the establishment. After a particularly intense affair with a young woman called The Germanist, he sets out to save his idol from utter decay in a psychiatric institution.

The title comes from Michel’s relationship with the French philosopher, who is described by the author himself as his perfect “reader.” Intertwining all kinds of post-modern themes with a very basic coming of age story, Duncker’s prose remains sharp throughout. In fact, I’d like to note that the epistolary aspects of the novel,the letters between the novelist and the philosopher that the student uncovers while in France are especially lovely.

The story is very much about the insular life of a student studying for an advanced degree. Not unlike Possession but without the Victorian overtones (Byatt even blurbs the book), Hallucinating Foucault has a central literary mystery to solve: why did Michel stop publishing books? And is he really, truly crazy? Part love story, part philosophical tribute to the work of Foucault, it’s a short, intense novel that I feel lucky to have discovered.

However, it’s told me nothing of life in Jamaica. I have to admit that I would have much preferred to read Michelle Cliff, oh how I loved No Telephone to Heaven, but my challenge isn’t about re-reading books I already know I like, but about finding gems I never would have noticed had it not been for a little guidance.

My favourite quote is from one of the letters that Michel has sent Foucault:

My writing is a craft, like carpentry, coffin-building, making jewelry, constructing the walls. You cannot forget how it is done. You can adjust, remake, rebuild what is fragile, slipshod, unstable. …You can say anything, anything, if it is beautifully said.

#24 – American Youth


Prior to writing a review of this book, I’m going to take a moment and note the passing of Kurt Vonnegut. I will forever add him to the list of authors that I smile and nod in response when he comes up in casual conversation. I’ve never read a Vonnegut novel, and even though there are a few on the 1001 Books list, I’m pretty sure it might take years for me to get to them. In fact, over the course of entire educational career (high school, two lit degrees), I was supposed to have read Slaughterhouse-Five, at least four times, and I avoided it like the plague. And it’s a shame that so much of the context of Vonnegut’s later life got caught up in that awful email forward that claimed he had just done a commencement address at MIT.

Annnywaaay. As I’m ever trying to find aspects that actually relate to one another during these blog posts, I think that Phil LaMarche’s American Youth, which I read in ARC format in Cuba (see photo), is kind of a fitting book to talk about on the day of Vonnegut’s death. Not to relate the iconic status of Vonnegut to LaMarche in any way, but rather to suggest the themes highlighted in some of the former’s outspoken politics can be found bouncing around the novel, as American Youth tells the story of a young man whose life changes irreversibly after a gun accident in his home.

With it’s overtones of American History X, and the right-winged dogged politics that swell underneath like silt in the ocean, American Youth is very much a compelling coming of age story in a time where you’re already expected to have grown up before adolescence if only to regress for the next 20 years (how many times have I heard 40 is the new 30 over the last few days? Too many). The unnamed narrator (from what I can remember) and the cold, removed voice were almost too affected for me as a reader, but the heart of this book, the story of a boy so lost after a tragedy with no clear way of making his way back, rang true.

I’ll say one thing for sure, it was quite an odd book to be reading on a beach chair on Cuba.

#23 – Good Morning, Midnight

I’ve been listening to Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black, one of the girls in the car up to conference brought it along, and it’s lovely, aching, heartfelt, broken, all the things a good record should be (there are a couple of songs that are just okay but for the most part, the whole album is really crisp). And I just finished reading Good Morning, Midnight by Jean Rhys. For some reason, the two fit so well together, the lonely, rough voice of Amy’s music echoes exceptionally well the narrative voice of Sophia Jansen, the protagonist of this strange little novel.

Rhys wrote Wide Sargasso Sea, which is one of my favourite books, and I’ve also read Voyage in the Dark, but years ago, so it’s not as fresh as the latter, which I’ve read three or four times in my lifetime now. But this novel isn’t as coherent as the other two, Good Morning, Midnight‘s stream of consciousness narrative is hard to follow sometimes; it’s as confused, pained and as troubled as the narrator herself.

Faintly the story of a struggling single girl who has escaped a tragedy only to attempt and drink herself to death, there’s little in Paris for Sophia (or sometimes Sasha) beyond the cafes and the chicken scratches of an everyday existence to keep her alive. Abandoned by life itself, she wanders through the days in a wine-soaked state and drowns her dreams in Luminol in the evenings. Profoundly sorrowful, Rhys’s novel vacillates between the utter beauty of modernism and a very true feeling of drowing. French inter-mixed with English, past mingled with present, real life confused with the stuff of dreams, it’s hard not to ache when following Sophia stumbling down the street or listening to her rant hysterically to the men who become her companions.

As with all the books I read in my Around the World in 52 Books challenge, a trend seems to be evolving, where displaced (or replaced, or happily emigrated?) authors tell stories not of their native land (in Rhys’s case, Dominica) but of their adopted homelands or even of places wild in their own imaginations. The setting for this novel is post-First World War Paris, just before the onslaught of the next devastating conflict. There’s evidence of many displaced persons within the book, refugees from life like Sophia herself, who find themselves all searching for money and acceptance. But all in all it’s the ache in Rhys’s writing that holds me tight in my place, her delicate way of describing situations, and her flighty use of metaphor, which makes me want to give up writing all together, find a bottle and romantically walk the streets of Paris wearing chunky heels and a new coat, and then fall into a shabby hotel only to wake up the next day and do it all over again.

Wholly deserving being found on page 402 of my 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. Fully captured in the feeling of heartbreak and ideal reading on the plane ride to Paris.

There’s a bookshop next door, which advertises second-hand English novel. The assistant is Hindu. I want a long, calm book about people with large incomes – a book like a flat green meadow and the sheep feeding in it. But he insists on selling me lurid stories of the white-slave traffic. ‘This is a very good book, very beautiful, most true.’

[They] Are The Champions

How often is it that the lit blog community and Oprah Winfrey agree on anything? Well, there was that whole James Frey thing but let’s set that aside for a moment. Is it coincidence that the Tournament of Books picked The Road just as Oprah announced her latest book club? Entirely.

But does it send out meta-tastic ironic vibes that us lit bloggers (and yes, I’m being generous and including myself in the the group) actually know what we’re talking about most of the time?

Shocking, I know.

Hell, you know what I’m most looking forward to, and I hate to be catty but, again, it’s late, I’m tired, are all the strange blog posts from the shiny happy people who usually read the Oprah book pick looking for something other than the utterly brillian Cormac McCarthy. And damn that I haven’t read that book yet considering I was going to pick it as my US entry for Around the World in 52 Books and slipped in The Emperor’s Children in it’s place. I might honestly get the RRHB to blog about it in my place as he devoured that novel in an afternoon last summer up at the cottage.

(High fives to BGB for the linkage)

Poem For Today

It’s Poetry Month and Knopf US sends out poem-a-day emails. Today’s selection is by Anna Akhmatova, “The door is half open…”

The poem is almost 100 years old at this point, and still, the metaphor of the door being half open, despite perhaps becoming cliched if we were to write it today, still resonates simply because of the gorgeous three lines that follow it. It’s the perfect example of how writing can always contextualize itself in even small places.

I’m fascinated by Ahkmatova, and I’ve had a giant biography sitting on my TBR pile for almost two years now. I’d like to say that I’ll get to it soon but with 1001 Books and other challenges, I think that it might be years still before it works up in the ranks.

#22 – April in Paris

I’m glad to be back from conference—it was a long week. Since I haven’t read anything new, I’m really happy that Michael Wallner’s April in Paris has finally been published. The German entry in my Around the World in 52 Books challenge, I finished this novel while we were on vacation in Cuba. It’s not saying much, considering how awful certain parts of that trip were (ahem, the hotels), that I preferred to be reading rather than watching yet another Dirty Jobs marathon on one of the two illegal American television stations in our room at night.

Anywaaay, behind-the-scenes reading aside, I really enjoyed this novel. It’s captivating and engaging without being overly wordy (it’s a relatively short 256 pages). Set in Paris during the Second World War, April in Paris tells the story of Michel Roth, a German soldier stationed in French capital who falls in love with Chantal, a resistance fighter.

Roth speaks impeccable French, and his post in the German army is that of an interpreter. Knowing that he could be charged with treason or worse, he sneaks out at night in a white suit, changing in bombed-out Parisian buildings, and walks the city, long to pass for anything other than the enemy. On one of his walks, he sees Chantal, and begins to follow her. She resists him at first, doesn’t trust his perfect French, his made-up story, and as the truth comes out, on both sides, they do fall in love.

When a tragic act of the French Resistance finds them out in many different ways, the inevitable reality of the war breaks apart any chance they might have had, in other circumstances, to be together. There’s an aspect of a good thriller in this novel, and Michel is a thoroughly sympathetic character, despite the fact that he was an officer in the German army. In a sense, the novel reminded me of that one scene in Band of Brothers where the Germans were singing across the line on Christmas Eve, about how despite the politics and the absolutely evil actions of the company of men in charge of Michel’s existence, he’s still human. He still has feelings; he still has a story worth telling, worth hearing.

The setting, occupied Paris, evokes such powerful images, and similar to Nemirovsky, but without the overtones of her giant Russian-like writing style, Wallner’s novel brings the time alive through his sharp prose and tight narrative. And not to be unbearably cliched, but the ultimate tragedy of the situation is Shakespearean and completely doomed from the beginning, which somehow makes the story utterly satisfying.

#21 – The Hopeless Romantics Handbook

Gemma Townley’s latest novel The Hopeless Romantic’s Handbook is finally out in stores. I read the book months ago when the galleys came in to work, took it home, and tossed it back in one night. Chicklit is so addictive! Anyway, the heroine of the novel finds a lovely old book entitled, you guessed it, The Hopeless Romantic’s Handbook. The unlucky in love Kate decides she’ll follow the steps and see what happens. And faster than you can snap your fingers Joe, a handsome American actor, shows up on the scene and she’s smitten.

Only the book gets a lot more complicated as Kate’s career (she’s a television decorator working on a fairly low-rated cable show) sort of careens off track. And, as is the law of chicklit, her love life follows suit. The more Kate listens to the book, the worse things get, and soon her two best pals, Sally and Tom (and especially Tom), are quite worried for her.

There’s a happy ending, of course. But Townley has such a knack for creating life-like characters within the fantasy setting the genre demands that you don’t mind that the plot might be a bit predictable. She always manages to add a little extra bit of inventiveness, a little something or other that pulls the books slightly off-centre of the stereotypes. Anyway, you all know how much I adore Gemma and her writing, so if you’re looking for a bit of mental escape this Easter long weekend, I do recommend picking her up.