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For anyone actually keeping track, there are spoilers below, so if you don’t want to know what happens in Anybody Out There? Marian Keyes’s latest novel, don’t read this mini-review.

Okay, with that out of the way, I finished Marian Keyes massively huge latest novel (it’s 592 pages, feck, I know the type is huge, but come on), in record time. Yes, it’s chicklit, so it’s easy to read, but I think too because her books have become so predictable to me (I’ve read so many of them) that I kind of hoovered through it instead of savouring the book, like I did with the other novel I read this weekend.

The novel continues the story of the Walsh clan, now with Anna, the second youngest daughter, who is home in Ireland after something traumatic happening to her. Um yeah, the trauma? [Here’s the spoiler part] Is a car accident that kills Anna’s fresh husband Aidan, and leaves her scared, injured and a 33-year-old widow. But we don’t find that out until we’re well on the way of being two hundred pages into the novel. Of course, I’m saying to myself, “Oh, she’s been in an accident and her husband is dead, which is why no one’s a) talking about him or b) slagging him off because he’s not there with her, helping her recover.”

But on the whole, it’s kind of annoying, not knowing. I mean, I understand that Keyes is trying to capture the shock of it all; the veritable other world Anna lives in until halfway through the book when she fully comprehends the fact that her lovely husband is dead. But to some extent, I also felt strung along, like “just tell me what happened already.” You know?

There’s a lot in this novel to like if you like Keyes; it’s very much more of the same, the same cute prose, the same cute storyline, but there’s a lot that doesn’t need to be in here (did I mention it’s almost 600 pages?), like her sister Helen’s crazy private investigator subplot, and sometimes, the chicklit-ness of it all kind of got to me (I know, I’m asking for it, aren’t I). However, it was a band widow weekend, so it was a very appropriate book. Yet, after reading and loving Pride and Prejudice so much, and taking a look at all of the very worthy and huge books I have on my shelf, I might take a break from chicklit for a while.

And then again, it’s summer, and what’s better for summer than a sweet, pink book about romance and happy endings?

With my RRHB safely off to his show in K-town, I am blissfully entrenched in my band widow weekend mode already, and it’s only 5:56 PM on Friday night. Oh, I’m not ashamed to say I’m already in my PJs, am halfway through the latest Marian Keyes novel, and will be watching the 9 PM airing of The Interpreter on TMN. I might even throw in a couple episodes of my new favourite show, Pepper Dennis, that are fabulously waiting for me on the Faux-Vo.

Then, it’s all brunches, Banff stories and Friends with Money, with a quick trip to the osteopath planned for tomorrow afternoon. I’ve already run all the errands (groceries, cat food, office supplies) and, with the exception of the house cleaning, which I will do at my leisure, I’ve got nothing but free time staring me in the face.

The short, weekender trips are much easier to take than the long-ass three week stints in terms of being a band widow. It kind of makes you appreciate free time and hanging out with yourself. Even if that self is exhausted, puffy from medication and terribly chubby at the moment.

Ahhh, bliss…

And if you live in Kingston, go see my RRHB play tonight. You’ll have a good time. I promise.

This is who I am, perhaps who we all are, keepers of the absent and the dead. It is the blessing and the burden of being alive…None of us are orphans if everyone we’ve ever loved has died.

I can honestly say that Camilla Gibb’s Sweetness in the Belly is unlike any book I have ever read. Not in the way she tells Lilly’s story, backwards and forwards, past and present, between her time spent in Ethiopia and in London, a white Muslim in a world that constantly forces her to the outside, but in the story itself. What little I do know about Ethiopia comes from images on the news: years old pictures of starving children, Sir Bob’s concert, flies landing on open eyes and the rounded, distended bellies of children.

And perhaps that’s my own ignorance, I mean, of course that’s my own ignorance, which is why I am moved by this book so very much. It took me into a world so different from my own that it’s impossible not to think about how narrow our own lives are here. Perhaps that’s not the right word, but that’s how it feels, my world of comfort and complete meals, warm clothes, clean sheets, shoes.

I’m always one to tell people that suffering can’t be compared. That pain is pain and people feel it equally, nothing that hurts should be discounted because someone beside you has suffered more or less than yourself. Yet, this book put my life into perspective, or maybe gave me the perspective to feel so much for the main character, Lilly, displaced more than once by her skin colour, her gender, her beliefs, her love for an adopted country and a man who went missing with the revolution.

Told with a voice keen with longing and strength of character, Lilly, a white woman, half British, half Irish, ends up an orphan in North Africa. Raised by a Muslim man, strict in religion and the teachings of the Qur’an, she makes a pilgrimage to Harar, Ethiopia, where she finds that being white and a woman excludes her from continuing her education. Banished to the home of a poor, ex-lover of the sheikh (the man she was sent to learn from), Lilly slowly finds her way in her new adopted home and eventually falls in love with a young, idealistic doctor named Aziz.

Revolution, war and religion all combine to make it impossible for the two to marry, and Lilly eventually must flee Ethiopia as Halie Selassie is deposed. She spends the next years searching for Aziz from London, where she now makes her home and her living as a nurse. As a truly displaced person, Lilly’s story is both moving and addictive. Once I started this book, I couldn’t put it down. Good thing my RRHB still has about a billion hours of TV to catch up on, or else he might have been perturbed at me spending hours lying in bed, imagining dry, dusty streets, damaged and broken ideals, inapprehensible suffering, and the deep-seated joy and peace in simple honest beliefs.

As bittersweet yet inspiring as strong coffee in the morning and as satisfying as a swim in the lake after a long summer day, Sweetness in the Belly truly captured my attention.

I don’t care what anyone says. I’m still dreaming about giving up my day job.

Last night I had one of the most surreal evenings I’ve had in a long, long time. A friend of ours is visiting from London, and she came over to see us before she heads back across the pond on Friday. At first the plan was to make dinner at home, but my RRHB wasn’t interested in making pizza and salad for a guest, so we went out.

I was so tired (gasp! me! tired! shocking, I know) and grumpy from working (not being the job makes me grumpy but because it was a bit too much yesterday) that the last thing I wanted to do was go out for dinner. I wanted to kick back in my sweats and hang out for some old fashioned gossip with Elyssa.

Annnywaaay. We went to a local restaurant called Mitzi’s Sister. Just as we sat down, I noticed a couple of cute kids playing and thought, “it’s nice to see families out in the neighbourhood.” Then I didn’t give them another thought. We started our conversation in earnest, discussing our days with Elyssa and chatting about Mitzi’s Sister when I heard someone say, “Ragdoll? Is that you? I recognized your voice!”

Well, it was Mark, this fellow my RRHB and I went to high school with. In fact, one of the greatest memories I have of high school is watching Mark and my crazy ex-boyfriend playing imaginary snap (with no cards) at my kitchen table at my fifteenth birthday party with my grandmother. My grandmother loved Mark and always talked about how handsome he was. I don’t know if he ever knew that.

So he says to me, “Holly’s been looking for you!” Now, Holly was one of my closest friends in high school, in grades nine and ten there was a group of us who were pretty much inseparable, and she and I spent a lot of time together. But as these things go, you grow up, people move away and you don’t see them anymore. But every now and again, I’d run into someone who’d say, “Oh, I saw Holly and she wondered how you were,” and we just never connected. So, I gave Mark my card, we all chatted for a bit (it was his lovely family I noticed) and we went on with our dinner.

Until five minutes later when Holly, beautiful Holly, showed up at the restaurant. It was magical, wonderful and truly one of the most surprising evenings I’ve had in a long time. I haven’t seen her in probably close to fifteen years and it was so absolutely fantastic to see her again. In fact, the “reunion” of old friends has been quite a trend in my life lately. Just the other weekend, Zesty and I had brunch with some of our other old high school friends who we haven’t seen in forever, and that was one of the best days I’ve had in a long time too.

And it got me thinking that the universe is an extremely powerful thing. Holly had been thinking a lot about being a mom and all the stuff that happened to me just before I got to high school (my mom’s car accident), and wanted to see me. Then, we find out that we live within blocks of each other and her cousin actually lives around the corner from me and my RRHB.

But also that I’ve been having an extremely hard year with the disease and trying to get healthy, and I think the world is sending all this wonderful stuff my way just to let me know that everything’s going to be okay. And the best thing is hearing about other people’s memories, how it makes you think of things that your mind had long forgotten (apparently, I was a fried egg for Halloween one year, heh!). But most importantly it’s to remember that there was a reason you were drawn to these people in the first place and that energy doesn’t go away despite living in different places, days, months, even years passing, and it made me giddy just to sit there talking to her.

The world is truly a magical place.

“There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more I am dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of either merit or sense.”

-Lizzie Bennett to her sister Jane

For some reason, I thought I had read this book already once in my lifetime. After seeing the latest movie version and umpteen other related films (Bride and Prejudice, Bridget Jones, etc.), I guess I knew the story so well I just assumed I’d already read the original.

I was completely mistaken. From the first delicious sentence, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife,” I realized that I’d never been down this path before. Now, I’m hooked. All I want to read is Austen, non-stop Jane, just like The Jane Austen Book Club, but obviously more interesting than that silly book.

Now, I know there’s nothing new I can say about Pride and Prejudice; I’m not even going to attempt to because I’m sure everything worthy about the novel has already been said. What I will say is that reading Pride and Prejudice was an experience of unadulterated bliss. I spent every spare moment over the Easter long weekend with my head in the book, much to the detriment of my poor RRHB.

And one thing I did not expect was how funny the novel is, quite like reading Restoration comedies; I actually laughed out loud on more than one occasion. And despite knowing the story backwards and forwards, I exclaimed, “Oh, no, Wickham!” when Lydia ran off, squeezed out a couple tears when Jane and Bingley finally got together, and gasped when Lizzie saw Darcy on her visit to Pemberley. Imagine that—a book written two hundred years ago might just be one of the best books I’ve read all year. It has so thoroughly influenced modern fiction, and especially genres like chicklit, that I’m so glad I actually got around to realizing that I’d never read the original. Ahem, I guess there’s good reason why it’s called a ‘classic.’

We drove up north on Thursday night so we could have a full day there on Friday. I was a bit hesitant to go up so late because the cottage hasn’t been opened up since last fall, which would mean piles of mouse crap and all kinds of other annoying things. And because I’m so tired by the time I go to bed (exhausted at 4 PM, hang in there until 10 PM, collapse in bed with a book, asleep by 10:15 PM kind of thing), I didn’t know if I’d have the energy to even sweep the floor by the time we go there.

My RRHB is on an opposite schedule to me. He’s just come back from tour, which means he’s used to being up all night, driving all ages and not going to bed until well into the morning. Hence the fact that he’d be more awake to drive the giant rock van at night than in the morning. So, we threw some food into some cotton bags, grabbed our PJs and off we went.

It was a gorgeous day yesterday. Perfect for cottage cleaning. It wasn’t too cold or damp for April and we got a lot done. Namely, we brought back a giant dresser of my grandmother’s for the house here because a) it’s too big for the room b) there are already 4 dressers up there and c) we’re trying to clear as much out of the cottage as possible.

We would have got a lot more done if the dump had been open (it was Good Friday), but we’ve already made a plan to go back up in a month, the weekend before the May long weekend, to finish organizing all of the furniture and actually get the cottage cleaned right out. How does so much stuff accumulate in such a small place? It never ceases to amaze me.

But I’m hella tired today. It was a long day of going through the mud room, where everyone (including myself) seems to have thrown everything they don’t want to deal with in terms of the cottage over the last three or four years. It’s clean and organized now, quite a feat!

When I first read Pamie’s description of the experience with the novel Haunted, and then heard all the stories about the crazy things Palahniuk does at his readings (the raw meat smells, the breath holding), I had pretty much made up my mind I would never, ever pick up this book.

I’m not a big fan of horror movies. They scare me too much. I have trouble separating the fact from the fiction. My RRHB took me to see The Exorcist when it was re-issued a few years ago. I have never seen another horror movie in the theatre. Oh sure, once in a while he’ll force me to watch Sean of the Dead or something of the like, and I’ll survive—but I won’t like it, that’s for sure.

Just let me give you an example, you know that totally silly movie with Richard Gere and Laura Linney The Mothman Prophecies? Okay, that film, that timid piece of Hollywood dreck, scared me so much that I slept with the light on.

So, the creepy, freaky world of Haunted wasn’t going to be easy. But all the other girls I was reading the book with (even Sam) managed to finish it, so off I went. One part of me wished I was still doing the Book A Day challenge because then I could read it quickly (with a deadline) so the scariness doesn’t keep freaking me out and make me check under the bed before I go to sleep.

Haunted is a series of interlinked stories, each introduced by a prose poem, with narrative sprinkled in that sets the novel at a writer’s retreat. Only this isn’t your average writer’s retreat—no one’s leaving. The short stories are written by the subject of the preceding poem, and everyone has nicknames (Earl of Slander, Miss America, etc), which somewhat reflect why they are there and who they are.

The tales are succinct and are more like morality plays in a sense. It’s a book of stories, but it’s also very much about storytelling and storytelling techniques. And there’s an historical aspect that I liked very much as well, how many of the characters kept mentioning the retreat in terms of the Villa Diodati, where Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein (the real Frankenstein, not the one I abridged, there was no Villa in my writing experience, sigh). I guess in a way he’s sort of writing back to the Romantics, to Poe, continuing the tradition before we were over-stimulated by slasher films, where you could be scared just by words on a page.

Palahniuk does this exceptionally well. There’s a literary bent to his writing that steers it away from Stephen King territory (but correct me if I’m wrong because I’ve never read a Stephen King novel), and the one quality I truly admire about this novel is how he never takes the stories where you might imagine they would go.

If I had to pick a favourite, it might have to be “Slumming” by Lady Baglady. In a way, it’s almost a parody of Jay McInerney’s Good Life, which I found kind of refreshing. The ooky-spooky stuff is still there but I liked the commentary about how poverty is the new rich and how ridiculously wealthy people were dipping themselves in urine scents and partying under bridges.

And the title is perfect. It works on so many levels. Damn book, I can’t get it out of my mind even though I’ve moved on to a murder mystery (something Murder She Wrote-ish) so I can finally get some sleep.

Last minute flight up to the cottage tonight where my RRHB swears I won’t have to do anything except sit in their rock and roll van and enjoy the view. Full update on Saturday…

So the prednisone crazies continue to be the worst side effect (even worse than my puffy face) that I’m facing these days. The littlest thing seems to upset me; things that normally wouldn’t bother me, like getting a rude email or someone being mean to you for no reason. You know, the stuff that you learn to sluff off like dry skin after using a loofah by the time you’re in your thirties. Well, that’s the stuff that’s making me bawl. And I can’t control when or why it happens. Which means that today I was sitting at my desk crying like a teenager about a mean email. I mean really? What happened to my backbone, did it disappear with my blood and never return?

Then I got home and relayed the entire story to my RRHB, bawling again. I’ve spent the better part of an hour all tolled today crying. For. No. Reason.

The prednisone weepies are way worse than the prednisone voice telling you to dive off a building. But at least I’m not hearing those at the same time or I’d really be in trouble.