Book Review #7 – Poached Eggs on Toast

I read a lot of good books. Books I’d recommend heartily to friends and family. Books I push on strangers at various events. Books I try to sell. Books with good writing, a solid story, and that provide a solid experience from start to finish. Good writing is good writing. But great writing, well, that brings an emotional depth that resonates and goes beyond the story itself. Poached Eggs on Toast is, simply put, great writing. Frances Itani’s Deafening was a glorious novel, but I think that when she’s faced with the short story, her work packs a punch that the format allows–there’s no doubt that the pieces in this collection benefit from their length. They are focussed, sharp, intense, and brilliantly characterized.

It’s true. I had often devalued the short story in my own reading. Preferring the length of a novel, I grew tired of the collections I was coming across that depended on “twee” (ugh, I despise ‘twee’) and “quirkiness” to get them to the end. But here, the basis for all of Itani’s work are the very rich and very real experiences of life. Real life. Lives that are shared, and put under pressure. Disease, war, destruction–they provide the backdrop, the impetus for her characters to do something, but Itani writes about life like nobody’s business, and that I appreciated.

A few of the stories take place in war-torn countries, wives of soldiers, diplomats, peace-keepers themselves in a very different way, leave the comfort of their homes to exist on bottled water and food in packets to keep their lives safe. One story that has resonated with me, “Marx & Co.”, which is about two friends, one of whom is dying of breast cancer, remains one of the strongest portrayals of female friendship I’ve ever read in print. Overall, I read these stories in short bursts, subway rides, before bed, moments when I’m frayed and exhausted and burnt out from the grind, and found them to be inspiring, achingly so, and I didn’t want the collection to end.

Book Review #6 – Sight Reading

I had a moment of panic over the weekend where I tried to get caught up on a bunch of work reading before a big presentation, and to my delight, found myself embedded in Sight Reading by Daphne Kalotay when I probably should have been doing something motherly, like, well, taking my child outside.

Here’s the opening: a middle-aged woman gets her toes done, steps outside in paper plate-improvised flip-flops and runs, spectacularly, into the woman who stole her husband. Yes, many years of passed. Yes, much water has flowed through under various bridges. But, still, Hazel, finds it hard to run into Remy, and the story moves back from there. To the first days of Hazel’s marriage to the gifted composer/conductor/music professor Nicholas Elko, to the how’s and why’s their marriage fell apart, to how he and Remy fall in love, their life together (she’s a violinist), and the many people and piece of music they touch. At its heart, it’s a simple story–but it contains everything that makes life complex. Human relationships don’t work–and even though it’s not always the fault of the parties involved, the sounds resonate throughout the rest of their lives on a very personal level.

Sight Reading is a play on words, of course, the skill whereby musicians look at a piece of music and play it in the moment (am I getting that right?), for the novel, it also means the difference between the many different layers of a relationship. A note can go up, it can go down–and the musician can recognize the subtle changes–and the same holds true for a life, for love. It ebbs and flows with time, as people grow, as they grow apart, and Kalotay has visualized it brilliantly in this novel. I’d compare it to the great novels by Ann Patchett or Barbara Kingsolver, but where those two authors have political undertones, globalization of healthcare for example in State of Wonder, or environmental concerns in Flight Behaviour, Kalotay roots Sight Reading very strongly in human emotion and experience. The music is the backdrop to the novel, and she understands musicians (I think?) very well.

Throughout the book, it’s apparent how long it takes Hazel to come to terms with the breakdown of her marriage, and the idiosyncratic nature of Nicholas makes it difficult for Remy, too, despite the long-term nature of their relationship. Love is gentle, kind, but also heartbreaking in this book–and it truly puts into focus something that everyone tries hard to understand, how it sometimes simply takes over a life and leaves wreckage in its path. But these are adults. They have flaws. They have sadness, happiness, embarrassment; they are parents, partners, lovers, best friends, and even it its simplicity, I found this book exhilarating. I read it one big gulp, often how I listen to classical music, too, in long uninterrupted stretches that drive my husband crazy. Sometimes, all you crave is a good book with a good story, relatable characters, and a strong sense of its overarching themes. Sight Reading is all this and more.

Book Review #5 – The Big Dream

When I finished Rebecca Rosenblum’s latest book of short stories, The Big Dream, I had one thought in my head: she’s, to put it simply, a natural writer. I’ve been reading a sh*t tonne of short stories lately, mainly for work, but also for pleasure (and my work is pleasurably so figure that dichotomy out!), because I can digest them in the 10 minutes I have before crashing at bedtime, and they’re really great for commuting. So, The Big Dream. It’s different from Rosenblum’s first collection, Once, in that there was an element of whimsy to the stories, a few of them even touching into magic realism for lack of a better term, while staying true to their urban core. The same urban/suburban settings apply to this collection–many of the stories are centered around characters who work for or on a series of trade magazines that honestly reminded me of Rogers, even though I probably shouldn’t say that out loud.

Rosenblum has an uncanny ability for writing intensely modern stories with fresh characters, but they’re all leading lives that anyone might recognize. The core issues that all of our Toronto-centric humanity deals with–love, family, happiness, selfish/less/ness, the TTC, job insecurity etc.–run like undercurrents throughout. I don’t want to point one story out to be my favourite, because I think the whole collection is so even and well-written that it wouldn’t do the pieces justice. Taken as a whole, with its links between (emails from members of the Dream magazine company), the book pieces together modern life through the myriad different people who work for, around or in the organization, but in these ordinary lives are extraordinary occurrences, observations, the things that make people individuals. I love that.

There’s a lightness and a freshness to Rosenblum’s voice. Her metaphors are exacting, and her sentences direct, but the writing isn’t sparse. It’s rich and vibrant and keeps your attention. These stories are like good episodes of a some great television you’d see on HBO, they’re definitely cable, not mainstream, if that makes any sense. Overall, I was consistently impressed–reading this book made me happy, full stop. And isn’t that a wonderful thing for a book to do?

(other books finished: Jennifer McMahon’s creepy Don’t Breathe A Word, which I found really implausible but still read it recklessly to the end, and The Last Runaway by Tracy Chevalier, which I enjoyed but found a bit light; however, am intensely curious about all of the quilting designs she describes, and really loved Honor Bright, the main character).

My February Revolution — Real Happiness & A Bit of Quietude

I finished my January book last month, When the Body Says No, and was actually a little disappointed. It’s funny, living with a chronic disease for the better part of my entire adult life, I’d already learned a lot of what Gabor Mate outlines. Stress contributes to the disease, and your life choices can impact your health–you need to live in balance, as much as possible. What I wanted from this book was more prescriptive advice, and less “I had this patient who had this terrible life and this terrible experience” narrative-style storytelling to make the same point over and over again, and more “this is how you cope with ongoing life with a crazy-ass disease.” So this led me to the recommendations from my friend Kate about meditation. The first book that showed up from TPL was Real Happiness, and I’ve been slowly going through it this month. It’s a 28 day program with interesting exercises like walking meditation (which I find compelling). The other two books that I have out are Breath by Breath and Teach Us to Sit Still.

Also, I’ve been doing some restorative yoga at home, my lungs have been bothering me lately, and I’ve been doing a lot of pranayama breathing to work them out–it’s helping. It’s a bit hard to do anything with a toddler, but at least once I’ve got my legs up on the wall, I can handle him bouncing up and down around me. Taking five minutes isn’t hard–it’s not ideal in terms of trying to calm down while there’s a manic energy around me, but I’m doing it anyway. I had thought I might tackle my diet this month but I’m still so harried on a day-to-day basis that finding five quiet minutes is something more than I had a couple of months ago.

I find that rhythmic breathing, counting in, counting out, to be so restorative. I know it sounds simple and kind of silly but the more I concentrate on the simplicities in my life, the easier it is to deal with the giant bits. So there’s my revolution for the month, breath. Belly breathe, if you may.

 

Book Review #4 – The Painted Girls

Like so many of my posts, I’ll start off with a confession–ever since coming back to work after mat leave almost eighteen months ago now, I’ve been woefully behind on my “work” reading. Keeping abreast of HCC books, etc., before publication was one of the perks of my job–reading books before they’re on the shelves is kind of like the ultimate spoiler to me, and I can’t resist a galley at the best of times, and for my favourite authors, I usually even read them in manuscript, that’s just how I roll.

To further confuse things, it used to be my job, as a digital marketing peep, to know and be able to talk about various titles, you know, building buzz, that sort of thing. Now that I work exclusively in ebooks, I never seem to get on top of our books until they are actually published. This brings me to The Painted Girls. I didn’t read it in manuscript or galley format–and I didn’t read our ebook, I actually took the physical book with me, a true break from my life, on my trip to New York a couple of weeks back. I read 90% of it while away, and then it took me almost two weeks to finish it as work reading (Bonnie Burnard’s Casino and Other Stories [#5]) and my January theme book, When the Body Says No, #6 crowded around.

Annnywaaay, told from the perspective of Marie and Antoinette van Goethem, the story follows the two sisters as they make their way in the world of La Belle Époque Paris at a moment in time when lives could change in an instant if a young girl, a petit rat, a ballerina, was chosen for the main stage of the Opéra, and even more if they caught the fancy of an abonné, a rich patron whose roses were always accompanied by other favours. Wrapped around them like the tulle of their practice skirts is the story of a band of ruffians, criminals who Antoinette falls in with, and Charlotte, their youngest sister, who eventually becomes a beloved fixture of the ballet.

For Marie, a young girl of just thirteen when the story opens, dance is the way up from impoverished existence, a world where hard work could change the circumstances defined by a dead father and an absinthe-addicted mother. She catches the eye of Degas, infamous now for his portraits, portrayals of young ballet girls, and begins to model for him, eventually becoming the inspiration for his sculpture, “Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen.” You would think, with all of these opportunities, coupled with Marie’s own amazing and intense work ethic, that ballet would be the making of her. As it is with most good stories, opportunity is always coupled with some sort of adversity, and Marie’s path becomes obscured by the pressures of her own moral compass as it becomes tested with the new world she inhabits.

For Antoinette, the dance has already been spoiled, and her world consists of hard scrabble to find her way, taking a terribly wrong turns after falling in love with a ruffian named Émile, whose story comprises the second historical vein running through the novel–as he’s on trial for murder. Antoinette has always been the glue that holds the girls together–pulling their hair taut into buns, mending their skirts, stealing their bread, and when her love for Émile challenges the tender bonds of family, all three sisters are tested, and no one comes out unscathed.

At its heart, one would imagine this is a book about ballet, and it is, Buchanan, herself a former dancer, writes confidently and accurately about the art–it’s hard to do, dance in novels and films is often trivialized or sensationalized (Black Swan, anyone? bleech). The other novel that I read recently that presented the most honest portrayal of dance I’d ever read was Zelda Fitzgerald’s Save Me the Waltz, a terrifically underrated gem. The Painted Girls does an exceptional job with the ballet portion of the story, it feels inherent and right, and it reminded me, like so many other girls, of a time in my life when I was emboldened by pink tights and plain black leotards, feet bruised and insteps aching, stretching myself to the limits even for a basic plié. I was never meant to be a ballerina, however, modern dance was always more for me, and so I felt for Antoinette, who wasn’t quite right for the Opéra, who struggled to find herself in a world insistent upon sending her in the wrong direction. But I think this is a book about sisters, about the bonds of family, and about the lengths that you’ll go to save someone you love–that’s what it becomes for Marie, that’s what it becomes for Antoinette.

Like Girl with a Pearl Earring, Buchanan expertly weaves art, experience, history, with the very human experiences of life and love. Breathing history and backstory seamlessly into the narrative, Buchanan creates a book that’s both rich and vivid, as beautiful as its cover.  Highly recommended.

So Sue Me, I’m Loving The Cold

The giant parka was pulled out of the basement this week because it’s beyond cold in Toronto. Minus 25 with the windchill and you’re bundled up with boots, a scarf, a hat, mittens, a giant coat, and people are upset about strollers on the TTC? Winter gear is so much more oppressive than a poor mom trying to get her day accomplished while a) being kind to the environment and b) suffering from the humiliation of having to rely on the kindness of strangers and/or the grumpy bus driver when navigating your child and public transportation. How about banning giant knapsacks on teenagers who never move and refuse to take them off? How about fining the people who listen to their music so loud that I can sing along and I’m standing an entire car length away? Oh, no, let’s punish the parents–because it’s the strollers that are the problem with the TTC, not the ineffective management, the poor service or the ridiculous discussions about subways and this or that that never get solved.

Whatevs. It’s cold and I’m loving it.

My kid, not so much–he hates getting into the snowsuit, hates wearing mittens, has succumbed to a hat because we’ve been relentless in forcing one on his head regardless of the weather, and don’t even get me started on the battle for boots. But when we do get outside, even when he’s picking up rock salt and putting it in his mouth, even when he’s shoving a pile of disgusting snow into his mug, even when he’s slipping for the hundredth time, it’s still really nice to be outside and enjoying the weather. There’s a magic to the winter that I know is overstated when people are miserable and late for work because but I don’t mind the wind chill because I’ve got a good coat and even better boots, and I love living in Canada.

Plus, it’s good for my garden. And it’s good for my soul–to have all four seasons. It makes me think that we could still have an earth for future generations, but maybe that’s just too optimistic.

Throw Your Arms in the Air!

What’s hard for me these days, is that feeling of being in-between. I spent a solid almost-two weeks as a SAHM, cooking, and cuddling, and being ridiculously frustrated with my toddler, and loving every minute of it. Despite the hectic nature of the holidays. Despite the insanity of my next-door neighbours (the next time we see you, please ask my husband about the exorcism we think we heard on Christmas Eve; scariest thing IN THE WORLD). Despite the fact that I’ve been riddled with a cold, a sinus infection, a terrifically potent stomach flu (twice). I loved being home. It’s not harder to come to work. It’s not easier to be at home. It’s just I think everyone would rather be with their families, even when you’ve got a terrific job, a rewarding career, there’s just something about the togetherness, the unit that we’ve created, that makes all the other stuff sort of fall away.

That’s not to say that I’m a joy to live with, or that raising a toddler who has epic tantrums and can honestly take an hour to get dressed is easy. But there are moments when he’s throwing himself through the air (see photo) and dancing, shouting at his father to, “turn it up slowly!” (translation get the music to the fast part and crank it loud), that joy bubbles up to the surface in such a primal way. You laugh. A lot. Those are the good parts. The family bits. The evening dance party when I arrive home and everyone’s happy to see me, and we have hugs, and run around for a time until the battle for bath/shower, pajamas and bed begins.

Then, there are the hard parts, the tit-for-tat, and the long list of grievances over who is doing what and who isn’t doing what, and who should be doing what, and when, and where, and how. I read an article in a magazine, I think it might have been one of the free ones that I pick up from daycare, about how a couple actually keeps a list of who does what and then has a reckoning every now and again. Is that healthy? I don’t know. But all of the nagging frustrations on both of our parts isn’t necessarily healthy either. So, our solution? A vacation. I think it’s necessary. While we can’t afford a full-on, bounce out of town on an airplane, stay-somewhere-warm kind of vacation, we have booked a couple nights at the Great Wolf Lodge, and I’m looking forward to it. We might cross the border into Buffalo and do a bit of shopping. And then I have another day booked off for us all to go and see the Frida Kahlo exhibit at the AGO. I have a crazy amount of holiday time this year from work, and I might need to be a bit more pro-active in terms of taking it. Because, it’s true, I never seem to take days off for us just to do family stuff. I’ll take days off if I need to cover for RRHB, if he has a quick job to do, an appointment, if he’s sick, and I think we’re both just bogged down in the day-to-day, the general ache of the days, the snotty, crabby, cold, endlessly early bits of the day where everything needs attention, care and then more attention.

There was a moment on New Year’s Eve when my RRHB had taken the RRBB to daycare, and I spent two hours writing. It was the first time I had been alone in my house, by myself, completely without anyone else there, since May. It was so quiet. Eerily so. And sure, I sit in my cubicle at work but I’m never truly alone. People are interrupting and there are meetings and calls and fires to put out and you’re never just with your thoughts. Those two hours were all I needed. My spirits were buoyed (although I did fall asleep in the movie; we went to see The Hobbit) for the rest of the day. And when we picked up the boy from daycare, it was a fun ride home (there may have been smarties; I’m just saying.).

So, I don’t know. I’m rambling during my lunch hour. The day-to-day is a bit defeating, but it’s that way for everyone in the working world. I have projects, they have word counts, and I’m adding to them weekly. We’re a bit in a funk, but that’s natural when you have a two-year-old, and not much of a life. Really, I think it’s a lot of waiting for the other shoe to drop from me at the moment. In the times when the disease is quiet, I have a feeling like “OMG! DISEASE!” Like it’s going to fall into my lap and explode at a second’s notice. So. Perhaps I’ll stop. Take some deep breaths. Get some fresh air. Take some enjoyment out of a good start to New Year’s Revolutions. Throw my arms in the air. Wave them like I just don’t care.

Book Review #3 – And Also Sharks

Spending time at home over the holidays, I was mainly reading short stories, simply because they’re easy for my brain to process when I’m tired. Luckily, I have more than a few collections on my shelves, so I picked up,  read, and enjoyed Jessica Westhead’s delightful, quirky And Also Sharks over the last few weeks. The people that populate the pages of these stories are hard to place–their ages, their locations–they seem mysteriously suspended in small towns, in small places that contain their lives, marriages that aren’t necessarily working, jobs that are filled with reports and decidedly odd co-workers and “plant ladies.” Westhead’s writing reminds me of Rebecca Rosenblum’s–they share that enviable talent of finding an exploitable quirk in human nature and brilliantly surfacing it throughout a story. The results are razor-sharp, humane without being twee, and riotously vivid.

I was in a meeting yesterday where one of our editors here at work was talking about how Canadian writing, in particular, elevates the short story, and it’s true–we have our own Chekov, as he described, in Alice Munro. Michael Christie, Sarah Selecky, Alexander MacLeod, Andrew Pyper–and Jessica Westhead can easily be listed alongside those writers whose ability to convey the emotional depth of a novel within far fewer paragraphs than a full-length work (I’d also add to this list Lydia Peele’s excellent Reasons for and Advantages of Breathing, but she’s American…). Not every one of Westhead’s stories obviously goes one-to-one with Munro, but we have a long tradition of appreciating the form here in Canada, and I’m pleased that we take publishing, reading, reviewing, and writing short stories so seriously. I enjoyed this book immensely, highly recommended.

Book Review #2 – How to Be a Woman

Because it’s my book club selection for this month, I picked up How to Be a Woman by Caitlyn Moran with a certain amount of whimsy. Not really knowing what to expect but seeing the book sell like hotcakes over the last few months, I wasn’t sure it was going to be a book for me. It’s funny, irreverent, honest, and ballsy, and there were parts that I earmarked because I found them so compelling (in particular how everyone, man, woman, child, needs to stand on a chair and scream: I AM A STRIDENT FEMINIST; and that the biggest fault of humanity at the moment is that we’re simply just not polite enough full stop), but overall, I have some reservations about the book (I mean, of course I do).

Moran is a natural writer–you feel like her thoughts flow so smoothly from her mind to her fingers, and that they don’t get all caught up in between as mine sometimes do. And she has convincing arguments, namely about the fact that feminism has gotten lost in terms of the idea of equality–or, rather, the perception of the “achievement” of equality, and young women left, right and centre, are declaring themselves “not” feminists primarily because they have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about. She also rails against sexism, the lack of hair on female anatomy, revolutions in music (and then back again), and much, much more. There are obvious holes to her arguments, that come across more like opinions than rational, thought-out perspectives, but that doesn’t make the book any less impactful.

I like smart, sassy women who aren’t afraid to use words that make me blush even thinking about them. I like strong, opinionated women, too. But to say this is a book about ‘feminism’ might just be a bit of a misnomer. It’s a book about Moran’s own brand of feminism, about conclusions she’s drawn, and the hopes and opportunities she has for our gender. Throwing in statistics and quoting the hell out of Germaine Greer doesn’t necessarily a feminist tome make. I laughed out loud in many places, especially during the beginning bits of the book–the fevered pitch of her writing is charming, and her early life’s eccentric enough to make for truly entertaining reading. Yet, as I turned page after page, I kept thinking that Moran’s a woman who knows her own mind extremely well. She’s confident in her decisions, in her thoughts, in her position in the world–it’s a feminist position, absolutely, and as a feminist myself, I appreciate every word she says. Knowing your own mind is one thing, but it’s not a universal thing, and I guess that’s what was missing from this book–feminism as it relates to Moran isn’t necessarily a prescription to fix many of the problems in the world, but it’s most certainly not a bad place to start, either…

My January Revolution: Dealing with Stress

One of my New Year’s Revolutions is to ramp up a sense of healthy living now that the terror of the complications from my pregnancy and the massive disease attack has subsided. It’s only taken two and a half years! Each month, like I said, I’m going to try and tackle an aspect of my life, not that I’d like to fix per se, but that I’d like to evolve a la AJ Jacobs. I’ve decided that January is the month I’m going to think about stress.

It’s an all encompassing term, sort of like “depressed” that people toss around left and right without really taking a moment to consider what it actually means either literally or figuratively. For me, stress, and worry in particular, is the number one reason the disease becomes active in the first place. When I am too busy, too stretched, worrying all the time, freaking out, panicked, upset, terrified–it ramps up my immune system which is a signal for the disease to jump into action. This is not scientific, this is just me living with Wegener’s for the better part of two decades.

The weekend before I came back to work, I was at a spa with my darling friend Heather. I was looking forward to it immensely after the hustle and bustle of the holiday season, of cooking two giant meals, of intense days spent with a two-year-old. And it was amazing, except for one small thing–I have absolutely no idea how to relax. Oh sure, I know how to be comatose in front of the television after a long day. But I don’t honestly know how not be so go-go-go all the time and laying down for a straight 24-hour period of people rubbing oils and lotions etc into my body was amazing but perhaps a little lost on me. We did a chakra realignment treatment–it was incredible–except every single one of my chakras are blocked. The therapist kept telling me to visualize a colour associated with a particular chakra and in my mind I got it wrong every single time. This was not the fault of the therapist. This is all me. I can’t quiet my mind. And since I’m too busy for restorative yoga these days, I don’t even have that hour space in the week where I could meditate and rest.

There’s a viable difference between being still and simply not moving. Being still incorporates a mindful, healthy essence–it’s breathing, it’s contemplation, it’s restoration. Not moving is just that–it’s sitting, mind whirring, iPad still on, spelling game in check, bad TV on full and putting in the time before bed. You’re too tired to do anything else. Being still takes work. Not moving, not so much. It’s a subtle difference, but I’m not being very still these days. Sure, there are stretches of time where I’m not moving but my brain buzzes over lists and things that I need to do the next day and moving forward and keeping on keeping on and work and RRBB and this and that and that and this and all of a sudden it’s 3AM and I haven’t slept for the fourth time this week and my kid’s going to wake up in an hour and wow I’m flapjacking tired.

So. Still.

There was an hour when we attended a yoga meditation session. I did pranayama breathing and for the first time in months I was still. It was the best part of the time I spent at the spa. The treatments were amazing but they aren’t something I can afford or realistically do regularly (except massage is covered by my benefits at work). But the meditation, well, that’s something I can try. My friend Kat has written a great introductory ebook (published in March), that has some terrific tips in it, and I’ve decided the book I’m going to read this month is When the Body Says No by Gabor Maté. I’m also looking for any bits and kernals of information anyone out there would like to share about how they deal with stress, about what else I might read, what other things I could do… About what really causes it and what it truly is. I’m embarking on stillness. That’s my goal for January.