#25 – Bringing Home the Birkin

My, my, my, my, my, the lives some people live! They are absolutely fascinating, and Michael Tonello’s is certainly no exception. His witty, charming, and butter-smooth memoir, Bringing Home the Birkin sucked me in and wouldn’t let me go until I had finished the very last page. No word of a lie, I started the book on the subway ride home last night and read the rest throughout the day (I had to send the author questions for an interview we’re doing).

After Michael makes a drastic change in his life, giving up his lucrative and stable life in the United States for Barcelona, Spain, he finds himself making an eBay auction living buying and selling rare Hermès products. From scarves to pottery, if he can find it and it’s rare, he’ll sell it. But it’s not until he realizes the desperate need for the rich and richer to own a Birkin that his business flourishes. Waiting list? What waiting list? Tonello discovers a fool-proof method for buying Birkins, and works it around the world. Literally. The man travels to major cities all around the globe that contain Hermès stores, makes connections with other bag-buyers, and becomes an industry in and of himself.

There’s little not to love about Tonello’s warm, chatty writing style, his adventurous spirit, and his entrepreneurship. Bringing Home the Birkin is that rare piece of nonfiction that zips along like the best commercial novel, and it would make perfect summer reading, whether you’re urban-bound or lazing about at the cottage, it’s so easy to get caught up in his world you’ll be transported either way.

#24 – Consolation

Consolation, Michael Redhill’s compelling novel with its story within a story, was the book all of Toronto should have read back in February. I think it was part of that whole “Keep Toronto Reading” promotion that went on for the month. As I am generally behind when it comes to city-wide celebrations, I have just managed to finish Consolation, which is also my Ontario selection for The Canadian Book Challenge. I realize it’s April. I hope that it still counts.

The book starts off with a bit of a shocker, one that I don’t want to spoil, so I’ll skip talking about it, and go straight to what I liked best: the balancing of the story of old Toronto, with its central character an apothecary named Hallam who comes from England in the mid-1850s to open up a pharmacy here in the city, with that of the modern day (well, 1997) as told around an urban geologist named David, whose family becomes involved in the very last project he was trying to unearth, a set of very early photographs of the city taken by our historical hero. Is that confusing? It shouldn’t be — the book’s epic storytelling makes it quite easy to flow from one time period to the next.

The history in this book, the detail, and the exquisite storytelling, all had me on the edge of my seat more than once. In both cases, the parts of the book that takes place in 1997 and that in the 1850s, the narrators are outsiders. Men on the cusp of something, of success, of family, of their own careers, which make their experiences unique and engaging. It’s a hefty book, but the pace is swift, and Redhill’s obvious skill as a poet means his prose is both lyrical and inventive at the same time.

I did find the ending a bit muddy but by that point I didn’t care as much about the perfection of the story; I was already embroiled in the absolutely delicious tale of Hallam and his cohorts. In the end, I’d say that I enjoyed the historical parts of the novel a touch more than the parts set in a more modern age. But Redhill’s book can absolutely stand the test of time in terms of becoming a quintessential novel about this city in which we live. It’s up there with In the Skin of a Lion, with Fugitive Pieces, with Cat’s Eye, and others. Highly recommended.

READING CHALLENGES: As I mentioned, I’m through Ontario! That leaves six more books to go before July 1st. Goodness, I’d best pick up the pace.

Saturday Morning

Sleep seems to avoid me on the days that I take the needle. So that meant that I was up for a long time last night just lying in bed feeling so tired but not being able to actually fall asleep. Eventually I did, and even without any kind of pharmaceuticals, but I woke up at 6:30 again this morning and now I’m yawning as I’m typing.

The sunshine looks glorious from our bedroom window, it shoots inside and forms a arrow-like pattern on the wall, a reflection from the house next door, so bright and yellow that it made me want to get up and bask in it for a while. My RRHB is still sleeping. Later, we’re heading to a friend’s for brunch, and then we’re going to go buy lighting fixtures for our hallway.

Yesterday, when I came home, my RRHB and Zesty’s Marine had done so much work on the house I was actually taken aback. The whole main floor has taken shape now, and we have a brand new, incredibly level ceiling along with the beginnings of a new wall. Within the next few weeks there will be paint on the drywall, and all kinds of trim, as much as possible before the hardwood floors come at the end of May when I’m in Paris. And when I come home from Paris, I will come home to new floors. Thrilling.

I don’t know how to put into words the lightness of my mood these past few days. It’s not something I’m used to, as if with the snow disappearing, it’s melted a lot of my personal worry along with it. And it’s not to say that there aren’t very real and very upsetting things happening at the same time, but it’s kind of magical when you’re not frustrated with your work, with the work at home, with the state of your house, with loneliness, with disease, with side effects from the medicine (which I’m decreasing steadily), with the idea of nothing ever changing. There are subtle bits and pieces of every part of my life in good places these days, and for the very first time, maybe ever, I’m not worried about it all coming crashing down. Last week was hard. But that’s okay too, because when I needed it, the help was there. A girl couldn’t ask for more. Whether it was a note of support here, a held hand in the food court, a joke, a bit of compassion from those who know me best, it all combined to help me understand the world a little differently.

Woe Is Me

My mind is all over editing these days. It’s all I’m thinking about. Much to the detriment of, well, my life because:

1. I forgot my wallet at home this morning. Now I have to scrounge around in my purse for enough change to take the subway home. Walking all the way is not an option.

2. Said purse is a giant, girl-sized mess containing tea, loose tylenol tablets, a notebook, a hair elastic, another hairband thingy, bubblegum, tea, American money, a map of NYC, actual garbage, TTC transfers, and lip balm.

3. I keep bringing shoes to work and forgetting to take them home. Currently, the collection sits at 7 pairs.

4. We’ve booked our apartment in Paris but need to wire transfer money. How does that even work?

5. It’s been a week of meetings which means I don’t have my normal amount of headphone time. I miss it. No Radio 2, no NPR, no loud pop music.

6. There’s a pile of work magazines on my desk that’s almost a metre tall. I’m exaggerating, but still…

7. It’s beautiful and sunny outside but a bit chilly. Therefore, a crucial button fell off my raincoat. I have cold boobs.

8. Tulips have sprung in my garden at home. Gardening is so not my thing but I sure love the tips of the little green buggers coming out.

9. Consolation is an excellent novel.

10. When will it be warm?

#23 – The Age of Innocence

Edith Wharton’s classic might have just moved onto my “best books I’ve ever read in my life” list. I’ve been quoting from the novel for days. The Age of Innocence won the Pulitzer in 1921, and it’s easy to see how and why the book is included in the 1001 Books list.

Newland Archer, our hero, devotee of upper class New York society in the age following the Civil War, finds himself torn between the life he imagined, the proper life, the expected life, and his passion, which comes in the form of his fiance May’s cousin, the mysterious Countess Olenska. Already standing outside society, the Countess has left her brute of a European husband and returned to the bosom of her family. Archer, a lawyer and all-round saviour of a man, becomes enlisted in the cause to resurrect her standing, and falls in love with her along the way.

Wharton’s tone is pitch perfect, and her narrative shows no signs of age, but it’s still as if the book is frozen in time, the descriptions are vivid, the characters redolent of the period, and the story heartbreaking. It’s great storytelling told by a master of the form.

Two more quotes, and then I’ll spoil no more of the book for you:

“…[F]or a moment they continued to hold each other’s eyes, and he that saw her face, which had grown very pale, was flooded with a deep inner radiance. His heart beat with awe: he felt that he had never before beheld love visible.”

“Something he knew he had missed: the flower of life. But he thought of it now as a thing so unattainable and improbable that to have repined would have been like despairing because one had not drawn the first prize in the lottery.”

Ah, if only the goal of self-satisfaction was so still utterly admired as unachievable in our post-post modern thoughts.

PHOTO IN CONTEXT: The book on top of its 1001 Books entry on my desk.

READING CHALLENGES: The first of the two 1001 Books Challenge titles I’m supposed to read in April, which brings my score to 154. Yee-haw!

WHAT’S UP NEXT: Consolation by Michael Redhill and The Ravine by Paul Quarrington. And maybe I’ll get back to War and Peace. But really? Who am I kidding? Anyone have recommendations for Summer reading?

#22 – The Private Lives Of Pippa Lee

I’ve been banging on about Rebecca Miller for days now, ever since I started reading her new novel, which is coming out in August, for work. The Private Lives of Pippa Lee tells the story of a woman, the protagonist of the book’s title, who marries a much older man, Herb, and starts a new life with him. Of all of my favourite things about this novel (and that list is endless), the fact that the narrative is so utterly surprising and goes in places you absolutely would not suspect endlessly impressed me as I read.

Here are 2 things that happened to me on my journey with Pippa Lee: I read in the elevator. Yes, I realize it’s silly as I’m only on the 20th floor, but that’s at least 2-3 minutes, which can be pages. I not only missed my floor but didn’t notice the elevator was heading down instead of up before I realized I forgot to get off. “Oh well,” I thought, and kept on reading. The VERY SAME day, I almost missed my subway stop and barely made it out of the doors before they crushed me in an iron grip, brushed myself off, and continued to read as I walked up the stairs and out on to Lansdowne. The book is that engrossing and entertaining.

It’s just my kind of novel: swift, smart, acerbic, completely unpredictable and kind of kooky. I love Pippa. She’s adventurous and damaged, a mythical combination, and I didn’t want it to end.

Here’s an interview with the author, Rebecca Miller. She rocks. She’s talking about the filmed adaptation of the book coming out in 2009 starring Robin Wright Penn:

Edith Wharton On The Way In Redux…

Oh, Newland: “He had married (as most young men did) because he had met a perfectly charming girl at the moment when a series of rather aimless sentimental adventures were ending in premature disgust; and she had represented peace, stability, comradeship, and the steadying sense of an unescapable duty.”

But then: “He simply felt that if he could carry away the vision of the spot of earth she walked on, and the way the sky and sea enclosed it, the rest of the world might seem less empty.”

And you’d guess that he’s not referring to his wife. Such is the way of love.