Down To Work

So, it seems I may have committed myself to a completely and utterly undoable goal of having a finished draft of the book (see, see how I’m actually calling it a book instead of a long story) finished by May 1st. Having successfully surrounded myself not only with books, but with other writers, we all seem to be egging each other on in all the good ways. I’m still not convinced that I’ll ever finish, but it’s nice to not be alone, if that makes any sense at all.

The candle is lit. The email is all caught up. There’s t-minus a couple hours until the Oscars. My RRHB has done all the laundry. I had brunch with one of my oldest friends who has just become engaged. I’ve obsessed over a certain something. Repeated”The King of Carrot Flowers” about sixteen times. This lead to a little dancing around my writing room. And read two stories in My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead, one of which contained this quote from Chekhov:

Repeated experience, and bitter experience indeed, had long since taught him that every intimacy, which in the beginning lends life such pleasant diversity and presents itself as a nice and light adventure, inevitably, with decent people — especially irresolute Muscovites, who are slow starters — grows into a major task, extremely complicated, and the situation finally becomes burdensome.

Perhaps it’s time to start?

What A Difference A Night Makes

Woke up after having a good night’s sleep. Finished Jennifer Haigh’s The Condition (#17). And managed to not only be on time for my appointment with Dr. Kidney today, but I was even fifteen minutes early, which gave me plenty of time to spend with Marianne and Elinor Dashwood.

I heart my kidney doctor, he’s kind and gentle, and has always, always been on top of my care in terms of the disease. But today, today is a grand day: my tests (blood work) are better than they’ve been in 5 years. My creatinine level is 97 — it hasn’t been under 100 since 2003, well before the disease flared this time around.

On top of that, I’ve managed to lose 4 kilos!

So, things are moving in the right direction when it comes to my health. Maybe I should stop complaining about the medicine, because it’s literally saved my life.

Oh What A Night

Let me first preface this entry by saying: I am an idiot who does not know how to drive a car.

Well, I have a license and I have never been in an accident, but I am not comfortable behind the wheel. In short, I have very little sense of myself in the world. Add to the mix a giant, hulking machine and I am stumped. If I bang into things all the time, imagine what happens when you put me behind the wheel.

Exactly.

So last night when I got home, I decided, oh so wrongly, to spare my RRHB the trouble of having to come out and drive the car up into the icy laneway to put it back in our garage. Oh yes, this was something I could totally do myself.

Or not.

As I made it halfway up the slight hill before the car slid back down and wedged itself into a snow bank kissing a concrete wall, and with ice all around, it wasn’t moving.

We had to call a tow truck.

Which cost me $157.50.

And then the battery died.

Sigh.

Add to that the panic and upset I felt for a) inconveniencing us so much for b) spending money we really don’t have right now and c) for pretty much ruining both of our evenings, and I didn’t sleep very well.

“No biggie,” I thought. “I’ll just get up early and make my way to the hospital so Dr. Kidney has everything for my app’t tomorrow.”

Hear on the news: “There’s a five alarm fire…all streetcars are going to be diverted.”

Even so, I still managed to get to the hospital well before 9 AM. Only to NOT have my bloodwork ordered correctly and have to wait almost 1.5 hours to get poked. So, after fasting (hangry anyone? [tm Charidy]), not sleeping, waiting for hours, getting the car stuck, being frozen waiting for the tow truck angel to do his work, being late for my own work, falling behind, and feeling sorry for myself, I started to cry. IN THE BLOOD WORK CHAIR.

Annnnywaaay.

I’m here now. And am about to get cracking. But thankfully, I had Jennifer Haigh’s upcoming novel The Condition, which is really quite riveting, to keep me company.

EDITED TO ADD: I just ate some soup for lunch and bit down (it was lentil, I like to chew), on a rock almost the size of my pinky finger.

It’s just that kind of day.

#16 – After River

The family drama of Donna Milner’s sweet, forgiving After River sweeps you away in its everyday life on a dairy farm in the beautiful East Kootenays. The story of the Wards, who come to accept a draft dodger named River into their lives, into their homes, until the book’s fateful event tears them apart, rambles over thirty-five years through terrain well-told throughout Canadian literary history. Family novels told by Canadian women are a popular kind, and Milner has set herself up in line with no shortage of excellent company. The novel, with its strains of Crow Lake and Unless, feels familiar and unknown at the same time. A compelling tale that overcomes its stereotypical beginnings to crash into an uplifting end, After River came as a bit of surprise.

As Natalie Ward tells the story of how her life changed after River, the unbelievably handsome and utterly compelling young American came into it, she cannot do so without giving the reader the whole picture. River just didn’t come into Natalie’s life, he came into her whole family, and his presence changed everything. Like the water of his nickname, he slipped into their land and made himself as essential as the air or the cows themselves. For Natalie, and her eldest brother Boyer, River represents that instant when your childhood leaves forever, a burgeoning adulthood that comes with the cost of happiness, and how rich the price of forgiveness remains when conflict goes unresolved.

The setting swept me away as much as the story: a farm set on rich, fertile land, a town trapped in its own small mind and an even smaller belief structure, all trapped (or set free depending on how you look at it) by the mountains that tower above. A highly personal story, it’s impossible not to feel empathetic with the events of Natalie’s life, nor is it easy to watch her make the mistakes she’s bound to make, or feel the weight of the guilt she carries away the moment she leaves the farm.

The prose isn’t perfect, and there are first-novel moments all over the book, tired descriptions and worn out metaphors, but none of that matters by the end, when Natalie’s life comes full circle, and the book comes to its pitch perfect end. Isn’t it always the case that we end up so far from where we begin, only to come home in so many ways, whether literal or metaphorical, despite how strong the pull of life drags you in another direction.

READING CHALLENGES: I had chosen Stanley Park as my book for British Columbia, but I’m swapping in this book instead. I’ll probably still read it, but I feel like this story and setting are just so evocative that I could see the mist rising up from the mountains in the dewy mornings and feel every inch of Natalie’s pain, which means it’s the right choice for The Canadian Book Challenge. It’s such a Canadian novel, this After River.

PHOTO IN CONTEXT: As I read a terribly practical but not entirely gorgeous ARC, I’m showing off the glorious cover. I know it might not be for everyone, but it perfectly suits the story, and the colours are just so lovely.

As with so many of my ARCS, here we go again…would anyone like me to pass this one along?

#15 – The Quiet American

Finishing up Graham Greene’s exquisite little The Quiet American brings me up to speed now in terms of my 1001 Books club, and this post is a milestone in the blogging world too, as I’ve hit 1000 posts. Instead of writing the same things in two different places, I’m just going to copy and paste what I posted up on the boards:

What did you think of the book?

I appreciated the short, succinct nature of The Quiet American. I enjoyed the book’s politics, its own powerful, yet stilted, observations about the conflict from Fowler’s point of view, and the overwhelming drive for Pyle not only to save the country from itself, but to marry Phuong, to “save” her in a sense.

Had you read this author before?

No, but I had seen the movie (although I didn’t remember all of it).

Would you read something by him again?

Absolutely.

What would you rank this book out of 10?

8.

Do you think it deserves to be included on the list of 1001 and why?

I do think it deserves to be on the 1001 Books list. Why is a much harder question. I think unlike books on the list like The Lambs of London (which absolutely do not belong on the list) or every single title that Ian McEwan has written (I think they were desperate to fill the pages by then; and not that many don’t deserve to be, but every one?), The Quiet American has a fascinating sense of morality underlying its narrative: the line between good and evil isn’t clear, not in war, not in life, and certainly not between men.

As a kind of conversation between neo-colonialism (of the quiet kind) and overwrought, more classic colonialism of the French and British, the novel puts the characters of Pyle and Fowler in impossible situations, if only to prove the utter uselessness of either side. Pyle can no more get over his innocence in terms of his believe in the justifiable reasons behind his cause than Fowler can actually return to his old life in London. Both are changed and immutable at the same time, much like the old ideals each side clings to during the war.

Any insightful literary critiques?

The edition that I found (it’s a British Vintage, I think) has an introduction by Zadie Smith, who points out that Fowler’s description of the war is never far behind a major plot point. That even though he states over and over again that he is neutral, whether that actually turns out to be true or not, not becoming involved is impossible. Narrative and politics become merged into one, as if the setting can’t help but stretch itself into every single aspect of the story, which remains the reason why the novel succeeds.

And this line: “She put the needle down and sat back on her heels, looking at me. There was no scene, no tears, just thought — the long private thought of somebody who has to alter a whole course of life.”

PHOTO IN CONTEXT: I didn’t like the cover of the one I have here so I just searched out one I preferred.

READING CHALLENGES: I’m on track now for the 2 per month 1001 Books challenge, and finishing this book brings my complete score to 151. I am enjoying these classics so much that I’ve already started Sense and Sensibility. I might not read anything written in this century for a while. However, I do have work reading and Canadian challenge to get back to too.

At This Very Moment

My RRHB and his cousin are creating the plumbing in what will become our downstairs bathroom. The house smells like propane from a blowtorch. The sound of work boots stomping up and down the stairs is thrilling. And this week maybe we’ll pick out the toilet and sink. RRHB seems to laugh at me when I get excited about things like drywall being on the walls, but the closer we get to using all of our house, the less I feel like taking said blowtorch to it entirely.