bookdiscovery

Canada Reads 2012; Final Answer

2012-02-15T16:43:00.002-05:00

Canada Reads took quite a beating last week as it was hit by some of the harshest criticism ever in its 11-year lifespan. First of all, there was much controversy over the ill-judged comments of one of the panellists. People were unhappy, and expressed their outrage in print and electronically. Never have there been so many articles, blogs and tweets written about Canada Reads.

But there were other types of criticism as well. Some thought the scope of the program was too broad, others too narrow; there should be more thought put into the choice of panellists; there should be an author or two on the panel, the way there used to be; it’s a ridiculous, condescending idea—how can there be one book that every Canadian “should” read?

Any change is bound to provoke reaction and criticism and Canada Reads has certainly evolved over the years, with changes in format, makeup of the panel, type of books discussed, and viewer participation. For the first time since its inception, this year, nonfiction books were chosen instead of fiction, and it was quite a diverse selection. Here’s a very brief synopsis of the books, in the order they were voted out:

The Prisoner of Tehran, by Marina Nemat. This is a memoir of a young girl in Iran during the time of Khomeini, who, at the age of 16, speaks out against the government and is imprisoned and tortured in the infamous Evin Prison.

The Tiger, by John Vaillant. Vaillant takes us on a hunt for a man-eating tiger in Eastern Russia; suspenseful, informative, thought-provoking, with an important message about the fragile balance of nature and our effects on it.

On a Cold Road, by Dave Bidini. We travel with Bidini on a colourful cross-country tour and see Canada from the unique perspective of a young rock band, The Rheostatics, with anecdotal snapshots from other Canadian rock musicians.

The Game, by Ken Dryden. Dryden was goalie for the Montreal Canadiens for eight years and won six Stanley Cups! This is a thoughtful account of his last season with them in 1979.

Something Fierce, by Carmen Aguirre. This is a brave, passionate story, told from the point of view of a young woman in South America in the 80s, involved in the resistance movement to oust Pinochet from Chile.

Widening the scope to include nonfiction broadened the range of discussion dramatically, because for the first time (I think), much of the debate dealt with what constitutes a truly Canadian book. Is it important for the book to be set in Canada for it to resonate with the Canadian public, or is it enough that it be written by a Canadian and is a well-written story with an important message? The final vote, between The Game and Something Fierce, underlined that debate, with two such different stories and perspectives. In the end, Something Fierce came out on top, Mme. Goldwater having been persuaded, over the course of the debates, that this was an important book to read, regardless of one’s own political perspective. I found that singular accomplishment extremely heartening, and hope that the debates had similar effects on listeners, giving them reasons to try something they might not have considered before the program.

The panellists were probably as diverse as the celebrity parameter will allow. It is not a literary panel and does not claim to be so. This is a group of Canadian personalities who like to read and are willing to defend a book that they believe in, on air and in front of a studio audience. This year’s panel included a singer, an actor, a model, a lawyer, and a businessperson. While none of them write literary nonfiction, four of the five panellists do write: one has written a book; one writes song lyrics; one writes comedy; one writes legal arguments. All five are used to being in the public eye and “perform” in one way or another; at least two have to be quick on their feet to assess a situation, respond to it, and persuade others to their point of view. All love to read and had obviously read and thought about the books, and some had done outside reading to back up their position or refute the others. They all understand the power and importance of words, and took the role of defending their book quite seriously.

As Canada Reads evolves, each year brings something new, with aspirations of broadening its scope and increasing its audience. But changes that some find interesting will be problematic for others. Nevertheless, along with all the controversy and complaints this year, there was also very high praise. Some claimed that it was the best Canada Reads ever; many had ambitions of reading at least some, if not all, of the books from this year’s debates, not just the winner. A clear victory for Canada Reads.

Overall, Canada Reads 2012 was a definite success. Whether laudatory or disparaging, there have been many conversations about Canadian nonfiction. Great! Let’s count on many, many more such discussions. I am confident that Canada Reads will continue to try new things, to grow and improve, to be controversial, to garner both praise and criticism, and to keep people talking about Canadian books.

We’re half-way through Canada Reads 2012 and how do things stand?

2012-02-07T23:17:00.001-05:00

After two days of intense (fiery?) discussion, a few things are apparent. Three of the panellists are thoughtful and articulate and have done their homework (and one of them is very funny--I’m looking at you Alan Thicke!) But the other two should probably not be there. One is ill-prepared or too nervous to answer the questions properly and the second prefers inflammatory statements over intelligent discussion. Much has been written about the controversy surrounding day one, so I won’t repeat what everyone else is saying. Suffice to say that I’m disappointed, both at the disrespectful comments and the fact that my favourite book got voted off first!

Given the combination of solid story and defender, I was convinced my book would get to the final round, and I was shocked when it was knocked out on the first day. Of course, I’m talking about Prisoner of Tehran, by Marina Nemat, defended passionately and articulately by Arlene Dickinson.

Marina Nemat was imprisoned for two years during the time of Khomeini. In 1982, when she was 16, she was arrested for speaking out against government propaganda in school, taken to Evin prison, tortured, and sentenced to death. She was saved at the last minute by Ali, one of her interrogators, who had her sentence reduced to life in prison. In return, in the face of threats to her family, Marina was forced to convert to Islam and marry Ali. Her story is horrifying and heartbreaking, and although she eventually rejoined her family, married the man she loved and found a new life in Canada, she was haunted by the memories of that time, and of all the people she knew who had died unnecessarily. After more than 20 years, Nemat had to tell her story, to let others know something about what was happening in Iran during that time, and still continues today. Told in a straightforward, almost matter-of-fact manner, it’s a book that we should all read, and serves as a reminder that the human rights we take for granted here are not universal and we need to pay attention.

That left four books still in contention on Day 2, with four defenders and a wild card. Which book would be the next to go? The Tuesday debate was more engaging and collegial than Monday’s, more focussed on the quality of the writing, not just the content or the characters. The Tiger got several votes for excellent writing, and both The Game and Something Fierce earned points for engaging their audience. Not as much was said about On a Cold Road, although most people enjoyed it. But after the vote, The Tiger had to wave goodbye.

The Tiger is the story of a hunt for a man-eating tiger in Eastern Russia in the late 1990s. But in order to understand this story, we need to know some of the history of Eastern Russia and the Amur Tiger, as well as current conditions in that region. The history is fascinating, but it’s shocking to learn about the extreme poverty that still exists there and the very primitive way of life that many people still endure. Some of the scenes could have been from a century ago. But the amount of information was sometimes distracting from the flow of the narrative and although it was important, there were times when I just wanted him to get on with the story itself. But I raced through the last part when I got hooked again. It was quite suspenseful and I had a lot of sympathy for all the players, both man and beast. I enjoyed the book overall, and felt that Vaillant had an important message for us about the fragile balance of nature and our effect on it.

So, what can we expect tomorrow on Day 3?

Fun? Altercations? Thoughtful debate about the merits of the books in a calm, collegial, light-hearted atmosphere?

Three books remain: a hockey memoir written by one of the best goalies to play for the NHL; the story of a young girl coming of age and becoming a resistance fighter in Chile during the time of Pinochet; and a tour across Canada with a rock band. One of them will get the thumbs down. Let’s hope it is given and accepted in a spirit of goodwill and respect.

Playing with poems in January

2012-01-30T09:27:00.005-05:00

Reading adventures for 2012 have started off with a bang. In late December a few twitter friends had a wonderful idea that seems to have started a whole new movement. I will let @bookgaga give you the scoop on that: http://bookgaga.posterous.com/todayspoem-the-solace-and-delight-of-contempl but the basic idea is to start your day by reading a poem, and then sharing that poem on Twitter using the hashtag #todayspoem. Quote a line or two, or simply tell us the title and author, or give us a link to the poem or a reading… Whatever you want as long as you use the hashtag. Simple.

The repercussions from this idea have been amazing and so much fun. On a personal level, I’ve read more poems over the last month than I have over the last few years! I have revisited old favourites, like T.S. Eliot, e. e. cummings, Wordsworth, Housman and Robert Frost; I have read Seamus Heaney, Billy Collins, Pablo Neruda, Rilke, Robert Burns, Dionne Brand, Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, Charles Swinburne, Shakespeare … I’ve read poems about dogs, cooking, the wind, anger, money, the rain, digging potatoes, marriage, writing, snow, language, a sow, a scarf, dying, loving, knitting, dancing, crying …

I’ve heard Alan Rickman recite Shakespeare. I watched a video made by a young family playing in the snow while reciting “The Snow Man” by Wallace Stevens. I’ve listened to rap, watched performance art, seen people on the street recite poetry. I learned about ekphrastic poetry, which is written in reaction to another form of art, such as a painting, sculpture, dance… (Check out the AGO website for some intriguing modern examples of this, or read “Ode on a Grecian Urn” by John Keats.)

Todayspoem has brought together people from all over the world, all with a love of poetry, and thankfully, many different tastes. Every day provides a fascinating variety of discoveries mixed with some oldies. I don’t like every single poem and some I don’t understand, but I usually save them to look at again later, because often what appeals to you or connects with you depends on your mood. Some days unearth absolute gems. Imagine a day devoted to cooking for friends and coming across this:

Onions

BY WILLIAM MATTHEWS

How easily happiness begins by

dicing onions. A lump of sweet butter

slithers and swirls across the floor

of the sauté pan, especially if its

errant path crosses a tiny slick

of olive oil. Then a tumble of onions.

This could mean soup or risotto

or chutney (from the Sanskrit

chatni, to lick). Slowly the onions

go limp and then nacreous

and then what cookbooks call clear,

though if they were eyes you could see

clearly the cataracts in them.

It’s true it can make you weep

to peel them, to unfurl and to tease

from the taut ball first the brittle,

caramel-colored and decrepit

papery outside layer, the least

recent the reticent onion

wrapped around its growing body,

for there’s nothing to an onion

but skin, and it’s true you can go on

weeping as you go on in, through

the moist middle skins, the sweetest

and thickest, and you can go on

in to the core, to the bud-like,

acrid, fibrous skins densely

clustered there, stalky and in-

complete, and these are the most

pungent, like the nuggets of nightmare

and rage and murmury animal

comfort that infant humans secrete.

This is the best domestic perfume.

You sit down to eat with a rumor

of onions still on your twice-washed

hands and lift to your mouth a hint

of a story about loam and usual

endurance. It’s there when you clean up

and rinse the wine glasses and make

a joke, and you leave the minutest

whiff of it on the light switch,

later, when you climb the stairs.

What a delight and so perfectly suited to the day! That evening, one of our friends brought up the topic of poetry, wondering if people even read poetry anymore. I told them all about the #todayspoem movement on Twitter and they were surprised and intrigued; my husband shared our experience last year when we went to the Griffin Poetry Prize readings and how moving they were. They couldn’t believe that 1200 people turned out for a poetry reading, and were quite taken aback at my description of people elbowing each other to keep their place in line to buy poetry books! I told them how “Onions” started, and because they all love to cook, their reaction was similar to the poem’s itself; oh, you can make anything you want when you start with sautéing onions—soup, risotto, stew, pasta sauce… They loved it.

I have enjoyed this past month’s poetry fervour more than I can say. I had already started to read a bit more poetry over the past year but with the advent of #todayspoem, I am reading more than I ever anticipated. It is so satisfying to be able to share that enjoyment with likeminded people. I hope this happy movement continues to grow and gather new players. Anyone out there who hasn’t joined the fun yet, jump in anytime. Or if you just want to read and savour on your own, do that. Dig out an old anthology, or start searching on the internet. Find some poems you like, read, and enjoy! Here are some last words on the subject of poetry from the wonderful Billy Collins:

Introduction to Poetry

BY BILLY COLLINS

I ask them to take a poem

and hold it up to the light

like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem

and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room

and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski

across the surface of a poem

waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do

is tie the poem to a chair with rope

and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose

to find out what it really means.

Sharing the Joys of Reading

2012-01-13T13:12:00.006-05:00

Recently I was asked to write a guest blog for STELLAA, a charitable organization whose main goal is to promote literacy in Africa by providing books and other educational resources. It was founded in 2007 by volunteers who want to make an impact on literacy, the environment, and poverty in Africa.

In this first guest blog I was given carte blanche for a topic to choose. As an avid reader, former librarian, freelance editor, and seemingly nonstop tweeter and book-blogger, there were so many things I could write about. The question was how to narrow it down to just one thing! I finally chose to write about how much the reading experience can be enhanced when it is shared with other people.

I grew up in a country that provides schooling and assumes (and in fact insists) that we all receive a basic education. Many people probably don’t even think about this very much, because it is simply a fact of life for us. But other places in the world are not as fortunate. This is where charities like STELLAA play such a critical role. They help to provide what we take for granted, to those who are not as lucky. Read more about them on their website: www.stellaa.org and check out my essay on the joys of reading: http://bit.ly/yBfM5k

The Sky’s Dark Labyrinth: why tell this story as fiction?

2011-12-15T00:31:00.001-05:00

Guest post by Dr. Stuart Clark

It’s always in the top three questions about this book. Often, it’s question number one: why did I choose to tell the true stories of astronomers Kepler and Galileo in fictional form? The answer is a simple one. Their lives were so dramatic that there was nothing I needed to invent to make them work as novels. I just had to craft them.

As I worked on The Sky’s Dark Labyrinth, I discovered that some simplification was needed to keep the story moving and some invention was necessary to fill in the gaps but my aim was to preserve the important facts so readers could share in these staggeringly important moments of history. But share without the boring bits, the maths and the technicality and all that. I could hive that off behind the closed doors of my characters’ various offices and studies!

This would be a novel – biographical fiction if you want the latest literary buzzword – about astronomers rather than about astronomy.

As I performed my detailed research on the lives of Johannes Kepler and Galileo Galilei, I was staggered at the events that they witnessed and the lives that they led. I also learnt that science was born from these highly religious men, not to challenge God but to glory in Him.

I wanted to know, what was Galileo thinking when he stood before the Inquisition? What did Kepler feel like when he saw Tycho Brahe’s giant observatory for the first time (in its own time as marvellous as the Hubble Space Telescope is today)? How did Kepler react when the soldiers marched on Prague and a battle raged in the market square close to his house?

History could not tell me; the emotions, thoughts and fears of these men largely died with them. So, if I wanted to explore those deep human responses I had to turn to fiction and I had to speculate.

I reasoned that every scientist knows how to extrapolate between data points. I toyed with the idea that The Sky’s Dark Labyrinth would be the literary equivalent. Then I realised that presenting science as fiction had a long precedent.

When Galileo wrote his book about the moving Earth, the Dialogue, he did not present that in a dry, pedantic way. Oh no! He invented three characters who argued and presented different points of view in a fictional debate set over four days. Perfect, I thought, to use fiction to discuss the perception of scientific truth – and off I went.

The Sky’s Dark Labyrinth is the result. I hope you enjoy it.

The Sky's Dark Labyrinth

2011-12-12T21:42:00.011-05:00

By Stuart Clark

In today’s technological world, we have incredible access to information. Want to find out what happened overnight in Afghanistan or how the stock market is doing or who won the game? Listen to the news on the television or radio, or turn on your computer. In seconds you will have information, often more than you really want. Although science reporting doesn’t get much space in the general press, information in all areas of science, including astronomy, is readily available on the internet. We can find out about new discoveries or see pictures of planets, stars, nebulae … at the touch of our fingers on the keyboard.

We take our daily exposure to news and information for granted. In The Sky’s Dark Labyrinth, Stuart Clark takes us back to a time when this was far from true. Information was precious; it was hard-fought and not always easily shared. He tells us the story of a few of the brilliant men to whom we should be grateful. Their drive to find out as much as they could about astronomy, led to the legacy of our understanding of some of its mysteries and to the vast amount of information that is within our reach.

In the early 17^th century, people believed that the earth was the centre of the universe and the sun travelled around the earth to create day and night. This was the truth according to the church; this was how God had created the world and it was not something to be questioned.

But a few curious minds did question it. One of them was Galileo Galilei, Italian physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and all-around science genius, whose “optical tube” (precursor to modern telescopes) allowed him to observe the night sky at 20 times the magnification of the naked eye. Another was the German mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler, whose brilliance caught the attention of the colourful Tycho Brahe. Brahe invited Kepler to come and work with him in Prague where he had established an observatory that far outclassed anything currently in existence in its sophistication and precision. These men did not always agree about the interpretation of their observations, but they were unified in their goal: the pursuit of knowledge.

Their observations ultimately led them to question the accepted belief about the relative positions of the sun and the earth. This had serious repercussions both scientifically and personally. It went against everything that they’d been taught and although they were men of science, they were also men of faith, and questioning the teachings of the church was not insignificant for them.

Reading this book will fill you with awe at the magnitude of what these men accomplished. We must remember that they had to find their own way to pay for their pursuits. They either supported themselves with other work (Kepler was apparently quite adept at drawing astrological charts!) or somehow found a sponsor to help fund their efforts. Not only was it sometimes at great expense or hardship to themselves and their family, but it was also dangerous. Heresy was a very serious crime and being in conflict with the church was not to be taken lightly.

Clark brings these men to life with great vibrancy and detail. We are witness to their frustrations, their curiosity and imagination, and their painstaking, meticulous work, as well as their foibles and eccentricities. We sympathise with Kepler (and his wife) having to live a life without much luxury, for the sake of astronomy. We share Galileo’s astonishment and satisfaction at being able to see so much more in the sky, including the moons of Jupiter, with his optical tube. And we are captivated with Tycho Brahe’s eccentricities (elk for dinner? But not to eat!) and his willingness to fund a whole band of merry astronomers, diligently making observations and taking measurements late into the night every night without fail, despite some wild partying!

Probably most of us have a rudimentary knowledge of the history of this time, and the turmoil that these theories caused but Clark opens our eyes to some of the intrigue that might have gone on behind the scenes. Although we have a pretty good idea of how it all turns out, there is quite a bit of tension and suspense in this fascinating story, and despite ourselves we keep hoping that Galileo will escape the clutches of the Inquisition. Clark’s exposition of the men in the midst of this time of upheaval leaves us wanting more. Luckily for us, this is just the first in a trilogy about the mysteries of astronomy and the important players in its discoveries.

The epigraph in this first book is from Kepler: “The roads that lead man to knowledge are as wondrous as that knowledge itself.” Clark’s books will help us travel along that road.

Thank you to Polygon, McArthur, Ruth Seeley and the author for providing a review copy of The Sky's Dark Labyrinth, by Stuart Clark

Visit McArthur for more information: http://bit.ly/ttFVCt or Stuart Clark's website: www.stuartclark.com

The Measure of a Man

2011-11-25T17:08:00.002-05:00

The story of a father, a son, and a suit.

J.J. Lee

I was completely captivated by this book. Lee’s descriptions of cutting fabric and sewing on a Singer treadle machine took me back to when I learned to sew, under my mother’s guidance, also on a Singer treadle. I loved that treadle; it was so forgiving, allowing you to control the speed so you never ran into problems at corners or when putting in zippers. My mother made all our good clothes and to this day I cannot fathom how she managed, with 11 children undertow. But I remember them vividly and they were beautiful.

So many memories are tied to clothing, especially if they’re made just for you, and J.J. Lee explores this aspect of clothing in his memoir. In examining and dissecting and eventually remodeling his father’s suit, he evokes strong memories of his father. It takes Lee a long time to prepare, before he is ready to do anything to the suit. He knows that once he makes a cut, it is irrevocable. When he finally does cut into the fabric, he opens up the suit to expose unexpected material that had been used for padding; so too do unexpected images surface of his childhood and his troubled parent. It is a brave journey that Lee takes us on as he explores both the suit and his father’s life.

Along the way, we learn some fascinating history about men’s clothing and how the suit became the mainstay of a man’s wardrobe. To Lee, a suit is not just a piece of clothing; it has history, it has meaning, it can express a mood or one’s stature, it can communicate to others in unexpected ways. He compares it to poetry “… the suit becomes a haiku… (p.3) and other more sensual things: “… the lapel … will roll out like a blooming flower petal … all fullness and sensuality … wool labia opening out with an irresistible lushness.” (p.42) I guarantee, once you read this book you will never think about a suit in quite the same way again.

I enjoyed this book immensely. It is a warm, loving, open look at Lee’s father and his influence on Lee’s own life and goals, using the metaphor of the suit to help in this exploration. Eventually, Lee is able to come to terms with what he uncovers, and to accept the fit that he can achieve.

The Jade Peony

2011-10-14T12:51:00.003-04:00

By Wayson Choy

As part of the reading for my local library book club, we read the lovely, poignant story of The Jade Peony, by Wayson Choy. Set in Vancouver’s Chinatown of the 1930s and 40s, we see a Chinese family struggle to survive, through the eyes of three of the children. Each has a unique role in the family and a different perspective. As the story progresses, and we move from one child's narrative to the next, we see the family change and adapt and eventually face the consequences of war and its very real and personal effects here at home. The story is told with great tenderness for all the characters and I loved it very much the first time I read it.

I read it again for the book club and it was the second reading for many in the group as well. I still loved it, but it’s a very different experience to read a book for your book club rather than simply reading on your own, especially if you’re lucky enough (as I am) to belong to one with people who not only love to read, but who have opinions and love to voice them! Reading on our own is a very solitary, introspective endeavour. We read, we might ponder a bit, depending on the book, then we move on to the next. But in a book club, reading becomes a dynamic activity. There is heated debate, there is argument, you have to back up your ideas, you sometimes have to fight to have your turn to talk, people agree strongly about some things, and disagree vehemently on others; one or two pick up on something they felt was significant that others have totally missed and now want to go back and find that passage to verify; an inference is made which some agree with and others think is a bit farfetched… It is a lively two hours of discussion, discovery, laughter, disagreement, reading aloud, surprise, and sometimes very strong feelings. Our bond is the love of reading, but we represent different ages and stages in life, different types of careers (nursing, teaching, business, editing…) and several cultures and countries. Each one of us brings a unique perspective to the table and adds to the richness to be gained from the book.

Most of us liked the book very much, for various reasons: learning something about the Chinese culture; seeing the world from a child’s perspective; strong characterization; beautiful language; learning some history through fiction rather than non-fiction. We all agreed that although the book is set more than 70 years ago, about a culture that is different from most of us there that day, many of the ideas that Choy explores are universal. Family loyalty, racial prejudice, fitting in, and the role of women in society are as relevant today as they were then. He shows us how much we are the same, despite our differences.

Each month this book club reads and discusses a work of fiction (usually). We vote on the selection of books for the coming year and are quite honest in our thoughts about the book. By-and-large, it is a generous, forthright group of people who are not afraid to share their ideas and to perhaps learn something in the process. I count myself very fortunate to be a part of such a lively, intelligent community of readers and look forward to the next discussion.

November’s selection: The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery.

Cool Water

2011-09-15T21:41:00.003-04:00

Take a drink of Cool Water with Dianne Warren’s wonderful book set in the sand dunes of Southern Saskatchewan. Her novel, in the form of interconnected stories, paints a complex picture of a place in time and the people who live there.

There are so many things I loved about this book, but one thing that intrigued me (and took me back to university days) was that the structure, despite so many story lines, seemed to conform to the “three unities” of classic drama, as set out by Aristotle, and further refined by 17^th century French playwrights. The unities of action, time and place stipulate that the story take place roughly within a 24-hour time period, that it all happen in one location, and that the action be limited to one main idea with few subplots. Although Warren’s book is nothing like what one would associate with classical theatre, it does in fact fit these criteria fairly well.

The unity of time criterion is met, as the events unfold during the course of one day. Lee Torgenson awakens in the middle of the night to the sound of a horse galloping. He ignores this at first, since he is often plagued by phantom hoofbeats, but eventually gets up to discover a real horse outside. The horse does not protest when Lee saddles him, and so, with the light of the moon to guide them, they begin their 24-hour adventure together.

A long-distance horse race that took place many years earlier is described in the prologue. Starting at the buffalo rubbing stone just to the north of town, two cowboys outlined a 100-mile perimeter around the local hills and sand dunes. When Lee sets out on horseback, he inadvertently traces the same path as the cowboys. This historic path sets the parameters for the unity of place: Juliet, Saskatchewan and the Little Snake Hills.

Although Lee’s adventure starts the action, and literally draws a boundary around the story, there are many other tales that unfold. Aristotle thought that unity of action was the most important of the three, and that there must be only one main story or plot. Any other action should contribute to that plot in a structured, cohesive way, so that “…the structural union of the parts being such that, if any one of them is displaced or removed, the whole will be disjointed and disturbed. For a thing whose presence or absence makes no visible difference, is not an organic part of the whole.” ^[1]

In this case, the “plot” is to show the interconnectedness of the various people in the book and Warren does this beautifully. Thus, Cool Water fulfills the unity of action as well. Each of the stories is connected in some way to one or another and does “make [a] visible difference.” As Lee makes his way around the historic path, he sees or visits different farms and homesteads and we get a glimpse of the people who live there and how their lives crisscross and intertwine. We witness interactions between a cowboy and a rebellious teenager, a bank manager and a father of a family at the end of his rope. We see a father communicating with his son, and an older couple trying to make a connection with each other. We see one woman who’s lost a horse and another who is afraid she’s lost a husband. Innocent actions, seemingly isolated, have repercussions later, so that leaving a gate open, or writing down a phone number, can have potentially disastrous consequences.

This is a very satisfying book. Warren describes her complex, appealing characters in a very warm-hearted, straightforward manner. Through them, she reminds us that we are all connected. We live our lives and each of us has our own story but we are inextricably linked to others, no matter how ephemerally and whether or not we are aware of that connection and its possible effect. Not a new idea perhaps, but somehow comforting nonetheless, and Warren’s version of it is a pure pleasure to read.

1-Aristotle, Poetics, VIII

The Raven's Gift

2011-08-29T21:59:00.003-04:00

In a post-apocalyptic world, how would you react? Would you do just about anything to survive? Would you have hope? Or would you give in to despair as the world sinks into chaos and anarchy?

Don Rearden’s first novel explores this idea from the point of view of John Morgan, a young, once idealistic schoolteacher. He and his wife Anna moved to a tiny, remote village in northern Alaska, prepared for hardship, adventure and new experiences. But the village is overtaken by a virulent fever which speeds through the community, leaving many dead in its wake. Cut off from the rest of the world and finally realizing that the cavalry is not on its way, John eventually flees, in hopes of finding help or even anyone else alive.

We follow John’s journey in the present and through flashbacks. We see him as the idealist in a loving relationship with his wife, and also as a cynic with many questions. How did the virus reach this isolated community? How did it start? Was it a natural occurrence or was it a government experiment? Why is no one coming to help? Are they all dead, or is this part of the experiment—to see if an isolated community could survive such a devastating situation, and how resourceful they would be.

John’s story is totally engrossing. It is a fast-paced examination of a catastrophe that is all the more chilling to contemplate as we see how such a disaster could actually happen. Much food for thought here, but despite all, we are not left in total despair. A very strong first novel from Mr. Rearden.

State of Wonder

2011-08-10T23:10:00.002-04:00

By Ann Patchett

Dr. Marina Singh is sent to Brazil by the pharmaceutical company she works for, to track down the elusive Dr. Annick Swenson, who is working in the Amazon jungle on a very promising fertility drug. Marina is also in search of information about the death of her former colleague and research partner Anders Eckman.

Once in contact with Swenson, Marina travels with her into the jungle on a pontoon driven by a young deaf boy named Easter. Marina’s fear and discomfort are palpable, and when the end of the day brings a bombardment of insects, Patchett’s description is so vivid that we almost feel them raining down on us: “At dusk the insects came down in a storm, the hard-shelled and soft-sided, the biting and stinging, the chirping and buzzing and droning, every last one unfolded its paper wings and flew with unimaginable velocity into the eyes and mouths and noses of the only three humans they could find.” And as it gets darker Marina becomes even more uneasy because she cannot see the jungle anymore: “She felt the plant life pressing against the edges of the water, straining towards them, every root and tendril reaching.” We have complete empathy for her feelings of vulnerability and oppression.

State of Wonder is filled with such rich descriptions that create a very strong sense of place. It is a beautifully written book; the language is so detailed and vivid that we can almost hear the birds and touch the trees and smell the air after the rain. We are there in the jungle with Marina and her colleagues. Patchett’s creation of this world was the greatest strength of this book.

Another strong component is the development of Marina’s character as she confronts some of her long-held fears in this alien landscape; we see her strength and determination in going to the jungle on behalf of her friend; and we delight in her warm, wordless relationship with Easter. But in general, I felt that the character development was lacking. We do get to know Marina and to some degree, Swenson, and we learn to love her young companion, Easter, but there are many secondary characters that seem to exist merely to move the plot along.

I was enthralled with this book almost to the end. Patchett creates a spellbinding world and forces us to confront questions surrounding drug research, exploitation of natives, sacrifice, love, and betrayal. It is an intense read, demanding much contemplation.

But then, the ending. This was very, very disappointing. It was unexpected and anticlimactic, and felt rushed and out of character. In a way, it spoiled the earlier part of the book that had been so enjoyable. At the same time, the language is so vibrant, the jungle setting is portrayed so vividly, and there is so much to think about, that it might almost be enough to offset the ending. Almost.

Guest post by Peter Behrens

2011-07-13T22:04:00.007-04:00

As part of the July Anansi/Behrens blog tour, Peter Behrens has written a guest post for my blog. This is a first for me, so I am very excited and honoured to be part of the tour and host this author on my site. Thank-you Peter and thank-you Anansi. Here he is:

Writing Women

Readers have responded passionately to the women characters in my novels — especially to Red Molly in The Law Of Dreams, and to Iseult in The O’Briens. Readers who fall in love with those characters sometimes ask “How are you (a man) able to write women characters so well?” My first response is pleasure that they, as readers, responded to the characters, felt involved with them and curious about them. But the question is kind of strange, when you think about it. As a novelist and a screenwriter I'm in the business of imagining characters, creating them and inhabiting them. Yikes, how dreary a book or a career would be if I could only imagine or see things from a “male” point of view!

What helps me with women characters is a lifetime of research! I've lived with women all my life! My mother, for a start. I grew up with two sisters, very close in age. I've had women friends all my life, and I'm married to a woman. It's fun to write the interior lives of women — the world seen and experienced from inside a women's head. It's a challenge but not much different from the challenge of inhabiting a male character. What bores me is a character too much like myself. When I was in my 20s and finding my feet as a writer many of the main characters in the short stories I was composing (for my collection Night Driving) tended to be young men in their 20s . . . it was a sort of egotism, really. I'm long since over that. I'm not at all interested in myself as a character. I'd rather dive into the minds, hearts and points-of-view of characters — men women and children — whose range of experience is quite outside my own.

Women are often more vocal and articulate about their feelings. I've watched and listened. I hope I've learned. And I'm glad that readers feel the authenticity of the women in The Law Of Dreams and The O’Briens . . .

The O'Briens

2011-07-12T22:08:00.015-04:00

The O’Briens starts with us being introduced to Joe, grandson of Fergus, the central character in Behrens’ earlier novel, The Law of Dreams. We follow Joe and his family as they travel from Quebec to California, British Columbia and Maine, with a stop or two in Mexico and New York City. We see the world change over the course of 60 years from the viewpoint of several generations of the O’Brien family.

When we first meet Joe he is 13 years old, the eldest of five, and already the head of the house. His mother is failing and his father has disappeared, succumbing to the wanderlust that afflicts many of the O’Brien men. Joe is a fast learner and starts in business at a very young age, earning enough money to look after the whole family.

Joe is 17 when his mother dies, and he decides to move out west to make a fresh start and find his fortune. After making arrangements for the rest of his siblings, Joe makes stops at Coney Island to take stock and “…be alone with himself, to block out the world for a few days.” (p.53) For the first time in his life he is not only alone but free of all encumbrances and responsibilities. He finds it both exhilarating and paralysing and it takes a week of solitude and wrestling with a few demons before he is ready to move on and start carrying out the plan he outlined during his stopover: to find a wife, to have sons and daughters. When he meets Iseult Wilkins several years later in Venice, California, the first part of his plan falls into place.

Iseult recently lost her mother and is in a similar state to the one Joe was in at Coney Island. “She wanted to just be for awhile. To collect herself. Much of her life had just been a refraction of her parents’ desires and needs. She wanted light, and time to think…with nothing else for company.” (102) She feels unmoored but free. She wants to live with more intensity, and in that, she is a perfect match for Joe. Watching surfers at the beach with him, “She felt a tremble of excitement and suddenly knew she had to transpose her life into another key — harsher, riskier…she felt space opening up within her chest, lungs expanding, the power to breathe deeply and well.” (p.121)

Joe falls hard for Iseult and because of her, delays his trip to Mexico to examine a proposed railway route. After a whirlwind, five week courtship they are married and he whisks her off to Mexico for a combined honeymoon and business trip. Iseult is as open to adventure as Joe and shares his passion to try new things. He makes her things in a way she never has before. As the train enters Mexico, they are attacked by rebels and Joe pins her down to protect her. Amid the bullets and the screaming, Iseult feels “Slight nausea, exhilaration, and a sense of her life coming open, sudden and entire.” (p. 141) And so their married life begins.

They set up house in a tent in a railway camp in British Columbia, as Joe’s crew works on a section of the new railway system. Joe and Iseult contend with their share of difficulties and grief over the years, some of it seemingly unbearable, but with their strong foundation, no matter how off course they become, or adrift from one another, they always find each other again.

The first part of the novel is quite intense and we get to know Joe very well as a young man and then an infatuated husband. We know what he thinks and how he feels and gain some understanding of his motivations. After his Coney Island stop we don’t see Joe again until he meets Iseult in California. But now we see him through Iseult’s eyes, and in the beginning of their relationship they are extremely close and her view of him continues to be strong and fully developed. Later on, as the closeness of the marriage wanes and Iseult becomes less happy, and contemplates leaving Joe, the picture of Joe becomes more closed and remote.

The perspective of the story changes in the middle part as the second generation takes over. Joe and Iseult become secondary figures as we see the world through the eyes of their children, Mike, Margo and Frankie. We see Frankie grow up and watch Mike go off to war, estranged from his father. We feel Margo’s joy, then sadness as she falls in love, becomes a mother, and longs for her soldier husband to return. We get a broader picture now, a sense of more people, more change, more things happening in the world. It is like the stream of people that Iseult saw on the boardwalk in Venice. A general throng, an overall view, with no one thing standing out, except once in awhile something special, with more detail.

For example, Mike is a pilot with the RAF and and his view of the war and his sense of humour come through when he writes to Margo about how tired they all are and starting to make mistakes: “A chap was killed the other day flying into a Chance light. Good pilot too. If it were a hockey game we’d be calling for a line change!” (p.402) Or Johnny Taschereau, Margo’s husband, expressing his love but also a feeling of being disconnected:

I’m thinking of your wrists now.

I once knew my wife, down to her bones.

Do you have a sweet tan this summer? Comme une huronne?

…

Let me dispose of my adjectives, please. In your arms, please let me release them.

bloody,

silly,

fecal,

loud,

beaten,

red,

terror.

You see I have slipped into nouns… (p.430)

These are two brief examples of Behrens’ evocative language. He has a gift for painting a picture, of expressing that person in such a way that we see and understand them at that moment in their life.

Although the glimpses into their characters are illuminating, I miss the fact that none of the next generation is portrayed in the same depth as the parents. We get a peek into their makeup but we don’t spend as much time with them or get to know them as well. None of them has the personality of Joe or Iseult.

Overall, it is a colourful journey that we take with the O’Brien family as they live through six incredible decades of the twentieth century. They participate in two world wars, survive the Depression, and play a siginificant role in the building of the railroad. The world changes drastically from 1900 to 1960, and Joe at 73 is not the same person he was at 13. But he is still the patriarch, the strong centre of the family, and the one we care about the most. When the focus returns to him in the end we are happy to get to know him again and to see him finding his way once more.

Soldier of the Horse

2011-07-07T18:00:00.004-04:00

By Robert W. Mackay, c2011, Touchwood Editions

Robert Mackay’s first novel is a fast-paced, gripping account of one soldier’s experience during WWI, based partially on his own father’s recollections of serving in the Canadian Cavalry.

Mackay creates a sympathetic hero in Tom Macrae, articling student who suddenly finds himself in trouble with the law. Tom takes the offer of a stint in the army rather than go to jail and is shipped off to Europe to serve in Lord Strathcona’s Horse. The muddy trenches of France are a far cry from his Winnipeg home, but Tom proves his mettle in his new circumstances and rises up the ranks to become lance-corporal, corporal, and eventually troop sergeant, before his time is up.

Mackay’s depiction of the war is vivid and gritty. When Tom rides into battle, stabbing with his bayonet, we can almost feel the resistance going in, then the arm swinging back as he removes the blade. We feel sick with dread as a troop scouts ahead of the front line into No Man’s Land, far from protection, open to bullets and grenades. The rain is cold, the mud stinks, it is always wet and dark and everyone is afraid. Such tenuous circumstances result in fierce bonds of trust and loyalty. These young men depend on each other for their lives every day. They also rely on their horses and their bond with them is complex, combining love, dependence, responsibility and protection. In one horrific scene, Tom and another soldier rescue a companion after his horse is shot and the soldier is thrown, exposed to the enemy. But the horse is not dead and the young soldier will not leave his horse to die slowly. As it screams in anguish, the soldier makes his way back to finish the job. Tom understands:

He could not bear the suffering of the horses, creatures that only did the bidding of men. Innocent, somehow. He had seen horses gutted, legs blown off, blinded, shot, even gassed, and he knew he would live with their screams for the rest of his life. (p. 154)

Mackay does not glamorize war. It is ugly, dirty and terrifying. The soldiers endure things that no one can without harm. Those who make it home are scarred, and are haunted by unwelcome memories. After the war, Tom attends a talk by his former general at The Empire Club in Winnipeg. As General Seeley starts to relate his “very thrilling story—the story of your Canadian Cavalry,” Tom cannot stop the images that assault him and he is forced to leave:

…he saw, once again, Flowerdew tumble from his saddle…he was alone on galloping Toby…blood spattering from his flayed legs…Horses screamed and men moaned for their mothers and Planck bled out on the ground. René Carbonnier…died in Tom’s arms…Tom shuddered and left the hall, the general’s cultured tones fading. (p. 230)

His view of the war is not a “thrilling story” to be shared with others. It is personal and nightmarish, and he can’t even talk about it with his wife. When she reads from the newspaper about General Seeley’s speech, “He’s talking about the big picture,” said Tom. “All I know is it was a bloody mess from where I saw it.” (p.231)

But in the midst of the “bloody mess” and the brutality, Mackay shows us a story of humanity, loyalty, love and honour. Tom and his men are not fighting for glory or recognition. They simply want to survive and be allowed to return home to their families, marry their sweethearts, and live as normal a life as possible after the war. They test their courage every day, and despite their terror and against all odds, try to do what is right and necessary. Their actions are proof of their honour.

As most of the veterans from WWI have now passed away, Mackay’s book is a commemoration to them and other soldiers, and in particular to his own father. At least 15,000,000 soldiers and civilians were killed and another 20,000,000 were wounded in that Great War. Incomprehensible to think of those numbers and their long-lasting and far-reaching effects. Mackay shows us one tiny picture of the war through the eyes of a common soldier and reminds us what a precious thing it is to be able to lead an ordinary life.

Hide and Seek: A Murder Mystery

2011-06-16T21:41:00.002-04:00

by Thomas Kaplan-Maxfield, published 2011by Kepler Press, Cambridge, MA

In Hide and Seek, Thomas Kaplan-Maxfield takes the usual murder mystery formula and turns it upside down. Right from the start we know who the murderer is, so what is going to keep us interested? What is left to solve? In this case, the puzzle is not who the murderer is, but who is trying to track down the murderer, and why.

Told in the first person, the story unfolds through the eyes of young, spoiled David Draper. Madly in love with the captivating actress Melanie Carson, David strangles her one night in a fit of jealous rage, then anxiously waits for the Boston Police to come calling. Still free six months later, he is invited to join his sister and aunt in a Murder Mystery weekend on a tiny island off the coast of Cape Cod. Although David is uncomfortable at taking part, he is finally persuaded to go along. Several coincidences later, he is convinced that one of the participants is manipulating the weekend events to flush out Melanie’s murderer. Who is it and what will David do about it?

Starting a mystery from this reversed viewpoint requires the author to pique our interest in a different way from usual. It is a psychological mystery rather than an action-based one, relying on character study to keep us engaged. I have only read one other mystery with a similar perspective. In L.R.Wright’s wonderful novel, The Suspect, eighty-year-old George Wilcox is provoked into striking another elderly soul on the head and kills him. As in David’s situation, it was not planned or even thought of ahead of time, yet there it is—murder—and what to do about it? In both instances, the question is not who is the murderer, but will he get away with it?

There is another question for us as the reader, and this produces a different kind of tension in the story. The dichotomy between the person we get to know and the one who committed murder, creates a psychological unease. In this case, David is a pleasant, ordinary fellow, not the kind of person you would expect to strangle someone! Since we see everything from his point of view, we share his anxiety and are forced to have sympathy for his dilemma, despite ourselves. Do we want the detective to discover him or not? He’s nice. But, he killed someone! How can we like someone capable of that? How do we resolve our conflicting feelings? This conflict is sustained throughout the book as we get to know David better and see him interact with others. Though guilty, he “feels” innocent.

The resolution of the problem is not as tidy as I would like (one murder too many, some action with no obvious effect on the plot…) but overall Kaplan-Maxfield accomplishes his goal. We are intrigued and uncertain about the outcome right to the end. Will David get away with murder? You’ll have to read Hide and Seek to find out.

Room

2011-05-23T14:56:00.003-04:00

by Emma Donoghue

Jack has lived in one room for all of his five years. A backyard shed, converted into a living space that measures 11’x11’ and receives natural light from a single overhead skylight, it is all he has ever known. Confined there with his mother, Room is his whole world. But now that he has turned five Ma is thinking of an escape plan. Is Jack really ready for “Outside” or would he rather stay in Room, the only thing that is real to him?

Told from Jack’s point of view, this is an extraordinary story of a child’s closed world and the incredible strength, endurance and patience of his mother. In captivity his whole life, with no exposure to anyone other than his mother and occasionally “Old Nick” Jack learns about the world from his mother and from watching television. But without the actual experience of it, it is almost impossible for Jack to comprehend that outside really exists and that there is something other than Room or TV.

Originally, I had to put this book down after reading for only a short time. I found it demanding and tiring. But when I came back to it, I finished it almost all in one go. Two things bothered me at first. I found the five-year-old voice and perspective jarring and somewhat contrived. As the book progressed and Jack’s personality and experience developed, his voice seemed more genuine and natural.

But the major stumbling block was the unrelenting experience of the mother. Imagine being a young mother, locked in one room with a young baby, then toddler, then precocious five-year-old. Day-in, day-out, you are with that child at all times, with no help or relief from one single person. You are the mother, the father, the grandparents, cousins, friends, day-care worker, babysitter, teacher. You feed him, change him, bathe him, talk to him, play with him, devise ways to keep him entertained and stimulated and for him to get some exercise, teach him to read, write and sing, answer all his questions. You cannot talk to anyone at any time about anything that might go wrong or that irritates you or worries you. In fact you cannot talk to a single person for seven years other than your captor once or twice a week, and your son. Your son becomes your world.

For Jack and his mother, their world is each other, but Ma knows they must break free if they are to survive. Eventually they manage to escape from Room and its physical confines, but escaping its psychological hold is not as easy. Now they must learn to adapt to a completely different life, filled with people and things and noise and busyness of all kinds. Jack misses Room, where it is quiet and safe and predictable, and where he has Ma all to himself.

Emma Donoghue does a remarkable job of creating their world and what it would feel like to live in it. It is an exceptional accomplishment, and there are many things to learn from this courageous little boy and his mother. An exacting but worthwhile read

Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

2011-05-09T14:20:00.005-04:00

by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

Soon after the end of WWII, writer Juliet Ashton receives a letter from a man from Guernsey who is searching for information about Charles Lamb. So begins a correspondence that extends to others on Guernsey, in particular the members of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. Through the letters we learn about what happened to the people of this island during the German occupation and how they have fared since the war. The letters are delightful; often amusing and entertaining, sometimes sad and moving, always full of information. They paint a picture of the strong, brave, interesting characters that populate the island and what they endured. They did what was necessary to survive, including forming their literary society, and ended up with a love and appreciation for literature and all that it can do. Their straightforward goodness and lack of sentiment will charm you and make you wish that the letters could continue and tell you more of their story.

The Bird Sisters

2011-04-26T12:23:00.002-04:00

By Rebecca Rasmussen

Rebecca Rasmussen’s debut novel is a delight. Fascinated by the lives of two sisters and their family, charmed by the ease with which Rasmussen spins her tale, you will not want it to end.

Milly and Twiss are elderly sisters who live in the same house they have occupied all their lives. Known for their skill at saving injured birds, people drive for miles to bring them a bird to heal. We see them in the present, towards the end of their days, and we see them the summer that Milly was 16 and Twiss 14. Their incomparable cousin Bett came to visit, and nothing was the same after that.

Told by both sisters through a series of flashbacks, their individual personalities shine. Milly is sweet, thoughtful, loves to bake, and is easily teased. Twiss is rough and tumble, headstrong and wild, and loves to golf with her father. She is anything but sweet. Different but extremely close, they are fiercely loyal to each other.

Rasmussen presents their tale with love and tenderness and draws us right into the heart of these women. She reminds us just how exciting, passionate, and fragile the world can be. I’m hoping this is just the first of many stories she has to tell.

Pigeon English

2011-04-06T16:59:00.004-04:00

By Stephen Kelman, 2011, House of Anansi Press

With his first novel, Stephen Kelman demonstrates his story-telling talent, bringing to life a young boy who is one of the most lovable characters I have come across in a long time.

Harrison Opoku lives in London with his mother and older sister Lydia, while the rest of his family remain in Ghana for now. From the perspective of an eleven-year-old trying to learn the language and customs of a new country, the world is a bit of a scary place. But there are things he must learn if he wants to fit in, or even survive.

Inner-city life is far removed from Ghana, but Hari is learning to navigate its byways. How many of us remember what it is like to be that young, that primal, so innocent and fresh? At the same time aware of violence and danger that appear at any moment. When Lydia is getting her hair straightened by a friend one afternoon, Hari watches and Lydia admires herself in the mirror. Suddenly,

Miquita’s face went all hard… “Are you with us?” … Miquita was making the iron go near then pulling it away like a crazy game … Lydia closed her eyes … “I’m with you, I’m with you.” Lydia opened her eyes … there was one tiny patch on her cheek gone shiny and red … “Just keep still, I don’t wanna hurt you. You shouldn’t have moved.” Lydia: “Sorry.” I got my breath back. The world woke up again. When Lydia’s hair was finished it actually looked bo-styles. (pp. 140-141)

With this passage we see how easily an ordinary pastime can shift from playful innocence to deadly seriousness in an instant. Lydia suffers one tiny burn to remind her of this episode and the very real possibility of extreme harm. Then, we shift back to normal, admiring how beautifully her hair turned out, and everyone is friendly again, as though nothing had happened.But we are reminded that the underlying danger is a constant thing and can surface at any moment.

Does Hari learn the language and codes necessary to get along in this new and threatening place? Does his “pidgin English” eventually transform into a language of survival? For the moment Hari combines the vernacular of his peers, filled with British slang, with Ghanaian terms and some of his own making. This gives Hari a unique, fresh voice, and we feel that we are truly hearing this child tell his story in his own words.

He is a beautiful spirit who feels the need to do good things, whether something tiny, like making his sister smile to “save the day” or something much larger, like tracking down the murderer of a young boy. We see his great love for his family, particularly his younger sister, Agnes, and the sacrifices he is willing to make for them; we see his curiosity about the world; we see his bravery in trying to identify the killer and in his refusal to submit to the local gang; and his attachment to his “own” special pigeon is endearing. In short, we learn to love him. But be careful, for he may break your heart.

The Canterbury Trail

2011-03-28T16:38:00.002-04:00

By Angie Abdou

With a wink to Chaucer and his Canterbury Tales, Angie Abdou assembles her own group of diverse personalities and sends them on a pilgrimage. She mixes up a batch of locals, foreigners, ski-bums, red-necks, hippies and urbanites and takes them trekking up a mountain one beautiful spring weekend for a last taste of powder. They ski, snowshoe and snowmobile their way up to “Camelot” the local ski cabin. Each group is unaware of the others and is somewhat dismayed to find that they must share the space. But they all make the best of it, and with more than a bit of booze and pot to help mellow out some of the conflicts, there is much ribald fun.

This is not a plot-driven story, although there is a definite agenda: climb the mountain and conquer the slopes; enjoy. This is a study in characters, and as we meet each one, we learn a bit about their personality and their reasons for participating in this venture. In time we get to see more than what appears on the surface, and although we might not always like what we see, we gain some insights and come to care about what happens to them.

Obviously, combining such disparate types could lead to conflict and tension, and it does. But there is also a lot of comedy, and some scenes made me laugh out loud, tears rolling down my cheeks. After an evening of indulgence, Alison (urbanite journalist) is horribly sick the next morning, and when she throws up from the upstairs bedroom window, it is so vivid, you can almost smell it. Then Lanny (the miller) having spent the night outside, wakes up from the noise and the odour hits him so hard that he makes a snowball to suck and hold under his nose, so that he doesn’t succumb. Amusing as this scene is, it also helps solidify the characters. We’ve all been there. We can immediately identify with these people so they seem more real to us, and we like them a bit more. This is just one of many examples that illustrate Abdou’s talent for making her characters come to life.

There is humour in various forms throughout the book and in general the tone is fairly casual and low-key. Some of the characters have serious issues to deal with, but the book itself feels quite light-hearted overall. Like most of us, they lead their lives in a fairly trusting way. Then, with a whumpf we are reminded that nature has its own rhythm, and if we are caught in it, it is terrifying, implacable, inexorable…final.

With The Bone Cage, Abdou showed us her talent for plunging us into the heart of the story from the very first sentence. She does the same here, and also delights us with her humour. But with her ending we see an entirely new side to her writing. She lulls us into a fun adventure, then hits us hard. In a last moving, powerful section, Abdou takes us “…somewhere beyond words.” All we can do is sit back and admire.

Pandora's Bottle

2011-03-17T20:20:00.002-04:00

By Joanne Lessner

Sy Hampton’s bid of half a million dollars at a wine auction wins him a bottle of wine. Yes, one bottle, but what a bottle it is. This is a Bordeaux, a Chateau Lafite 1787 once owned by Thomas Jefferson, and possibly still drinkable after more than 200 years. The winemaker at that time had experimented with the best barrel of the exceptional 1787 vintage, using extended maceration for 40 days and adding a secret ingredient. “La chose secrète” was still a mystery. No one knew what he had added, but it was supposed to preserve the wine and keep it drinkable for far longer than usual. Only the owner of the wine will be able to find out if it actually worked.

Once Sy acquires the wine he'd been coveting, he has to decide what to do with it. Drink it now, keep it, drink it by himself, open it up with other wine-lovers, or share it with a special someone? Sy opts for the latter, and invites a beautiful young woman to share the excitement of opening the bottle, with expectations of a wonderful evening together, enjoying something truly special. Hopes are high. And when he finally opens the bottle, he does not seem disappointed:

Sy lifted the bottle to his nose and breathed. The luscious aroma of earth, chocolate, fruit, and smoke was dizzying. Sheer, unadulterated desire overtook him, and his entire body grew weak.

The inspiration for Lessner’s tale came from an event that took place at The Four Seasons restaurant in 1989. New York wine merchant William Sokolin had been commissioned by a British wine firm to sell a Chateau Margaux 1787, etched with Thomas Jefferson’s initials, who was well known for his love of Bordeaux. Sokolin was hoping for $500,000 for the bottle but had had no cash offers to date. In showing it off to the other wine-lovers that evening, somehow the bottle was broken. Although the bottle did not shatter, it was punctured in two places. Wine flowed out and Sokolin fled, mortified.

Lessner takes this incident and runs with it, embellishing and exaggerating, then adding a diverse cast of characters, to produce a delightful romp. Take a few middle-aged oenophiles, a young woman with the seductive name of Valentina D’Ambrosio, a waiter/dancer named Tripp, an ambitious French-Canadian restaurateur, a young boy named Eric and mix well. Add some mistaken identity, a couple strong Brooklyn accents, and dashes of naivete, romance and suspense to spice things up. Finish with a large helping of humour and enjoy.

This is an entertaining read, but with some serious elements as well. We care about the men and women in this book as they make choices involving love, family, money and ambition. Sy is struggling with a mid-life crisis. The bottle is a kind of metaphor for his life; what will he do now that he has reached this point and realized some of his dreams? Will he remain alone or will he share his life with someone else? The event at the restaurant serves as a catalyst for several other characters to examine their lives and make some changes. These are significant decisions, but it never feels too serious. Everything is handled with a light touch.

Lessner leads us through the novel with ease and verve. She is a talented playwright, actor and singer and has written the lyrics to several musicals with her husband, composer/conductor Josh Rosenblum, including Fermat’s Last Tango and Einstein’s Dreams. Pandora’s Bottle is her first venture in writing a novel. Given how much fun she seemed to have with it, I’m pretty sure she will go for an encore.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

2011-03-07T15:17:00.003-05:00

By Rebecca Skloot

HeLa cells had been used for decades in scientific research, but when Rebecca Skloot first heard of them in high school and wanted to know something about the woman for whom they were named, nobody could answer her questions. Eventually, needing to satisfy her own curiosity and convinced of the importance of this story, Skloot decided to investigate, determined to let the world know about the woman whose cells have helped so many. She has written a moving, thought-provoking book, which deals with ethics in science, racism, poverty, and the importance and strength of family ties. Skloot tells us the story of Henrietta Lacks and how her cells became “immortal” after her death.

Henrietta Lacks was born in Virginia in 1920 and died 31 years later from aggressive cervical cancer. During her short life she bore five children and worked as a tobacco farmer. She ended her days in excruciating pain and was buried in an unmarked grave. We learn about Henrietta’s incredibly hard, impoverished life, through Skloot's research and her contact with the Lacks family. Wary at first, she eventually convinces them to talk to her, and Deborah, Mrs. Lacks’ daughter, joins Ms. Skloot in her mission to tell the world about her mother and the story behind the cells that are so familiar to scientists, but unheard of to everyone else.

Lacks was treated for her cancer at Johns Hopkins Hospital, using a method that today sounds like absolute torture. Doctors there took cells from her cervix without her knowledge or consent, and cultured them. Culturing cells was tried routinely, but the cells always died. This time was different; Henrietta’s cells lived, and not only that, reproduced incredibly. Her cell line became known as HeLa from the first two letters of her first and last names.

Mrs. Lacks died later that year. Her family was not aware that part of her had been removed, that her cells had been cultured, and that they were being used in scientific research. They had no idea that her cells had been so beneficial to important medical and scientific advancements, or that people were profiting from marketing them, until more than 20 years later. This was because scientists wanted blood samples from surviving family members, to help study the HeLa cells and try to understand why they had become “immortal” when others died.

Skloot does a good job explaining the science involved in the culturing of cells and why they are so incredibly important. She takes us on a journey of discovery that took her ten years to reveal and we are enthralled. But this is not only a book about science and research and history, it is also a story of love and family. Deborah opens up to Skloot because she also wants to know about what happened to her mother. It is her journey of discovery as well. Just a toddler when her mother died, she does not remember her and knows very little about her. She is avid to learn more. Through Skloot’s research and detective skills, Deborah eventually finds out more of her mother’s story. There are many tears along the way (for the reader as well) as we learn about Henrietta’s suffering (the autopsy report is unbelievably brutal to read) but also joy and relief to finally gain some longed-for knowledge about her mother’s life.

There is much to learn from this book. How many people even think about how research is conducted or where the material for the research comes from? How many would realize that so much has been accomplished based solely on this one line of cells? Without Henrietta Lacks’ cells to work with, our knowledge and understanding of many diseases (cancer, polio and AIDS to name a few) would be much further behind.

Some other things we learn are not so pleasant. Many passages are shocking. It becomes clear early on why the family is distrustful of doctors and scientists and wary of reporters. There were many instances in the early 20^th century and even into the 1940s, of doctors and scientists using black patients for research and experiments, often allowing patients to die, in order to make observations, rather than treating them. Other “experiments” are cited that are enough to make one angry and ashamed that we as humans, are capable of such atrocities towards one another.

Rebecca Skloot has produced a compelling, intelligent book that gives us a hint of the wonder of science and the excitement of discovery. She raises questions about ethics in scientific and medical research that are still relevant. Henrietta Lacks’ family is left with the knowledge that her cells live on and continue to contribute to medical advancements to this day. A wonderful legacy, but many have profited from research using these cells, and her family still lives in poverty, unable to pay for health insurance or to take advantage of the treatments that her cells helped to develop. Skloot reminds us of the human story behind the science and that even advancements that benefit humanity may have personal consequences as well.

Crime Machine

2011-01-28T13:11:00.003-05:00

By Giles Blunt

With his recent book, Crime Machine, Giles Blunt has returned to his tried-and-true wonderful protagonist, detective John Cardinal.

Working with his partner and best friend, Lise Delorme, Cardinal tackles the latest gruesome murder in Algonquin Bay, the beheading of a visiting Russian couple. Cardinal and Delorme must sift through the many distractions, red herrings and real leads (attractive American reporter, annual fur auction, “family” of criminals in hiding, 20 year-old cold-case file) before they can determine the solution to this brutal crime. There are many threads to the story but Blunt’s conclusion weaves them together nicely, and there is plenty of suspense to keep us hooked right to the end.

Apart from the mystery to be solved, it’s always a pleasure to read another story about John Cardinal. He is still dealing with severe grief and loss over the death of his wife. Catherine suffered terribly from depression, and after her death John felt guilt as well as grief, despite all he had done to support her. His vulnerability and humanity add another dimension to the novel so that we are just as interested in his own personal story as we are in the mystery.

This novel brings Blunt back to his best writing. His attempts to write outside this detective series are not as successful; story-lines and protagonists are not as well developed and seem flat compared to his mystery novels. With Crime Machine, we return to familiar territory, peopled with strong and colourful characters. Let’s hope Blunt maintains this series a bit longer because I’m sure John Cardinal still has a lot to tell us.

The Bone Cage

2011-01-21T12:39:00.002-05:00

By Angie Abdou

Angie Abdou’s debut novel The Bone Cage, places us squarely in the world of two dedicated athletes. With her powerful imagery and her gift for the smallest detail, their daily routines feel very real. We sweat down with Digger as he prepares for weigh-in and we swim countless lengths in the pool with Sadie. Although the demanding and often harsh practices these two must endure would be alien to most people, Abdou draws us in to such a degree that it all feels normal and matter-of-fact as we fall into their patterns.

Each chapter alternates between the two main characters, Sadie Jorgenson, a 26-year-old swimmer, and Digger (Tom) Stapleton, a 28-year-old wrestler. Both have qualified and are preparing for the 2004 Olympics. They are living with their parents during this time and there is a sense that their lives are “on hold” for now, as practising their sport occupies them completely.

The picture of Sadie is more fully developed than Digger’s. She is a bit of a loner and is quite introspective. We learn about how she feels, how she sometimes uses literature to get through her practices, memorizing poetry or rewriting the classics, or recalling quotations that seem apt to her situation. She seems very real and understandable. She displays one of the few strong emotional bonds in the novel, that between her and her grandmother. They have a loving, supportive relationship, unencumbered by expectations. When her grandmother dies, Sadie is devastated, and mourns her loss physically. Her body collapses and refuses to follow its usual pattern. She sleeps for days, needing time to recuperate emotionally; that can only happen when she is strong again physically.

Digger’s portion of the story is interesting because of his sport. It is fascinating to learn about some of the techniques and strategies used in wrestling. But he is not as fully drawn as Sadie and although he is a hard worker, he seems young for his age. Neither of them has time for any other career or occupation, and their social life is almost non-existent. They are very focused on themselves. But it is their single-mindedness that has brought them this far and which allows them to survive the physical demands on their body.

One of the powerful aspects of the book is Abdou’s concrete imagery. There is an immediacy to her visceral, graphic details that allows us to feel the athletes’ pain or exhaustion. Occasionally, too, we are given a glimpse of satisfaction, even contentment that is as much physical as emotional. There are a couple of such instances early on when Sadie is swimming. The constant repetition of her strokes and kicks become mesmerizing, like a mantra, and nothing exists for awhile but her body and its repetitive movements as she travels back and forth from one end of the pool to the other. There is a feeling of calm, almost meditation, and Sadie is in total harmony with her body:

One, two, three, breathe. One, two, three, breathe. She slides easily into the rhythm of her stroke … up one side, back on the other …The even splashing of her own arms, her own feet, soothes her. Her breathing fills her ears…. herself into herself. She doesn’t think. She acts. Her body knows the movements. (29)

With this fleeting picture, Abdou shows us why the drudgery and the pain and the routine of being so dedicated to a sport might all be worthwhile.

Death at La Fenice

2011-01-14T13:44:00.004-05:00

By Donna Leon

In the first of a series of mysteries set in the enchanting city of Venice, a famous conductor has been murdered at the opera, between acts of “La Traviata.” We are introduced to the unassuming, yet brilliant Commissario Guido Brunetti and follow along as he unravels this mystery.

As with most detective stories that I love, the plot, though interesting and important, is secondary to the characters. Leon has created an endearing protagonist in Brunetti. As he goes about the business of solving the murder, we watch him interact with his colleagues, his highly non-functional boss, his literate wife Paola and his two teen-agers. He loves his family and has a very stable home life. I think it is this which allows him to function so well in a job which exposes him to the very worst of society while he strives to find the truth. He is sensible and hard-working, and has great compassion as well as a sense of humour. He is calm, and seems content with his lot. There is none of the angst so apparent in many detectives, and the violence of the crime is minimized. The result is a relaxed, engaging story, set in a most beautiful city, and when it is finished, we are ready for another episode.

I’m looking forward to making my way through the rest of the series, with my new love and guide, Guido Brunetti.

Will the real Harry Bosch please stand up?

2010-12-02T16:53:00.005-05:00

The Reversal, by Michael Connelly

One of my favourite mystery characters of all time is Connelly’s LAPD detective, Harry (Hieronymous) Bosch. Bosch takes us into the gritty world of a cop in Los Angeles, bringing us along as he cracks the latest murder. We get to know him and some of his quirks, loves and weaknesses. He is tough but vulnerable, he loves jazz, he’s lonely. He has a dogged integrity that wins the reader over. His story is often horrifying but always interesting and engaging.

But, the last few Connelly mysteries have been disappointing and The Reversal is no exception. Bosch teams up with lawyer Mickey Haller to solve a 24-year-old crime. Connelly alternates point-of-view between the two men, but this technique has a very negative result. Instead of getting twice the story, we get less than half. Neither character shines; neither one is fully developed or as strong as usual. Because we only see Bosch part of the time, we don’t get the same sense of what he’s up to and the steps he’s taking to solve the crime. Half the story is missing.

The mystery itself feels dull and uninspired. The crime is brutal of course, but a re-trial after 24 years is not gripping in the way that a current crime would be. Trying to prove that the original suspect is guilty, does not provide the same suspense as following the trail of a killer and hunting him down.

One of Connelly’s strengths is his talent for making his characters come to life. Unfortunately, this does not happen in The Reversal. The characters are two-dimensional, and potentially interesting relationships are virtually ignored. Haller and Bosch are half-brothers who only learned of each other’s existence a few years earlier. They barely know each other, yet they are working together on this case. Another complex relationship is that of Bosch and his teenage daughter Madeline. She has recently come to live with him after the murder of her mother in the previous book The Nine Dragons. Suddenly, father and daughter have to learn to live together as well as deal with their grief and loss. So much scope here for personal insight or drama that would have been the norm in earlier works and might have added enough depth to round out the story.

I really wanted to like this book. I think Connelly’s earlier works are some of the best mysteries around, and he has created some complex, vulnerable, appealing characters. He can tell an exciting story like nobody else. I’m confident he’ll get back to doing that once more and that we’ll see the real Harry Bosch again soon.

Old British Mysteries and a Cup of Tea

2010-11-20T13:50:00.002-05:00

Nov. 20, 2010

Recent tweets about female British mystery writers reminded me of how I was introduced to mysteries, and inspired me to revisit the very first one I read: The Daughter of Time, by Josephine Tey.

I must admit that early in my life I was a bit of a snob when it came to mysteries. It was only when my father-in-law suggested that I read one that I thought there might be something to it. He was a soft-spoken, well-read, academic man, and was the University Librarian at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon for much of his career. He read widely and voraciously, and loved mysteries. So, when he suggested that I try reading Josephine Tey, I took his opinion seriously and even though I had my doubts, I thought I would give it a try.

What a brilliant suggestion that was. The Daughter of Time is no ordinary mystery. Instead of puzzling over a current murder, we are taken on a fascinating journey, examining the character of someone thought to have committed murder over 400 years ago. The question is whether this man is the evil mastermind behind the crime or whether he has been maligned by historians all this time.

The story starts off with our hero, Inspector Alan Grant of Scotland Yard, confined to bed in hospital, with a broken leg. To help relieve his boredom, a friend brings him a package of portraits to examine, as Grant has a reputation for being quite good at the study of faces. In the lot is one of a serious man, someone used to power and responsibility, who had perhaps been ill as a child. Grant is astounded when he discovers that he is looking at a portrait of Richard III. He is amazed, and disappointed with himself. How could he not see evil in that face? He spends many hours simply staring at the portrait, trying to see what must have escaped him. After much reflection, and discussion with others, he decides to take his detective skills back in time and find out as much as he can about Richard. He needs to know how a man with the face of a judge could have committed the heinous crimes of which he is accused.

Tey takes us on a journey through history, examining contemporary letters and documents, and reading from history books that we discover are based on no more than hearsay. Although the events in question took place hundreds of years ago, there is still a feeling of suspense, and there is outrage and sadness for the innocent victims. After all, two young princes did disappear and were probably murdered. The question is, was it the uncle, Richard III, who was behind the murders, or someone else? Tey’s wit and intelligence draw the reader into the mystery and we are as enthralled with Grant’s study of Richard and his time, as he is.

Tey’s book, published in 1951, was key in rekindling interest in Richard and the controversy over his portrayal by such well-known authors as Sir Thomas More and William Shakespeare. Her facts and her research, her questioning of historical truth, all told in her typical amusing style, reached many more people as a mystery novel than any history text could ever have done. The Richard III Society was re-established and became even stronger in its mission to clear Richard’s name. It boasts thousands of members from around the world, and nowadays, most historians at least acknowledge the possibility that Richard may not have been as villainous as previously thought.

Of course, as my father-in-law foresaw, I was hooked by Tey. Her beautiful language, colourful characters, and fascinating puzzle intrigued me, and I devoured her other mysteries. Next on the list was Dorothy L. Sayers, then P.D. James, Ngaio Marsh, and the race was on. What fun discovering and getting to know all those authors and their characters. I loved Lord Peter and Harriet Vane and hoped so much that they would get together. Adam Dalgleish’s poetry showed a sensitive, vulnerable side that made him all the more appealing. And I absolutely adored Detective Chief-Inspector Roderick Alleyn of Scotland Yard, and his talented artist wife Agatha Troy. All of them became like old friends, and I could hardly wait to read the next book and find out what was happening to them.

Eventually, I moved on to include modern mysteries from all over the world, but I am still partial to the older Brits. Their mystery stories never seem as violent or threatening or oppressive as current ones. I find them relaxing, perhaps because of their slower pace from an earlier time, and because of the associations they have for me from my initial reading of them. When we visited my in-laws we would all settle in the family room after dinner, my father-in-law with his pipe, and his book or cryptic crossword; the rest of the family would read or contribute desultorily to his cryptic clues (he certainly didn’t need help from any of us!) It was very calm and peaceful and I have fond memories of those cozy evenings..

So, if you haven’t yet discovered their charm, curl up on the couch with a Tey (or a Marsh or a Sayers), a nice hot cup of tea, then relax and escape to another time and place.

Innocent, by Scott Turow

2010-10-14T13:38:00.003-04:00

Once again Scott Turow has produced a page-turner. Rusty Sabich, chief judge of an appellate court, wakes up one morning to find his wife dead in bed beside him. The question is, how did she die, and did Rusty have anything to do with it?

Twenty-two years earlier, Rusty was charged with murdering his mistress. The case against him was strong enough to keep us in suspense the whole book, but eventually, he was acquitted. We see him in the same predicament again, accused of murdering a significant woman in his life. The earlier book, Presumed Innocent, was a fast-paced, tension-filled novel, full of twists and turns, with an ending that I found completely unexpected and actually somewhat shocking--very thought-provoking. I was dying to read Innocent, to see how Rusty would fare this time around. It definitely kept my attention and I found it hard to put down, but ultimately, despite the complex story line and the unrelenting tension, I was disappointed. Somehow, I was not engaged by the characters. My recollection of the previous book was that I actually liked Rusty and cared about what happened to him. This time I found him quite aloof, hard to read, and not all that likable. Other characters are not fully developed and none of them commanded my sympathy or respect except for the prosecutor, Tommy Molto. He seemed the most genuine, and turned out to be one of the most honest people in the book, a man stuck in a thankless job, trying his best to do the right thing. The ending of the earlier book was extremely significant and would definitely have affected Rusty’s relationship with his wife, Barbara. I found it frustrating that the actual event is never referred to, not even in Rusty’s thoughts. Perhaps because some readers of Innocent might not have read the earlier one yet and Turow didn’t want to spoil it for them, but I found this quite annoying and unrealistic.

Turow is a talented writer with a gift for constructing complex story lines, creating tension, and keeping his readers riveted. Innocent was a wild ride but I was very glad when it was over. Here’s hoping his next mystery includes characters that we care about more, so we can enjoy the ride and want it to last longer.

Canadian Favourites, Old and New

2010-08-26T09:14:00.000-04:00

All the talk these last few days about over/under-rated Canadian authors made me start thinking about all the books by Canadian authors I have read over the years, many of which I have truly loved and read many times over. So, I decided to put together a list of my own, based purely on the fact that I like them, and no other criteria whatsoever. They move me in some way, they make me laugh out loud, they make me nostalgic, they intrigue me…

Here they are:

Anne of Green Gables, by Lucy Maud Montgomery

One of my all-time favourite books, I have read it innumerable times, have watched the CBC movie twice, and still cry and laugh every time. Anne is a charmer and a delight, and eventually all who meet her fall under her spell. How can you not wish you could be her “kindred spirit”?

Who Has Seen the Wind, by W.O. Mitchell

Another favourite from younger days, which I think I will dig out and reread (again!) Growing up on the prairies, it was so easy to relate to this book, and the later version with Kurelek’s illustrations bring back so many memories of visiting cousins, exploring the amazing hills in southern Saskatchewan, smelling hay and wild sage… Wonderful!

The Edible Woman, by Margaret Atwood

I absolutely loved this book when I read it back in university days. Atwood explores relationships and gender roles using humour and she does it extremely well. I vaguely remember that the main character finds it very hard to eat anything because she starts to identify with food, as she feels she is being devoured in her relationship with her fiancée. Have no idea if it would stand the test of time, but I laughed out loud the first time around.

Les Belles-Soeurs, by Michel Tremblay

Another one from university days, and one of many plays by Tremblay which I enjoyed. Reading joual and hearing it onstage was such a pleasure; not exactly like the French my parents spoke but very similar. Again, I could relate to the characters; they were women who sounded just like my “ma-tantes”, they were poor, they teased each other and they were extremely funny. Those women were so much a part of their environment, so Quebecoises, but people in English Canada understood and loved them, and there is even a Scottish version which did very well! What a talent Tremblay has.

Bousille et les Justes, by Gratien Gelinas

This was one of the first plays I read by Gelinas, and it’s hard to say that I actually enjoyed it but it was quite memorable. The story is quite sad and the atmosphere is depressing. And yet, Bousille touches your heart. He is an innocent, surrounded by a family (les Justes) who do not want him to tell the truth about a crime that he has witnessed, because it will implicate another member of the family. They use various means to try to persuade him to change his mind. Gelinas translated this play into English himself and both the French and the English version were extremely successful.

Forty Words for Sorrow, by Giles Blunt

This is the first in a series of detective novels featuring John Cardinal, whom I love. He is smart and persevering, cares about his work and finding out the truth, and adores his wife and daughter. He has a secret in his past which haunts him and which.makes him human and vulnerable. This is gritty and not for the faint of heart, but getting to know John Cardinal is worth it.

Three Day Road, by Joseph Boyden

Boyden’s first novel tells the tale of two young Cree men who join the Canadian army during WWI and are used as snipers by the military. When Xavier returns, his aunt, Niska, tells him stories of his young days when she raised him in the bush, to try to help him heal. Xavier is in drastic need of healing, both in body and spirit. A moving, powerful, story, loosely based on a real character, told beautifully by Boyden.

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, by Alan Bradley

This was such a fun read. Flavia de Luce is a brilliant eleven-year-old girl who loves chemistry, especially concocting poisons, fights with her two older sisters constantly, and enjoys hanging out at the library. She’s extremely clever, is a bit of a loner, and whizzes around town on her trusty bicycle companion named Gladys, gathering information to solve the latest mystery. What’s not to love?

Amphibian, by Carla Gunn

Another child protagonist whom I adored and who made me laugh till the tears rolled down my cheeks. As we see the world through the eyes of nine-year-old Phineas Walsh, environmentalist par excellence, we are reminded how beautiful and amazing, but sad and scary the world can be. His struggle to make sense of this puzzling place is poignant and serious, but also entertaining and often hilarious. He is fascinating, endearing and inspiring. I guarantee you will love him.

Annabel, by Kathleen Winter

This is a haunting story, with some powerful scenes that are so poignant you think your heart will break. A baby is born to a young couple in Labrador but is it a boy or a girl? Raised as a boy, we follow Wayne through childhood to early adulthood. We feel his bewilderment and misery over his lonely predicament, but we also share his wonder for the beauty he sees in the world around him and the joy of love and friendship. Through poetic language and vivid imagery, his complicated, unusual story is told tenderly and lovingly.

The Cellist of Sarajevo, by Steven Galloway

Canadian author Steven Galloway’s third novel is an intensely moving story, set during the siege of Sarajevo (1992-1996). It is partly based on an actual event, in which twenty-two people were killed while waiting in line for bread. The next day, a famous cellist enters the square where the shelling took place and plays the Albinoni Adagio in their memory. He vows to return and play each day for each person killed. This is a haunting story, that I hope many will read. We lucky ones in Canada sometimes need a reminder, not only of what others endure in war-torn countries, but how quickly and easily our world can be transformed into such a state. Kudos to Mr.Galloway.

Well, that was a quick, fun exercise. Interesting to think back over some of my favourites and then challenging to narrow them down. I’ve been reminded of books I haven’t read for a long time that I might reread and of course there are so many, many more that I had to leave out! And now, with the two lists from the National Post, I have a lot more exploring to do, not to mention my current list of books to read. But I really enjoyed doing this for myself, so even if nobody reads this post, it’s still been worthwhile for me. But if you do read it, please feel free to leave comments on my choices or tell me some of yours. Even better, post a list yourself! So … what are some of your favourite Canadian books?

The Cellist of Sarajevo

2010-08-23T21:08:00.004-04:00

By Steven Galloway

Although the title derives from this incredible incident, the cellist’s actions serve mainly as background to the story. He does not interact with any of the main characters, although they are aware of him and in some cases, their lives are affected by him. Three separate narratives tell the stories of three different people struggling to survive in a world that has changed from a civilized society to one of anarchy. Everyday they are confronted with choices that could lead to death or injury or to a loss of integrity and self-respect. They feel helpless, abandoned, vulnerable, angry and terrified. Yet, in many moving scenes, they exhibit courage in the face of fear, and a determination not to lose their humanity.

Galloway’s vivid prose brings the characters to life and the intertwining stories create suspense. The most arresting story for me was that of Arrow, a young female sniper. She has been dragged into the conflict against her will, and unfortunately for her, she is very talented. She is afraid that she will never be able to return to being the person she was before the war. Her personal struggle is by far the hardest.

The ending is incredible and I won’t spoil it for those who haven’t read it. It is both sad and hopeful, and it will remain with you for a long time. Sad for various reasons, not the least being the inevitable politics of any situation, so that even in a case where all should be fighting together against a common enemy, there is still conflict and in-fighting within the ranks. But it is also hopeful because we see a determination to be true to oneself in the face of death or torture.

This is a powerful, haunting story, that I hope many will read. We lucky ones in Canada sometimes need a reminder, not only of what others endure in war-torn countries, but how quickly and easily our world can be transformed into such a state. Kudos to Mr. Galloway.

Q and A with Kathleen Winter

2010-07-11T16:34:00.002-04:00

Recently, I read the wonderful book Annabel, by Kathleen Winter, which I reviewed and posted earlier on this blog. After reading the book and thinking about it a lot, I wrote to Kathleen a few times with some questions and she was kind enough to indulge me and take the time to answer them. She also gave me permission to post them, so here they are. Hope you find them interesting and thought-provoking.

JD: Overall, I loved the book and found your writing so poetic. You really evoke a sense of place in your descriptions of the land and the wildness of Labrador and the hustle of St. John’s. Your portraits of the characters are all so strong and real, especially Wayne and Treadway. Even though I hated what Treadway did sometimes, I could always understand him because we got to know him so well. But, I was wondering why you ended up treating Jacinta the way you did. She starts off as such an important support for Wayne, yet she ends up becoming so withdrawn and eccentric (perhaps more than a bit crazy for awhile?) that she virtually disappears as an important element of his life. She goes from being the most important to the least, and we don’t really hear from her again. That bothered me because I found her so sympathetic and likeable in the beginning. I thought it was a bit unfair for Treadway to end up being the strong, important one instead of her.

KW: You're right about Jacinta - she does retreat. I'm not sure I know the answer to your question, except maybe to say that yes, it was a choice I made, to have Treadway emerge as the stronger one, and I can see why a reader might feel the way you do. It would be a good question for a book club! I felt that Jacinta's self-enforced repression of her wishes regarding Wayne, all through his childhood, made her feel ultimately that she had made a deep mistake that she didn't know how to fix. I already had a strong female character who didn't care what any man thought (Thomasina) and I guess I gave her the bravest female role.

JD: Images of bridges occur throughout the book. Thomasina sends Wayne postcards of bridges while she travels, she talks to Wayne about bridges, and Wayne and Wally create their own beautiful version of the Ponte Vecchio. In the end, Wayne decides to study and design bridges himself. I thought it was a wonderful metaphor for Wayne, as a bridge or transition between two worlds. How did you come up with this idea , or is it possible to pinpoint when or how the seed for an idea is planted? I thought it was a very beautiful image.

KW: I can pinpoint the instant bridges came to me. The Ponte Vecchio did not exist in early drafts; Wally and Wayne built a treehouse, but the treehouse didn’t feel right to me. For a long time I left it in there but I knew it wasn’t what the story needed. I didn’t have a clue what to do instead. I was having coffee outdoors at Café El Mundo with my husband and the idea of bridges flew gently into my head, and I knew then and there what was going to happen with bridges throughout the story. It was a gift, the idea. A lot of writing is like that, for me. There is author control on one side, and inspiration on the other. It is really important to me to admit that I don’t know the answer to something I’m writing about, and to let the question sit, over time, until the idea wants to come to me of its own accord, in a completely unexpected form.

JD:Both Jacinta and Thomasina support the feminine side of Wayne right from the start. Treadway tries his best to encourage the more masculine aspects of his son and in fact, seems to be afraid of seeing any signs of femininity. Do you think that women in general are more accepting of differences in people and are more inclined to take people as they are and not feel threatened? Or is that too broad a generalization? Is there any research that you found on this idea?

KW: One of the hardest things for me in the writing of this novel was to stand back and allow the concepts of masculinity and femininity to breathe. I think they are artificial concepts when it comes to the soul, or the inner person. So I did not want to polarize them, even in apparently polarized characters, like Treadway and Jacinta. Treadway has music in him; he sings, and he has intensely private moments in which he consults the wilderness about whether he has made a mistake in forcing Wayne to be raised as a boy. Jacinta and the other women in the novel have strengths that we often attribute to men. But yes, I have observed that while gender is more fluid than social constraints pretend, it often appears that a man like Treadway would have a harder time accepting that fluidity, on the surface at least, than Jacinta or Thomasina would.

JD: Why did you isolate Wayne quite so much? When Treadway dismantles the “Ponte Vecchio” Wally and Wayne are broken apart. Why did you make it so drastic? Surely Wally would have understood that Wayne was not to blame for Treadway’s actions? It was actually surprising that Wayne was not more depressed or even suicidal, given his lot in life and the isolation he had to endure for so long.

KW: I mentioned earlier that there is a tension between author control of a story, and what the story wants to do. I don’t decide ahead of time what is going to happen. Wayne’s isolation was an important part of the whole atmosphere of this story, which is, in part, about loneliness. Loneliness is an important theme to me, and I think it is one reason why readers read novels. There is an essential loneliness that affects us all, and that is why I love E.M.Forster’s epigraph in Howard’s End: “Only connect.” I think that in order for Wayne to connect, to belong, and to find his place in the world, he had to go through a dark night of the soul first.

JD: Wayne’s attack by Derek Warford and his crew really bothered me. Why did his first sexual experience after his operation have to be so horrific and devastating? I’m sure you must have had good reasons for the way the story progressed, so please forgive me but this just didn’t seem quite right to me.

KW: I did think of removing the attack scene from the book after I had written it, because it is so brutal. Then I did some reading about what happens to many intersex people and others who don't fit at extreme ends of the gender spectrum, and realized that this scene was mild compared to the brutality, torture and even murder that many people of ambiguous gender have to face. So I left it in. I was disturbed by it too.

JD: You’ve probably read Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides, another book about a trans-gendered young person, but treated in a completely different way. What did you think of it? In that novel, Cal ends up deciding to live out his life as a man. How do you see Wayne living the rest of his life? Do you think he will become more one gender than another, or do you prefer not to think about the rest of his life, or is that possible? I find it hard not to think about him a lot and I’m just a reader; I imagine that as a writer it would be even harder.

KW: I am just beginning the first chapter of Middlesex now, after finishing my own book, so I don’t have any thoughts on it yet. But I do have thoughts about how Wayne lives out the rest of his life. He has been through a lot. He has been through so much sadness and loneliness, but at the end of the book he has begun to find a place of wholeness and belonging. In my mind I see him as moving further into that place, where people in his life will love him for all his beautiful qualities, and where he can give love in return. I did not realize when I set out to write the book, which began as a short story, how much it would focus on his childhood and youth. By the end of the novel he has only just begun to find his place in the world, but I hope that for him it is a good place. I see him as living beyond gender. I see him as having a beautiful face and graceful way of walking. I see him as someone whose gender strangers will not be able to tell, but I see him as having a circle of friends and loved ones who understand that he is intersex. In the time of the novel (starting with his birth in 1968) and in the locations covered in it, I did not find him a satisfactory lover, although I did write intimate scenes that did not end up in the book, because he had not yet come into his final way of being, his new, whole self, and for real intimacy he would have had to find someone who responded completely to his real self. I think that happens later in his life, and I think it might have to happen in a big city, although I could be wrong about that.

JD: One final question, about Wayne’s best friend. Why did poor Wally have to lose her voice? It was her one true passion and it was taken from her in such a dramatic way. Actually, I thought you treated her a bit harshly overall. She was so confident and a leader without trying when she was young, then along comes Donna and Wally is “taken down”. What were your reasons for all of that?

KW: This question really interests me because it makes me think more deeply about where I came up with Wally’s harsh experiences. She remained a strong person, but by around grade five something happened to the social atmosphere at school. There formed a social hierarchy, with sophisticated and hidden forms of creating inner and outer circles, as well as outcasts. I have seen and experienced this, and I know it affects children deeply for life, so I felt it was important enough to put in the book. The scene in which she loses her voice comes directly out of this atmosphere of covert bullying. She lost her voice because she had the courage to speak out against the bully, who reacted with impulsive violence. When I wrote that scene, I wanted to take it out of the book. I told my daughter, who was the same age as Wally and Donna, about the problem: that I did not want singing to become impossible for Wally, since, as you say, it was her one true passion. My daughter replied, “Have her sing anyway.” So that is what I did.

Thank you for these great questions. They go deep into the book and I appreciate them. Kathleen.

JD: Thank-you Kathleen for taking the time for this. I really loved the book and found it a very tender story. So easy to love Wayne!

Edith's War

2010-07-06T11:18:00.003-04:00

By Andrew Smith

In times of war, everything you take for granted about your life is transformed. The illusion of safety, faith in your country and the rules that govern it, normal routines of work, feeding and looking after your family, are all upset and new rules and routines need to be established in order to survive.

Set in England during the Second World War, Edith Maguire’s story is that of an ordinary young woman suddenly going through a time that is no longer ordinary. Her experience is like many others, and it gives us a very tiny glimpse into what happens in extreme circumstances. Multiply that by several thousands and we might get an idea of what war-time is like for the family and community the soldiers leave behind. War affects everyone. With their world turned upside down, people behave in ways that they normally would not, and they are forever changed by that.

Over the course of the novel, we discover some of Edith’s experiences during the war, and the consequences of her and others’ behaviour. Two distinct narratives tell her story, and by far the stronger of the two is that of Edith herself. We see her live through the war with her mother-in-law in the small town of Shrimpley, near Liverpool. Young, pregnant, with her husband away at war, estranged from her own family, we feel her loneliness and confusion. Appalled by her own country when Italian neighbours are taken away because of Britain’s internment policy, she is angry and disillusioned. Her story is alive with her struggle to survive and to make sense of a world that has become senseless. Interspersed throughout her story, are her sons’ reminiscences from today’s perspective. Awaiting her arrival in Venice, Will and Shamus spend the day wandering around the city, sightseeing, drinking coffee and bickering about everything, especially their family. As the two story-lines intersect, we get a more complete picture of Edith and her life since the war.

Edith’s War is one small snapshot of a time that is long gone but whose consequences live on. It is a powerful reminder of the fragility of our own world and what thin threads hold it together.

Annabel

2010-06-24T15:45:00.002-04:00

Kathleen Winter

The story of Annabel is told through the heart and mind of a boy named Wayne. A child is born to a young couple in Labrador, who is neither distinctly girl nor boy, but both. Born at home, only the parents and midwife know about the baby and all three are stymied. Should the child be altered so that he or she may become completely one or the other, or would it be possible to let the child simply grow up as is, having qualities of both? The latter is what Jacinta, the mother, would prefer, and so does Thomasina, the midwife. They are loth to change this beautiful little person and risk losing an important element of its being. But Treadway, the father, decides the child should be a boy. They name him Wayne.

Early in life, Wayne realizes that he is not quite the same as everyone else but he’s not sure how different he is. He feels haunted by a presence, almost as though someone is hiding inside him, wanting to break free. He longs to express the grace and beauty deep within himself but also knows that certain kinds of behaviour are acceptable and others are not. The desire to wear a girl’s bathing suit, like that worn by the soloist of the Russian synchronized swim team, must be kept secret. His outward demeanor must conform to what is expected and so, doing chores with Treadway, he knows “… that a grim, matter-of-fact attitude was required of him by his father, and he learned how to exhibit such an attitude … but it was not his authentic self.” Wayne’s parents, particularly Treadway, are terrified of that authentic self showing through. How would Wayne be seen by others, and how would they treat him? Ironically, it is their own behaviour that causes him pain and isolation. Treadway alienates Wayne’s best friend and both parents end up withdrawing from his life in their own way, leaving Wayne almost completely alone. Wayne must face the quandary of his existence by himself.

Wayne’s haunting tale unfolds. We follow him through his journey to adulthood, experimenting, making mistakes, reaching out. We feel his bewilderment over his lonely predicament and his misery when he is treated abominably. We share his wonder for the beauty he sees in the world around him and the joy of love and friendship. Through poetic language and vivid imagery, his complicated, unusual story is told tenderly and lovingly. We feel what Wayne feels, and it seems real and true. It is a powerful story of hope that we can eventually bridge the gap between one another so that we can truly be ourselves.

The Hour I First Believed

2010-06-11T14:23:00.002-04:00

By Wally Lamb

Wally Lamb takes us on a journey into the heart of a man struggling to make some sense of his life and ultimately to discover what he believes in.

Caelum Quirk teaches at Columbine High School and his wife Maureen is the school nurse. Because of a family emergency, Caelum is absent on the tragic day of the Columbine shootings. Maureen is not so lucky, and finds herself hiding in a library cupboard, waiting to die. When Caelum rushes back to Colorado he is overjoyed and relieved to find his wife unhurt physically, but neither of them can comprehend the devastating psychological harm that Maureen has suffered. She is damaged to such a degree that their whole relationship, how they fit together, how they fit into this world, is called into question. Searching for some comfort and stability in their lives, they return to their old family farm in Connecticut. They struggle together to find sanity and order and seem to be making a start, but before any hope can be found, more tragedy befalls them.

I liked the early part of the book very much and kept hoping for the best for Caelum and Maureen. Their efforts to heal themselves and each other and the many problems they faced seemed honest and genuine. But the second half almost felt like a new book. Caelum’s complicated family history is brought to light and we see its effect on him and others. We read about prison life for women, both current and historical. While both of those story-lines are fascinating on their own, they feel somewhat distracting from the main theme. Many other topics are touched on as well, such as chaos theory, alienation, drug addiction, quests, hope, despair and belief. The multitude of threads make the book less cohesive and the amount of tragedy seems excessive. Although it is a long book at over 700 pages, the ending felt too abrupt. Some loose ends were tidied up unnecessarily, while others were not worked out satisfactorily. Maureen’s “salvation” did not ring true and getting rid of her felt like a cop-out. Surely, the metaphor of Caelum’s quest did not require him to actually be alone to face the world at the end?

Despite some of the criticisms, I could not put the book down. Lamb has created complex characters facing devastating problems. He poses hard questions about violence and its aftermath. How do people deal with its long-lasting effects? How do they live their lives afterwards? What do they believe in to help them get through it and get back to “normal”? Is that even possible? Thought-provoking questions for all of us to ponder.

Amphibian

2010-05-18T23:32:00.002-04:00

By Carla Gunn

Amphibian is the story of Phineas Walsh, a precocious nine-year-old boy. As he tells his story we see the world through Phin’s eyes and we are reminded how beautiful and amazing, but sad and scary the world can be. His struggle to make sense of this puzzling place is poignant and serious, but also entertaining and often hilarious.

Phin is obsessed with the state of the world’s animals and he thinks about them all the time. Almost everything he talks about relates to the animal world in some way. If his mother makes an offhand comment , his rejoinder is about how an animal or insect would react in that situation. It sometimes seems as though he is thinking like an animal himself!

When Phin compliments his mother on how she looks in her new white pants, she is devastated to learn that he meant she looked bigger in the white pants than the black ones! In the animal world, bigger is better because “the bigger they are, the less likely they are to be attacked by predators.” Phin doesn’t understand that while this is useful for animals, it has nothing to do with people, especially women, who only want to look thin, not bigger!

Phin’s main concern is that so many animals are endangered or threatened. He would like to do something to help but what can a kid do? He feels helpless and overwhelmed and is losing sleep over this. Unlike other people, Phin cannot put aside troublesome thoughts and get on with normal activities, like chores, homework, and playing with friends. Even his playtime is preoccupied; he deals with his various anxieties by writing about his imaginary world of Reull and its animal inhabitants.

When Phin’s teacher gets a White’s Tree Frog for the class and keeps it in an aquarium, Phin realizes that this is his opportunity to finally do something and save at least one small animal. He enlists his best friend Bird in his plan and their attempt to rescue Cuddles (Phin named him!) is bold, crazy and brave. Phin has taken his first step and although it had mixed results, he is now on his path.

Carla Gunn has created a character who is as innocent and vulnerable as the animals he is concerned about. At the same time, he seems a little too old for his nine years. He is already trying to come to terms with the world he lives in and his attempt to figure out how he fits into it is fascinating, endearing and inspiring.

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

2010-04-28T23:20:00.006-04:00

Alan Bradley c2009

I am a sucker for child protagonists and this book did not disappoint me. Flavia de Luce is a brilliant eleven-year-old girl with a passion for chemistry, in particular the concocting of poisons. She lives with her father and her two older sisters, who fight with her mercilessly (guess why she delights in experimenting with poisons?!). Interesting secondary characters abound, including their housekeeper Mrs. Mullet, who, in Flavia’s words “… was short and grey and round as a millstone and who, I’m quite sure, thought of herself as a character in a poem by A.A. Milne…” and tortures them by baking “pus-like custard pies.”

Set in the small English town of Bishop’s Lacey during the summer of 1950, Flavia is confronted with a series of mysterious events that she is compelled to investigate. Racing around the neighbourhood with her faithful companion, Gladys (her bicycle), Flavia consults the library (of course!) and makes various inquiries around town that seem destined to land her in an impossibly difficult situation. Needless to say, she is quite resourceful, and since this is the first of a series of books, I don’t think I’ll spoil it for anyone by saying that Flavia comes through with flying colours! Some tense moments along the way, some funny ones, and some interesting and moving moments with her father, and his manservant, Dogger.

The story is captivating right from the start. We see Flavia’s unique brilliance and her ability to extricate herself from difficult situations from the first page. She is obviously extremely clever but is a bit of a loner and does not seem to associate with other children very much. Her association with Dogger is touching, the way she seeks revenge on her sisters is unique and quite entertaining, and her relationship with her father tugs at the heartstrings without being sentimental in the least.

The story whizzes along breezily, much like Flavia herself, and we are drawn in and held hostage. We are let go at the end, but by then we have developed Stockholm Syndrome and we do not want to leave this captivating young girl and her intriguing family. Fortunately, Flavia returns in The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag, and I feel compelled to go and seek her out once more. No doubt Flavia will be as spellbinding in this mystery as in the first.

Introduction to Literature: Poems

2010-04-21T00:26:00.002-04:00

Edited by Lynn Altenbernd, and Leslie L. Lewis

In honour of Poetry Month, I decided to revisit an old friend, slightly behind the times but still with lots to offer. Yes indeed, it is that oldtimer published in 1969, the second edition of “Altenbernd and Lewis.” This particular copy is a dog-eared and slightly stained paperback, much-loved and much-used, dating back to university days. The last poet included in the anthology is the American poet Anne Sexton (1928-1974), so obviously it is far from up-to-date, but I still find it a handy reference tool for so much that was written up to that time. I have other poetry books on my shelf, most published after this one, so I am not completely out of touch with the current world of poetry, but this one is still a favourite.

I took several poetry classes at the U. of S. in Saskatoon and remember one particular professor very fondly. Ron Marken’s love of poetry was apparent for all to see and his classes were dynamic and exciting. I can recall many instances of listening to him read with great feeling from Gerard Manley Hopkins (one of his very favourites) or T.S. Eliot. One of my own favourites dates from that time, Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” I found the chorus calming and mesmerizing: “In the room the women come and go/Talking of Michelangelo.” Of course some of the lines are much more meaningful now than when I was a student!

And indeed there will be time

To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”

Time to turn back and descend the stair,

With a bald spot in the middle of my hair------

(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)

I find it very appealing to be able to pick up this book and look for some of the poems that I love and remember from my student days.

Apart from nostalgia, why would I recommend this book? First of all, despite the fact that it is not up to date, it covers quite a bit of territory. It starts with “A Handbook for the Study of Poetry,” which is divided into sections covering the nature of poetry, its language, form and content. A useful guide for the neophyte, it gives some background to poetic tradition, and explains how the form of the poem can affect the meaning.

Apart from a few anonymous lyrics from the 1200’s (of course the very first one is “Sumer is Icumen In”) and some ballads, the only known author listed from the Middle Ages is Geoffrey Chaucer. Three of his poems are reproduced, including the prologue to the Canterbury Tales. From there we jump to the sixteenth century where we meet Sir Thomas Wyatt, Sir Walter Raleigh, Christopher Marlowe, and Shakespeare, among others. The seventeenth of course includes Ben Jonson, John Donne and Milton, and the eighteenth Swift, Pope and Gray. Thereafter we move to the Romantic Period (Blake, Wordsworth, Burns, Byron, Shelley, Keats...) the Victorian Age (Whitman, Tennyson, Browning, Emily Dickinson, Hopkins) and ending with the Modern Period (Hardy, Housman, Yeats, Frost, Sandburg, Eliot, Auden, Dylan Thomas, Anne Sexton). All the mainstays are there.

For me it is a wonderful collection of old favourites and I can pick it up and find something enjoyable to read without too much difficulty. However, there are a few small points that could have improved its usefulness. It would be nice to know something about the poets, and all we are told are the dates of birth and death. Where were they born? Where did they live? When did they start to write? A few details would have made these writers come to life a bit more. Secondly, this is a book of anglo-saxon writers, almost totally British. It might have been nice to include a few examples of masterpieces from Europe, Asia or Africa, such as Rumi (Tajikistan, thirteenth century) or Paul Verlaine (French, nineteenth century) . . . Obviously, you would need some books of poetry from other countries to round out your collection.

These are minor quibbles. It is a very comprehensive book for someone who wants an overview of the development of poetry in the Anglo-Saxon tradition from Chaucer’s time to the mid-twentieth century and includes some truly breathtaking and beautiful lines.

I think continually of those who were truly great

. . .

Who wore at their hearts the fire’s centre.

Born of the sun, they travelled a short while toward the sun

And left the vivid air signed with their honour.

(I Think Continually of Those, Stephen Spender/1909-1995, English)

Good Harbor

2010-04-14T17:44:00.000-04:00

By Anita Diamant

Kathleen and Joyce become good friends over the course of a summer spent in Gloucester, Massachusetts. They take walks along the beach at Good Harbor, a metaphor for the safety and support they feel as they walk and talk there together. Each one is dealing with a crisis of sorts at this point in their lives; Kathleen is facing breast cancer and Joyce is struggling with her marriage and her teenage daughter. Despite their age difference they feel a rapport soon after they meet and spend many hours together, walking, talking, and learning to support each other through their trials.

This book did not completely engage me and I probably would not have finished it were it not for my book club. But it was an interesting session that night and we had quite a lively discussion. The importance of communication, relevance of religion, dealing with grief and fear, were just some of the topics we debated. Much food for thought in this easy read.

The Time Traveler's Wife

2010-04-14T17:07:00.000-04:00

Audrey Niffeneger’s tale of lovers dealing with the additional difficulty of literally being out of step in time.

Henry is away travelling and Clare is home waiting for him to return. Sound familiar? But this is no ordinary travel and no ordinary wait. Henry is time travelling. He was born with a genetic anomaly that sends him out of current time, visiting places and people in the past and occasionally in the future. He has no control over these adventures. It could happen anytime, he could show up anywhere, although he doesn’t stray far from familiar territory, and it can last for any length of time. When he comes back, he often returns to his own home, but sometimes not. Both in travelling away and returning, he is often thrown into unusual circumstances or dangerous situations and sometimes gets hurt. Clare never knows when he will return or in what condition. All she can do is wait.

The story is told alternately by Clare and Henry so we get a good sense of what it is like for each of them to have to deal with this problem. They love each other very much but Henry’s disappearances and the inherent worry for his safety are hard for Clare to bear. Another difficulty is their inability to conceive a child and that drains her both physically and emotionally. As an artist, she is able to express some of her grief and worry through her creations. For Henry the time-travelling is very physically demanding and he is often exhausted and ravenously hungry. He gets thinner and more wraith-like as he gets older.

In the end, it is a love story, fraught with all the ordinary worries and problems of any ordinary two people. However, since Henry is far from ordinary, they have to face problems that most people would never even have to contemplate. Despite the suspension of disbelief required of the reader, it feels very real, passionate and believable.