June 30, 2008
Seen Reading Within Readings
Seen Reading Within Readings: Spotted on Page 75 of Maggie Hellwig’s Girls Fall Down, on the Yonge subway line south of Davisville, “someone reading Shopaholic Takes Manhattan, everybody pretending not to notice the man in the mask”.
June 30, 2008
The Vows of Silence by Susan Hill
There is a precedent for me appreciating crime fiction turns by literary writers, and her name is Kate Atkinson and so I was intrigued to read The Vows of Silence by Susan Hill. I’d read Hill’s 1973 novel In the Springtime of the Year quite recently, she has run her own press Long Barn Books since 1997, and is a very prolific blogger.
I also suspect that it’s true that I’d like crime fiction full stop, but I’ve not read enough of it to be sure of this. The rush to the end though, pieces fall together– it’s my favourite part of reading anything.
The Vows of Silence is fourth in a series of Simon Serrailler novels (and a fifth is in the works). Though the book stood alone just fine, back story illuminated whenever necessary, but not so that detail was superfluous. I had all the tools I required to follow the story of Detective Simon Serrailler, on the case when random sniper starts shooting young women in the Cathedral town of Lafferton. The first victim a new bride shot dead just inside her apartment, then a group of girls out at a club for a hen night, and a wedding dress designer who’s been advertising in town– and all this with an upcoming wedding at the cathedral, with the Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall scheduled to be in attendance.
I’m not sure this is the case with most crime novels, but it is in my limited experience that neither the crimes themselves, nor their solving are what first and foremost propels the narrative. Perhaps in the last fifty pages, yes, who done it will keep you reading late into the night, but there has to be more to drive a whole book. Here it was the characters, the lives of the people of Lafferton, and their interconnectedness, their various connections to the crimes. Hill’s background as a literary writer evident as she populates this community with such vivid characters– people– and the different ways these peoples’ lives are cast in the shadow of the crimes taking place around them.
Hill has stated writing crime fiction appeals to her as an opportunity to address contemporary life and its issues, and this engagement is well reflected here. Also themes relating to love, marriage and togetherness continue– Simon’s sister husband’s diagnosis of a brain tumour, a widow falling in love again, Simon’s father’s new partner becoming part of their family. Simon juxtaposed with all of this, a loner, whose own story is hard to decipher from just this one book out of a series, and what would probably send a curious reader back to the previous three. Who also hasn’t the time much to analyze his personal life, what with just days until the cathedral wedding and the gunman still out on the loose…
I do wonder, what in a literary writer’s background makes the foundation of a good crime writer? Strength in plot-building, definitely, and I could see how short story experience would be beneficial to compressing much into little, and it would take a novelist’s deft hand to bind all these pieces together. Certainly Susan Hill’s apprenticeship must have served her well, for The Vows of Silence is a pleasure.
(By the way, in terms of genre-crossing, an interesting post on Hill being welcome or otherwise in the exclusive world of crime fiction.)
June 30, 2008
Additional Dimensions
This photograph is notable for three reasons, not least of which is that I captured a spectre partway up the staircase. Second, to brag that we have finally painted our hall, and how yellow changes everything. (Goodbye eggplant brown!) But also to talk about the very fact of stairs, how they expand one’s residential experience, the access they allow to additional dimensions. People who’ve grown up in bungalows no doubt feel quite different, but real homes, to me, have always required two stories. And that I have two floors in my own home now has been an arrival of sorts. We’re still a ways away from homeownership, but stairs in the meantime are more than consolation. And not just because we’ve joined the league of multi-story apartment dwellers such as Diff’rent Strokes.
June 27, 2008
Hunger eats civilization
“[It’s] the same around the world. What look like ethnic problems are really economic issues. If you look closely at these conflicts around the world, they come down to poverty and economics and resources. The more poverty, the worse the war. Hunger eats civilization. The West is not hungry; that’s why they can say they’re so civilized. Civilization is the biggest bluff!” –Marjane Satrapi, The Believer Book of Writers Talking to Writers
June 26, 2008
Poem in the Post
Kawaii. Today in the post was a “Hello Kitty Everywhere! Haiku Postcard” from my sister. Haiku as follows:
Peeking through the soil,
The flowers shyly emerge.
I am their first friend.
June 26, 2008
Worthwhile
You’ll have to buy the magazine, but do check out Guy Gavriel Kay’s “Summertime When the Visigoths Go Pillaging” in the July/August issue of The Walrus. I’d quote the whole thing, it’s that lovely, but I’ll settle for, “…I suspect we all have inward links between some books and where we were when we escaped into them. Everyone knows the memory links to scents or the pop songs of teenage summers, but I suspect if we reach back and in, we’ll find many of the books of our lives to be vividly time and place specific too.” Indeed.
My friend Lauren Kirshner has started blogging, and her posts demonstrate her immense talents. (She’s got a book Where We Have to Go being published by McClelland and Stewart in the spring). Kate Sutherland’s post post on Anne of Green Gables at 100 (to the day) is fabulous, quoting from Montgomery’s journal entry the day her book came: “There in my hand lay the material realization of all the dreams and hopes and ambitions and struggles of my whole conscious existence—my first book!” Fine Lines (my favourite diversion) is going to become a book! And a profile of Jhumpa Lahiri.
I also went to the ROM this weekend. Their exhibit “Out from Under: Disability, History, and Things to Remember” is extraordinary (and on until July 13).
June 26, 2008
A Perfect Match
We don’t talk fashion much, here at Pickle Me This, except when its bookish. But then how bookish is this, to find myself today wearing a dress that was perfectly coordinated with my reading material? I don’t think even cool people have started doing this yet. Or perhaps that they haven’t is the fact that makes them cool…
June 24, 2008
Bookish Happenings
I visited This Ain’t the Rosedale Public Library this weekend at their new location in Kensington Market. Which was my first time at This Ain’t… altogether, actually, so I’ve nothing to compare it to, but I was impressed. A great selection of journals and magazines, and shelves and shelves of bookish spines. I bought Girls Fall Down by Maggie Hellwig, because all the reviews I’ve read have intrigued me, and because I love the quality of Coach House books.
In other bookish news, I am beyond excited to discover that my favourite poet has a new book forthcoming: Jennica Harper’s What It Feels Like For a Girl is out in September by Anvil Press.
June 24, 2008
Found
Found today in a box by the side of the road: A Recipe for Bees by Gail Anderson-Dargatz and The Tiger in the Tiger Pit by Janette Turner Hospital.
Claimed.
June 24, 2008
Club Hand
I’ve been over-indulging in all my favourite pleasures of late (i.e. train travel, strawberries and sugar), but then I’ve got a birthday upcoming. So it was for this reason then that Stuart and I partook in Afternoon Tea at the Four Seasons this Sunday– which is my absolute favourite thing in the entire world. Accompanied by Bronwyn and her husband Alex, and it was perfect from start to finish, the weather complementing the sun-dresses we’d planned to wear all along. The tiny sandwiches delicious, tiny cakes delectable, the scones brilliantly fresh and sided with copious jam and cream, and yeah, the tea was good too. Overwhelming always to be in the midst of my favourite thing in the world, but I survived. It was absolutely wonderful.
Disturbing, however, was the revelation that my pinkie finger doesn’t work. As I don’t do most things properly (even those I love best), I’d never made a point of holding my teacup like the Queen does (or her friends), but I was devastated to realize that I physically can’t. My pinkie doesn’t go that way, and it doesn’t even when I’m not holding my cup, and then everybody started calling me “Club Hand”. They said I had fingers that were toes. Which is better than some people I know who’ve got toes that are actually fingers, but I’m not naming names…
