January 21, 2010
Apart from the soul
“The fortunate thing about lab glassware is that it boils water at the speed of light. I threw a spoonful of black leaves into a beaker. When it had gone a deep red I handed it to Dogger, who stared at it skeptically.
‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘It’s Tetley’s.’
He sipped at the tea gingerly, blowing on the surface of the drink to cool it. As he drank, I remembered that there’s a reason we English are ruled more by tea than by Buckingham Palace or His Majesty’s Government: Apart from the soul, the brewing of tea is the only thing that sets us apart from the great apes– or so the Vicar had remarked to Father, who had told Daffy, who had told me.” –from The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley
January 21, 2010
Pre-Swiftian Love Story
Poet P.K. Page, who died last week, has been eulogized aplenty since then, and I don’t really have much to add to the chorus, except that she was certainly an extraordinary person (as demonstrated by this brilliant obituary by Sandra Martin at the Globe & Mail) and I’m glad I got to meet her once. Though I spent only a little time in her presence, that presence was unforgettable and she was everything they said.
Less eulogized, however, has been Erich Segal, author of the novel Love Story, who died the other day at the age of 72. When I was twelve, I found a library copy of this novel in a desk at school (checked out under someone else’s name) and I stole it. Proceeded then to worship it through my unlovable teen years in hope that a hockey-playing, MG-driving, heir to a great fortune might just fall in love with me before I died of leukemia, even though I was neither Ali McGraw nor a musical prodigy. Even though I didn’t love Mozart or Bach, but I did love The Beatles, and I would have loved Oliver too, given the chance.
I haven’t read this book for quite awhile, but I read it so often back in the day that my original copy fell apart and I had to replace it (which wasn’t difficult. Love Story is always readily available used, usually displayed along with poetry collections by Rod McKuen). I am pretty sure that Love Story was not a great book, but I really loved it, and I must give credit to the man who wrote the book I’ve probably read more often than I’ll reread any other book in my life.
Though the book was wrong, and love does mean having to say you’re sorry, as unromantic as that sounds, but seeing as Jenny was only 25 when she died, perhaps she just didn’t have long enough to figure that out.
January 20, 2010
Book charm
On an ordinary day, Old Books, Rare Friends: Two Literary Sleuths and Their Shared Passion would have been the most interesting book of any stack I picked up from the library. (I found out about this book from the Louisa May Alcott bio. It has the best cover I have ever seen. And that I am excited about a book with such a cover really does catapult me into a new league of nurd. Fortunately, I’ll keep it to myself and no one will ever know…).
But today was the day I also came home from the library with the gorgeous Bothered by My Green Conscience, the less gorgeous might be stupid but it was sitting on a table so I picked it up Sleep is For the Weak: The best of the mommybloggers, and Sheree Fitch’s book of poetry for adult readers In this house are many women.
And just when you thought books couldn’t be anymore charming, I’ve just joined the league of people who’ve discovered Flavia de Luce. Now reading the Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley, which I have a terrible suspicion might be a literary love letter only for me: literary Harriets, a nod to Harriet the Spy herself (perhaps not on purpose, but still…), references to tea, and to pie, and literary allusions, and libraries to get lost in, plus she has a bike called Gladys. When I used to have a bike called Gladys, pink with a basket when we lived in Japan. Anyway, the connections are uncanny, delightful, and maybe Alan Bradley and I are long-lost somethings. The book is wonderful. I’m zipping through it and will be posting a review in days to come.
January 20, 2010
Books in Motion #2
Today was a girl in her twenties, carrying a shoulder bag with a picture of a golden retriever puppy on it, racing across Bloor Street on foot and then heading south on Robert Street. Didn’t even stop to talk, and all the while she had her nose stuck in a copy of The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne as if her life depended on it, and maybe it did.
January 19, 2010
Family Literacy ALL WEEK LONG
Next Wednesday (January 27th) is Family Literacy Day, but we’re turning it into a week-long celebration here at Pickle Me This. Stay tuned for lots of children’s literature love, including an interview, a party and a fieldtrip. Check out their website to find an event where you can take part, or register your own.
January 19, 2010
Plenty of novels to choose from
“As with most [Lorrie] Moore characters, her dialogue– witty, allusive, never merely expository– is less a reflection of how real people speak than how they should. (This is sometimes said as a criticism of Moore, but it shouldn’t be. For readers who prefer their narrators to be drearily realistic mediocrities, there are plenty of novels to choose from).” –Deborah Friedell, “The Family That Slays Together” (review of The Gate at the Stairs) in the London Review of Books, 19 November 2009.
January 18, 2010
Canada Reads 2010: Independently UPDATE 2
I’m going to be reading Carrie Snyder’s Hair Hat in just a book or two, which I’m looking forward to, particularly to seeing how another collection of linked stories compares to Century. Perhaps the most frustrating thing about this kind of exercise is having to compare books that are worlds apart, and yet it is looking for commonalities that opens up all kinds of avenues that might not otherwise be explored. It is definitely, I think, a worthwhile exercise.
Though it’s going to be tough– last year, when I read the Canada Reads books, at least I had the benefit of hating one book, and not being terribly impressed by two others, which made deciding my favourite not altogether difficult. Probably my feelings towards this year’s picks are going to be a little more passionate, and rankings will be infinitely more brutal to decide.
My other updates are fairly close to home– my husband is currently reading and loving Moody Food. This week, my mom has read How Happy to Be and Wild Geese, and was pretty crazy about the latter. Steven W. Beattie dares to offer a bit of support to Ray Smith’s Century with a wonderful comment on my review. Century champion Dan Wells’ responds to my Century reaction. And I know some other marvelous readers with the Canada Reads Independently stack just ready to be delved into; are you one of them?
If you’re reading along, do email me your reactions to the books and I’ll include them in the weekly updates, or leave a comment on the blog. And stay tuned for details of how to vote for your favourite Canada Reads Independently pick to decide who comes out on top.
January 18, 2010
Kiss the Joy as it Flies by Sheree Fitch
Two and half days of my last week were spent in the absolute bliss of reading Sheree Fitch’s first novel Kiss the Joy as it Flies (shortlisted for the 2009 Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour). I’d previously only read Fitch’s wonderful children’s book Kisses Kisses Baby-O!, but love it so much that when I discovered Fitch had written a novel for adult readers, I had to read it. Though I began reading with a degree of uncertainty: the story of Mercy Beth Fanjoy, who receives a troubling medical prognosis and decides to stage a clear-out of her messy life in the time she has left. This sort of formula could go either way, and very quickly in, I was pleased to find Fitch had gone in the right one, with sprightly prose and a narrative packing a punch. The novel is wonderfully original, although if pressed, I’d have to call it as Fannie Flagg meets Miriam Toews.
In Kiss the Joy as it Flies, it’s not so much plot that accelerates as the language itself operating on sheer gumption, and the spirit of Mercy Fanjoy picking up speed as she comes into her own. Though things happen– people die, hopes are dashed, love is born, battles are fought, illusions are shattered, triumphs are won, and lessons learned. The stuff of life with a wacky cast of characters who are constructed as types– religious zealot mother, loyal friend, hippie daughter, enigmatic dead father, sex god– but each of them excellently crafted with the most remarkable ability to surprise you.
Mercy Fanjoy is wholly embodied by Fitch’s prose. The fact of the disease that lurks inside her, and her buxomness, and her sexuality, and when she expresses milk from her engorged breasts into the bathtub during a flashback in which she remembers her teenaged, single-mothered, basement-apartmented self. Two decades on, Mercy has come a long way– she’s reconciled with her difficult mother, earned a university degree, she pens her own column in the Odell Observer, has raised her daughter, bought her own house, teaches a creative writing course, and has maintained a lifelong relationship with her best friend Lulu. She still holds a grudge against horrible Teeny Gaudet (who has since gone onto fame as bestselling author of the “Burt the Burping Bear” series of children’s books), but you can’t win them all.
Over the week she seeks to put her life in order, Mercy finds herself becoming unhinged, and emerging from a rut she’s been stuck in too long. In the end, just about everybody in her life surprises her, but she manages to shock them right back, tenfold. And while it’s raw, we’ll get our hearts warmed, and Fitch also pulls of a satire so slick, we can’t help laughing, and I suppose that this is what she means by “the sheer mad joy of all of it.”
January 16, 2010
Clearest, starkest brilliance #1: When Randy Bachman held my heart
Harriet is pictured here in her very early days, back when a moment of daytime peace was worth a photo for posterity. But lately, actually, I’ve been thinking of a certain moment of nighttime peace, when Harriet was about five days old.
For the first few weeks of her life (how long exactly doesn’t matter, suffice it to say, it was an eternity), we had to wake her every three hours for feeding, as she’d not yet returned to her birthweight. (This was when I was reading Tom’s Midnight Garden and “Only the clock was left, but the clock was always there, time in, time out.”) And once the alarm went off, we’d leave the radio playing while we fed her, and so we discovered that CBC at night subscribes to programs by other public broadcasters. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation at 1:00am, and 4:00am would be Swedish, and something uptight and BBC close to the morning.
This one night in particular was not so late, however, and I remember waking up to Randy Bachman’s Vinyl Tap. So there we were, up with our baby daughter in this weird, wide world that was the size of our bedroom’s four walls and we hadn’t thought outside of it in five whole days, which might have been a lifetime (and they were). So that, in effect, Randy Bachman was coming at us from the farthest reaches of outer space.
Fittingly, his show that night had a stars and planets theme, and Canada felt very small as Randy’s wife Denise introduced the next track, by Randy’s son Tal. Surprisingly, it was not “She’s So High”, and Denise reported that she’d always felt so envious of Tal’s talent. And then after that they played music that wasn’t by anyone related to Randy Bachman, which I think was “Blue Moon”(and according to the program log, I’m remembering this in the wrong order, but that doesn’t change the way it was). They played “Good Morning Starshine”, and we marvelled at the lyric “Gliddy glub gloopy, Nibby nabby noopy, La la la lo lo.” It was midnight, but it might as well have been the middle of the night, and the baby was sucking sustenance out of a tube stuck to my husband’s finger, but anyway, we were happy.
But no more so than when they played “Little Star” by the Elegants. Our own peculiar lullaby, to which we found ourselves relaxing for the first time in days. Twinkle, twinkle to a doo-wop beat, and the moment was so beautiful, it shone. We were a family. And I wouldn’t take back any of the awfulness of those early days, if I had to give that song back with it, and what it was like to be listening, and finally not anxious, and to be connected, in touch with a calm, blissful world.
