June 9, 2011
The Odious Child by Carolyn Black
I’m very happy that Carolyn Black has agreed to be next up at Author Interviews @ Pickle Me This. First, because it’s been awhile, this mostly because it’s been awhile since I’ve read a book that’s made me curious enough to go search the author out for some illumination. Second, because her book The Odious Child has left me so curious, most of all to discover who Carolyn Black’s influences are. I can’t figure them out. (Although she is thoroughly umPymmish, however, her characters do work in Pym-like occupations I find infinitely fascinating– indexers, librarians, museum cataloguers. Yum). She writes like no one else I’ve ever read, like a writer who’s standing on the shoulders of nobody, her stories’ own foundations are so very solid. There is a fantastical element to the stories, but nothing whimsical. You might call some of the stories’ structures “experimental”, but it’s not the right word because it suggests the author didn’t know her outcomes beforehand and Carolyn Black’s “experiments” are so incredibly, impeccably controlled.
The story that kept me up in the night thinking about it, and wouldn’t get out of my head the following day, was “Baby Mouth”, which is the very best illustration of maternal ambivalence I have ever read. Lionel Shriver also did it well, but she forgot to put the love there, and Carolyn Black doesn’t, with a story that so much echoed my own experience that the similarities made me shiver with every page I turned. About a mother who’s not perfectly suited to the new baby in her care, and how those dark early days come back to her almost a year old when her baby still hasn’t smiled. Wondering, but unable to confess, if a violent moment of abandon could have led to her baby’s problem… (Here is my obligatory clarification: we had no violent abandon at our house, except for the time I punched the wall [but not through it! There is restraint, albeit the wall’s, and not mine, but alas…])
The story is funny, as Black satirizes the absurd industry of modern parenting, but it’s also sad as the mother’s desperation mounts, and the love is tender, and Black’s empathy with her character is remarkable, which is the case through the whole book, even in the stories that are completely out there. And it’s where the solidity comes from, I think, from a writer who is so completely invested in her people and their points of view. Which, you’d think, would go without saying, but I’ve read a lot of books where this is not the case. Particularly not when the author’s people include, for example, a disembodied head…
Anyway, though Carolyn Black’s first book is one of the strongest debuts I’ve ever encountered, I’m not sure this is a book for the short story novice: it demands close attention and several leaps of faith, and these readers might not be ready for it yet. But for those who are already admirers of the form, The Odious Child will prove remarkably rewarding.
June 9, 2011
Our Best Book from this Week's Library Haul: Bumpety Bump by Pat Hutchins
Our best book from this week’s library haul was Pat Hutchins’ Bumpety Bump which we love for its rhythm, and also for the illustrations which wonderfully depict a rich garden growing above and underground. It’s a great book for this time of year when gardens are everywhere and Harriet’s prime fascination. Runner-up is Barbara Reid’s The Party, which I’ve read five times today.
June 7, 2011
Descant 110: Birthing
I am an unabashed devotee of small magazines, but secondhand back issues for sale always strikes me as a bit pathetic. Sort of like the used National Geographics in Nikolski, where they never managed to sell a single issue. Does anybody really want to buy a copy of The Fiddlehead from 2003? Every year, the Victoria College Book Sale seems to hope so, but I don’t imagine they have much luck. Or maybe they do–I don’t know. I just think that magazines are meant to be a bit ephemeral.
Not all of them, however, and here’s the proof. Here also is the proof behind that claim that small magazines are where our finest writers get their starts. Ages ago, I bought the Descant 110: Birthing, which was published in 2000. (Clarity note: I am not pregnant. Am reading it now because I’ve made it through the C books in my to-be-reads, and Descant starts with D). I picked it up at a used bookstore because the topic was interesting, and then I bought it because of the writers inside– most of whom hadn’t published books at time the issue was published. Who’s who? Jonathan Garfinkel, Laisha Rosnau, Michelle Berry, Jonathan Bennett and Stephen Marche. Also, Diana Kiesners, now of The Accordian Diaries.
It was an absolutely stellar issue, one of those wonderful thematic ones whose points in common just seem like a coincidence. One of my two favourite pieces was “Hardiness Zones” by JA McCormack, which was way too awesome and assured to have been written by a writer going nowhere. Some googling cleared it up: JA is Judith McCormack, who published The Rule of Last Clear Chance 3 years later, and also a chapbook with Biblioasis. She is also a lawyer, and a law professor, which might explain what’s she’s been up to in years since. (But I want to read her books now).
And then Diana Kiesner’s weird, wonderful and absolutely perfect essay “Long History of a Small Idea” about the practical considerations surrounding getting a poem written on the surface of an egg. And thank goodness the history is long, because it’s also funny, erudite, and full of practical advice should I ever require a poem written on the surface of an egg: “It is the making of something out of nothing; also of nothing (an abstraction) out of something (a perfectly good food source).” Totally weird, and absolutely masterful.
Anyway, this secondhand magazine is going to live on my shelf forevermore. So I guess anything is now officially possible.
Update: Do forgive. I have spent this week quite ill, sleepless and braindead, therefore I forgot to remark upon another exceptional piece in this issue. But then I just read Sarah Henstra’s blog post about clowns, which mentioned her vocal teacher Fides Krucker, who wrote the essay in question– this amazing piece linking the sounds of childhbirth with vocal training, how being a singer helped her in childbirth, and how having given birth made her a better singer. Remarkable for the way the writer describes sounds, and body. Once again, like nothing else I’ve ever read before.
June 6, 2011
The YA fiction of my youth: bulldozing coarseness, misery and a whole lot of sex
I haven’t read much YA fiction since coming of age, and though I do raise eyebrows at adults who read it exclusively (what? I’m just passing judgment…), I’ve got no case to make against the genre itself. Because YA made me into the reader I am, one that reads voraciously, and I am sure that’s because my YA books were packed with subject matter that was no less than fascinating: namely the “kidnapping and pederasty and incest and brutal beatings” for which this bizarre piece maligns modern YA–not to mention a whole lot of sex. Here, I highlight the best of the sordid:
Forever by Judy Blume: This book is infamous, it has teenage sex (on a rug!) and a penis with a name. Also, a grandmother who disseminates Planned Parenthood paraphernalia. Is probably the main reason any teenager ever got pregnant. Or used birth control and didn’t.
Sunshine by Norma Klein: Norma’s books were always a bit sexy, but this one in particular. Also, it was based on a true story, but what YA novel wasn’t? The story of Jill who is a divorced, teenage single mother who is not only having an affair with a hippie on a mountain top, but is dying of cancer.
Looking On by Betty Miles: This book sat on our toilet cistern, so everyone in my family has read it a lot. It’s the story of Rosalie, who becomes infatuated with a young couple from the community college who rent a trailer in her backyard. No blatant sex, but Rosalie is totally miserable, and spends a lot of time fantasizing about the young man’s thighs beneath his cut-offs.
Daughters of Eve by Lois Duncan: A militant feminist manifesto about a group of female students bent on vengeance for the inequality in their everyday lives. Incredibly violent. There is also, naturally, sex. (Do see all of Lois Duncan’s other books if you think that modern YA fiction is disturbing).
Hey, Dollface by Deborah Hautzig: This book is about two miserable teenage girls who explore lesbian relations together. I read it over and over, in particularly the part about breast fondling.
Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume: Misery galore: Murdered dad, broken dreams, the atomic bomb, and an annoying aunt called Bitsy. Though I was mostly drawn to the part where she gets it on with her boyfriend under the boardwalk.
Flowers in the Attic by VC Andrews: The sex was incestuous, but that was all right with me!
Then Again, Maybe I Won’t by Judy Blume: And boys can be miserable too! Here, we’re dealing with a brother dead in Vietnam, class struggles, and a boy who uses his binoculars for “bird watching” if you know what I’m saying. Because the teenage girl next store never closes her drapes.
Sweet Valley High by Francine Pascal: Don’t hate me, but I didn’t love these books. Mostly because there wasn’t enough explicit sex. But there were enough boyfriends, misery, backseats and post-game parties that I could read what was going on between the lines.
Face on a Milk Carton by Caroline B. Cooney: Just wanted to point out that my generation liked to read about kidnappings too, and that we turned out all right!
June 6, 2011
Wild Libraries I Have Known: Vanessa's Bedroom
In which Nathalie Foy tells us about a wild library she has known:
It’s not a library, exactly, but I did borrow books from Vanessa’s bedroom. It was a large, cool and quiet space, with the hushed and reverential atmosphere of a library, and from its shelves, I borrowed many books. When Kerry asked me to contribute to this series, it was memories of Vanessa’s books that came most powerfully to mind.
Port-au-Prince, 1977. We were seven, and Vanessa was my best friend. We lived in Haiti, and attended Union School in Port-au-Prince. Vanessa was an only child and adopted, her pigtails were perfect ringlets and never fell out; I had an annoying younger brother and a boring pedigree, my poker-straight hair sought any means of escape from braids, ponytails or hair bands. Vanessa had a four-poster bed with a canopy in her bedroom, all frills and luxury. Bright pink bougainvillea bloomed outside her window, and in golden rows on her bookshelf sat the complete set of Nancy Drew mysteries. Every single one. All arrayed in numerical order, the yellow spines each had the cameo profile of the girl detective holding her magnifying glass: a vast, crisp expanse of potential. Even the school library did not have the whole set.
Oh, how I envied her that collection! I borrowed and read the books in sequence, but even at the time, I was aware of a definite taint to the experience. There was a limit placed on my pleasure by greed: I wanted the books to be mine. I am certain that the book buyer in me was born in that bedroom, because I do like to own books.
Somehow, at the impressionable age of seven, I conflated the wonders of that complete set of Nancy Drew mysteries and the four-poster bed with being an only child and adopted—all of which were to be envied. It was all so exotic; it was what I was not. I’ve met other only children and adopted children since then, none with complete sets of Nancy Drew, and I like my brother considerably more today than I did when he was five and a pest. I have since learned that Carolyn Keene is a pseudonym for the stable of anonymous writers who wrote the Nancy Drew mysteries for $125 a pop. My life experience has not cured me of my covetousness when it comes to books, though.
I love libraries. I love what they do and what they stand for. I love that they open up the world for us. I am humbled each time I see the crowds outside of the Toronto Reference Library, and I feel a surge of joy when I see the noble griffin protecting the doors of Lillian H. Smith branch of the Toronto Public Library, the branch I use most regularly. Most of the time, I check out books for my three boys, being more reliable with getting things read by the due date with them than for myself. But if we read a book and love it, I itch to buy it. My boys have the luxury of a childhood lived in one place. I moved to a new country every two or three years, and precious few books from my childhood survived the moves. I’m making up for lost time and making my own rows of delicious books to devour.
June 5, 2011
The Forgotten Waltz by Anne Enright
“You think it’s about sex, then you remember the money,” notes Gina, the narrator of Anne Enright’s fabulous new novel The Forgotten Waltz, and that statement just about sums up the book. Though it’s hard to forget about the money, the embarrassment of riches, real estate fortunes (characters who feel inadequate about not owning four houses)– it’s there from the very beginning of the novel, whose story unfolds from the turn of the century with Ireland’s economic boom, and comes crashing down with its eventual bust (which I, with my minimal interest in economics, learned about in this fantastic Vanity Fair article “When Irish Eyes Are Crying”).
The Forgotten Waltz is all about real estate, in the tradition of Howards End. And like The Last September, another Irish novel which I read last week, a personal story is cast against a national backdrop. The personal story is about another kind of real estate, about taking what isn’t your own. Still suffering from the fallout of her extramarital affair, from having fallen in love with another woman’s husband (who is somebody’s father too), Gina recounts the story of her own journey from boom to bust. The story, however, just like the story of the economic boom, is hardly straightforward: “I can’t be too bothered here with chronology. The idea that if you tell it, one thing after another, then everything will make sense./ It doesn’t make sense.”
Enright won the 2007 prize for her novel The Gathering, though I found her memoir Making Babies and her short story collection Yesterday’s Weather much more resonant. The way these two books zeroed in on domestic detail, on objects and what her characters did with them, and Enright’s doing that here once again. Quite different from the focused detail itself, however, is her conversational, meandering prose, with issue-skirting and repetition, and the effect is to cast a spell of its own. And how this woman can craft a sentence: “The Danes who did the refurbishment put in irrigation the way you might do the wiring so the place is a thicket, and though I am cynical about these things (the idea that a few plans makes us more ‘green’) I even voted for the canaries, at some meeting, only to be outvoted on the grounds of canary shit.”
Enright is funny, in particular when considering tender things, as anyone who’s read her mothering memoir is already aware. She writes with more sympathy than Rachel Cusk, whose writing is similar (I just read her The Bradshaw Variations, and there are all kinds of connections between the two novels.). Enright is fully attuned to the strange dynamics of modern society and all its accoutrements– the mobile phone text messages that are integral in Gina and Sean’s affair are perfectly worked into the novel’s weave. And she is careful to include more traditional methods of obsessive love, Gina sitting outside his house at night, for example, watching the lights inside go off one-by-one.
Each chapter is titled with the name of a pop song, whose musicality complements the nature of Enright’s prose, but also serves to contrast perceptions of love with its more sordid realities. Sure, “It’s in His Kiss”, agrees Enright, but then she examines what “it” is exactly, and the possibility that one kiss can take a character places she never intended to go and won’t be able to turn away from.
June 2, 2011
Slave Lake Library
Slave Lake Library Staff
As many people already know, when much of Slave Lake Alberta was destroyed by wildfire a couple of weeks ago, the town lost its library. The tragedy of this is underlined by the fact the library was less than two years old, and had been built after years of local fundraising efforts. And because we’re library enthuasiasts around here, and because we’ve been delivered much good fortune of late, we decided to pass some of that fortune along with a donation to the library and its reconstruction. I’d like to encourage the library-lovers amongst you to do the same, or perhaps make a bid in the Slave Lake Book Auction, which is a fantastic campaign run by Lavender Lines.
June 1, 2011
Mini Review: Look at Me by Anita Brookner
Can you blame me for having kept Anita Brookner’s Look at Me on my shelf for years? Seriously, the cover is hideous. But because it started with B, I got to it finally, and though the start was slow, it grew on me. Which is unsurprising, because the book is so Barbara Pymmish– spinster librarians, their tea rituals and lonely lunches. But only superficially, actually. In her book Felicity and Barbara Pym, Harrison Solow writes that Brookner “lacks the insularity which makes the English, English” and that her heroines “struggle incessantly, never in balance”. There is no charm to Anita Brookner, but this, of course, is why her books seem more literary. (I am not sure that they actually are, or perhaps what I mean is that Pym’s unliterary-ness is only understood by those unschooled in Pym.)
Look at Me is the story of Frances Hinton, spinster librarian, who feels she’s finally glimpsed what life is, what the world is, when she is befriended by Nick and Alix Fraser (who Jonathan Yardly writes “could just as well be Tom and Daisy [Buchanan]’s British cousins”). The couple, however, plays with her affections, and at the end of the story she’s left with her same lonely life, though I wonder about Frances’ own role in her fate. She has cast herself as an observer, but as a result, we have very little understanding of her character, of how she comes across to others. We must put the pieces together with statements by the malicious Alix Fraser, and it is left to us to decide which character is more unreliable. Frances, who is also beginning a career as a writer, may have more control of her narrative than she appears to.
June 1, 2011
The Vicious Circle reads: Last Night in Montreal by Emily St. John Mandel
All forecasts called for things to get really vicious last night as the Vicious Circle assembled to read a book that nobody seemed crazy about. The book was Emily St. John Mandel’s Last Night in Montreal, which we were prepared to go a little bit easy on, considering it was a first novel, but still, the book was hard to take in places. Viciousness did not ensue, however, mostly because the book failed to find a fervent defender for the rest of us to rail against.
It was thought that this was the kind of the book a character in the book might have written (and these were the kind of characters who like to sit in cafes and talk about the art they’re not making). We thought that this book’s author was robbed by her copy-editors, who did an atrocious job (and don’t even get us started on the semi-colons). And also by editors who would have picked up indescrepencies such as how Eli knew about what Lilia did when her hair got too long, except they weren’t together long enough for her hair to have got too long more than once. Or there wouldn’t be a ship in Montreal harbour in the dead of winter.
Montreal didn’t seem realized to us here. Two of us thought that Elise Moser’s novel As I Have Loved and Hidden It was a much better realized version of this novel. One of us though that the author was trying to cast the same spell that Claudia Dey cast in Stunt (with tightrope walkers and all) but she failed to. We failed to engage with the characters. And though Mandel did a good job in places of creating suspense, the big reveal was a bit anti-climatic. We didn’t get a sense that these were characters who lived in the world (which might have been okay if the spell had worked, but it didn’t). We thought that the idea of Montreal as a city unpenetrable to French non-speakers wasn’t realistic, we wondered about Eli taking travel advice from a woman who hadn’t lived in Montreal since she was 9, we didn’t buy the idea of Montreal as a sinking garrison, as a place where a dead language lives. It also made no sense that Eli only spoke English, because most PhD programs have a second-language requirement (and surely an aptitude for languages is an aptitude for languages, whether dead or alive). These were the practical considerations that kept bogging us down– like who was paying Christopher to drive around America for years and years? Or why was Michaela so consumed by her father’s accident when she’d lost him so many years before it.
In lieu of viciousness, we took up eating cheese, and then conversation drifted away and never managed to come back. Which was okay. It was the end of a hot summer day, and the sun was down, the air was cool. It seems every home we gather in is a particularly lovely, comfortable one, though we’re not sure if this is just a coincidence, or we make it that way. Nevertheless. We ate cupcakes, and strawberry pie, and we kept on drinking wine, and we kept having to lower our voices because the windows were open and we didn’t want to horrify the neighbours.
May 31, 2011
Magic Cities at the Osborne Collection
I wish I’d written this post weeks ago, because it would have given you more than four days to make your own visit to the Osborne Collection of Early Children’s Books (at the Lillian H. Smith Library) to see the Magic Cities Exhibit, which closes on Saturday (June 4). But I couldn’t have posted it, because I only went to the exhibit yesterday, but I’m putting this post up anyway in order to urge all those who can to go and see it for themselves.
I’ve written about this before (scroll down), but I love houses, and literary houses in particular: Howards End, To the Lighthouse, Anne of Green Gables (and the girls of Lantern Hill. New Moon, Silverbush etc. Clearly LM Montgomery loved houses too). Most of my favourite books have a house at their centres, and it was the case when I was little too– I loved the way illustrations showed houses with a wall removed so that you could see life going on inside it. (I still feel similarly when the outlines of rooms from a demolished buildings are visible on the wall of the house still standing next door). I loved Virginia Lee Burton’s The Little House, as well, and now so too does Harriet.
So it was with great joy that I discovered that the Magic Cities exhibit is all about houses. Pop-up books with castles inside, picture books about how houses are built, and the parts of houses, and the early ways that children learn about architecture. (Though, surprisingly, I did not see reference to A House is a House for Me). Novels about houses like Green Gables, and Green Knowe, that Little House on the Prairie, and books about neighbourhoods, and different kinds of cities and towns. Lovingly curated with every wonderful book you’ve ever forgotten, the exhibit features books old and new, original artwork, and plenty to reflect on and delight in. So glad I got to take a look at it before it turns over to the summer exhibit (which is Turtle Mania! I’ll be checking that one out too).
