July 4, 2011

The O'Briens by Peter Behrens

There exists considerable difference between “a good book” and “a great book”, and lately I’d feared being so fixated on understanding the latter I had become unable to appreciate the former. Which would be a shame, I think, because there is pleasure in a good book, a big fat novel to while away a long weekend with. Losing the ability to enjoy such a thing would be like getting turned off timbits in favour of gourmet cupcakes. But once in a while it becomes clear to me that not everything needs to be placed in a hierarchy, or is another opportunity for a soapbox tirade. That we can simply have a donut and eat it too, in particular on summer weekends when the weather is so sunny, and heat lives on your skin along with a new crop of freckles. Though I will still stamp my foot for just a moment and say that this should have been a better book, but it wasn’t, and I ate it anyway.

It means something, it does, that though parts of Peter Behrens’ novel The O’Briens rang hollow to me, I read it with delight. Absolutely absorbed, and happy, and satisfied with its considerable bulk. The O’Briens is the sequel to Behrens’ award-winning The Law of Dreams (which I haven’t read; it stands alone), the story of Joe O’Brien and his siblings who escape their violent home in the Ottawa Valley at the turn of the century. The sisters are sent to a convent, and quite conveniently die of the Spanish flu years later, so we never hear of them again, but we follow Joe and his brother to California where Joe falls in love with Iseult, and then the rest of the book traces their story back and forth across the continent, and throughout the first half of the twentieth century.

The problems are this: characters are so unknown to each other that it’s not clear that author even knows who they are; that the action always happens off the page, the characters choosing passivity all the time; that the O’Briens are uncannily linked to all the major events of their time; that the structure of the novel is stilted, and uneven; and that we’re told far more than the writing actually shows until it’s like being beaten over the head with a Leica camera.

But still, the pages kept turning, even as I rolled my eyes. Partly because the novel’s events are so sweeping that I was swept along as well, and because some of Behrens’ depictions of place were so vivid that I could smell the sea air. Because there are real moments of absolute, pin-pointed tension and/or tenderness that show Behren’s would be a remarkable writer if his focus were narrowed. Moments do not make a novel of course, in particular if they’re not very well hinged together, but the moments still stand out here. Also because it’s been ages since I read a saga, and I’ve a thing for families as institutions, and I still think that America is a little bit glamorous (Happy 4th of July!), and Peter Behrens makes it so.

The O’Briens was a very significant part of my glorious weekend, a beach book even though I wasn’t at a beach, but it made me feel like I was missing nothing. And yes, I suppose if The O’Briens wins a big book prize later this year, then we’ll have reason to get on our soapbox about the sorry state of Canadian Literature, but until then, let’s not take a good book as an affront. Let’s just enjoy it, because it’s July after all, and good books are how summer days are very best spent.

July 4, 2011

The books keep coming.

In theory, I am making excellent progress at moving through my books-to-be-read shelf. I’m just about finished the Ds, having completing Joan Didion’s Salvatore this afternoon (and it’s so good. I don’t suppose anyone who ever invaded Iraq ever read it). But the problem is that the books keep coming faster than I can read them. And I’m not even talking about the new books I buy (which, according to my unstraightforward filing system, reside on another shelf altogether). It’s the books that keep finding their way into my life, and because they can be had for a quarter, or a loonie, or because they’re even free, I can’t help but bring them home with me.

Like tonight, when we walked past BMV and I found these two gems in the bargain bin. (I would also go on to find five bummis wraps outside someone’s house, which is very good, because the velcro is all shot in ours.) The one on the bottom is The Penguin Classic Baby Name Book. I am not pregnant, as ever, but the book is irresistible– conventional baby name book structure, except it lists which characters in literature have had these names, which include Bradamante and Britomart. The entry for Harriet begins, “Used by authors almost exclusively for secondary characters in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries…” Will make for some fascinating thumbing, I think. And if I ever have another daughter, I can name her Cunegonde.

The other book is Can Any Mother Help Me? about a group of English women who set up a writing co-op in the 1930s through which to take stock of their domestic lives. I got it for a dollar, and it’s a gorgeous hardback, pristine, with the loveliest endpapers, and I think I’m really going to enjoy it. As much as I’m going to enjoy Barbara Gowdy’s Fallen Angels, which I found on a curb last week, Lorna Jackson’s A Game to Play on the Tracks, which I bought as a library discard for a quarter, The Eatons by Rod McQueen, which was also found curbside, and Olive Kittridge, by Elizabeth Stout, which I bought at a yard sale for a quarter.

July 4, 2011

A story that would not be illuminated

“This was a shopping center that embodied the future for which El Salvador was presumably being saved, and I wrote it down dutifully, this being the kind of “colour” I knew how to interpret, the kind of inductive irony, the detail that was supposed to illuminate the story. As I wrote it down I realized that I was no longer much interested in this kind of irony, that this was a story that would not be illuminated by such details, that this was a story that would perhaps not be illuminated at all, that this was perhaps even less a “story” than a true noche obscura [dark night]. As I waited to cross back over the Boulevard de los Heroes to the Camino Real I noticed soliders herding a young civilian into a van, their guns at the boy’s back, and I walked straight ahead, not wanting to see anything at all.” –Joan Didion, Salvador

July 3, 2011

Best morning ever

Our friends Jennie and Deep have a new house within the vicinity of Trinity Bellwoods Park, so that was where we met them this morning for a splendid picnic brunch. It was a brilliant walk in the sunshine, from our house all the way down to Clafouti for the best croissants in Toronto. We had teas and coffees, and sat on a blanket under a tree, and marvelled at the goodness of life in general, in particular on a day like today. And then Harriet went to the playground and the wading pool, while Jennie and I dashed across the street for a browse in Type Books. I bought Should I Share My Ice Cream? by Mo Willems and It Must Be Tall As A Lighthouse by Tabatha Southey. Jennie bought the Jack Dylan Trinity Bellwoods poster (at right). Then back to the park where we splashed around with Harriet in the pool. She was eventually bribed out of the pool with the promise of ice cream, which dripped until she was covered in it, and by then we were home. And then Harriet slept for three hours, which made this probably the very best day on record. Not a bad way to cap off a weekend of patio sitting, bbqs, and reading a big fat summer book. More about that book later…

July 2, 2011

A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman by Margaret Drabble

All right, please forgive me, but I’d like to take the short story off its pedestal for just a moment or two. Not to demean it in any way, but rather to point out the utter banality of proclaiming a writer “a master of the short-story form”. If only because I don’t think there is any such thing as “the short story form”, which is of all forms is probably the most elastic. Think about what Ann Beattie has in common with Alice Munro, I guess. Or closer to home, even Sarah Selecky and Jessica Westhead’s stories are altogether different creatures. There is such diversity in short stories, which is the underlying flaw in any argument against them as a form, but it also means that many of us are sputtering critical banality when we try to talk about them in general.

But then, here is another thing…

Margaret Drabble’s complete short stories A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman were written by a writer who has never been called a master of the short story form, mostly because most people don’t know she ever wrote short stories, because she only wrote a handful of them, and because she had been altogether occupied attempting to become master of the novel instead. (And can I just say that more than most contemporary novelists, she has probably come very close?)

But yet there are stories here which are masterful, because this is Margaret Drabble after all and she is so, so good. So the conclusion I take from this is that the short story form isn’t necessarily one requiring fervent devotion, the way some would like us to think it is– I’m referring to the pedastal. The conclusion is that anyone is capable of writing an excellent short story… as long as anyone happens to be Margaret Drabble.

The stories here, which are organized in chronological order, represent the same kind of trajectory evident in the progression of Drabble’s novels. Early stories are very focussed on the individual, interior and immediate, and were very fashionable in a way that hasn’t aged terribly well (but their quality remains evident). Her middle stories become more political with a strong feminist bent, and then the later ones are concerned with the limits of fiction, with stretching these limits, and also with history, and science and questioning. A reader seeking something conventional from later-Drabble will come away disappointed, but with an understanding of what she is trying (though not always managing) to achieve), the reader can appreciate these works’ greatness.

It is difficult to talk about a collection like this, which represents the work of five decades and was never intended to be discussed as a whole. Except to say that it’s a wonderful overview of (and perhaps introduction to?) Margaret Drabble’s work, and a must-read for any of her devotees. That a few of the early stories have a certain unsteadiness, but then the other assume the assurance of writers who, if she has not necessarily mastered the short-story form, has certainly managed to master the story in general.

July 1, 2011

The Vicious Circle Reads: Everytime We Say Goodbye by Jamie Zeppa

There were just four of us at the most recent meeting of The Vicious Circle, held in splendid east-end backyard digs last Wednesday. And one of us had absolutely nothing good to say about Jamie Zeppa’s Every Time We Say Goodbye, and nothing bad to say about it either because she couldn’t be bothered, it wasn’t even worth the effort to hate. The book had done nothing for the fiction ennui she’d been suffering from of late, and so she would not contribute much to our conversation. However, two of us were partial to the book’s beginning, the story of Grace who has a child out of wedlock and must put her life together enough to demonstrate that she’s capable of taking care of him. They liked her free spirit. And then the fourth of us confessed that she did not like Grace’s story at all, that she’d read the first part of novel afraid she’d dislike the novel entire. Because Grace’s “free spirit” was just a way to avoid investing her with actual, complicating human qualities so that she could function as a device for the plot the author had envisioned. (We had this with last month’s book too– these ethereal female characters so that authors don’t even have to bother making them human.)

We were all in agreement that the ending of the book should have been chopped right off– the cult storyline. That the tidy ending was too much, and that the precocious young protagonist was annoying. That perhaps 2/3 of the novel could have been chopped off altogether (editor, where art thou?) and what we would have ended up with is the story of the young boy, the charismatic misfit who learns he’s adopted and acts out, but perhaps he always would have. And nature vs. nurture questions that fascinate, and perhaps the only genuinely complicated character in the book, Dean Turner who’s portrayal as a 14 year old boy about to fall off the rails rang so true. (The fourth of our group kept her mouth shut). This part of the novel demonstrating that Jamie Zeppa can really write.

This is a first novel, but unlike others we’ve read, it’s not Zeppa’s first book, and she’s got years of writing experience and life experience behind her, and this shows in the best part of the book. The structure of the novel itself was faulty, but the parts that were sound are indicative of a writer whose next book could be better, of a writer who’s a member of the “one to watch” club.

And then we started in on the ribaldry again, broke out the pie, and sat there talking and talking until we were talking in the dark, and it was finally time to go home…

June 30, 2011

Our Best Book from this week's library haul: Cinnamon Baby by Nicola Winstanley

We had very good luck at the library this week, and so to determine a Best Book was difficult. We were delighted with Robert McCloskey’s One Morning in Maine, which was so lovely that Harriet sat through the whole thing even though it was looong. We liked The House Book by Keith DuQuette, Dog in Boots by Greg Gormley, and An Evening at Alfie’s (but then we love all the Alfie books). Our favourite of all of them, however, has been Cinnamon Baby by Nicola Winstanley, about a brand new baby who cries and cries, until her mother (who is a baker) finally soothes her with the smell of cinnamon bread baking in the oven. A very good book for those in our family who remember a certain baby who once cried, and cried, and also for those of us who are absolutely obsessed with babies (hint: not the parents). And Janice Nadeau’s illustrations are as lovely as the prose, whimsical and yet grounded with familiar objects its readers will know. We particularly like the cat who is holding an umbrella…

June 29, 2011

Jiggety Jig

Some of you who’ve been reading awhile know about the summer of 2007 when I read Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal Vegetable Miracle, and grew a gorgeous backyard garden (peppers! tomatoes! cucumber! when a raccoon ate our cantaloupe, and I cried, and watermelon!). We were off to a wonderful start as urban farmers, except the next spring we lost our garden plot when we moved to a new house, our attempts at a pot garden were thwarted by squirrels and shade, we learned we’d had less green thumbs than great soil thanks to the Portuguese gardeners who’d been working away at it for years in our neighbourhood. Anyway,  ever since,  I’ve pretty much only grown impatiens.

What that summer did, however, is turn me onto fresh food like serious. I realized the difference in taste between local food and food trucked in is worth every penny extra. And especially since I’m now feeding a little person, and trying to teach her to appreciate the marvelous flavours the world offers, I make a point of buying the freshest, best-tasting fruit and vegetables available. And this time of year, there is plenty of stuff available. Becuase the season of abundant abundance has begun (and oh my, to imagine August– bursting peaches, corn on the cob, tomatoes, necterines, and blueberries…), and our local market offered up plenty of delicious this week.

We got garlic scapes (so good roasted on the bbq, with a bit of olive oil), hamburger patties, zucchini, strawberries, raspberries, rainbow chard, basil, cheese, and heirloom cherry tomatoes. Also a strawberry rhubarb pie in the freezer made with fruit that I bought last week.

So many wonderful ways to eat the sunshine…

June 29, 2011

Drabbling 2011

I fell in love with Margaret Drabble in 2004, when I was living in Japan and first read The Radiant Way. After that, every trip to Kobe necessitated a trip to Wantage Books so I could pick up a few more battered Penguins with bright orange spines (or, more often, with orange spines now so faded that they’d become yellow). When we left Japan, I insisted on sending all of my battered Drabbles home by surface mail. Before we came to Canada, we spent six weeks in England, and I bought a whole pile of mid-period Margaret Drabble books at various charity shops. I read her latest The Red Queen. And then I’d read all the Drabbles in the entire world, and suddenly new Drabbles were a rare and precious thing.

This doesn’t happen to me so often. Most of the writers I like have huge backlists and are usually dead, and so I have many resources at my disposal when I want to feast upon their oeuvre– new books, used books, libraries, random boxes on curbs. When I want anything, I rarely have to wait for it. I don’t know the anticipation of lining up for things at midnight, whether it be for Harry Potter or an iPad, but sometimes I wish I did.

Because I kind of do know it, actually, and it’s wonderful. I’ve known it since Drabble’s The Sea Lady came out in 2007, then The Pattern in the Carpet in 2009, and now as I’m reading Drabble’s collected stories A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman. New Drabble prose: precious and rare . I savour every bit of it, and even when there’s no new Drabble in my immediate future, I am comforted by knowing that in this very room, Margaret Drabble is busy cooking up more.

June 27, 2011

Wild Libraries I Have Known: Brewster Ladies Library

Hamilton writer (and fellow member of the Barbara Pym Society!) Judy Pollard Smith writes about the Brewster Ladies Library in Brewster, Massachusetts:

I have a Golden Rule about Libraries. They have to carry Barbara Pym, May Sarton and Edith Wharton. If they carry all three I know they’ll have everything else that good libraries should have. And last week at the Brewster Ladies Libary, I counted several of each writer’s novels, neatly shelved and waiting for patrons to tuck them into their wicker baskets.

In 1852, when Brewster was a flourishing Cape village, Misses Sarah Augusta Mayo and Mary Louise Cobb, along with friends, raised enough money to place a shelf of lending books in the home of Captain Mayo on Main Street. Over the years the library has added a garden dripping with rich vegetation, and a fabulous addition. The original house still serves as a hushed reading room with stained glass windows and the original fireplace. If you listen you can hear the rustle of the Misses skirts as they pass by.

There is a cheerful children’s room with aquarium, story times, toys and books. There are author chats, book discussions, holiday family programs (works out well if it rains on your vacation!) and local artist’s displays.

There are 200 Senior Volunteers, four of whom were sitting gluing the pages back into books when I was there. There are cosy wing chairs, free internet and a general feeling of amicability. Denise at the Reference Desk redefines the words “pleasant, helpful, lovely.” And summer visitors can get a card for no charge.

I say, “Up with those two Misses who started their lending shelf in 1852!” They had no idea what shining threads they were weaving into the posterity of this tiny village.