February 14, 2007
Radiance by Shaena Lambert
Radiance would be the story of Keiko, a “Hiroshima Maiden” who comes to America in 1952 for plastic surgery on her facial scars. It is quickly apparent, however, that this story belongs instead to those she meets during her sojourn– people who see her as an opportunity to fulfil their own personal longings. And all of them want to hear her story:
~’Tell me about Hiroshima.’ But she is. She is. It is a map she carries in her body, where north holds the hills and, beneath them, the wide suburban avenues, the streetcar rails dusted with snow. South is full of winding cobbled streets, smelling of fish. East beyond the castle is a flat plain that reminds her of her father. Here soliders practice their drills and formations, carrying black bayonets.~
Hiroshima is a place of many stories. For me, for many years, Hiroshima was a book by John Hersey and a photo of a mushroom cloud. While we lived in Japan, we visited the city twice and it became one of my favourite cities in that country, with beautiful canals, a vibrant atmosphere, and nearby Miyajima, which might just be my favourite place in the world. Lambert plays with the idea of a storied Hiroshima in a marvelous way. How a city’s name has come to stand for such atrocity, and yet behind it are the stories of the people who live there. And similarly are stories woven throughout the novel– in particular the story of Daisy Lawrence, Keiko’s American “host mother” who is dealing with her own personal trauma when Keiko comes to stay. Keiko herself remains a cipher right to the novel’s ambiguous end.
Daisy comments that once Keiko comes, everything seems to be “carrying a double shadow, so that you could never be sure if what you saw was strange or natural.” It is the same experience for the reader, who can never be sure whether incidents are interpreted through characters’ neuroses, or can be seen for what they are. This ambiguity is particularly effective as the narrative takes place during the era of McCarthyist paranoia, and Daisy’s own husband is called to testify about his affiliations. But at the same time, so many unanswered questions leave a reader a bit unsatisfied too. More of a focus could have aided this: with so many double shadows, and you long for something solid to hold.
The multitude of perspectives is one problem in this text. Swinging between characters results in such bizarre situations as Daisy seemingly noting her husband sitting in the car “watching her stout, muscled buttocks” as he dropped her off at the train station. Similar awkwardness exists in some of the prose: a sentence like “The pilot… stepped jauntily down the steps” is absolutely crying out for a better verb, or an editor. I was uneasy about some of the metaphors connected Daisy and Keiko: that the former takes off her girdle and is imprinted with flowers, as victims of the atomic bombs are burned by the patterns on their kimonos, and while the connection is jarring, I did not find it particularly informing.
But as the above passage about Hiroshima indicates, Lambert is capable of very strong writing. And this story gathers momentum as it goes, culminating in twists and turns that took me completely by surprise. Perhaps Radiance is a book of too many stories, but the story at its core, which is Daisy Lawrence’s, is well-played out until the very end. And Keiko’s story too, even in her reticence. She proves a most intriguing trickster figure, never explained away and this contibutes to the novel’s magic aura. Using a remarkable blend of Japanese and American lore, Shaena Lambert’s Radiance tells the stories which underwrite the history we think we know.
February 13, 2007
Self Portrait
We’re tired at our house, which is what happens when we both spend the night having dreams in which we are struggling to sleep. And so for today, in lieu of coherence, Pickle Me This brings you me waiting for the tub to fill. Turban-headed because if my Japanese life taught me anything, it was that a bath sans shower is foul. And I like this image because it incorporates four of my favourite things: books, baths, big mugs of tea and Stuart (for it is his robe after all). Happy All The Time was a splish-splash delight.
Today in the post was a letter from Bronwyn, with whom I’ve defied Laurie Colwin’s quote from Happy All The Time: “Friendship is not possible between two women one of whom is very well dressed”. (That said woman is Bronwyn and not me should be revelatory to nobody). And her note contained the news that she has subscribed me to the London Review of Books, which is sort of like having pennies rain from the sky. I’d say life must be mostly good, with friends like that.
And I think Lucky Beans is one of the prettiest blogs I’ve ever seen.
February 11, 2007
Culling Nothing
Wonderful! Some writers’ rooms (with photos!). This one is Hilary Mantel’s. Here for literary friendships, and rivalries. Calvin Trillin in conversation. The beginning of this article is something a lot of book collectors can related to, on pruning your shelves: “…the same thing happens with every potential discard: You start to read it. Four hours later, you wake up on the floor, having culled nothing.” This article pleased me– on being a good wife. Heather Mallick’s manifesto— it’s always amusing to read the comments of her irate (and apparently avid) readers.
February 11, 2007
Bliss
This weekend the sun came out and I had to leave the house because I’ve been living in pseudo-hibernation the last while and by Sunday evening I’m always crazy. Not this weekend however, as we’ve had a delightful time. We went to St. Lawrence Market yesterday for fruit and veg and had lunch there, and then hung about in a coffee shop reading the paper. Last night the Brown-Smiths came for dinner and we had a wonderful time, and I didn’t drink too much– just enough. Today we went for a walk down College Street and had coffee/tea at Golden Wheat. The house is clean, delicious leftover risotto in the fridge, and just enough ice cream to make a dessert. Bliss.
February 11, 2007
Cheating
I’m totally cheating because I’ve gone on a YA spree. I am justifying this by explaining that I am dealing with a young protagonist at the moment and so it’s good to have some exposure to that kind of voice, but the truth is that I love the Anastasia books. They are so clever. I went to the library yesterday to return one and brought home four more, as well as a couple of other young adult novels. And I say that I am cheating because I read one in an hour, and then mark it on my list of Books Read Since 2006 and now I’m at 199 and I don’t know if that’s quite right. Now reading Happy All the Time by Laurie Colwin. I love Laurie Colwin.
February 11, 2007
Epigraph
The streets of London have their map; but our passions are uncharted. What are you going to meet if you turn this corner? -Jacob’s Room
February 11, 2007
Project
Whenever someone came to visit us in Nottingham, we took their picture in front of the Robin Hood Statue. This was not only because there wasn’t much to do in Nottingham, but it was quickly an important ritual. Some shots are quite posed: me and my guests standing at attention (hello Erin, Claz, Mike, and all of ye who attended my 24th birthday celebration). We’ve got Stuart’s and my sisters in town, and even a shot of my Mom (though she’s standing a bit east of the statue; her visit occurred before tradition was cemented). Some great dramatic shots: Bardley launching his bow alongside, Rebecca swooning at RH’s skirts, and Britt being nailed in the skull. All in all, an excellent photographic exhibition (in which, it must be noted, the sun is never shining) and I’ve decided to arrange and frame some sort of a display that will deck our walls forever more. At the time I was unaware that I was creating an historic record, but then I suppose one never is.
February 8, 2007
At 57 Mount Pleasant Street
Bronwyn and I once had the pleasure (or terror) of seeing The Proclaimers live at the T in the Park festival in Scotland, and I must say I’ve never been part of a scarier crowd. We both very nearly cried, but then neither of us thrive in chaos at the best of time. We just thought that we like “500 Miles” sort of, and we could hum along with it, but the experience was like being at a ten-thousand-strong revival when you’re sort of not bothered about Jsus. It was a cultural thing, and I thought of it whilst reading this article about how the English just don’t “get” the point of those bespectacled boys. The Costa Book of the Year has been won, and it’s a book researched entirely in the British library which takes place in Northern Ontario. Ohhh! CanCon (sort of). On movie/book cover tie-ins. Irène Némirovsky. And last night I was lucky enough to attend Trudeau night at The Kama Reading Series which was lovely, except that Stephen Clarkson and Peter C. Newman never showed!
Today I’m starting Jacob’s Room for the first time.
February 8, 2007
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning was absolutely stunning. If you read it, I promise you will like it. The story of Arthur Seaton, a factory worker in 1950s Nottingham with insatiable tastes for married women and liquor, and the smartest, deepest soul. Really a cracking story with humour, a marvelously rich and complex character, a reflection of a time, and oh the language. Concluding with “Well, it’s a good life and a good world, all said and done, if you don’t weaken, and if you know that the big wide world hasn’t heard from you yet, no, not by a long way, though it won’t be long now.” This is the most subtly delicate masculine book I’ve ever read.
And I read it because of this article from The Observer last month about Nottingham now versus then, and the idea of reading any book set in Nottingham really appealed to me because I used to live there and I miss it all the time. There is something about reading about a place where you’ve lived (I particularly remember feeling this whilst reading Russell Smith’s books when I was an undergrad). Even if the book is set fifty years before you set foot in that town, and the Raleigh Factory is gone now, and all the rough places are even rougher and even the nice places aint so nice anymore. I would posit that reading a book about a place you know well is a vastly different experience from reading a place you’ve never been, or a place that never was. They’re whole different species of reading, I think.
It was also interesting to read Saturday Night and Sunday Morning having just read No Longer at Ease and Things Fall Apart (which was published just a year after Sillitoe’s novel). And the relationship between Achebe’s postcolonial Nigeria and Sillitoe’s 1950s Industrial Midlands, which is just fascinating. And I thought this even before the African character Sam rolls into Nottingham and they reckon he’s so good at darts “as a legacy left over from throwing assegais”. Just these similar themes and emotions experienced by the protagonists, and the fact that a “Morris” automobile is a status symbol for Achebe’s Obi, and yet Sillitoe’s Arthur dismisses an ancient one as a step below a car.
It’s a brilliant book. I wanted to read it slow and well, just to see how the words worked. And I have been making an effort to read more books written by men, as I’ve been far too discriminatory in the past. I’ve enjoyed this broadening of my horizons. It was also nice to see that Saturday Night and Sunday Morning was one of the 1001 books I must read before I die. That list is a bit man-heavy, really, and lately I’ve been wracking up a score.
February 7, 2007
Voluble
“A literary portrait of marriage”, so says this profile of Calvin Trillin of About Alice (which I read in December). A different perspective on those streamlined classics. Margaret Atwood once again on arts funding cuts.
Just finishing No Longer at Ease.
My friend Sk8 proposed to her lovely boyfriend in the company of bison on Sunday, and he said yes. Hooray!
And finally, Sunday night I saw a penguin being eaten by a seal on David Attenborough, and I’ve been traumatized ever since.
