November 1, 2010
November bits and bobs
CBC Books’ Monthly Book Report Podcast is now online, and at about 8:40 you can here a panel discussion with me, Jen Knoch of the KIRBC, Ron Nurwisah from The Afterword (moderated by Erin Balser) about what’s going down with Canada Reads 2011. Admittedly, I was feeling a bit more optimistic about the Top 40 that day than I was last Friday, but you’ll be happy to know that I’ve come around a bit. That it might be the journey and not the destination that matters– if what I love best about Canada Reads is obscure recommendations, then here is a list of 20 books I haven’t read yet, and why not pursue those avenues? What if the authors pushing their books are not so much saying, “Win me a prize!”, but “Read me, read me, read me!” Which is the kind of plea I tend to listen to. You know, it was never so much Canada Reads itself and the panel discussions I cared about as much as the reading that led up it (and the conversations online with other readers), and perhaps this changed format is just going to extend that whole experience.
That said, have you voted for Sean Dixon’s The Girls Who Saw Everything yet? If I’ve got to have a reread in the final five, might as well be the one that I brought to the table.
Anyway, I’ve officially decided to bring on Canada Reads Independently 2011, because it was a great deal of fun last year, and complemented the actual Canada Reads in all kinds of interesting ways. And also because it was the Canada Reads subject to my whims, and how brilliant is that? I’m already a-thinking about panellists, and I think we can come up with something amazing. Watch this space.
Watch also for news of my work appearing in all kinds of interesting places– I’ve got essays and reviews coming out this month that I’m very excited about, and though I still have to keep my mouth shut about them, I look forward to soon when I no longer have to. I’ve finally got started on a blog for Literature for Life, and am going to visit their new digs tomorrow to get an update on where we are at. I will also be giving a guest lecture at Ryerson later this month about “Bringing Children’s Books to Life” and I’m wholly enjoying the preparation, looking forward to the delivery, but there’s still plenty of work to be done in the meantime, and so onward.
October 29, 2010
About Canada Reads 2011: The good and the bad
So, I am excited that Sean Dixon’s The Girls Who Saw Everything has made it into the CBC Canada Reads Top 40 list. It’s a fantastic book that you should probably read, and I’m not the only one who thinks so– it received a lot of support. This does mean, however, that we all have to vote for the book again to get it into the finals– go here and do so.
I’m a bit conflicted though, or maybe just confused. I think a lot of us having been coming at Canada Reads from a multiplicity of angles, and the whole thing might be turning into a convoluted mess. Because, for example, my understanding is that Canada Reads is a great opportunity to highlight a book one is particularly passionate about, to bring the public’s attention to something they might not have read before, but something they will probably love, which is why I picked Dixon’s brilliant, quirky, book that was published by an independent press.
But I realize that I’d missed the point, or that my understanding of Canada Reads is different from another’s– say, Perdita Felicien, who last year was a panelist championing Anne Marie McDonald’s Fall on Your Knees. Quite simply, she picked a book she loved, and that was that. Other critics have demonstrated they understand Canada Reads to be an opportunity for panelists to promote books that Canada should read, in order to better ourselves. And this year, CBC has made Canada Reads something a bit different altogether– a chance for us to revisit the best books from the past decade, as nominated by the readers who loved them.
Oh, and as nominated by writers too, which is kind of awkward. I love the idea of readers pushing their favourite books, the conversation that ellicits, the passions fuelled, but surely an author in the fray isn’t going to have the same kind of conversations, the same interests. If your book really was one of the essential books of the past decade, couldn’t you rely on your passionate readers to promote it? And if you don’t have those passionate readers, then, um, maybe your book wasn’t one of the essential books of the past decade? It sort of kills the fun, actually, and you can’t blame the authors really, because they were encouraged, but it all seems quite contrary to the spirit of the game.
When I first saw the top forty list, I was thrilled. Not only had Dixon’s book made it, but so many other books I’m passionate about are there as well– The Way the Crow Flies by Anne-Marie McDonald (so underrated– I love this book), Unless by Carol Shields (which is my favourite book ever), Sweetness in the Belly by Camilla Gibb (which is wonderful, and award-winning, but I don’t think we could be done talking about it yet), Skim by Mariko and Jillian Tamaki (a graphic novel– such a twist!), and Lisa Moore’s February (swoon). I guess all of these are books we’re not finished talking about already, or at least I’m not.
But there are two problems, and I only realized this a while after I first saw the list. 1) All the best books here, the books I most want to win, I’ve read already! So there goes 99% of the fun for me, really. [And there’s only book here that I’ve not yet read that I’ve been moved to pick up, and that’s Essex County by Jeff Lemire. I’ve read 20 of the others already, and the final 19 haven’t appealed to me yet.) 2) The books I most want to win probably won’t win– a lot of readers’ understanding is that we should vote for the most essential books of the last decade, and in general terms these probably are The Book of Negroes, Late Nights on Air, Lullabies for Little Criminals etc. Books we’ve already read to death, however– and I can’t imagine that I’d find myself reading these again.
I’m still hopeful that the CBC will come up with something excellent– the list does bode well for interesting, but if you’re like me and come to Canada Reads to encounter something new, things may not work out exactly as planned. Which is why, I think, I am probably going to do Canada Reads Independently 2011, CBC shortlist pending. So we’ll have to see what happens, and at least things aren’t boring (yet).
March 12, 2010
Ray Smith's Century tops Canada Reads: Independently!
Taking 35% of the popular vote, Ray Smith’s Century has won top spot in the Canada Reads: Independently picks. Thank you to everybody who took part, to everybody who voted, to Jian Ghomeshi for mentioning our humble little extravaganza on yesterday’s CBC Canada Reads broadcast, to Dan Wells for nominating Century (and for publishing it), and to Ray Smith for writing it.
Thanks also to the rest of our celebrity panel, for donating their time and for the wonderful books they introduced to us. The five Canada Reads: Independently selections made clear that Canadian Literature is multitudinous, rich, and full of surprises. Which makes it much like literature in general, and in particular too.
Now, why don’t you celebrate by buying the book?
March 10, 2010
On the Hair Hat Man
I have never met Carrie Snyder, but I started reading her blog just before Patricia Storms recommended Hair Hat for Canada Reads: Independently. (Patricia doesn’t know Carrie either– I checked. Because Canada is a very small town.) So Carrie and I have corresponded by email a few times, and I broke one of my own personal rules to ask her about her Hair Hat Man.
But first, my rule. I will never, ever ask a writer where she gets her ideas. I don’t care. I don’t care if the work is autobiographical, divined by magic, or hatched from an egg. The answers to these questions are rarely illuminating about the works themselves as much as they tell us what we want to know about an author. And just because we want to know doesn’t mean that it does us any good to do so.
BUT. Carrie Snyder’s Hair Hat Man was so impossibly weird, and I just didn’t get him. Though I understood that my inability to grasp him, pin him down, was part of the power of the collection, that the culmination of the stories serve to make him “almost plausible”.
I love the fact that the Hair Hat Man has had the same effect on Snyder’s negative reviewers that he has on the other characters in her book– he makes us uneasy. People hate the Hair Hat Man, within the book and without it, but any character who provokes that reaction must have some substance behind him. Or rather, the criticism is often that he’s more a device than a character, but I think the same thing applies.
So I had to ask Carrie where he came from. Not that it changes anything at all, but as the answer to such questions often is, what she told me was worth repeating:
In answer to your Hair Hat question (and it’s definitely the most-asked question about the book!) … my inspiration came from actually seeing a man with a hair hat. At least, I think that’s what I saw. I was a grad student in Toronto, and often stopped at a coffee shop on my way to campus (at the corner of Bloor and St. Joseph Street, near Wellesley). One day, while walking past the shop, I thought I saw a man inside with his hair shaped into a hat. I don’t even think I did a double-take, but afterwards kind of kicked myself for not looking twice.
Somehow, the image worked its way into my imagination. He first appeared in a song I was writing. A year later, he made his way into the first hair hat story that I wrote–“Queenie, My Heart” (and that title actually arrived a few years before I’d even seen the hair hat man, scribbled in the margins of notes I was taking for fourth-year English class). But that story went unfinished. For about two years.
I’d just given birth to my first child when I wrote another hair hat story: the one in the voice of the lone male narrator in the book, which includes that coffee shop. After I wrote it, I said to my husband: is this just too weird? Because I want to write more hair hat stories. So I did. They just kind of poured out. At that point, I’d written a novel which had gotten me an agent; the novel didn’t sell, but she was able to sell these stories (which were written over the course of about a year) to Penguin. That happened just before I gave birth to my second child. And then, it was only at the editing stage that I found the ending to my Queenie story. And wrote the last story in the book, which surprised me entirely. I had no idea it was waiting to be written, but it felt like the perfect ending.
March 9, 2010
Canada Reads: Independently 2010: UPDATE 8
I was looking through the twitter posts about Canada Reads today, and found one that said, “Every year, I get psyched about Canada Reads, and then life gets in the way and I don’t read any of the books”. Or something like that, in 140 characters. And for an instant, I thought that was profoundly sad, and pretty weird, until I remembered that the bookish circles amongst whom I travel the internet are probably way outnumbered by people like that. That though no doubt many people pay attention when Canada Reads rolls around, those who read every single book, those who start up spin-offs, and other spin-offs, or read the books from spin-offs, or blog the whole thing three years in a row, for example– these are sort of extraordinarily book-loving people.
All of which is to say that those of you who’ve read the Canada Reads 2010: Independently books are awesome, and that I very much appreciate you having my reading be just a little less independent. Thanks for all the feedback I’ve gotten so far with your top Canada Reads picks– others still have until Thursday to have your voice heard (even if you haven’t read them all). The Canada Reads 2010: Independently winner will be announced on Friday!
This week, Writer Guy read How Happy to Be: “I “got” Maxime, maybe because I could understand her dilemmas, her struggles. Ultimately, however, what makes it shine is Onstad’s prose: she’s a natural, seemingly effortless, writer. It’s easy to forgive and forget certain plot contrivances when the writing is skillful and fun.”
She who is Buried in Print read Wild Geese: “The dynamics of this story are complex; the emotional alliances between the characters are unpredictable and shift as easily as Caleb’s temper, and the reading experience is painful at times as, like Lind, we are temporarily immersed in this cruel world. But the overall sensation is one of endurance and survival, and it’s clear to see why this novel has endured in the Canlit canon…”
Charlotte Ashley (who has read Canada Reads AND Canada Reads Independently. Impressive, no?) read How Happy to Be and reports: “The figure of the girl who is directionless and out of control until motherhood finds her and gives her some purpose is not without precedent (I’m thinking Natasha from War and Peace, or in some ways myself). But by the same token, it made me feel that Max’s issues earlier in the book were not really that “real” after all, and all her whining and confusion was really just self-absorbed adolescence drawn out too long and she just needed to grow up. Maybe this was what Generation X lacked – the characters didn’t grow up.”
March 5, 2010
Canada Reads: Independently. It's the Final Countdown
Okay, it’s not exactly a “countdown”, but “It’s the Final Vote” would bring to mind no song by Europe, and so what’s the point of that? I’ve just posted my final Canada Reads: Independently review, and my rankings are set with Hair Hat in the top spot. But my power only extends so far, of course, and the winner of Canada Reads: Independently isn’t up to me. It’s up to us!
For those of you who’ve taken part, reading all or some of these books, you’ve got a vote. Our little poll will close at midnight on Thursday March 11th. Before then, email me (at klclare AT gmail DOT com) your top pick of the Canada Reads: Independently selections, and the winning book will be announced on Friday March 12 (just in time for CBC Canada Reads champion to be unveiled!)
And my bets are on Century, but anything can happen!
March 5, 2010
Can-Reads Indies #5: Moody Food by Ray Robertson
Until yesterday afternoon, I was dreading having to write this review. I was about half way into Moody Food and I just wasn’t getting it. I did like the references to 1960s’ Toronto and the Yorkville I only know from ancient mythology; I liked Thomas’s back-story; I liked the Making Waves Bookshop; I loved certain ways Thomas’s understanding of music was described (in particular, what he heard in the vaccuum cleaner when he was a child). But I found the prose awkward, with strangely-claused sentences that were hard to follow. And my biggest problem was with Bill Hansen.
For the first half of the book, Bill was a cipher. He was a non-character, and I couldn’t figure out why any of the others, with their vivid personalities– his cool girlfriend, Christine, his old hippie boss at the bookstore, the enigmatic Thomas Graham himself– why were they even hanging out with him? Bill took responsibility for nothing, had no real talents of his own (so they made him the drummer), didn’t follow through with anything, all of this for no real reason except to propel the plot. Let’s face it– in reality, Christine would never have dated him, Kelorn would never have hired him (and would have fired him once he stopped showing up for work), and Thomas wouldn’t ever have given him the time of day. Moody Food would never have happened. It all seemed like a construct, and that bothered me.
Thomas Graham himself I also had a hard time with– I didn’t buy his charisma. Though I started to see that the problem here was that we were seeing him through Bill’s eyes, and Bill describes himself as “the first and last disciple of Thomas Graham”, plus Bill was doing a lot of drugs, so probably nobody else really bought the charisma either.
So this disparate group comes together to form The Duckhead Secret Society, hooks themselves up with a steel guitar player called Slippery Bannister, they eventually catch the interest of a record producer with their “interstellar North American music”, and the rest is music history. Music history in the “Almost Famous” sense, the Behind the Music downward spiral that by now is a familiar narrative. And for me, once the spiral started, I finally found the book’s momentum.
Thomas and Bill get into cocaine, and then Thomas starts doing heroin, and instead of focusing on their tour and the album they were contracted to make, Thomas becomes absorbed by his magnum opus “Moody Food”. At one point, he’s got a cow in the studio, and he’s got a certain affinity for bovines anyway since becoming obsessed with vegetarianism. Robertson is throwing out these amazing sentences like, “When he hit the desert earth the crunch of his carrot was the only sound for miles.” Thomas is falling apart on stage, but he doesn’t care, and he and Bill spend their nights strung out on coke and writing new material (for which Bill is essential, because he hears music in colours and matches it with passages from library books they steal from all over North America). And Thomas starts referring to himself in the third person, and throwing liver off balconies, and uttering lines like, “The heart gets all the songs written about it and it’s what everybody talks about, but the liver is the biggest thing in you. So how come you never hear anybody talking about the liver? Where are all the songs written about it?”
When Thomas slips too far over the edge, suddenly Bill Hansen makes sense. We’re not supposed to like the guy, much like how we felt about Max from How Happy to Be. Unlike Max, however, Bill lacks wit and charm, and his perspective is remarkably limited: later, a character says to him, “I knew you weren’t bright, but I never took you for stupid.” But he is, a little bit, because he’s just a kid from Etobicoke who’s caught up in a story that’s too much for him. When the Duckhead Secret Society returns from their tour, Thomas holes up in his hotel room until the RCMP catch on (because he’s dodging the draft, and wanted for drug possession). The whole Yorkville scene has gotten out of control, and as a riot breaks out between protesters and police, Thomas Graham urges his band up on the rooftops for one last show that would have been an overwhelming cliche, but hilariously and tragically isn’t, and all of the sudden our perspective (and Bill’s) is whipped back to something resembling reality. How we’ve been following him so up close all this time, but Thomas Graham from far away can actually blend into a crowd.
I really enjoyed this book in the end, and I’m not sure if my early reservations were my fault or the book’s, but I didn’t have any by the time I was finished. That it took me so long to get into it, however (and this is a 400 page book), would have me counting against it. And here’s where this ranking think is stupid– every single book I’ve read as part of Canada Reads: Independently would probably be the very best book on most reading lists, but this is a particularly superlative reading list. Which means that although Moody Food is taking the bottom spot, it’s only because of its very good company, and also that my heart is breaking. But that this entire book list has been a really incredible reading experience and I’m so pleased to have had it.
Canada Reads: Independently Rankings:
3) How Happy to Be by Katrina Onstad
4) Wild Geese by Martha Ostenso
5) Moody Food by Ray Robertson
March 3, 2010
Canada Reads: Independently 2010: UPDATE 7
Fun fact I’ve noted is that two out of five Canada Reads: Independently picks reference my alma mater Victoria College. In Moody Food, Ray Robertson has his characters meeting up on the stone steps of Old Vic, and Carrie Snyder goes one better in Hair Hat and has her character in “Flirtations” return three books to the Victoria College Library (though was it the library pre or post renos? I wonder…). Anyway, I will try not to let these references colour my perceptions (and as the post below makes clear, I am always very open-minded when it comes to literary perceptions).
I am just about done Moody Food, which took a while to grow on me, but this afternoon when I was this far into the drug-soaked downward spiral, I found myself hooked. Though it’s pretty clear that things aren’t going to end well. Review to follow in a day or two…
Meanwhile, Julie Forrest (who I met today! She’s lovely) read Century this week, and she puts it on top of the rankings: “Powerful and poetic, Century tackles big issues for such a slim volume. Inadvertent as it was, I’m glad I saved the best for last.” Buried in Print struggled with Century, but found it not without rewards in her post “How many clever readers does it take to make a “great” book?”: “I can see that it’s well-written and carefully constructed, but I think I’ve missed a lot of what I was meant to notice, and that’s an uncomfortable feeling.” August reads Moody Food, and found it “damned near impossible for me to put down because there was so much life in it”, though as a self-confessed music snob, he didn’t buy The Duckhead Secret Society. He also read Hair Hat, hated the hair hat, but was more impressed with the book than he expected to be: “Carrie Snyder writes like she knows.” And my husband Stuart read How Happy to Be, finding its heroine reprehensible but, oddly enough, the book much compelling all the same.
February 22, 2010
Canada Reads 2010: UPDATE 6
Four down, one to go, and I know lots of other readers are making good progress. Pretty soon I’ll be providing details of the vote we’ll be using to determine which title comes out on top, and I hope you’ll all show support for your favourites.
In the meantime, there’s plenty of reading going on– my husband is eating up How Happy to Be as I type this, and August Bourre had plenty of good things to say about Katrina Onstad’s novel: “Onstad’s send-up of self-important celebrities and the media apparatus that seems structured soley to support their egos is dead-on… and I laughed out loud more than once while Maxime was interviewing Ethan Hawke. It all seems like such a laugh, really, watching Maxime deliberately sabotaging her career, eviscerating her coworkers with her wit, navigating parties and talk shows and fucking Ad Sales out of boredom. And then for a moment it’s all ripped away and we can see the insecurity that underlies it all…”
This week, Charlotte Ashley read Moody Food and found it “engrossing, a genuine page-turner, and uncomfortably evocative of a seriously messed-up time. But so very not my thing.” Buried in Print read it too, found it not exactly up her street, but wrote, “The dialogue is truly stand-out. It’s walk-off-the-page good. Not overly clever, just damn straight and believable. ” Writer Guy reads Century and suspects it’s untoppable: “Ultimately, the real strength of this work is Smith’s assertive and limpid (a word he actually uses at least three times!) prose. There’s a confidence in his style, a writer who’s totally in command of the language.”
In wider Canada Reads news, can I please credit the CBC people for being so cool and supportive about their imitators? For taking it all on as flattery instead of threat? And certainly, there is much flattery– the National Post announced their Canada Also Reads shortlist, which includes Pickle Me This favourites Come Thou, Tortoise and Yellowknife. And having read Julie Forrest’s review, I’m also going to read Stacey-May Fowles’ novel Fear of Fighting (which is available for free download). And then the fantastic KIRBC pepole bring you Civilians Read, which is the CBC Canada Reads lineup, but with a different panel of defenders. And so it will be interesting to see how things go down there.
March promises to be quite the showdown .
February 22, 2010
Can-Reads-Indies #4: How Happy to Be by Katrina Onstad
If Max were a man, there would be no debate about whether or not How Happy to Be is a serious novel. But Katrina Onstad’s Max is a woman, and so we have to discuss whether or not this is chick-lit, and if there is such thing as women’s fiction, and my answer to that one would be that sometimes there is, but not now. That if Max were a man, this novel wouldn’t be so different, except for the scene where she gets her period. I think a man reading this novel would appreciate it as much as I have.
If Max were a man, we’d c0mpare this book to Lucky Jim, but because Max is a woman, someone will mention Bridget Jones. She’s more Jim though, because her behaviour is loathsome rather than lovable, but loathsome is made palatable by being funny. (And I got this whole Lucky Jim thing from writer Kate Christensen re. her first novel In The Drink, interviewed here: “…an august tradition of hard-drinking, self-destructive, hilarious anti-heroes beginning with Dostoevsky’s Underground Man and continuing through Joyce Cary’s The Horse’s Mouth, Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim, and David Gates’s Jernigan, three of the books which have inspired me most. Other exemplars of Loser Lit (and there are many) include The Ginger Man, A Confederacy of Dunces, Bright Lights, Big City, Wonder Boys, Miss Lonelyhearts, A Fine Madness, and, most recently, Arthur Nersesian’s The Fuck-up. I was consciously co-opting a predominantly male genre, another reason I worried that no one would “get” In the Drink.”)
I feel bad now about the fact that I have to undermine this book’s femininity (assuming books have genders, but I’ve got a feeling that they do) in order to demonstrate its value. And you’re probably thinking that I’m protesting too much, but I also know that you’d think I was ludicrous to put this book at the top of my rankings. Why? Because it’s a popular novel, because it’s about a wayward youngish woman who finds love at the end, because it engages with pop culture and media culture, because it’s a comedy, because of the scene in which Max gets her period on a first date, the date has to go out and buy her tampons, he comes back with pads so thick that when she puts one on she waddles.
But in many ways, I truly think How Happy to Be is the best of the Canada Reads Independently books I’ve read yet. First: no gimmicks. Like some critics, I will concede that the Hair Hat Man himself was a gimmick. Century had them too (“Does it matter that there was no Jane Seymour? I don’t think so, but I hope you found her convincing.”) In fact, speaking of Century (and these outlandish comparisons are part of what makes a reading challenge like this so interesting), How Happy to Be also takes on “this murderous century”. It’s similarly woven of stories, of true ones and embellished ones, stories about how we tell stories and why, the stories we tell ourselves, those we can’t bear to, those we tell the world, and those that complete strangers tell us while we’re sitting beside them on the streetcar.
More though, about why this book is so wonderful: Katrina Onstad is a stunning writer. She is. “I watched from windows and trees for seventy-two days until Spring came. Her hair was finally longish, down around her ears now, and she looked beautiful again, her high cheeks neither sunken nor overblown. She could catch me. Day 73, she climbed the same tree from a different angle and grabbed my foot. Terrified, I howled like a stubbed toe and she laughed and laughed and my father brought us lunch to the rotted picnic table with only one bench. We sat in a row, my father, my mother, me, eating sandwiches off paper plates, shoulders touching in the summer, our limbs sighing with relief where they met.”
If How Happy to Be had a gimmick, it would be Onstad’s engagement with reality. The novel is a roman à clef of sorts– no doubt the newspaper where Max writes her film column is The National Post (where Onstad was once film critic); The Other Daily‘s vapid girl columnist seems familiar; Onstad counts Ethan Hawke, Jennifer Aniston, and Nicole Kidman among her characters; her fictional headlines mirror actual ones; she skewers a coke-snorting, bitch-slapping media scene culture that is apparently true to life (not that I’d know, of course, as such culture often takes place after 7pm and I haven’t left my house at such an hour since 2004 and that was just to return an overdue library book).
But the punch of her prose and the push of her plot keeps the trick from wearing thin. Max has spent her life looking on and telling stories from the sidelines, but she’s on the edge of something now– not yet recovered from the end of a long-term relationship which broke with “make or break”; desperately unhappy in her job writing about shitty movies whose advertisements pay for her paper; drinking too much; having stupid sex; she doesn’t have furniture or anything fresh in her fridge. “You have run out of repartee. You think of all the time you wasted watching while you should have been remembering what you once knew: how to start a fire with hands and twigs; how to sleep in a snow cave. You should have surrounded yourself with old people and listened to their tales of survival, really listened instead of jotting them down for later. You have entered your thirties without knowledge and you want it in a pile of sticks, a river, your bones.”
She wants her mother, the mother she lost to cancer years ago. And though she’s too angry with him to know it, she wants her father too, who was so paralyzed by his wife’s death that Max could never reach him. She wants roots, something real, and perhaps she might find it in Theo McArdle, who in his absolute goodness is the opposite of the rest of her whole life.
Rona Maynard was right in her pitch: How Happy to Be is a coming-of-age novel. A bad headline for this would be Catcher in the Wry. And now for the reasons that the novel will not be topping my rankings: first, a fairly conventional plot from about midway in is not extraordinary enough to compare with Hair Hat or Century. And also that the whole point of this novel is Max’s singular vision (“I’m being stabbed to death by my point of view”), which is dealt with most effectively, but (redundant though it is to say) is terribly limited, and doesn’t begin to compare with the other books’ polyhedronal approach.
But I love this book. I think it’s an important book, that it sets a standard that all novels about young women should live up to, that it deals with contemporary urban life in opposition to the Can-Lit standard, that it sets a standard of funny that all novels about anyone should live up to, and that it might surprise any male reader who thinks he’s not so interested in stories about women’s lives.
Canada Reads Independently Rankings:
1) Hair Hat by Carrie Snyder
3) How Happy to Be by Katrina Onstad
