May 14, 2024
Monsters, Martyrs, and Marionettes, by Adrienne Gruber
As I noted in the introduction to my Bookspo conversation with Adrienne Gruber, I’m not as preoccupied with notions of motherhood these days, or with essays about of motherhood, certainly not as much as I was back in the day when I was publishing my own anthology of essays about motherhood, when I was positively obsessed, and felt like I was working out pressing and essential existential questions with this obsession. The most surprising and disappointing revelation of that experience (along with many others that weren’t disappointing at all) being that motherhood is niche, never mind that everybody everywhere was born to a mother once upon time. But considerations about motherhood themselves are not as fascinated and universal as I’d supposed they’d be back when I was young, starry-eyed, naive and about to publish my first book. (Goodreads reviews for my most recent novel include comments from readers who were disappointed that motherhood factored so strongly into my book, and therefore they found themselves unable to relate to the story.) I think too about what older writers must have thought when I was in the heart of “discovering motherhood” era. And I’m not helping the cause by having now considered motherhood discovered and conquered, because soon it will be a decade since I last changed a diaper. But now Gruber’s essay collection Monsters, Martyrs & Marionettes has gone and got me right back into the thick of it. It’s tapped a nerve. “Pouring off of every page like it was written in my soul.”
There is an essay in this book, “A Route That Does Not Include Your Child,” that is the nonfiction version of the “Hot Cars” chapter of my novel, ASKING FOR A FRIEND. Gruber and I both, I suppose, too attuned to tension, to risk, to possibility (though it’s our job as writers), reading Gene Weingarten’s 2009 article “Fatal Distraction” in the Washington Post with meticulous attention. From the first page of my novel, “Parenthood, Jess observed from her perspective smack dab in the eye of the hurricane, was—if you were lucky— like friendship, a story without end. The alternative too awful to contemplate. But what this also meant, of course, was that it never stopped, there were no breaks from the possibility of something new and worse to worry about around every single corner.”
And this is the neighbourhood that Gruber is exploring in her essays, writing about the various ways that bringing life into the world is tangled with death, dead pigeons on the sidewalk. She writes about her pandemic pregnancy, about the challenges of unruly toddlers and being able to hold a child’s gigantic and ferocious feelings, about being stuck in a two bedroom apartment with small kids due to wildfires that have made the air outside unhealthy to breathe. She’s writing about legacy, about her own struggles with mental illness, and those of her scientist mother, and her grandmother’s cognitive decline. About how essays of motherhood turn out the essays about everything, about the most elemental parts of life itself, milk and sweat, and then a reviewer will turn around and write something like, “This dark comedy is not for the squeamish,” and question who would want to read a book like this.
Anne Enright has called motherhood “the place before stories start”, describing her surprise at finding it was not the sort of journey that one could send dispatches home from. I read Enright’s memoir MAKING BABIES when I was pregnant with my first child, and a decade and a half later I understand what she means. I’d never envisioned how those early days would come to seem like a journey I now cannot imagine having ever taken. “Did we really go through that?” Otherworldly. But this only makes writing down how it was all the more important, because otherwise it would be impossible to remember any of it in that unbroken sleepless blur.
May 9, 2024
The Game of Giants, by Marion Douglas
I loved Marion Douglas’s novel The Game of Giants, though I’m not sure where to start in telling you about it. The back of the book describes the story as beginning with narrator Rose and her partner Lucy in the early 1980s discovering that their son Roger has developmental delays, his abilities marked the third percentile, which sends Rose back into her own history to explore when things went awry, which was early, because Rose as a character is pretty off-beat herself, and so is the narrative. But I’m not actually sure that this is what the story is “about” at all, and instead have a sense that this is a novel intent its own unique trajectory, intent on the propulsiveness and sharpness that results from Rose’s off-beats, and the terrific momentum created by her narrative voice and the remarkable ways that (in her experience) one thing leads to another, questionable choices culminating in a rich tapestry of experience, insecurities, lessons and longings. This novel is such an achingly hilarious story of tender humanity, with Munro-country vibes and the literary influence of Alberta, and yes, unconventional motherhood is where we finally arrive long after the runaway train has left the station on the wildest of rides, Rose struggling to accept the extraordinary reality of her son because she’s never been able to accept the reality of herself. But the reader does, just as Rose’s long-suffering partner Lucy does, Rose Drury a literary creation to fall in love with, made up of foibles, heartaches and broken parts like nobody else is, just like everybody else is.
May 3, 2024
Not How I Pictured It, by Robin Lefler
I read a huge pile of excellent books in February as I was recording interviews for the BOOKSPO podcast, and now that those books are out in the world, I have some catching up to do in terms of posting about them. And one of these is Robin Lefler’s second novel NOT HOW I PICTURED IT, which I just loved with my whole heart. In my conversation with Lefler, she mentions how life itself is stressful enough and therefore, in her fiction, she strives to give readers a holiday from all that and provide fun and pleasure instead, which she definitely accomplishes, but I also want to emphasize that this book is so good. That excellence and being a pleasure to read can go hand-in-hand, as they do in this “shipwreck rom-com” (I didn’t even know that was a thing!) in which the cast of a 20-year-old teen drama en-route to their reunion show end up stranded on a desert island. A great cast of characters with complicated ties to each other (both spoken and otherwise) have to come together to survive, and also figure out who among them is the traitor who instigated this disaster and might still be putting them all in even more danger. Protagonist Ness—who fled show biz years ago and now lives in Toronto unclogging drains in the apartments she owns—is definitely regretting her instincts to avoid being a part of the reunion project in the first place, although the chance of rekindling her connection to her dreamy ex-boyfriend Hayes means: it’s complicated. Funny, sharp, and full of heart, I loved this book.
May 1, 2024
Who By Fire, by Greg Rhyno
In his excellent, riveting, heartful and hilarious second novel, Who By Fire, Greg Rhyno pays tribute to the fact that all the best classic detective novels always include some dame. Although his dame is not just any dame, instead Dame Polara, truly an original, only daughter of legendary PI Dodge Polara, whose brain is now scrambled after a stroke. If elder care wasn’t stressful enough, Dame is recently divorced, her latest IVF round has failed, her dodgy landlord keeps demanding she catch up on rent bills she can’t afford, and her straight job at Toronto City Hall working with heritage preservation is starting to seem pretty futile, particularly as a string of arsons take down one listed building after another. In spite of her best instincts, and out of desperation, Dame finds herself taking on a domestic case on her dad’s behalf, though she’ll be performing the investigation herself, which shouldn’t be so hard, right? After all, she’s the kid whose dad used to lock her out in the cold in order to deliver essential lessons in lockpicking, and she’s tagged along on all his stakeouts. But it turns out the case is connected to something sinister afoot in the city, and the true culprit is closer to home than Dame will ever imagine, putting her in serious danger, and forcing her to rely on her wits when the stakes have never been higher. I loved this book. A pitch-perfect pleasure.
April 30, 2024
Lightning Strikes the Silence, by Iona Whishaw
There’s not much I love better than a return to King’s Cove, the bucolic hamlet near Nelson, BC, where the fictional Lane Winslow makes her home after a tumultuous WW2 during which she’d served as a special agent, utilizing her quick wits and affinity for the Russian language. When Lane arrives in 1946, England left behind her, she’s envisioning a quiet life, a chance to dedicate herself to writing, a retirement of sorts, even though she’s still young herself, but it seems that fate disagrees, as she stumbles across a body and manages to solve the crime, in partnership with the Nelson Police Department, a partnership that’s solidified with Lane’s relationship and eventual marriage to Inspector Frederick Darling a few books into the series. And now we’re on Book 11, Lightning Strikes the Silence, and it seems that Lane’s life hasn’t been quiet for a moment, and is even less quiet than usual when the sound of an explosion is heard high on the mountain above King’s Cove. Meanwhile, in Nelson (on Baker Street!), the local jeweller has been found dead, his office ransacked, and Inspector Darling is a bit pleased about having come upon his own corpse for once, without his dear wife’s involvement, but it won’t be long before Lane is embroiled in the case as well, in addition to caring for a young Japanese-Canadian child found injured by the explosion site. In 1948, with the war long over, Canadians of Japanese ancestry are still forbidden to return to coastal areas, their homes and livelihoods taken from them, and anti-Japanese racism is rampant. Will goodness triumph? Will Lane and Darling crack the case? Will Ames finally do something with that engagement ring he’s got hiding in his pocket? Book 11, and the series gets better and better. Lightning Strikes the Silence does not disappoint.
April 23, 2024
The Time of My Life: Dirty Dancing, by Andrea Warner
If you’ve read my second novel Waiting for a Star to Fall, in which Dirty Dancing features as a plot point (“Brooke had never seen an abortion in a movie before, and it was surprising, because Dirty Dancing was over thirty years old. So it should have been a throwback, but it was something very new: the character who wants an abortion. There is no other alternative, it doesn’t even make her sad, and she doesn’t change her mind at the last minute, or have a miscarriage as a convenient trick to avoid being an agent in her own destiny. She isn’t even sorry… [And] it seemed symbolic that no one had to live in shame. You could be a fallen woman, and then get up on a stage and dance. This was a huge revelation for Brooke, who had never even considered the possibility, the number of ways a script could go.”) then you’ll know that this movie means a lot to me, and Andrea Warner’s The Time of My Life: Dirty Dancing, a contribution to the ECW Pop Classics Series, only deepened my affection and admiration. Warner explores the movie’s roots as based in “the classic Jewish value” of tikkun olam, its celebration of liberal idealism before the ’60s got complicated, the subversiveness of a film whose entire plot hinges on abortion (screenwriter/producer Eleanor Bergstein was deliberate about that!) at a moment when American women’s reproductive rights seemed assured, and how its iconic soundtrack is the bedrock of the film. Andrea also fangirls in typical Andrea Warner fashion, sharing her own personal connections to the story and also critiquing the film for its shortfalls, how it appropriates Black culture and lacks intersectionality—demonstrating both this is a film substantial enough to be worthy of critique and that LOVING ALL OF ANYTHING (in the way that Baby wished Jerry Orbach could love her) means grappling with the ways it disappoints us too.
March 28, 2024
Sharp Notions: Essays from the Stitching Life, edited by Marita Dachsel and Nancy Lee
I’ve been around for a little while, and I think it’s safe to say that Sharp Notions: Essays from the Stitching Life, edited by Marita Dachsel and Nancy Lee is the best literary anthology I’ve ever read. It’s a beautiful volume, as aesthetically as pleasing as you’d expect for a book about art, a beautifully crafted object in its own right, complete with colour photography of beadwork, quilts, Kelly S. Thompson’s knitted bull terrier, a conversation in embroidery, and needlepoint.
I’m not actually sure of what the difference is between embroidery and needlepoint (I’m a lapsed knitter myself, without much of a stitching life at all) but I still really loved this book, the different approaches of its essayists, the capaciousness of “the stitching life” in general and its connection to many different backgrounds and traditions, which means that every reader has something new, and fresh, and inspiring to say.
A common thread (oh, no. I’ll stop…) is the way that various kinds of stitching have sustained the writers through periods of difficulty, how needle crafts have managed to be transportive at moments when the crafters themselves weren’t going anywhere. My favourite piece was Jess Taylor’s, a meditation on pain, healing, trauma, and productivity. I loved Anne Fleming on knitting and gender; Danielle Lussier on bringing Indigenous beading traditions to her PhD thesis; Laura Cok on infertility and knitting for a pregnant friend’s baby; Lorri Neilsen Glenn on the stitches that have been with her throughout her life; Rob Leacock on knitting as a way to be alone; Carrianne Leung on stitching her way through pandemic days; and Theresa Kishkan (such a beloved writer!) on stitching through uncertainty.
These essays are stories of connection, with the past, present, and future. Stories of creation, solace, and possibility. These are stories of kinship, and it’s a privilege to join the fold through reading.
March 18, 2024
The Gift Child, by Elaine McCluskey
With her seventh book, The Gift Child, short story superstar Elaine McCluskey has pulled off a novel that’s as great as one of her sentences, which is saying a lot. It’s a novel in the form of a memoir by Harriett Swim, a photojournalist who lost her career when the bottom fell out of the industry, and lost her marriage around the same time for reasons she’ll eventually make clear, which is also to say that she is struggling. Age 52, she’s returned to her hometown of Dartmouth, NS, where she’s got a job at the casino and can’t help getting sucked into the vortex of her father, Stan, iconic news anchorman, philanderer, narcissist, pathological liar, and jerk. But does the story of what’s wrong with Stan and all his various crimes have to do with who Harriett is? And what about her cousin Graham, a bit slow, last seen riding a bicycle with a giant tuna head in the basket and missing ever since? What if it’s easier to get to the bottom of the mystery of what happened to Graham, what happened to Stan, than to unpack the reality her own trauma and heartaches? (“Focusing, as people often do, on the peripheral, because the real problem was too unmanageable.”) What if family ties weren’t necessarily destiny? But then, if that were true, what would explain it all? What stories would we tell?
This is a novel ostensibly made of bits and pieces, and diversions, but it’s also fundamentally a poignant journey to the heart of things. Further, it’s an assemblage of the weird and wonderful—aliens; Dartmouth separatists; an exploration of the culture of “paddling,” which I never even knew was a sport; off-colour adventures of the down and out; the crime beat; Russian spies, and hockey heroes. I loved it all so much.
March 8, 2024
The Hunter, by Tana French
Tana French is my favourite. Her new novel, The Hunter, is the second book in her new series featuring Cal Hooper, a retired Chicago detective who buys a rural home in the west of Ireland to discover that the big city’s got nothing on the village of Ardnakelty in terms of darkness and depravity. I read the first book, The Searcher, in 2020 and then forgot everything about it, but no matter because The Hunter doesn’t require a reader to be wholly up to date. And I will likely forget everything about The Hunter too because, as with when I read any mystery novel, but especially Tana French’s, I’m more just steeped in the atmosphere than sorting through the details. And the atmosphere is HEIGHTENED in this latest release, set during a sweltering summer as crops fail and everyone’s on his very last nerve. Cal has created a healthy relationship with local teen Trey Reddy, but it’s all set to go awry when Trey’s father reappears after years away in the company of an Englishman who’s probably not what he seems, and when the locals try to pull one over the both of them, it might just be that they’re being swindled themselves, and just when Cal thinks he’s got a handle on things, a dead body turns up in the road on the mountain. Could not love it more. My only complaint is that now I can’t stop saying “Feck.”
February 13, 2024
Black Boys Like Me, by Matthew Morris
Three pages into the first essay in Matthew Morris’s new collection BLACK BOYS LIKE ME: CONFRONTATIONS WITH RACE, IDENTITY, AND BELONGING, and I was hooked, as Morris describes a 4am journey through Brooklyn, the way he adapts his performance of self as he passes a police station (“stage my innocence”) versus how he would have acted if he’d run into another Black man on the subway who presents himself in public as Morris does (“I would have amplified my Blackness—for survival”). The former I could have discerned, but I’d never considered the latter—how racism and anti-Blackness could be as pervasive as that.
I loved this book, each essay blowing my mind a bit, framing the familiar in ways that are new to me. How does Morris, as a Black middle-school teacher, get dressed to go to work in the morning, and how are his fashion choices judged in comparison to those of his white colleagues? (What is “professionalism” anyway? What kind of people get to “profess”?) “Still, how are the Jordans I chose to wear to work less professional than the boat shoes Tanner rocked?” He writes about his mom buying him a Snoop Dogg CD when he was nine at the Sunrise Records at Cedarbrae Mall, and what hip hop has meant as a reflection of Black identity when there is so little representation of Black masculinity in pop culture otherwise, but what was complicated about that: “Those rappers were me, but that didn’t mean I was them. Outsiders couldn’t see the difference.” About pursuing his dream of NFL stardom, and the what that pursuit did to his body—he connects the distribution company where his dad worked (and where Morris and his brother worked the summer before he left to play football in Ohio), a company where the workers on the floor were all people of colour, and management was white, to professional sports where white owners reap their fortunes from the bodies of Black athletes. Though the connection is made implicitly, and this is the art in these essays, Morris laying out the evidence and letting the facts speak for themselves.
And herein lies the artistry at work here, in terms of structure, and prose that calls attention to itself in the most vivid and compelling way. I’m going to suggest that that first Snoop Dogg CD was the beginning of an education in the poetics of hip-hop, and that the influence of that poetics is discernible on every page of this book. Although I feel like I’ve never been more middle-aged white lady as when I’m supposing I can discern the influence of hip hop, um, anywhere, but there is just such a rhythm and a feel to Morris’s sentences, their cadences and alliteration. And then I think of the essay “The Fresh Prince Syndrome,” teenage Morris performing Will Smith’s character in school…because the alternative was being Carlton and alienated from his peer group, and I think of the high school teachers who wrote Morris off for being the smartass Black kid mouthing off in the back of the classroom, and is my supposing the influence of hip-hop similar to that, as opposed to a more traditional kind of literary influence? (What is tradition? Who gets to tradish?)
A thread running through all these essays is Morris’s relationship to his family, especially his mother (who was white, with a Polish-Jewish background—interesting to encounter not long after reading James McBride’s memoir THE COLOUR OF WATER), and—more subtly, but essentially—his younger brother, whose trajectory of life as a Black man would be wildly divergent from Morris’s for awhile. While Morris pursues his football scholarship dreams, his brother gets involved with drugs, with drug dealing, and eventually winds up in prison. “Despite thirty years spent knowing and touching and loving each other, we couldn’t be further apart in the routes we’d taken to preserve the collective sense of what Black masculinity meant to us. Of what Black boyhood had meant.”
BLACK BOYS LIKE ME is a complicated work with multitudinous facets, and every one of these surfaces shines. This book is a celebration and a gift.
