March 8, 2009
Come, Thou Tortoise by Jessica Grant
Bookwise, “quirky” is a demeaning term, and it only gets you so far. A grander scheme has to be in play in order for a quirky book to mean more than that, and so it is fortunate that in her first novel Come, Thou Tortoise, Jessica Grant so deftly pulls the strings. Fortunate because her premise is so intriguing, and the book itself is so physically appealing, that the substance of the story itself has an awful to live up to.
So what is with it with Audrey Flowers exactly? For she’s a strange one, certainly, the product of a rather unconventional upbringing, and in possession a decidedly unconventional point of view. She’s referred to, lovingly, as Oddly, and this is the main thing about her, I think– that she is loved. When she finds out her father is ill and she must fly across the continent from Oregon back to her home of St. John’s Newfoundland, she has friends with whom she can leave her pet tortoise Winnifred, and, however eye-rollingly, they do accommodate the tortoise’s special needs. Upon arriving at home, she’s surrounded by friends and neighbours wanting to take care of her, and when the Christmas light technician finally falls in love with her, in no way are we surprised or unconvinced.
There is much left unexplained in Come Thou, Tortoise, which is its point– upon returning home Audrey realizes there is much she doesn’t know (or has chosen not to know) about her background, and the rest of the story is of her pursuit to fill in the blanks. But Grant takes care not to explain too much to the reader either, not pathologizing Audrey. Though she does have a low IQ, she discovers, when she phones home to tell it to her father, and realizes that “what I had assumed was a high score was not a high score. It just sounded like a high score. It sounded like a not-bad grade, the kind of grade I never got in school.” But she isn’t stupid, she has friends, is utterly charming at times, and adept at the most surprising things– disarming an air marshal mid-flight, for example, and then hiding in the plane’s bathroom with the gun, refusing to believe they weren’t all being hijacked.
The narrative is unconventional, and every so often Audrey’s point of view is interjected by that of Winnifred the tortoise back in Oregon. Who is the voice of reason, as she serves her purpose as a bookmark/papermark in a collection of Shakespearean plays. But there is reason to Oddly Flowers too, an order to her skewed universe which we come to understand as her story progresses. Her narrative enhanced by simple artwork, and also her employment of wordplay, strange spellings, short and abrupt sentences and paragraphs. Grant plays with language in order to show us Audrey’s point of view, to show us Audrey herself, and though the result is quirky as you like, it is also utterly real and convincing.
The grander scheme here at play, however, is not even the fascinating character development at work, but rather something far more fundamental– plot. As the story progresses, mysteries deepen, and it’s a race to the end to see what is what. And what is what, as you might imagine, is not what is expected, nor perfectly clear, but it’s nearly perfect. As is Audrey Flowers herself, and this altogether marvelous and clever book.
March 4, 2009
Like acid-washed jeans
I really enjoyed Meghan Daum‘s collection of essays, My Misspent Youth. She comes by her Joan Didion comparisons honestly, except I laughed out loud at Daum’s work, and however much I revere Joan Didion, she’s never made me do that. For a sample, could I please refer you to “Music Is My Bag”? “I grew up surrounded by phrases like “rattle off that solo,” “nail that lick,” and “build up your chops.” Like acid-washed jeans, “chops” is a word that should only be invoked by rock and roll guitarists but is more often uttered with the flailing, badly timed anti-authority of the high school clarinet player.” Oh my, yes.
March 2, 2009
From the "I should have known better…" file
Do NOT read Andrew Pyper before you go to bed at night. This tip I picked up reading The Killing Circle last year, waking up in the night convinced there was somebody lurking at the bottom of my stairs, even hiding under the bed, or standing over me watching while I slept, so I was not to move a muscle. But I thought I would be safe with early Pyper, with his short story collection Kiss Me. (It had been a gift from the lovely Rebecca Rosenblum after all). And it was the story “Break and Enter” that finally did me in, so that I woke up at 2:30 this morning, not convinced the man was actually gone, the one who’d been standing over me ready to kill me in my dream. In order to shake off the fear, I then had to rouse myself into a state of wake that would last for over two hours. During which I was distracted when the baby kicked, and worried baby wouldn’t kick again when it didn’t. And then when I finally managed to fall back to sleep, I dreamed I was being chased by a wild boar.
I don’t think he had anything to do with the boar, but still– do NOT read Andrew Pyper before you go to bed at night.
March 1, 2009
Pickle Me This reads Canada Reads: The Fat Woman Next Door is Pregnant by Michel Tremblay (trans. Sheila Fischman)
I’m sure there are reasons involving the nature of translation and French-Canadian prose which might explain why Michel Tremblay’s novel The Fat Woman Next Door is Pregnant makes such little use of line breaks, paragraphs and even chapters. My own hypothesis, however, involves Tremblay’s creative intentions, that his book constructs not so much a narrative as a day, a neighbourhood, as life itself (see Woolf’s essay “Modern Fiction”, noting in particular, “Let us record the atoms as they fall upon the mind in the order in which they fall, let us trace the pattern, however disconnected and incoherent in appearance, which each sight or incident scores on the consciousness.”) Life itself, you see, does not come with line breaks, and paragraphs, and neither do neighbourhoods, particularly those partial to scenes of chaos, cacophony and carnival.
Such is the kind of neighbourhood depicted in Tremblay’s novel, the Plateau Mont Royal on the second day of May, 1942. The novel presided over by a Greek-style chorus– Rose, Violet, Mauve and their mother Florence, unseen by all except cats and crazy people– knitting booties on the balcony of a tidy yet apparently abandoned house: “We’re here so that everything will keep moving ahead. What’s knitted is knitted– even if it isn’t knitted right.” And move ahead indeed everything does, as the rue Fabre awakens, its residents starting their days, niece and oncle in one particular house staging a race to the bathroom.
It is in this house that the fat woman lives, too old and too fat to be pregnant, but she is, risking her health. She’s confined to a chair in her room, listening to the sounds of life inside her crowded apartment. She lives with her two sons, her husband and his mother, brother, sister, and her two children, and in such close quarters, tempers flare, dramas are enacted, bodies excrete, are washed, make love, and make life. The woman is ridiculed for the state she’s in, for exercising a degree of agency in her reproductive life. Six other women on the street are also pregnant, but each of them are more burdened than blessed than the fat woman, who is having a baby just because she wanted one. Though this is also WW2, during which men with pregnant wives are exempt from the draft, French Canadian men in particular reluctant to fight a war for the English, or for France who they see as has having abandoned them.
The novel takes place over the course of one day, various plot lines connected by geographical proximity. Following the fat woman and her family, their various neighbours, including the two local prostitutes, and the fabulous cat Duplessis, all presided over by the knitting sisters. The story takes turns both hilarious and tragic, characters marvelously wicked and cruel, driven by whims, driven by passion– there is everything here. Like life itself. The novel actually driven by life, or at least its promise, punctuated by baby kicks: “She rubbed her belly. The baby had just moved and her heart contracted with joy.”
This is a political novel, written during a political time, but even more importantly, the novel is far more than that. It achieves universality even in its specificity, and I read it divorced from its context– I don’t know Montreal well, the history and culture of Quebec I know only in the vaguest terms. What remains, however, is a wonderful piece of Literature, which was not the sense I got from The Book of Negroes once its context was taken away. I did get such a sense from Mercy Among the Children, but that book never came alive to me the way this one did. The way Fruit did too, which was literary in spite of its accessibility, and whose simplicity might have obscured the various planes on which it worked. (I liked Fruit‘s ending, so terribly haunting, not at all what one would have expected for a book that was bright pink).
What counts against The Fat Woman Next Door is Pregnant is that it’s difficult, work to get into, though once I was hooked it was a pleasure. But reading did require a fair bit of revisiting, maps on the endpages, diagrams in the margins, there were several bits I did not understand, necessitating a rereading. But how engaging is that? A book that can’t be skimmed over, that you have to work to get inside, but once you’re there, you’ve earned it. The book is yours. So I’m going to go along with the idea that difficulty is artistically desirable, that Canadians are smart enough to be so challenged. That we get the kinds of novels we deserve, and so The Fat Woman Next Door is Pregnant would really be quite the compliment.
Final! Pickle Me This reads Canada Reads Rankings:
1) The Fat Woman Next Door is Pregnant by Michel Tremblay (trans. Sheila Fischman)
2) Fruit by Brian Francis
3) Mercy Among the Children by David Adams Richards
4) The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill
5) The Outlander by Gil Adamson
February 28, 2009
Sing Them Home by Stephanie Kallos
Stephanie Kallos’ novel Sing Them Home is a little bit of everything. Imagine Alice Sebold meets Wally Lamb meets Fannie Flagg, and then they all get spun up in a funnel cloud. Imagine a 500+ page novel that goes by like a breeze. This is one of those comfortable books you crawl your way into, and linger long inside, happy and warm. But then that the novel is well-written also almost seems like too much to be true.
Sing Them Home is the story of the Jones family, whose three siblings come together after their father’s death– he is killed on the golf course, struck by lightning. The family having long ago been left fragmented by their mother’s disappearance, when she “went up” with a tornado and her body was never found. So that the Jones children are practically strangers to one another– art history professor Larken lives her adamantly independent life far from her hometown of Emlyn Springs, seeking solace in eating; her brother Gaelan is a well-known weatherman and bodybuilder who seeks his solace in meaningless relationships; and Bonnie the youngest who has stayed closest to home persists in cycling up and down country roads seeking garbage she interprets as “artifacts” from the ditches.
The novel’s course is the year following their father’s death, during which the Jones siblings struggle to come to terms with their grief, as well as with finally reconciling with the tragedy in which they lost their mother. Emlyn Springs the backdrop for all of this, a small town in Nebraska, quirky characters populating its dying streets, but Kallos does something remarkable in making Emlyn Springs somewhere quite particular. With its Welsh heritage especially– reflected and really outlined here in language, rituals and traditions– as well as characters far richer than small town cliches, the town becomes actually not a backdrop at all, but is as much of a character in the story as its residents.
In similarly dealing with specifics, Kallos also makes each of her characters’ individual perspectives utterly convincing. Larken’s world is seen through the prism of an art lover, all colours and tones, while Gaelan’s profession is fascinatingly explored, clearly an integral part of his life. Bonnie, the more whimsical of the three, is never quite as pin-down-able, always a little bit more flighty, but this is also the very point of her. Kallos’ narrative switching back and forth between these characters effortlessly, encompassing also the perspective of their father’s mistress, and diary entries interspersed representing the voice of their long lost mother.
So the dead speak, which means there is magic here amongst the solid realism. Some bits so utterly fantastic, bordering on sentimental, that indeed it can seem like too much to be true. The ending in particular so perfectly tidy (but perfectly satisfying!), all its ends tied, but then how could we bear any of them to be left straggling? Such tidiness not quite the way the real world works, but then thank goodness we have here a book instead.
February 23, 2009
Pickle Me This reads Canada Reads: The Outlander by Gil Adamson
Right there on the back cover of Gil Adamson’s The Outlander, it’s labelled, “Part historical novel, part Gothic tale, and part literary Western”. The sort of hybrid book readers go crazy for, and I’ve certainly never heard a word against it. Adamson’s first novel (though she’s published collections of short stories and poetry before) has at its forefront Mary Boulton, “The Widow”, who we find at the beginning of the story fleeing through the woods with dogs on her trail, being pursued by her enormous red-headed brothers-in-law. It appears that she’s killed her husband, so the brothers are determined to find her and force her to face some kind of justice.
The book refers back to a time when the maps were all empty, though we know that Mary Boulton is in Western Canada. The shape of the novel being her track across that empty place– imagine her as a furiously dotted line. Along the way she encounters several different characters, though some are hallucinations. Never safe, she stays nowhere too long, and passes from one port to another until she ends up in the mining town of Frank, British Columbia.
The book’s strongest feature is its language, I think, which is gorgeous and evocative. Describing a nature which is in turns glorious and brutal, as well as the bare facts of Mary Boulton’s situation– her hunger, her sickness, her madness. She’s an intriguing character, even more so in the flashbacks when we see she comes from a background like nothing you’d expect of a murderess, and that she was a very different kind of girl once upon a time.
Unfortunately, I never felt I got close enough to her, to understand why she killed her husband, to understand why she runs. She was a character distant enough to be called just “The Widow”, and those around her were even more distant, incidental to her flight. The plot seems a loose construction around the language, which dragged down to reveal that not so much was there. The book said to be “gripping” but I was never gripped. With every page, with every new character she encountered, I’d think, “Ok, now it starts…” but it never did for me.
Which I don’t think is the book’s fault, but I was just so far from its ideal reader. “Part historical novel, part Gothic tale, and part literary Western” seems a recipe for the kind of book that puts me to sleep. Which is why my review is a bit lax here, but there really aren’t hours in the day for me to spend thoughtfully reviewing books I don’t like. Particularly when so many others do like this one, and they can’t all be wrong. I’ll be really interested in hearing readers’ arguments for this book, but I think it might all just come down to a matter of taste.
**Check out a more positive take on The Outlander over at the Canada Reads site.
Canada Reads Rankings (so far):
1) Fruit by Brian Francis
2) Mercy Among the Children by David Adams Richards
3) The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill
4) The Outlander by Gil Adamson
February 19, 2009
Cusp of falling headlong
I’m now reading The Outlander, which I’m not particularly loving, but I feel I may be on the cusp of falling headlong into, particularly if DGR’s assessment is right. Though I do fear I may have set literary standards too high, having spent part of this weekend reading Jools Oliver‘s Diary of an Honest Mum. (You can read the hilariously digested version here). We shall see… Elsewhere, I loved Rona Maynard’s take on the Facebook 25 things meme. To Nigel Beale for the best used book sales in Canada (and I concur, because it includes my favourite). My baby kicks like mad to this song. And there would be more, if I weren’t so tired, or if lately the newspaper had been remotely interesting.
February 17, 2009
The Divided Heart: Art and Motherhood by Rachel Power
I still don’t know squat about sleep training, for instance, but ever since I got pregnant, I’ve been obsessed with books documenting women’s ambivalence towards motherhood. Anne Enright’s Making Babies and Rachel Cusk’s A Life’s Work (in addition to the mother who lives on the other side of my garret wall and is screaming at her daughter as I write this) have served to steel my expectations for the imminent adventure ahead. Which is sort of strange because my feelings about motherhood aren’t even ambivalent yet, but from the mother on the other side of the wall in particular, I’ve got a sense of what’s coming, and I want to know how my life will change, if there’s hope of retaining any of it.
It’s a strange, complicated ambivalence (as opposed to, say, the childless Lionel Shriver’s) that strikes women about motherhood when they actually happen to be mothers. Which is why I maintain one has to be a brilliant writer to capture it properly– all the love that’s there, even with the reservations, the powerful urge to protect still accompanying any urges to run the other way. Rachel Power’s title articulating this ambivalence: The Divided Heart; “a split self; the fear that succeed at one means to fail at the other.”
Power’s book The Divided Heart: Art and Motherhood is a series of conversations with prominent Australian woman artists about the effect of motherhood upon their art. Part of the book’s appeal in its homeland, I imagine, perhaps being insight into such notable lives, though I lack that context from where I read, as Power’s subjects are unfamiliar to me. But she does such a fine job of depicting their remarkable lives– the actresses, writers, painters, dancers among them–, as well as their back stories and very own voices that to get to know of these figures was one of the book’s decided perqs.
These women’s lives are remarkable, as I said, but their experiences are somewhat universal to all mothers, especially all working mothers– that they’re taken less seriously in their fields because they have children, are hindered from progressing as men (even fathers) can, their balancing “the second shift”, their guilt about being absent from their children’s lives. And yet there is something particular to the experience of the artist-mother, which Power well conveys. That pursuing art is often seen as an indulgence of sorts, and it doesn’t bring home much financial benefit. The blurred borders between the studio and the home-front, which bring forth constant interruptions. That to give up art would be to give up a passion, part of one’s heart, however divided.
The book’s conversational style is delicious, shaped with Rachel Power’s eye for fabulous prose, and the different perspectives enthused by her subjects make for a perfect mosaic of ideas and opinions. Which brings forth balance– none of this is to be taken as dogma, but instead considered, weighed and evaluated. So the bad of artist-mothering– certainly overwhelming at times– is also countered with the good. These women’s lives, however harried, still inspiring in that they get on at all. That artist-mothering is possible, even at a price.
These engaging interviews are also worthwhile for their range and detail– for example, the various effects of pregnancy and childbirth upon the body of a ballerina, upon an opera singer’s vocal range. That motherhood is not a vacuum and the rest of life creeps in as well– Power speaks to women who’ve fought cancer, who are raising children with special needs, caring for elderly parents. Her artists are painters, poets, filmmakers, photographers, writers and and illustrators, and “art” is very much in general, but still such a force in all their lives. Power showing how complicated these lives are, and how various.
The value of book such as this isn’t any “self-help” it offers, though I suspect it could reassure most mothers that they aren’t alone. Inspiring me also with the many ways in which creative pursuits and motherhood are complementary. Which would not be the point though, the use-value hardly Power’s intention, but instead the stories are an end to themselves, just like our lives are. Beautifully told, beautifully set, they deserve to be out in the world– we’re better for them– and they really seem enough to fly by.
February 13, 2009
Pickle Me This reads Canada Reads: Mercy Among the Children by David Adams Richards
Following along with Canada Reads online, I’ve found it a testament to both the book and its author that so many readers have been driven to put down Mercy Among the Children because of its “bleakness”, or because “it’s depressing.” Doesn’t that strike you as a powerful effect for a novel to have? To be abandoned for reasons quite different from being boring, or incomprehensible. Any assemblage of text that can hit one that hard must be something of an marvelous construction.
But I do understand what these readers are saying, because Mercy is certainly not easy. Though it’s not difficult either, being set within the last twenty years, most excellently paced, and written in accessible language that still manages to be exquisite prose. Where I lacked access, however, was in terms of literary allusion, which restricted a whole plane of the novel’s experience. Further, I’m seriously under-read in the kinds of novels from which this one finds its tradition– nineteenth century, Russian, or written by Thomas Hardy.
I think understanding this kind of literary tradition would have provided the bleakness of Mercy Among the Children with some kind of context. But lacking that background as I do, I could only take the Richards’ narrative as I found it. The story of the Henderson family whose bad luck is unrelenting, as narrated by their son Lyle. The father Sydney committing himself to pacifism at a young age to save himself from the world around him, for he believes that whatever ill you inflict upon another will come back to you in ways that are multifold. This stance distinguishing Sydney as somebody different, a threat to the status-quo.
“You are allowed anything in this life,” Sydney’s wife Elly tries to tell him, “except the luxury of being different– this is why you are being tried.” Theirs is a world where success comes only with “deceit and treachery”, and Sydney’s refusal to pay this price means his family remains impoverished out in their tar-shack on the highway, his children are tormented at school, and he is framed for crimes he would never commit. He won’t defend himself against these accusations either, feeling such arguments beneath him. He may be an uneducated man, but he taught himself to read, and he has absorbed enough of the wisdom of books (which as “knowledge” is distinguished from “learning”) to be confident in the direction of his leanings.
As a reader I had to steel myself against the Hendersons’ fate, one horrible plight after after and soon I just became resigned (which is perhaps my version of “putting the book down”). The novel’s devastating conclusion utterly ineffectual then, for I’d become numb to it all– but as Lyle Henderson had to some extent too, I think my experience was analogous. The conclusion also somewhat satisfying in proving that Sydney Henderson was right, that everyone will get what’s coming at the end, though I wonder– at what price?
This is an interesting novel to consider for discussion, because I think most readers will focus on a judgment of the characters rather than a discussion of the book itself. Whether Sydney was right in his stance, did he betray his family, whether Lyle’s deviation from his father’s ways was justified or not. Though there is a certain limitation to this kind of discussion too, for so many of Richards’ characters are written as “types”. He explains them to us: who is weak and who is strong, and though he has sympathy for some of the most unsympathetic types (providing an understanding of the devious Pits, for instance, who are the architects of most of the Hendersons’ destruction), others (particularly those who are more “learned” than “wise”) are presented as utterly ignorant and one dimensional.
I struggled with the female characters too, who were beautiful, stupid and helpless (but with a core of inner strength), and endlessly coveted sexually, or were shrewd, mannish, ugly, and utterly unsexed. In the novel’s afterward, more hopeful scenarios are presented for these characters (or at least for those who haven’t died), but these are more alluded to rather than shown.
Mercy Among the Children read like a great novel to me, in a way that Brian Francis’s Fruit isn’t, but– guess what– I still think Fruit is more worthy of being the novel that Canada Reads. Actually dealing with much the same subject matter too– Peter Paddington would probably be well aware that we’re allowed anything in this life except the luxury of being different. Peter is feared for his differences just as Sydney Henderson is feared, because those who challenge the status-quo threaten to expose the worst about the rest of us. But because Francis doesn’t drive the point all the way home in quite the way that Richards does, and because Francis’s comedy is most engaging (and rare in Canadian lit.), I will leave Fruit at number one.
I still think The Book of Negroes is an amazing book, and worth reading for all of the reasons Avi Lewis outlines here. But I don’t think any of his reasons are good ones for picking up a novel. I really find The Book of Negroes is a kind of nonfiction incognito, and though I enjoyed it more than Mercy Among the Children, and learned much more from it, I can’t help but determine Mercy.. as a more successful work of fiction.
Canada Reads Rankings (so far):
1) Fruit by Brian Francis
2) Mercy Among the Children by David Adams Richards
3) The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill
February 1, 2009
Pickle Me This reads Canada Reads: Fruit by Brian Francis
In Brian Francis’s not-yet-coming-of -age story Fruit, Peter Paddington is the hero of his own life. So successfully entrenched within his own perspective, he’s in the league of famed adolescent narrators Huck and Holden, though stylistically is most akin to the great Adrian Mole. Francis casts a spell with Peter’s voice, and not once does the spell ever break.
I want to protest only about how this book was sold to me, even in its quirky subtitle, “a novel about a boy and his nipples”. The first line of the blurb on the back of the book is, “Peter Paddington is a 13-year-old, fat, gay cross-dresser…”, which really didn’t immediately capture my attention, so as I read the book I was relieved to come to see that Peter Paddington is actually quite normal. Or perfectly normal from the point of view of anyone who spent a pretty tortured few (or more) years growing into themselves. Any of us who’ve ever had to work in the school library at recess in lieu of having friends, or who’d read that conditioning one’s hair with Hellman’s was a good idea, only to wind up with a scalp like a grease pit.
Peter Paddington may very well grow up to be a fat, gay cross-dresser, which is all fine and well, but the point is that his adolescent experience is pretty universal. Pretty awful too– he’s bullied at school, he’s longing for friends, he’s embarrassed about his body in general, and puberty is hardly doing him any favours. Where the book gets its humour is in the gap between Peter’s reality and his perception of it– a space so rich and brilliant, allowing the reader ample room between the lines to consider this young boy’s situation from an adult point of view. That Peter does not entirely understand his situation is his saving grace, though of course the book does suggest he is more aware than he lets on, but is working to actively avoid enlightenment.
It is this edge then than allows us to take Peter Paddington a little more seriously than we did the similarly hilarious Adrian Mole. Peter is not a caricature, and neither are the people around him– particularly his loving parents who try to do their best, but are just as helpless to help him as he is. The world around him as realistically rendered– Sarnia, Ontario in 1984, with all the pop-cultural touchstones that ring so familiar, and junior high school clique taxonomy.
But Peter’s voice is Francis’s greatest triumph. Peter taking himself so utterly seriously, prioritizing his own point of view in the way that real people do, and it is obvious that Francis gives Peter much the same consideration. Never breaking away from Peter’s vision to insert a bit of irony, to provide a wider perspective, to ensure readers know he’s writing something more than a YA novel FYI, and in never breaking away, Francis thus has created a voice that’s so extraordinary. Peter Paddington is a train wreck waiting to happen, and of course we can see that because we’re years older than he is and we know how the world works, but he really hasn’t figured it out yet. This gap being from where the novel gets its humour, but also from where it earns its most unsentimental poignancy.
And so here’s the part where, for Canada Reads sake, I argue that Francis’s Fruit is superior to Lawrence Hill’s The Book of Negroes. Which is the strange thing about this whole set-up, apples to oranges and all. I will definitely say that Hill’s book might be more important than Francis’s, that The Book of Negroes is more educational, that it will broaden our perspective in a way that Fruit only takes us inward. But Fruit is a better piece of literature, more successful in its realization. With a scope far more limited, admittedly, but I felt Hill’s too-broad scope was actually his greatest limitation. Whereas everything Fruit sets out to do, it succeeds at absolutely.
Canada Reads Rankings (so far):
1) Fruit by Brian Francis
2) The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill
