January 2, 2008
On A Celibate Season
Carol Shields writes to Eleanor Wachtel: “Mail in Montjouvent is always welcome. (On the odd mail-less day the postman knocks and gives me his condolences.)” From Random Illuminations.
I just finished reading A Celibate Season, and enjoyed it so much, to my relief. For I hadn’t been sure: this was co-authored with Carol Shields and Blanche Howard, as well being an epistolary novel (and I don’t think I’d read such a thing since Heloise and Abelard in an undergrad survey course). Also that it was the last Carol Shields novel I’d left to read, which has me less sad than I thought I’d be, for I am grateful instead that I got to read it at all.
I enjoyed A Celibate Season as much as I’ve loved any book by Carol Shields, which is a lot, and it was especially interesting to read in light of A Memoir of Friendship, which was the collection of Shields’s and Howard’s real-life letters. Friends and letters seem to have been twin stars in Shields’s life, and how wonderful to see their intersection in both these books.
December 31, 2007
The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff
Very exciting news– though it’s still 2007, I have already read one of the best books of 2008. The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff comes out late January, and it’s absolutely extraordinary. A first novel you won’t believe, with all the qualities so many people liked about Special Topics in Calamity Physics, but not annoying, pretentious or gimmicky. Anything the least bit gimmicky about The Monsters of Templeton, I considered a gift actually. Lauren Groff is a bloody brilliant writer and tangible proof of this is evident in that her book contains the term “Potemkin nipple”. There is nothing more I need to say.
But of course I will continue on, because I haven’t loved a book this hard in ages. American in its scope (by which I mean big) Groff is good enough to handle her material, which begins with her narrator Willie uttering her mighty opening sentence, “The day I returned to Templeton steeped in disgrace, the fifty foot corpse of a monster surfaced in Lake Glimmerglass.”
Now normally monsters don’t turn me on, but Groff has done something quite original here. The magic not even questioned amidst such a solid realism, but a realism so bizarre that no magic could be contested. And also magic and realism so original– could there be anything more entrancing than a ghost like this one: “To my mother it had looked like a bird; to me a washed-out inkstain, a violet shadow so vague and shy that it was only perceivable indirectly, like a leftover halo from gazing at a bare bulb too long.”
Willie has returned to Templeton (a fictional version of Groff’s own hometown, Cooperstown, NY) “in disgrace”, her mother taking her mind off her problems with the revelation that Willie’s father is not who she’d thought he was. But who he is exactly, Willie’s mother won’t say, and it is up to Willie to solve the mystery, tracing her complicated family history back to her ancestor, the founder of Templeton. Characters from the past get their own chapters, Willie’s world also filled out by exceptionally brilliant secondary characters– her best friend and her mom, the male joggers who run through town first thing in the morning in particular. Willie herself is an amazing creation– gutsy, smart, funny, weak and strong.
The main character in the novel is Templeton, however, and Groff invests the town with such beauty. With a spirit threatening to fade when the monster dies, when all seems bleakest, but there is so much hope, and such a gorgeous ending: “and it is good.” I finished reading this last night near 1am, and couldn’t sleep for a long time, just thinking about it, and smiling.
December 28, 2007
Random Illuminations by Eleanor Wachtel
“… I think the more we know about a writer, the more we understood how the novel was put together and why and what it means. And maybe we don’t need to know this. Maybe we don’t need to know anything about the writer. Maybe it’s better for us to enter blindly into the reading of novels, but, of course, I’ve I am always curious about the person behind the voice, behind the writing hand”– Carol Shields, “A Gentle Satirist”
The more about I read about Carol Shields, particularly in her own words, it is clear to me why her friends have been moved to honour her: Blanche Howard’s Memoir of Friendship (which was how I spent the end of June) and now Eleanor Wachtel’s Random Illuminations. Shields’s mutual engagements with fiction and the world (both absolutely intertwined) were so deeply considered, original and brave, that her death left a gaping hole, and not only for those who knew her. Carol Shields’s own generosity of spirit– that which gave her her talent for friendship in particular– meant that her loss would be exponential.
There are some people who’ve never read Carol Shields, which I find baffling. But maybe you have to have read her to know what you aren’t missing. I think, however, that anyone who’s never read her might be surprised by what they find here, by the vastness of her thought, her wisdom, her curiosity, her insight, her embrace of the actual world. In many ways she was a philosopher, which might sound hyperbolic, but this was a woman who was asking singular questions of humanity in even the most ordinary letters to her friends. (Who never actually seemed to write an ordinary letter come to think of it.) Who dared to declare issues of womanhood and motherhood issues of personhood after all, the very fundamentals of personhood: how are we meant to be?
Eleanor Wachtel wrote her essay “Scrapbook of Carol” after Shields’s death for the Canadian journal A Room of One’s Own, and that essay opens Random Illuminations, Wachtel’s collection of letters from and interviews with Shields, who was a friend. This collection reads much like a scrapbook also, chronological, layered, touching back upon the same ideas and taking stock of their development. Like everything Shields touched, it seems, the book is most vibrant and full of joy. Fascinating for writers and readers alike, and I mean readers in general too. How terrible, it underlines the loss of Shields, but also suggests that she chose friends as generous as she was, who are now so willing to share her with the world.
December 27, 2007
Le Bal Irène Némirovsky
Though quite a slim volume, the latest work by Irène Némirovsky to be translated into English, Le Bal, will be welcomed by all those who so enjoyed Suite Française (which I read earlier this year). Le Bal also provides a new way to approach Némirovsky’s work, which here is less touched by the tragedy of her death (though is still influenced by events and circumstances in her life) and has to stand alone without the trappings of a story like Suite Française‘s amazing rediscovery and publication.
This book comprises two short novellas, “Le Bal” and “Snow in Autumn”. The former is a story to whom I’ll apply the adjective “wicked”– not something I do often to anything. Antoinette’s loathsome mother is an aspiring socialite whose riche is altogether nouveau. She treats terribly Antoinette, who herself is no prize but then Antoinette has the excuse of being 14, the very worst age ever. What happens then, when Antoinette finds herself entrusted with the posting of invitations to her parents’ first ball? What happens when Antoinette throws the invitations into the Seine instead? “Snow in Autumn” is told from the perspective of a servant following the Russian family she’s devoted her whole life to, from their flight from Russia during the Civil War to their exile in Paris. What is her place in this family whose circumstances have so changed?
Here was a wonderful read. It is a combination of Némirovsky’s uncommonly good writing, and excellent translation by Sandra Smith which has allowed the language to so retain its vibrancy. I also enjoyed the opportunity to read this author performing a closer treatment than Suite Française, which, of course, was exceptional in its sweep, but Némirovsky has more than one trick. She was an incredible writer, I can’t to read more, and I would also welcome more works in translation by other writers being promoted with a similar fervor.
December 23, 2007
A Golden Age by Tahmima Anam
Like Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie did with Half of A Yellow Sun, Tahmima Anam looks back to not-so ancient history in her novel A Golden Age, which takes place in 1971 during the Bangladesh War of Independence. Anam’s approach also reminded me of Camilla Gibb’s in Sweetness in the Belly, as like Gibb she holds a PhD in Social Anthropology– definitely a valuable background for a creative writer. Which is not to say Anam writes like an academic, for her prose is stunning. Rather, I think, her background serves to underline that she knows well the story she tells.
Adichie and Anam vary greatly in their respective portrayals of war. Whereas Half of a Yellow Sun was exceptional in its multiple points of view, vividness, and unshy brutality, Anam tells a quieter story. Certainly not of a quieter war, of course, but her focus stays with one character– Rehana, a mother. The setting is primarily the family home, through the outside world creeps in inevitably. Rehana’s children, near-grown, are politically active in the fight for an independent Bangladesh, and soon her support for them involves burying munitions in her flower garden, taking care of an injured fighter, giving over her rental house for her son and his friends to use. And though the narrative stays quiet, Anam shows the brutal reality of war in a just a few choice images with an impact that is especially dramatic.
This story twists in the prologue, however. Rehana is a widow, and sooner after her husband died, she allowed her children to be taken away from her. I say “she allowed”, for this was what she felt occurred when Sohail and Maya were sent from their home in East Pakistan to live with Rehana’s late-husband’s brother in Lahore. Rehana gets her children back two years later, having erected a second house on her property to provide her with income and independence. But thereafter she feels indebted to her children for their time away from her, unsure of where to draw the line between their protection and indulgence– a dilemma that is particularly relevant in the heightened atmosphere of war. Further, where does Rehana’s fierce love for them end and selfishness begin?
I enjoyed this story very much, and the writing in particular. Of the Bangladeshi refugees, Anam writes, “And everywhere they went the memories argued for space, so that they forgot to cross the road when the lights were red, or overmilked their tea, or whispered into their newspapers as they scanned hungrily for news of home”.
Of what it was to live in such times: “There was always something… Every hiccup of the political landscape made its way to their door… [and] there was only this time, this life, this fraught and crowded era, to which they were bound without choice, without knowledge, only their passions, their loves, to lead and sustain them.”
Though I would agree that Anam has achieved something remarkable with A Golden Age, I was disappointed not to like it quite as much as the many rave reviews I’ve read of the novel. Though the plot held and the writing was gorgeous, the characters let me down at times. Rehana could be so unsure of her intentions and her feelings that her strength was muted and she could come across as wishy-washy. Also Rehana’s relationship with her daughter more sharply drawn would have illuminated both their characters.
It is notable, however, that Half of a Yellow Sun was Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie’s second novel, and Sweetness in the Belly was Camilla Gibb’s third. If Tahmima Anam is already so comparable with this novel– her very first– then certainly her career promises a grand future before her.
December 20, 2007
Spending days
I have a talent for spending days. I am also quite good at wasting them too, but I can make the choice now, which is something. Particularly since I am on Christmas vacation. Oh my job is a wee bit dull, but one can’t complain for the pay is good and I don’t need to return there until January 7th. And I spent yesterday so utterly stimulated, reading through my manuscript, reading the entirety of Claire Cameron’s The Line Painter, unable to put down Canadian Notes and Queries, and chatting with the mailman in my track pants. I met my Creative Writing allies in the eve. Today I just finished reading my own manuscript, I’m reading When the World Was Steady by Claire Messud whose books never fail to give me a whole world, and at 3:00 I’m going to get my hair cut. And some people might find such days mundane, but then they just don’t understand magic.
December 18, 2007
The Dirt on Clean by Katherine Ashenburg
There are many marvelous things about Katherine Ashenburg’s new book The Dirt on Clean: An Unsanitized History, not least of all the brilliant design. Outside the book resembles a bar of soap, while the text inside is laid out beautifully, scattered with small graphics and quotations. The book is artful in style and content, the graphics ranging from Greek and Roman images of bathing to 2oth Century soap advertisements. That Ashenburg uses these images and literary evidence as her sources, as well as more traditional historical record, suggests a rich resource. Ashenburg’s prose is compelling and enjoyable to read, the subject matter fascinating and full of illumination, and here we have a book on a most unlikely subject which a wide range of readers is bound to appreciate.
Where I do find fault, though, I do unfairly. For it is unfair to fault a book for being exactly what it purports to be. Simply a history of cleanliness, focusing on the Western world, and arguing that a people’s view of cleanliness tells you much about who those people are. And there is so much stuff with which to work on this subject, as Ashenburg makes clear, but I couldn’t help wishing that she’d worked it a little more. Even the ubiquitous quotations and factoids suggest to me that so overwhelmed was she by the richness of her facts, she could neither harness them completely nor let any of them go. So we get a compendium of miscellanies instead of a book, the kind of trivia so fashionable these days, the kind which gets pulled out at parties whenever knowledge is called for. That changing one’s shirt was once all that was required by way of hygiene, how disgusting Europeans seemed to the rest of the world, and how clean must have been Odysseus considering that the Greeks bathed upon their departures and arrivals.
Have you heard about”Knol”– the the new Google version of Wikipedia? I think they made up “knol”, but the term is supposed to stand for the smaller bits that knowledge can be broken down into. The idea bothers me, for I don’t think that knowledge can really be broken down. Knowledge is the sum of its parts, synthesis being required for an assemblage of facts to mean anything, and such synthesis was what was missing as I read The Dirt on Clean.
But I am being doubly unfair, I realize. For I cannot claim to be so knowledgeable as much as merely “knolly” myself, and if Katherine Ashenburg had written a book called, for example, “An Academic Treatise on European Bathing Practices and Society in the 16th Century” and said book had not been designed to look like a bar of soap, I probably would never have even read it. Ashenburg’s book is undeniably charming, and though its facts left me with questions, I can seek the answers elsewhere. That the book raised questions at all makes it more useful than a “knol” and could well set me on a path toward knowledge after all. Being a popularization of history does not taint that history, and though I maintain that Ashenburg could have pressed her analysis further, that she has written such a good book with such wide appeal is probably healthy for everybody.
December 12, 2007
Orpheus Lost by Janette Turner Hospital
Last month I read Janette Turner Hospital’s new novel Orpheus Lost, and have followed up with a “critical duet” of sorts with Steven W. Beattie at The Shakespeherian Rag. I enjoyed the book a great deal, Steven did less so, and what results is a pretty interesting dialogue, I think. I will post the beginning, and then you can follow the link over to read the rest.
Kerry Clare: I’d never read anything by Janette Turner Hospital before, and she definitely surprised me. I was aware that she is as American as she is Canadian, and that she is Australian first and foremost, but somehow I still expected her work to be representative of the sort of fiction Canada’s female writers seem to write best. The sort of fiction that I like best for that matter, of kitchens and caves, mothers, daughters, and divining.
The premise of Orpheus Lost would suggest otherwise though, wouldn’t it? This story of Leela, who studies the mathematics of music and falls in love with Mishka in the subway as he plays Gluck’s “Che farò senza Euridice” on his violin. Mishka, whose strange disappearances begin to coincide with terrorist attacks in Boston. Soon Leela is snatched off the street on her way home and taken to an interrogation centre where she is confronted by Cobb, a figure from her past, and questions of Mishka being a terrorist.
Thrills and chills, international crime and intrigue. What a treat, I discovered quickly. To read a plot-driven book for once, and have it be so good. To be unable to stop turning the pages until I’d reached the end. I was choking on my heart a number of times, and one day this book extended my lunch break by an extra half-hour. There was no other way.
I do love it when literary fiction manages to surmount the limits of “genre.” To borrow the best of other genres, using it to great advantage. And indeed Turner Hospital does sufficient borrowing here — with the Greek allusions, musical references, spy plots, and romance. Orpheus Lost is a veritable stew, but reads quite originally, all its ingredients measured.
I found the story throughout quite compelling, but Turner Hospital’s depiction of the Australian rainforest was striking in particular. Of course the rainforest is a place that lends itself to story, and Turner Hospital properly invests it with elements of the fantastic, but that somewhere so unknown to me could emerge so vividly is still a testament to her achievements. Conversely the story lagged just a bit for me with Leela’s backstory, which takes place in a small Southern town I felt I’d read about already.
Leela and Mishka’s relationship was hard to understand at first, though with two such eccentric characters, this is unsurprising. Some of the woodenness of their dialogue is easily attributed to the fact that they’re both so unconventional, and so too would be their romance. Words are neither of their fortes. Turner Hospital conveys their respective passions (math and music) well, and also marries them together. Though not so easily — nothing is easy here, and I respect that. The Orpheus story never exactly matches this modern version, piece for piece. Many characters do remain insoluble equations.
So I could continue here, picking the pieces of Orpheus Lost apart, but I will conclude now instead by stating this book is much more interesting as a whole than these pieces are in isolation. That Orpheus Lost is altogether riveting and well-orchestrated, and that it works. Or at least it worked for me.
How about you?
***
Steven W. Beattie: I’m going to be the dissenting voice here. Orpheus Lost was, for me, a major disappointment… Read the rest.
December 10, 2007
The Mitfords Edited by Charlotte Mosley
Here is not a book for the common reader: you have to know and “get” the Mitfords in order to appreciate Charlotte Mosley’s collection of their letters The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters. My journey towards such knowing and getting began about five years ago when I read Mary S. Lovell’s biography The Mitford Girls. I’d plucked it off a shelf in Waterstones one day whilst on a lunch break, and I can’t remember now what possessed me to do so, but I was enthralled by these sisters, their family and their story. Nancy, the lady novelist; Pamela, who had her Aga custom-painted to match her blue eyes; Diana, who married a Guinness heir and then left him for the leader of the British Fascists, was fond of Hitler and never repented; Unity the Nazi, whose own fondness for Hitler led to her suicide attempt two days after England declared war on her beloved Germany in in 1939, where after she lived brain damaged until her death in 1948; Jessica the Communist, who ran away to the Spanish Civil War and then to America where she made a career for herself as a “muckracker”; and Deborah, who would become the Duchess of Devonshire.
Only England could have made them, and only in the twentieth century at that. Their story is the century summed up, from society balls to “Well Lady, the inevitable has occurred, Dinky is going to have a baby by a black man”. Their relationships best understood by the phrase: “I naturally wouldn’t hesitate to shoot him if it was necessary… but in the meanwhile, as that isn’t necessary, I don’t see why we shouldn’t be quite good friends.” I’ve written plenty here about my Mitford leanings. How I’ve loved the other volumes in my Mitford library since the Lovell: Nancy’s novels, Jessica’s memoirs, even Debo’s book (I visited in Chatsworth House in 2003 and would have enjoyed it much more had I not been terribly ill at the time and having to keep collapsing on the grass amidst sheep poo). I read Decca’s letters earlier this year and absolutely adored them.
This collection of letters is essential, and I found them fascinating– though I didn’t enjoy them as much as Decca’s. Perhaps a collection between six people wouldn’t have the same narrative arc? And also that Unity’s and Diana’s letters were so disturbing, the latter right up until the very end as she perpetually viewed herself as victim (though the years she spent imprisoned during WWII for her relations to the Germans must indeed have been traumatic). But I learned so much new stuff here, about Debo and Pamela in particular and how interesting (but not inter-esting) each one was in her own right. Debo is also as fine a letter writer as her far more literary sisters. That though Jessica and Nancy were terrible liars, this trait was not unendearing somehow. That the homeliest sister turned out prettiest in old age (I think, at least– Pamela). How impossibly hard is one life, and any life, even one which is most extraorder.
What an amazing bond is sisterhood, which these letters demonstrate. The jokes, secret languages, grudges, traumas, and joys. Collections of letters also manage to represent death like no other literary form I’ve encountered (as I found when I read Carol Shields’ letters in June) –the absolute silence of a writer’s cessation is incredibly powerful, and real. With Nancy’s and Pamela’s in particular, and then in the end that blank page. To think of all the life that created these, which is as palpable as the page upon which they’re printed.
