December 8, 2016
Holiday Reading Break
I never plan my holiday reading breaks—they just sort of happen. One minute I’m reading the new Zadie Smith, with Eimear McBride, Deborah Levy, Paul Beatty on deck, and next thing I know I’m reading Linwood Barclay. (I’ve never read Linwood Barclay before—he comes much recommended and I’m loving this book so much.) So suddenly all the big books and ARCs are put aside, and I’m reading murder mysteries, juicy novels, and all the books on my shelf that I’ve been meaning to get around to for ages but haven’t because they’re not particularly timely and little of consequence. Which makes me not the best book blogger, because I’m going to make a 2016 Best Of and I’ve not really properly read 2016 yet. But a holiday reading break also makes me happy and sane as a reader and a person, and is the nicest way to wind down into the holiday season. I will be reporting in from my holiday reads, and do look forward to resuming Big Books again in the new year.
December 5, 2016
The Toronto Review of Books’ Seasonal Affective Party!
I’m looking forward to reading as part of the Toronto Review of Books’ Seasonal Affective Party on Tuesday December 6, 7pm at Poetry Jazz Cafe in Kensington Market. I’ll reading alongside Andrew Pyper, Trevor Corkum, and Catherine Graham. TRB Managing Editor and novelist Damian Tarnopolsky will be reading too, along with TRB Senior Editor and writer Kelli Deeth.
The Facebook event is here! See you there?
I’ll be reading the infamous pork shoulder scene from Mitzi Bytes, and it’s going to be great.
December 4, 2016
I regret the cake
They say that over the course of a lifetime you never regret the cakes you baked, but instead the cakes you didn’t bake, although in one specific case I will make an exception—except I am also sorry for the butterfly cake I brought to a party in 2000 that was mostly paste, and the cake I over-mixed for my friend’s engagement in 2008 that had the consistency of cheese. But not this sorry.
I regret the cake, the Hillary Clinton victory cake I baked on November 7.
“If all else fails, there will be cake,” I blogged blithely, but it turned out that the cake didn’t taste very good. When I’m really upset, I don’t have an appetite for anything, and so that sad cake hung around our kitchen getting stale and eventually I threw it in the garbage. The day after the election, I had a task that involved cutting out thirty small squares of paper and using a hole punch, and it was about all I was up to. I sat there at my kitchen table cutting and punching, and weeping as I listened to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s concession speech on the radio. I probably ate some cake, but I didn’t taste it. There was no consolation.
If I had to do it again though, I’d probably still make the cake. Partly because I’m bloody-minded. And partly too because I refuse to budge from my vision of what the world could be and what it should be. I’d rather be wrong than be wrong, if you know what I’m saying. Although I did feel guilty after the fact—I know I inspired other people to embark upon similar baking projects, and there we all were sad in our kitchens on that terrible Wednesday morning. There was so much cake, physical evidence of disappointment, and all of it was my fault.
But I’ll take the fall. I was wrong, and I’ve been wrong before, but as I said above, at least I wasn’t wrong in fundamental ways. I’ve tried very hard to resist a dynamic of winner/loser from this election, not because I don’t like losing, but instead because I don’t mind if I do lose. It doesn’t matter. You might call me a crybaby, but I’ll just look at you confused, wondering why you’re delivering such a puerile insult, and I really don’t care what you think either way. (I’m not going to run out into the street and start firing off my stockpiled ammunition either, and there is really something to that.)
“The art of losing isn’t hard to master…” It’s true. I’ve lost before, over and over again, and what I learned from these experiences is that mastering losing can mean that you can do absolutely anything. I have no fear of failure because I’ve failed over and over again, and everything turned out…fine. Often the very worst thing that can happen isn’t. There are certain things that if I lost them, my life would be fractured irrevocably, but these things are mostly people and I don’t know that anyone can master that kind of loss, although I even know some strong, incredible friends who appear to have done so, who carry on under the weight of interminable grief. So there is loss and there is loss, I mean.
The results of the election have been devastating, but I’ve resisted the idea that my/us having lost is part of the equation. No, it’s something more than that, which is what is actually lost on the simple-minded people who are gloating. Those gloating people aren’t why I was crying, but instead I was crying for everyone, for a vision of the world that’s not that I thought it was, what I hoped fervently it could be. I was wrong, and a whole lot of people proved me wrong, but I can handle that. And if necessary, I’ll be wrong over and over again. Until I’m right, because that’s how history swings.
It’s been a brutal month. On Thursday I finally got my ass back in gear, and started replying to hundreds of emails with apologies for being unable to anything much for this past month except stare at my computer screen in abject horror. I fell down terrible twitter rabbit holes that made me despair about everything, and to wonder about the bubble that I live in, confused and messed up by “voices obsessed with rhetorical fallacies and pedantic debating practices.” When reality starts to seem like a giant conspiracy theory in itself, it becomes hard to know what’s what, and where you stand on things when ground is ever-shifting.
What’s brought be back to earth? Books, of course. I started reading Caitlin Moran’s Moranifesto last week, and it set me straight about feminism, and class, and why I don’t want a revolution (“Personally, I’m not up for that. The kind of people who are up for mutinies and riots tend to be young men… I, however, am a forty-year-old woman with very inferior running abilities and two children… I’ve read enough history books to be resoundingly unseen on extreme politics of with the left or the right…They tend to work out badly for women and children. They tend to work out badly for everyone.) While there has been an effort to package this book as more than a collection of her columns, with a thesis and everything, it doesn’t quite work, but it doesn’t have to. Moran is terrific. “Why We Cheered in the Street When Margaret Thatcher Died.” “This is a World Formed by Abortion—It Always Has Been, And It Always Will Be.” “We Are All Migrants.” The world has gone so willy-nilly in the last year that some pieces in this collection are dated in a way that hurts my heart, but the fundamentals still stand. Last Tuesday evening I sat alone reading this book in a public place and I kept laughing aloud in a way that disturbed passersby, and that was a good thing. It was like a terribly funny person finally talking some sense back into me.
And along those lines, I picked up Luvvie Ajayi’s essay collection next, I’m Judging You: The Do-Better Manual. A book whose first section left me unmoved, but I think it was tactical, some light and easy judgement toward people who don’t wash their bras regularly or who court unemployed boys with gambling addictions who call you to pick them up at the casino because it’s raining and their only form of transport is their bicycle. Breaking the reader in for the heavy stuff—”Racism is for Assholes,” “Rape Culture is Real and it Sucks.” Powerful, amazing sensible stuff that I so desperately need to hear right now when everything seems so upside down. A Black woman writing about feminism, a Christian woman critiquing how religion is messing so much up these days, a smart woman unwilling to withhold her judgement, so she gives it and it’s glorious and we’re better for it. Consistency is overrated. The point is to be good, to ourselves and to each other. I’m about two thirds into this book, and I’m loving it, reminding me that this upside-down world is the same as it ever was, and that striving for better is the least and the most we can do.
“But the ultimate pragmatism is to quietly note that idealism has won, time after time, in the last hundred years. Idealism has the upper hand. Idealism has some hot statistics. Idealism invented and fuelled the civil rights movement, votes for women, changes in rape laws, Equal Marriage, the Internet, IVF, organ transplants, the end of apartheid, independence in India, the Hadron Collider, Hairspray the musical, and my recent, brilliant loft conversion. Every reality we have now started with a seed-corn of idealism and impossibility—visions have to coalesce somewhere.” —Caitlin Moran
December 2, 2016
The Day Santa Stopped Believing in Harold
I full-on believed in Santa Claus until I was eleven, mostly through sheer force of will and because I was a strange child, and I’ve actually kind of still believed in him ever since then. If asked if there is a Santa, I’ll never say one way or another, because there are some kinds of magic that are beyond our understanding. If asked if I in fact partake in performing the duties of Santa, I may concede that I do, but that such partaking is in fact part of the magic, but no one’s asked me that question yet. There have been other question though, and I will answer them carefully, recalling my own longing to believe that so preoccupied me as a child, a longing that had me actually making notes on the books I was reading and tallying those in which Santa was confirmed as real or otherwise within said books (and there became more of the latter, obviously, as I became actually eleven—I think I was actually reading Sidney Sheldon novels when I was eleven, although Santa rarely came up in these).
The Day Santa Stopped Believing in Harold, by Maureen Fergus (Buddy and Earl) and Cale Atkinson (If I Had a Gryphon) is definitely pro-Santa, and the perfect book contending with these sorts of questions who’s just not quite ready to give up yet. Santa, it seems, has stopped believing in a child called Harold, because the letters Harold writes to Santa are penned by Harold’s mother and Santa’s snack each Christmas Eve is actually catered by Harold’s father. Santa’s wife tries to convince him otherwise, but Santa will not be deterred, and resolves to wait up until Christmas morning so he can see Harold for himself and finally discover whether or not he actually exists…
I bought this one to commemorate the beginning of the Christmas season, a new title for our Christmas book box, and we absolutely loved it. It’s sweet, silly, and the perfect Christmas book for the savvy kid who wants to go on believing just a little bit longer.
December 1, 2016
Swimming Lessons: Addendum
Full disclosure necessitates I update you on how things have proceeded since I read about exiting Guardian Swim and the beginning of my new career reading on the poolside. I thought I was being so clever this time, not keeping my child in Guardian Swim until she was five, which was what happened last time. Never again was I going to have my school-age child in the same swimming class as an infant, and so Iris was enrolled in Sea Turtle. This time we were going to do it right, and it was so right, for the first two lessons, at least. Iris is part mermaid and was happily floating on her back, and she had the most excellent swimming instructor in the entire history of our life in recreational programs…and then, for absolutely no reason, when we arrived at class for Week 3, Iris refused to get into the pool. And there we’ve been ever since, Iris screaming whenever forced to come into contact with the water, turning her body into a plank or a noodle, whichever would prove most inconvenient. And when you’re a parent who’s been expecting to spent 30 minutes reading poolside, the prospect of a screaming kid refusing to enter the pool is most frustrating. There was swearing.
Last week was the second last class, and there was finally progress. Iris got in the pool, but in order for this to happen I had to be crouching at the pool’s edge, basically sitting in a puddle and being splashed whenever anyone practiced kicking. There was no reading.
All of which is to say that this underlines my growing suspicion that there is really no way to do parenthood right. No matter how you swing things, they’re probably always going to be a bit annoying.
November 30, 2016
Books of the Year (and on the radio too!)
49thShelf’s Books of the Year list came out on Monday, and I’m thrilled with it. It turns out that 2016 has not been a total disaster—maybe the books will save us after all? And I was on CBC Ontario Morning today talking about some of the picks that would also make great holiday gifts. You can listen to the podcast here; I come on at 37.30.
November 27, 2016
Swing Time, by Zadie Smith
I can plot my adult life with Zadie Smith novels. I first read White Teeth during the summer of 2001 when I had a job that was in proximity of too many bookshops, and it was the first time it occurred to me in an undergraduate English stupor that there was such a thing as contemporary literature. (I reread it years later and the book was still brilliant, and shockingly prescient.) I got The Autograph Man out of the library a couple of years later when I was living in Nottingham, and I didn’t think much of it, and wasn’t the only one, but that didn’t matter much because On Beauty would come along in 2005, the year we moved to Canada and this modern take on Howards End would continue to expand my ideas about what contemporary literature could do. I bought her last novel, NW, the day that Harriet started playschool in 2012, when I was five minutes pregnant with Iris, and I can’t remember it so well now, partly because I was pregnant, but also because it was a difficult novel to hold in one’s grasp (as suggested by the surprisingly articulate review I wrote, but have no recollection of). And four years and a few months after that, it would be time for me to pick up my pre-ordered copy of her latest, Swing Time.
It took me nine days to read Swing Time, which for me is a literary eternity. Thankfully, I’m not pregnant, but I was busy and also distracted, and it’s not a novel whose plot exactly rivets. It’s also more than 400 pages long, which is heavy to lug, but I did so. It was not that I didn’t enjoy reading it, but sometimes I wondered what the point was. If NW took its reader up and down the streets and alleyways of northwest London, Swing Time transports across continents via jumbo jet and through decades too—its canvas is immense. It’s a novel about girlhood, friendship, race, dance, musical theatre, social media, celebrity, and social mobility. It’s more White Teeth than NW, and Irie even makes a cameo on page 34. And in all its material, I kept waiting for patterns to emerge, for parallels, binaries.
It’s the story of two girls, our unnamed narrator and her childhood friend Tracey who meet at dance class, and they’re both mixed-race children growing on the same housing estate. The novel moves between chapters that take us through their shared history and another contemporary storyline in which the narrator is a personal assistant to an international pop star, Aimee, modelled on Madonna and Kylie Minogue, and helping to establish a school for girls in an unnamed West African country. The notion of time is important through the book, in terms of music and rhythm, narrative time, and also just chronologically. Swing as in swing music, but also in how time swings back and forth between the two narrative threads. (Swing Time is also a 1936 movie musical starring Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire). Common to both threads is the narrator’s relationship with women—to her mother, to Tracey, to Aimee—and her tendency to lose herself to another’s command. Except that such self-effacingness seems more like a convenient front than actual reality—the narrator is thoroughly in command of the 400+ story she sets out to tell, bending time to suit her own sense of things. Her tendency to not be present is a curious aspect of the book—to the point where other characters are replying to things she said that we never get to read, and what is her name?—but she’s also everywhere, in charge of shining the spotlight even as she ducks out of its glow.
For me, Smith has always been a masterful novelist whose works just kind of peter out before the end, and my explanation for that is that her stories are so excellent that the endings are always going to be a let-down and/or do we really expect her to come up with a novel like that and properly end it too? But in her fourth book, it seems she’s finally got the conclusion that comes with a gut punch, the last fifty pages or so finally bringing the pieces together, the patterns emerging. The conclusion of Swing Time is wonderful, devastating, and ambiguous in the most engaging fashion. Yes, the book is a bit bloated in the middle, but reading any of Smith’s prose is a pleasure. And all of it matters—you just don’t know how until the end.
November 25, 2016
How Do You Feel?
I’m going to say it—it’s been a rough few weeks. Yesterday I asked a parent in the school yard if he was American, intending to wish him a Happy Thanksgiving, and he looked so upset when I asked him. “I’m not accusing you of anything,” I said. “I’m just trying to create some distance from that mess,” he responded, and I got that. I’ve been trying to create some distance too. I took Twitter off my phone. Between conspiracy theories, white supremacy and CanLit ridiculousity, the platform has ceased to have much value except for to constantly have me exclaiming, “What that actual fuck?” I’ve tried telling men’s rights activists to eat various bags of dicks, and attempted to engage with a woman who insisted that the patriarchy wasn’t real (“That’s what they want you to think,” I told her, with a winky face, which she didn’t think was very funny, and my goodness, I thought feminists were the humourless ones) and watching what’s happening at Standing Rock just causes me to despair.
There are a whole lot of people on Twitter who, before November 8, I’d been in adamant disbelief that they were actually real. But it seems that they exist, human bots. Who refuse to read anything but Wikileaks emails, have eggs instead of heads (remember when once upon a time that implied intelligence?) and have no passion for anything except the things they hate. Which is anything the least bit challenging. And there is this atmosphere of disdain for feelings. Slinging “crybaby” like an epithet. This from people supporting a man whose supporters had been stockpiling arms for the event of their disappointment—and suddenly crying was something terrible? Speaking of alternate universes.
Who are they, the people who make fun of feelings. Do they not understand that it’s feelings that underline the dangerous fabric of nationalism? That there is nothing rational about screaming nonsensically at a rally, or screaming, “Kill the Bitch? (I am never going to forget that phrase.) That the notion of safety has become a joke. Why would denying others such a thing be the hill you’d choose to die on? And I keep getting emotional—of course I do. I feel terrible. I am sad, and angry, and frustrated, and disappointed. And really, really confused by the determination of others to put our precious, fragile, precarious arrangement in peril.
Pendulums swing though. And back. It’s the way of history. And it’s healthy to keep asking ourselves questions. “How do we keep what we believe in and know it’s right from becoming dogma?” I asked my friend May yesterday, and that’s a whole other blog post. We talked about how apparent injustices are now, all those things we were able to ignore before that have risen to the surface. To be acknowledged, looked in the face. Finally. It’s all very hard, but necessary. And in the meantime, the question of feelings are going to be more so. (See also this post: What are you going through?)
On Thursday I went to the Canadian Children’s Book Centre Awards Gala, and drank all the wine, which helped a bit with the whole feelings thing. And in my silly bubble of happy, I felt grateful to be surrounded by people who acknowledged the power of books and of story and truth and history. We need books more than we’ve ever needed them, books to keep us asking questions, books to make sense of the madness, and to underline to our children the things that are important and ever shall be.
Harriet remains a hedgehog fanatic, and therefore we have all become fond of the book, How Do You Feel?, by Rebecca Bender. I love the double meaning of the question (because anything that teaches that a single thing can have two realities is important), and that the answers to the questions are all about words and similes. The whole book is about connection, and it’s sweet and lovely, and also powerfully subversive in the most important way.
November 23, 2016
Mini Reviews
The Keys of My Prison, by Frances Shelley Wees
I loved this one, a reissue of a 1956 novel by Wees who wrote more than 20 romance and mystery novels. The Keys of My Prison fits comfortably into the contemporary craze for domestic suspense novels; its a terrifically Toronto book*; and it reminds me of Hugh MacLennan’s The Watch the Ends the Night in a vague kind of way. It’s the story of a young wife and mother (and heiress!) whose husband is injured in a car crash, and when he emerges from a coma, he’s not the man he was before. Could the man in the bed really be Rafe or is he an imposter? Or is it possible that none of them really ever knew Rafe at all? *Had a bone to pick with the jacket copy though, which describes the family as residing in their Rosedale mansion, but they in fact live north of St. Clair on Russell Hill Road. There is also a mention of the “Bay Subway” which someone takes downtown (and which stops on the surface at the corner of Yonge and St. Clair?) and I couldn’t figure out what that was all about. But that I cared so much is a testament to the book’s appeal. Heartily recommended.
*
I liked this novel a lot, and it’s a story that will appeal to anyone who appreciated Jessica Grant’s Come Thou Tortoise a few years back, another story about a quirky character with an affinity for a non-human creature. Structurally, Cluck is a bit lacking, a big and sprawling narrative that could use more focus and tautness, but it has charm and the twists are interesting, and I appreciated the humour throughout, as well as the sensitivity with which Rowntree writes about mental illness and social exclusion. (She previously co-edited an anthology of stories about mental illness.) It begins with Henry playing with his farm set at a young age, and moves through his life as he struggles to find a place for himself in the world, build his own community, and discover an outlet for his passion for poultry. In a hopeful and realistic way, Rowntree depicts the complicated experience of a character for whom conformity is not an option, and has her readers plotting along with her on the road to his ultimate triumph.
*
Sex and Death, edited by Sarah Hall and Peter Hobbs
This book was so good. I must confess that it initially gave me a case of CanLit Inferiority Complex, because the internationally-authored stories were so stellar I wondered how poor old Canada could ever compete. BUT…then I realized that it was just that the pieces in this anthology were so well selected (by acclaimed writers including Ben Marcus, Claire Vaye Watkins, Kevin Barry, Taiye Selasi, Ali Smith) rather than the rest of the world setting the bar so high (I am sure there are middling short story writers in the UK; I just never have to hear about them). AND Canadian literature has two stand-out contributions to this anthology, the amazing Lynn Coady and Alexander MacLeod (whose own story is worth the price of the entire book). My favourite story is Ceridwen Dovey’s “Fixations”, however, which is one of two postpartum stories in the collection and the best story I’ve ever read about an anal fissure. I also appreciated the badassedness of flashing this book’s cover on public transit. Funny too how much the thematic concerns of the anthology cease to be the point, partly because the stories are just so great, but also because sex and death pretty much covers everything you’d ever want to write about.
November 21, 2016
Destination Bookshop: Hunter Street Books
Saturday started pretty badly: literally seconds into our road trip to Peterborough, I hit a bollard while backing out of a parking space and took the front bumper off a giant Toyota. How was this even possible? My front wheel well hit the bollard and away went the bumper, and this was as upsetting as you might expect. I tried to put it back on myself, but it turned out the car wasn’t made of lego. I’m going to be getting an unpleasant bill. I cried and two teenage boys came over to marvel at the damage while I cried. Miraculously, the car sharing company gave me use of another car, however, and this one I managed not to destroy. And so we were off, flying down the highways toward Peterborough’s brand new bookstore, as planned, and we were talking about how I’d never had a car accident before, and if one has to have such a thing, this one is probably best case scenario, and how nobody was hurt, no other cars were involved, and even the bollard was unscathed. How the Toyota was too big anyway.
And so the stakes were high. This trip to Peterborough has now cost us perhaps $1000. Hunter Street Books had better be worth the journey and the damage. But I had a feeling it would be. A brand new bookstore in the city I’d grown up in—I knew how much downtown Peterborough needed a store like this. I knew how excellent it was that writer Michelle Berry had taken a chance on a new business. I’d seen photos online of the space and it was beautiful. Though, as always, a true mark of the store’s goodness would be the quality of the books on the shelves.
Well, Reader, I bought them. The books, I mean. The books I’d planned on buying, because Michelle had them in stock and facing out even—did she knew I was coming and was intending to purchase a copy of Elena Ferrante’s The Lost Daughter? And Hot Milk, by Deborah Levy? And then I ended up buying I’m Judging You, by Luvvie Ajayi, which I hadn’t known I’d needed, but Michelle made me realize. I bought Marnie Jackson’s new book too, because I’d only had an ARC and it’s stayed on my mind in such a way that I realized I needed something more substantial.
I go to a lot of bookstores. I’ve been to ones that are good, bad and middling, and my standards are higher than most people’s because I’ve been around a bit and because I have a million books at home already. You have to be more than adequate to satisfy me. You have to stock small press titles and prize lists and the books everyone has heard of and those we haven’t yet. You have to have both of Anakana Schofield’s novels and Double Teenage, by Joni Murphy, facing out. You need mysteries and commercial favourites and Maria Semple and books in translation. You have to stock all the books I love best, and the ones I’m still looking out for. And Michelle Berry has done it all—Peterborough is so lucky.
Check out the curated shelf, with picks by Dave Bidini, Esta Spalding, Eden Robinson and Madeleine Thien. (Madeleine Thien used to have more books on her shelf, but people bought them all). These books are selling well, Michelle Berry says—and then she asked me to curate a shelf of my own for January (and just you wait and see what I’ve come up with…)
The space is big and airy and full of light. My husband reports that the chairs are comfortable—and he’s sat down in a lot of bookshops. More than that, he also had a good time browsing—the Oliver Sacks book in our stack was his pick. And then he sat down and waited for me to finish exploring, and he was happy to do so. He saw it coming when I hung up my coat on the rack by the door—we’d be there for a while I perused every shelf. A small table and chairs is set up in the back for littler readers. There will also be space for events in the New Year, and I can foresee this being a very good spot for literary-minded people to come together.
And they already were—coming together, that is. I took a photo of the line at the till, for lines at tills in bookshops are my very favourite thing in all the universe. I’d happily wait in one forever. Well done, Michelle Berry, for supporting local authors, boosting your downtown community, putting more books in the hands of people of the world, and for doing it all so well. You’ve made the world a more beautiful place, and I can’t wait to come back.
Although next time I’ll try to drive more carefully.
