May 16, 2012
People Who Disappear by Alex Leslie
Twice last week I tried to read People Who Disappear, the short story collection by Alex Leslie, but couldn’t get past page 20. Not because there was anything wrong with the book, but instead because it seemed a bit heavy, and I suspected it would require an emotional investment I might not be ready to give. The third time I was ready though, it finally took, and the first story “The Coast is a Road” was so absolutely perfect. I read the ending over and over in disbelief that the story had led where it had. The story of of two young women, one a free-spirited journalist travelling in search of stories and the other her lover who trails along after her: “A tin can rattling, small tin rabbit jumping, tied to your bumper.” Together they travel through northern British Columbia, skirting disaster at every turn, tracing the limits of their commitment to one another, and the story is fabulously full of plot, jarring images– the horses! the horses! Seriously, have you read it yet?
This is a story collection populated with people who do disappear, with fractured lines, with miscommunication, gaps and questions. Closest family ties tend to be with strange uncles, or dubious fathers. Lovers are not wholly known to one another, test each other’s limits. The roads these characters travel are off often the map, literally and metaphorically: “There were so many, a person could spend their life driving around and around these invisible roads.”
Something I’ve noticed recently in reading reviews of short story collections is that very rarely do reviewers reach any consensus about what stories are the strongest or weakest of the bunch. And I’m beginning to think that as subjective is everything, the stories in a collection are in particular. The best stories here are the ones I liked the best, like “The Coast is a Road”, and also “Face”, its trap of nostalgia. My husband is not Canadian so he did not get it at all when I read to him the line that evoked my entire childhood:
“He went down in the pits again, taking his best friend, who played hockey by himself against his garage door every night, sending hollow metallic bursts down the block, so everyone knew at the same moment when his sweat got its first chill and he went inside; then we knew it was night.”
And of course, check out this writing. Clearly, this story’s appeal is its language as much as the personal connections I’ve made with its plot details.
In “Like-Mind”, a woman agrees to help an old friend whom she knows is unstable to drive around Vancouver picking up freecycle items for his new apartment, and she knows that becoming involved with him again is ill-advised, but he has no one else. It is inevitable that their history will be repeated. “People Who Are Michael” is a series of descriptions of videos uploaded to the Youtube channel of a Bieber-ish pop sensation who’s cruising for a crash. “Wire Boy” and “The Bodies of Others” are stories of childhood outcasts, and a young narrator is also at the heart of “Long Way From Nowhere”, the story of a girl who rides the invisible roads with a man who tells authorities he’s her father, but clearly they both have something to hide. She finally escapes him to run away to a community of environmental activists who live in houses in the trees, and this story is like the collection’s first story– as substantial as a novel and as surprising in its turns. I also enjoyed “Two-Handed Things” about two women whose relationship’s cracks are exposed but unremarked upon when one fractures her arm and becomes wholly dependent on the other.
Leslie’s stories are firmly rooted in their place, coastal and northern British Columbia with its ferry boats, extreme weather, and Vancouverosity. To those for whom these places and things are familiar, I imagine this book might feel a bit like home. And to people like me for whom it isn’t, the sense of it all is evoked just the same. It’s a really wonderful collection.
May 15, 2012
I'll be shindigging tomorrow
The Short Story Shindig takes place tomorrow evening at Type Books with three great writers and three great books– Heather Birrell’s Mad Hope, Daniel Griffin’s Stopping for Strangers, and Carrie Snyder’s The Juliet Stories. And I’m hosting the event, which I’m very excited about. You couldn’t ask for a better line-up. I hope to see you there.
May 15, 2012
Malarky Giveaway. Because you really have to read it.
I have this problem wherever books are being sold, I always think it’s kind of rude not to buy one. So this is how I ended up in possession of a spare copy of Anakana Schofield’s Malarky after attending her book launch tonight. Her reading was wonderful, the novel’s opening and its most terrible, hilarious, devastating sex-scene. I love this book so very much, and I’m not the only one– over here, the book is celebrated by the likes of Lynn Coady, Annabel Lyon, Jenny Diski and ME (which is the best crowd I’ve ever hung out in). Malarky has been chosen as one of Barnes and Noble’s Summer 2012 Discover Great New Writers selections.
“If Hagar Shipley met Stella Gibbons…” is how I called it in my review. “Malarky is a journey beyond the limits of love, an equally sad and hilarious portrait of motherhood.” I finished with, “This is a book that will leave you demanding more of everything else you read.” And it has.
So now I’d like to send you a copy. Leave a comment below before Saturday for a chance to picked in a draw, postage paid by me because I want you to read it this much. And yes, of course, the book is autographed.
UPDATE: And the winner is Julia, whose comment number was randomly selected by a toddler from a sunhat. And now the rest of you should track down copies of your own. You won’t be sorry.
May 15, 2012
On the baby blues, that space in between
The unhappiness I felt during my early days as a mother has been diagnosed as post-partum depression by such authorities as complete strangers and the back of book in which my essay “Love is a Let-Down” was published. And I’ve fought this label from the get-go, resenting the neatness with which it packages my experience. I think calling every difficult time in one’s life “depression” undermines the experiences of those who actually do endure this disease, and I maintain that my unhappiness was born from one salient point– life with a newborn was hard and crappy, and I am not very good at adjusting to change.
So I was thrilled to hear an interview on post-partum depression this morning on the radio, for a variety of reasons, actually, because the conversation was very interesting, but in particular because the doctor spoke about “the baby blues”. Of course, we’re all familiar with the term, but I was pleased to hear it delineated. She describes the baby blues as feeling “down and teary”, and the difference between it and PPD is that the former goes away in a matter of weeks (and it did!), and that it is so common that it’s not even classified as a disorder. It’s a period of adjustment, she says, which is what I’ve been saying all along. It was the whole point of my essay, which some readers missed and others resented. My friend Heidi says something similar to this in her blog post “Sometimes It’s Just that Becoming a Mother is Hard”.
I am a huge fan of in-between spaces in general, but I like this one in particular– this space between the blissed out new mom (who does exist! I’ve ever met a few of her) and the mom with PPD. The thing is that all of us are normal, that all of us need support from friends, family and our communities to make it through the early days. And it’s by acknowledging the various degrees of experience that every new mom will be able to find the support that she needs.
May 14, 2012
Oh come over here, kid we’ve got all these books to read
“Oh come over here, kid we’ve got all these books to read,
With the turtles and frogs, cats and dogs who civilize the centuries,
And in a world that’s angry, cruel and furious,
There’s this monkey who’s just curious,
Floating high above a park with bright balloons.”
From “I am the one who will remember everything” by Dar Williams, from her very wonderful new album In the Time of the Gods which I received for Mother’s Day, along with a new guitar tuner.
May 14, 2012
"I’m not sure if it’s sad or amazing that this is my life now."
“I’m not sure if it’s sad or amazing that this is my life now,” is something I wrote here nearly three years ago, not long after my life had changed forever and I still wasn’t sure if I liked it. “Now, must wake baby, feed baby, change baby. For we’re off to a program at the library that promises songs, and stories and “tickle rhymes” for all.”
And we all know how that worked out, of course: that first day, Harriet fell asleep in my arms, and we kept going back and back to learn new songs, hear new stories, so I could learn new ways to engage with my baby, to memorize the tickle rhymes that made her smile so I could pass them onto her Daddy when he came home at the end of day. The library became our community centre, its staff became some of our favourite people (and there was a time when Harriet referred to four people by name: Mommy, Daddy, Elmo, and Cindy [from Spadina Road] so that means something).
We had good company, made some excellent friends– though truth be told, not so many. I used to spend a lot of time sitting in circles of Mommies I could never love, wondering what had happened to my life, and also why everybody was thinner than me. I also dealt with a reputation as “the mom who knows all the songs”, which was a little embarrassing. But then as Harriet got bigger, we grew more secure in our new world (and found enough friends gathered from here and there that we always felt bolstered), the crowd seemed to matter less and less and the library program became about us, something fun for us to do together. We also weathered the stage where she wouldn’t sit still and I spent Baby Time chasing her around the library.
We graduated to the toddler program at the Lillian H. Smith Library, which came with a door that closed so Harriet couldn’t escape. And like that touchstone first day of Baby Time, when Harriet fell asleep in my arms, we had our toddler touchstone too when at the end of The Beanbag Song, 18 mos. old Harriet could not stand relinquishing her beanbag and howled inconsolably. The next week, however, she’d got with the routine, and returned her beanbag with all the other kids, and I had this sense that here was my girl learning the ropes, figuring it out, watching the world around her and deciding how she’d fit into it.
And so I got a bit teary this morning as I watched Harriet put her beanbag away for the final time, so at home in this environment and 
without a doubt that she’s entitled to the richness our community offers us. I remembered that 2 mos old baby in my arms that very first day as we sat in a circle singing Sea-Shell, Sea-Shell, Sing a Song to Me, and that screaming toddler clinging to her beanbag for dear life, and now this fabulous child who will be three in two weeks, who knows the ropes in some ways but is still figuring out in others– she likes to watch up to strangers and say, “I’m Harriet.” Sometimes she will hug them. Sometimes they are more or less comfortable with that, and my heart seizes. I already feel like the mother in Kristen den Hartog’s And Me Among Them who’s silently imploring her daughter’s schoolmates as she follows them all on their way to school, “Walk with her, please walk with her. Walk the rest of the way with my girl.” My girl. Yes.
But then my girl is also fierce, hilarious, loving, enthusiastic, fun, and kind, and her hugs are still age-appropriate enough that they’re met with the same. And now she knows all the songs too, singing along out of tune and half-screaming. Today when Joanne read us Jamberry, Harriet amazed us all by reciting the book along with her. Last week, she didn’t even sit with me, but up at the front with the other kids where she took her cues from the rowdiest ones and had a brilliant time. And once again, I wasn’t sure if it was sad or amazing that this was my life now. Sitting back, watching Harriet begin making her way in the world– it’s incredible to see her independent of me, but I miss the squishy goodness of her body in my lap, in my arms. Watching her put the beanbag away one last time, like a veteran toddler. When the program begins again in September, Harriet will be too old and enrolled in nursery school.
And so it’s away with one stage and onto another, sad and exciting, tragic and wonderful, and I’m getting the idea that being a mother means that we do this over and over again.
May 13, 2012
Malarky Launches
Malarky, which I loved madly, launches in Toronto on Tuesday. And since Rebecca Rosenblum has other plans that night, I’m going solo, which is terrifying. I don’t think I’ve ever been to a literary event without Rebecca. So here’s hoping that you’ll decide to come along, and I don’t feel altogether lonely.
May 13, 2012
Bad Mommy by Willow Yamauchi
The world already having had its fair share of bad mothers, bad mothers, and bad mothers, I’d wondered if Willow Yamauchi’s new book Bad Mommy was a necessary addition to the canon. But the book turned out to be quite different from what I’d supposed it was, not another tell-too-much so-bad-I’m-awesome mother memoir, but instead a satirical guide to motherhood, the perfect antidote to any baby book I ever read, particularly in the early days.
And best intentions do start early, don’t they? I spent my pregnancy reading Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth and Pam England’s Birthing From Within, eventually become a compulsive parenting expert, found becoming a mother akin to the universe exploding, and clung to its pieces with my few certainties: cloth diapers, front-facing strollers, not to feed baby to sleep, to breastfeed lying down at night, black and white mobiles, etc. At first there were the things I “knew”, and eventually, with enough confidence and experience, there were actual things that I really learned, though it baffled me how inapplicable my advice seemed to be to other people’s experiences. Why weren’t they taking my certainties on board? And even more baffling– why did I care so much what other people were doing? Why did other people’s (ill-advised, I thought) breastfeeding holds make me crazy? Why did nothing terrify me more than seeing other mothers making different choices from mine, I wondered? And of course, I see now that I was clinging to order in a chaotic world, imagining there was one path to good motherhood and that I was walking on it, because the alternative (which was the reality) was too much consider–that there was no path, and that all of us were all just stumbling blindly, making our own way as best we could.
I’m not sure I could have read Bad Mommy back when I was still clinging, when it was so important to me to be certain. Yamauchi’s irreverence is without restraint, nothing is sacred, and anyone and everyone is a target– she’s fair and balanced in that respect. Let’s face it, she tells us in her introduction, you are a bad mommy. You may be trying to be good, but you’re still bad, or at least somebody is going to tell you so. And in the next 40 chapters, she proceeds to tell us how: you will always be too young or too old to be a good mommy; no matter how you time your pregnancies, you’ll always get it wrong. Even if you remember the folic-acid, there will still be plenty of opportunities to fail your child’s development in utero– sushi, cheese, paint and kitty litter to choose from! You’ll gain too much weight, or not enough. You’ll deliver your baby in an idyllic water birth, and have the baby get stuck in the birth canal, or you will give birth in a hospital with painkillers which will result in an apgar score of less than perfect.
Everything you do as a mother, says Yamauchi, will be wrong, so you might as well have a sense of humour about it. Oh, and the breastfeeding– night nursing leads to tooth decay! Women who pack in breastfeeding are failures! Mommies who breastfeed into toddlerhood are perverts! The chapter on circumcision was my very favourite, the entirety of which I read aloud to my husband whilst laughing hysterically– “A common reason given for circumcision is that men want their little boys to ‘look like them’ down there. This is such a bizarre concept. First of all, what kind of parent and child compare their genitals for familial similarities?…” Though, she writes, don’t circumcise and your son will end up with STDs, Bad Mommy.
And so it goes, through disposable diapers and cloth, how to put your baby down to sleep (and the standards for this, Yamauchi notes, change every ten minutes, along with car seat requirements, and when and how to start solid foods), to vaccinate or not to, to work or stay at home. The point is to go confident in your choices, says Yamauchi, because you’ll only ever be wrong in them.
And there are so many ways to be wrong– I related in particular to the “Crafty Bad Mommy” chapter, as our craft supplies haul is mainly stubby crayons. You can be the Bad Mommy who sends her kid to school sick, or the Bad Mommy with muchhausen by proxy. You’ll have fat kids, or anorexic ones, you’ll look like a frump or a mutton-dressed-as-lamb, and onwards and onwards, so it goes, until you start to see that Yamauchi is joking but she also isn’t.
The book ran a bit too long to my tastes, and I found Yamauchi’s chapters more interesting than the case-studies that followed each of them (though even these had their moments), but in general, Bad Mommy is a great counter to so much of the faux-earnest or overtly polemic conversations about parenting going on all around us these days. Though everything is fair-game in the book, its point is not to abandon your principles as a mother (and for the record, I am still a cloth diaper fanatic. I just shut up more than I used to. Not that anyone actually wears diapers in our house anymore [!!!]), but to embrace them.
To be Willow Yamauchi’s bad mommy is simply to be the mother you are, but with gusto.
May 11, 2012
In which I help solve a literary mystery I unwittingly created
1) Dear Ms. Clare, I recently signed out a copy of Lionel Shriver’s The Post-Birthday World from the Toronto Public Library and found it inscribed, “Kerry Clare, March 2007,” as well as with a hand-written “To Kerry” and an illegible signature on the title page. I did some Googling and saw that you reviewed this book on your blog in March, 2007. So this must be “your” copy of the book, right? I’m just wondering why a library book might have your name in it! And possibly the author’s signature, too?
Hoping you’ll be willing to provide an explanation, I remain
A curious fellow reader (who is, incidentally, enjoying the book very much),
Kyle Miller
Toronto
2) Wow, I gave away an autographed book? That wasn’t so clever. I did see Lionel Shriver at HarbourFront in 2007 and she was wonderful. But I have far too many books in my life, and regularly prune my collection, donating the discards to the Spadina Road Library, which is one of the best places I know. If I’d realized it was autographed, I probably would have kept the book. But then I love a good literary mystery as much as the next guy, and I’m pleased to have been a part of one, so I’m glad I didn’t.
Can I post your message on my blog? My blog is all about literary connections, and this is perfect.
Thanks for writing. I’m glad you’re liking the book. I liked it too, as my review attests.
All the best to you,
Kerry
