January 3, 2012

A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny

Coming to detective fiction via Kate Atkinson’s Jackson Brodie is a bit like being the kind of person who only goes to church on Christmas Eve. And sure, I’ve tried to make up for it since– I’ve since gotten into PD James and Dorothy Sayers, but I’ll never feel like I’ve got quite enough cred. I’m not a real detective fiction fan anyway– I seem to like the stories in spite of the detection, and though I know this is an unpopular point of view, I’ll tell you that if Atkinson forgot to put Jackson Brodie in her next novel, I’m not sure I’d notice. What I like about murder mysteries is that they bring to the forefront what I like best about novels in general: atmosphere, surprising relationships, back story and plot.

And yes, I like my novels English, and the mysteries in particular. For me, Midsomer Murders is less about the murders than whatever is happening on the village green (which, as it happens, is usually murder, so it all comes out in the wash). And somehow in A Trick of the Light, the seventh book in her Armand Gamache series, Louise Penny has managed to thoroughly infuse a village in Quebec’s Eastern Townships with the English essence I so love in my fiction.

The village is Three Pines, so isolated it does not appear on any maps, but also a hotbed for murder. In this latest installment, a body has been discovered in the garden of Clara Morrow, an artist who has just launched her first solo show at the Musee in Montreal. The dead woman turns out to be a ghost from Clara’s past whose connections to the people in her present are numerous and surprising. Chief Inspector Gamache must untangle the web of intrigue, all the while dealing with his own trauma from a recent incident in which he was seriously wounded and officers working under him were killed.

For two days last week, I was more devoted to this book that anything else in the universe. It was the perfect book to curl up in against the winter darkness, I found Gamache and his second-in-command so compelling as characters, the vicious and incestuous art world served as a sparkling backdrop, and Three Pines was a perfect idyll, even with all the murder going on. Though yes, this books really wants for an edit. Penny writes in short stilted non-sentences that make for breezy reading but don’t completely make sense when you look at them closely. And there were too many slips– how did Clara notice the expression on her husband’s face when he was walking a few paces ahead of her, and the misused “begging the question” twice in five pages was a bit agonizing. The essential bit of Englishness that we’re really missing here is the genre writer with serious command of the language.

But I’m happy to forgive the book for all its flaws, because it made my holiday, and I look forward to acquainting myself with more Gamache in the future.

January 1, 2012

Textual Mothers/Maternal Texts: Motherhood in Contemporary Women's Literatures by Elizabeth Podnieks and Andrea O'Reilly (eds)

That Textual Mothers/Maternal Texts has been sitting on my shelf at all is because it marries two subjects that fascinate me: contemporary literature and ideas about motherhood. That it’s been sitting on my shelf for a year or so is because I was intimidated by its academic approach, and had opened it up one day a while ago when the time was not right. The time being righter, I returned to it shortly before Christmas, and was glad I did. Though my enjoyment of the book and success with it is due to me abandoning my usual rule of reading cover-to-cover, and employing that old cliche about some books existing to be dipped in and out of. But I suspect if there’s any such book, this is one of them. Some of the essays were immediately accessible due to my familiarity with the works involved, but I became unabashed about skipping those rendered impenetrable by jargon, theory and/or books I’d never heard of.

Which is not to say that I had to know the books under discussion in order to appreciate these essays in this collection. Quite the contrary, I was surprised to have so many essays pique my interest in literature that is new to me. In “That Was Her Punishment,” Ruth Panoksky’s examination of prostitute mothers in Jewish communities left me wanting to read Adele Wiseman’s Crackpot; my friend Nathalie Foy’s essay on Eden Robinson’s story “Dogs in Winter” was evocative and gorgeously written; I’ve never read the poems of Minnie Bruce Pratt, but Susan Driver’s “I had to make a future willful, voluble, lascivious” brought the poems (and the poet) to life on the page; and I really enjoyed Rita Jones’ “But She’s a Mom! Sex, Motherhood, and the Poetry of Sharon Olds.”

So the book broadened my understanding of how motherhood is represented in contemporary literature, but also deepened my understanding of the works I was familiar with, whose discussions attracted me to this book in the first place. Nancy Peled draws connections between several of Margaret Atwood’s novels to show how each is informed by the roles of absent or powerless mothers. Emily Jeremiah’s “We Need to Talk About Gender: Mothering and Masculinity in Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin” managed to bring something new to a novel that has been discussed over and over again, but also preserves the ambiguity and complexity of Shriver’s novel in its arguments. I also appreciated Joanne S. Frye’s and Andrea O’Reilly’s essays on motherhood memoirs (and in particular, the way that these essays spoke to and contradicted one another). And then into another over-studied book is breathed new life with Di Brandt’s “(Grand)mothering Children of the Apocalypse”: A Post post-modern Ecopoetic Reading of Margaret Laurence’s The Diviners” (and it may not show from the essay’s title, but oh, how wonderful prose stands out in an academic text).

Even with the skipped essays, however, others would prove challenging in different ways. It was due to my own experience that I was exasperated by the simplistic reduction of Denys Landry’s “Maternal Blitz: Harriet Lovett as Postpartum Sufferer in Doris Lessing’s The Fifth Child.” Similarly, I resisted the conclusions of Andrea O’Reilly’s essays on motherhood memoirs, and found what is termed “new-momism” (see The Mommy Myth by Susan Douglas and Meredith Michaels) to be a too-simplified version of most women’s reality. And of course, I would think that, and this is the same argument I have with second-wave feminists every time I identify as a housewife. Anyway, perhaps “new-momism” is over-represented in literature (though I’m convinced much nuance is being overlooked here), but the experiences of most women I know are much closer to what Rita Jones presents as so revelatory in the poetry of Sharon Olds:

This woman determined her own sense of proper womanhood and mothering, but, importantly, she does not do so in some kind of isolation. Instead, she responds to and sometimes imitates contemporary notions of intensive mothering and the new momism. Certainly, she cannot possibly attempt to live her life “off the grid” of mothering. Like the bees, she too tries different arcs of narratives of womanhood and mothering, and we see how tempting she finds the narrative of intensive mothering as she alternates between subsuming her identity beneath that of her children’s and remaking her identity on her own terms… The woman… finds pleasure in her roles as both mother and lover, and she experiences no conflicts in performing both roles.”

But then responding to these essays based on my own experiences would prove to be a very narrow way to read them (or to read anything, for that matter). It’s as necessary as it is difficult to have one’s ideas and sense of relational self properly challenged, and in her essay, Susan Driver provides a wonderful quote from Minnie Bruce Pratt to frame how to rise to this challenge: “I try to say: To acknowledge the complexity of another’s existence is not to deny my own.”

Acknowledging the complexity of existence is what these essays do so well, the complex existence of living, breathing women, and also of the characters in our literature. And the power of this book is found in its acknowledgement of the symbiotic connection between the two, how each one can inform and be empowered by the other.

December 31, 2011

Fewer sweets not going so well

Next year, I was going to eat fewer sweets, but then I received a Kitchen-Aid Professional Stand-Mixer for Christmas, so it really doesn’t look like it’s going to happen. I am consoling myself, however, with the realization that I’ve achieved both my 2011 goals, which were to read Great Expectations and finish a draft of my novel manuscript. I have read 132 books this year, and have also been successful at reading through my to-be-read shelf (and putting them in alphabetical order has made all the difference in the world, by the way) and I’m on the Ps. I vow to never let such a pile-up occur ever again. In 2012, I am going to finally finish reading John Cheever’s collected short stories, and write a brilliant second draft of my novel. I am also going to restrict myself to blogging 3 days a week in order to make time for other kinds of writing.

This time last year, I had just finished up a fulfilling creative year, but had no idea but 2011 would have in store. And to think that it would include a National Magazine Award nomination and publication in a book would have been nearly too much to wish for, and so I am pretty grateful for those opportunities, as well as writing gigs with some great publications, and my work at Canadian Bookshelf and Uof T. In addition to my novel, I’m at work on a couple of other interesting projects, and would also like to publish some short fiction this year, though perhaps it’s too much to wish the cup be eternally runneth over.

Speaking of cups runneth over (or at least bowls), we’d been planning on a chocolate fondue to bring in the new year tonight, but then our neighbour who’s departing on vacation brought over the contents of her fridge, and now it looks like we’re going to have to make a clafoutis as well. So I really mean it when I say that we’re doing poorly on the fewer sweets thing, but if that’s my biggest problem, we’re really doing all right.

Happy New Year and all the best for 2012.

December 31, 2011

Harriet's room

It’s an exciting time in any parent’s life when your child moves out of her crib onto the futon that was once your living room couch. It’s like the circle of life for the not-so-upwardly mobile. But it’s gone off without a hitch and, like everything ever in the history of Harriet, was a much bigger deal for us that it was for her. She likes the new bed because she can turn somersaults on it, and is fond of the comforter she received for Christmas from one of her grandmothers. From the other, she received custom bunting spelling out her name (and you can catch a glimpse of it in the first photo). All these new things being the best excuse for a bedroom reorganization, and I’m very happy with the result.

You can click here for a glimpse of how Harriet’s library began, and from the picture on the right, you can tell that we’ve come a long way. And aren’t kids books impossible to get rid of? I am pretty good at pruning my own collection, but with Harriet’s books, every one seems so essential.

December 24, 2011

Blue Christmas

Christmas Eve is my favourite day of the holidays, and with yesterday being a holiday too, it’s like we’ve had two of them. But with Christmas Day nearly upon us, it means it’s time to get down to the holiday reading I’ve been saving. It is by coincidence only that all these books are blue, but I like the connection. I’ll be reading ZZ Packer’s Drinking Coffee Elsewhere, which I bought on clearance ages and ages ago and am finally getting to because I’m at P in my to-be-read pile. And I’ve been looking forward to this one. The Louise Penny book I tried to read in the summer during that time when the temperature was 50 degrees celsius, and it just didn’t work for me. With the cover so wintry looking, I’m thinking now is a better time to try it, and don’t mysteries just seem somehow more December-ish anyway? And finally, I’m going to read A Family of Readers by Roger Sutton and Martha Parravano (in fact, I’m probably going to read it first), which was a gift from Nathalie Foy (and this is the part where you get to envy me for not only having Nathalie as a friend in my online life, but also as a friend in my neighbourhood).

I hope you have a holiday just as lovely. xo

December 23, 2011

Our Best Book of the library haul: Don't Slam the Door by Dori Chaconas and Will Hillenbrand

Of course, this was our favourite book from the library haul this week. Don’t Slam The Door has rhyming couplets, fabulous vivid drawings, and is one of those causality lesson books (like Tumble Bumble, one of our favourites). The little girl implores the dog not to slam the door, but then he does and all hell breaks loose, just as she’d predicted– knotty wool, stinging bees, cows in the bed, and whatnot. Delightful. But I especiall admire the bossy little girl at its centre, demanding everything of everyone around her, and doesn’t she seem just a little bit familiar.

December 20, 2011

The pieces we've chosen

Hattie prepares to roll out the pastry

Someone asked recently what the reasons are that those of us don’t go to church still make a point of celebrating Christmas. To which I answered that it’s about lighting darkness, about remembering all things that are evergreen, and celebrating the miracle of new life. And so there’s a 7 ft tall balsam fir in our living room, stockings by the fire, and we’ve been baking cookies shaped like stars and crooked snowmen. Gifts are very far from the point, and what gifts there are are most often books. Harriet has asked if Santa not come this year, because she doesn’t like him. “I want my stocking empty,” she kept saying, and we’ll listen so not to traumatize.

We sing Christmas carols, traditional ones and ones by Slade, Wizzard and The Pogues, and this year we’ve told Harriet the Christmas story, because these things are of the culture we’ve come from, and we like stories of all kinds– we recently purchased our own copy of Dick Bruna’s The Christmas Book after reading the library’s copy to near-death. We’re also reading A Christmas Carol together, each of us for the first time, and however familiar the story is from popular culture, it’s a joy to be discovering. In particular since we have a gorgeous big edition with illustrations by Quentin Blake, and although I’m not sure how much Harriet is really getting out of it, she’s taken with Tiny Tim. Kristen den Hartog’s most recent blog post has made me interested in making the film version of the book part of our family holiday tradition.

And oh, tradition, isn’t that at the heart of it? These hooks we hang our lives upon. To be without religion is not be rudderless, I insist upon that. I guess some might resent that we pick and choose the pieces with which we build our life, but the pieces we’ve chosen are chosen with care, and held in reverence.

December 19, 2011

Blogging course makes the news

Much of this Fall was consumed by the adventure my first round of teaching The Art and Business of Blogging at through UofT’s School of Continuing Studies. An article on the course was included in The Toronto Sun‘s recent continuing education supplement, and is available for your reading here. And just a reminder that the course will be offered again in the spring!

December 19, 2011

I read The Spoiler and Osprey Island

Without actually intending to, I’ve gone on vacation, mostly thanks to the last two books I’ve read, both big, fat, enveloping novels. The first was The Spoiler by Annalena McAfee, which was published this year in the UK and will be out in Canada in April. McAfee is a veteran newspaper journalist, as well as (less interestingly) the spouse of Ian McEwan. The Spoiler is her first novel, something of a roman-a-clef, which takes on the UK newspaper business, whose own business has been creating its own press for last six months with the News of the World Scandal. Though McAfee sets her book in early 1997, not so long ago that the fundamentals were so different (or at least the sleazy, illegal tabloid tactic side), it was certainly a different time– John Major was at the end of his power, Spice Girls were only in the ascent, Princess Diana was still campaigning for landmines, and Liam Gallagher was married to Patsy Kensit. And notably, in the newsroom, expense accounts were limitless, and the internet was only going to be a fad.

The problem is that McAfee’s narrative is all too aware of itself, conspicuously placed on a pivot point, and when her protagonist Tamara Sim references Princess Diana and Jill Dando in the same chapter (who’d both be dead not before long, we know), or dismisses the internet as a fad, we’re taken out of the story, and placed above her. Though perhaps such a vantage point is appropriate, because we’re clearly expected to find Tamara something of an idiot. And it it is curious why she, glossy celebrity gossip scribe, has been enlisted with the task of interviewing formidable journalist legend Honor Tait, now aged 80 and doing publicity for a new collection of her articles and essays.

Fallout is to be expected as these two very different characters collide, and the effect is uncomfortable, amusing. As the novel proceeds, both characters become better developed, though Tamara mostly remains a caricature. Fortunately, the plot itself so picks up in the novel’s second half that such a flaw is forgiven. The book’s ending is surprising, absorbing, and serves to strengthen all that came before it. It’s a good old read, and quite devourable in its light touch. Comparisons to Nancy Mitford and Helen Fielding are apt, though I’d probably lean more to the latter. Perhaps like Helen Fielding equipped with a thesaurus is how you’d sum it up just right.

And then there’s Thisbe Nissen’s Osprey Island, which I bought from a clearance bin in 2009 and never got around to reading. And I picked the wrong season within which to finally get to it, because this book is Judy Blume’s Summer Sisters meets Dirty Dancing. You’ve got the island lodge with the townies, a crop of Irish chambermaids on working holiday visas, and the preppy waiters (“You just put your pickle on everybody’s plate, college boy, and leave the hard stuff to me.” The thing you might not know about me is that I reviewed Patrick Swayze’s autobiography last year. But I digress.)

Plot hinges on a troubled couple, a fiery death, and battle for custody of a vulnerable boy, with sideplots involving chambermaiding, summer love, the Vietnam War and hotel life. Nissen’s a really good writer, which heightens the novel’s more trashy elements, and many of the characters are startlingly evoked. It’s a beach read for the thinking woman, and I enjoyed it even though I don’t even have a beach.

December 18, 2011

Making the season right

From my Christmas post at Canadian Bookshelf, “Books: Help to Make the Season Right”:

“Pictures of this Christmas book tree have been making the rounds online for the last week or two, representing a tangible link between reading and the spirit of the holidays. Though such a link would come as no surprise to anyone for whom gift-giving is a tradition, because there is no object on earth as easy to wrap as a book is. Even the clumsiest thumbs are capable of a present-worthy wrap job, thanks to compact solidity and right-angled symmetry. Further, once the wrapping is shed, the book is ready for reading straightaway, no batteries required, no plugging in to charge… Books have the potential to make everything that’s wrong with Christmas right, to make gift-giving about more than acquisition and stuff.”

Read the whole thing here.