April 25, 2010

The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters

So what is it about these stories, about outsiders coming up the drive toward the stately home that’s past its prime? Daphne Du Maurier, and the Brontes, and even more recently in The Private Patient by PD James. It’s the romance, yes, and the world’s colliding that is so fascinating to watch, the pervasiveness of the British class system too, and the way in which these homes are universes onto themselves, complete with their own rules, what happens when the rules start to change. And yes, there is no better backdrop for a mystery– so many places to hide, stuff to steal, secrets to reveal, skeletons in the closet.

The same elements are at work in literary mysteries (whether they be detective stories or ghost stories) as in any literary novel. The driving force of plot, the withholding, the twists, the reveal, the unreliable narrator, the atmosphere– these are the reasons we’re taken by any kind of story, but in mysteries there’s nothing subtle about the way we’re being handled. So mysteries are remarkable in being novels pared down to their bones, but even more remarkable is their power to leave their readers paralyzed with fear. Mysteries make clear what a powerful object a simple stack of printed page can be.

Sarah Waters’ latest novel The Little Stranger is the least historical of her acclaimed historical fiction, taking place post-WW2 in Warwickshire. Her narrator is Dr. Faraday, called out to the isolated Hundreds Hall to attend to one of the maids. “One of the maids! I like that,” says the young master of the house, Roderick Ayres, when he receives the doctor. “There’s only the one– our girl Betty.”

Ayres himself had come through the war with considerable damage, and the same can be said of Hundreds Hall– most of the house is shut up, the land is being sold off, the house’s contents being sold as well to raise capital. Throughout England, the age-old aristocracy is faring badly by the mid-twentieth century, particularly under the heavy hand of a tax-grabbing Labour government. For Faraday, such decline is an awkward paradox– his mother had been a servant at Hundreds years ago, and he remains conscious of the immutability of his class, though circumstances have changed so considerably.

Circumstances have changed so much that he has quite a bit to offer the Ayres’– Roderick, his widowed mother, and his sister Caroline. Faraday begins to perform a medical treatment on Roderick’s damaged leg, visiting the house regularly in the process. He becomes so close to the family that he is invited  to a small party at the hall– the party itself an anachronism– though his conspicuous presence does not go unremarked upon by the guests (“No one’s unwell, I hope?”). His presence is a blessing, however, when tragedy strikes and he is able to save the life of a young guest. And as a series of bizarre events begin to unfold, Faraday finds himself more and more non-expendable until his relationship to the family begins to consume his personal and professional life.

Is Hundreds Hall haunted by a poltergeist, or have its inhabitants been driven to mental illness by their surroundings? Is it the ghost of the Ayres’ first daughter Susan, who’d died as a child of diphtheria or is the house possessed by an even more malevolent spirit? Is Faraday’s ability to find rational explanations for what occurs at the house a sign of his own sound mind, or is he simply unwilling to acknowledge forces against which he is powerless? In fact, might his continued insistence upon those rational explanations be a sign that he might not be of such sound mind after all?

Faraday is a fascinating narrator, seemingly unconscious of his own role in shaping the narrative (both literally and circumstantially). The real story takes place beneath the one that Faraday tells, this made clear by Waters’ clever ending, underlining his complicitness in the story. Though the real story throws up far more questions than it answers, of course, Waters never entirely alleviating her book’s decidedly creepy and sinister atmosphere. There is no comfort there, no assurance, and the mystery never goes away, because nothing is fully explained. And it takes a masterful writer to create a narrative that so convincingly hangs like that.

April 24, 2010

Major Quake Rocks Notts

After eight years, I finally went to get this framed. The woman at the framing store informed me that it was a bit beat up, and that framing wouldn’t fix it. I could have told her that the poster had spent two years taped to the back of a door in England, a few years packed in a box, and a few more years stuck inside the pages of a book, and so every crease and tear has been well-earned. I stole this from a newsagents during the autumn of 2002, and loved the boldness and simplicity of its overstatement. I remember the major quake too, and how it sounded like an overweight man was tumbling down the stairs. I was living in a backpackers’ hostel at the time, and we were sitting up late down in the kitchen, and after we heard the overweight man fall, we decided to go to bed. I probably found out about the earthquake on the radio the next morning, and remember seeing this poster and feeling excited to have been a part of something monumental. Living in England in general had that effect on me– something was always sweeping the nation in a way that isn’t possible in a country as large as Canada, and I loved being swept along with it. Even along with shifted tectonic plates. It was a very strange time, anyway, and I cherish it, and this stolen scrap from way back then makes an exciting addition to the wall in our hallway.

April 24, 2010

On literary cakes

Cake is one of my many weaknesses, actual cake and bookish ones. I’ve really never, ever met a cake I didn’t like (except carrot cake, which I hold passionate feelings about. The cake that should not be called cake. An insult to cakes. If you tell me you’re bringing cake and then you show up with carrot cake, you’ve not only let me down, but you’ve told a lie). I like to bake cakes, I like to eat cakes. I think my favourite is chocolate banana cake, or chocolate-anything cake, or vanilla in a pinch. Fillings can be cream, or fruity, but should probably be icing. Oh, icing. When I was little, I used to eat the icing and leave the cake. Since then I’ve learned (but not entirely).

I like cakes in books too, though they’re often markers of tragedy. The cake Rilla Blythe had to carry in Rilla of Ingleside, and how there was nothing more mortifying. Oh, god– the birthday cake in Raymond Carver’s story “A Small Good Thing”. Could it be the most unbearable cake in fiction? Marian McAlpin’s cannibal cake in The Edible Woman.  Does Carol Shields have a cake?? There must be one, though I can’t think of it. So literary cakes, and there must be a couple more.

Cakeish books have had a way of getting my attention lately. I adored Heather Mallick’s essay collection Cake or Death when it came out a few years ago. I’ve been wanting to read Sloane Crosley’s collection I Was told There’d Be Cake for ages now. I can’t wait to read Sarah Selecky’s story collection This Cake is For the Party when it comes out next month. And just now, when I was searching for books on cake, I discovered that Aimee Bender has a novel coming out in June called The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake (which could never approach the particular sadness of carrot cake, but I digress). I’ve never read Bender before but a proper cakeish book seems like a particularly good place to start.

And note that you’ve still got about a week to enter Sarah Selecky’s Win a Cake contest. I’ve already entered, and I won’t be sharing if I win.

April 22, 2010

"Poetry is mad scientism": A Poetry Primer by Jennica Harper

Jennica Harper’s books are What It Feels Like For A Girl and The Octopus and Other Poems. She works as a screenwriter and story editor in the Canadian film industry, and is also an occasional stand-up comic. Jennica holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia and a BA in English from the University of Toronto. She lives in Vancouver and she’s my all-time favourite poet.

Dear Kerry,

When you asked me to contribute to your Poetry Month celebrations by writing a poetry primer – defined however I liked – I thought, no problem. But here I am. The month ticks away. And all I can think of is Robin Williams tearing those graph-covered pages out of a textbook to prove that you don’t Analyze poetry, you Feel it. And yet, I don’t quite believe that, either. Sometimes Analyzing is exactly the path to Feeling a poem more deeply.

I’ve come to realize that, at this moment in time, I have no idea how to prime anyone on either the reading or the writing of poetry. Instead, I’d like to humbly offer you some thoughts on what I love about the form.

***

How I Think About Poetry, A Top Ten

1. Poetry is stand-up comedy. When comedy really works, and you laugh, and you’re elated, it’s because the comic has said something undeniably true, impossibly familiar –plus nailed the timing of the silences, and used the exact right words, in the exact right order.

2. Poetry is jamming in a garage. Also known as riffing, noodling, and disappointing one’s parents.

3. Poetry is revisionist history. It hypothesizes, it offends. It sets the records straight.

4. Poetry is clown school. It’s learning to take chances, to pratfall, to make it look effortless. Sometimes it’s putting on a false face so you can see others clearly.

5. Poetry is pioneering.* It’s a fear of the unknown and a determination – a need – to push forward anyway. Because who knows what’s over the next hill? Maybe land you can put a stake in. *Dowdy styles no longer a requirement in poetry.

6. Poetry is Helen Keller saying “water”.

7. Poetry is hot yoga. It’s meditative, it flexes and relaxes your mind, it keeps your midi-chlorians flowing.

8. Poetry is a surprise party. When I read something I connect with, I can’t help feeling “Wow! You all came here for me?”

9. Poetry is dinner at the Magic Castle. Not sure I can make the metaphor work, I just really want to go to the Magic Castle! Have you heard about this place?

10. Poetry is mad scientism. Unrelated items fused together. Mutations. Or the pieces of dead things sewn together and come back to life.

***

I would love to hear your Top Ten, or the Top Tens of others in the comments below… together we might be able to assemble the least useful (but most fun) poetry primer ever.

Yours in faithful silliness,

Jennica

April 22, 2010

My story is online

My story “Anna Lambert Lived and Died” is now online as part of The New Quarterly 114, The “Lists” Issue. Hope you enjoy it!

April 21, 2010

Brown Dwarf by K.D. Miller

K.D. Miller’s novel Brown Dwarf is a delicious secret. A slim volume, gorgeous to behold (and to hold! that cover. those thick pages. such an elegant typeface, perfect leading), it knows far more than it is telling. Rae Brand, a successful mystery novelist, turns to her own personal narrative in order to confront a pivotal event from her childhood. Though she’d been Brenda Bray then, lumpen outcast, daughter of a depressive, the character Rae Brand has been escaping ever since.

The novel alternates between Brenda’s story in third person, and Rae’s voice, addressing her childhood friend Jori. Though their relationship had not been a friendship exactly, the power dynamic far too unequal. Jori had been an outcast as much as Brenda, though for different reasons, and had seized onto the other girl, dominating her. Brenda had followed along with Jori’s scheme to catch an escaped serial killer hiding in the wilderness of the Niagara Escarpment, th0ugh what had gone on between the girls exactly is never entirely clear. Something sexual, other things even more complicated than that, and one day after Brenda leaves her in the woods, Jori is never seen again.

A brown dwarf, writes Rae Brand, is a character in crime fiction, the villain. Ugly, understated, far from the prime suspect because just too dull to be noticed, but this stigma is the brown dwarf’s ulterior motive. Particularly dangerous, because this character blends so well into the background, and Brenda Bray is such a character. Miller provides a particularly strong perspective of her personality but using the present-tense, second-person address, and showing us young Brenda in third person (this even more interesting when we understand that this is also filtered through Brenda/Rae’s point of view). The gap between these two presentations wide enough that Rae/Brenda still remains somewhat elusive, which is probably as intended.

Are we to trust Rae’s rendition of events? So much is going on between the lines here (and hence that leading, amazing!). Even the book’s main weakness could be deliberate– I didn’t find Jori altogether convincing as a character. She wasn’t meant to be authentic either, more of an Eddie Haskell type (and is there a more modern reference point than Eddie. Anyone?)– but Jori read like a substandard version of Cordelia from Atwood’s Cat’s Eye. But then mightn’t Brenda want us to see her that way? To block any light that Jori might have shone?

Brenda’s character turns out to be the real driver of the narrative, in a way that’s so subtle we don’t even notice until the climax. But is Rae Brand a better writer than we realize? Has she pulled the wool over our eyes altogether? Such gaps and ambiguity make Miller’s novel an engaging and absorbing read.

April 21, 2010

The Essential P.K. Page

I’ve been reading such beautifully-made books this last while, The Essential P.K. Page among them. The poems have been selected from the span of Page’s career and are here placed in alphabetical order, for (as the editors remark) “There is not a ‘young’ voice and a ‘mature’ voice. For [Page], time is not linear and she places little value on such distinctions”. The effect of this is fascinating, something like a catalogue, something vaguely like taxonomy. The structure of this collection and Page’s work itself called to mind what poet Michael Lista referred to as poetry that is “set within the strict—and ancient— clockwork of the world”.

In fact, Lista’s approach seems less original (or less unoriginal?) when viewed in light of Page’s oeuvre. In her work, she engages with works of art (unsurprising, as she was a painter), other works of literature– with her glosa poems in particular. She plays with language (and not only English) for the sake of itself. Some of the poems are challenging, because they refer to ideas outside my familiar realm (what is an arras?) but that is my problem, and not the poems’. Page’s approach seems to be to take the concrete stuff of the universe, and spin it into something golden. The breadth of her vision is truly amazing.

Read the incredible “soft travellers” here. “that there is worth/ in orthography and there is worth/ in geography as well — for words, that is/ words correctly spelled have, in truth, /destinations…”

“Stargazer”

The very stars are justified.
The galaxy
italicized.

I have proofread
and proofread
the beautiful script.

There are no
errors.

P.K. Page

April 20, 2010

I don't know how anyone ever came to respect cinema as an art form

Jenny Diski, from “Mother! Oh God! Mother!” LRB 32.1:

“‘This is where we came in’ is one of those idioms, like ‘dialling’ a phone number, which has long since become unhooked from its original practice, but lives on in speech habits like a ghost that has forgotten the why of its haunting duties. The phrase is used now to indicate a tiresome, repetitive argument, a rant, a bore. But throughout my childhood in the 1950s and into the 1970s, it retained its full meaning: it was time to leave the cinema – although, exceptionally, you might decide to stay and see the movie all over again – because you’d seen the whole programme through. It seems very extraordinary now, and I don’t know how anyone of my generation or older ever came to respect cinema as an art form, but back then almost everyone wandered into the movies whenever they happened to get there, or had finished their supper or lunch, and then left when they recognised the scene at which they’d arrived. Often, one person was more attentive than the other, and a nudge was involved: ‘This is where we came in.’ People popped up and down in their seats and shuffled along the rows, coming and going all though the B-movie, the advertisements, the newsreel and the main feature. No one dreamed of starting a novel on page 72, or dropping into the Old Vic mid-Hamlet (though perhaps music hall worked the same way; was that the origin of the movie habit?), and not even the smallest child would let anyone get away with starting their bedtime story halfway through, but the flicks were looped, both on the projector and in our minds. You went in, saw the end, and after you’d watched the beginning and a bit of the middle you figured out how and why it had happened that way. In the introduction to Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Fredric Jameson claims that postmodernism proper dates from the later 1960s, but let me tell you that the dismantling of narrative was rampant in cinemas up and down the country for decades before that. Maybe, after all, it was an interesting way of learning about story structure, but even so, how odd that no one thought it a strange way to proceed.”

April 20, 2010

My video pitch for Barbara Pym

Jen Knoch’s book club is not only Keepin’ It Real, but they’re Keepin’ Toronto Reading too. I did my part for their effort, making a video pitch for Barbara Pym’s No Fond Return of Love. You can watch the video, and my series of bizarre facial expressions, here.

April 19, 2010

100 Books

Today I finished reading Brown Dwarf by K.D. Miller (glowing review to follow!), which was the 100th book I’ve read since Harriet was born last May 26. The last book I read before she was born was The Children’s Book by AS Byatt, and the first one I read after was A Big Storm Knocked It Over by Laurie Colwin (which was the best, best, best book ever to read after having a baby). Also, because my computer died last year in June on my birthday, I lost my cherished list of Books Read Since 2006, so the new list starts with the Laurie Colwin, and it seems like these are the only books I’ve read ever.

Naps are my precious, precious reading time, curled up in my slanket with a cup of tea. The naps tend to be forty minutes exactly, twice a day, but I make the most of them, and for those forty minutes twice a day, my entire life feels pretty indulgent. Back when Harriet napped exclusively on my chest (and when did this end? I can’t remember. The last 100 books have been a blur), I got a lot more reading done because I was immobile and she slept for up to two hours, but the freedom of her crib naps is definitely preferable.

I’ve been surprised to find that hardcovers are easier to read than paperbacks– mainly because I have to hold the paperbacks, and this annoys Harriet when she’s breastfeeding, but hardcovers can be laid down on the couch beside me and stay open, and Harriet is none the wiser. The problem with hardcovers occurs, however, when I’m breastfeeding lying down and I drop one on her head. Though I don’t really breastfeed all that much these days (and when did this happen? How can one thing fade into another so subtly?) so soon this will cease to matter. Though paperbacks will continue to be easier to stuff into the diaper bag…

I’ve been much harder on the books that I’ve read, perhaps because my time is more limited, or because I’m in a surly mood more often than I used to be. Or else, there has just been a proliferation of really shitty books published since May 26, but I’m not convinced that’s the case.

I miss reading in bed. Some Saturdays, you’d find me there until noon. I still read in bed in the evenings, but never for very long because I go to bed too late, trying to stuff an impossible number of things into my evenings. The odd time I get a good chunk of reading-in-bed in, however, I am really profoundly grateful.

Anyway, this is just a post to reassure my former self that everything is really going to be fine. A day can be stretched wide enough to accommodate many things, and books are as portable as babies are. Also, that the books discovered through and with babies open one’s eyes exponentially to the magic of reading, and how amazing it is when you start to see the baby falling in love with reading too.