March 1, 2009

Prodigy/Prodigal etc.

February 28, 2009

Sing Them Home by Stephanie Kallos

Stephanie Kallos’ novel Sing Them Home is a little bit of everything. Imagine Alice Sebold meets Wally Lamb meets Fannie Flagg, and then they all get spun up in a funnel cloud. Imagine a 500+ page novel that goes by like a breeze. This is one of those comfortable books you crawl your way into, and linger long inside, happy and warm. But then that the novel is well-written also almost seems like too much to be true.

Sing Them Home is the story of the Jones family, whose three siblings come together after their father’s death– he is killed on the golf course, struck by lightning. The family having long ago been left fragmented by their mother’s disappearance, when she “went up” with a tornado and her body was never found. So that the Jones children are practically strangers to one another– art history professor Larken lives her adamantly independent life far from her hometown of Emlyn Springs, seeking solace in eating; her brother Gaelan is a well-known weatherman and bodybuilder who seeks his solace in meaningless relationships; and Bonnie the youngest who has stayed closest to home persists in cycling up and down country roads seeking garbage she interprets as “artifacts” from the ditches.

The novel’s course is the year following their father’s death, during which the Jones siblings struggle to come to terms with their grief, as well as with finally reconciling with the tragedy in which they lost their mother. Emlyn Springs the backdrop for all of this, a small town in Nebraska, quirky characters populating its dying streets, but Kallos does something remarkable in making Emlyn Springs somewhere quite particular. With its Welsh heritage especially– reflected and really outlined here in language, rituals and traditions– as well as characters far richer than small town cliches, the town becomes actually not a backdrop at all, but is as much of a character in the story as its residents.

In similarly dealing with specifics, Kallos also makes each of her characters’ individual perspectives utterly convincing. Larken’s world is seen through the prism of an art lover, all colours and tones, while Gaelan’s profession is fascinatingly explored, clearly an integral part of his life. Bonnie, the more whimsical of the three, is never quite as pin-down-able, always a little bit more flighty, but this is also the very point of her. Kallos’ narrative switching back and forth between these characters effortlessly, encompassing also the perspective of their father’s mistress, and diary entries interspersed representing the voice of their long lost mother.

So the dead speak, which means there is magic here amongst the solid realism. Some bits so utterly fantastic, bordering on sentimental, that indeed it can seem like too much to be true. The ending in particular so perfectly tidy (but perfectly satisfying!), all its ends tied, but then how could we bear any of them to be left straggling? Such tidiness not quite the way the real world works, but then thank goodness we have here a book instead.

February 27, 2009

Gluttony

I am being inundated with marvelous books: what do I see but Lauren Groff with a new one out. And I picked up Swim at the post office tonight– it’s gorgeous. Then a stop at the library, where waiting for me were My Misspent Youth: Essays by Meghan Daum, Coraline (the graphic novel), and Pool-Hopping should be in any day now. Have also just eaten a whole bag of cheese curds but shhhh.

February 26, 2009

Two fat things, and a few wonderful things

I’m now reading and thoroughly enjoying a big fat American novel, Sing Them Home by Stephanie Kallos. To be followed by The Fat Woman Next Door is Pregnant by Michel Trembley, which appears to have no paragraphs, but all the same, I’m hoping to really like it. Which will be my Canada Reads lot read. And then, that my dad is now cancer-free, my husband does not have glaucoma but that he does still have a job, and our baby is fabulous and kicking. We’ve booked a weekend away in early April. Also, how about this weather? It felt like springtime on this February morning…

February 26, 2009

No contradiction

“It’s my audacious hope that a man born and raised between opposing dogmas, between cultures, between voices, could not help but be aware of the extreme contingency of culture. I further audaciously hope that such a man will not mistake the happy accident of his own cultural sensibilities for a set of natural laws, suitable for general application. I even hope that he will find himself in agreement with George Bernard Shaw when he declared, “Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it.” But that may be an audacious hope too far. We’ll see if Obama’s lifelong vocal flexibility will enable him to say proudly with one voice “I love my country” while saying with another voice “It is a country, like other countries.” I hope so. He seems just the man to demonstrate that between those two voices there exists no contradiction and no equivocation but rather a proper and decent human harmony.”– Zadie Smith, “Speaking in Tongues”

February 25, 2009

Swim-Lit

I’ve been swimming five days a week for the past six months, and it’s become such an important part of my life. So much though that I think I’m addicted, but then there are worse things. But I crave it, the way I can stretch into each stroke, the rhythm, the sounds the world makes under water. Though I shower afterwards, I spend the rest of the day smelling of chlorine, but I love it. Pushing off from the wall, arms sweeping the surface, even shaking the water out of my ear. There is something meditative about it, though not wholly because I certainly never spend my lengths thinking of anything very interesting or productive. But it’s the quiet, the echo, feeling all the the way spent when I’m done, yet as invigorated as if I’ve just napped. Drying off and the water drops that remain there, each one singular, stuck fast to my skin.

Via Kate S., I was referred to Swim: A Novel by Marianne Apostolides. I’ve ordered it, and am looking forward to its arrival. An entire novel in lengths– dive in metaphors are too easy, but I’m longing for immersion. I also plan to read Swimming by Nicola Keegan, which is out this summer. And if you’re a publisher looking to peddle anything further in the realm of swim-lit, I’m pretty sure I’m your man.

February 25, 2009

Speaking of gorgeous books

… and speaking of gorgeous books, how about Come, Thou Tortoise by Jessica Grant, which entered my life today. And I knew as soon as I saw it, because these days a fabulous book cover design often has these two words behind it: Kelly Hill. I can’t wait to start reading. The book also has me reflecting on literary tortoises, which are really quite common– Lightning from Arcadia springs to mind from the start, because it’s fresh there, and I do know that they came up in Woolf’s essays, if not her fiction (which I’m not sure of). There are more, I’m sure, and one day I’ll write the definitive guide.

February 24, 2009

darkness of a child's heart

“You can control and censor a child’s reading, but you can’t control her interpretations; no one can guess how a message that to adults seems banal or ridiculous or outmoded will alter itself and evolve inside the darkness of a child’s heart.”– Hilary Mantel in The Guardian

February 24, 2009

Out in the world– a concert and a play

Various events this winter are conspiring to keep me from becoming hermetic, and also providing me with opportunities I won’t see again for a long time once The Baby is born. For example, a concert– Dar Williams, live at the Mod Club this Saturday!! I am very excited, as I’ve not seen her since 2003 (live in Sheffield), being too poor for tickets when she was in Toronto in ’05. And then a play! My very favourite play, no less- Arcadia, performed at Hart House Theatre in March. By Tom Stoppard– have you read it? I’ve done so many times over the past ten years, and can’t wait to delight in it again on stage.

February 23, 2009

Books worth it for their covers

From The Guardian Books Blog on Book Covers, I was referred to the AbeBooks promotion 30 Novels Worth Buying for the Cover Alone. Containing some picks I’d definitely concur with– Pickle Me This faves Skim, The Monsters of Templeton, The Boys in the Trees, and Fruit. And so inspiring me to showcase the most gorgeous book I’ve read in ages (albeit not a novel): the McSweeney’s edition of Michael Chabon’s Maps and Legends. The “dust jacket” actually constructed of three different panels, so that the multiple dimensions aren’t just an illusion. It was almost the whole reason I bought the book, and I wouldn’t even have been disappointed if the content had not been as brilliant as it was. As it turned out, I was just biblio-spoiled.