September 4, 2008
The Flying Troutmans by Miriam Toews
It is typical of the way that argument goes, of why argument is very rarely ever productive, when essayist Stephen Henighan responds to reviewer Nigel Beale’s assertion of “the market as a determinant of literary quality” by pushing the argument towards it most illogical conclusion: “So the great novelists of our time are Dan Brown and J. K. Rowling?” Because no, of course they aren’t, but there is definitely something to Beale’s argument (which I believe was in reference to Ian McEwen.) That sometimes a writer’s popularity can eclipse their literary merit can be demonstrated by Miriam Toews.
Not to suggest that Toews is in need of defending, of any assistance– her first novel Summer of My Amazing Luck was a finalist for the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour, A Boy of Good Breeding and the memoir Swing Low: A Life were both McNally Robinson Books of the Year, A Complicated Kindness was a Giller Prize Finalist and won the Governor General’s Award in 2005. But all this acclaim may have made Canadian Literature critics forget how fine a writer she really is, how good her writing truly is.
I say this because her work is the epitome of everything I hear critics calling for more of in Canadian literature (including Henighan): much of her fiction is utterly contemporary instead of backward-looking, she makes remarkable the lives of impoverished people who live in cities (and Winnipeg, no less), she has fun with language, colloquialism and the vernacular, pulling it all into pieces and then slapping it back together again. She addresses depression, drug addiction, poverty etc. but not as “issues”, these are stories. She does “gritty” but it sparkles, and though I believe Toews is one of the most exceptional writers we have working Canada today, she rarely gets such critical response, however much she is popular and racks up the awards (which I would argue, as most people would, are not quite the same as “critical response”).
Her latest novel The Flying Troutmans begins, “Yeah, so things have fallen apart.” The narrator Hattie Troutman returning home from a life in Paris that was unraveling anyway, in order to care for her nephew and niece. Her sister Min has been hospitalized with depression once again, and it becomes clear that Min’s problems have taken a toll on her kids– fifteen year-old Logan has been expelled from school for gang ties, and Thebes at eleven has ceased bathing, displays a manic chatter belying deeper problems and fears inside.
So they go on a road trip, driving across America in search of Logan and Thebes’s father. Because Hattie knows the kids need her, but she can’t cope with them on her own, or cope with them at all, she thinks, and there is no one else she can turn to. Min is back home in the hospital, “hooked on blue torpedoes” and last time Hattie had called the hospital, the nurse had told her Min didn’t even remember she had kids.
“But, said Logan, a fifteen-year old could technically live on his own, right?… No, a fifteen-year old cannot live on his own, I said./ Pippi Longstockings wasn’t even fifteen, said Thebes, and she–/ Yeah, but she was a character in a book, I said./ And she was Swedish, said Logan./ So there would have been a solid safety net of social programs to keep her afloat, I said. It doesn’t work here.”
And it doesn’t. These kids are all alone and they know it, and they know their mother wants to kill herself too. In fact they’ve exhausted themselves for months trying to keep her from doing so, and there is no safety net, solid or otherwise. How do you even be a kid in a world such as this one? How do you be a figure of stability to kids who know well there is no such thing.
“He asked me if I thought all this stuff was happening for a reason. /No, I said. I don’t think so.”
But yeah, just like Pippi, these people are characters in a book too, and because this is a book by Toews, this terrible reality is underlined always with humour. So that the book is a joy to read, however disturbing and awful. The Flying Troutmans is touching but without compromise, and only a really great writer could do that.
One of Toews greatest strengths is voice, perfectly capturing the dry tones of her narrator Hattie, Thebes’s unceasing banter from the backseat, the unexpected breaks in Logan’s teenage reticence. Toew’s dialogue is fast paced, rich and real, and she is a kind of ventriloquist to create these different characters. And a sort of juggler or an acrobat (I’m not sure, someone who can do something awkward but with verve) to put these characters altogether and to make out of it a story so perfectly formed.
The Flying Troutmans represents real development since Summer of My Amazing Luck, which also had a road trip at its very heart and is a fine novel, but Toews has gotten so much better, which is the ideal. Her ending here a perfect balance between happy and real, known and unknown, resolved and otherwise. Here is a novel that is a road trip to somewhere, which is more than enough to ask of a book.
September 3, 2008
Links and more links
The best thing we read all weekend at our house was “Just Two Clicks: The Virtual Life of Neil Entwistle” in the LRB. Hilary Mantel’s “In the Waiting Room” (not avail. online) was similarly awful, but beautiful to read. Katherine Parrish thoughtfully raises the topic of gender and The Salon Des Refuses, which I didn’t mention, but it certainly occurred to me: “John Metcalf’s excoriating indictment of the Penguin Anthology accuses the publishers of “pulling a Binchy,” comparing their choice of a mere practitioner like Jane Urquhart to a hypothetical decision to ask Maeve Binchy to edit a comparable Irish anthology. Why not Frank McCourt, I wondered… Whimsical women with their stories. Serious men with their ideas. Ahhh. The good old days.” Rona Maynard’s “Dear Governor Palin” is powerful and smart. And Lynn Crosbie on the resurrection of Brenda Walsh. Now reading Hilary Mantel’s novel An Experiment in Love.
September 3, 2008
Being Taken Places
Oh, how books do take us places. After reading Francine Prose’s Goldengrove last week, I absolutely had to watch the movie Vertigo. Which wasn’t a particularly good or convincing film all around, but there was something about it, how it came by its filmishness absolutely brilliantly, and was so thrilling to watch. How the movie and Prose’s novel informed one another; I absolutely loved it.
And then I finished reading Owen Meany, which became far less plodding halfway through. And yes, I understand that some of the plodding was a narrative device, but I think some of it could have been fixed by an editor. Still, I remembered why I’d loved it, which had been the very point.
Then onward to The Long Secret by Louise Fitzhugh, the sequel to Harriet the Spy. And I’ll say this– I think Louise Fitzhugh is one of the best writers I’ve ever read, ever. Out of children’s lit. and lit. the world over. I loved The Long Secret when I was young, and I could see why upon rereading– I was just as baffled and fascinated as I would have been the first time around, and not every kids book reread can do that twice. In both of her books I’ve read, Fitzhugh captures the awfulness and inexplicableness that is real life in a way I can only compare to Grace Paley (class differences of their characters aside, of course). In no way watered down at all, Fitzhugh renders that reality palatable for children, which is truly amazing. This is the kind of literature children deserve…
And how strange here to see the number of parallels between The Long Secret and A Prayer for Owen Meany— religious fanaticism, grandmothers, bad parenting, coming of age, summertimes etc. etc.– which would have gone unnoticed had I been reading in any other direction.
September 3, 2008
Delightful Things
This past weekend, because it was long, because it was summery weather, and because my sister-in-law was staying with us, we indulged in delightful things. Chocolate raspberry tarts at Dessert Trends, a sunny afternoon at Riverdale Farm, bbq indulgences (esp. corn on the cob and mmm that grilled peach blue cheese salad was good), a trip out of town to the Twenty Valley where we loaded up on gorgeous produce from a roadside stand, and then to Ward’s Island yesterday, to wade in the warm (!) and gorgeous Lake Ontario and dinner at The Rectory Cafe. All in all a perfect way to kiss goodbye the summer, or perhaps more to give summer a whole lot of temptation to stay. Just a little bit longer?
We’d been discussing Rosie Little earlier this week, my sister-in-law and I, having both fallen in love with Danielle Wood’s tales something fierce. And we were talking about the restaurant in Vancouver where Rosie has tea at the end of the book– The Junction Tea Room? (Which I cannot
verify, as my downstairs neighbour has borrowed my copy for a holiday to Japan). And how we wished the magical tea room was real, but a fruitless Google search suggested it wasn’t. Alas. And then come Sunday afternoon in Jordan Ontario, we find the only parking space in down right out from of the Twenty Valley Tea House.
We had a brilliant afternoon tea there, sun pouring in through the windows. As at The Junction Tea Room, we got to select our own cups and saucers, mismatched and gorgeous. A hat racked mounted with chapeaus and feathers was there for our pleasure, should we choose to
partake. Oh, the tea was delicious, the cakes and triangle sandwiches. Ok, there was no cream (no cream?!) but the scones were so moist and flavourful, none was really required. We ate in tiny bites, morsels, in that afternoon tea way that always has us come out stuffed. Afterwards, a browse in the gift shop, with tea goods for our pleasure. All in all, a superlative teaish experience. Even worthy of fiction…
September 1, 2008
Very Strange
When I realized in June that the colours of my dress coordinated so perfectly with a Miriam Toews novel, I thought it was a marvelous sort of coincidence. But what to make of it now, Toews’ new novel The Flying Troutmans such a perfect match for my other favourite summer dress? Have I failed to notice book designers rummaging through my closet for inspiration?
September 1, 2008
Her reading aloud had killed
“When Lydia was alive, my grandmother seemed content with her reading; either she and Lydia took turns reading to each other, or they forced Germaine to read aloud to them– while they rested their eyes and exercised their acute interest in educating Germaine. But after Lydia died, Germaine refused to read aloud to my grandmother; Germaine was convinced that her reading aloud to Lydia had either killed Lydia or had hastened her death, and Germaine was resolute in not wanting to murder Grandmother in a similar fashion.For a while, my grandmother read aloud to Germaine; but this afforded no opportunity for Grandmother to rest her eyes, and she would often interrupt her reading to make sure that Germaine was paying proper attention. Germaine could not possibly pay attention to the subject– she was so intent on keeping herself alive for the duration of the reading.” –John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany
September 1, 2008
Readers Reading
I’m the reader reading today over at Julie Wilson’s marvelous Seen Reading. Click through to hear me reading from my favourite novel Unless, stumbling over the words only minimally with the sound of a waterfall in the background.
August 27, 2008
Schedules Amok
Schedules are all running strangely of late, because we have a house guest, because she arrived in the middle of the night Sunday night, because we keep going out for meals with her and feel as though we’re on vacation too. I’m currently rereading A Prayer for Owen Meany and just not getting into it. I always loved John Irving, but I’ve not read him for years, and I feel I may have lost the habit. It’s also looong and I am eager to get through it in order to reach my final reread (The Long Secret), and then begin to tackle the wonderful stack of unread books on my shelf that have been gathering there since the end of June.
And so I’ve made no time for writing these last few days (here or anywhere) and consequently we’ll all have to make due to with links. Oh, like Lizzie Skurnick revisits Flowers in the Attic. Nigel Beale refuses the Refuses. Laurel Snyder interviewed at Baby Got Books (and I’ll be reading her book v.v. soon). Why postscripts still matter in the digital age. Rebecca Rosenblum is a Reader Reading (and now she’s got her own Facebook group too).
August 25, 2008
Goldengrove by Francine Prose
I’m not sure why my review of Francine Prose’s Goldengrove has to begin with a discussion of whether or not it is a Young Adult novel. (It is a novel that “takes its place among the great novels of adolescence,” says its Amazon product description, though I’m not sure this is the very same thing.) I’m not sure why my review has to begin with this discussion, because I know I wouldn’t care so much about a blurring between fiction and non, between poetry and prose, say, or even between a novel of graphics or text. But for some reason the distinction between Young Adult Lit. and Lit. Proper strikes me as altogether essential.
Which is not to say that YA isn’t literature, because it is, moreover it is the very literature that teaches us to love literature. Not simply literature’s adolescent sibling, but still, it is a genre onto itself.
So the question I’m dealing with now is, what makes a book YA? Is it anything more than a youthful protagonist? For often enough the boundaries are blurred, and it’s really quite difficult to tell. For example, the recent story of Margo Rabb, whose book’s YA status was determined by her publisher’s marketing department. And then there’s Francine Prose, a prolific novelist for adults (though she has written a YA novel before). Her new book is Goldengrove, narrated by thirteen year old Nico, taking place over one summer as her family is suffering from the sudden death of her older sister Margaret.
The novel was lovely, gripping and sad, made all the more compelling by moments of absolute clarity. The perfect details of family life, of breakdown and suffering– the contents of Margaret’s work-in-progress bedroom, a younger sister’s unconscious mimicry, the disturbing moment when young people realize that even adults are vulnerable. By Nico’s voice also, which tells the story with confidence, even when her own self is wavering. Her parents growing apart from her, and from each other, and then the process through which the members of this family try to put themselves whole again.
It is Nico’s confident voice, however, that leads me to believe that this book is YA. And I’ve written about this before, about the distinction between literature that is YA or not. The difference being that the latter creates a gap between the narrative voice and the reader, and as a reader goes from childhood to adulthood, they will cross it. Examples, some however inadvertent, are Catcher in the Rye, Anne of Green Gables, Huckleberry Finn, a lot what Esther Freud writes, and even Harriet the Spy and Starring Sally J. Freedman As Herself.
Examples are not (however infinitely readable these novels might be) Special Topics in Calamity Physics (which I loved), Prep (which I didn’t), and (I suspect, though I don’t actually know) anything Harry Potter. Forget the third example (v.v. controversial), but with the first two, their young narrators were absolutely in control of their stories. Even when they weren’t in control, they were smart enough and looking back from far away enough that they would be speaking from a wiser place. As opposed to Holden Caulfield, who wasn’t, though many of his readers wouldn’t realize this until later. Or to the narrator of Hideous Kinky who (from The Guardian Book Club today) “merely reports the signs of adult meaning… The reader is left to construct the story.”
I mean that for this second group of examples, if you encounter these books when you are fourteen, you’d find the books much unchanged years later.
To say that Goldengrove is such a book is not to demean it. It is not to say that the book lacks an edge either, because Nico’s dealings with her dead sister’s boyfriend take quite a sinister turn by the end of the novel. And further, it does not mean that this book isn’t worthwhile for an adult to read, but I was conscious all along that I was not quite its intended audience. Even though it was a sophisticated book, and it was– very cool film and music references, its adult characters interesting and well-developed, beautiful writing and pointed insights. But the story was so firmly inside Nico’s head, processed in spite of her confusion, and though the story’s feel is altogether immediate as it goes, I wasn’t surprised at the end to find out that it’s being told from years onward.
I wasn’t surprised either to find that a work by Francine Prose would forgo that gap between narrator and reader. The only other novel I’ve ever read by her is Blue Angel, whose altogether creepy narrator coaxed a tricky sympathy that was most disturbing. If we could learn to get in the head of Ted Swenson, Champion Scumbag, then identifying with Nico is no great feat. It’s what we’re suppose to do as we read Goldengrove, but such a lack of distance keeps this from being a deeper novel. (Which is definitely not the case with Blue Angel, but of course these are two very different kinds of stories).
So why is this distinction important? Because if this was an adult novel, I’d judge it a weak one. Lacking a certain complexity, featuring a predictable storyline etc. etc. But as a YA novel, Goldengrove is brilliant. Which isn’t lesser, no, because I think a story for fifteen year olds has to be different than a story for their mothers. And to pretend otherwise– for the sake of the
book, out of courtesy for its authors, its readers– is to miss something pretty essential.
I enjoyed this book, but if I were fifteen again, it would have spun me a spell. And certainly it is no slight on Prose to say that fifteen year-olds are lucky to have her writing just for them.
