March 28, 2008

As in everything

For all those fearing that the end is near, I wish to put forth that once upon a time, a child raised on Archie comics, YM and The Baby-Sitters Club actually grew up to me. Which might be dispiriting, but not, at least, for the future of literacy. Though my mother would take care now to remind me that my literary diet was also certainly well stocked with all the childhood classics, that I was well supplied with fine contemporary novels too. But the fact is, I would have tossed them all out of bed in order to to curl up with the latest from the Animal Inn series, or Sleepover Friends. So atrocious literary taste doesn’t necessary lead to the same. I also think that the 11-14 year age-range is tough going all around, when you’re too old for most things, not old enough for others, and no one is experiencing any of it at quite the same rate. In books, as in everything, it eventually gets better.

INCIDENTAL UPDATE: And thanks to my friend Jennie for sending on the news that in their latest editions, the Sweet Valley Twins have been shrunk from their identical perfect size six figures down to size fours.

March 27, 2008

Salvage by Jane F. Kotapish

Convention is insufficient with which to discuss Jane F. Kotapish’s first novel Salvage. I could try to think of analogous works– This Novel meets That Novel, say– but an appropriate hybrid refuses to be imagined. I could stick with plot, but really, which one would I choose? Centrally, this is the story of one woman’s tenuous grasp upon reality after experiencing a traumatic event. Or, this is the story of a woman who spent her childhood speaking to her dead sister in a closet. Or, here is the story of one house, and the story of another. An exploration of mother/daughter relationships utterly unreliant upon precedent. About what happens when maybe-actual saints start appearing in one’s back garden. Each thread a bit of the story here, but each one singularly giving readers the wrong impression.

Perhaps I can get to the point by explaining that I read this book over two days, finished it last evening, and only just now realized that the narrator/protagonist goes unnamed. It is significant, I think, that such a detail could be so unremarkable. Also significant, that indeed in this book, the protagonist speaks to her dead sister in a closet– a detail that might have tripped up my reading in the hands of a lesser writer, but the rest of the story carried me right through this. Or that this story of a communication breakdown between mother in daughter, its origins in childhood trauma, could be so invested with pure love. That love can ever be so aching.

I have selected these details to demonstrate Kotapish’s firm control of her narrative, everything exactly as it should be, nothing as you’d think it is. The narrator lacking a name, but I don’t even notice, so sure is her voice, so essential are the details with which we’re provided. Which are that this woman has witnessed something traumatic, something so awful that it’s torn her right out of her life, and she’s returned home again, purchasing a house not far from where her mother lives. Such familiar ground, however, reawakening troubling childhood obsessions, and this woman must navigate the narrow ground between her demons as she edges towards recovery.

But all this might give the wrong idea still, for Salvage is terribly funny. Darkly funny, naturally, but ultimately this is an uplifting book, caustic and ironic throughout. Its disparate plot threads and various tones all contained by a brilliant use of language, of imagery, both of which are surprising and edgy. Lines like, “The only reason I can recollect my father’s face at all is because I saw it catch fire in our back yard when I was three.” Lines like every other line as well, and the dialogue, which maps relationships’ whole histories. All recounted in the same even tone, a curious perception, both of which are the effects of damage, of trauma undeniably, but are no less for this, casting the ordinary world in a light entirely new.

It is this same even tone, this perception, which keep the trauma from seizing the narrative. Preventing sensation from taking over, from spiraling out of control. Kotapish’s language keeps her narrative in line– the perfect container. The scene in which the woman recounts the event that drove her towards breakdown manages to be so beautiful and awful, a horror perfectly choreographed– a memory after all.

Salvage is an astounding first novel, challenging the bounds of a novel’s capabilities, demonstrating the startling complexity of emotion. Language employed with the utmost exactitude, bending reality in fascinating ways.

March 26, 2008

Poetic April

I was a poet first, before I’d ever written a line of prose. Which I might tell you to make myself sound interesting, prodigious, but I was actually 8 years old in the time of which I speak and the poem was stupid. Though it’s true that I’ve wanted to be a writer ever since then, and that it was poetry that inspired that yearning. I wrote poetry quite regularly in the years that followed, much of it cripplingly teenage. Some of the better stuff I’ve even posted here. But I don’t write poetry anymore. I thought it was better to concentrate my talents where they seemed to lie, and I felt I didn’t know enough about the stuff to make it my own.

But there is something about April. We’ve just passed a long, hard winter, all poetry seemingly sucked out of life, and so during next month I aim to inject some, in large doses. Even if it has to be in lieu of real spring. I’ve been inspired by writer Laurel Snyder (one of my favourite bloggers for years now) to write a poem per day, for it will be National Poetry Month after all. To be posted here. Just small poems, and I make no promises of them being any good, but I think the exercise will be interesting. In fact, some under-stimulated muscle somewhere in my head is absolutely crying out for this.

In addition, of course, I plan to read quite a bit of poetry. Once our boxes are unpacked in the new house, twill be a perfect time to embark upon the unread books on my shelf by David McGimpsey and Carol Ann Duffy. To reread The Octupus by my favourite poet Jennica Harper. To memorize my favourite poem Portrait of a Lady, which I’ve been wanting to do for years (though this is unlikely). I’ll also pick up Snyder’s book (as she’s started this after all).

With spring comes such inspiration.

March 26, 2008

Just in

I’m just in from the Exile launch, which I left all too soon as I have 600 impossible things to accomplish before bedtime. Had the great pleasure of hearing Rebecca Rosenblum read though, and I picked up the new issue of the Quarterly— it’s beautiful.

In others, I am thrilled that writer Justine Picardie has started blogging. I fell in love with her writing when I lived in England, particularly her memoir If the Spirit Moves You and I look forward to reading her new novel Daphne. Maud Newton on Laura Lippman (whose What the Dead Know made for a perfect cottage read last summer). The Great Gatsby celebrated in The Globe & Mail. And Steven W. Beattie reads Nikolski.

March 25, 2008

Coming Home

I am now reading Salvage by Jane F. Kotapish, and I am totally hooked. Her language is mesmerizing, and the story is edge after edge.

And now living amongst gargantuan chaos, as perhaps two thirds of our apartment is packed up, and only a narrow path is cleared to walk from room to room. I keep thinking of new reasons to break into the boxes I sealed two weeks ago, and of new boxes to fill with things I’d forgotten we owned. I keep thinking of new things to own, and other things to shed. Of the light in my new kitchen, which I’ve only ever seen in February, and how they’ll get the sofa out the door.

I think about losing our big storage closet, and where will we store our baseball gloves now? The exposed brick and the fireplace, and the roof beams in our new bedroom. The ugly carpets, for which we’ve traded our hardwood, but then the Mexican tiles in the kitchen, the cupboards in the bathroom, the two decks, and the premise of laundry without coins or going out of doors. The “spare room” and “library” and that they’ll be one and the same doesn’t make me swoon about it any less.

And to be settled down again. This is how I function best, how I write best, and for the past month, we’ve been positively in-between. My brain moved out the day we gave notice, and I hope it’s packed somewhere too, in a box I’ve just forgotten to label. I’m looking forward to being home again, to the day the apartment stops smelling like someone else’s, to the familiar sound of rain on that roof, to the lazy easy light of Sunday morning. And not only to being home, but I’m looking forward to coming home, day after day. Counting the stairs, my key in the lock, somebody’s already put the kettle on to make a cup of tea.

March 21, 2008

The Letter Opener by Kyo Maclear

After nearly a week of reading through short zippy novels in a flash, there was something meditative about settling down with Kyo Maclear’s first novel The Letter Opener. It’s a slower read, rumination more than narration, quiet in its power, and subtly sharp.

With such an intriguing premise: Naiko works for Canada Post at their Undeliverable Mail Office. Her job is to direct items stranded in transit, where this is possible. Incorrectly addressed envelopes containing school photos, love letters, birthday money. And “the rubble”, items sprung loose from their packaging: “Lesser goods… Boy Scout badges, vacation photos, Magic Markers, teeth moulds. A medical X-ray. A book of Sufi poetry. A Leonard Cohen audio cassette. Nothing was too small to matter to someone, somewhere.”

This emphasis on things comes to link the story’s various threads: the strange disappearance of Naiko’s colleague Andrei, a Romanian refugee; Andrei’s own history and that of his mother, a Holocaust survivor; the story of Naiko’s fractured family, particularly her mother who is in the early stages of Alzeimers Disease; Naiko’s own problems with intimacy, as she navigates her relationship with boyfriend Paolo; even the end of the Cold War. Such a wide range of subject matter, some of it heavy and loaded, but Maclear uses these ideas effectively, in new and intriguing ways– her deftness with facts perhaps making clear her creative origins in non-fiction.

The narrative sounds crowded, but Maclear’s expansive prose creates the effect of ample space. The novel is also carefully structured to accommodate all these threads, which through Naiko’s own perspective are tied more tightly than they seem. And it is through this perspective that we come to understand a twist on the problem of materialism: not that our society cares too much about “things”, but rather we don’t care enough. How much we lose spiritually from failing to invest our objects with proper meaning, and how much we take for granted.

Though of course conclusions are not so straightforward as this– this is rumination after all. The Letter Opener is primarily the story of Naiko’s own self-discovery, as she realizes her constructions of others through their objects tells more about her own self than anybody else’s. And this story is fascinatingly beautiful, a satisfying read.

March 21, 2008

Shelf-pruning and undesirables

For spring’s sake, I’ve written about shelf-pruning and undesirables over at the Descant blog.

March 21, 2008

Immediately enthralling

My books are packed, though I’ve kept a few out to sustain me for the next while. One of which was The Grass is Singing by Doris Lessing, which was recently cited by Globe Books as an essential read to understanding modern Zimbabwe. It was immediately enthralling. I also like that it’s an old orange Penguin, whose biographical note concludes with the fact Lessing has just finished a new novel called The Golden Notebook.

March 21, 2008

The Postal Phantoms I have known

I’ve just finished reading The Letter Opener by Kyo Maclear, which I have absolutely fallen in love with. I’ll fit in a review during my empty tomorrow, but at the moment I want to write a bit about something I read in the “PS…” section of the book (and may I point out how always interesting is the “PS content” in these books).

Maclear writes about the “postal phantom” at her house, the inspiration for her novel– “Mr. Szabo– a man who, for whatever reason, never got around to having his mail redirected.” And of course I know about postal phantoms, though I’d never considered them in such specific terms, never thought of these people as a collective, and it hadn’t occurred to me that such figures could even be given a name.

My postal phantoms as follows: there was Robin Stephenson, in my university apartment on Dundas Street. I can’t remember if it was her or a roommate that received Scientology paraphernalia, but Robin had forgotten to change her address when she finished university, and was always getting alumni notices from the U of T Geography Department.

No phantom, I believe, will ever be as prolific as Mrs. Sandra M. Spencer from our house in Nottingham. We’d suspected she’d died, as she’d left all her cake tins behind, and death is as good an excuse as any for leaving no forwarding address. She owed a ton of council tax, going back a few years, received regular notices for mammograms, and often was summoned to court to come and testify against her son. Note, we didn’t start opening the mail until about after a year, after we’d called the council to tell them she wasn’t there anymore, and they said they’d keep sending her bills anyway, because it was her last known address (which also goes part way towards explaining why there’s no longer a British Empire).

We received a lot of mail for the Moniz family here at our current address, as well for Amanda Hickman (who is on the list of numerous charities) and Michael Popowich (and in case he googles himself, Michael– McGill University is desperate to get in touch with you.) Each of these are characters, wholly present in their own peculiar contexts, which is their absence. And we practically know them, we do, though the foundation of this knowledge is the fact we never ever will.

Further, what about the bizarre idea that somewhere out there, somebody’s postal phantom is you.

March 21, 2008

Remembering Days

The book I’m reading at the moment, which I’m absolutely in love with, contains that quotation, “We do not remember days, we remember moments.” Which I don’t buy actually, and I never have, because like Albert from Behind the Scenes at the Museum, I “collect good days the way other people collected coins or sets of postcards.” I can remember so many glorious ones, right down to very details, and though today wasn’t exactly glorious, it was definitely very fine.

The finest thing about today being happiness arriving in the post the very week I decide to stop looking for it there. And isn’t there something about a surprise package when you’re expecting nothing? The surprise turned out to be from Sayaka (who has a blog, by the way). She’s our friend from Japan, she stayed with us for a few marvelous days last summer, and now she’s seen fit to surprise me with a gift that blends two of my favourite things: tea and Miffy. Indeed, I do miss living in a land where Miffy kitchenware was so easy to to come by, but it’s nice of Sayaka to ease my yearning. How positively splendid.

In other fortune, another friend gave us our wedding present a few weeks ago, nearly three years late but perfectly on time actually, as it was an HBC giftcard, and I have to buy wares for our new apartment. So I spent the early part of this evening buying new towels and bathroom accessories, and it was fun to spend spend spend (though not so fun to carry the bags home). And then I spent two hours with Rebecca, which is some of the best company I know.

The list goes on: that work has been good of late, but that today I left early, we move in a week and a half and a farmer’s market is starting up in our new neighbourhood, our Easter treats from our English Mum and Dad, going home for the weekend to the Canadian ones, that tomorrow we’re doing nothing at all, the stack of good books to be read, the one that I’m reading, that March sunshine, and that all I want at the moment is a cheese sandwich, and in a matter of moments I will have one.