September 16, 2007
Tomato Soup
This weekend was less than remarkable, but more than enjoyable. I’ve been tired for ages and now I’m not, and I’ve read a zillion books, and scrubbed my tub. Finally. Yesterday I read memoirs Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy, and Ann Patchett’s Truth and Beauty. Both were extremely well done, but I was also surprised at how much Patchett’s book was a writing memoir more than anything else more controversial. Last night we went to see The Great Space Debate. Should we send people to Mars? It was more hilarious, particularly when Robert Zubrin (president of The Mars Society) became enraged at the premise of colonizing Mars being a sorta bad idea. We also got freeze dried ice cream, which tasted like real ice cream but made us thirsty. Sunday has been such a Sunday, but also v. cool as the abundant tomatoes from our garden were turned into a delicious tomato soup thanks to my husband. And it’s a beautiful day outside– the sun has been pouring in through the windows deliciously.
September 16, 2007
Gifted by Nikita Lalwani
Upon first page, I found the Nikita Lalwani’s first novel Gifted absolutely enthalling, and this spell stayed cast until the very end. What a remarkable book, this story of Rumi, the daughter of Indian parents, growing up in Wales. Rumi’s gift for mathematics becomes apparent when she is five, and from that point her whole life is a strict study regimen dedicated to getting her into Oxford. She has no time for friends or play, consumed with exercises and mock-exams staged by her father. When plans comes to fruition, however, and Rumi gets to Oxford in the end, her entire life subsequently implodes. The end of Gifted is the stuff of parental nightmare, and a dramatic way to cap off such an excellent story.
Two points about this book are particularly notable. First, though Lalwani effectively constructs her narrative from multiple points of view, her portrayal of Rumi herself is really fascinating. As a young girl her perspective is convincing as from a child’s eye, but is also distorted by her “gift”. Rumi calculates radii to pass the time, views the world as a series of angles, when she fancies a boy she likens him and her to amicable numbers. This was not so overdone, but offers a worldview that I’ve never been privy to.
I also found that Lalwani’s portrayal of Rumi’s parents Mahesh and Shreene was extremely effective, avoiding predictable opposition and cliche. Mahesh in particular demonstrates the motivation for an immigrant to have his child succeed in his new country. We see the distance between him and the people around him, his disdain for those “deluded enough to think that the world is full of choices.” Our glimpses into his own point of view attribute him some sympathy. Similarly with his wife Shreene, whose behaviour is at times monstrous, we are given an understanding of her situation, raising a daughter in a society whose value system is very often at odds with her own. And that Lalwani lets these parents “go too far”, in spite of their best intentions, is a brave narrative choice, what ultimately makes this book so compelling. This takes the plot beyond a simple set-up, and explores character behaviour under extraordinary conditions.
I also really like the cover design of this book. I didn’t find it immediately appealing, but soon fell in love with its retro simplicity. Though is the picture supposed to look like, well, what it looks like? See, we could talk about this for hours….
September 14, 2007
What blooms
Our backyard garden was born of a whim. Tired of staring at the rubbish heap outside his backdoor, our downstairs neighbour Curtis ventured out one spring day to purchase seedlings. He came home with lettuce, carrots, tomatoes, cucumber, peppers and melons, but then he left them on the back step for three days.
We understood the sudden death of Curtis’s gardening enthusiasm. Our house has been under construction as long as we’ve lived here, the backyard serving as a receptacle for all the refuse. An eyesore, with piles of bricks, pieces of toilet, old pipes, kitchen cupboards, and artifactual empty beer bottles. We are a blot in an otherwise lovely row of backyards, so well-tended by our Portuguese neighbours. The yard had become embarrassing, but ameliorating the situation seemed to require forces beyond our capabilities. A few seedlings in the face of such general awfulness would be no weapon, we thought. And so we were all quite content to let Curtis’s seedlings wilt away and die.
It was surprising, then, to wake up one morning and look out the window to see the seedlings planted. My husband Stuart and I consulted Curtis who knew nothing about it, which left only the possibility that our neighbour next-door had been as embarrassed by our backyard as we were. It appeared that he’d snuck over in the early morning and started the job, determined not to let the seedlings go to waste. Maneuvering his way around the detritus, he had planted tidy rows of vegetables, and now it seemed we had a garden after all.
Of course, the lettuce would be ready first, but we didn’t know that then. We didn’t know anything then, until somebody told us. We would learn quickly, however, that seven lettuce plants were probably more roughage three people could handle.
Lettuce was king throughout June, and our regular weeding and watering were paying off— the garden was growing. The old man next door who’d started it all liked to poke his head over the fence from time-to-time, observe the work we were doing, and to tell us, in his limited English, “It is good.”
And it was good, we thought. A garden was a neat trick, and finally we had a backyard we could be proud of. Everything in the garden appeared to be thriving— and then the lettuce bolted.
Bolting, I have since learned, is the process by which a plant goes to seed when faced with danger, in this case the onset of summer heat. In this last-ditch attempt at propagation, our lettuces suddenly grew tall with a thick ugly stalk and their leaves became too bitter for eating. Lettuce season was finished, finally, and we were a bit grateful at a reprieve from green salad.
So that was bolting. Never before have I learned so much in such a short time as I have from our garden. We also learned the way cucumbers grow with their yellow blossom at one end and the stem at the other, and that until they’re ripe they are spiky to the touch. We learned, with regret, that carrots in clay soil won’t grow downwards, and turn into a horrible mangled knot of root instead. We learned not to put the barbecue so close to the tomato plant, and that in spite of burns, tomatoes will persevere.
We learned that a melon plant can take over the entire garden, its vine spreading wherever there is room to grow, wrapping merciless tentacles around everything in its wake. That red peppers come into season later than green peppers, quite obviously it seems now, because of the additional sunlight and energy necessary for its fruit to blush.
Our garden was blooming, and although the lettuce was gone, we had the rest of the salad. Even though we had to pick the workmen’s cigarette butts out of the tomato plants, and I kept finding bent nails in the soil.
We knew we were doing particularly well the day the boy next door— the old man’s grandson— called over the fence to tell us that our garden was cool. “I like it,” he said. “It’s way better than the rats that used to be back there.”
Recently I read that it is difficult to grow watermelon. Apparently watermelon are quite sensitive to wind, require enormous amounts of sunlight, but if you provide them with a great deal of care and attention, your own may prosper. Which I found surprising considering the gorgeous melons nearly ready-to-eat in our own little laissez-faire patch of earth. We have had ample beginners’ luck, it seems, but then never has a garden needed it more.
It was August soon and the cantaloupe was ready. One afternoon we cut the first one open, revealing the perfection of its orange flesh, dark green around the edges, and the miraculous mess of seeds inside. We were sitting down to eat and I was about to devour my half, just like all the melons I’d taken for granted before, when I realized that only moments ago, here had been a living thing. A dramatic realization— food comes from somewhere— though of course I ate that melon all the same. But I didn’t just eat it, rather I savoured it. I appreciated it. And without a doubt, the melon tasted better for it.
This summer we’ve learned what a long haul it is to the table, even if it’s only the distance from the yard.
September 13, 2007
Elusive boys are hard to find
Now reading Gifted, which has been wonderful from the start, and, interestingly enough, wholly in compliance with my previous observations regarding the difference between British and American fiction about immigrants. The British is so much grittier. Tonight I went out to Le Bar a Soup with my friend Jennie, and then we had coffee and dessert on a patio, staying out talking until it was too dark to see.
September 13, 2007
Fictional Fiction
I’ve been thinking about fictional books lately, and of course I’m not the only one. There’s a whole wikipedia page devoted to them (and of course there is). But fictional books have been turning up in my life awfully frequently lately– The Blind Assassin by Laura Chase, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Nikolai Mayevskyj, Briony Tallis’s Atonement, the Great Expections as retold by Matilda and Mr Watts, My Thyme is Up by Reta Winters. I do believe Mr. Ramsay had written a book to prove he’d reached the letter Q, but I don’t think I know its title.
Please pardon the obscure references (but full points to whoever can get them!). Do note, however, that these are only the fictional books found in books I’ve read since the beginning of August. And I haven’t even started on The Raw Shark Texts, which are primarily constructed of such things. Is there something strange going on here?
Now I understand that the ubiquity could have something to do with the books I choose, and my affinity for books about people who write. But sometimes fictional books do turn up in the oddest places. Some have also had profound effects upon me. And which especially, you may ask? The best fictional book I’ve never read would have be Lo, the Flat Hills of my Homeland by none other than A. Mole. And I am also quite fond of Anne Shirley’s short story “Averil’s Atonement”, though of course its commercial nature put me off a bit in the end.
September 12, 2007
My Mother's Daughter by Rona Maynard
It’s not clear to me why I wanted to read former Chatelaine editor Rona Maynard’s new memoir My Mother’s Daughter. I am hardly the target demographic and I often have problems with memoirs– usually that they fail to be Annie Dillard’s An American Childhood. But Maynard was familiar to me– she and Sally Armstrong, whose letters would grace the magazines that came into our house while I was growing up. I was also intrigued to discover that her sister was Joyce Maynard, she of the controversial memoir and JD Salinger fame.
And so I read My Mother’s Daughter, Maynard’s account of her relationship with her difficult mother. Though I found their relationship less interesting than their respective experiences as women in the twentieth century. Their struggles are not those I would identify with (Maynard’s mother had to leave her job as an academic when she became pregnant; the conflict Maynard faced as a working mom) but that lack of identification is the very point. It’s important that women my age know what not to take for granted.
Maynard’s family dynamics were more difficult to read about– references to her sister as “The Adorable One” were a bit painful, and I’m not sure if they was supposed to be. Further, the episodic nature of the work meant that parts of the story felt glossed over. But Maynard is a really wonderful writer, deft with prose, and her life has been inherently interesting (if not always where she thinks it should be). I enjoyed reading this book, and I imagine fans of Maynard’s Chatelaine work will find much with which they can identify.
September 12, 2007
I made a pie instead
The Poet’s Occasional Alternative — by Grace Paley
I was going to write a poem
I made a pie instead it took
about the same amount of time
of course the pie was a final
draft a poem would have had some
distance to go days and weeks and
much crumpled paper
the pie already had a talking
tumbling audience among small
trucks and a fire engine on
the kitchen floor
everybody will like this pie
it will have apples and cranberries
dried apricots in it many friends
will say why in the world did you
make only one
this does not happen with poems
because of unreportable
sadness I decided to
settle this morning for a re-
sponsive eatership I do not
want to wait a week a year a
generation for the right
consumer to come along
from Begin Again Collected Poems, 2000
September 12, 2007
Adoring Rosie
Rosie Little mania abounds. You might remember the rave reviews when I read it recently– and I’m not the only one. My magnificent Jennie has reported adoring it, and wishes that Rosie were her friend. And what company she’s in, as Heather Mallick read it also, reporting ” The stories are odd and witty, but have an undercurrent of pure terror. Young women will love this book, but after reading it, they may not want to go outside.”
September 11, 2007
A goat with one horn sawed off
It is very nearly that time of year, better than Christmas. Indeed The Victoria College Book Sale is just around the corner, and tomorrow I am taking a suitcase full of my own books to donate. You should do the same if you are able.
I was saddened to hear of Madeleine L’Engle’s recent death. I will join the chorus of people singing about being profoundly affected by her work, in my childhood and after. I remember turning to A Swiftly Tilting Planet six years ago tomorrow, and the comfort it delivered me then. In Laurel Snyder’s Salon Tribute, she writes “To compare L’Engle’s universe to the stuff cluttering the post-Harry Potter marketplace is to compare a unicorn to a goat with one horn sawed off: real enchantment standing beside something that approximates felt hat and white rabbit magic.”
And Bookninja’s feature on empathy— it’s wonderful. Says Barbara Gowdy, ” For me, as both a writer and reader, it’s necessary maybe not to like the main character but to believe that he or she can be redeemed, whether or not that turns out to be the case”.
