September 11, 2007
Blowing off dust
Today was exciting for a number of reasons: that I woke up and sat down to spend the morning working on my manuscript, which has been living under my bed since April. Had to blow off a layer of dust, but it was easy to get started, and strange to be affected by words I’d written so long ago they’ve ceased to belong to me. My goal is to finish this final revision by the end of this year, and then what’s next would, quite naturally, come with the future. Further exciting, was lunch with my old dear friend Erin Sanko who I’ve not seen in at least five years. Nice to have it feel like no time had passed, and her boyfriend is lovely. (I was also happy to hear that she had so much enjoyed Half of a Yellow Sun). I spent the afternoon shopping, for skirts, shoes, and turtleneck sweaters. Also for a new backpack, and any number of things to replace hideousness. And then I had my first visit to Ben McNally Books, which was a marvelous experience, and I had the good fortune of picking up a copy of Jonathan Garfinkel’s new book Ambivalence. It’s a beautiful book, and I am very happy for him. I also look quite forward to reading it.
September 10, 2007
Turtle Valley by G. Anderson-Dargatz
Gail Anderson-Dargatz’ latest novel Turtle Valley reminded me of Sheila Watson’s The Double Hook. No small words are these. Though their books remain worlds apart in sensibility and accessibility, Anderson-Dargatz writes similarly to Watson of desperately stunted people rendered smaller amidst a harsh and aggressive environment. She evokes the same ghostly presences, ambiguous in their nature, and she can also write downright spooky. Anderson-Dargatz’ book has far more popular appeal than Watson’s, but she practices the same art of witholding, letting what can be sensed tell the story. A quick internet search reveals that Anderson-Dargatz has been inextricably stuck with the tag Northwest Pacific Gothic, which is dramatic but makes sense to me. In tone I found Turtle Valley was also reminiscent of Eden Robinson’s Monkey Beach.
I’ve not read Gail Anderson-Dargatz’ earlier novels A Cure for Death by Lightning or A Recipe for Bees, but I do know that Turtle Valley is a descendent of the former. Beth Weeks’ daughter Kat is the subject of this new book, which takes place against the backdrop of a mass evacuation due to forest fire in BC’s interior. Kat has come with her husband and son to help her parents clear out their home before the fire comes down into their valley, and in the course of sorting through her parents’ accumulations, she discovers things about her family’s past that she never knew. History is thus disturbed, but Kat’s present is also in need of sorting, as she struggles in her relationship to husband Ezra who has become a different person since his stroke. To complicate matters further, she finds herself having feelings once again for a man from her past.
The fire metaphors are hard to resist: rekindling, old flame. Fire is pervasive throughout the text, and provides perfect imagery– particularly at the book’s conclusion. Anderson-Dargatz’ writing is strong, absolutely beautiful in spots. Her treatment of everyday objects is particularly admirable, and underlined by the photos of said objects accompanying each chapter, showing the reverence with which simple things can be treated, and the meaning that is invested in them with time. To understand Kat and her family’s history through these things is a fascinating process, and yet in the end something about it troubled me. The same thing that troubles me with any narrative in which a character finds a box of stuff that tells her all the answers. Now Kat is certainly in need of clues– her mother is entering the initial stages of dementia, her father is terminally ill– but somehow it seems too easy for her to assemble stories of such gravity. Tidiness is perhaps my most frequent gripe with fiction, and I was disappointed to have to call it here, however slightly, for a book I enjoyed so much otherwise.
September 10, 2007
En vacance!
Oh what a joy it is, not only to arrive in a brilliant city for the very first time, but to have friends there (as friends in interesting places are a most precious commodity). And how happy we were for ours, as Rebecca showed us all the best spots, as well as her new apartment with its death-defying staircases. Stuart and I got in a rather broad exploration of the city, ate all the required foodstuffs (and loved them), walked off the calories, spent a rather lazy Sunday relatively speaking, I spoke French and was understood, the train was a sweet dream as we played Tetris and read our books, our hotel was fantastic, brunch was amazing, we have bagels. Also I have the day off tomorrow, to return to my novel after four months away, have lunch with a friend I’ve not seen in years, and to buy clothes so I can work this Fall without looking like a ragamuffin.
September 7, 2007
Mini-Break
We’re on vaca for the weekend, off to Montreal. Thanks to Chapati Kid for her suggestions of what to do there, and to my other friends who offered advice. I am taking Atonement and A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian for the train, and is it strange that I am as excited about the train as I am about everything else?
September 7, 2007
If memory were a colour
“Something of my grandmother was sealed here in ink: in her careful, controlled penmanship, in the choices she made over what to set down. She had preferred a fountain pen over a ballpoint; the evidence was here, in the flow of ink from a fountain pen, as she wrote this recipe on how to preserve a rose: Dip the whole blossom and stalk in melted wax, coating completely to seal from the action of air and the passage of time. If memory were a colour, it would be this blue, the colour of the ink my grandmother used to preserve her treasured memories from the wasting effects of time.” –Gail Anderson-Dargatz, Turtle Valley
September 6, 2007
BiblioTravel
A chance google search led me to BiblioTravel. Do you know it? Plug in the name of a place, and BiblioTravel will generate a list of books which take place there. How cool. Peterborough brings up Battered Soles, and I’m intrigued. Montreal’s list is epic, naturally, though the lists are incomplete, I’ve found. Thankfully you can add and amend, in a wiki styly. I intend to explore much further.
September 6, 2007
October by Richard B. Wright
I’ve never read Richard B. Wright before, somehow missing the whole Clara Callan hullabaloo, but last week my friend, the much astute Rebecca Rosenblum, described him to me as a “journeyman”. And upon finishing Wright’s latest novel October I understand what she means. For there is a solidity evident throughout October, an assurance that all its parts are assembled and functioning as they’re supposed to be, and yet the success of the project is understated. It runs so quietly you can’t even hear the hum. And yet hum it does, weaving two different narratives together seamlessly, grappling with complexities, alluding to great literary works, and, with references to modern and popular culture, managing to be so much of this world.
As with most great novels, what this book is about is not the point of it, but I will recount the story nonetheless. James Hillyer, a widower in his seventies, is suddenly summoned to England upon receiving the news that his daughter who lives there has terminal cancer– the same kind to which he’d lost his wife years before. Whilst in England James has a chance encounter with Gabriel Fontaine who he has not seen for sixty years, not since a pivotal summer when they were friends and both loved the same girl. And from this point chapters alternate between James’s memories of that summer, and his experiences in the modern day when, still adrift by the news of his daughter’s illness, he accompanies Gabriel on a most unusual trip to Zurich.
The solidity is James Hillyer’s calm and even tone, and yet the hum is there– that these disjunct pieces of his life come together to mean something much greater. Further, that this story asks questions, and then dares not to answer: “But what if many things we encounter have no answers? What if they just remain unsolved mysteries?” And so they do remain, but as readers we still come away satisfied. October is more to be pondered than digested, and, I expect, also to be revisited from time to time.
September 5, 2007
New Season
My second summer of rereading proved as fulfilling as the first, though it was not as concentrated. But it was a joy to revisit classics: The Portrait of a Lady and To the Lighthouse, which I’d previously just read as a student, but it was something different to approach them on my own terms. My regular rereads: Slouching Toward Bethlehem and Unless were better than they’d ever been. Books I’d read but forgotten, and certainly not because they were forgettable: The Summer Book, and The Blind Assassin. I have a theory that you’ve never really been anywhere until you’ve been there at least twice, and I think this might very well be the case with books.
But now it is September, and new books are blooming. I’ve been binge reading lately– what else are holiday Mondays for if not a book in a day? Looking forward to the long train journey this weekend to get some more books under my belt. Oh, there are some wonderful books coming out this Fall, so stay tuned here and I’ll recommend the best ones. Watch for my review of Richard B. Wright’s October very soon. I am now reading Turtle Valley by Gail Anderson-Dargatz, who I’ve never read before.
After reading under restrictions for the last two months, being able to read so freely feels deliciously licentious.
September 5, 2007
Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones
New Zealand novelist Lloyd Jones’s Mister Pip tells the story of Matilda, a young girl whose South Pacific island is in the midst of brutal conflict during the 1990s. Against the most uncongruous backdrop of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, Matilda unaffectedly conveys the violence and deprivation she witnessed and experienced, constructing an unlikely bridge between Dickens’ story and her own.
Her island is under a blockade, infrastructure has crumbled, and there is no school anymore, until Mr. Watts takes on the role of teacher. As teacher Mr. Watts– the last white man on the island, eccentric and strange even through Matilda’s eyes, he wears a clown nose and pulls his wife around on a trolley– is unsurprisingly unconventional, and invites the children’s parents into class to supplement his own knowledge. These lessons tell the history of the colour blue, how to kill an octopus, how to cheat the devil, why to have faith. Mr. Watt’s own area of expertise lies with literature, however, Dickens’ novel in particular. Matilda is immediately entranced: “By the end of chapter one I felt like I had been spoken to by this boy Pip. This boy who I couldn’t see to touch but knew by ear. I had found a new friend./ The surprising thing is where I’d found him– not up a tree, or sulking in the shade, or splashing around in one of the fields streams, but in a book.”
Dickens’ story reconstructs 19th century England for this little girl on an island time and worlds away. Pip becomes real to Matilda, and as a character he much brings turmoil to the village– a harsh testament to the power of story. When Dickens’ novel goes missing, Matilda and her classmates reconstruct the story from the fragments they remember, their imaginations enhancing these inevitably. And what follows demonstrates the thin line drawn between our lives and our stories, and the fragmentary nature of both.
Matilda’s cool tone is tragic in the context of her whole story, but it also serves as a most engaging technique. To render the extraordinary as ordinary is a tremendous trick of voice. And what an experience as a reader, to be lulled by even tones, words you know, scenes you think you understand, and then to realize this is something entirely different. That this narrator will not take you where you expect to go, and neither will her story. So it goes with Matilda, allowing the violence and brutality of her recollections to be couched in terms which are easy to ingest, but once we’ve put the pieces together they are all the more horrifying for that ease. It is through these acts of reconstruction that Matilda becomes like Pip to us, demonstrating the way that stories come to life.
September 3, 2007
The dog in the nighttime
Off to Peterborough this weekend, to visit family and friends, which was delightful all around. The summer lingers, but not in a tired way, and autumn seems like a possibility rather than a sorry fate. My dad took us out for breakfast Saturday, and practised our throwing arms. We went camping Saturday night, using our new tent for the first time (a charm). It was a gorgeous night, and we had a brilliant fire, roasted smores, saw fireworks across the lake, the sky thick with stars– we saw the milky way! Retiring to bed with the cricket hum, and then the dog on the neighbouring campsite started barking, howling. The howling kept us up most of the night. From time to time an inhabitant of one of the tents there would call out “Shut the f*ck up Darcy.” Because apparently the dog’s name was Darcy. Dog didn’t understand English, however, and so the language was ineffectual. Someone else came over and tried to kept them to quiet the dog around 3:30 but they just ignored her. We got up then for the bathroom and the moon was so bright we didn’t need a flashlight. Soon the sun rose, and Darcy kept on. Geese were honking. It was morning. I’d slept that night on the cold hard ground, and I had hardly slept at all. This doesn’t mean that camping wasn’t hilariously wonderful, but just that Sunday was shot to hell as we spent the day en-mattress. Mom-cooked dinner, and then out in downtown Peterborough for fatigue-laden hijinx. Fun was had. We came back to Toronto this morning.
