September 21, 2007
Friends
Ah, friends– the sugar on my berry. I received an envelope in the post today from one of my oldest friends (“since we were girls” I am nearly old enough to say), inscribed with the same symbolism we used to affix to notes passed in grade nine math. Indeed, I am a great appreciator of history. But then also of new friends: what kind of a miracle are they? Is it not enough that I met brilliant people when I was twelve and was smart enough to discern they’d be good to know, but that I continue to meet brilliant people to this day? How could such a miserable bloody world manage to be so brilliantly peopled, and bloody all the same? That I do not know, but I do know that I came home tonight from an evening with a new friend, quite hysterical with joy. My new friend. All right, I’ve known my new friend for two years now, but for me most friendships require a while to bud. And in the last few months this one has bloomed, positively. La la la my new friend. Our conversations set the world on fire.
September 19, 2007
Forward
It’s always exciting to have a new author before me! I’ve never read Kate Christensen before, but I took note of Maud Newton’s recommendation awhile back. Today I picked up her first novel In the Drink from the library. She’s also got a new book out: The Great Man. Oh there is always something to look forward to.
September 19, 2007
My song remains the same
(On her website, writer Rona Maynard has written an interesting post in response to my reading of her book. I’ve responded there, but her ideas have brought to mind arguments I’ve made before. My song remains the same, and so why don’t I reprint it? This post was first aired in 2004 on my early-twenties dirty-laundry angst blog which, thankfully, no longer exists.)
Longer than I’ve been alive, women have arguing for their superior lifestyles, zealously attempting to convert the masses in order to justify their own choices. This debate is not so much meandering as a run-around, and the fact of the matter is that it continues because cat fights sell papers. Those who balk at feminism are surely pleased by the civil war in the ranks, and their cause is furthered when the women inevitably fail to come to any conclusion or truce. This is by no means cause to stem debate, but perhaps a good reason to examine the debate more carefully.
The false dichotomy is the first issue. Women talking about choosing not to have children vs. mothers of many; working women vs. stay-at-home moms; women opting out of careers vs. women who never had one in the first place vs. women who choose not to have have children. There is a sense from every one that she is being let down by the others. We see already this is more than a two-sided issue, but then you have to realise also that all these women are talking about the very same thing. Women are not always free, do not always have the appropriate support, to make the same life choices that men can. This is not simply a natural burden of femininity, but rather an injustice that severely compromises the potential of half a nation’s population, and thus the potential of the nation itself.
External forces have to change. Companies have to adopt more family-friendly policies- free childcare, flexible hours, parental leave and such. People who happen not to be women, or who are women without children have to not look upon these changes as a threat. Women have to stop throwing accusations of selfishness at each other, because making lifestyle choices is inherently selfish regardless of your choice. Further, the right to these choices is something no woman should abase or take for granted.
Women without children have to realise that someone has to have them, and that these women are altogether noble for instituting the next generation- surely a a necessary process? Women who have children but work are no less noble for this, and every family works differently and so there is no reason why their arrangement is inferior. Women who stay at home with their children have to understand that working women are doing them a service while they exercise their noble choice. Women who opt out of work in order to raise their families owe something to all of these women and their blazed trails which have allowed for their own choices, and the “opt-out women” themselves are blazing a trail no less important. Finally, women who are privileged enough to be making these choices at all have to realise how fortunate they are.
So the dichotomy looks just as two-sided as it ever was but now it’s man versus woman and it’s certainly easy to see it that way- a man will never be asked if he can handle the double burden of a family and a career. His choices will be made so much easier and without the layers of guilt most women wear like a girdle. However this polarity is equally false. No man benefits from a society in which half the population is underutilized and undervalued, and most men realise this. Most men today were raised in families where the mother’s capabilities were not compromised as well, and in fact all sons and daughters have benefitted from that vantage point. So there is hope after all, more than there ever was.
Women need to stop being threatened by others who choose differently than they. It is paramount that they support each other, and understand the richness and importance of a wide range of lifestyles, in order that women in the future have such a wealth of options still available to them.
September 18, 2007
Bay window
The very best thing I’ve read lately is R.M. Vaughan’s “Dominick’s Fish: The things we leave behind when we die” in the latest issue of Walrus, which uses an amazing story about aquarium fish to demonstrate that “the concept of disposibility is itself false, a convenient conceit.” And writers’ rooms continue at The Guardian, with two of my favourite writers: Sue Townsend and Margaret Drabble (photo borrowed here [and oh I wish I had a British bay window to call my own]). For more good reading, go here for Ben McNally, and then go to his new shop (which is just up the street from my husband’s building- as if he needed yet another place to be sent on errands to). Rona Maynard gets a great review, and a review of Cloud of Bone, the book I’m reading right now. Giller Prize Giller Prize Giller Prize. Hooray.
September 16, 2007
Life on the Refrigerator Door by Alice Kuipers
Stuart and I are quite dependent on one another, rarely apart, and we once spent four straight months together when we were between jobs/countries, and never tired of the company. We’re lucky, I think, but then there is a certain something that comes from distance. Soon after that four months, we returned to real life and one morning I left a message for him on our whiteboard, returning home later to find his reply to me. The exchange was hardly profound, but it struck me– this physical evidence of our relationship, the different ways you communicate when you’re not side-by-side. How much words can do when they stand up on their own, which is the power explored by Alice Kuipers in her new book Life on the Refrigerator Door.
Life on the Refrigerator Door is a funny little book, part YA, a bit novelty. Composed simply of notes from mother to daughter, some just a few words or lines long, but then it made me cry. That is something. Kuipers has demonstrated that a series of notes on their own can assume a narrative structure, convey character, humour, emotion. This is one of those things, I suppose, that would be much harder in practice than it may seem. And it’s also a risk for a new writer to take, when grandiosity is all the rage. A writer must have confidence to create a work like this, a lack of ego to send something so deceptively simple out into the world. This book has left me much intrigued as to what Alice Kuipers will get up to next, and now I am excited to go there.
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.
