September 21, 2007
Cloud of Bone by Bernice Morgan
“She hears a sharp crack… Ian is dead. In that instant Judith Muir knows that every thought she has ever had is wrong. All the answers, those grand possibilities, the carefully constructed theories delineating the upward curve of civilization– all false, all a disguise for what we humans are, what she is.”
Here, within the final 100 of pages of Bernice Morgan’s Cloud of Bone, is the point upon which this novel turned for me. On page 335 to be exact, when three remarkably disparate stories were fused into something solid, stories braided together. Until then I’d found these separate narratives rather curious in their connection. The first is the story of Kyle Holloway, a young deserter of the Canadian Navy during World War Two, traumatized by his wartime experiences. Followed by the story of Shanawdithit, who had been the last of the Beothuk people of Newfoundland, more than a century before on the same land Holloway now treads. And finally Judith Muir, a forensic anthropologist whose husband Ian is killed as they are investigating a genocide site in Rwanda.
Kyle Holloway’s story is brief, curious in its casual brutality. The next part of this book, about the last Beothuk girl, is more detailed, chronicling her people’s desecration at the hands of Europeans, “the Dogmen”. Shanawdithit’s role in this novel is similar to George Cartwright’s in The Afterlife of… by John Steffler, though of course this is the other side of the coin. Though well-evoked with Morgan’s magnificent prose, this part went on long for me. I was struggling a bit as I began the third part of the novel, Judith’s portion, when Ian was dead. Here, I felt on more familiar ground, with writing that reminded me of my favourite British novelists Drabble, Lively, Mantel. Their same preoccupations with history, bones and cities underfoot. “Memory dissolving into the earth”. And the whole project suddenly made sense to me, these stories connecting to say something quite profound and disturbing about “what we humans are.”
The brutality here is not gratuitous– Morgan is far too fine a writer. These tales are carefully spun so that reality is not so off-putting, so that the reader is less overwhelmed by violence than what the violence means. Each of these stories functions in their own right, but in their connection is where the possibility of hope lies: “our stories cross over and break away, drift into a future we cannot see, will never know.” Morgan has engaged with the world, with history, to produce a work that is massive in its scope. She has built a bridge from the rather self-contained world of CanLit out into the rest of the world, allowing different stories and voices to engage with one another in a brilliant conversation.
September 21, 2007
You must
Because I read so much, so fast, I am quite well-versed at moving on. Books end, books shut. But one book has been positively haunting me since I read it more than a month ago. You might remember that I wasn’t so impressed as I read Vendela Vida’s Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name. I didn’t know where the tale was leading, and the narrative seemed lacking in complexity. The prose was good, but it was all so weird. Intriguingly so, though, and I read to the end. That end. It shocked me, as it was meant to. Not with horror, but with power. Vida took everything I’d ever supposed about fate, family, obligation, story, history, and she turned it on its head. The phrase still resonates: “And when I hear people say that you can’t start over, that you cannot escape the past, I would think You can. You must.” Nothing else has ever been so wise, and the power of that moves me to tears if I think too hard. Of course you must, and I cannot wait to reread the book, galvinized by its now-inevitable close.
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….
