July 12, 2007
Salt Rain by Sarah Armstrong
There are some truly lovely elements at work here in Salt Rain, Sarah Armstrong’s first novel. Her prose is strong without trying, and the premise is compelling. Place features largely in this narrative, Armstrong creating a powerful sense of atmosphere in her depiction of the Australian rain forest, with the rain, the heat, the endless cycle I quoted in the entry previous. When 14 year-old Allie’s mother Mae apparently drowns in Sydney Harbour, Allie is taken to live with her Aunt Julia, an eccentric tree planter who claims to be giving her land back to the forest. Vines come into the house through her windows, and the rain falls, the floods come. I got the sense of nature as adversary like I’d only read before in Canadian literature. Or rather that nature is not so much adversarial as gigantic so that human drama is minute in comparison. And Armstrong’s story does suffer when she tries to correct this imbalance, stretching her story as broadly as her backdrop. Reaching back decades, spanning geographies, and several personal histories. In such a short novel with multiple points of view alternating between chapters in a subjective third-person narration, we don’t get the chance to delve into one character adequately, let alone to explore the innumerable stories which branch out from each of their separate experiences. So much must be glossed over, details imparted for the sake of themselves, and the story skims its surfaces. There are suggestions that more is going on in the depths, but we’re too busy to be taken there. Insufficiently invested then, the big twist feels facile. Which is disappointing, really, because Armstrong’s writing left me with such a powerful sense of this book, I wished the story itself was better explored.
July 11, 2007
Links of late
Links of late: A Midwest Homecoming is the blog I keep reading aloud to who ever is in earshot, scribed by Ms. Leah with whom I shared a bunkbed in Nottingham for three months nearly five years ago. Absolute hilarity, and bookish goodness too, though I suspect she’ll be changing her title, seeing as she’s just decided to move to Korea.
Also, Oprah Schmoprah— book recommendations by some of the bloggers I like best.
Hands down, the best story in the paper all weekend was Elizabeth Renzetti’s “You’d be a numpty to mess about with the weegies”. She writes, “Before you attack a country, it’s probably best to scan their cultural history. Did the two men who drove a blazing Jeep into Glasgow airport last week know nothing about Scotland’s past? Had they never seen Braveheart? Had they never read Rob Roy? Didn’t they know that it is always a bad idea to mess with an angry Scot, especially one from Glasgow? Ye’ll get a wee skelp and nae doot aboot it.” And it only gets better.
An incredible profile of Chinua Achebe here.
Here for summer reading tips. (Stuart was flattered and surprised to see that his recent reading had qualified him as “The Universal Literary Smartarse”).
July 11, 2007
Wholly visible and reliable
What is it when pathetic fallacy functions in reading? Because at the moment I feel like I’m reading Salt Rain in just the right climate: “the raindrops making an endless circuit from earth to clouds, the same water falling again and again for decades.” 80% humidity is probably as close to the Australian rain forest as Toronto ever gets. It’s a funny thing.
So far Salt Rain is a pretty good story, but then you’ve got to feel sorry for any book that has to follow Henry James. Such an unfair pitting, but the narrative voice feels so slight in comparison. Which came to mind last night when I was reading James Wood’s review of Edward P. Jones’ Aunt Hagar’s Children in The London Review of Books. Writes Wood:
These days, God-like authorial omniscience is permitted only if God is a sweet ghost, the kind with whom the residents can peaceably coexist. This is especially true in most contemporary short stories, where the narrator may be wildly unreliable (first person) or reliably invisible (third person), but not wholly visible and reliable. Few younger contemporary writers risk the kind of biblical interference that Muriel Spark hazards, or that V.S. Naipaul practices in A House for Mr. Biswas, in which the narrative eschatologically leaps ahead to inform us of how the characters will end their lives or casually blinks away years at a time: ‘In all, Mr. Biswas lived six years at The Chase, years so squashed by their own boredom and futility that they could be comprehended in one glance.’ Comprehended by whom?
And now, post-James, I am craving omniscience. And have set myself a little challenge: the next story I begin will have a narrator who is not a sweet ghost at all.
(Update: Oh, yes, I looked it up. “eschatology [esk‐ă‐tol‐ŏji], the theological study or artistic representation of the end of the world.”)
July 9, 2007
Completely a fool
Reading a classic every month takes up so much reading time and reading effort, but oh the payoff. I adored The Portrait of a Lady, which I hardly remembered from my first reading seven years ago. Oh, the mastery. And that Henrietta Stackpole was redeemed in the end; it pleased me that my younger self was not completely a fool. It was interesting, by the way, to see how self-reflexively I used to read my books– the lines underlined. It was as though I used to read seeking myself (“Yes yes yes! That’s meeee!” my notes appear to shriek. “That’s just how it is!!”). Any line that summed up my experience, my struggles, my pain. I once read a book where a character had the same name as a boy I loved, and I underlined every single instance of that name. How ridiculous. And so we’ve come full circle, I suppose. It seems that my younger self was indeed completely a fool.
Now reading a new novel–Salt Rain (from Australia!) by Sarah Armstrong. And so the alternating rereading begins, and next I will get to We Need to Talk About Kevin.
July 9, 2007
Unsung Love Song
I want to sing a love song: I love the Gardiner Expressway. I decided it was necessary to start singing yesterday whilst browsing through the latest issue of Spacing (which looked quite good by the way). An article, albeit interesting, about the loss of “South Parkdale” to said expressway, and I realized I was so tired of Gardiner-bashing. It takes us nowhere, which, the Gardiner, my friends, decidedly doesn’t.
The facts are these and I know them: that in this day and age, we no longer build expressways right through neighbourhoods. That Jane Jacobs was right. That the expressway network into Toronto is decidedly rubbish, as anyone who’s ever tried to drive out of the city around five o’clock will realize. That the reason the expressway network is so crap is because it was never actually completed (thanks to the efforts of Jacobs et. al), which is a good thing. And yes, also a bad thing, if you happen to drive a car.
So a good thing and a bad thing: such is the story of the Gardiner Expressway. Indeed it’s very bad, and we all know why. It’s crumbly, ugly, creepy underneath in midafternoon let alone the dead of night, cuts the city off from the waterfront, encourages driving when public transport should be an object, it’s noisy, etc. But the flipside is there– the song I want to sing.
As a pedestrian, a cyclist and driver who owns two legs, a bike, but no car, I think I’ve got no bias. And to enter Toronto from driving east on the Gardiner provides one of my favourite views: cityscape against the sky, the CN Tower just off to the south. Whizzing along on an elevated road right out of a retro imagining of the space age. The Gardiner is a relic from a future that was never to be. No highway has ever made me feel more like Judy Jetson. I live in a city and here it is, glimmering in late-afternoon sunshine. A cousin to the CN Tower, built of the same sensibility. When the future didn’t always just mean an apocolypse.
The Gardiner might not have been built with the pedestrian or cyclist in mind, but then I wonder: how fantastic is an expressway that can be crossed this safely? Isn’t the Gardiner an amalgam of pedestrian and driver interests, no matter how skewed? Definitely it stands as a physical barrier between our city and the waterfront, but that barrier is also something of an illusion. The advantages of this sort of road have hardly been taken advantage of. The problem of access to the waterfront is not the Gardiner’s, but rather a confused plan of interests: industrial, port, rail, upscale-residential and parkland, none of which seem to complement each other. In terms of all the problems presenting by the unfortunate lack of planning in this area, the Gardiner seems to me one of our most advantageous.
I guess we could bury it, but wouldn’t years of construction represent a far more formidable barrier to the waterfront? It would also cost too much money, and, oh, never ever happen. And so, I say, the solution is to love the Gardiner instead. Sure we can mourn South Parkdale, and we can miss the history that was lost with the thoughtless planning of yore (through disregard for the past and too much zealotry toward the future), but it’s far more important to learn to live with what we’ve got. For the city to maintain the Gardiner so it continues to serve its optimum purpose. For plans for waterfront development to work with the expressway, rather than ignoring it. And for those with urban interests to stop knocking it; you are boring, and I know all you say already. It would be far more interesting, I think, to look for reasons to love the Gardiner instead. It’s a more sensible strategy, and if you look, the reasons are there.
(Oh yes, and I found that image here).
July 9, 2007
Canada's Greenest Shopping Bag
Currently in love with Canada’s Greenest Shopping Bag from President’s Choice. In which I do not tote my President’s Choice organic groceries at all, but instead it’s the perfect size to hold my lunch, a novel, obligatory odds and ends, as well as my baseball glove. And I really would buy one for everyone I know and love so they could share in the delight, but I don’t have to. They can buy one themselves. For my new favourite fashion accessory costs only 99 cents!
July 8, 2007
Store Bought Women
We shall save the island for next weekend then, as plans were thwarted. For some reason Saturday morning we didn’t wake up until eleven, and this morning we woke up to thunder. Fortunately there was plenty of other fun to be had. Friday night we had dinner at the Brown-Smiths (who become “the Smiths” full-stop come January how exciting!), and relished rooftop patio goodness and finally the CN Tower lit up. I hadn’t seen it before. Clearly I neither get out nor look up enough. Yesterday’s highlight was a swim in the pool at Christie Pitts– what a delight! Sweet relief from the humidity. Today was such a Sunday– I read The Portrait of a Lady (nearly done), worked on a new true story full of lies, and Stuart devoured The Raw Shark Texts in one sitting. This weekend we watched Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and adored it. You might remember that both of us read the book and loved it earlier this year. I love when a film can so well complement the book it came from. Two more days until the new Crowded House! And the big news? This weekend I successfully baked a chocolate cake. This has never happened before, as my cakes have variously exploded, disintegrated, failed to bake etc. But this cake is perfect, and easy. I shall not attempt a different recipe ever again. And tea of the week? Pomegranate Green. Yum zum.
July 6, 2007
Destination
My husband is a miracle. I was stomping around the house like a troll and instead of administering a good slap, he bought train tickets (!!!). Yes, come September we’ve got a Montreal mini-break planned, and I am absolutely thrilled. Plan to become a character out of a Hugh MacLennan novel for the occasion (though I am a girl and therefore that would involve inspidity, hmm). Further, in travel fun, British seaside towns gallery. I vote for Brighton, but where is Skegness? I am excited for the weekend. Travel still, albeit closer to home, we plan to take the ferry to Toronto Island.
July 5, 2007
The thing with academics
“‘I’ll tell you what my thing is with academics,’ she continued in a harder tone. ‘They take something that is complete, say a story, that is not material to work with– it’s complete; it is to the writer anyway– and they take it as crude ore that they’re taking out of the ground, to suit some purpose of their own, and I find this outrageous.'” -Mavis Gallant in this month’s Walrus.
July 5, 2007
Stackpole
Maud Newton has pointed me toward Marilynne Robinson’s review of The Maytrees. Katie Roiphe shows that a literary allusion can make self-reflexiveness much more interesting. Outsider top tens (though they missed the obvious choice).
Still reading Portrait of a Lady, and enjoying it, but then my twenty-first century sensibilities makes the nineteenth century read at a dilatory pace. But no, it’s a rich book. I like the American/English dynamic, which I believe would have gone over my head the first time. And Henrietta Stackpole is not so much an inspiration as absolutely absurd, but perhaps that was always the point.
