June 14, 2007
Remember when the boys were all electric?
What a good lunch break I had today, dropping out of a brilliant game of catch to read in the grass until the boys were ready to go back in. Sunny with a breeze. Now reading So May Ways to Begin by Jon McGregor, which connects me to the England I’m missing furiously post-vacation*. The book is wonderful so far. I read McGregor’s first novel If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things a million years ago, and though I enjoyed it and McGregor himself was doing something remarkable, the book wasn’t perfect. Whereas the sense I’m getting so far is that in his second novel, he’s finding his feet. Which is so exciting, and it’s wonderful to think of his career still ahead of him and books books to read. It will be nice to follow along, just as it has been so far.
And I was very happy to see that Madeleine Thien’s Certainty was nominated for the Amazon/Books in Canada First Novel Award. Pleased that Heather O’Neill’s much-deserving Lullabies for Little Criminals is on the list as well, but I’m rooting for Certainty. O’Neill’s had plenty of fun already, and Certainty is the very best book I’ve read this year.
*Ah, missing furiously. I listen to BBC Radio1 at work, and every since Monday have heard the songs we listened to as we drove across the North of England with the top down, and never in my life have I felt such nostalgia for a last week.
June 13, 2007
On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
My favourite thing about Ian McEwan’s characters is how solidly these fictional creations reside in the world. His Edward and Florence in On Chesil Beach only underline this, and how their ties to the world are expressed in this small and subtle novel is a testament to McEwan’s talent.
As in the brilliant novel Saturday, ordinary lives are drawn not on the periphery of history, but firmly entrenched within it, almost powerless against it. Edward and Florence are a young couple on their wedding night in 1962, honeymooning on Dorset’s Chesil Beach in the South of England. “This was still the era… when to be young was a social encumberance.” On the cusp of a new era, with whole languages yet to be invented, particularly pertaining to sexuality, and it is for want of these words that the penultimate moment of the novel spirals so horrifyingly out of control. And in the chapter which follows, McEwan’s communication of miscommunication should be particularly commended.
The reasons I love McEwan’s writing are similar to why I so enjoy Margaret Drabble’s work–characters who live in the world, constructed of details, backstories and even their own paths not taken. Edward and Florence are recent graduates, Edward a historian and Florence a musician. These occupations inform the novel– Edward’s interest in “semi-obscure figures who lived close to the centre of historical events”; the pace of Florence’s music in the background, and the cohesion of her string quartet analogous to the tautness of this narrative. And it is the combination of their respective situations which renders the novel’s climax so inevitable and wholly realized. Such details are what allows, so essential in a novel so sparse, everything to mean something. Which I find truly a rich trip to discover.
June 12, 2007
Know more
I hope you got the print edition of The Globe this weekend, because Ali Smith’s “Torontode” wonderful, and I cannot find it online. She writes, “I love wandering about in Toronto. I dream about wandering about in Toronto, which could not be more perfect for the wanderer-about, with its leafiness, its windy wide streets in spring and autumn, the smell of sweetness and coffee on Bloor Street by that big grand hotel opposite the museum, the dainty suddenness of Yorkville tucked down the back of all the big-gun commerce like an afterthought, and especially Queen Street, I love wandering around Queen Street, I nearly saw Baby Spice once on Queen Street…” Of course she did.
Also in the same paper, I was impressed that Rex Murphy managed to connect Edward Causabon to global warming, though I am not so sure that I agree with him. Margaret Atwood on Polish writer Ryszard Kapuscinski: a magnificent article, because I’d never heard of him, but now I want to know more. And Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in The Guardian. Cool thing about that? I got to read it first on paper.
June 11, 2007
Unbooks
Though I do love books, I have a particular aversion to books that aren’t actually books. I am unfond of gift books, decorative books, foam books, faking books, and faux books. I do believe that these inferior items unjustly ride on the coattails of a sacred object. And so it was quite remarkable when I fell in love with this treasure up in the Lakes, though the price tag put it out of my league. 
I suppose I have a particular aversion to books that aren’t books, unless the book happens to be a teapot.
June 10, 2007
You are a shining light
I’ve just realized why “Intervention” by Arcade Fire has been driving me nuts since the first time I heard it: it is exactly the same song as “Shining Light” by Ash! In further music news, I bought tickets for Crowded House this morning.
June 10, 2007
Lettuce
Last night was a very exciting one in the land of Pickle, as our vegetable garden has yielded its first crop. The tomatoes aren’t ready yet, and so our salad was a scant one, only one of lettuce, but never, ever, has lettuce tasted so good.
