December 23, 2006
Merry Christmas
It’s nearly The Eve, and we’ve been rocking out lately to Snoopy and the Red Baron, Do They Know It’s Christmas, Fairytale of New York, All I Want for Christmas is You, Please Come Home for Christmas, Oh Holy Night and When a Child is Born (among other fine tunes). We’re getting ready for all our favourite Clare-Lawler Christmas traditions ie Slade, brunch, a Mexican supper, and our annual Love Actually viewing. And then it’s off to PTBO for a couple of days of family fun, all the while we’ll be missing our family far across the sea. I hope that everybody passes the next few days properly. Yuletide yeas.
December 22, 2006
Special Topics etc.
I will be brief about Special Topics in Calamity Physics as so many reviews have said so much already (I’d link to more reviews, but my internet is dial-upily slow today, who knows why). As always, I would dismiss the opinion of all those who couldn’t get through it because this book’s ending was my favourite thing about it. I also would not accuse the novel of pretentiousness, but rather it is meant to be a critique of pretentiousness– not an entirely successful one, however. Similarly, the novels gestures toward an extreme bookishness, which a reader can’t quite buy as many of the books discussed within this one aren’t even actual books. Comparisons to Donna Tartt are made easily, but Pessl’s characters are not as interesting (in fact, Blue van Meer’s teenage peers are incredibly boring). Comparing anyone to Nabokov is a bit unfair. In typical American styly, the book is big as a brick and I’m not sure it has to be (though I’m hardly one to talk– my attempt at brevity is already failing). The inevitable however. The first third of this book is hardly a slog, but it’s annoying in parts. I think that fake bookishness might be worse than pretentious bookishness. The second third of the book is better, but far too focussed on the secret life of teenagers, which of course is boring. The third part of the book, however, is golden. It’s what I imagine that DaVinci book might be like for people who liked it. Murder mystery/thriller/race to the end/gutting twist etc. Marisha Pessl is trying to do far too much with her debut novel, but the upside of that is that I think most people could find something to like in this book.
Now rereading Jane Eyre, which I read last eleven years ago when I was in grade eleven English. “I hate English!” is written on the title page in my handwriting, but I do remember liking this book and I’m loving it now. Continuing with uTOpia, which actually has many more good essays than bad ones, and I’m learning a lot. I particularly like the way essays unconsciously counter and disagree with one another, which fits the complexity of the issues this book is addressing. Oh, and Curtis bought me a subscription to Vanity Fair, which I’ve been dreaming of for my whole life. He and Erin came over for dinner last night, and my risotto debut was a giant success. We all drank too much wine, and had inordinate amounts of good conversation.
December 20, 2006
Pickle Me This Picks of '06
What you’ve all been waiting for, to enhance your reading lists for ’07, or to help you get that Christmas shopping done.
New(ish) Fiction Picks
Sweetness in the Belly by Camilla Gibb
On Beauty by Zadie Smith
Alligator by Lisa Moore
The Accidental by Ali Smith
Mean Boy by Lynn Coady
When I Was Young and In My Prime by Alayna Munce
Saturday by Ian Mcewan
The Emperor’s Children by Claire Messud
The History of Love by Nicole Krauss
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Memoir Picks:
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
Giving Up the Ghost by Hilary Mantel
Poetry Pick:
The Octopus and Other Poems by Jennica Harper
Anthology Pick:
Writing Life by Constance Rooke (ed)
Non-Fiction Pick:
The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth by E.O. Wilson
New to me only (but I loved them all the same):
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
A Big Storm Knocked It Over by Laurie Colwin
Wonder When You’ll Miss Me by Amanda Davis
Collected Stories by Grace Paley
Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
Our Favourite CD was “Let’s Get Out of this Country” by Camera Obscura and we also liked “Sam’s Town” by The Killers
Our Favourite movie was Little Miss Sunshine
Our Favourite Holiday destination was Prince Edward County.
It’s been a very good year. And all the best for 2007!
December 20, 2006
From here and there
The Penelopiad is being remade for the stage. And though it happened awhile back, John Steffler is Canada’s new poet laureate (and I liked his novel.)
In terms of non-fiction, I’m reading uTOpia at the moment, which is interesting in parts, but terribly obnoxious in others (one person wrote an essay about how he was connected to each of the forces of Toronto’s cultural renaissance [ie someone was his second cousin, though they’d only become acquainted recently, and he used to go to parties at so and so’s house, etc etc] which I think was supposed to have a point beyond that but I missed it).
The big news is that Bronwyn’s back in town, and showers galore are the theme of the holidays. As matron of honour, I have organized a fete for Saturday afternoon, but then I can’t say anything more because it’s a surprise. Just that it’s bookish. We’re keeping holiday gatherings to a minimum, as I’ve got a lot of work to do these days. Tomorrow night, however, I am learning how to make risotto, which is exciting. We’re getting to the end of the Christmas baking, like the gluttons we are. I realized I made it a week earlier this year, which probably wasn’t the best idea.
December 19, 2006
Holden
I’m now reading the much-hyped, well-loved and well-hated Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl. Almost two hundred pages in, I’m enjoying how it goes, but more about that later. For the moment, I wish to discuss Holden Caulfield, however. And how most modern characters described as “a modern day Holden Caulfield” are so blatantly not.
In particular, I’m thinking about Pessl’s main character, and also about Lee from Curtis Sittenfeld’s Prep. And I am trying to figure out why I find these characters so childish, why these books read like YA Fiction when Holden Caulfield never really did. I’ve determined it’s about perspective. These modern protagonists are all-knowing, and even when they screw up, the screw-up is always in retrospect. At some point, their narratives reveal that they get over adolescence. Holden Caulfield’s never did. Catcher in the Rye is so planted in his head in a way that is absolutely alarming, and that’s what interesting about the book, not necessarily his engagement with the world. Holden never tells us anything that Holden wouldn’t have told us. He exists as himself, and as not as a quirky, clever set of eyes through which to see the world. Herein lies the difference, I think.
When I first read Catcher in the Rye, I was thirteen years old and thought that Holden was cool. Encountering him again ten years later, my heart hurt for this deeply broken boy I’d once had a crush on. The change in his character made this a completely different book each time, and I don’t know that I’d think the same about the modern Holdens. I consider YA fiction fine in itself, but it’s not compelling to me as literature if it’s just the same book twice.
December 19, 2006
The Sea Lady by Margaret Drabble
The necessary disclosure is that I’m in no way qualified to review anything written by Margaret Drabble with objectivity. It’s no secret that she is my very favourite author, and that I would read a phone book so long as it was written by her. So it’s no surprise that I loved The Sea Lady. Which is not to say that The Sea Lady has anything in common with the phonebook at all (apart from some fine names), but I am not fully convinced that it might be everybody’s cup of tea.
I have determined three marked periods in the career of Ms. Drabble. From her first novel A Summer Bird Cage until Jerusalem The Golden, she wrote about very fashionable, fabulous, modern people. This continues to some extent into The Needle’s Eye and The Ice Age as well. Though the characters begin to engage more with the wider world, the world is telescopic. I love these books very much, but due to their 1960s modernity, they come across as a bit dated today.
With The Realms of Gold and The Middle Ground, Drabble begins to develop the style of her middle period which culminates with The Radiant Way Trilogy (which was how she and I fell in love, you see). These books, written from the late 1970s into the early 90s are concerned with vast themes and are sprawling projects, and here she invents her universe, the wonderful Drabble universe where I would love to take up residence and chat with Kate Armstrong and Alix Bowen, and meet Liz Headleand’s cat. Through this period, Drabble wrote the whole world, and captured contemporary England in a sad and desperate way. Rather than appearing dated, these works have managed to capture an era.
Since 1997’s The Witch of Exmoor, I get the impression Drabble has been bored by the confines of the novel, and has tried to push the form in different ways. She has also shifted her focus from “now” to “then”, delving much into the past– her own past in The Peppered Moth, or the life of a historical Korean Queen in 2004’s The Red Queen. Narratively speaking, she does funny things to her texts and leaves ends untied. I am not sure that critics universally love her later works, and I can’t begin to imagine how these novels might read to one who has never read Drabble before. But to me, who is so in love with Margaret Drabble’s writing, these works fit into a scheme whose development I understand by looking at the evolution of her work. I am not sure her intentions are always ultimately realized, but this is the same universe. Its writer is just looking in a different direction.
The Sea Lady is labelled “a late romance”. The story of Ailsa and Humphrey, who meet as children, meet again as adults and fall into a young love doomed to end badly, and the heart of this novel is their encounter in their sixties, after forty years apart. Humphrey is a marine biologist, and fish permeate the novel’s symbolism, but I didn’t find it tiresome. It seemed appropriate. The biological focus was particularly interesting, due to my interest in scientific literature. Ailsa is a media personality/feminist/art historian/sociologist, and a theme of the novel is the merging of science and the arts– if such a thing is possible, and what is that entity? The novel is structured around Ailsa and Humphrey’s return to the place of their original meeting, and their minds drift backward on their respective journeys. The ending of the novel is strange, twisting a bit shockingly/tidily, and the presence of the Public Orator, which many critics considered the novel’s real flaw, wasn’t troubling as much as it was weird.
But this is Margaret Drabble– her voice, her people, her universe. In some ways, this novel blends her three eras as much as any book she’s ever written. She is smart and the novel is bursting with facts– but not to prove her erudition, rather her passion for knowledge drives her to create a story from it. I think for the first time Drabbler, The Sea Lady would be perplexing in parts, but certainly not unenjoyable. And as a Drabble devotee, I will add it to the long line of Margaret Drabble novels on my bookshelf– a collection which means as much to me as all the other books in the whole library.
December 18, 2006
Pests
On Saturday we received phone calls throughout the day from a recorded voice claiming to have a sniper rifle aimed at us. Since early this morning, there has been a clawed creature of some sort trapped in the ceiling above my bed. I do look forward to seeing what the future holds.
December 17, 2006
Easy Ave.
This weekend was notable for its lack of demands. Stuart’s office Christmas party, where we both behaved well and ducked out early. Britt for dinner last night, and I cooked roast chicken, squash and onions from our new cookbook, and we had a wonderful evening by the light of the Christmas tree. And then today we watched Curtis’s copy of A Muppets Family Christmas and ate sugar cookies. I continue to drabble. Later, I plan to do it in the tub.
December 17, 2006
Because I had time to read newspapers
Zoe Heller on the film adaptation of Notes on a Scandal. Oprah brings up Heller’s favourite books (via Maud Newton). From around the world, the best fiction of 06. Fannie Flagg, whose writing has always delighted me, has a new book out. On translating Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The Guardian Books Blog continues to bud. I loved Heather Mallick’s Triumph of the Eggheads. And Joan Didion’s collected nonfiction reviewed in the Globe.
December 15, 2006
Drabbling Again
In our house we have a verb called “drabbling”. It’s like reading, only much much better. I haven’t actually drabbled since I read the wonderful The Red Queen last Christmas. I drabbled a bit in the summer when I reread The Radiant Way and The Middle Ground, but true drabbling is always a first time encounter. And now I’m reading The Sea Lady, I’m drabbling again. I really can only read a few pages at a time because the delight is just too much.
