January 12, 2022
Outside, by Sean McCammon
I’ve learned to be wary of stories about white guys finding themselves in Japan, particularly as someone who has lived in Japan myself, because I’ve met those guys (yikes!), but Sean McCammon’s debut novel Outside was a smart and soulful take on those tropes.
The novel weaves two narratives: the story of David’s first year teaching elementary school, and his urge to take his class outside and into wild spaces, which eventually leads to a devastating tragedy; and the story of David’s escape to Kyoto in the aftermath, where he’s strung out on pharmaceuticals, suffering from PTSD, broken and lost, and finds refuge in the company of a group of other travellers and Japanese people who eventually become his friends.
It’s a quiet narrative, but the reader is compelled through the story by the ominousness of what David is running from and the desire to discover what happened.
Outside is a story about teaching, learning, responsibility, grief, connection and human goodness. I especially like how McCammon gets at the peculiarities of gaijin culture without resorting to tired cliches—a tricky balance.
I really liked this book.
January 11, 2022
Gleanings
- For a while, grief is the only thing—but then the noise of life begins again. Now, as we pick up some of the pieces of what was once just routine, we all find ourselves confused by sudden vertiginous shifts between familiarity and estrangement.
- Though snow swirled yesterday and the roads were icy, though ravens have begun their courtship over our woods, acrobats of love, though the house is quiet and the cat is sleeping, I am happy to have reached my 67th birthday as the days grow a little longer and the sun dreams of summer.
- What secrets might be inside? Who could resist opening that little door? Definitely not me. Inside I found a small purple book which encouraged those who discovered it to share their dreams.
- Books did a lot of heavy lifting in getting me through this past year, I’ll tell you what.
- But I’m also very aware, increasingly so, that there’s more years behind me than ahead of me. And that these days, months, years are not to be frittered away being busy or seeking merely to be entertained or, god forbid, working on ‘self-improvement’.
- “It’ll be a mess,” one reporter said, “and in 24 hours it’ll be over“, and of course he was right.
- As for me, I do want to make of my life art. I want to be a witness to splendour. I want to get as much down as possible, whether by the light of photography or by the light of my weird noticing.
And one more (extra special) post! Kathy, whose excellent blog is Little Yellow Bungalow, wrote a really kind and generous post about her experience as part of Blog School’s MAKE THE LEAP course in September. My next course starts on the first of February, in just under a month. Sign up today to join us!
January 11, 2022
Old Year in the Books
Once again, we spent the final days of our old year putting photographic highlights in a photo album, an act that reminded me that 2021 was actually filled with a lot of light and joy, in addition to the challenges which seemed so front of mind as we’re facing a whole new wave of the pana-rama-ding-dong.
Printing photos is one of those new year’s resolutions that it’s not too late for you to try.
Check out Diane Schuller’s post with some tips on how to make it happen!
(You will be glad you did. My daughters take such pleasure in flipping through our albums, which have been regularly piled on the floor over the past two weeks…)
January 10, 2022
If the sun’s rays fall on the table, and nobody LIKES it, does the sun even shine?
I was explaining how important Instagram had become to me as a practice of paying attention, of noticing. “The way the sun falls across my kitchen table throughout the day.” And I was asked if I’d still be able to do that without posting, making me consider what it means to have an app as an intermediary between me and the world that I’m supposedly paying attention to. It’s interesting—why do I feel like I want to work everything out in public? A question I’ve never really known the answer to, or maybe I do and it’s somewhat self-indulgent. When I’m teaching writing via blogging, I put it down to the form’s epistolary origins. To blog (which, for many of us, is what Instagramming is) is to be asking, “Is anybody out there?” (Though is it also to be demanding, “Look at me?”?) What if, “Is anybody out there?” isn’t even the question I need to be asking anymore?
Last week, I felt like everything I read was a message to my wondering soul. Courtney E. Martin’s newsletter, and this post from artist Lisa Congdon about how, “Lately, though, I’ve been feeling like a don’t always have something to say that hasn’t already been said…” But/and then I listened to poet Maggie Smith on the JOMOcast (and immediately ordered her journal and new book, Keep Moving, from which the journal is inspired) and she was talking about the usefulness of working things out in public, about not having to feel like there is a divide between one’s public and private selves—and I get that. It’s everything to me.
And yet. I guess the idea of fashioning being into some kind of performance makes me tremendously uneasy right now. There is a certain self-consciousness to it that’s tripping me up, and it hasn’t always been this way, but maybe it’s just that I’m more conscious of all kinds of things than I’ve been in the past, my self just one item among them, and so it feels like a performance, whereas it didn’t used to?
Is hyper-conciousness a thing? Because maybe considering this is the beginning of articulating what I’m going through right now, picking up on all the vibes, and I’m looking for what’s real and solid instead of what’s trending, what’s distracting, what’s noise. On the sun on the table, I suppose, even when it’s not posted for everyone to see. On this blog, which is somewhat of a more private place.
What would happened if I really zoomed in, intent on focus? This day, this house, this moment. Right now?
January 7, 2022
The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, by Eva Jurczyk
Eva Jurczyk’s debut novel The Department of Rare Book and Special Collection ticks all my boxes—bookish mystery, rare book thieves, library setting, weirdo librarian characters, Toronto setting, and intriguingly feminist. Curiously, Jurczyk arrived at the idea for her book and her protagonist Liesl after she became a parent and began pondering the invisibility of women, specifically older women…and then she went and wrote a novel about a woman who’s about sixty, which isn’t the usual trajectory for a new mom/novelist, is all I’m saying.
And so Liesl was not who I was expecting, especially based on the book’s otherwise quite compelling cover which might mislead a reader (and it certainly did me) into thinking I wasn’t picking up a book about a character with decades of backstory behind her, a story about a woman in a long marriage with a grown daughter, a woman on the verge of retirement with plans of finally writing that book about gardening she’s been thinking about all these years.
But then plans get called off when the Director of the Rare Books Library (which may or may not be influenced by the Thomas Fisher…) where Liesl works is incapacitated by a stroke, and she has to step into acting in his role. Which her colleagues are put out by, never mind the university president with his ubiquitious bike helmet and obsequious regard for major donors. All of which would be annoying enough, but then Liesl begins to realize that things at the library are not what they seem, that any number of her colleagues could be keeping secrets, and then one of those colleagues goes missing, but no one wants Liesl to involve the police.
The bookish mystery here is fun and interesting, though it’s Liesl’s own story that’s most remarkable and compelling about this book, and I admire the deft way in which Jurczyk sets her character just past midlife (don’t tell any baby boomers I wrote that…) and yet manages to develop a rich and textured backstory without awkward exposition. Liesl’s relationship with her husband John is my very favourite part of this book, such a deep and sensitive portrayal of a long and complicated relationship. John has struggled with depression over their years together, the reader is able to understand, and I kept waiting for this to become a plot point (and so does Leisl, actually, ever aware of how the bottom can fall out) but (SPOILER ALERT) it really doesn’t.
I don’t know that I’ve ever read a novel before in which loving somebody with mental illness is incidental to the story, but also it informs our understanding of Liesl, and her experiences with John in the past will inform the challenges she encounters at work where she feels like she’s been stymied at every turn.
The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections was my first book of 2022, and it started off my literary year on such a high note. Even better? On January 21 at 1pm, I’ll be interviewing Jurczyk for her virtual event with the Toronto Public Library. You can register here if you’d like to attend. I’m really looking forward to it.
January 6, 2022
What I read on my holidays…
The end-of-year holidays is my very favourite reading period, when I shun new releases and top of the bestseller charts, and devote my time to smelly paperbacks I found in Little Free Libraries, novels I bought at used bookstores years ago with the best intentions but still haven’t read yet, and other books that have been sitting on my to-be-read shelf for far too long. It’s also the holiday where I’m not travelling, where my days are mostly full of hours to fill with reading (staying in bed for ages in the morning, reading all afternoon…) especially since it’s also the time of year where I mostly abandon the internet.
I love reading in the holidays because I get to finally make a dent in my epic to-be-read pile, to feel less overwhelmed by all the books before me and to get down to brass tacks. It was WONDERFUL.
Dear Exile, by Hilary Liftin and Kate Montgomery
I first read this book almost 20 years ago after stealing it from the youth hostel where I was living at the time, far across an ocean away from my own dear friends, including one that was named Kate. And so this story of two friends post-college on separate continents was very resonant, I recall. And then I mostly forgot about it…until I realized that my next novel, about two best friends, had definitely been informed by Dear Exile. And so I purchased a secondhand copy online and read it all again, and was bowled over by how extraordinarily good Liftin and Montgomery’s writing is. I don’t think anyone would ever publish that I sent my friends in a book. Also offers an extraordinary glimpse of late 90s dot.com work culture, whose tail end I had a sense of a few years later. A more innocent time. THE CYBERSEX!
*
When Things Fall Apart, by Pema Chodran
As I’ve written already, I rolled into the holidays in a mental health crisis, and so this title spoke to me when I encountered it on the shelves of the best store in the city. Definitely the book I needed in the moment—this book has showed me a glimpse of a world in which I don’t always need to be freaking out about what’s around the corner and instead just focussing on right now. Even if right now is hard.
*
Rocks Don’t Move, by Shari Kasman
Kasman and I have been sharing a swim lane on Mondays for a few months now (and we will again!), and after I read about her new book in The Toronto Star, I knew I had to have a copy. It was a remarkable book to read after When Things Fall Apart, actually, which its emphasis on subjectivity. What is a fact? What’s a feeling? An opinion? And what is community? This book grapples with these questions rather marvellously.
*
Sport, by Louise Fitzhugh
I either found this book in a Little Free Library or picked it up at a used bookstore this summer to add to my Louise Fitzhugh collection—and when it still felt like things were falling apart for me, to sit in my bathtub one Sunday night reading this while eating leftover fried chicken just felt like the greatest thing in the world.
*
Dirty Birds, by Morgan Murray
I met Murray in November when we both attended the Wordstock Sudbury Book Festival. Our hotel was as far away from the airport as was physically possible that weekend, and so we had lots of time to get to know each other in the airport van. Morgan Murray is notable for being a man who read my novel who is neither my relative nor a friend (though I might consider him one now—he’s wonderful). His debut novel was also nominated for the Leacock Prize and was such a delight to finally encounter. It has footnotes, AND cartoons. I really enjoyed it.
*
Voices in the Evenings, by Natalia Ginzburg
I’ve read a Natalia Ginzburg book over the past two winter holidays, and so was excited to read this one, which came out in English just this year. Truthfully, I loved it less than I’ve loved her other novels, but I loved them a lot, so that’s not saying much. She’s wonderful.
*
The Flatshare, by Beth O’Leary
I found this book in a Little Free Library this fall and knew I’d be looking for something light and cheerful. Like the Mhairi McFarlane book I read this summer, it was not as light as you think, but that’s probably why I liked it. Great character, some emotional complexity. Initially I was a bit suspicious that a novel about two flatmates who never meet would work…but it did!
*
The Ravine, by Phyllis Brett Young
Phyllis Brett Young’s The Torontonians is a beloved novel for me, and The Ravine is a noir novel she published under a pseudonym a few years later, reissued by Vehicule Press’s Ricochet Books with an introduction by Amy Lavender Harris, who was the whole reason I discovered The Torontonians in the first place. I really liked it—sinister, over the top, but with some interesting complexity and bit of a Shirley Jackson/Peyton Place England edge.
*
A Room Called Earth, by Madeleine Ryan
I spent a lot of early 2021 ordering books online from indie bookstores and this one was a title I threw into the order to make it worth my while. I read it on Christmas, which turned out to be perfect, because it was set at Christmas, albeit in Australia. Madeleine Ryan, who is autistic, writes about a character who herself is neurodiverse, though this is not made explicit in the text itself. Instead, the reader gets to see the world through the character’s unique perspective, which is extraordinary.
*
Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village, by Maureen Johnson
I gave this book to my husband for Christmas, as we’ve spent a lot of time watching Midsomer Murders together over the years, and it proved a lot of fun. Our daughter also read it and related because she’s a fan of Johnson’s Truly Devious series.
*
Orwell’s Roses, by Rebecca Solnit
I received Orwell’s Roses as a Christmas present, the latest from Rebecca Solnit, who’s become well known for her pamphletty essay collections on politics and feminism, but whose larger literary projects (especially informed by her background as a geographer) were how I fell in love with her work in the first place. In this delightful meandering book, she reflects on a garden of roses Orwell planted at his home in Wallingford, Oxfordshire, and how this and other factors complicate common perceptions of the writer. Orwell continues to be fascinating for his critique of the USSR and authoritarianism all the while not becoming a right-wing nutjob in response, which was the usual trajectory.
*
Turn, Magic Wheel, by Dawn Powell
I bought this book at a used bookstore years ago, and have been failing to pick it up for years. Dawn Powell published this in the 1930s and her obscurity has been lamented by such forces as Fran Lebowitz and Rory Gilmour. It is exquisite, sharp and clever, full of edges and surprises.
*
Eleanor and Park, by Rainbow Rowell
Rowell’s Attachments was one of my favourite books of last year, and everyone told me that I had to read Eleanor and Park, which I think we found at Value Village. And I really liked it.
*
If You Want to Make God Laugh, by Bianca Marais
Also so happy to finally read this novel by Bianca Marais, whose podcast has been a big part of my year.
*
My Mom Had an Abortion, by Beezus Murphy
And then this book arrived in the mail, which I’d supported through its Kickstarter—it was so well done, telling such an ordinary story that doesn’t get addressed enough—how many of us only exist at all because of an abortion. It’s a graphic novel geared to teens and manages to address what’s simple and complicated about abortion all at once.
*
To Say Nothing of the Dog, by Connie Willis
And omg, this book, this book!! Be still, by Dorothy L Sayers/Barbara Pym/Jumble Sale loving heart, all wrapped up in a bonkers time travel plot. This novel was a gift and such a perfect novel to be reading as the new year began. (Grateful to Lindsay for the recommendation!)
January 5, 2022
Shedding Stories
“Historically, you’d be more likely to find me evangelizing about the power of story, but these days, something else is happening. I’m shedding stories. I think people all over the country are. We’re turning away from trite, flat stories of the past (so much pain was redacted). We’re turning away from triumphant, entitled stories of the future (it requires so much denial). We’re admitting we are not authors in control, but unwitting characters, trying to ride waves of unknown narrative.
We’re settling into the small, fragile present. Into basic observation: this is my body, breathing in and out; this is my child, turning poker chips into macaroons; this is the feeling of my favorite sweatshirt and a 400-year-old tree and the light that emanates from a candle in a paper bag. This is my grief right beside my joy, my rage right beside my gratitude.”
January 5, 2022
Spring 2022 Books on the Radio
What a delight to return to CBC Ontario Morning today to talk upcoming books I’m looking forward to in the next few months. You can listen to my segment here—I come on at 42.30.
January 4, 2022
Gleanings: Happy New Year!
- But COVID predictions, like election predictions, are often mostly about escaping from the feeling of unease and unreality and uncertainty that dominates the current moment.
- Was I really grieving the marriage all that time? All those jokes, that mistake of identifying myself as cold, or hard-hearted? Grief? Really? It makes me weep for the woman I have been.
- I am hesitantly stepping into 2022, much like stepping onto a frozen pond, not sure if the ice is solid enough to hold me.
- In 2021 I read 49 books, and I loved them all.
- …and our hearts each beat probably around 100, 000 times and the light of the day got the teeniest of a fraction longer, because this earth we all live on is orbiting a sun out in a galaxy and universe beyond that which we can even fathom.
- But as we all know, being top of the class means very little later in life, with how you might actually live your life.
- That’s a gift of living in pandemic times, for those of us who’d imagined we had more control over things — we get to see and feel and know how precarious our plans were all along.
- In any case, I don’t think any book I’ve written has ended up being what I thought I was going to write.
- It’s possible that R will never get the cookie he wants since he’s fixated on a memory of a variation that cannot be repeated. I should also add that the challenge is entirely in my own head. It doesn’t matter to him whether I make the cookies or not. But if I make them, he will offer an opinion. That is our dynamic.
- What makes a house, a home? For starters, I would hope we can all agree it doesn’t have to be a house.
- I think, in some alternate universe, if the coat had been fine and never wrecked by moths, I wouldn’t want to wear it.
- Resolutions tend to be removing things from our life or ‘improving’ ourselves or how we do things. Bunk to that. Instead I want to focus on what I can add to my life to make it better, happier, more fulfilling. I want to focus on what I can do to bring more carefree joy to my life.
- This makes me question my own life’s ambition to write a biographical novel of Harriet Vane. But maybe that’s different because she is already a fictional character? I will have to ponder this…
- Today I whittled my inbox down to the essentials. I chased payments and worried over invoices. I put on a pot of beans. I tried to move gracefully from working in a quiet apartment with a scrappy mouse for company to navigating the converging energies of five whole humans at the end of their long days.
- I’ve found that these types of reading “goals”—the resolution to read books that challenge my expectations and complacency, that provide unexpected pleasures, that a small business believes in—have enriched my life in a way that “read all the XX nominees” or “read all the bestsellers” or “read XXX number of books” doesn’t.
- If I were to pick a word for the upcoming year, it would probably have to be contingency.
And one more (extra special) post! Kathy, whose excellent blog is Little Yellow Bungalow, wrote a really kind and generous post about her experience as part of Blog School’s MAKE THE LEAP course in September. My next course starts on the first of February, in just under a month. Sign up today to join us!
January 4, 2022
More Best Books
Maybe one of my New Year’s resolutions is to read more off the beaten track, just the way I did on my holiday break (more on that coming this week, you know you want it…). The above books were some of my favourite books I read last year that weren’t published last year. Each one made my reading year rich and interesting.
