October 21, 2024

Death of Persephone, by Yvonne Blomer

I walked home reading this book on Saturday evening, the setting sun turning the tall buildings east of us golden, and it felt like the book was casting a spell. I was a woman walking in the city reading a book about women walking in the city, a riff on the myth of Persephone told through poetry structured as a detective story, and this book was doing it all, the plot, the language, the allusions, the truth of it. Blomer’s Persephone in Death of Persephone is Stephanie, a young woman who’s grown up in the tunnels beneath Montreal where her Uncle H. runs a souvlaki stand, her story punctuated by case notes from Detective Inspector Boca, investigating a series of violent deaths by young women throughout the city. Each poem taken on its own is a marvel, colours ever-changing when it’s held up to the light, but they come together to take on the rhythm of a gripping crime novel, a fierce feminist tale and who dunnit is misogyny. From “Violence is a bone in the body”: metatarsal, metacarpal, maxilla,/ mandible. How violence bites.”

October 18, 2024

The Rich People Have Gone Away, by Regina Porter

I had no idea what I was getting into when I started reading THE RICH PEOPLE HAVE GONE AWAY, a Covid-era novel by Regina Porter, a book that came to my attention via Maris Kreizman’s wonderful substack. A novel whose first section begins with an encyclopedia definition of “door”: “barrier of wood, stone, metal, glass, paper, leaves, or a combination of materials, installed to swing, fold, slide, or roll in order to close an opening to a room or building,” the novel’s following two sections beginning with similar definitions of “doorframe” and “threshold.” And Porter’s doorway/opening to the novel itself, (which is to say, her book’s first paragraph): “Mr. Harper takes sex in doorways. Halts new lovers at the threshold of his front door. Left hand on shoulder. Right hand on hip. He searches the ninth-floor hallway for furtive eyes before pressing the whole of himself in the tender nook of his lover’s ass.” I mean, what now?

Nothing is what it seems in THE RICH PEOPLE HAVE GONE AWAY, set in March 2020 as the world has shut down, neither Mr. Harper himself, who is Theo, presumed suspicious when his young pregnant (white) wife Darla (a bassoonist) disappears on a hike near their cottage in upstate New York, nor the teen in the Cardi B t-shirt who seems to be loitering in Theo’s Park Slope building, nor Darla herself with her secret skills in hotwiring vehicles, or her father, who perished on 9/11. Porter is also an award-winning playwright, and the novel’s playful heteroglossia has those skills on display, resulting in a dynamic and shapeshifting text, full of tricks but never cheap ones, missing white lady/GONE GIRL tropes turned inside out and on their noses, and it’s all so interesting. The narrative moving swiftly through that strange and harrowing season (the teen in the Cardi B shirt’s mother is hospitalized with Covid; she comes off her ventilator; she goes back on her ventilator…) to late spring, late May, the teen boy’s phone blowing up, Minneaopolis, another threshold. “Did you see it?” No resolution. A story without end, but that is also what makes the novel particularly satisfying.

October 16, 2024

Another Year of the TURNING THE PAGE ON CANCER Read-a-thon

Five years ago, I embarked upon my very first TURNING THE PAGE ON CANCER fundraiser, and was in love with founder Samantha Price Mitchell (in the photos above) right out of the gate. First, because she was just lovely, and brave, and honest, and awesome, but also because she dreamed up a cancer fundraiser for those of us who’d rather not run (some of my favourite parts of the population, to be honest), for those of us who love nothing better than sticking our heads in a book, and who’ve been training our whole lives for such a thing as a “read-a-thon.”

I met Sam through my friend Melanie, who was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer in 2016, and who loved books as much as I do (we’d met online through Canada Reads in 2009!), connecting me with Turning the Page on Cancer, whose proceeds go toward Rethink, supporting research and better outcomes for women living with MBC through. Sam was also a book lover, and had just landed her dream job as a merchandiser at Indigo before her diagnosis, and I was so grateful to her for giving me this way to support my friend and raise money for a good cause. And through our online connection, Sam became a friend too, and I’m so happy to remain connected with her family and to be helping to carry her generous legacy on.

Sam died in July 2021. She was 30. Melanie died on the winter solstice that December. She was 45, a mother of three. Sam and Melanie both had so many books still to be read…

And so we’ll be reading for them, and if you’d like to join us, it’s not to late to sign up for your own read-a-thon. If the idea of spending EIGHT STRAIGHT HOURS READING is beyond your athletic abilities, then please donate to the campaign if you’re able.

October 16, 2024

Keep, by Jenny Haysom

I’ve been reading all over the place lately, out of necessity, sometimes seven books at at time, bits and pieces, and so it was quite delightful to fall into a novel for the first time in a long time, to read the whole thing in a day. I loved KEEP, by Jenny Haysom, a novel following her award-winning debut poetry collection DIVIDING THE WAYSIDE. KEEP is the story of two real estate stagers charged with packing up the life of Harriet, an elderly poet with dementia, who become entangled in the mess of her life. Although their own lives are not so tidy either—Jacob, in his early 20s, has just been dumped by the boyfriend he moved to Ottawa to be with, having tried and failed to conjure domestic bliss for them; Eleanor, 20-some years older, is dissatisfied with her own domestic arrangement, the small home she shares with her husband and three children altogether too confining, everybody relying on her labour to make it work, and she’s exhausting. KEEP is a novel about building home, about keeping house, about what life does to everybody’s best intentions, and the distance between the faces we present to the world and the realities we’re actually facing. The braided narrative is so well balanced, each character a vivid and engaging presence in the novel, and it’s interesting (and refreshing!) to encounter a book presenting three different generations together and the genuine connections between them.

October 16, 2024

Love is a Mixtape

At the turn of the century, almost all of the romantic love I had to give was unrequited, and the only problem with that (in retrospect) was that I never got to realize my dream of having a boyfriend come along to digitize my vast collection of mixed tapes, and then burn them onto CDs. And I suppose I could have done like Dalloway and digitized the mixtapes myself, but I didn’t have my own internet connection back then, let alone a CD burner, and besides, it used to take entire afternoons to download half a song, and burning a CD could take even longer, and the only people with patience for such projects were the kinds of emotionally stunted, technically-inclined dorks that I tended to have crushes on, and none of them ever cared about me enough to do so.

So my trove of mixtapes was lost to time, from “Britt’s Mix 93” to the ska tape our friend Laura made in 1997, that very random tape I made in Grade 10 that went from April Wine’s “I Wouldn’t Want to Lose Your Love” to Alannah Myles’ “Lover of Mine,” and that most iconic Summer of ‘99 tape whose Side B began with Sophie B. Hawkins’ “As I Lay Me Down” to Mariah Carey’s “Always Be My Baby” (and “Angels” by Robbie Williams in there somewhere).

And yes, it’s true that if any of those CD burner-owning boys I’d fancied had ever managed to love me back, the attraction might have petered out around the time they discovered the extent of my affinity for soft rock. The one guy I did go out with during this period didn’t have a CD burner either, but when I gave him a tape that included Heather Nova’s “London Rain (Nothing Heals Me Like You Do),” he was really mean about it, which should have been a red flag—nobody puts a track from the Dawson’s Creek soundtrack in the corner. (Full disclosure: his mixtape for me was really cool, introducing me to music I love to this day, but he was not very nice in the end.)

Mixtapes, for me, in the 1990s, were almost like a scrapbook, compiled in real time. My Sony Sports Walkman was always nearby, and I’d be listening to the tape-in-progress, removing the tape from my deck only to add to it, taping something off a friend’s CD, recording a song off the radio, or from somebody’s parents’ record collection. And then once the tape was complete, it would be titled and dated, a record of time, much of the music not actually contemporary, assembled by chance, but that would become my soundtrack as I made my way through the world, foam headphones ever-present on my ears (at least until I stepped on the headset and broke it, which happened all the time).

My husband never made me a mixtape. We met in 2002, and he’d already embraced the future, a never-to-be-obsolete technology called the minidisc (ha ha) and he brought me on board, for which he still regularly apologizes. He must have made me a mix-minidisc, but I don’t remember what was on it, mostly because there was so much else going on at the time, our separate lives converging, the beginning of forever. In 2005, under the impression of an iconic ad, we each purchased an ipod shuffle (catchphrase: “Life is random”), which was the start of the end of our relationship with physical media (although we still own an entire shelf unit of CDs).

But the ipod shuffle would not be the the end of us sharing music together, on road trips, in the kitchen doing dishes. My husband has a Spotify playlist called “The Kerry List” that is 2 hours and 26 minutes long, specially curated at the intersection of our tastes, and while there’s no Mariah Carey, every single track is one that makes me exclaim, “Tune!” at the opening strains, and to me there is nothing more generous.

Including “London Rain (Nothing Heals Me Like You Do).”

Love is a mixtape, indeed.

(Read on to find great mixtape book recommendations!)

October 16, 2024

BOOKSPO Season Two

7/10 episodes of the BOOKSPO podcast are up now (with more to come on the next three Wednesdays). I’m also so pleased to report that the podcast is now available on Spotify, along with Apple Podcasts, Substack, and (pretty much) everywhere else you get your podcasts.

Guests so far are Corinna Chong, author of the Giller-longlisted BAD LAND; Ayelet Tsbari, author of SONGS FOR THE BROKENHEARTED; Alice Zorn, author of COLORS IN HER HANDS; Marissa Stapley, author of THE LIGHTNING BOTTLES; Suzy Krause, author of I THINK WE’VE BEEN HERE BEFORE; Jennifer Whiteford, author of MAKE ME A MIXTAPE; and Anne Hawk, author of THE PAGES OF THE SEA. More to come!

October 15, 2024

Toxemia, by Chistine McNair

TOXEMIA‘s gorgeous cover (a collage by @rhinocerospoems) sets the reader up for what’s to come, the literary bricolage, a hybrid of memoir and poetry. “To Lady Sybil,” the book is dedicated, the character from DOWNTOWN ABBEY who died of pre-eclampsia in the show’s third season (after which I refused to watch any more because *how could they have done that?!*). Christine McNair blends high and low cultures, arts and science, words and images, memoir and research to tell the story of her life as a woman with a body, a body that is so often wrong or dangerous, her symptoms and experience disbelieved, disregarded. McNair’s experiences of pre-eclampsia during her two pregnancies don’t just have consequences for her mental and physical health in the years afterwards, but also tap into her experiences with depression, self-harm, and eating disorders. “I am now more afraid of telling doctors my history,” she writes. Though with TOXEMIA, she’s made art of that story, a moving and compelling narrative, strange and edgy, unsettling. Unputdownable.

October 10, 2024

The Accomplice, by Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson

I will admit that I first picked up 50 Cent’s debut novel because I found the idea of a novel by 50 Cent really funny, but when I opened up THE ACCOMPLICE, I was surprised from the very first line: “Nia Adams doesn’t have a green thumb, but waters her garden diligently, cares for the soil, tends to the flowers, and tames the weeds. Her favourite perennial is the Lupinus texensis, the Texas blue bonnet. The bright blue petals are the showpiece of her front yard. The flowers thrive on full sunlight and damp soil and are resilient during dry spells. Like Nia, they’re survivors.”

With delight, I can tell you that I loved this book, the story of Nia Adams, the first Black female Texas Ranger, whose fate becomes bound up with that of Vietnam-vet turned thief Desmond Bell after a bank robbery goes very strange with nothing of value appearing to be stolen. The lines between good guy and bad guy, and right and wrong, becomes blurred as we learn more about Bell’s story and as Adams comes to understand her colleagues and the institution she works for.

Written in partnership with crime novelist Aaron Philip Clark, THE ACCOMPLICE is a deft thriller with proper twists and turns, and is absolutely gripping. The only thing that tripped me up was some fairly gruesome violence in a couple of parts, but thankfully the story doesn’t linger there, instead tackling big questions about history, race, power and the possibility of redemption. And 50 Cent even makes a cameo in the text, or at least his music does, when “P.I.M.P.” is being played on somebody’s karaoke machine—Desmond Bell unplugs it.

It’s all a little ridiculous, but I’d be disappointed if it wasn’t.

October 9, 2024

Gleanings

• In 1967, my mother was 22 and worked at a college library in Michigan. She took a payday loan to travel to Juarez, Mexico. That was very much my mother and how she took care of things. She was like Mrs. Dalloway in that way—she would buy the abortion herself.  
• I like my hands. They’re weathered from the sun and from washing dishes and bathing babies and dipping sponges in clay water. They’re weathered from planting marigolds in the summer (to keep away the squirrels) and forgetting to wear gloves in the winter.
• I have been staring at these wounds for some time, these repairs, the way things hold together.
• I would like to be librarian again for another year if you can pay more.
• Watch for weirdness.
• But I had to cut them to get to the heart of the story. I called it “the lean edit” and most of it took place over a two-week period when I was watching a friend’s house and cat in Portland in July of 2023. I just sat down and looked at the book and envisioned the core story and went from there. But I also said to myself, “If I miss these characters when they’re gone I’ll put them back in,” but I didn’t. I really like my books to feel tightly crafted. I give the reader exactly the information they need.
• But the other day, I walked like a freak – with nothing plugged into my ears! Imagine. And wow, I realized I missed listening to my own thoughts. I listen to my thoughts all the time, while doing chores etc. But internal thoughts take a different shape when you’re out walking, especially in nature. I don’t know why that is, but it is.
• I am fascinated by all things miniature, especially handmade tiny food or tiny furniture. I remember yearning desperately for a dollhouse when I was a child, but we couldn’t afford one. Now I’d rather look at OTHER people’s dollhouses because we don’t have the space in our house, plus I’m leery about falling down the rabbit hole of making my own miniature furniture.
• And as an aside, it’s funny that we associate the novel, the Count, the bats, the entire thing with Halloween, with the dark seasons yet the story itself begins in May. The majority of the book’s action takes place in spring and summer—the seasons of new life and budding blossoms, warm evenings and dazzling sunlight—and only concludes in early November. A lot happens in a mere six months!
• Maybe I’m intrigued by East Germany because it represents, in nation format, what is true for all of us. We can’t return to the world we grew up in; it doesn’t exist anymore. We’re always in the present, moving forward, and always trying to hold on, in various ways, to parts of the past.
• I could tell you how I long for elder mentors in my life, and how the other day when I heard a peer lament, “I’m getting old and fat,” I found myself thinking about my Grandma who was old and fat, and her mom who was old and fat and her Mom’s Mom who was, well you get the picture, and how I thought that we really could use some more old and fat Grandmas around here.
• I’m not old, white, or rich. I don’t think I fit anyone’s expectations of a sailor, as evidenced by the looks of surprise I get when I bring it up to family, friends, and fellow writers. Their assumptions exhaust me, and I don’t always have the energy to explain how I began racing, how active the sport of sailing is on the Great Lakes, or the special atmosphere at Queen City. As a result, some people have known me for years and not known that I’ve sailed. In the mirror is a petite Asian woman with a round, serious face who looks like she spends more time in the library than doing rigorous physical activity. Peering closer, I see the bruises on my shins and my foul-weather gear hanging on hooks. But on occasion, someone corners me with their curiosity. “I hear that you sail,” they say, and the words spill out of me.
• Draw history through the eye of the longest needle in your basket, the twined thread—flax stem, inner bark of a pine, pounded nettle, strands of a coarse-haired sheep—and make the seam to hold the bag together. In it, the story of the blood clot, the blue lane of the pool, the tiny merganser chicks light as the air itself. This is yours, to give away or to keep.
• And so this weekend, I will think about that man who, on Oct 15, 2009, 10 days after his 58th birthday, met me when he fixed my fridge, changing his trajectory for the rest of his life. And mine with it.
• I guess all of this is to say—this house has been a place of love and accompaniment, heartbreak and endurance, transformation and steadfastness. We wish you all those things in this next season of its stewardship, and whatever more you would like it to be. Change is hard and constant and oh-so-beautiful. We hope this one wraps you in its arms and makes you feel cozy and known and nourished. We couldn’t imagine better people to pass on this little glowing box of light.

October 8, 2024

The Lodgers, by Holly Pester

“If you’re unsettled, you’re unsettling,” the narrator tells us in THE LODGERS, the debut novel by UK poet Holly Pester (and also the debut novel published by Assembly Press here in Canada). It was a novel I wanted to like based on its premise (a woman returns to her hometown to live in a sublet, all the while reflecting on the person who’s moved into her just-vacated previous quarters) and also based on its cover design (“For some reason I ate [the sandwich], I wasn’t happy. But as a result the triangular box was empty, with an inside that resembled, like sarcasm, the one I was in. I looked inside. It had a window too.”) but very styled slightly abstract fiction that refuses to show its hand isn’t always my favourite thing (so many cool books I tried to love, but couldn’t) so I wasn’t sure how THE LODGERS might go over. It isn’t that I don’t like being unsettled per se, but instead that I want my novels to add up to something, being cool is not enough, but this one does add up. Strange, disorientating, and indeed unsettling, but it has a hook for me to hang my hat, metaphorically speaking. Our unnamed narrator’s new sublet is around the corner from the home of her mother, Moffa, a home to which the narrator still has a backdoor key, letting herself in from time to time once she’s back in town, but Moffa is never there. And neither is Kav, the supposed inhabitant of the second bedroom in her sublet, whose arrival could come at any time, the narrator never able to relax into her new abode because of this anticipation. And meanwhile she addresses the new inhabitant of the room she’d left behind, a room that was only ever hers between the hours of 6pm and 9am because otherwise her landlady operating her massage business of the space, and the narrator found comfort in belonging to this home, however tangentially, and her connection to the landlady’s child, the suggestion of a stable domestic situation that our narrator herself has never known. This is a novel that goes in circles, the way the narrator’s life seems to be, every path leading back again to a home that never was, poignant, comic, and biting at once.