April 16, 2020

The Union of Smokers, by Paddy Scott

I confess that I cheated a bit with this one. A book about a twelve-year-old boy, “the heroic last day in the life” according to the copy on the back, and these days I just don’t have the stomach for heartbreak, so I read the last page first to see if this was a tragedy that was survivable—for me or the character, or both, perhaps—and I determined that it was. I could take this.

So I knew what I was getting into with Paddy Scott’s The Union of Smokers, is what I mean, but did I really? In this story of Kaspar Pine, a farm kid from the outskirts of Quinton, ON, which bears an uncanny resemblance to the town of Trenton, right down to the swing bridge and the creosote plant with a propensity for catching on fire.

Not everyone takes Kaspar seriously, in fact nobody really does, except Kaspar himself. (“Getting snorted at by women is bound to happen if you’ve learned your entire repertoire of charming manoeuvres from senior citizens.”) His mother’s whereabouts are unknown, and he was brought up by his father in a kind of deprivation, until circumstances changed and he was brought to live with his maternal grandparents on a farm outside of town. They, at least, provided him with the stability and love that had been missing from his life, and a sense of identity in farming culture, which most of the people who live in town don’t properly understand.

Kaspar, a prolific smoker thanks to the collection in his butt baggie, bikes into town to replace a canary (twice) and here is where the book begins, when he meets up with Mary Lynn, love of his life, just a couple of years older, with whom years before he’d once shared a dramatic adventure while dressed in a cowboy costume, but she doesn’t remember. The two of them become yoked, and it turns out their bond is even deeper than that, although not in the way that Kaspar longs for, and Mary Lynn herself has no idea what to make of this wacky weirdo kid who won’t leave her alone and ends up using her bra as a tourniquet, but not in a sexual way.

An eccentric portrait of small town life; a narrative voice that gets in your head and proves unforgettable, a story that manages to be utterly devastating and uplifting at once thanks to a character so strangely and richly imagined, with the most indefatigable sense of himself and his story and his worth—no matter what anybody else thinks, and you’re going to take his side. Not to mention be sorry when it’s finally time to leave it. I really loved this book.

PS I picked up the book finally after its virtual launch at 49thShelf. Throughout this month and next, we’re spotlighting new releases that deserve our attention at a moment when launches and festivals have been cancelled. Hope you can pay attention to what we’re doing here and do your best to support these books and authors.

April 15, 2020

Books on the Radio

Books are giving me life right now, at a moment when life itself is kind of thin, and so it was a pleasure to speak on CBC Ontario Morning today about five books that have been good for my spirits lately, as inspiration, distraction, and reasons for hope. You can listen again to my recommendations here—I come in at 44:30.

April 14, 2020

Gleanings

• Not everything is a lesson. Not everything that happens is for you to analyze right as it’s happening.
• Though I was raised Catholic, my family actually worshipped at the Church of Frugality.
• I was grateful the book was there, even if I couldn’t give it the attention it deserved.
• Maybe I can write about what life is like when you feel like it is slowly ebbing away from you and some days you wonder why you are holding on so tightly.
• I wondered, myself, where is this surge of joyfulness coming from—not to be mistaken for the lack of concern for everyone that is and could be affected by COVID-19—and there is not one reason. I actually, counted 19.
• Love of reading in the time of corona
• Women Talking is itself a kind of manifesto, I suppose, though it does not read like a statement of intent so much as an inquiry, almost an autopsy.
• There’s never been a better time to enjoy the calm of green spaces. As the Chinese proverb goes, Life begins the day you start a garden.
• My fascination with loos began in early childhood, when a trip to the powder room felt like a flirtation with independence.
• So, I’m not. Nimble at catching my thoughts, that is. Quite the opposite. Mine are like dragonflies, abundant, right there in front of me but impossible to corral
• Yeast privilege is something that before the pandemic you may have thought you didn’t want to have because it sounds itchy.
• if there’s one thing we are good at here, it is staying the fuck home.
• As long as we can find (not just find but SEE and grab hold of) the tiny moments, the patches of light, the glimmers, then the days will continue to be ok.
• No, this is not what being retired is like
• The kind of book that feels like letters from a favourite aunt.
• Every picture a couple posts of a delicious meal they cooked together makes me wince with pain, as I eat sardines out of a can with my fingers.
• One thing, though which has really surprised me, is that I am much more of an introvert than I ever thought I was…
• It might be the least of our troubles, but curating the internet has never been trickier.
• But sometimes I’m kind of, I don’t know, done? I want to say, “Shhh.”
• I can solve nothing, I can save no one, but dammit, I can mail Patrick a copy of The Night Watchman.
• Two very different kinds of days and for me, two very different ways of reacting to each during these stressful, odd, pandemic days.
• You can’t be happy all the time, and you can’t be grateful for all moments, but all moments are opportunities for gratitude.
• It takes a true bibliophile to appreciate the desire not just to read books, but to surround oneself with them, to collect them, to pile them on shelves until the wood bows from the weight.
• I thought of how easily one adjusts to solitude. It doesn’t mean I don’t get lonely.

Coming in June: LET’S GET TOGETHER! A guided and community driven experience for novice and advanced bloggers.

April 13, 2020

“I’m in the dark, feeling my way…”

“I don’t know where it goes from here. I’m in the dark, feeling my way… Maybe my actions…are futile, I have no way of knowing… The future, in my world, has always been obscure. I have come to appreciate its darkness. To see far ahead—to know exactly what is to happen—robs us of unexpected sparks.” —Cordelia Strube, Misconduct of the Heart

My favourite restaurant has pivoted. After a month of being closed, they’ve reopened selling groceries and meal-kits, and because they are my favourite, because their food is delicious, and because they’re probably the first place I’m going to go “once this is all over” so I want to do my part to make sure there’s still a place to go to, I made my order minutes after their new website launched, and I was struck by the automated response I received. A response I’m sorry now I didn’t write down verbatim, but it was something along the lines of, “Okay, we have no idea how all this is actually going to work. We’re still figuring everything out as we go.”

And it was so refreshing to read that, and resonated with me on all kinds of levels. It was an honesty that few other businesses/institutions/people have been willing to engage with these last few weeks, understandably enough, I guess. But it was the first time I felt like I was hearing from somebody who was actively engaging with reality. (It is not a surprise either that someone actively engaging with reality has done such a fantastic job of re-imagining a way to have their business work and serve their customers at such an unprecedented moment in time.)

Nobody knows. Such an incredible, impossible thing. Literally incredible, even, if you delve into the responses on politicians’ social media posts or read that forwarded email from your cousin about how Covid-19 is actually a biological weapon intentionally released by Saudi Arabian desert camels. Or even the outraged tweets and op-eds by pundits who seems to be confused how science happens and how knowledge works, accusing public health officials of more flip-flopping than poor John Kerry back in 2004. Who seem to think there’s a conspiracy theory about why our understanding of the virus has changed since mid-February, and are just as frustrated as the rest of us as to the lack of answers—how has this happened? Why’s it so bad? Why weren’t we prepared? When will it end? There’s not even anybody properly to blame, though that’s not stopped an awful lot of people from trying. How do you tell a story after all when there’s no certainty? No answers?

I’ve given up properly following the story. The answers aren’t there yet. After a straight week of losing my mind, refreshing Twitter over and over and desperately worrying about the fate of Tom Hanks, watching the numbers climb—I stopped. I don’t get paid enough to tune into daily press conferences and watching mounting death tolls. It serves nobody if I do, me least of all. So I stopped freaking out and returned to reading books instead, which were solid and contained. There were answers there and even lessons applicable to our current situation, uncanny signs sometimes. Of course, I read the weekend papers when they were delivered to my door, and looked at the news here and there on the news page my phone suggested for me (though the algorithm figured me out and soon it was all about sourdough bread). I paid some attention to the world outside, followed Boris Johnson’s medical journey quite closely, have myself been following public health guidelines so my ignorance puts nobody at risk, and I have read some extraordinary stories—read “Sirenland,” by Briallen Hopper. Read the Toronto Star’s Bruce Arthur on Bobcaygeon. There’s incredible journalism going on by now, but it’s being told by the people who are willing to accept that we don’t have answers yet and that it will be some time before we do.

“Okay, we have no idea how all this is actually going to work. We’re still figuring everything out as we go.”

It is interesting, is how I can frame it on my better days, when the sun is shining and the sky is blue, when I wake up and look forward to something ahead, even if it’s just discovering how my sourdough loaf has risen overnight. It is interesting to see so much learning happening, to see science in action, that there is no real definitive authority on what’s going on right now, that we really are—from internationally renowned health experts to the guy stocking cans in the grocery store—literally making it up as we go along. We are learning how fast things can change, how connected we all are, how essential science really is, that learning never quits and there’s always more, and the world is more amazing, unfathomable, untameable, random and strange that even the smartest of us will ever properly understand.

It’s also humbling—in a way that many of us could stand to learn a lesson from. Lessons that could change the world.

There was never certainty anyway. From the quote by Elizabeth Gilbert, which I came upon by way of my fave podcast, “You are afraid of surrender because you don’t want to lose control. But you never had control; all you had is anxiety.” The illusion of it all finally exposed, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Even though it’s hard and it hurts.

April 9, 2020

A Conversation With Tara Henley

Like many of you, I found myself unable to read as this crisis arrived in our lives, perpetually in a panic, scrolling news feeds instead. Not being able to read, however, only compounded the trouble I was in, because if I’m not a reader, then who am I? And it was Tara Henley’s new memoir LEAN OUT: A MEDITATION ON THE MADNESS OF MODERN LIFE that brought me back to books again, a gorgeously written memoir that is perfectly timed for our current moment. Henley was kind enough to answer some of my questions about the book, so please read on to learn about how Madeleine L’Engle’s books expanded her vision for her life, what are the limits of self-care, and how “right now we’re seeing in stark terms the price we all pay for inequality.” I love this book so much.

April 8, 2020

How to Pronounce Knife, by Souvankham Thammavongsa

Make your book pink. Make your book slim. Put a nail file on the cover, and have your reader forget that it’s actually a blade, and this is how you do it, create a story collection that seems unassuming but will cut you with its razor edge. The “Yes, Sir” delivered in a tone that really means, “Fuck you!” And it gets under your skin, of course, a book like this, Souvankham Thammavongsa’s fifth book after four acclaimed poetry collections and her debut fiction, the short story collection How to Pronounce Knife. (Full disclosure: the writer and I were classmates twenty years ago, and I since followed her career with admiration.)

These stories are subtle, wonderful and jarring. They range between those from the perspective of children of immigrant families from Laos (reflective of Thammavongsa’s own background), children who are know before many of their classmates the way that parents are actually fallible after all, that they struggle and have limits, and stories of people awkwardly navigating social and romantic mores, failing to fit in with convention (which is another way of not failing at all—especially in a story).

In the title story, a child takes her father’s guidance on the correct way to pronounce “knife,” and learns the lessons of a lifetime in the process. In “Paris,” a woman who works in a chicken factory dreams of getting a nose job—and experiences vicarious heartbreak. A seventy-year-old woman has an affair with her young neighbour in “Slingshot,” a story with the most perfect, powerful ending.

I LOVED “Randy Travis,” the story of a family who immigrates from Laos, and the mother falls in love with country music, which helps define for her a different kind of life she desires for herself. In “Mani-Pedi,” a failed boxer who ends up with no choice but to take a job at his sister’s nail salon—but who insists on keeping his dreams. “Chick-a-Chee” is about one family’s embrace of a bizarre local ritual. “The Universe Would Be So Cruel,” awesome and heartbreaking, about a man who runs a small print shop and has an uncanny knack for knowing the future for the couples whose invitations he creates. A child considers the mystery of her mother in “The Edge of the World.” A school bus driver realizes he’s losing his wife in “The School Bus Driver.” A mother watches her daughter from afar in “You Are So Embarrassing.” The story “Ewwrrrkk” begins, “The summer I turned eight, my great-grandmother showed me her boobs.” An accountant looks for love (and potential clients) in “The Gas Station.” A childhood friendship is recalled in “A Far Distant Thing.” And a young girl goes to work with her mother in the final story, “Picking Worms.”

The stories are quiet but powerful, the sentences extraordinary, the volume as a whole is such a pleasure to read and to discover.

April 8, 2020

What’s Your Blogging Challenge?

Looking for a diversion? How about a quiz? In which I nail your biggest challenge in blogging, and give suggestions for how to overcome that challenge and achieve your blogging goals.

PS Want to be part of Blog School event in June?

April 7, 2020

Gleanings

• how to make a log cabin while sheltering in place
• The exceptional does not faze us.
• “Gentle,” I told myself as I worked. As, I recognized, I have been telling myself for several weeks.
• the thing has to be read to be appreciated, otherwise I could as easily say frogs, bulrushes, English sparrow, landscape, polar ice, sunlight, rain, thunder, a gravel path, the egg cases of a praying mantis, the thin membrane of an onion, that sort of thing.
• I believe this is how we will all build the future of journalism: person by person, reporter by reporter, opportunity by opportunity, story by story.
• Is it possible to think of the time right now in some ways as holy or sacred? Where can we locate our “collective effervescence?”
• It would be easy to feel hopeless.
• Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out.
• Given the times, given that we are keeping our distance, given that more people than ever are strolling along my usual routes by the river and other green spots in the city, I’ve been tromping along backstreets, down alleys, through what others might call the uglier parts of town.

Cool New Blog School Offering Coming Soon:

LET’S GET TOGETHER in June 2020

April 6, 2020

We’ve Still Got Weekends

I wrote about “observing the weekend” on Instagram the other day, about the ways that doing so has helped to frame our lives in what is now the fourth week of quarantine during the time of Covid-19. Though it’s probably a good thing to do even at the best of times, and something that I didn’t do enough as I scrambled to finish my work during the brief hours my children’s school day provided and then had to fit in an extra shift or two on Sunday afternoons. And while my time to work is no more plentiful than it ever was (and now steeped in distraction, and anxieties, and I keep insisting on making elaborate lunches), the weekend has become a sacred thing.

On Friday afternoon, I turned my laptop off and didn’t turn it back on until Monday morning. All the weekday rules thrown out the window—dressed and breakfasted by 9am? Pshaw. If you’re not still in your pyjamas on Sunday, 1:30 pm, then you’re doing it wrong. All the breakfasts should be photogenic and totally delicious, and you’re only allowed to read the news if you’re reading an actual NEWSpaper, though you have to read the comics first. The last two Saturdays, we’ve ordered takeout, because a person should only have to orchestrate one photogenic meal a day. There has been a whole lot of sloth, and togetherness, and video games, and reading, which is a pleasure and a break, and makes you even want to pull yourself together once Monday morning rolls around.

Even better than observing the weekend though? Adding a little bit of weekend to the week. A few weeks back, Harriet was having a pretty tough time with our new arrangement of hiding in our house for the foreseeable future in fear of a deadly contagion (kids these days!) and decided that special breakfasts on Wednesday would add a little bit of the magic and delight that has retreated from our lives. We’ve also curled up for a family movie on Monday nights the last two weeks, which would never have happened in any other universe, and seems like a lovely kind of indulgence in this upside-down world.

April 2, 2020

No More Nice Girls, by Lauren McKeon, and Lean Out, by Tara Henley

Although almost everything I was reading a month ago seems kind of irrelevant now, Lauren McKeon’s No More Nice Girls feels like it could be an exception. This underlined by the number of Canadian politicians and public health officials who are women and spearheading efforts to fight and control what’s going on right now, women we are turning to for answers and reassurance, one of whom, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, shows up early in McKeon’s book as as “a new kind of power that’s completely, deliberately at odds with a very old, very masculine one.”

In her book, McKeon imagines what might be possible with a different kind of power, and writes about ways that people are imagining such things already, with all-women co-working spaces, the #MeToo movement, “identity politics of lonely, angry men” as a backlash to women’s power. She writes about how conventional power doesn’t tend to work for women when they achieve it, corporate achievement as an example, where the women at the top still have to contend with the same challenges that all women do—sexism, harassment, discrimination, violence, a gender pay gap. The ways in which women have to be “better than perfect” to be accepted, while any guy in a poor fitting suit seems to fit the bill. And the limits of #GirlBoss kind of power, which is the kind of individualized, status-quo sustaining power that the patriarchy likes.

It’s difficult to synopsize McKeon’s book, whose range is so wide. She writes about race and representation; economics and federal budgets; gender and the media; how technology affects our lives and what it means that so much of technology is created by men; feminist cities; online trolling (McKeon is author of F-Bomb: Dispatches from the War on Feminism, which I read and loved in 2017); and about numerous and inspiring ways that women all over the world are raising the bar and changing the narrative on traditional notions of what a life of a woman ought to look like. It’s an incisive and inspiring read.

*

I read No More Nice Girls in “the before times” and then was unable to read anything properly for a couple of weeks, as the world before my eyes was changed into a surreal and disturbing reality. And the book that finally brought me back to reading was Tara Henley’s Lean Out: A Meditation on the Madness of Modern Life. (Full disclosure: Henley wrote a kind and generous review of my novel back in 2017. We also share an editor. Neither of these factors are why I’m so obsessed with her book, but are definitely worth noting.)

Reader, this book was a balm, as it was always meant to be—but it meant so much more than it would have even a month ago. Suffering from physical symptoms of anxiety in 2016 after a decade of living in the big city and working in journalism, Henley reached a breaking point and realized that things would have to change—but also that she was limited as to what change was possible to her as an individual, this becoming even more apparent after she moves back to her hometown Vancouver and is confronted with the city’s unaffordability. Does modern life truly have to be like this, Henley wonders? A less solipsistic Eat, Pray, Love is how I am thinking about this book.

Lean Out is rich with reporting, but underlined by Henley’s own story and family history. (It’s also gorgeously written and inspired by the works of Madeleine L’Engle, which meant a lot to me after My Year of Vicky Austin.) She writes about alternatives to the way we do work, connect with nature, eat food, make and spend money, live online, combat loneliness, find community, and make our homes. Arriving at not definitive answers, but instead broadening the range of what is possible for a more fruitful way of living both as individuals and as a society. And, as with McKeon’s book, it all comes down to inequality in the end—data shows that unequal societies, Henley writes, make life demonstrably worse for everybody, even those who are at the “top.”

Which is something all of us should keep in mind as we think about what kind of world we want to live in “when all this is over.” I am so grateful to these authors who are already doing the work of imagining new and better ways of being.

*Both these books are included on a Books With Vision list I created at 49thShelf. And an amazing Q&A with Henley will be up on 49thShelf in about a week. Stay tuned. And buy her book in the meantime—you will be glad you did.