Reader Rabid

Sunday Reading

2011-10-16T15:54:00.000-04:00

With cold, fally weather arriving at last, our living room has become a much cosier place. (Some furniture rearrangement helped; and the new music-playing device we acquired using Air Miles.) Now all I want to do is read. Add that to Sunday afternoon and a damn good book, and I can barely tear myself away to type this. (Helps that I needed to update my reading device and now might as well let it charge.)

So, the book is The Sterkarm Handshake by Susan Price. I found it in a “Best British Books” list for young people, the end result of several link hops from Fuse#8. There’s the tiniest SF device—a time and dimension machine, all nicely explained so that we don’t have to worry about things done in the past affecting the present—and then it’s part spec and part historical fiction. We’re sometimes in the 21st century, with the organization that built the machine, and sometimes in the 16th century, in a wild borderland between that day’s England and Scotland, populated by violent, vengeful descendants of Vikings. Our heroine, a disregarded “fat girl” in the 21st century, is living with the Sterkarms, the most vengeful of the lot, and reporting back to her employers—and also coming to love the Sterkarms, who regard her highly and expect her to marry the flower of the flock, the chieftain’s son Per. She loves him, and in such a messy, honest way—this book has Outlander beat, hands down.

Now, before I forget, I purposely left The Best Laid Plans lying on the coffee table last weekend when my father-in-law came to visit, and over the weekend he read the whole thing. He loved it, as I thought he would, and I thank Terry Fallis for providing him with much entertainment and smiles.

Also, a tip of the hat to Sister, for giving me Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife by Linda Berdoll. I had to promise that I was no Austen purist before she gave it to me. It was definitely entertaining, based on the notion that behind closed doors and properly wed, Darcy and Elizabeth are as passionate toward each other as they are about their self-respect in polite company. So, very salty reading, all couched in Austen-like language. The author managed the latter fairly well, though I think she used “hence” too much and not always properly, and lost her grip on lay-lie when faced with accouchement (laying-in—ouch!). She managed a neat plot trick: when their passion may be getting in the way of procreation, Lizzy and Darcy are separated by the Napoleonic Wars for just the time it takes to grow and deliver two healthy babes. Nice!

Best Lied Plans

2011-10-05T18:40:00.000-04:00

So, realizing I wasn’t enjoying The Best Laid Plans by Terry Fallis (I wanted to, I really did) I dismissed the idea of attending the book group meeting at which it would be discussed, feeling that not only would I have nothing to contribute to the discussion, I would also no doubt be inwardly seething. I wanted it to be funnier; also, Fallis erected a glass house when he had two of his characters be grammar purists. Fallis, you have to LIE low; and people get put through the WRINGER. The humour was stuffy, and here’s why: because (in the style of which his narrating character explicitly approves) he didn’t use one word when he could use many more than that.

Thank you for letting me get that off my chest; on to Ashes, Ashes by Jo Treggiari (can’t see that name without thinking about Friends’ pal Joey). This was one of those books I read for therapy, dealing as it does with the scenery of my deepest anxieties. It is a YA disaster romance, set in a drowned New York City, when only 1 in a million people have survived hemorraghic smallpox. A crazy scientist, a hot freak of nature, a jealous princess and the guy who won’t declare himself—it was pretty good.

And just for a lark, I checked Molly Bang’s Living Sunlight: How Plants Bring the Earth to Life out of the library. What an enthusiastic delivery of one of the most vital processes on Earth. You can never begin too early to understand the importance of photosynthesis and its partner, respiration to Life on our planet: Molly and her partner Penny Chisholm do a great job of making it comprehensible. I never saw so clearly how glucose is so basic: how I love seeing the carbon and hydrogen and oxygen lined up like that in the chemical expression of its makeup. So clear and beautiful! My one difficulty with the book is the design, particularly as applied in the Notes section at the end: the yellow vibrates horribly against the blue page, and I pity any child or adult with vision challenges who wants to read it.

Birthday Books

2011-09-22T10:19:00.000-04:00

A Good and Old Friend gave me True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey for my birthday last month. Was it ever good! As the reviewer put it, “you can pat yourself on the back for reading a clever book at the same as you’re titillated by adventure, intrigue, murder, love and lust.” Well, love maybe, but the lust is not particularly lusty, unless it’s a lust for stickin’ it to the the man, outlaw style. I loved the tragedy of Carey’s Kelly, how at every step he’s pushed along in a direction he’s not really choosing, from the time he becomes an outlaw’s apprentice to the assembly of a gang bearing his name, to the final, humorously political understanding that, whether he wants to or not, a leader must lead. I love how Carey constructed the painful, deep and damaging love of the son for his mother. I deeply admire the narrating voice—technically brilliant!

Regarding that last point, let me also recommend Inzanesville by Jo Ann Beard. Again, voice is right on and technically adroit, with a surface simplicity that demonstrates admirable restraint on the part of the author. I picked up the book because it’s a girl’s coming-of-age in the 70s, an era to which I feel a connection. There’s humour but never at the expense of our old, adolescent selves; in that respect, I might describe it as a girls’ Catcher in the Rye, except that a) a “girls’” anything seems to ghettoize (sad but true) and b) I despise automatic CitR references, which I believe most often come from people who didn’t read much fiction at all between the ages of 12 and 20, and don’t even read much fiction now. Let me say instead that if my daughter were being asked to read CitR, I’d give her this instead. If she were interested. Which she wouldn’t be.

Another reason I think of CitR is that the book was in the adult section. It was about a teen, and the coming-of-age did not involve a sexual relationship or massive drug use or cutting or self-damaging behaviour of any kind (though there is a scene with a babysitting client early on that is harrowing). It seems strange that all of that stuff can be found in YA novels (Wallflower, for example) and yet this is the book that’s on the adult shelf. Why? Because it’s too real, not black-and-white enough? Do we believe that teen readers don’t want to know about an ordinary girl with an ordinary, sadly drunken parent and a life that moves subtly from childhood to not-childhood? Or is it that the author herself, or her publisher, didn’t want to ghettoize this book? Hm.

Finally, Suddenly in the Depths of the Forest by Amos Oz, an old-fashioned fable about secrets, animals, wilderness, community mores and such. It felt a little slow and repetitive at times, and the whole whoopititus thing seemed a little silly. I’d put this in a category with The Old Country and Fish (both of which I felt were more compelling): tales to read aloud, then let the kids lead the discussion, because you’d want to know what they take from it.

Karen Cushman Said

2011-09-02T14:43:00.000-04:00

... that this book is “Delightful! Funny and wise.” So I picked it up—The Book of the Maidservant by Rebecca Barnhouse—and took it home. I was finding it tedious about halfway through: the main character spends so much time trembling and being obedient and trying not to think about her personal history, the thing that would make her more than a powerless, uneducated, timid servant girl. Everything snaps into focus when the key bit of that history is revealed (Spoiler alert: it was her own behaviour that lost her a home and her beloved sister and put her into this put-upon position) but then dwindles away again by the end. She just didn’t come off the page.

Do I expect too much? I don't think so. Other authors have dealt with powerless females in history (Karen, for example) but have managed to infuse them with wit and interest without making them historically exceptional. How the author came to this story is really interesting, but maybe (again!) the truth of it cramped her style. All the physical abuse and humiliation the maidservant suffers throughout the book needed a like satisfaction: Margery Kempe, that self-righteous pontificatress, deserved to fall down some stairs and expose her bum, at least. So, in short, this is a competent enough book, but for real fun just go straight to Karen.

Not Lost Without Carol Shields

2011-09-01T09:28:00.000-04:00

Just finished Alone in the Classroom by Elizabeth Hay (and just in time, meeting my personal goal of being at the keyboard no later than 9 am today; yes, 8 is better, but I slept badly last night, so there).

I loved every word of this book. It showed me how you can tell a family story: as it comes to you, in bits and pieces, going backwards and forwards, filtered through the changing motives and circumstances of the person telling the story. Because it is (at least presented as) completely fiction, it is free to be more truthful than truth—compare, say, The Year of Finding Memory, which was brought up short by the facts (or lack of them) and so didn’t move me as much as “Classroom” does.

What is the truer truth? How you can never get the whole story, and how it changes as the new pieces are added and your understanding of the characters involved, your relatives and friends of the family, changes, as it does as you get older—especially your elder relatives, the ones who cared for you as a child and whom you see anew, over and over, as you move through life: teen, fighting free; twenties, setting your feet on your own path; thirties; a parent yourself; forties, that time of reassessment; and onward. And all this in the most economical, plain (meaning: not “lyrical”) but evocative and rich language. The best of prose. All the elements that satisfy me in a novel. And then, of course, it’s also about teachers and teaching (the family trade); and about the regenerative qualities of art, and craftsmanship; and sneaky little bits about writing and being a writer.

Note: you may want to read the excellent review by Aretha Van Herk in the Globe and Mail, April 29, 2011: http://preview.tinyurl.com/4yhyvjy).

The Children's Book

2011-08-30T10:28:00.000-04:00

Another Byatt–how delightful! This one was very good, especially if you have read or read about E. Nesbitt. This is about a Nesbitt-like character who writes for children and lives in a household comprised of more than two adults and children who belong to one of two possible mothers. The Fabian world and mindset is illuminated; this very interesting period of history (end of Victoria, beginning of new century) in England and Europe is examined through the lens of children growing up and differentiating from their parents. (An argument thereby being made about the beginning of the modern age: that’s a dinner conversation right there.) Byatt does a good job of showing how children in a large family relate or don’t and find space for themselves or don’t. Byatt plays her checkerboard of related families and characters very adroitly, jumping this one forward, then that, to carry us forward through history; and the culmination in WW I is brilliant: sketchy, but deeply felt because, in the end, so shockingly few of the golden children we have come to care for survive.

I will confess that I skimmed through the purely political passages fairly rapidly. I am sure they are very good, too, if you like that sort of thing.

In other news, I felt it necessary to pick up something from the reading list accumulated by one of my book groups (after all, this was my idea!) and chose the first of the Simon Serrailler mysteries, The Various Haunts of Men. Meh. Maybe it gets better, but the character of Simon in this book is a bit of a blank: he’s just the boss of the main character and also the object of a sudden and unwanted crush. And then that character is killed off—doesn’t that seem like a strange way to begin a series? I guess he’s supposed to be mysterious: hints of a past, family black sheep, personal but cultured tastes demonstrated by a beautiful apartment in an unlikely neighbourhood. But nothing about Simon was compelling to me, and neither was the writing—not enough to drive me to book two. And in a final note, how does one pronounce Simon’s last name? I want to go French with it, but I know the British will have some wonderfully woolly way of saying it, so I just kind of mentally mumble over it, and that bugs me. Oh, and one last last note: there were about half a dozen words in this book that I had (gasp!) never read before—not fancy words, slangy ones. Shtum, for example. I wish I had noted them all—this doesn’t happen very often.

Smut

2011-08-15T10:28:00.000-04:00

I enjoyed Alan Bennett’s reading Queen (you know I am partial to the Queen, dear Readers) and so picked up Smut, which was a quick read and most entertaining. Light and clever and not marketable if it were written by someone unknown. And such fare is necessary—I don't always want or need Meaning but do want and need good writing, however frivolous the topic. This book is two long stories about alt lifestyles in the proper bedrooms of suburban or maybe smaller-town Britain. One thing I found odd: the author or the editor seemed averse to commas, which made some of the sentences a reading challenge. British style employs fewer commas to start with but this book was extreme.

Also read in the last few weeks:
The White Garden by Stephanie Barron, on the recommendation of a colleague/professional friend, with whom telephone meetings always start out on business matters and devolve into satisfying chats on everything. I like my myths unmythified, generally, but Barron used Virginia cleverly and Jo, her main character, was so different in nature that it worked. I’ll try the Austen mystery series next.
Good to a Fault by Marina Endicott; can’t remember how I learned of this title. It was wonderful. The writing was careful and measured and the story well built. The genius in it was how I believed in and liked the main character, Clare and yet, when the fault in her good works was revealed and shook her AND the novel, I also believed that, and recognized that Clare as well. It was remarkable.

In a nutshell: a long-divorced, living-alone, looking-at-middle age woman gets involved in the lives of a struggling family. Her community (an Anglican congregation, mostly) looks with favour on her good works; she’s uncomfortable with their approval, because she’s aware of how much caring for the family’s three children is giving her. But she doesn’t examine it too closely, until she’s forced to: and then the truth is galling and she almost doesn’t make it back to life. I loved the book, couldn’t put it down, but don’t tell me if you try it and can’t get into it. The earth-shattering truth of the book is so subtle, anyone might miss it; I think it entered into a very personal place that has nothing to do with the book, and I don’t want to explain or even look at that place. But this book is very, very good.

Now I’m reading The Children’s Book by A.S. Byatt. It’s wonderful if you know about E. Nesbitt and her milieu—the children’s writer in the book is obviously based upon her. The Fabians, tra la—what an interesting time in Britain this was, the time when Canada was granted its wish for independence. So far, I am observing that Byatt captures large-family life well, utterly avoiding the preciousness that creeps in so often when, for example, a writer is trying to portray the layered conversation full of internal reference that large witty families engage in. I think because, conversely, she invest more time in the less obvious part of large-family life: the layered and very strong interior lives of at least some of the siblings involved. I know I am going to enjoy this novel.

Teen Angst, 90s Style

2011-07-25T11:51:00.002-04:00

What do I think about The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky? Hm. The reason I gave my copy away without reading it was that I didn’t want to go to the place where The Catcher in the Rye and A Separate Peace (books this one was being compared to) and, I suspected, Go Ask Alice and Ghost World (thanks, Tara) and all those other teen angsty novels live. It’s a place I never lived, but am repeatedly told is real and genuine. (In this particular novel, parts of it strongly resembled Say Anything.) Obviously, a lot of teens both now and when I was a teen take them to heart. For me, the problem is that they are written by adults who have since achieved some clarity. So the teens in them seem to me as real as teens in most Hollywood movies about teens (see previous comment RE: Say Anything): all the actors are actually in their twenties. (I think this is what made “Freaks and Geeks” different. The high school cafeteria was a room with chairs and tables in it. The little gang of three Grade 9s looked like overgrown children. The characters seemed to be stumbling around looking for something, while simultaneously trying to separate the wheat from the chaff in their lives.)

In different decades, the bus driving through this territory has different stops: this one was sexual molestation. It was interesting that one of the former stops—drinking and drugs—in this and other such books seems now just part of the ride. This is progress, in that the characters (read: today’s young people) understand that misuse of these substances (i.e., getting wasted for its own sake rather than in the context of friends and enjoyment) is a symptom and not the disease. Characters deal with their business and then get back on the wagon, relatively speaking. I think sexual molestation may become part of the ride in the novels of tomorrow: from all the talk I hear amongst the teens in my house about pervs and inappropriateness, and considering the ending of Wallflower, the culture may learn to deal and move on. Does this kind of progress make you feel sad?

One touching difference in Wallflower was the narrating character’s love for his family, and their love for him. That is definite progress, and I feel, writing this, a huge gratitude to Stephen C. for unlocking the handcuffs and setting us free from the Boomer mythology of generational divides. On a different plane, in a different vein, Edeet Ravel did the same in her Pauline books (which I recommend, BTW: first one is The Mysterious Adventures of Pauline Bovary). To these authors I am truly thankful.

Top-Up on Tepper

2011-07-14T11:00:00.002-04:00

A Sister informed me that Sheri S. Tepper had published a new novel so I hied me hence to the ebook store and loaded The Waters Rising onto my Kobo, as the library didn’t seem to have it yet. It was good for quite a while and then it fell apart, into ridiculousness. I had already reserved another SST at the library, though, my interest being rekindled: It was The Family Tree, and I soon beheld some of the pieces of Waters: a world from which humans had been removed (could have been either the plague or the Big Kill of Waters); outraged nature taking a stand; secret hidden repositories of tech and knowledge. A friend mentioned she had stopped reading SST because it was all getting too political and agenda-driven and I can see, in these books, why she thought so. Maybe I caught a whiff of that possibility myself after reading The Frescoes, and that was my semiconscious reason for not reading more....

Anyway, also read Freedom by Jonathan Franzen. I loved The Corrections in spite of my antipathy toward sweeping novels of social commentary: why? I tried to figure it out while I was enjoying Freedom, which I did, very much. I think it’s because both novels are so strongly character driven, and the rants/wanks are pretty well contained. And many times Franzen hits upon things I have been quietly wondering about myself: like the disappearance of the overpopulation problem, which I remember being taught when I was in elementary school (along with “ecology”, which simply became “the environment”). I think about this problem every time I pass another housing farm in my rapidly-developing suburb, each one chock full of people from countries far more populated and competitive than mine; and I think about all the fertile topsoil that was trucked away from the land beneath these hectares of houses; and about how this urban area has enough food within it to feed its population for only three days.... Time to go outside and listen to the birds for a while, I think.

Escaping Fugitive

2011-06-20T16:15:00.001-04:00

Call me a philistine, but Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels, which I have finally read, escapes me. Why that bit at the end about a whole new character and his girlfriend(s)? And how did Jakob and Michaela die? Aside from those mysteries, the book confirms for me my bias against poetic novels. I like poetry, I like novels, I don’t like poetic novels.

Penderwicks Return

2011-06-14T11:37:00.001-04:00

The third Penderwick story, in which they exeunt somewhat severally for vacation (the bulk of them in Maine, where Jeffrey, released into Penderwick custody reluctantly, makes a Discovery), prompted a realization: why, these are the Little Women! Skye is Jo, Rosalind is Meg, Batty is Beth (with her stuffies but a more life-giving mystery, embodied now in her musical talent) and Jane is Amy (what is Sabrina Starr, her alter ego, but a romantic heroine?) They even have a Laurie—Jeffrey, of course.

Also read since last post: My Dirty Little Book of Stolen Time by Liz Jensen, a romp worth of children’s literature, but with sex. Not so very much of it, dear reader. Time travel and plucky clever whores and a hero who is a loving father. It was a bargain book at Megastore and is an example of why I love the bargain table. First Light by Rebecca Stead: interesting premise, a race of people who have been living under (literally under, as in within) a glacier for generations, and the discovery of same by a boy whose ice scientist father and periodic depression-suffering mother who is a geneticist have unspoken reasons for their family research trip to Greenland. Liked it. Finally, Still Alice by Lisa Genova: much better than Left Neglected. Still somewhat casual fiction but more emotionally engaging. In the end, husband can’t take it and effectively leaves, but daughters step in to care for mother in the last way possible: by physically and emotionally being there for her. And that reminded me of the one thing I engaged with in Left, which was the relationship between the protag and her mother.

That’s all, must return to the caribou! She said cryptically.

More Haven

2011-06-10T08:42:00.001-04:00

I went on to Something Rising (Light and Swift) and it went down better than the other Haven; but if I read a reference to Hillman or “The White Heron” again I’m going to scream. I think a novelist should only be allowed to use her university course material once, no matter how resonant and mythopoeic; at least, not this obviously. And now I recall something from a NYorker piece I read this morning: “We see the world not as it is, but as we are.”

Thanks, Friend!

2011-06-06T10:26:00.001-04:00

I picked up Practical Jean by Trevor Cole on the recommendation of friend Tara Harte (check out her blog for detailed comments on the book); what a funny and satisfying story! The book cover alone was enough to make you want to read it. I commend the author on his nailing of certain kinds of females and female relationships (in a somewhat exaggerated way, but that was just fine in the context); also true was the relationships of Jean and her brothers. The comedy was right on.

Not so successful an experience was Iodine by Haven Kimmel. The structure of the book was spacey, bouncing between first and third person narration, with the main character having one name to herself and another to others, and sometimes and inexplicably breaking off mid sentence. This was a fine way to bring to the page someone who, it turns out, suffers from frequent dissociative/fugue states (owing to childhood horrors); the reader is put firmly on her side, so that it comes as a surprise (though you can backtrack and see the trail) when a period that added up to four months for the narrating character was actually over four years. What I’m saying is that there was nothing wrong with the book; I just wasn’t in a place to enjoy it. This was my first foray into the author’s fiction and I haven’t stopped, as you will see next post.

Family Stories

2011-05-30T14:32:00.004-04:00

As I’ve said before, I’m not fond of fat books of the sprawling transgenerational sort, but my neighbour across the road recommended The Toss of a Lemon by Padma Viswanathan, and since I generally like Indo-Canadian novels, I read it. Like my neighbour, I couldn’t put it down; but when I finally did, I was left with an unfinished feeling. The novel had been one thing, then another: pure fiction of the magic realist sort, with one character bleeding gold dust, another talking with Ganesh and horoscopic predictions coming true time after time; and then acknowledged realist fiction based on the author’s family’s stories—but with a fictional narrator suddenly speaking up between the story and the author’s acknowledgements. Many of the characters really delivered as they were carried through time; some, not so much: for example, Janaki, one of the main female characters, whose daughter becomes that aforementioned narrating voice, was lost between childhood and wifehood. She didn’t seem like the same person. And did the author mean for us not to understand, exactly, why the main male character treated his mother so very badly?

Then there’s Not Suitable for Family Viewing by Vicki Grant—a Canadian writer of whom I am fond. (Quid Pro Quo, et al.) This one has a female MC with romance, but has that familiar thread of mystery, quirky but solid relationships and slight tongue-in-cheek air. A truly satisfying read that I will leave lying about for a while in hopes that Wilful Daughter will pick it up.

End of the Line

2011-05-24T09:22:00.004-04:00

Nothing like a holiday weekend to finish a series. The Singing was satisfying enough, though I don’t know what Hem, aside from wielding the tuning fork of power, actually did. ... I guess he was the physical stand-in for the Nameless One. Oh, yeah, clever—Maerad, too, was nameless, as no one knew her secret, third Elidhu name.

How does it feel, to live in a fictional world of your own creation for seven years, and then to leave it?

The Second Book of Pellinor

2011-05-21T08:56:00.003-04:00

And the third, actually—and we’ll start with that.

When Hem and Maenad were parted in Book I, I had a hunch we were in for a Farmer Boy—you know, having to endure a story about a character we don’t really care about just because the author has an agenda. (I was a dutiful reader of FB as a child, every time I went through the series, and the only thing I picked up was that Almanzo ate a lot. But as an adult, and especially visiting the Wilder homestead, I understood what a huge economic difference there had been between Almanzo’s and Laura’s families, and what pains the author had taken to prove that, socially and aspirationally, at least—all that emphasis on education and correct behaviour—Laura’s family was equal to or even a little better than Almanzo’s.) So I was not surprised that Book III was all about Hem. While I was reading it I was carried along well enough by his motives and desires; but afterward, I judged the plot pretty much a machine to get him into the Iron Tower (well, more-or-less) to receive his part of the Treesong. It was a good ride, though. And the way Hem is forced to grow and mature is pretty organic—he’s ready to be Maerad’s equal now. I especially liked the portrayal of the living earth, not as female (for a change—hurrah!) but as male in a way that feels true; I’d have to talk it out with someone to figure out how. But it reminded me of a male friend who is a deep nature boy with the same odd twist of grace and implacability. The representation of the same as a huge stag at the end was resonant, too. Anyway, by the time the book was done Hem had become an important character.

And as for Book II, well, that was terrific. Totally Journey literature—character is raw and dependent at the beginning; and self-sufficient, tempered and ready for the task at the end. How the author handled sexual desire was interesting, but still a little remote and theoretical, I thought; this is the only part of her maturation journey that isn’t quite complete. But maybe it is, for a YA novel. And for fun, let’s compare Hem’s and Maerad’s romantic (for lack of a better word) experiences.

Hem: is driven to save Zelika, realizing in the process that he loves her (wants to marry her when he grows up); his search (read: pursuit) for her is rash, against his own better judgement, disapproved of by the adults in his life—very Romeo, in its way, except for the absence of the physical. Throughout, in the Bardic way, he is searching for her mind, and when he finds it, it isn’t hers, after all, but her brother’s. Read: he isn’t ready.

Maerad: is hunted by the Winterking, and then downright wooed; her will and spirit are up to the task of resisting him and protecting her growing sense of self and her ambition to succeed at her task, but her body (her desire is described all in physical though not sensual terms) nearly betrays her, and she is saved by the intervention of her spirit grandmother/the Wise Crone—who helps her to exchange her betraying body for a wolf’s (!). How you want to read that is up to you!

Spring, O Spring!

2011-05-05T09:11:00.002-04:00

One of the benefits of being unemployed (in an official capacity; I’m not saying I have nothing to do) is strolling out to the backyard with your morning coffee and counting up all the treasures: first leaves on the peonies, flowering periwinkle, what looks like domestic strawberry mysteriously appearing where you’ve never planted it, or, even, seen it before... but darn all that garlic mustard. Drastic measures must be taken.

Words That Start with B by Vikki VanSickle: Very nice story, interesting characters, clever use of title/chapter titles. Good read.
Out of Line: Growing Up Soviet by Tina Grimberg: speaking of titles, this was a strange choice, given that the expression used throughout the book was “out of step”. Otherwise, informative and well put together, and will furnish examples for a talk on memoir I somewhat rashly promised to give at the end of the month.
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach: From 2003; compelling, both in content and delivery. Enjoyed it very much. Got a few ideas of my own out of it.

Now, darling friend who recommended Left Neglected by Lisa Genova: Such is my esteem for you that when I saw I was Number 73 in line for it at the library, I bought it for my Kobo instead. So please don’t take what I’m about to write personally; I try to be honest here, and snarky only when I must relieve my feelings. More to the point, maybe due to my work history, it’s so often more interesting to figure out why a book doesn’t work (for me) than why it does. So: it was well-conceived and all the oddities and trials of the condition were intriguing—and it read exactly like a teen problem novel. The choice to tell the story chronologically was a mistake. We go into it knowing the main character has an accident and becomes brain-damaged in a fascinating way; we are naturally impatient, therefore, with everything that happens beforehand. Since the author was using the time to build the character, that impatience meant I couldn’t engage with the character. It might have been better to use a third-person limited PoV, as well: this Type-A (as we are told many times), driven, competitive character isn’t particularly observant or thoughtful and so being in her head wasn’t a particularly rich experience.

Now, of course, I’m going to have to read Still Alice, just for comparison’s sake....

Was Is It About This Writer?

2011-04-29T18:44:00.002-04:00

Susan Vreeland, Clara and Mr. Tiffany: I picked this up because I had read The Forest Lover, given to me by my sister years ago. I’m interested in Emily Carr and found that book pretty good, though now, after Clara, remember that I had to get over the writing style, which I found awkward in some way. This feeling was worse with Clara: was it overly writer-y? arch, somehow? I didn’t believe the main character, at least, was of her time (turn of the century NYC)—though, to be fair, who knows how a woman of that time and type would describe the world to herself? I certainly didn’t “cry over the glory of women’s work” as one blurber said. On the contrary, the detailed descriptions of cutting and setting and glass in general got a bit tedious—I could never picture it. My conclusion? Meh.

Margaretha’s Recommendation

2011-04-27T14:53:00.002-04:00

I’m not a huge fan of fantasy that involves an invented language and history and cultural notes in an appendix (I’m too lazy to learn something that isn’t real) but this one was recommended by Biggie and so I persevered. The story was great, the main character a real winner, and some of the feminist issues involved (not driven, just there) make The Naming by Alison Croggon a rich read. it got me thinking about the physics of magic. I think it would take a lot of energy. Afterward, a magic worker would be need to be kept warm, like an athlete. A magic worker would be pretty thin, as a rule, though not fit—this isn’t muscle work. He or she would eat a lot and suffer from weird food cravings. Some kinds of magic would involve more drawing on the universe than others, and would have unique physical effects: deep shivers, perhaps, or blanking out afterward. As I write this, I begin to believe that writers of magic don’t take the human body into account much. Alison did, more than most—her heroine gets her period (though weirdly frequently, it seemed like).

Good News

2011-04-21T09:16:00.003-04:00

Ages ago (it’s funny how those two words look alike) I wrote about Case Histories by Kate Atkinson; it’s my joy to say now that there are sequels! I found out by accident. The second book is One Good Turn; the third, which I just finished (I’m going to work today, honest!) is When Will There Be Good News? (I have the answer to that question—when you learn that there are sequels to a book you loved.) This is detective fiction for people who don’t like detective fiction. In Good News, Atkinson brings together Jackson Brodie, the hapless sleuth; a character from the second book, wonderfully underwritten somehow, even when we’re in her head (she isn’t very self-aware); and two new characters who carry big bags of unluckiness. One of these is pure genius of the writer’s art. Read the books and then let’s talk about how.

Novels that stir up the pond

2011-04-20T10:48:00.002-04:00

My first Walter Mosley was The Man in My Basement, which I thought was extremely odd but couldn’t forget. When I found Six Easy Pieces on a bargain table, I bought it, and then had to read the Easy Rawlins series (I’ve only got about 3 in so far, the early ones being hard to find, and I must read them in order). Now there’s The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey. Let’s get this straight—the only thing I have in common with the characters in this novel is that we’re all human beings. But that’s enough for Mosley, who never loses hold for a second in this book. The story is this: a scared old man descending into dementia gets a reprieve through the arrival of a teenaged girl and an experimental drug. He uses the reprieve to deal with the particular memories that haunted his dementia; to love the girl as thoroughly as he can; and to carry out a task given him by a man he loved and saw lynched as a child. How he does this is as satisfying as it always is when a character who has suffered uses money and knowledge/power to exact justice without mercy, and to reward the merciful. That’s the detective fiction part of Mosley’s craft. But deeper than that is how he looks at aging, and love, and one human being seeing another over barriers of age, experience, sex. I finished the book at bedtime and then couldn’t sleep, for all the memories and thoughts it had stirred up.

Polygamy Sucks

2011-04-19T19:52:00.003-04:00

... for women.
I’ve had a bit of a smiley-face on for polygamy ever since I started watching “Big Love.” With the ending of that show (a first-class pie-eyed wimp-out, IMO) my eyes have gone a bit squinty on the subject. “Sister Wives” makes it look so wholesome—and then there was the article on plyg in Canada in The Walrus, and after that a nonfiction book on Bountiful and a memoir of an escapee—the latter rather spectacular. Finally, Hidden Wives by Claire Avery. Nothing new here, information-wise, except for a detailed description of some “temple” practices that recalled that one episode of BL where Barb goes to the temple. Fig leaf aprons over white garments and being pulled through a white sheet, etc. As for the book itself... hm. I could hear the writing instruction hovering in the air: “Don’t say your character is afraid; instead, describe the physical effects of fear.” So this book was full of acid reflux, vomiting, stomachs clenched like fists, burning throats, etc. Except for the gastric distress, the narrating characters were empty—while the others were laughable stereotypes.

For refreshment after that, it was nice to turn to When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris. The humour was there, yes, but what struck me reading this collection is the way he collects separate little experiences and brings them together in a way that lets you feel how they may have come together for him, in his own mind. This looks simple, but I’ll bet it has taken a lot of time and effort to learn to do. I’m always having mash-ups going on in my head, but I’ve seen the glazed look on Husband’s face (and he loves me!) when I’ve tried to explain why they matter.

I’m Back!

2011-04-16T10:28:00.002-04:00

“A long while” turned out to be two years; but my little cyberspace time machine returns me to the point at which I departed, and unchanged, even, unless I make “physical” adjustments to this page.

The world is different, though: no more DWJ.
[moment of silence]

I wonder if she would have enjoyed the movie I saw last night, “Source Code.” A completely satisfying movie-going experience, which has left some bits in my mental teeth that I could pleasurably worry loose. The ideas in that movie were so beguiling I was willing to accept what didn’t work, a mood supported by the lead actor’s sad/hopeful face and his character’s good-soldier persona. Go and see this movie, and then consider these two points: Could the 8-minute conceit work anyhow but as a movie? and, That magic 8 minutes is a perfect metaphor for the work of the writer’s imagination. Source code, indeed. Watch for the nerdy guy in the short-sleeved dress shirt who charges up the machinery, who looks like Neil Gaiman as a short-sleeved dress shirt-wearing nerdy guy.

As for reading: in the past two years I've been a member of two reading groups, one new. The later has been... interesting; during the second year there was an accidental influx of new members, some of whom drive me up the wall. But some of them are not afraid of argument and they keep me going. Next month’s book is/was The Bishop's Man by Lynden MacIntyre: what a boring mess. I couldn’t connect with the main character, couldn’t keep track of the three or four timelines the author was working out, and by the end, felt I had missed the key moment that may have explained everything.

For the old book group, we read Room by Emma Donoghue; that was fascinating, hard, unbearable, and then the author helped us all escape from the unbearable place and the novel became a more ordinary one which you continue to read because you wish the characters well.

Year of Writing

2009-01-02T14:13:00.003-05:00

This will be my last posting, at least for a long, long while. I have to jettison a few things to make room in my life for more purposeful writing, and this is one of the things to go. I'm going to shoot for less reading, too, but we'll see how far that resolution takes me!

I just finished another Geraldine M: The Kite Rider (Oxford U.P. 2001). This story was almost too painful to read—I had to put it down a few times just to get some relief. It's a bit like Crispin—a boy finding his way (but much more painfully) past one way of being and thinking to another. It takes place in newly-conquered Mongol China, around the time of Kublai Khan's attempt at invading Japan; it concerns change, obedience, revenge and salvation. Haoyou, the boy, is so slow to learn; but isn't that also so real? After this, any quicker personal transformation in fiction will eem false, I feel.

For fun, a couple of Joan Aikens: The Scream (Macmillan, 2002) and The Witch of Clatteringshaws (Delacorte/Random House, 2005) The latter was published posthumously, the last of the Dido Twite adventures. The former was a short and compelling tale of the supernatural—very well done. I will now troll the Internet for nice things said about JA postermortem.

Here are two titles that bear comparison: The Bar Code Tattoo by Suzanne Weyn (Scholastic Inc., 2004) and Unwind by Neal Shusterman (Simon & Schuster, 2007). These are SF titles set in a world not too far in the future whose stories are inspired by a single idea; one starts out promising and doesn't deliver, while the other is far-fetched yet well-executed.

The premise of the first is credible and interesting: what if it became mandatory for everyone to get a bar code tattooed onto their arms, which would give access to all the personal information required to live and take part in society? Sadly, the story is half-baked and ill-informed. There's too much teenie romance and not enough hard thinking. "The wilderness" is not some kind of endless grocery store that can supply the needs of anyone who hangs out in it. You can't go from city living to feeding and clothing yourself with what you manage to hunt without a lot of training—and you certainly can't provide for a whole colony that way. And the number of the beast argument coming from a teenager with no understanding or even consideration of the gleeful apocalypse accounting that underlies it—it's just ridiculous.

The premise of Unwind is completely unbelievable—I read the book just to see if the author could make me believe it, and though he didn't, he did make the story and characters compelling enough to have me finish the book. His future world is a post abortion-war USA in which parents can choose to "retroactively abort" an unsatisfactory child aged 13 to 17, as long as about 95 per cent (every useable part and piece of tissue) of the child is used again as transplant material—i.e., it's not a death but a new, expanded life. This is supposed to have been a ridiculous compromise brokered just to get the sides talking, and unexpectedly taken up in seriousness. But I just can't buy it. I can't even buy the war itself, even with the explanation that it really wasn't about abortion or no abortion, just about one side against another. The culture Shusterman builds to support the premise is convincing for the most part, though, and his main character offers some interesting scope for discussion about what makes a leader.

Continuing my Meg Tilly explorations, there is Porcupine (Tundra, 2007). Very competent, humorous and touching. There is nothing like family dysfunction, it appears, to teach a person how to write about sibling relationships in a realistic way: the love, the ignorance, the loyalty, fear and jealously all bundled up and doled out blindly by the characters but to excellent effect by a committed writer.

Picture Bride by Yoshiko Uchida (University of Washington Press, 1987), is about a young, educated Japanese woman who travels to the U.S. to marry a Japanese bachelor storekeeper. It reads a bit like a novel resulting from graduate school research, but not enough to be off-putting. The characters were real and the writing didn't draw attention to itself, which in this case was good.

Finally, What Happened This Summer by Paul Yee (Tradewind, 2006), a collection of short stories in the voices of Chinese teenagers in a number of contemporary Canadian Chinese communities. Very good indeed.

Bad Bad Bad Blogger

2008-12-14T13:42:00.002-05:00

How could I have forgotten? The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian by Sherman Alexie; art by Ellen Forney (Little, Brown and Co., 2007). A fantastic book! At the beginning I was doubtful; the approach—the way the narrator was presenting himself, and the tone he was using, made me think it was going to be one of those clownish, over-the-top confessionals that seem so popular these days. But it ended up being full of the deep humour that carries hope and insight with it. The hero risks everything has, which is little enough, for something he hardly understands he's hoping for—and he gets it. Think Adrian Mole, but with more wit and self-awareness—and better friends.

The Bad Bad Blogger

2008-12-13T16:10:00.007-05:00

Once upon a time, there was a little blogger, who wrote about the books she was reading. Then she started to put off the writing in favour of more reading. The longer she put off blogging what she had read, the more onerous the task of catching up became—especially since it was buried underneath some freelance work that she was also behind on. Until finally a tiny cry went up from her readers and she thought, “Well, maybe today, blogging would be less onerous than the editing I have to do.” So she logged in to her blog and discovered—oh my!—that is was two whole months since she had written, and here it was, nearly Christmas, when her readers might be looking for something to while away the holiday hours. So she set to work. As she began, a sense of weird otherness came over her. Surely she had written about Kristin Lavransdatter already? She went back to her blog, and searched, and discovered, by means of technical divination, that it had not been two months since last she blogged, but only one—but the November blog had languished, unposted, in the draft pile. She tried to clean it up, but, foiled by the blog site’s inscrutable magic, she was forced, in the end to post the entry with all its errors and hope for the best.

Sorry for that; blogspot didn't like something in the draft and I couldn't find or get it out—hopeless. On to the next lot of reads.

Just finished: Singing Songs by Meg Tilly (Syren, 1994): Yes, that Meg Tilly. Arresting and sad autobiographical fiction (she thought she was writing fiction but it turned out to be her memories, unpacking themselves). I found it on the new books shelf in the kids' section, and it definitely doesn't belong there. Teens, at the youngest, for though the stories are told in a clear, convincing child's voice, what she relates is devastating. How very interesting to compare to this to Haven Kimmel's autobiographical stories, which also emerge from a grubby and inadequately supported, though much less abusive, childhood. I am now keen to read her fiction, and see if she keeps that unadorned voice and clear vision.

Spilled Water by Sally Grindley (Bloomsbury, 2004): maybe someday, we'll read a work by the Chinese female peasant/domestic slave/factory worker herself. In the meantime, such a story is enough to make you think twice about how "cheap" goods made in China are.

I would not recommend What Makes Women Happy (Fourth Estate/HarperCollins, 2006) to first-time readers of Fay Weldon, but you fans out there should enjoy it tremendously. It is her wise-woman's compendium. The short answer is "nothing, not for more than ten minutes" and I find that to be absolutely true. And in the lovely way of synchronicity, let me direct you to the little video a co-worker sent me before I had ever heard of Fourth Estate:
http://vimeo.com/2295261

I've been reading tons of historical fiction for work, good, bad and indifferent: I don't have all the info by me and won't go into these in detail except to recommend them: When My Name Was Keoko by Linda Sue Park and Stones in Water by Donna Jo Napoli. I also recommend What I Saw and How I Lied by Judy Blundell (Scholastic Inc, 2008): how excellently evocative of a certain time and circumstance without being exactly about them. A coming-of-age story set in postwar USA, in which a girl very simply makes a hugely complicated moral decision.

The Other Side of the Island by Allegra Goodman (Razorbill/Penguin, 2008) describes another sort of coming-of-age, in a future world where the environment is scary and threatening and safety is to be found in the town of the Mother and the Corporation—or so they say. The story is told from the perspective of the deeply loved but unaware and conforming daughter of rebels. Couldn't put it down!

Another great title by Caroline B. Cooney: The Ransom of Mercy Carter (Dell/Random House, 2001). It addresses an historical question: why did so many kidnapped settlers refuse to rejoin their families when ransom was offered, in early 18th century America? I'd add this title to a booklist illustrating "the resilience of children" for sure—and it might give readers pause, looked at that way.

Ah, Susan Juby—a national treasure! Getting the Girl (HarperTrophy, 2008) does not disappoint. I was curious, though, if the male voice worked for males, so I pressed Son for his opinion.
Me: What did you think of Getting the Girl?
Him: It was okay—not that great.
Me: What didn't you like about it?
Him: I can't really say.
I'll spare you the agony (he is 13, and not universally eloquent) and sum up: he thought the book would appeal more to girls than boys, due to some aspects of the story and the characters that weren't "realistic." Disclaimer: this was my word, which he allowed for.

I don't know how my work searches led to this title, but it did, and I read it: The Boy From the Basement by Susan Shaw (Speak/Penguin, 2004). Sad and touching, a well-written novel of the sort I ate up when I was 13 and 14, about abused children getting away and finding the love and help they deserve.

Well, that's all! I have a few things from the library and on my shelves to choose from tomorrow. I will need them because the house was not cleaned today, or even tidied up, and a face shield will be necessary if there is to be any relaxing!

Penderwicks Rampage Again

2008-11-03T12:58:00.003-05:00

Why didn't Candlewick publish The Penderwicks on Gardam Street by Jeanne Birdsall (Alfred A. Knopf, 2008)? Perhaps they couldn't afford to carry another and then the three more that are planned. The second Penderwick is just as delightfully, bewilderingly old-fashioned as the first, and even a bit more deliberately so, with references to Lewis, Nesbitt, and Eager ("O Turtle!") The main story is bracketed by an end and a beginning, with plenty of love, hijinks and excellent writing in between. Readers of the current and next couple of generations who discover and love these books will be just as dear to one another as readers of the Melendys have been to me.

I'm doing a lot of reading for work again, and so there is much criss-crossing between reading stacks for me. Definitely on the pleasure side was my third read of Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset—the greatest work of historical fiction of the twentieth century. This time I read the new (1990s) translation by Tiina Nunnally—what an improvement. And it is so interesting to read it at this stage of life, with my children beginning to grow up and and away a bit. I find the way Kristin's life is told is so true, in incidents and breakthroughs of understanding. Just as in life, where ordinary days hurry by until something happens that alters your course or colours everything backwards with a different shade, again. I would love to see this work revived as an HBO or British television mini-series. It has everything—passion, politics, swordfights, plague, disaster, wealth, mountains, ships, dread superstition, near death by childbirth and heights of soul fervour...

Now I'm going to hasten through a whack of reading I have done in the last few weeks:

Ursula K Le Guin: Powers (Harcourt 2007): The third book, which follows Gifts and Voices; very good, though I preferred the other two. This seemed more of a portmanteau than the others, with more packed in and feeling more deliberately carried to a certain destination. The best part of it is the relationship the main character, Gavir, has with three significant women in his life: his sister Sallo, his friend Diero, and his aunt, Gegemer, who rescues hims from that Old General always waiting in the wings to make the Young Soldier suffer for his own glory—in this case, Dorod, the seer’s interpreter. These three relationships channel into his care of Melle, whom fate hands him when he is ready to take the gift and responsibility of uninnocent love.

Also by this author: Lavinia (Harcourt 2008): A homage to the Aeneid by Vergil. Powers, I see, was a lead-in to this look at that classic male thing, a hero, this time from the perspective of The Hero’s Wife (or maybe “Prize” is a better title for the thing Lavinia is). The author plays with voice and time a bit, using the device of the poet himself conversing with his hal-formed creation in a dream or vision; but it's not enough to overcome them, causing more confusion than anything else. And it wasn’t necessary. Most remarkable is the calm and sideways way in which Aeneas’s eldest son is defined as gay—or rather, that his “sexual attraction is not to women.” Wow!

Martyn Pig by Kevin Brooks (The Chicken House, 2002; Scholastic PUSH ed.) The first novel of the author of Being; I can see the hard and even cold edge of the latter title is a characteristic of his writing. He describes the feelings his character is having—or, sometimes, the character describes them to himsself—but the character doesn’t quite have the feelings, just experiences the effects of them—the confusion, the sweats, the rising up in violence. This story is about a boy who accidentally kills his drunken father, then covers it up with the help of a girl who ultimately betrays him utterly; but he’s hoist on his own petard there, because, justifying the cover-up, he has said, “It’s only wrong because people say it is; if it’s right for you it’s okay.”

Heroes by Robert Cormier (Delacorte 1998): Again, spare and simple on the surface, below complex and unresolved. Very good.
Naked by David Sedaris (Little, Brown and Co, 1997): I didn't realize starting out that this book was so old. Which means he came out flying.
The Miracle at Speedy Motors by Alexander McCall Smith (Alred A Knopf, 2008) My somewhat guilty pleasure. Can't read these too close together or they will cloy, but it's fun to read them from time to time.
The Plain Janes by Cecil Castellucci and Jim Rugg (DC Comics, 2007): Love the style, story and characters great. Daughter liked it too and wanted to check out the chix graphic novel line advertised in the back ("Minx": love the name!); but Friend tells me it has folded already. Darn!
Here Lies Arthur by Philip Reeve (Scholastic Press , 2007): After The Sword in the Stone, this is the treatment of Arthurian legend I have enjoyed most. It's historical, not mythical, and posit Merlin as a spin doctor of the highest order.

Human Variety

2008-10-06T09:55:00.003-04:00

There's something that keeps turning over in my mind, from The Shadows of Ghadames (blogged 9/6/08); it is this kind of thing that got me started doing this in the first place. The sequestered women of that book take turns hosting a regular women's market. They trade goods, but not for money: out of their powerlessness and poverty, they erect a framework of social support and personal favours. Each trader, by giving of what she has when she has it, assures herself of the blind eye or loaf of bread she or her loved ones will surely need somewhere down the road. Hey! It's a reputation economy! just like in ...

Extras by Scott Westerfeld (Simon Pulse, 2007). This clever little addition to the Uglies cycle posits a post "mind-rain" (Tally Youngblood's nano cure for the bubblehead operation) city which decides to curb its rampant consumption problem by the institution of a "reputation economy": in order to get more or better clothes, food, accomodation, stuff, and leisure time, you have to earn merits (ie, do chores or labour for the common good) or fame; to facilitate the earning of fame, every citizen above littlie age gets a feed—their personal port of call on the information superocean. So they go around with hovercam floating above one shoulder, trying to get the attention of the city, the country, the world. Once again, SW does a great job building up this world; the ending (the answer to the mystery of the "inhumans") is a bit cheesy and unbelievable (the reason for the eye-surge, for example: pshaw! SW only wanted us to expect aliens) but it was awfully fun getting there.

The Samurai's Tale by Erik Christian Haugaard (Hougton Mifflin, 1984), another Japanese historical fiction novel from this excellent author, follows the career of the son of a minor warlord murdered by an enemy, as he grows from captive kitchen boy to trusted right hand of a great samurai. This is Medieval Times from another part of the world.

I read Voices by Ursula K. LeGuin before I read its prequel, Gifts (Harcourt, 2006), simply because it looked so good that I couldn't wait. Now I've read the latter and discovered there was no harm done in reading them out of order. These books, though linked by common geography and some characters, stand alone. But so richly! They are much better than the Earthsea books, at least the trilogy. They're a tribute to human imagination, in all its forms—and especially in story.

A Taste for Rabbit by Linda Zuckerman (Arthur A. Levine/Scholastic Inc., 2007) is a interesting tale, in which an outcast member of a society of intelligent foxes comes face to face with a troubled citizen of a city of intelligent rabbits. There's an intelligent badger, mixed up in it, too, and a pair of lesbian raccoons; and despite all this, the story manages to be quite courtly, old-fashioned and a bit philosophical. The writing is a touch clumsy at times, but how the author deals with the whole prey/predator thing is deft.

The Pull of the Ocean by Jean-Claude Mourlevat (Delacorte/Random House, 2006; translated from the French L'enfant ocean) was puzzling. I'm given the impression that it is supposed to be deeply meaningful, but the meaning escaped me. In looking for it, am I doing what the author cautions the reader not to do, in the voice of "Jean Martiniere, sixty years old, skipper, merchant marine"? To whit:
...this child wasn't real, [...] he had stepped right out of a fairy tale. [...] he was granting [us] the right to enter the tale for a moment [...] willing to take [us] in [as long as we] stop asking stupid questions.
Intellectually, I might deconstruct the tale along the lines of "The story is told in many voices, the voices of all the individual's who "read" Yann's silence and the story which unfolds from the escape he engineers for himself and his brothers , much like a Biblical parable or fable of Aesop is "read" people from all times and places" etc., etc., as you will; but if I can't get pleasure from the first reading, what's the point? If the author doesn't want me to ask questions, then he should do a better job of wooing me. Give me some kind of satisfaction of language or imagery to go on with. Strike my heart's bell.

Is the lack of resonance the fault of the translation? Is French meaning untranslatable? (Was the American Library Association's Batchelder Award for the French original, or English translation?)

Being by Kevin Brooks (Puffin [UK]/Chicken House/Scholastic Inc. [NA], 2007) was a bit gory for Son, who didn't like the idea of cutting yourself open to fish around in your insides. The fact that the person doing the fishing was not-quite-human didn't help at all, I think. But what an interesting way to look at the deeply adolescent "who am I?" question, all wrapped up in a very cool, bite-sized version of the Bourne story. And how strangely cold, yet right, the ending was, with not one of us, not even the not-quite-human himself, knowing who or what he is, beyond what the story tells us about him.

I should point out that all my reading is done against the background hum of The New Yorker, as I keep up with my new subscription. Sisters in the province who are interested in the back issues as they accumulate should speak up!

Mission Burritos

2008-09-17T14:14:00.003-04:00

Little Brother by Cory Doctorow (Tor Teen, 2008) is chock full of information, of which some will be useful, some eye-opening, some confirming, to some-to-most readers: but I'll wager only a San Francisco thirteen-year-old who likes Mission burritos will find the two paragraphs dedicated to Mission burritos interesting, because they will provide an opportunity for self-congratulation. Now, I am the parent of a 13-year-old, and have been a 13-year-old, and I know how precious and necessary a little self-congratulation can be at that age; but there's too much extraneous explanation in this useful, eye-opening and confirming novel, choking the life out of an otherwise gripping story.

In its own way, the book is a graduate of what I like to call the Barbie School of Writing--you know, where the heroine doesn't just toss her hair, but tosses her golden, shimmering hair that bounces from a long session with a blow dryer and just the right amount of [au courant product name here]. Let's call this the Star Trek 401, though—where every bit of tech is explained, whether the explanation is necessary or not. It's cool to know that you know that bit of tech already; and sometimes it's cool to be taught (there's a few things I'll be Googling, that's for sure) but I really can't stand the author explaining things just because it's cool for him or her to explain them.

You can call me shallow (I've never got through a Great Russian Novel for all the damn philosophy those characters were always yammering on about); I agree with the writer in Wired who said that science fiction is the last bastion of idea novels, and I really appreciate all those ideas. But that writer also pointed out that the genre tolerates execrable writing (he really used that word!) and though the writing in this book is far from execrable, it could be a lot tighter. I blame the editors, or lack thereof. I mean, no one should be allowed to get away with a sentence like this (coming from the 17-year-old narrator who lives and is on good terms with his parents): I never watched TV, but I knew my parents did.

All of that said, I am not flaming this book. It's very very nice, and not just if you like that sort of thing. I'll give it to 13-year-old Son, and recommend it to High School Teacher Sister.

In Between New Yorkers

2008-09-12T18:56:00.002-04:00

For Daughter's sake (the possibility of a need for m'audition) I checked out of the library Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices From a Medieval Village by Laura Amy Schlitz (Robert Boyd ill.). This is another feat of liberal, devil-may-care publishing (2007) from the amazing Candlewick Press. The author wrote the book for a class that wanted to culminate their study of the Middle Ages with a play "with no small parts". The series of linked monologues, some "broken prose" (as Nikki Grimes calls the poetry-looking format), some straight prose, some verse, paints a picture of life in a English medieval settlement, from the point of view of varied young characters living it. The detailed and warm illustrations make it a book; and you can't get through the book without reading at least one of the monologues aloud to a family member (and then the family member insists on reading one back to you).

Kanada by Eva Wiseman (Tundra, 2006) tells, again, the story of the horror perpetrated on the Jews by the Nazis during World War II. It is a good novel, well-built and solidly written, and adds the voice of a young female Hungarian to the grievous chorus. But it doesn't do anything else. It tells no other story. I am always longing for another Milkweed.

Daughter rapidly ingested Click Here (To Find Out How I Survived Seventh Grade) by Denise Vega (Little, Brown and Co., 2005) and stated flatly that I had to read it. So I did, and it was charming. And the chasm between my grade 7 experience and the one Daughter is likely to have cracks even wider.

The New Year

2008-09-06T19:02:00.003-04:00

Everyone I know feels that September is the real beginning of a new year. The turn of the season, the start of school, and that indefinable something in the air that fires you up to start some big projects. I have three I'd like to start on, but today spent several hours blanching beans and chopping peppers, etc, to put in the freezer. Tomorrow Husband and I will can peaches. I realized this morning at the farmer's market that this is my way of holding onto summer and its plenty. In spite of all this September-type industry, I managed and whisk-in visit to the library, to pick up a hold and some DVDs; and in the spirit of September, I'll tidy up my mind by talking about the three... no, four books I read this week.

First, the book Younger Sister lent me, Sarah Waters' Fingersmith (Virago, 2002). I loved Tipping the Velvet, and this book was not a disappointment. It displays some uncommon and tangy slices of Victorian London life (that amazingly pestilent and fertile—at least for writers—place) and rather makes up for the raunchy and, really, when it comes down to it, horrible The Pearl. and I still am not clear on how those dear girls are going to collect on the will (doesn't the real Maud have to marry, first? according to the conditions of the will) but the story worked itself out to a satisfying conclusion.

Virago... I discovered so many authors through this marvelous press, the year I was in Sweden and dependent upon the English section of the big public library downtown. For some reason the English book buyer liked Virago, and I started to simply look for those characteristic dark green spines.

The New Policeman by Kate Thompson (Greenwillow/HarperCollins, 2005) was really delightful—and this from me, the one so thoroughly sick of Faerie! I thought the socks were dumb, mostly because I think the missing-sock "mystery" is as fake and overblown as Santa Claus; but that one detail—"we leave them where they are because they tell us where a house is"—kind of made it all right. I could not resist getting up and going to the piano to try out a few of the melodies. I'm going to give a little sketch now, to tempt you, V.T., in case you haven't read it yet. A teenage Irish boy decides to give his mother what she wants for her birthday: more time. It seems to be running out—no one has time for a wander or a cup of tea with a neighbour anymore. In spite of the pressures of modern life, however, this family keeps up the generations-old tradition of the music party (fiddle, bodhran, flute, dancing), and the boy is a crack fiddler. It really isn't a surprise why, but how the author gets there is so much fun, it's no trouble to be patient and let her unfold it for you. And P.S.: the mother does get her birthday present, in the end.

The Shadows of Ghadames by Joelle Stolz (Delacorte, 2004) was rather fine, making real and human a world in which women and men lead completely separate lives. It almost doesn't seem that bad... except for that bit where the girls are taught from the beginning to walk "like women." And, of course, that they aren't allowed to go anywhere. At all. And that the male world is superior to the female. As usual.

Finally, there's Smart Dog by Vivian Vande Velde (Harcourt, 2005): short, sweet, and containing nothing objectionable to the educational market. Enough humour to make the somewhat stodgy bits (popularity blah blah) swallowable. Very cute cover.

HB to ME

2008-08-18T16:01:00.002-04:00

It being my natal anniversary, I knocked off for the afternoon to read and have a beer on the deck, under the wind-tossed birch tree. It was very pleasant. Now I feel I should catch up a little on what I've been reading. I confess I have read some books forgotten what they were, as I had no time to blog or even note the titles, being always in the middle of some summer thing, such as packing for camping, unpacking from camping, prepared the children for camp... I'm sensing a theme here.

BUT speaking of camping, I brought many mags, plus a work-related book. …Ah! that was one I read and forgot! Abharat by Clive Barker--quite good. Imaginative but a bit too largely roving for my taste (strange adventure for its own sake). The comparison to Alice was apt, though the adventure is less philosophical, I'll wager; but the heroine is, thankfully, less passive than Alice (Eat this! Drink that!). So I'll try the sequel, even though it looks massive. (Son has it at camp this week.) Anyway, I also took camping John A: The Man Who Made Us by Richard Gwyn (Random House 2007), a biography Husband bought with birthday money and enjoyed very much. It is entertaining and eye-opening. Haven't finished it yet.

I gave up on reading The Birchbark House to Daughter--she wasn't very interested. So I went on the with the sequel myself, The Game of Silence by Louise Erdrich (HarperCollins, 2005), which I picked up much reduced at Big Chain Bookstore. I loved it. I can see once again, in the illustrations (by the author) and the careful, interested description of what the characters do and how they do it, Erdrich's answer to Laura Ingalls Wilder. How I love the complex, unusual Old Tallow! And the way the people accept her unusualness. And the formality of the people's interactions. And of course, again the story is moving and complete.

Which brings me finally to the book I just finished in my backyard: Ahab's Wife or, The Star-Gazer by Sena Jeter Naslund (HarperCollins, 1999). I waded into this in some doubt, it being a fat book of small print, but fell in love with its heroine, and the careful building of her, which is pieced all quilt-like out of so much knowledge and devotion and range that it couldn't help but be interesting. Okay, the meeting with the infant Henry James was egregious, and made me glad I wasn't overly familiar with most of the other literary figures the author stitches in, but otherwise I plumped along as "wrapped" as can be. Now that's enough of the quilt metaphor. Sister-Who-Quilts would like this book very much--if, indeed, she hasn't read it already.

And that's all!

The Sad Truth

2008-07-28T19:34:00.002-04:00

...About Happiness by Anne Giardini (HarperCollins, 2005) is that it isn't a very good book. Stuff happens, stuff is talked about (by the narrator) and you don't know why. It seems like the writer took everything she ever thought about and threw it in. There's egregious description, too: what Husband and I call "skyed sparrows" (thank you, Steve Martin). I went through on seven-league boots, and missed only one significant detail.

Continuing on my pursuit of Malorie Blackman, I read Noughts & Crosses (Corgi, 2004), which was good—turning the whiteness of the Western world on its head--mostly. Unfortunately the bottom dropped out of her created world for a moment when she slipped some real-world historical references into her invented history classroom. It didn't make sense that the Crosses, up high on the top of society, would make a fuss over McCoy's invention. (I hate it when an agenda takes over a story.) We'll see what the sequel is like.

Finally, a reread: Breath by Donna Jo Napoli (Atheneum/Simon&Schuster, 2003). One of my favourite by this author. An historical take on The Pied Piper story, in which 12th century Hameln is seized by a mysterious illness. The magical thinking of medieval times just can't cope, and the innocent suffer. Despite the scientific thinking behind the illness and its ramifications (and the doings of a coven of witches), the author still has that piper magic the children away, though.

Pre-Vacation

2008-07-09T19:41:00.002-04:00

BeforeI can go jaunting off and do some cottage reading, here is some reading I've done in between my real life:

Elijah of Buxton by Christopher Paul Curtis (Scholastic Canada, 2007): All right: first off, this is an excellent story by an excellent storyteller, and now I want to go and visit Buxton. Elijah is a funny character, and his relationships with the adults around him very interesting. The moment when he stares slavery in the face for the first time is horrifying, and very well executed. However, I found the dialect hard to wade through, though it did get easier as I went along. I wonder, though: how, in the way Elijah spoke, did others hear that he was educated? Okay, MaWee of the circus had a lthicker way of talking, but Mrs Chloe wasn't so different. Hm. Also, I would like to to know how "fra-gile" sounds different from "fragile."

Fish by L.S. Matthews (Random House, 2004): Borrowed from a workmate. A family of aid workers leaves the drought-stricken village where they leave, just in advance of soldiers. It seems to be Africa, but not necessarily. They have a guide with a donkey and a fish in a pan, which the child in the family rescued from a mud puddle, and which she, or he, it isn't specified (the narration is first person, and they all call the narrator by a nickname, "Tiger") continues to guard until they get to their destination, a refugee camp at the border. In the final metres, the fish is being carried in the child's mouth. What a wonderful book--perfect for a class, say, that's been talking about refugees.

Cut by Patricia McCormick (Scholastic Inc, 2000): Because I came to this book through a second one, which is about child sexual slavery in Asia and is called Sold, I thought this was going to be about infibulation. It isn't--it's a psych ward novel, about a teen who self-cuts.

Little Emperors: A Year with the Future of China by Joann Dionne (Dundurn, 2008). Since the author's year was the year Hong Kong was returned to China, the story is a picture of the past, which she acknowledges. This was interestingenough but I didn't get a picture of little emperors, really.

And then there was about half a dozen graphic novels which I returned to the library precipitously, alas. One was devastating--about the aftermath of the Rwandan massacre. I hid it in my room so Son would not read it. Oh, and there was the book I didn't read, but must mention, because it was so provoking: The Last Time They Met by Anita Shreve. All the conversation is in italic type--why? To make the people seem dry and affectless on purpose? Feh. I threw it aside.

A Few Reads, Then Back to Writing

2008-06-25T09:24:00.003-04:00

Oh, The House of Many Ways by Diana Wynne Jones (HarperCollins, 2008) is a good long drink; not as scintillating as what I first tossed back, in the days when the springs were fresh and my thirst quite bottomless and everything that poured from this particular pen went straight to one's head; but I'd gladly give this book to anyone who'd never tasted DWJ; if they like it, well, the older, stronger stuff has been so beautifully rebottled, and is so readily available. ... okay, I'm getting tired of this metaphor!

Of course, it is simply fun just to be near Howl and Sophie again. The heroine of this story is very humorously full of and unknown to herself, even more than Sophie was.

Years ago I meant to read The Confessions of Max Tivoli by Andrew Sean Greer ((Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004) and now I finally have. It was lovely. It tells the story of a man whose body has lived its life backwards, starting with an old man's body and getting younger and younger every year. Amazingly, the author makes it work; and what a device for balancing observation, experience, and the limits of point of view, so that for once, the young can what the old know, while, yet, humanity is not glorified, and youth and all it represents is still wasted, one way or another. I didn't recognize the woman Max loves and longs for all his life, though; or was it just that such a woman, if I encounter her, I find hard to connect to; and, even, scorn a little? Or is she that thing I always find frustrating and opaque, a (literary) man's woman?

I really enjoyed Mistress of the Art of Death, a delightful historical/medical/murder mystery with an unusual heroine, so of course I made time for the sequel, The Serpent's Tale by Ariana Franklin (Penguin, 2008). It was more of a straight murder-mystery read than the first one, because I was familiar with the set-up and the main characters, and because there was less bone- and flesh-reading in this one. But the historical setting and details, and the relationships between the main characters, and the unfolding of the plot (though achieved with some tricky withholding of information which, later, was apparently known to our heroine) were all satisfying and rich. If you haven't read the first one, it should definitely be on your summer reading list, with this to follow up in the fall.

Finally (for now), Mud Girl by Alison Acheson (Coteau, 2006). I have had reason to be made aware of this writer's weakness, which is the heroine who is mute with tragedy, trapped in her own suffering mind and heart; it's a weakness because sometimes it works (when the reader can agree that what happened was sad and difficult) and sometimes doesn't (when the reader thinks, "What's the big deal? Get over it, already!"). I was glad to see that in this book, it works; very well, in fact. You do, at a certain age, if you have been frustrated and need something more or better, and if you are lucky, emerge from the mud of your own family and experience and expectations and begin to get the idea that you can arrange things for yourself, differently; and if you are lucky, you find loving people who help you start to do this, despite your stunned inarticulateness; for in that state, you simply lack the language to describe a reality you have only just begun to imagine.

And, as the Canadian Children's Book Centre review put it (roughly), it's so nice to read a YA about a girl that doesn't involve endless prattle about shopping, snogging, or snarking!

Vile Temptress Casts Her Spell

2008-06-19T21:08:00.002-04:00

After meeting Vile Temptress at BookExpo, I receive a gift in the mail: the sequel to Howl's Moving Castle. It was waiting for me when I got home today. Of course I had to sit down and read a little, just enough to make me sigh and wish the next page turn would reveal, "A Spell For Producing Dinner Out of Empty Pots and an Unprepossessing Fridge and Cupboard Array When the Cook Is Just As Tired and Grumpy As the Family Members Hanging Around Waiting For Dinner Are."

More later! Thank you, VT!

Another Rare Success

2008-06-09T08:53:00.002-04:00

Husband is such a picky reader, it's a miracle when he enjoys something I recommend. I think my first unqualified success was How To Be Good by Nick Hornby, which he loved as much as, though in different ways than, I did. Now there is Doing It by Melvin Burgess (Penguin, 2003), which I recommend to all fathers, mothers of teenagers (especially teenage boys) and high school teachers. The cover on the copy I picked up is arresting, as you can see here—actually, that's why I picked it up. The story starts out being about sex, but of course it's about so much more. The main characters are 3 males, one whose enormous self-confidence takes a licking, one who gets through his sexual terror, and one who saves himself, using dubious but necessary means, from a twisted situation. There are also a couple of female characters we hear from, and even, in a few instances, some parents. Here is one of the little brilliant moments in this book: one of the quaking bogs Mr Confidence (Dino) is standing on is his parents' marriage. In the book, he witnesses his mother passionately snogging someone not his father; mother and son dance around the fact that Dino knows for a while, and when it's finally out in the open, Dino can hardly stand it:

He watched her as she turned to make the tea. This was a woman, he hardly knew her. She was like a tiny box he had held in his hand all his life, and he had pressed a catch and she'd opened up and here she was, big as the sky. She was like the bloody Tardis. He felt a wave of resentment that she had so much life.

I loved this book!

I also loved Fun Home by Alison Bechdel (Mariner/Houghton Mifflin, 2006); so did a lot of other people, so it needs no help from me. I'll just point this out as required reading for any of those remaining literacy snobs who think graphic novels are only for readers who can't handle "real" reading. And for the subset who thinks they are kids' reading, a warning: sexual content, adult situations and existential musing.

A sister sent me an essay which pointed out a few writers I hadn't heard of (not the purpose of sending me the essay but the fruitful offshoot); one of them is Malorie Blackman, a British writer whose unpretentious tone comes with a side of quick and playful wit. I read Dead Gorgeous (Corgi, 2003), the most unscary ghost story I have ever read (except for The Ghosts Who Went to School, maybe!) and am waiting for a couple of others to arrive at my library. Slightly higher on the scary scale was Margaret Mahy's The Other Side of Silence (Puffin, 1995) which I bought at a secondhand store because I had never seen it before. (I've read many others by this excellent author.) This was the scariness of the unhinged, though. The book says some interesting things about what gets left unsaid, and why; and how people slot themselves, sometimes into different slots for different things.

An ARC of The Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins, Scholastic Press, 2008) came my way (thank you, Rabbit Girl!) and it was down the hatch in short order, for both Son and me. The author (who wrote the Gregor books) must have spent some time watching Survivor; the logical extension of that appalling and soul-dirtying franchise is this: a television series everyone must watch in which the contestants battle to the death. The story's world is the poverty/decadence of our world condensed into one City and its twelve outlying and resource-providing Districts; the author adds to that a dose of ancient Greece and Rome, and a dash of video RPG (stuff appearing in mid-air when you need it! and if you have the means to get it) and creates a story that is consistently compelling and well-imagined. Only at the end, when the "hounds" are released, did its hold on me waver: I could almost see the jerky-fluid CG movement of the creatures, and the detail about the eyes seemed egregious, a mere plant for follow-up in the next book. However, I forgive and eagerly anticipate moving on.

Joanna Trollope's North American editors continue to annoy me with their laxity (Diane Krall? Hello!) but Second Honeymoon (McArthur&Co, 2006) was all right. Another title read for the author's sake: Light a Penny Candle by Maeve Binchy (Arrow, 1992; Century, 1982). I galloped through that at breakneck speed and enjoyed it.

Don't Think About It

2008-05-26T09:20:00.002-04:00

Around the time Norah Jones' first CD was leaving the atmosphere and heading for the stratosphere of popularity, I read a piece about its popularity in The New Yorker (where else?), which concluded that sometimes, the reason something's popular is because it's good--simple as that, no need to think about it. It's just good. I feel that way about Lori Lansens' The Girls (Knopf, 2005). I don't even want to talk about it.

Younguncle Come to Town by Vandana Singh (Viking, 2006) is a good-old-fashioned kids' story, that reminds me of Erich Kastner a bit, but lighter and more modern. I enjoy reading adult novels set in India or from Indian writers--there's a whole lot of good storytelling coming from that land. I am happy to say that includes children's storytelling. And this is a book you can give an eight or nine-year-old reader who finds a standard chapter book a bit daunting. It's episodic, for one thing; but it looks inviting, too. The typeface is open and friendly, there's lots of leading and the occasional illustration loosens things up even more.

Leaving Simplicity by Claire Carmichael (Annick, 2007) had a promising premise: boy from a closed, simple community enters near-future world dominated by corporations and advertising. It was disappointing. Our simple hero is never in the least persuaded by "the chattering world": he and his critical education always stay firmly above it all, so we never learn anything but the standard and obvious media-lit things about advertising. (What was the reaction-reading appliance embedded in his tooth supposed to read?) His cousin is a stereotypical Valley Girl from beginning to end, with hardly a mind of her own; yes, she learns that her "Uncle" the senator is a bad man, but the reasons he's bad are also obvious and basic.

Two Awesome Reads... and Then Some

2008-05-17T10:37:00.003-04:00

A Sister recommended The Witch's Boy by Michael Gruber (HarperTempest, 2005) and it is terrific. A forest witch adopts takes in a foundling, against her cat familiar's better judgement; she engages a bear as a nursemaid, and bids her bonded efreet add a nursery to her house. Then she goes back to work. It's clearly not entirely her fault that the boy turns out dangerously spoiled and cold; choices are made, and they are not all hers. The book turns several folk/fairy tales inside out as the witch's story becomes the boys and then joins them up again. Sometimes, as Son pointed out, this creates reader's agony, as you wait for the characters to realize what you already know; but this is made up for the in gloriously satisfying ending.

Siberia by Ann Hallam (Orion, 2005) was recommended by a work contact, and it is also terrific. A girl arrives with her mother at a winter prison camp--this part reminded my of a novel I read years ago, about a girl who grows up in Siberia after being exiled there with her mother. Anyway, this girl comes to believe her mother has some kind of magic, after observing her at a secret, mysterious task after work hours one night. After a while her mother starts teaching the girl how to do the task herself: which is growing, keep and preserving a group of miniature creatures. Due to the girl's youthful carelessness, her mother is arrested again and taken away, and the girl, who is clever, goes to a boarding school. There, after a number of things happen, she realizes she has got to do what her mother promised they would do toegther, one day: take the cretures, called Lindquists, north and west, to "the city where it is always light". She sets off, always pursued by a man who may or may not be a friend. Aside from being a fantastic survival adventure, this story presents a chilling picture of some possible outcomes of global warming and rampant industrialism.

The Salt Roads by Nalo Hopkins (Warner, 2003) is unusual and ambitious and many other good things; but I didn't finish it. I was not in the right frame of mind--you have to commit to following a thread of meaning that weaves into and out of several stories across several centuries and continents, and I was tired and had so much else to read.

A couple of older Kevin Henkes novels: Protecting Marie (Greenwillow, 1995) and Sun and Spoon (Greenwillow/Puffin, 1997). Stories about layered moments and family relationships. Girl stories, one might say. And then, a book which, while I was reading it, reminded me I had read it before. I put it that way because it didn't feel like a reread at all. It was The Folk Keeper by Franny Billingsley (Aladdin/Simon&Schuster, 1999). Short and complex; alas, too much so (and too chilling) for use at work.

I couldn't resist Pictures in the Dark by Patricia McCord (Bloomsbury, 2004), a story about wo sisters dealing with a mother who is off her rocker. It was a swift read, accomplished pretty much in a day; a sad story, well built but somewhat artless in the telling. It was told in the 12-year-old's voice, and she seemed to be able to see what was wrong too easily or plainly. She told herself too much. I guess I expect, in this kind of story, the kind of strangled, painful half-articulation of 12-year-old Fanny in Protecting Marie. Why does that seem "realer" to me?

Becca at Sea by Deirdre Baker (Groundwood, 2007): more moments and family relationships, but coupled with some very felt and lived-in experience, mostly to do with nature and the outdoors (sailing and sea swimming, forests and beaches). Episodic but with a happy ending.

Meanwhile, I have read and discarded a few fantasy novels; one, The Divide (Scholastic Inc.) I might have finished if I had the time.

All Over the Underland

2008-05-12T14:46:00.002-04:00

For work I picked up Gregor the Overlander by Suzanne Collins (Scholastic Inc, 2003?) and it was so good, I got ahold of the other four in the series and ripped through them at high speed. They are Gregor and the Prophecy of Bane, Gregor and the Curse of the Warmbloods, Gregor and the Marks of Secret, and finally (2007) Gregor and the Code of Claw. A neat bow to the author for ending it there. Son and I agreed that the Underland would make a fantastic setting for a video game: lots of characters with different skill sets; battles on land, on sea, and in the air and in darkness; dipping into the museum stores for special supplies; moments of rager attack which would be energy-costly but effective.... "I can just picture it!" said Son, fresh from his birthday weekend of nonstop Super Mario Brawl.

Continuing in my Festival-influenced reading, I borrowed A Girl Named Zippy by Haven Kimmel (2001, Broadway Books/Random House). A memoir about "growing up small in Mooreland, Indiana" (a town of 300, then as now); loving and funny and spare. At the Festival I bought Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (Random House, 2008) and this was very good. A novel in short stories about/around a woman who very much reminded me of Hagar Shipley. Only a little less self-deluding, perhaps.

Jean Little's Dancing Through the Snow (Scholastic Canada, 2007) is like the orphan stories that satisfied me when I was a child. Am I now too old, or my joy too lost, that I don't trust that satisfaction anymore? Perhaps I should read it to Daughter, and see what she makes of it. The cover is fantastic.

Speaking of Speaking

2008-04-14T10:26:00.002-04:00

I might as well mention Speaking of Faith by Krista Tippett (Viking, 2007): Many interesting ideas but they all relate to conversations she's had on her radio program (natch: the book is about her experience in conversation with deep thinking moderates of many faiths--the NPR version--maybe originator, I don't know--of CBC's Tapestry); after a while it just seems like one generality after another and I just want to hear the actual conversations. So I'm done.

Another From the Reading List

2008-04-14T09:59:00.002-04:00

Amy&Isabelle by Elizabeth Strout (Random House, 1998): With a blurb from Alice Munro on the back cover (not sure if this is a recommendation to me or not...). I was simultaneously listening to an audiobook by the same author which I was not loving, partly because the reader wasn't always able to see to the next line of text while reading the end of the current line, something I hate because it creates weird skips over meaning. (The worst case of this I ever heard was in The Master Butchers Singing Club, read by the author, Louise Erdrich. It was painful!) Anyway, because I was not loving the one title, I was reading the other with one eyebrow raised; in the end, though, Amy&Isabelle won me over. It didn't take the pleasant way; Strout didn't soothe the reader, the way, say, Elizabeth Berg often does; the characters are left with the pain they have inflicted on each other unhealed; moved past, a little, but there, still. It was very real, I thought.

Skim, and Skimming

2008-04-11T12:41:00.002-04:00

I'm doing a lot of skimming, skipping and half-reading of books these days, because of work. I know I'll be coming across books that aren't suitable for my purposes but I wish I could finish. Those I will recommend. So far, there have just been a couple that weren't suitable but that I didn't particularly want to finish, either. Those I won't mention... but I might mention others like those, if they really get on my nerves!

Two un-work-related reads: Skim, by Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki (Groundwood, 2008): a graphic novel that I am returning to the library before my daughter finds it in the house. There is stuff in here that she would find very disturbing. (Falling in love with a teacher. Kissing a teacher! The pervasive nihilistic mood. She has no context for this!) This is a high YA, which the publisher's website acknowledges, sort of: it's recommended for ages "14 and up" but grades "7 and up"; there's no way I'd give this to a 12-year-old to read. (see reasons above). The reviews praise the book on various levels and I guess I can see what they are talking about but I, for one, would like never to hear or read about Holden Caulfield again, EVER! That damn book irritated me when I had to read it in high school and almost every reference to it irritates me now. I have a vague idea why--it's packed into my under-the-mental-bed drawer with all the other stuff related to the glorification of adolescence. Which is a STAGE, people, that you're supposed to GROW OUT OF!

Living by the The Book

2008-04-04T12:33:00.003-04:00

The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs (Simon&Schuster, 2007): Husband ordered this on his birthday bookstore gift card. It's a stunt, and no doubt very interesting to people who don't know much about one or either of the Bibles the author delves into (Jewish and Christian). But since I wasn't learning very much (due to childhood Bible saturation in a Christian denomination that loved the OT, plus a life-long interest) I had time to notice how carefully the author skirted around the most obvious truth about Bible rules and regulations: most of them have to do with how the COMMUNITY is supposed to conduct itself. He seems terrified of the group--even though his most "spiritual" (whatever that means--transcendent, maybe?) experiences arrive in group settings. Also, BTW, his approach to child rearing (at least on two counts, eating and discipline) is totally whacked-out. He's raising a boy who will not be able to watch TV without eating, and who will think that hurting people doesn't matter, as long as you Band-Aid a "sorry" onto the wound.

However, he's a good writer and the book was a pleasant read. I enjoyed his forays into the fringes of Judeo-Christian religiosity. He let people speak for themselves and kept his judgements to a minimum--and admitted when he genuinely appreciated people.

Bro by Robert Newton Peck (HarperCollins, 2004): Short, spare and sweet. Not a wasted word, not one extra gesture. This is one disciplined writer! It would be a very interesting exercise to compare this, side by side in every aspect, to Hope Was Here. They are both folksy (they concern plain American folks in a certain place and/or time) and they both deal with love and self-sacrifice, and family members finding and drawing close to one another. Why do I like Bro so much better? Why does it seem more true?

Faith Matters

2008-03-30T15:30:00.003-04:00

Spoiler Alert: The conference I am going to shortly is about faith and writing, so any reader who does not have a soul should skip a few paragraphs--or perhaps tune out altogether for the next month or so. I'm going to be talking about soul books.

In the interest of being a somewhat informed conference attendee, I am trying to read as many titles from the recommended reading list that I can get from the public library and that I haven't read already. So:

The Man Who Walked Between the Towers by Mordicai Gerstein (Sorry, I returned it already and so I'm not sure if the title is right; but it was Roaring Brook Press, 2004 maybe). Touching and visually interesting (great use of foldouts) with a neat left hook at the end.

By Gary D. Schmidt, Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy (Yearling ed., 2006). Good book, goes very deep into parent-child relations and hypocrisy and intolerance and bullying and community--and it's a beautiful story, and a lyric poem RE the sea and the coast and islands and whales, and Schmidt does the hard, right thing by his story in letting a certain one of his characters die. But I would like to see the original edition (Houghton Mifflin, 2004), because Yearling really cocked it up. The book is mostly definitely YA--heck, it won a YA prize. Yet here it is, digest-sized and with the most wrong cover art. It shows a couple of children, a blond white boy in a high collar and a pink-dressed black girl, in a boat together like a couple in a Hollywood, "straightlaced male meets free-spirited female and is liberated" movie. Which this story is not. It's about souls touching: Lizzie's and Turner's, Turner's and his father's. As for the whales: they are the music. In those whale encounters, Schmidt brings Darwin and the conservative Christian together and invites them to dance. If you can look a whale in the eye and connect, soul to soul, what does that say about your place in creation?

Hope Was Here by Joan Bauer (Puffin ed., 2002; G.P. Putnam, 2000). Well written and definitely full of faith but not the kind that appeals to me overmuch. Rather the kind that appeals to Oprah's book club. I do not like the folksy American voice at all.

That's it for the reading-list books for now. Others I should mention:

Dillon Dillon by Kate Banks (Frances Foster/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002). A ten-year-old boy spends a cottage summer processing something he has learned about himself. It was touching and good, but the loon stuff itched me like a woolen sweater. Loons don't nest in July, they nest in early spring. I couldn't suspend disbelief.

A Cabinet of Wonders by Renee Dodd (The Toby Press, 2006). The author spent a long time writing this, and did a lot of research. And fell in love with her characters. Those characters were for the most part interesting though they fell into some bad habits from time to time (the guy-only scenes seemed a bit belaboured). She settled them all well and honourably at the end, though.

Joseph Bruchac, Hidden Roots (Scholastic Inc, 2004). Elder Sister provided a good descriptor for this author: steady. He has a steady hand with fiction and I appreciate his subject matter, which is most often Native North Americans present and past. In this story, a boy slowly discovers his Indian heritage--as well as some shocking facts about it, and a surprising thing about his own, beloved "Uncle Louis."

Ali Smith, The Whole Story and Other Stories (Hamish Hamilton/Penguin, 2003). I confess I did not finish the book as I was impatient to get to the reading-list reading. But this is definitely in my "good short stories" category. The author, it appears, is Scottish and her stories often deal with Scottishness, perceived and actual. Yes, Loch Ness comes into it, quite humourously. I wonder what a Scottish reader thinks of these stories. Is part of their charm the "other" flavour?

Roddy Doyle, The Deportees (Alfred A. Knopf, 2007). Stories about race in Ireland, adventurously written. Very enjoyable because Doyle begins and ends with character. I assume Irish readers enjoy them as they were published first in an Irish newspaper for new Irish (ie immigrants). But then, maybe part of their charm is still, in that context, the "other" flavour (see above).

Now, on to a few New Yorkers. Though this weekend I saw a romantic comedy set in New York and as it opened (the actors names layered PowerPoint-wise over scene of New York) I thought, "I'm getting tired of New York. Why can't it be somewhere else for a change?"

Another Geraldine

2008-03-23T15:01:00.006-04:00

Stop the Train by Geraldine McCaughrean (Oxford, 2001): What a thoroughly entertaining novel. Very funny. But, I sigh... I hope the right readers are finding it.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers (Vintage Canada ed., 2001): The title seemed less disingenuously ingenuous and more tiresomely truthful as I went on. In the last third, I was reading only about a paragraph per page. Judging by all the rave reviews, either critics enjoy being called motherfuckers or they think they are exempt. Of course, criticizing this book is like agreeing with that kid in Grade Four who endlessly said, "You hate me, don't you? Admit it," and if you said, "Yes, I hate you" you were proving them right, therefore given them masochistic satisfaction (euw) and if you said "No, I don't" you then had to be their friend. I'll just shelve this beside Don DeLillo in my mental library. Category: Whatever.

Does My Head Look Big in This? by Randa Abdel-Fattah (Orchard Books/Scholastic Inc., 2005). Well, Islam certainly is the flavour of the month. A friend told me not to overthink this one -- that it was just meant to be fluff; but, excuse me, is this book not about a girl making a thoughtful decision and then grappling with the consequences? Yes, it has the form of a fluffy, getting-one's-knickers-in-twist teen girl comedy; but the reader is being asked to take the heroine seriously, and so I did; and I found the earnest religious explanations for why she can't kiss the boy she likes just as sad and wearying as I would in a novel about a radically chaste Christian teenager.

Writing Conference

2008-03-05T09:23:00.003-05:00

Hurray! A friend drew my attention to a writing conference in April to which I am going. I'm going to have to read furiously to get acquainted with some of the talent speaking there.

A reader of this blog has marvelled at how much time I have to read. I'll remind her and whoever else needs to know that I read very fast. This book, for example: The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt (Clarion/Houghton Mifflin, 2007): it is 264 pages in 12-point type comfortable spaced, and I read it in about... hmm... 4 hours, tops. So, you see, it's not that I have so much time; it's more that I can cram so much reading into the time I have.

The WW was very fine indeed. I like this author--he's a solid, old-fashioned sort of writer (it's not an accident that he sets so many of his books in the past) of the sort that builds a character from the soul outward. This is not to say that his books lack appeal. Son is finding this book funny and engrossing. It's a snow day today and when I told the children they could stay home, his thanks were utterly warm and spoken from the depths of the sofa where he was already settled to read. Incidentally, Schmidt will be at the conference--yay!

Mother lent me Sweetness in the Belly by Camilla Gibb (pub info to come--I lent the book out again to a neighbour). I appreciated this book intellectually but not emotionally; there was more sociology in it than I like in a novel, for one thing. But the main problem for me was that thought there was lots of talk about the main character's love of prayer and her faith (Islam) but I couldn't feel it. It didn't get past my high internal threshold--my knowledge of how hard this faith is on women, my perception of the ignorance created by a purely Qu'ranic education. Did I miss it, or did the author simply not convey adequately what was beautiful and lovely in Islamic scripture? It should have come out clearly through her main character, given that very education.

I went looking for The Invisible by Mats Wahl (Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2000/2007). I don't remember why--well, because it's by a Swedish writer, but I don't know in what context it came to my attention. Anyway, it was interesting--written in a very flat, detailed sort of "police procedure" way, which creates a vivid picture of the landscape inside you. The story itself is not at all unsual or unique--it's an old modern story, about thuggishness with fascist pretensions, coming to a head in an isolated small town. Neither are the characters--the meticulous police officer, the bewildered mother of the bully, the brittle desperation of the victim's parents and the guilt-stricken girlfriend. Even "the invisible" idea isn't unique to me. But it all works together quite well. Apparently it's going to be made into a movie--whcih might actually be better than the book, if it's done right.

Finding My Hat by John Son (Orchard/Scholastic Inc, 2003) is one in a small series of "First Person Fiction", stories about the experience of being new to the US. It was good but oddly framed--it is, and isn't, autobiographical, about a Korean boy's growing-up years in various American cities.

As well as having read all the above, I have been listening to a novel on CD called On Beauty by Zadie Smith (pub info to come). As the reviewer on Salon.com says, its a novel that reminds you why you read novels in the first place. Maybe I'll say more later--maybe I'll just keep this one inside. It's wonderful.

A Quick Note

2008-02-09T12:34:00.001-05:00

...to recommend Esther by Sharon E. McKay (Penguin Canada, 2004), especially in the light of Quebec City's 400th anniversary. My visiting mother heard the letter that inspired this book read on CBC radio. It's an unusual story of a Jewish girl's 18th-century journey from St. Esprit, France to Quebec. Weirdly, in the way of synchronicity, I am currently reading Blood Secret by Kathryn Lasky (HarperTrophy, 2004) which deals with the same theme: that is, the secret trails of hounded Jewry through the bloodiest dark valleys of Christian history.

And I will also recommend Enter Three Witches by Caroline B. Cooney (Scholastic Press, 2007) for another perspective on That Scottish Play. A bit slow moving at times. One is frustrated by the extremely meek heroine's helpless fluttering around the scenes of her undoing; you know that she is simply pinned there, a specimen belonging to the actual play.

The Temptation was just too great

2008-01-31T17:54:00.000-05:00

...and part of it is the fault of Vile Temptress, who was earlier introduced and knows who she is. But, to be fair, I also had to go to the book store for something somewhat work related, and I had a gift card, so I'd already spent the money, really; and then, I read so fast, so it hardly took any time at all...

Such is my growing respect for Neil Gaiman that I bought, cold and in hardcover, M Is for Magic (HarperCollins, 2007), a collection of short stories of his that he thought young people would enjoy. I do not regret buying it in the least. "Sunbird" alone was worth it! And "How to Talk to Girls at Parties" was a gem. I think Neil is some kind of spiritual son of DWJ; certainly Interworld, by NG and Michael Reaves (Eos/HarperCollins, 2007) would make one think so. Interworld also was fantastic and Son thought so too. It's very "boy"--lots of action, lots of potential for further action of a non-character-developing but very exciting and creative sort. Now that the story is so well laid-out, perhaps the TV and film people the authors have tried to pitch this story to will finally get it. Great—then the publisher will be rewarded for their investment!

There's going to be a lot more fantasy talked about here—I have to read it widely, for my next work task. So be prepared!

On that topic (and continuing with NG; and, come to think of it, HarperCollins).... a graphic novel treatment of Gaiman's Coraline! Coming soon (June 2008) to a bookstore near you! Very nicely done. The story gained, and lost, in this format: because you could see such things as the other mother snacking on beetles, there was more of a straight-out horror feel; the chill in the original came from the ordinary, almost flat voice of the narrative. The artist did a lot towards keeping this flavour by subtlety of expression in Coraline's face.

I was grateful to be able to give this to Daughter, who claims never to have finished a novel in her life, poor thing; she loves graphic novels, though—in fact, she is upstairs right now inhaling the third Babysitter's Club by Ann M Martin/Raina Telgemeier (Graphix/Scholastic Inc, 2007)—I love Raina's style. I have been quite inspired by my daughter in this area and find myself checking out the graphics section at the library--not manga, that's a taste I don't share, though I've tried. So I found White Rapids by Pascal Blanchet (Drawn&Quarterly, 2007)—what a styley book. Delightful! And before that, another recent Drawn&Quarterly pub, a peculiar little story called Wimbledon Green (I think) about "the world's greatest comic book collector" ; the artist was the one who illustrated the covers and endpapers of the last Stuart MacLean book I read (and blogged, somewhere here).

So, I have apparently been reading up a storm (even I don't know where I find the time) because I also must talk about DWJ's newest, The Game, published in Great Britain by HarperCollins (2008; thank you, Vile Temptress!). Now, this is a lovely story—if it weren't for the bloody, drunken Maenads (and their boozy leader Bacchus) I could add this to my "possibility for the job" pile. The extra stuff at the back is fun and very helpful for today's reader; whatever they don't know they certainly might get interested in, reading this story. It features a classic, ignorant and unknowingly gifted protagonist who is thrown into a chaotic situation with no explanation and has a glorious adventure in which she (in this case) discovers her true nature. The magic comes from the "mythosphere"; in particular, the "Golden Apple strand"—and that's all I'll say, for the sake of the many sisters who read this and will be borrowing said book from me...and eventually, if they can, buying it for their own DWJ collections. But the best part of reading this was discovering that a sequel to Howl's Moving Castle is "coming soon"!

It pays to browse the shelves, always. In the library I found a novel by Geraldine McCaughrean I had no idea existed—and oh, it is LOVELY. Well, I love this author, which is why I leap at her name on a spine; but the book really is LOVELY!!! It is a shining example of a good writer's genius: to listen, and read, and pay attention, and imagine—and then bring readers to a place where she herself has never even been. The book is The White Darkness (HarperTempest, 2005—good gracious, this IS an HC day, isn't it!); the story is of a girl who, step by step, is stripped of every truth she knows, and given instead absolute madness and despair; and yet lives, heroically. It takes place in Antarctica—not just a place, but a huge metaphor. Geraldine, if you are ever in my city, how I would love to buy you dinner!

To Err Is Human

2008-01-16T11:05:00.001-05:00

...to read, divine.

Okay, so I was mistaken--I HAVE been finding time to read. Actually, I forgot to mention a wonderful read from two weeks ago--Birdwing by Rafe Martin (Scholastic Inc., 2005). It's an imagining around the Grimm story "The Six Swans" (or the Swan Brothers, I can't remember what it's called exactly.) Son loved it too. It is so well written and so well thought-out, so satisfying in every way. Martin treats every character, even minor ones (such as the children of the sister) with respect. Every one seems to have a fully imagined backstory that informs their every conversation. And the language is beautiful without being self-conscious. Its about transformation and self-determination and heroism and compromise; it turns a fairy tale into a novel without sacrificing the ineffable. That's pretty difficult.

I read, very quickly, the prequel and sequel to Wise Child, Juniper and Colman, respectively. Of course they were not as gorgeous as Wise Child, but they were highly satisfactory nonetheless. These are books to add to my Soul List, which I am about to formally assemble—books that teach the soul. The foreword by Karen Cushman in Colman inspires me to learn more about Monica Furlong. She published an autobiography.

Because of a conversation with a high-school librarian friend, I picked up The End of the World As We Know It by Lesley Choyce. This is an author I'm not crazy about, but keep bumping into, and admire; he is very hardworking and determined and this is definitely the best I've read of his work so far... even though it isn't up my alley. There will be plenty of teen readers who identify with the protagonists anger and bitter view of the world; and Choyce will win them over to hope in the end, because he does not make it easy. It's very real.

Okay, back to work. I swear!

A Last Hurrah... For a While

2008-01-07T09:00:00.000-05:00

I am about to enter a period of intense and nonstop work, so this will be the last blog for a while. And it's not even going to be a long one!

I'll start with the book I just this moment finished: The Penelopiade by Margaret Atwood (Canongate, 2005). One of the few Atwoods I have truly enjoyed. Her crabbed view of humanity, particularly of the uses of power in relationships—and even more particularly, in relationships between the sexes—is the perfect one to take in this recasting of the story of Odysseus. I don't mind her gloomy daubs all over the past—it's so less upsetting (and, okay, threatening) than her pictures of the present or the future. The bitter humour in this is really, really enjoyable, too—her Chorus is a thing of brilliance, and I recommend to any mother of a teenage son her Telemachus. But the best part is how completely in control of this story Atwood is. She's in control of the original material, and of her narrating character, and of every single word, and handled it all so seemingly lightly.... There is no better feeling for a reader than to be in such hands. I felt like Atwood had figured out the real story at last.

And if I were teaching an upper-level high-school English course, I'd want this book, along with Julius Lester's retelling of the Cupid and Psyche myth, on my syllabus.

Oh, I suddenly figured out what was so amusing about The Penelopiad: it's like a mash-up of Margaret Atwood and Fay Weldon....

A Mango-Shaped Space by Wendy Mass (Little, Brown and Co., 2003): I found this title when I was doing some research on body-related fiction. It would be interesting for anyone who had never heard of synaethesia, and it's competently written with believable characters, but it didn't last much past the turning of the last page.

Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay (McClelland and Steward, 2007). I got this from the fast-track "7 days only" shelf and found it difficult to race through it. It wasn't enough to just get the story; I wanted to linger in the places the author was taking me to. (This is such a rare experience for me, I hardly know what to do with it!) I also wanted to figure out this little trick she had of setting up "She didn't know that later, such-and-such would occur" moments which then didn't arrive; or, not in the form one expects, anyway. I am going to have to read this book again.

Well, that's it for now and for the next three months, probably. Toodles!

The Festive Reading Season

2007-12-27T10:07:00.000-05:00

Ah, the Christmas holidays. Cooking, wrapping, chocolate, movies and reading!

First, let me chat about a couple of weekends ago when the local library branch finally launched its renovated—well, rebuilt, really—self. Awesome space! Husband observed that though one is aware that these are politicians with an interest in saying the right thing at the right time to the right people, it was STILL nice to hear them speak of their own library memories. There was an amazing crowd at the event, and I smile now to think of the people I encountered there from other spheres of my life. For example, a swimming acquaintance with whom I had just that week struck up what became a satisfactory conversation. She was there with her family; and I thought, well, I shouldn't be surprised! For the first time, I sidled over to the Easy Readers section to see if my book was there, and it was. Somehow, that means more than seeing it at the bookstore!

Now down to business.

Wise Child by Monica Furlong (Random House, 1987); why did it take me so long to find this book? It is excellent, and I shall run back to the library to get the companions, Juniper and Colman. Once again, a thoughtful author holds up to our eyes a piece of the world and time where Christianity and an Auld Way run side by side for a while. The relationship between the Child of the title and her mentor is lovely.

Someday Angeline by Louis Sachar (HarperCollins, 1983). Cute. A nice story.

Are We There Yet? by David Levithan (Alfred A. Knopf, 2005). A YA book which I read as an adult book, strangely. Well, until about halfway through. It is well-written and sold and I can't say anything bad about it. It just didn't speak to me, particularly. I wonder what Gay Friend With Three Brothers would think of it? Must ask him to read...

Fly By Night by Frances Hardinge (MacMillan, 2005): Great read, couldn't put it down! A fantasy story set in a world similar to pre-Industrial-Revolution England, this is another lesson in the hazards of unbridled religious fervour. Since The Gammage Cup, I have never met such perfect fantasy naming: humorous, but not arch. The plot is complex, the characters multidimensional.

Finally, The Blue Girl by Charles de Lint (Viking, 2004). It would be churlish of me to complain about anything in this excellent fantasy, which places faery in a New World, urban setting so competently and completely. But it did take too much time to explain faery lore, sometimes, and got maundery. Otherwise, a very good story.

Readarama Weekend

2007-12-01T09:46:00.000-05:00

Last weekend I read a lot; whether because I had lots of time or squeezed it in, I'm not sure. But somehow I found myself with a stack of books beside the computer, reproaching me for not speaking about them. So here goes.

The Seven Wonders of Sassafras Springs by Betty G. Birney (Aladdin Paperbacks, 2005); well, heck, Christian homeschoolers will just LOVE this yarn! America just loves its mythical heartland.

Lawn Boy by Gary Paulsen (Wendy Lamb/Random House, 2007); and on the other end of American myth-making... a funny tale about an inadvertent (and underage) tycoon. Complete with enforcer!

The Curse of the Shaman by Michael Kusugak (HarperTrophy, 2006): Cool, an Inuit novel! Although it got off to a bumpy start (the editor should have been harder on repetitive and unnecessary explanations and language explanations) it was a fine story with lots of humour and solid characters. Loved it!

Poop: A Natural History of the Unmentionable by Nicola Davies/Neal Layton (Candlewick, 2004). I read this for work; what funny work I get to do! In the end it proved to be a little much for my purposes, but it is a very funny little book and quite exhaustive on its subject. Thereby contradicting its own title!

Pure Spring by Brian Doyle (Groundwood, 2007): This plus Boy O'Boy and Mary Ann Alice are my three favourite BDs, I think. Martin O'Boy returns; he's living with his friend and rescuer Buz's grandfather, and acquires a job with a soft drink company. He has to figure out a way to keep what needs (self-respect, the love and trust of others, work) while dealing with a crooked co-worker.

Jakeman by Deborah Ellis (Fitzhenry&Whiteside, 2007): Alas, this bored me. I must have Son read it to see what he thinks. And maybe one of the nephews, too.

Diamonds in the Shadow by Caroline B Cooney (Waterbrook Press, 2007): How well and lovingly Caroline portrays and instructs the ignorant American teenager! This book is excellent--even better than Burning Up. In it, an American family takes into their home the African refugee family their church is sponsoring. The African family is shadowed by a thug (posing as another refugee) who has forced them to smuggle rough diamonds for him. The American parents shake their heads in ignorant sympathy over the African family's strange behaviour and extreme skittishness; "poor sufferers" they think. But the kids are suspicious—why do the parents and older brother never speak to, never even look at, their mute, limp daughter/sister? Why does brother/son's English sound completely different from his parents'? Why do the two kids look nothing like their parents--or like each other?

The main point of view in this story is the American son's, and Cooney lets him damn and redeem himself without comment or judgement. The main force of her tenderness is directed toward the traumatized African daughter, to whom she applies the best of Christian morality and symbolism. In the end, this "least" of children gives up her life for her friends—and is saved, forgiven and welcomed into the family in a baptism of cathartic tears.

Do the Math: Secrets, Lies and Algebra by Wendy Lichtman (Greenwillow/HarperCollins, 2007): Well, I don't really get math, except in the most basic arithmetical way, so math as a metaphor doesn't do anything for me. But at least I finally understand the utility of algebra.

More Thoughts on Ayaan

2007-11-14T10:58:00.000-05:00

Infidel keeps turning over in my mind; particularly, what I learned about Dutch politics from it. And about the Dutch nature—what in my parents and siblings is not our family but "Dutch"? The more I learn about the "pillars" organization of Dutch society the less inclined I am to support faith-based schools—and the more I wish for someone, somewhere, to take on the British North American Act.

Defiance by Valerie Hobbs (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005) is a deep story lightly told about a boy who takes his first stand for himself; and, thanks to an unusual friendship, also manages back down when doing so means choosing life over fear and weariness. I'm of two minds about the Afterword. Would an Epilogue have been better--a little narrative slice, of Toby accepting the Pulitzer on Pearl's behalf? Or maybe his speech on the occasion, or a little piece of it... yes, that would have been good.

Read This Book!

2007-11-09T14:21:00.000-05:00

Just finished Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali (Free Press/Simon&schuster, 2007). Wow. All you teachers with Somalians in your classrooms, read this book! All multiculti believers who weren't convinced by Irshad Manji, read this book! All Western women who don't call themselves feminists, read this book! All children of Dutch immigrants, read this book! It won't take you long, because once you start, you won't be able to put it down until you're done.

And in other news: Don't Tell by Sandra Glover (Anderson Press, 2006): The working-class English way of speaking is really irritating, set down in print. The Wadjet Eye by Jill Rubalcaba (Clarion/Houghton Mifflin, 2000): Very informative and full of things happening; but I wouldn't call the plot "tightly woven" (Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books), rather, "carefully doled out." The characters are fairly wooden, too.

Bookies

2007-10-22T17:28:00.000-04:00

Followed up with Pretties and Specials by Scott Westerfeld; Sister was right, the third one lagged, partly because we know how the world works now. Neat twist RE: the wild primitives in the forest, though, and Tally's transformation into and out of official Specialdom was convincing. Regarding the romance, Lending Friend and I agreed that we appreciated the measured way in which the author returned Tally to Nature Boyfriend after the demise of Prettyboy.

Mentioning these books to Eldest Sister during a (far too rare) phone conversation, I was told, "Oh, yes, I recommended them to Youngest Sister." Who knew? Maybe it's time we had some kind of joint blog—a virtual book club. Five minds must be better than one! If anyone out there has advice on this sort of thing, let me know.

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell (Little, Brown and Company, 2000) arrived at my local library. I am eagerly looking forward to the next idea this author takes on.

You can't read just one...

2007-10-15T14:36:00.000-04:00

Mmmm--Sunday reading!

I admit I rolled my eyes a bit at the beginning of Alex and the Ironic Gentleman by Adrienne Kress (Scholastic Canada, 2007); there have been so many rollicking adventures lately, and irony is rife. But in the end it was a delightful tale with lots of humour and a heroine who wasn't egregiously heroic; and who knew you could fit torture and death into a children's book in a way that is both comic book ridiculous and ever-so-briefly, chillingly real? The realness comes from the author taking her time to include many true and well-observed moments (I recommend to you the musing on the nature of Monday mornings) which give the story the depth (and, perhaps, the staying power) that the Lemony Snickett series lacks.

A tip of the hat to editors on both sides of the water for a good clean read (if you've read earlier grumbles you'll know what I mean). I beg you all to give the author time to write the second book properly, so that isn't just more of the same but has the well-rounded feel of this one.

I borrowed the copy I read but I think I might get one of my own so that Husband can read it to Daughter. They will enjoy it, I think.

Apple Farming

2007-10-13T15:24:00.000-04:00

The Land of the Silver Apples was very good—Couldn't Put It Down and all that—but not as "of a piece" as Sea of Trolls, which seemed more real, while the sequel is more fantastic.

All this while I've been working my way through Emotions Revealed by Paul Ekman (Henry Holt, 2003) which I picked up because of another read, Blink by Malcolm Gladwell (Little, Brown, 2005). The latter was so very good (it's rare for me to encounter a nonfiction CPID) that I wanted to know more about something that Gladwell wrote about. Emotions just shows me how well Gladwell understood and presented the kernel of Ekman's research that most matters to the person on the street. I'll put Emotions aside now (I'm getting bored) and take a look at the other Ekman book I took out of the library, Why Kids Lie. And BTW, I highly recommend Blink. You'll never take market research seriously again.

The power of a novelist: to crack open a moment and turn it into a life. In Remembering the Bones (HarperCollins, 2007) Frances Itani presents the story of Georgie, as she lies at the bottom of a ravine waiting for rescue. Because of her car accident, she is missing the biggest event of her life, a birthday lunch with Queen Elizabeth. That could stand as a parable for her entire life: she missed out on a loving father, work that suited her gifts, raising more than one child, a golden sunset with her husband—if she chose to look at it that way; but she steadfastly refuses to. She strives toward stubborn hopefulness to the end. An utterly persuasive book.

Shadow of a Bull by Maia Wojciechowska (Simon&Schuster, 1964): they just don't make Newbery Medal winners like they used to! Whether this is a good thing or a bad, I don't know. All I can say about this book is that it contains not one nanoparticle of irony.

Darling Son

2007-10-12T11:22:00.000-04:00

Am currently reading the sequel to Sea of Trolls, The Land of the Silver Apples by Nancy Farmer (Atheneum, 2007). Son found it in the library when he was there with Dad and brought it home for me. Had to finish Uglies by Scott Westerfeld (Scholastic Inc, 2005) which a friend at work gave me—I remembered a younger sister had recommended it, and it was indeed very good, bringing to attention peculiarities of our culture, in the way that the best spec fic does.

Holiday Reading

2007-10-08T16:01:00.000-04:00

Ah, there's no one for a happy ending where all the characters get what they need and the simple generous heart is rewarded than Maeve Binchy on a tear. I took the day (well, it is a holiday, after all!) off (okay, I did laundry) to read Whitethorn Woods (McArthur and Co., 2006) and the day was not wasted. I do wish that overseas writers would hire North American editors to vet their North American characters, though. An American would never even think "she was meant to be eighteen" when the meaning is "it meant she would have been eighteen"! It just looks silly—and it's so preventable.

I've not been blogging very much as I don't want reading to be work. So, a quick (and incomplete) catch-up: Billy Creekmore by Tracey Porter (HarperCollins, 2007)—entertaining and old-fashioned; the ending came somewhat abruptly; two Alice novels (Alice On Her Way and Dangerously Alice, both Simon&Schuster)—just by way of keeping up; they were okay; various New Yorkers; and an interesting entry by Geraldine McCaughcrean in a history series called Flashbacks, called Casting the Gods Adrift (A&C Black, 1995, 2005). I at first thought it a possibility for a historical fiction project but decided it was probably too complicatedly about religion—even if that religion isn't practiced anymore. The book is about a boy training as a sculptor in the court of Akhenaten, the pharoah who tried to establish monotheism in ancient Egypt. I guess this is what historians cite as the inspiration for Hebrew monotheism. What a discussion one could have with a church youth group!

Twisted Sad People

2007-09-10T09:20:00.000-04:00

Okay, don't you think it's a bit weird that a stream of sad tales about creepy or twisted or simply bruised, battered and broken people keeps flowing from middle-class novelists? Is it a kind of voyeurism? A sort of artistic do-goodness? Slumming? It depresses me to read about the prison life of women who have murdered their own children; it's only a little bit less depressing when they have murdered their abusive husbands or sons. What makes a writer want to get into the lives of women who set their nine-year-old daughters on the streets to work? To speak for them? Why? What illumination is there, for the middle-class reader, in these drug-fried, violent, devil-possessed evil-doers?

The only thing I took away from The Big Girls by Susanna Moore (Knopf, 2007), a story about a psychiatrist with countertransference issues, is that the people in charge of a prison are only a shade less gone than the prisoners. Dwellers in misery, all of them. What disturbs me the most about such things (this book, Zombie by Joyce Carol Oates a decade and a half ago; the criminal hijacking episode in "Six Feet Under"—heck, "The Sopranos" phenomenon) is that the audience for them is the educated middle class. It's icky!

On the other end--WAY on the other end--of the scale is Secrets From the Vinyl Cafe by Stuart McLean (Viking Canada, 2006), which is icky in its own way. The stories about Morley, Dave and their kids and neighbours are very sweet, and, as with candy, the mature palate quickly sickens. I wouldn't have picked up the book if it hadn't been for the design, which is fabulous, and, now that I think of it, totally reminds me of a hilarious Norwegian movie I saw a couple of months ago about an early-fifties (fictional) research project of the Swedish Housewives' Institute, which sends Swedish social scientists out to a border village to "observe" the kitchen habits of Norwegian bachelors

Along with several New Yorkers, in the past couple of weeks I have also read How I Live Now by Meg Rosen (Random House, 2004) and S.A.S.S.: Swede Dreams by Eva Apelqvist (Speak/Penguin 2007) . The latter I picked up, of course, because of its setting in Stockholm: an American teenager goes to Sweden for three months, becomes fluent in the language and finds herself and true love. It was utterly pedestrian and a little unbelievable, but pleasant.

The former is another take on the "what happens when the world as we know it ends" theme. In this story, an American girl goes to England to stay with her cousins when her home situation (stepmother, new baby, anorexia) has become dire. Aunty has to go abroad, and then Britain is invaded, by an unspecific (terrorist-type) enemy. Since the kids (ages 17? to 10) are alone and live deep in the country, it takes a while before the situation catches up to them. This, too, is a highly personal story—aside from a few dramatic incidents, the "war" is the backdrop to the relationship between the American and: the cousin with whom she is passionately in love; the younger girl cousin whom she must care for; her own sense of self. Still, the "war" is interesting: Britain's invasion is one of many all around the world, by enemies who have nothing to gain but the attention and fear of their hosts. They are never going home again and have nothing to lose; their occupation is at first somewhat lazy but, when pushed, they kill.

Well, duh!

2007-08-14T20:37:00.000-04:00

I nearly forgot--The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill (HarperCollins, 2006). Love this novel! One of those thoroughly engrossing, thinking about it even when you're not reading kind of books. And it's a fat one, too! Afterward, I skimmed through the author's notes, and only then thought, "Wow, the research!"

Back Again

2007-08-14T19:24:00.000-04:00

Parrotfish by Ellen Wittlinger (Simon and Schuster, 2007): This book I read a review of and immediately booked online at my libraries. (I love this reading method!) It's about a "transgendered" girl who changes her name, gets a new wardrobe and then copes with living as a boy in high school. She/he is patient with her mother and former best friend (who has her own problems fitting in—both of them were home-schooled for their elementary years) and surprised by her new best friend who accepts the change with alacrity and even writes an essay in her/his honour, on the topic of parrotfish, females of which species frequently change sexes, becoming "super males" with a first-dibs hold on procreation. I can't say I really bought that parallel (would the school alpha female really be that secure?) but on the whole the book is humorous and gentle but firm, much like its hero/ine; and, okay, maybe I'm a little less skeptical about this whole "transgendered" thing.

The character her/himself asks, why does it have to be one or the other? Why can't we just dress, act and socialize in the way that best satisfies us? She/he has discovered that among a Native people (I can't remember which one) "two spirit" people were respected. I think of my favourite such character, in Louise Erdrich's The Birchbark House, an irascible older woman who lives, hunts, works by herself, doing all work, men's and women's, her own way; who watches overs the little girl with true, though untender and distant, care.

Angelica by Arthur Phillips (Random House, 2007): Another "read review and reserve" title. It was in The New Yorker. What an odd and engrossing novel! A Victorian narrator is telling it, at the request of a doctor--so right away we know that something is wrong. The same story, roughly, is told four times, about a family unit rocked by something apparently supernatural, which in the end destroys them, sort of. First there is the wife and mother, who fears the evil spirit she sees molesting her four-year-old daughter. Then there is the spiritualist who is brought to the mother's attention by the housemaid. This woman, strong and convincing, is at first keen on the money she can make from this disturbed woman, then moved to pity and love, for both the woman and her daughter. Then there is the husband and father, the very picture of (what we imagine as) the Victorian middle-class husband and father: earnest, pompous, baffled. Slowly, his grip on his life is loosened. Finally, there is the daughter, the eponymous Angelica, over whom the mysterious battle has been fought. It is her story that clarifies—but always with caution. I enjoyed this very much.

The Last Girls of Pompeii by Kathryn Lasky (Viking 2007): Well, it's a very fine novel if you've never read anything set in ancient Rome...well, Pompeii, I guess; with lots of detail about life at that time and a satisfying ending.

Barbara Gowdy's Helpless (HarperCollins, 2007) was echte BG, involving several sad characters with sorry lives who nevertheless try to remain positive, and are sometimes rewarded for sticking it out. The White Bone seems like a miracle, compared to this and Mr Sandman. This is not to say that I don't like BG--quite the contrary. I feel the tenderest love for her girls; and in this book, desperately sorry for poor Ron, who is so...well, helpless.

Then there was The Margarets by Sheri S. Tepper (HarperCollins, 2007). Oh, Sheri, I love you! In this story she comes up with a reason for why human beings are so short-sighted. It's really too bad there isn't a race of benevolent, sentient cats out there to come and teach us the lessons we need--and to sacrifice so much for us, so patiently, just because we take care of their mutant relatives. I was delighted to find the book, after a stimulating conversation about Sheri and her outrageous feminist thoughts at our family gathering a few weeks ago. I must try some more of her books; e.g., Gibbon's Decline and Fall (love the title).

The Gods In Winter by Patricia Miles (1978; Front Street, 2005). A very entertaining and intriguing story in which some classical gods reenact one of their stories on a new stage, the British countryside in modern times. It was resurrected by Tamora Pierce, who wrote an Afterword. Nice call, Front Street.

Gossamer by Lois Lowry (Houghton Mifflin, 2006): Another "child with a special task" tale from this author, who does it well; this is a simple one, and easy. And sort of old-fashioned.

King of the Mild Frontier by Chris Crutcher (Greenwillow/HarperTempest, 2003). Another entertaining memoir from an author whose books I have never (and in this case likely never will, due to their strong boy/man appeal) read. I am touched and amazed at how uncomplaining he is about his upbringing. It all sounds like a lark, until the final chapter.

And that's all for today! Now, on to finish the week's work and get ready for camping. Hmmm...must get some more books!

Long Time Passing

2007-07-21T08:26:00.000-04:00

I look for sequels (ones I know are coming, that is) I don't find them, time passes and I forget. Then I stumble onto them. Crispin: At the Edge of the World by Avi (Hyperion, 2006) continues the story of Crispin (and his newly-found soul), his companion/guardian Bear and adds to the band Troth, the damaged follower of an old religion who joins them after her own guardian is killed by an angry mob. Rich and good.

In the case of Retribution by Carrie Mac (Puffin, 2007), Book 2 of the Triskelia...series? trilogy? I picked up the sequel before I read the first book. So I waited and went back to The Droughtlanders, first, which was very well imagined and chock full of interesting characters. Not every character was interesting (Lisette is a bore) and there were a few details I scratch my head about (French speakers in this world seem out of place, somehow) but on the whole it was remarkable. The second book, however, feels a tiny bit cobbled-together, its forms (the mysteriously connected triplets who are to save the world) a bit, well, pat. Perhaps this is a function of settling into the actual story, as opposed to setting it up; but perhaps it is a function of lending the manuscript to a readers group and then incorporating their suggestions. Okay, yes, the author won't use anything that doesn't feel right, but (and this is appalling, coming from and editor and sometimes writer of children's lit, I know) I don't have much respect for youthful readers' responses, at least in a group. Maybe it's different with teens, but kids, I have found, generally just like being consulted and read to and so love anything you bring to them, uncritically. What was with that guiding voice in the head thing? First, because it is something suddenly supernatural in a world that is dirtily, gloomily real, it sticks out; and then when the author wimps out and makes it the voice of Eli's conscience it just seems dopey. In the matter of religion, the author's taking from the current world and projecting seems to freeze up: in crisis, religiousity is intensified, if anything--this world should be full of fanatics.

What feels different in this YA is the detailed, almost enjoyed violence. It almost gives me the creeps.

I gave up reading Dust to Dust by Timothy Findley (HarperCollins, 1997). I'm just not a fan of TF.

Lisa Yee's Stanford Wong Flunks Big-Time (Scholastic Inc, 2005) was quite good and not at all a sequel to the author's previous book using some common characters. (I say this because I haven't read the previous book, Millicent Min, Girl Genius, and didn't feel like anything was missing.) However, these sixth-grade kids don't look anything like the Grade 6 students of my acquaintance. They stroll around town with their pockets full of money, making dates without consulting their parents and having interactions with their peers that feel more like high school than elementary ("middle school" notwithstanding). It's hard enough comparing one's life to Hollywood; must we also fight literature?

Absolutely Normal Chaos by Sharon Creech (Scholastic Inc, 1990): good Lord, I'm behind! There are rafts of work by established authors I have no clue about... This was an entertaining story about a girl of a big family (which is not made much of, it just is) who deals with the arrival of a cousin in their midst. Very down-home and country and old-fashioned. So of course I liked it.

On the topic of oeuvre, there is the Andrew Clements title I missed, A Week in the Woods (Simon and Schuster, 2002). Another fine dramatization of child-adult relations, this one about getting off on the wrong foot.

A Is For Angst by Barbara Haworth-Attard (HarperCollins 2007) is another entry in the chicklette-lit arena, and it's a good one, entertaining and humane. Our heroine is sensible and grounded (as far as you can be at 15) and her high school social categories are not Hollywood caricatures (I sense a theme here) but real ones that even I can recognize. Thank goodness! The heroine is funny, but in herself--she's a funny girl, not a girl being tossed into the funny pool so that we can laugh at her dog-paddle.

That concludes the blogging for today. I really must do this more often...so that the pile of books doesn't look so daunting!

Chickens See Blood

2007-06-24T14:57:00.000-04:00

Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer (Harcourt, 2006) is about a family (divorced mother, three kids) getting through the winter after an asteroid nudges the moon closer to Earth. What I would do in disaster--what kind of a person I would become--is something I think about a lot. My mother once told me that there was a lot of pushing and shoving in the breadlines during her war in Rotterdam, and she found it very difficult to push herself forward. The mother in this book doesn't: she goes into survival mode right from the get-go and as a result the family survives.

But despite some interesting details, this book was a disappointment to me. In the end it was a teenage-girl's-journal novel. And I was reminded that I've never actually been crazy about SBP.

At the other end of the Wow! spectrum there is Beth Goobie's Hello, Groin (Orca, 2006). What a fantastic book! This writer is a national treasure.

Better Than Blonde by Teresa Toten (Puffin, 2007): About five minutes on the Internet proved to me that indeed, juice boxes didn't get going in the market until the 80s. It was that detail that got me seeing blood, and I could hardly read on for all the holes I pecked. Okay, so maybe a 13-year-old reader won't notice...but is that fair? Why even bother setting the book in 1975, then? The only reason I can think of is to explain to said 13-year-old reader why there is so little sexual intercourse in the Blondes' lives. This does not excuse authorial laziness and the shortsightedness of the publisher, who could easily have caught these things simply by engaging a copy editor old enough to have been around at the time.

Anita Lobel's No Pretty Pictures (Greenwillow, 1998), is a great read, distressing but enlightening; necessary, certainly.... I wonder if Jerry Spinelli read this before he wrote Milkweed. AL rode that carousel that figures so prominently in JS's tale. We can read these books as what they are, stories of war; but we can also read them to see what those experiences do to children. Does being born into a toxic/addicted family, and growing up in poverty and in and out of the state's care, create the same kind of people?

Smiler's Bones by Peter Lerangis (Scholastic, 2005) is the story of a young Innu boy who is taken by Peary with this father and a number of others from his village to New York, where, after being displayed to the public as curiousities, the adults die one after another from TB. The boy finds a home with a foster family and grows up fairly happily, until his teens, when he is shocked to discover that the bones of his father and of the other Inuit were rendered and are being kept for "study" by a natural history museum.

I'm pretty sure I read this boy's story before, but differently. Nevertheless, this was good: distressing, sobering, well written. The boy is not an object of pity, though he is pitiable.

The Bad Word

2007-06-12T14:25:00.000-04:00

Silly Americans...what else would you call a scrotum in this (perfectly innocent and also funny) context...a private part? But we're talking about a dog! Dogs are not private! (And the word is so beautifully at the centre of the perfect ending.)

The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron (Matt Phelan, illus.; Atheneum, 2006) is very much a Newbery book—plucky kid in insecure circumstances getting what she needs and finding love. It throws a lot of things together which together are funny: a Parisienne in the California desert, competing 12-step programs, American frontier eccentrics, aforementioned plucky heroine getting things slightly wrong. So, it's funny; but to whom? To kids? The writing style is oddly dense--I had to reread sentences often. Maybe it's a read-aloud. A twelve-year-old female accomplished reader would enjoy it, I'm sure. The illustrations are fine.

Me and the Blondes by Teresa Toten (Puffin, 2006) was just what it was described to be, and I liked it and was impatient reading it in equal measures as I went along. I did make a point of picking up a copy of the sequel and chatting with the author at BookExpo so that must mean that on the whole I like it. The impatience was mostly my own; I don't like too much dialect/quirkiness in pronunciation in writing (just the jist of it is enough, usually) though I grant it was pretty funny in this book.

Regarding that chat, which was very fun, here's a bulletin from the Department of Horn-Blowing: Let it be known that any reference the author makes hereafter to the Blondes books being about how Sophie needs the Blondes and the Blondes need her, or variations thereupon, are directly attributable to me.

Being Careful

2007-05-30T09:57:00.000-04:00

It’s awkward when you read a book by an author with whom you have some sort of connection and and find that you don’t like it. I can talk around Odori by Darcy Tamayose (Cormorant, 2007) by saying that it is richly written and illuminating on the subject of Okinawa as distinct from “Japan”; that the story teaches that no one understands rootedness like the transplanted; that there is so much for the senses here: tastes, smells, feelings of all sorts. But the fact is that this is a poetic (lyrical) novel and this is a genre I am not fond of. So I end up lamely returning to that o-so-useful phrase used by a friend’s mother: “It’s very nice—if you like that sort of thing.”

Also, odori is a kind of dance—another art form I can’t get into. Once an author starts getting lyrical about dance, I’m doomed.

I actually bought Enna Burning by Shannon Hale (Bloomsbury, 2004) on the strength of The Princess Academy—only to discover that it is a sequel/companion to The Goose Girl, which I haven’t read. Okay, Enna is a story of its own—but it has effectively ruined Goose Girl for me. I’ll read it anyway, because I love SH’s writing, but if I were a kid I’d be ticked off at the publisher’s disingenuousness (“other books of Bayern”) indeed!

At the same time I bought Geraldine McCaughrean’s Not the End of the World (HarperCollins 2004). My trust in this author is so complete, I even attempted the official sequel to Peter Pan because of her. Her success with that sequel is unquestionable: though I didn’t like it (skimmed through and just barely managed to finish it), neither have I ever liked Peter Pan; and Son said, “It’s surprisingly dark” to which I replied, “So is the original Peter Pan.” GM can’t change PP, a precious and vindictive character I have never found in the least attractive; but she does manage her way around the misogyny in a very interesting and liberating way.

And on that topic, End of the World: whose main character is Timna, Noah’s daughter, and whose subject is their mythical survival of the Flood. One of the reasons I love GM, I think, is that her mind seems to live in some of the same places mine does, furnished by Christian tradition and a habit of story. When she rearranges that furniture, as she does in this book, you’re liable to be barked on the mental shin. Now, bear in mind that this is just one aspect of the book: on the surface, it is an excellent, deeply-thought and humorous story about a family in extremis (knee deep in animal dung and soaked with mildew) with all its dysfunctions showing—something that any young person can get into. But what I really appreciate is its firm rejection of the notion that “one man’s head” can contain “the whole of God’s intentions”: “Some of them may…get mislaid. Bent out of shape. Misinterpreted.” There’s a whisper under there: Even 460-odd heads, when they are all men’s heads, can get it wrong.

Another must-have for all church libraries—especially for the youth section.

Code Talker by Joseph Bruchac (Penguin, 2005) tells the story of American Navajo Marine communications specialists during WWII. I appreciate JB’s plain style and thorough, humane coverage of his topic. Son enjoyed it. The War of Jenkins’ Ear by Michael Morpugo (Egmont, 1993) is one of those letters from the foreign world of British (in this case, all-boys’) boarding schools. It’s an utterly mystifying world but awfully fertile for stories, a sort of hothouse of rumour, oppression, group fevers and secrecy. In this one, a boy becomes convinced that a new student is what he says he is: the reincarnation of Jesus Christ. Incidentally, there is very little hint of this on the cover; the story is less of the “school boys vs townies” story than it purports to be.

Cinderella Story

2007-05-22T09:02:00.000-04:00

I can't remember if I mentioned Rover by Jackie French (HarperCollins, 2007): a child and her dog get captured by Vikings and end up on Freydis' voyage to Vinland. A good book.

This weekend did not get much time to read due to: good weather and wanting to do yard work rather than housework; then having to do housework anyway (on Sunday!!); then visiting guests; then more beautiful weather and yard work. These are not bad reasons not to read (except for the housework), especially when the "yard work" involves trying to figure out how to build a treehouse. (We've got lots of old lumber and the perfect old tree but no expertise, alas. And the anxious mother I am now is slowly taking precedence over my inner child--I want this thing to be somewhat safe!)

Nevertheless read (reread, it turned out) Adaline Falling Star by Mary Pope Osborne (Scholastic Inc, 2000); what a lovely story, with a great heroine: the putative daughter of Kit Carson and an Arapaho woman. At the same time I was reading The Cannibals by Iain Lawrence (Delacorte, 2005), a sequel to The Convicts which I enjoyed more than I thought I would; this one, too, is satisfying; and I love the blithe disdain the author shows for any kind of politically correction for the cannibals—really, for explaining away of the cruelty in the novels' world (England, etc, in the 1820s). The hero isn't particularly lovable, either--but he's pretty real.

But before that, read the very interesting The Woman in the Wall by Patrice Kindl (Puffin, 1997). This is a sort of Cinderella/Sleeping Beauty story, in which Anna, the middle of three daughters, retreats into a sanctuary she builds in the walls of the old house in which she lives with her mother and sisters—from "shyness", but also because she is literally invisible to others (even her own family can hardly see her). She goes through adolescence alone and uneducated ("I, who was never ill, got sick; I was wounded in some mysterious way...I was turning into some sort of fat, hairy, bleeding monster with skin eruptions.") She begins to emerge again when, finished with the physical parts of adolescence ("I'm not a monster after all. I'm a woman.") she begins to experience the social-emotional ones: she falls in love. So there's a "prince" who "wakes" her: the waking comes from inside her (she soon realizes the "love" she feels has nothing whatsoever to do with its putative object) but it opens the way into her as well, and the friendship that develops because of it is what "rescues" her. There's a "ball" at which she appears resplendently dressed in a costume of her own, very clever, devising. There's envy of her sisters, there's a clueless mother--it's all there, in the most comically serious way. I was reading this when I met a sister for dinner downtown, and I promised I would mail it to her straightaway--in exchange for the page proofs of an international Cinderella mash-up by Paul Fleischman that she gave me.

Advice For HP Unfans--Stay Tuned

2007-05-12T10:53:00.000-04:00

Lion Boy: The Chase and Lion Boy: The Truth by Zizou Corder (Puffin, 2004, 2005): I was really wowed by the first book, looked for the continuation others in vain (at old small town library) then forgot about them. Read these two in succession and quickly—they are pretty delightful. The chameleon who speaks every language, including "computer", was the real hero.

Our House by Pam Conrad (Scholastic Inc, 1995; illustrated by Brian Selznick, 2005); love the Brian. Stories from Levittown.

Factory Girl by Barbara Greenwood (Kids Can 2007): definitely high time for this book. Got it for daughter and ended up reading it from cover to cover. Well done fiction/nonfiction blend about child labour (in Canada/America) in the early 20th century.

The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo; Bagram Ibatoulline, ill (Candlewick, 2006): sort of The Velveteen Rabbit meets Elizabeth (a magnificent picture book about a girl who leaves her dear doll behind when she and her family escape Nazi Germany). I smiled over the Coda at the end: fuel for my expected argument in favour of using this term in another project.

This book...it's got huge adult appeal, like The Velveteen Rabbit—only adults know what a long journey life is, how many lucky and unlucky twists it holds. I suspected this right from the first look and read it only because I felt I should read something by this author. I found nothing new in it; it's all old, old themes and expressions of those themes.

But.

Those themes are old and keep coming back because they express truths. Children will take to the book if a) they have loved a doll or stuffed animal deeply, or b) the book is read aloud and the reader takes his or her time, enjoying individual words and sentences. The story is simple and deep; there are parables in it—for example, about the many shades and complexity of love, which the world is so quick to reduce to simple black and white, and judges accordingly. And the art is quite, quite excellent.

After that came Almost Eden by Anita Horrocks (Tundra, 2006). I've seen this book referred to so often that I felt I should read it at last. It was quite funny and I could sympathize with some of the small religious community stuff the main character goes through. Even though the novel was set earlier than my own childhood, I still recognize turns of phrase: "what's the diff" and "I don't give a care." That was rather startling.

The Crazy Man by Pamela Porter (Groundwood, 2005): another "read because I should" which I ended up enjoying quite a lot. Yes, it's another novel in verse (why is it that novel set in dry dusty prairie places call for this form?); at least that makes for a quick read. A girl's father leaves right after a farming accident; her mother copes by hiring on a patient from the nearby mental hospital to run the farm. The girl, injured in the accident, learns as she heals: about her father, about her community, about herself. It ended with some unfinished business—that took restraint on the author's (editor's?) part and I appreciated it.

Finally, thanks to a sister I can finally give some more reasons for my dislike of the HP books. They are expressed in an essay on the HP "phenomenon" in Sticks and Stones by Jack Zipes (Routledge, 2001), which I photocopied and will lend to anyone who asks.

Help!

2007-05-06T14:19:00.000-04:00

I have such a HUGE pile of books to read;...what am I doing at the keyboard?

I finally got ahold of Notes From a Liar and Her Dog by Gennifer Choldenko (Puffin, 2001), recommended to me by the same head-scratch-provoking sister who sent me to CancerVixen. Notes is the story of a girl who has been, in the words of the carefully interfering teacher who helps move things along, "painted into a corner" by her family's assignment of roles. Is this what your unhappiness felt like, Sister? A very good book, anyway.

Witness by Karen Hesse (Scholastic Inc, 2001) is another novel in verse; although, it is set up like a play, in five acts. Several different voices tell the story of a Vermont town visited seductively, violently but fortunately briefly by the KKK. I don't know why Hesse had the youngest narrator speak so queerly--like Opal in Only Opal. Was she trying to convey that kind of self-sufficient, wise-innocent interior? I think so--but in the context, it seemed odd.

Finally, Grace (Eventually); Thoughts On Faith by Anne Lamott (Riverhead/Penguin, 2007). Vintage Anne. Gets a bit much from time to time, as usual (except in, maybe, Travelling Mercies) but full of useful perception.

Bird People

2007-05-02T11:01:00.000-04:00

A sister recommended CancerVixen, a graphic novel by Marisa Acocella Marchetto (Knopff, 2006). As I have said before, love graphic novels, so I went for it. It was fine, but this is the second time this particular sister has caused me to scratch my head in perplexity. The first time was over Sex and the (in the? can't remember) City. "Good writing," she said of that; and good writing/drawing can equally be said of this; but still, the goings-on of this class of women simply cannot move me. I'm sure many women are empowered by them; I am equally bewildered and irritated by such women. (And incidentally, MAM is one of my least favourite New Yorker cartoonists.) They are birds: they don't know where their home is, they don't know where their soul is, like the song says (and it is just part of the whole picture for me, the weird transformation of that songwriter from girl-with-guitar to singing sex machine); so, is there a part of this sister that is homeless and soulless and longs to flit from tree to tree eating, mating and crying, "I'm pretty, look at me!"?

Drums, Girls and Dangerous Pie and Notes From the Midnight Driver by Jordan Sonnenblick (Scholastic Inc, dates to come) are both good, but Drums is better. Son, who hate things "moving", was totally won over by the narrating voice, that of an eighth-grade boy who drums in a school jazz band and is trying to keep it together while his little brother endures treatment for cancer. Notes features another boy, also a musician (and, it turns out, in the same school as the character in Drums) who befriends an old guy as part of his court-ordered community service. The ending is satisfying, but in a rather rosy way. Still, and again, the voice wins you over.

Not so Rex Zero by Tim Wynne-Jones , which was too tweely English for me (Groundwood, 2006). I wonder if Son would feel that way?

Finally, Lush by Natasha Friend (Scholastic, 2006). A portrait of an alcoholic('s) family, and the best illustration of enablement I've ever seen. I liked the book.

Spud Returns

2007-04-24T20:12:00.000-04:00

I guess once you develop a taste for Brian Doyle, you can't shake it. It's his tone that gets me. It reminds me of the way one of my nephews talks--a little like Sam in the TV show Freaks and Geeks. The story in Spud in Winter (Groundwood, 1995/2006) isn't particularly strong, but the characters are. All the exclamation marks should bug me, but they don't.

My Name is Number 4 by Ting-Xing Ye (Doubleday, 1997/2007): this was the abridged version, abridged, I suppose, to appeal to a younger crowd. It's a very good introduction to the Chinese Cultural Revolution. I read a book like this, and feel that it's a good thing she decided to make her home in Canada. So far all the memoirs of the Cultural Revolution I have read have been by women. Are there any written by men available in English?

It's Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini (Miramax/Hyperion, 2006) is today's teen-in-the-psyche-ward novel. It seems lightly written, though it covers all the ground, and is apparently based on the author's own experience of 5 days there. There are various good descriptions of things, but on the whole I couldn't connect. Sometimes I wonder if I was actually present during my own adolescence.

Voices from the Vortex

2007-04-20T09:51:00.000-04:00

Borrowed Reading Lolita in Tehran byAzar Nafisi (Random House, 2003) despite the fact that reading Lolita in Toronto irritated me at the time I did it. I lolloped through great swathes of this book because, as the author said herself, it was written by an academic who couldn't help but use the book as a vehicle for expounding all her own literature theories. Hoever, because of that I have another way of thinking about that book now.

I was hoping to meet and get to know some of the faceless voiceless women of Iran, but I didn't really--they were still too shrouded for that, this time by the author's voice and her odd ways of describing things. (How can characters be developed on the page when they aren't developing in real life?) I did however strengthen my grip just a little on the vortex of reporting that has come from Iran since the nineteen-eighties. Ms Nafisi made me to understand, for example, something about those perplexing mass mourning scenes when a "hero" dies/is killed: mourning--and "righteous" anger--are the only emotions that the people are allowed to show in public; and such events are the only mass events allowed, in a culture where people aren't even allowed concerts and movies. No wonder people--even the ones who hate the regime and its leaders--show up for the catharsis.

There's now something called the Milkweed Prize for Children's Literature; Behind the Bedroom Wall by Laura E. Williams is no Milkweed, not at all, but I guess it serves a useful function. I am editing a novel right now that is about WW II Germany (in parts), also from the perspective (in parts) of a Hitler Youth member and, ultimately, Weirmacht soldier; I guess simply witnessing what happened has been done, and we are on to reaching behind the show to see what hand(s) are pulling the strings.

The Bunny List

2007-04-16T19:16:00.000-04:00

I'm now doing so much writing of one kind and another in the course of my work that blogging everything I read is feeling like too much work. Still, I want to keep track; and sometimes I do want to say something. So, starting today I'll give myself permission to simply list what I've read and only comment when I'm moved to. A sort of Reader Rabid shortlist.

I'll start with Hamish X and the Hollow Mountain by Sean Cullen (Puffin Canada, 2007): I enjoyed this one more than the first, maybe because I was less critical (I knew that sometimes the footnotes would be a little irritating--and then found them not to be; in fact, I had quite a few laughs with them, my favourite being the one about that "prima donna of the appliance world" the toaster) but also, I think, because there was development from one book to the other and from the beginning of this one to the end. There was still lots of mayhemic adventure, but now I know a little more about the mysterious Hamish. What also developed was my confidence in Mr Cullen's storytelling abilities. He seems more confident, too. In the first book, there was this Narrator voice he kept putting between himself and the reader, like a shield; in this book, there's just a little speech from him at the beginning, and then it's on with the story.

Before I Wake by Robert J. Wiersema (Random House, 2006): what can I say--I'm a sucker for a Dutch name. The parents of a young girl become the focus of a millenia-old struggle when their daughter is struck by a truck and begins to work miracles of healing while in a coma. Readable enough, but a little Catholic.

Belle Falls by Sherrie Vanderveen (Penguin, 2007): see comment above. The author lost her grip on her character (a problem in a character novel) , falling prey to all that sixties shit. Not great but not terrible.

Digging to America by Anne Tyler (Doubleday, 2006): I will never stop loving The Accidental Tourist. That said, this was very solid. Two families, one "typical American" and one expat Iranian, adopt babies from Korea at the same time. They become friends, drawing into their overlapping circles their extended families--some members more willingly than others. I recognized Maryam. I kept seeing the lady I worked for in Sweden, years ago.

The Custodian of Paradise by Wayne Johnston (Alfred A Knopf, 2006): Remember BookExpo? I picked this up there, so long ago, and finally got around to reading it. It's a long one, and I confess I leap-frogged through it a bit. I really just wanted to know who Sheilagh Fielding's father was, and if she ever got to meet her children.

I finally got around to Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris (Little, Brown and Co, 2004). There are so many books I want to read, and then I never remember to make a list when I go to the library. I've enjoyed his pieces in The New Yorker and now, having read these all stacked up (I couldn't put it down on Saturday, though I did still manage to vacuum and dust most of the house, and unpack all my Christmas stuff to repack it into bins for the crawl space, thereby turning a trunk into a coffee table/footstool for the TV room. Yes, I finally have a TV room) I could see why David fled to France and Amy makes muffins for people. His pieces about his brother were wonderful.

Bush Ghosts

2007-03-28T13:22:00.000-04:00

Wendy Orr's Spook's Shack (Allen&Unwin, 2003) is delightful. Nim's Island was terrific. I've got to read more of this author. Spook's Shack is about a boy who is staying with his aunt while his parents are abroad finding a place for the family to live. He encounters a ghost who isn't at first aware that he is a ghost, in a shack in the bush on his aunt's property. Adventures ensue. The characters are great—real fiction characters, genuine yet fanciful. The main conceit—that while in the presence of the ghost the boy can feel inside the animals he encounters in the bush—is richly delivered.

The Stone Angel Revisited

2007-03-23T08:46:00.000-04:00

Jonathon Scott Fuqua's book Darby (Candlewick, 2002) was a product of another project, collecting oral histories in Marlboro County, South Carolina. I found it surprising that the narrating character turned nine in the story; I had thought she was older, though when I think about it I see that perhaps that was only because the story was so well and elegantly told. Darby separated from her narration—her activities, her friendships—is certainly her age.

No wonder this book has already won awards—the subject matter, racism and community in the beginning of the Depression, makes it educational. Darby herself, plus the wealth of period detail and language, and the confidence with which the author uses it, makes it simply a good story. I had forgotten that another name for dragonfly is "mosquito hawk" (a more descriptive name); tying a thread to one and treating it for a time like a flying pet is just one of the fascinating ways Darby and her friends entertain themselves. I remember a friend's mother telling us of growing up in BC's Okanagan area; one of the things they did for fun was to climb up a youngish deciduous tree, then ride it to the ground after friends had chopped it down. We found this outrageous and fascinating—children with axes! chopping down trees for fun! Darby and her brother do something like that, less destructively, choosing young, flexible pines and simply riding the bend. Darby also makes "penny peeks," holes in the ground that are decorated like shop windows, with flowers and such, for friends' viewing.

Zahrah the Windseeker by Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu (Houghton-Mifflin, 2005), a fantasy, is set in a city by a jungle, in a world where computers, along with everything else, are grown. Despite having such a plant-based culture, the people in the city are terrified of the jungle. Its precincts are forbidden and not even the books can say for certain what is there. Making her way in this world is Zarah, a girl who is part jungle herself, with vines growing in her hair. Despite her parents' pride in her "dada" nature, they don't really know what it means; and like parents everywhere, their encouragement can't undo the damage she suffers from her peers. She has so thoroughly internalized their fear of her, that when she discovers her dada gift, she is too afraid to explore it. It isn't until she is forced into the jungle by a greater fear, fear for her best friend's life, that she rises (literally!) to her potential. This is an excellent parable about control versus creativity. Interesting, mind-altering drugs are presented as part of the landscape—not a recommended or wise choice for young people, but available for people who want them. In the Dark Market, not the regular one, of course.

All hail the solid, old-fashioned novel. We all loved Crow Lake by Mary Lawson; we can also love The Other Side of the Bridge (Alfred A. Knopf, 2006)—especially those of us who have read and loved The Stone Angel. Here is the story of Hagar's sons, minus Hagar (not literally—these boys are named Jake and Arthur, not John and Marvin—though, do you see the resemblance?—and their mother isn't called Hagar; and the story takes place in a northern Ontario town) and from Arthur's point of view. The narration is shared by Ian, son of the town doctor, who is chafed by role in a different but similar way as Arthur is; their stories alternate. There is too much in the novel to go into here, but it was utterly lovely. Note the dedication: "To my brothers...who love the north." The whole novel says, "To my brothers, whom I love."

Pick a Peck

2007-03-19T09:50:00.000-04:00

Having rediscovered Richard Peck in the last year, I picked up Dreamland Lake (Puffin ed, 2000) which was originally published in 1973. I saw in this the reason I did not read Peck beyond the Blossom Culp books, back then. Nothing grabbed me in this story of two guys' friendship and how it changed one year. It is set up like a mystery/horror but it isn't, really. I'm not sure what it is.

Before the above I read Tanglewreck by Jeanette Winterson (Bloomsbury, 2006) which I had seen reviewed in The Horn Book. Not that the review signified; I didn't really get past the author's name. I liked this book, which in spite of being a bit King in the Window and a bit Golden Compass and a bit of everything we have seen in children's fantasy over the last...five years? decade? Anyway, in spite of containing enough to drive the fantasy-sated reader away, the story still held its own, mainly because of the loving friendship of its two main child characters and because the power of love, the child struggling and prevailing against powerful adults, the ways of secret societies, are all themes whose richness can never be bled away.

I hope that the young person out there who needs it finds Snap by Alison McGhee (Candlewick, 2004) for its portrait of a moment when friendship asks more from a girl than it gives back. This was a well-written novel that I whipped through in an hour and may or may not forget in a month. Time will tell.

Have been curious about Orca's line of hi-lo books for teens for a while, especially given the list of authors who have written for it. Home Invasion by Monique Polack was great until the stepdad decided he and the narrating character were going to try to catch the invader together, at which point the story stepped right off the reality scale. I still don't see why that was necessary, when the ending (and the capture) was achieved realistically.

Finally, there was The Girls They Left Behind by Bernice Thurman Hunter... sort of (Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2005). This book was finished by BTH's daughter after her death. The thing about BTH is that though her writing is not always original in form (it's so full of common idiom) it's always original in function—alive, and her. Her style, without her, becomes intolerably heavy with cliche. By the end of this book, I felt like there was a bell in my head, bonging them out: my heart sank like a stone, having one of her spells, a veil like a shroud, not a worry in the world. Then, there were the few historical details I questioned, which of course turns my mind to all the details I didn't know enough to notice but were probably there. For example, I'm pretty sure Toronto was not "Canada's biggest city" just after WWII; and would an airman really have written home in such detail (with a diagram!) about a bombing mission? (How it got past the censors is explained, but what about motivation? It just didn't seem real.) And then there was the character herself. There wasn't much that was unusual about her—she's seems nothing more than a teenager of her time, interested in boys and earning money for herself doing war work while she can. There's nothing wrong with that at all—until the end, when the sub-author decides it isn't enough. Suddenly this character should know "deep down" that she has "a future much different from [her] friends"; suddenly she has "a mission"—to become a history teacher and "teach the young" that there must be no more war. With this, historicity goes boom.

Oh, well. It's a hard job to follow after your mother, I guess.

2007-03-11T18:17:00.000-04:00

Here's a new thing—a book group. An out-of-town friend was visiting on the night of her book group meeting, which was taking place in Big City, a half-hour drive away. So I went with her. I got the book only a couple of days before so I had only read about three-fifths of it; enough, however, to talk about. The women there that evening were all ones I knew from my own previous life in Big City, and they are stellar women every one. It was awfully enjoyable. These meetings happen with months in between, which seems a sensible way to do things: you have time to look forward to it.

The book was excellent: Brick Lane by Monica Ali (Scribner, 2002). It tells of a young Bangla woman who is married off to Bangla man more than twenty years her senior who lives in England. The story is told entirely from her point of view, and it's basically her transformation from a deeply passive village girl to a woman who is capable of choosing what is best for herself and for her children, despite the tangles of love—both slow-cooked married love and love of a more passionate sort—and perceived notions of duty. Meanwhile, there is much said about how women manage their affairs, how men manage theirs, and about the compromises and hypocrisies peculiar to Islam. It had its faults—I still don't get why the sister's letters were written in such a deliberately execrable style, and there were other strange choices of dialect that just didn't work. But the portrait of the Benylin-swilling usurer—and the main character's challenge to her at the end—was great.

Before that, I read Black Canary by Jane Louis Curry (Margaret K. McElderry/Simon & Schuster, 2005), which I borrowed because of its music connection. It was all right but not utterly solid. The story didn't deliver the significance promised by the details of setting and character it set up with.

Missing Someone

2007-03-07T09:02:00.000-05:00

Wenny Has Wings by Janet Lee Carey (Aladdin/Simon&Schuster, 2003) is about a boy whose sister dies after a truck runs into them both at a crossing. The boy is trying hard to fill the empty space this has left in his family (Dad, pregnant Mom), writing "letters" to his dead sister describing his efforts, in a journal given him by a helpful counsellor. The problem with telling stories this way is that they make a dull read—you are limited by the child writer's limitations, of language and expression. The dullness is alleviated in this case by the interesting truth the boy can't immediately share with his parents, and the interesting activities he gets up to (trying to contact Wenny) until he finally does share it. The boy had a near-death experience, so knows that Wenny has gone to a good, beautiful place—which he himself chose to turn away from, because he didn't want his parents to be completely alone. How he expresses this to his parents is very touching.

Friends recommended Jodi Picoult; I couldn't remember which specific title so I picked up Vanishing Acts (Atria, 2005). It was a great Sunday read (right before the violent illness that swept through my family kicked in): woman discovers she is not who she thought she was when her father is arrested for kidnapping. There follows a roller coaster of finding mother—losing (imagined) mother—rejecting mother and accompanying triggered memories. After reading, though, some things bugged me. I couldn't believe the (quantity of) details she remembered; and just how much had the boyfriend meddled with her? The urinary tract infection implies a lot; but sexual abuse to extreme, though she might not remember it, would have affected her sexual relationships as an adult. And I thought the ending was odd: the understanding seems to be that if Eric shapes up, he and Delia will get back together. But then what will Fitz do?

Also, note to publisher: it's annoying to the eye to use different typefaces for different voices, and it adds nothing to understanding—I still had to flip back to find out who was telling the story.

Enough with the Faeries, Alraedy

2007-02-28T09:41:00.000-05:00

This is weird—I was reading The Doctor's House by Ann Beattie (Scribner, 2002) assuming the author was British and the Cambridge the main characters lived in was Cambridge, England. (I guess I was mixing Ann Beattie up with Ann Fine.) And then, after repeated references to Boston had intruded on my assumptions and I'd realized my mistake, I still couldn't keep in mind that this was an American book. Its sensibilities, moral outlook and characters are completely British to me, somehow. That said, although I read this book with interest, in the end I felt remote from it. It was a portrait in words of three characters who all are looking at a fourth whom we never get to see except reflected in their eyes.

Work brought me to Pay the Piper by Jane Yolen and Adam Stemple (Starscape, 2005), which I skimmed through after determining it was too "old" for my purposes. I haven't much liked Jane Yolen's writing so far, and this take on the Hamelin story didn't change my mind. The wordy, artificial way the main characters' friends talked put me off, and then there's the whole faery thing. I'm so sick of faery, I can't begin to describe my distaste. Apparently there are other "rock 'n' roll fairy tales" planned, the next being Trollbridge.

For sheer sweet pleasure, though, you can't beat another installment of Mma. Ramotswe's detective agency doings. It was seeing this very title, The Kalahari Typing School for Men (Alfred A. Knopf, 2002), at my old town's library that got me started on this series. P was reading the first one, and after a while asked me, "So, when do things start happening?" and after a moment's thought I had to tell him, "Never."

Four Eyes Are Better Than Two

2007-02-25T19:32:00.000-05:00

Life is settling down a bit here in Hard-Workin' Suburban City, and so there is more time for reading. Son recommended Dunk by David Lubar (Graphia/Houghton Mifflin, 2002), which he borrowed from his school library. Which, he observes, is better furnished than the old school library--not a surprise. What an excellent book. It takes place on the Jersey Shore, right on the midway, and has an unusual premise: a teenaged boy wants to be the "Bozo" in a dunk tank. On top of being a good story, well told, with realistic tensions and a remarkably unremarkable main character (and being a gift, in effect, from one's son), it's a lesson to a parent: examine the thing you suffered that you want to spare your child. Would it be the same thing to her or him that it was to you?

Charlie's Raven by Jean Craighead George, though a bit didactic and pie-eyed, is a treasure trove of raven lore. A great companion to Sharon Stewart's Ravenquest. (But one must read the latter title first.)

Two newer titles from Andrew Clements, Lunch Money (Simon and Schuster, 2005) and Room One (2006). Not far into the former, which is about a boy who loves making money and finds a way to do it at school, I saw what was coming, and Clements did a nice little balancing act with the "school book club." The latter is a little different, taking place in a tiny prairie town and a modern-day one-room school.

Lastly, I read one of slowly diminishing pile of advance copies from various sources, and as I thought it rather dopey (though I'm sure very nice for those who like that sort of thing—faery wings, velvet robes, and faked-up archaic language ["miching malecho"--that's something that should only EVER be seen in the pages of a Shakespeare play!]) I will not talk any more about it.

Let That Be a Lesson to You

2007-02-21T11:26:00.000-05:00

Great cover on Three Songs for Courage by Maxine Trottier (Tundra, 2006). For about the first 2/3 of the book I had to push myself through—there was so much describing: of habits, of thoughts, of scenes; so much internal to the main character, a 16-year-old boy in the 50s. And then, sometimes, a switch (well done, but I still had to read the paragraph twice) to the insides of his girlfriend. And sometimes the inner life of the villain, which helps for a time, to understand girlfriend's mixed feelings—but then doesn't work, when he goes squirrelly, and when he's killed—what are we to think of that? The point is, however, that it is worth pushing through, because what you get is so rich.

And then, in the last third, things pick up—when things start to happen. And the ending is very moving.

Finally read A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines (Vintage Contemporaries/Random House, 1993) My father-in-law inhaled this book when he was visiting over New Year's. Elder Sister recommended it years ago. It was very good, but it didn't hit me the way it seemed to hit them—perhaps because I read The Known World first. I really liked the presentation, though. I want to photocopy the list of other Vintage titles at the back and work through them—at least, the ones I haven't read.

Character Building

2007-02-17T19:15:00.000-05:00

The Prophet of Yonwood by Jeanne DuPrau (Random House, 2006) is called "the third book of Ember" and it's a prequel you want to read after you have a read the first two books. (But I feel that way about the reading order of the Narnia series—read them in the order they were written!) It's lovely. DePrau has a knack for building a fictional character that feels 3-dimensional yet is firmly in a story. In this case, it's eleven-year-old Nickie, who has goals. When you set yourself goals, you're setting yourself a plot—it's a brilliant device for telling a story. It's a brilliant way to deal with the now of the main part of the book, the summer Nickie is eleven and the events in Yonwood happen, while leaving yourself room for the later that you need to cover in order to (in this case) get to that moment when (grown-up) Nickie does the thing that plugs her into the first book of Ember.

I'm very fond of Joanna Trollope, and here is Brother and Sister (McArthur &Co, 2004) which makes up for Girl from the South, which wasn't very solid. In this book, the Canadian wife still seems quite British to me; but it isn't as irritatingly off as the American characters in that book were (and some of it is the fault of not-careful-enough editing). Trollope is very good at Jenga in fiction—I think that's the game—building her characters' lives, then removing that one key piece so that we can see how everything tumbles down.

I just realized that the figure the birds form on the cover of Yonwood is a falling bomb. I thought it was a fish!

In the Loony Bin

2007-02-14T08:50:00.000-05:00

Books about teenagers in the mental institutions being drawn out of their misery into something more hopeful became quite the thing in the seventies. They are still around, and they are still fascinating. The Game by Teresa Toten (Red Deer, 2001) is an excellent one. The good psychiatrist takes a back seat—Toten establishes how important he is by making him the Prologue, but from there, his work is almost invisible. It's the damaged helping the damaged that makes the story, and perhaps that's what makes this such a good piece of YA. Everyone who has ever been given a healing dose of reality by a tough, loving friend can relate. Particularly poignant is one friend's comparison of their pain and damage to a coat, something that they will have to wear all their lives but might one day, if it's really cold, actually offer some protection. This is a thought-provoking piece of wisdom.

Lacking a regular newspaper, I have to get my cartoon information from collections borrowed from the library—or, in this case, bought outright (secondhand, of course). I am in love with Mutts.

Thanks, Mom!

2007-02-10T10:34:00.000-05:00

At last got a hold of Snowcrash by Neal Stephenson (Bantam, 1992) and it was great—definitely an explosion on the literary scene, and all that. But it doesn't take the place of The Diamond Age in my imagination. It was interesting to see how he bet on fiber optic Internet connection— that didn't work out in the way he imagined. But no one has ever explained/demonstrated how information can be currency as vividly as Stephenson does in this book. His wild ride on the topic of virulence in religion was fascinating. He didn't see the rise of fundamentalist Islam coming. The toilet paper memo was a whank, but a humorous one.

As I wait for Charles DeLint's The Blue Girl to come to me, I took them time to his short story collection called Waifs and Strays (Firebird/Penguin, 2002). It was good. I love it that so much takes place so firmly in the Ottawa area—so refreshing. But however beautifully he handles it, I still don't agree with the transport of faerie into the New World.

I checked out Marshfield Dreams: When I was a Kid by Ralph Fletcher (Henry Holt, 2005) simply because of the photo on the cover—boy in a bow tie, brush cut, freckles and ears. I had never come across this writer or his books, but this memoir was lovely. The chapters are each, really, one memory, introduced by bits and pieces of other memories, as applicable; and "extroduced" with the lightest touch, so that we're never burdened by the adult Ralph, but are free to enjoy his memories in our own way.

Finally (for today) I would like to recommend to all (!) my readers this lovely YA offering: Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin (Farrar Strauss Giroux, 2005). The Lovely Bones was good, but always, always sad. Elsewhere is full of light. The personal violence done to the narrator of Bones makes her atypical—she needs philosophy. Liz in Elsewhere is an unremarkable type (uncomplicated middle class American adolescent female) except for one thing, which is her ability after death to speak natural Canine. Oh, the dogs in this book are darling.

Reading Elsewhere was an unusually delightful experience because my mother is visiting and I was able to actually lie on the sofa with my feet up and read the whole thing from start to finish in one afternoon. For one thing, most of the time she was ensconced in a chair and reading also; but more than that, I have less to around the house, thanks to her gift for just doing stuff in a way that doesn't involve anyone else. Even psychologically, because when my mother does stuff around the house, she invariable does it excellently.

Old Reads

2007-01-29T13:56:00.000-05:00

...that you don't remember are interesting—is the recognition going to be satisfying, or disappointing? In the case of Brian Doyle's Easy Avenue (Groundwood/Douglas & MacIntyre, 1988), definitely the first. This was the one that set me off on a deliberate Doyle read, I believe. It is absolutely delightful. I gave it to Son, saying it was "really funny" (I read him a funny bit, to prove it) but knowing that it was also that dreaded thing, "moving." Doyle worked his charm, and Son did not dismiss the "bad" with the good. He thought the book was good.

Found King of the Middle March by Kevin Crossley-Holland (Orion, 2003) at the library and took it home. P has read the other two in the Seeing Stone trilogy to Son, while I read them on my own. It has been so long since any of us read book II that we could hardly remember what it was about. Well, once I got started it came to mind, and with a few prompts P and Son reconstructed the gist of it together. What a fantastic conclusion—I hope they enjoy it as much as I did. I don't know why I love these books. They are so rangy and dot-dot-dash, but they go so deep. I'm no fan of King Arthur stuff, though I recognize the power of the myth. Crossley-Holland makes King Arthur matter to another Arthur and through that other Arthur, makes King Arthur matter to us, and makes the myth seem so possible. The books are our "seeing stones" into a double-layered past; and, as with Arthur's stone, we understand our present that much better for having the sight.

Go Girl

2007-01-24T08:47:00.000-05:00

Vintage/Random House has a new line called Vintage East, paperback reprints of novels by Asian authors: Ha Jin, Haruki Murakami, etc.,—and this one, The Girl Who Played Go by Shan Sa (2004). The ending is grim and inevitable (and there's something particularly Asian about it); the way to the end is full of surprises. Shan Sa's description of a young woman's first sexual relationship is pretty great; she (the character) alternates between stylized romanticism and self-possessed pragmaticism in the most realistic way. In this novel, the males are the romantics; for the women (except perhaps the mothers), relationships with men are a means to an end. I have noticed this before, in Asian novels.

On the totally romantic end of the scale, there is Astro City: Life in the Big City by Kurt Busiek, Brent Anderson and Alex Ross (those are the ones listed on the spine, anyway—there are more names on the title page: Homage Comics, 1995). This is obviously a tribute to 2950s comicdom, and since I know nothing about it, I can't comment on the book's qualities as a tribute. Son like the book and urged me to read it ("Don't be put off just because it's about superheroes, Mom.") so I did and it was fine. Very lush and rich, and practically a treatise on the art of comic book reading.

British Family Stories

2007-01-21T19:13:00.000-05:00

The British children's book market seems to allow for a certain kind of family story that you just don't see much of in North America.The Quigleys in a Spin by Simon Mason (David Fickling/Random House, 2005) is an example. This is a collection of stories about a family of four, an ordinary (read: middle class) family just living their lives. Each of the stories is centres around one of the family members—at least in this collection they do; there are other collections of Quigley family stories. I'd like to write stories like this. The one about the daughter's birthday party is especially fine—I laughed aloud several times ("Beardy Bob"!!!). Now that I think of it, there has been a recent Canadian offering in this genre, that I would recommend to anyone—Travels With My Family by David Homel and company.

I finally got around to reading Hamish X and the Cheese Pirates by Sean Cullen (Puffin/Penguin, 2006). Silliness abounded, which is to be expected; Son loved it, but, lacking the decades of accumulated general knowledge of his mother, he would not have caught the annoying examples of slight misuse in the employment of whimsical archaisms. Also, I wonder what he made of the footnotes. He would not have known when the information given in them was silliness and when it was true. That said, the story was interesting: and Cullen did something I want to see more of in Canadian children's literature, which is a wild, no-holds-barred, totally unearnest peopling of Canada's north with ridiculousness and adventure. Mammoths ridden by Inuit who serve their guests roasted seal meat! Settlements established by the Dutch for the manufacture of propellers! The Dutch, treated comically!

The Invisible Rules of Zoe Lama by Tish Cohen (HarperCollins, July, 2007) is of that budding sub-genre of kidslit for which I don't have a name—yet. (I'm collecting my names for things as of now. For example, in the last few weeks I've come up with two names for things I think everyone should use: 1) Googleganger: the other person you find with your (uncommon) name when you Google it. My Googleganger is a varsity basketball player in the Netherlands. 2) podcast: a general announcement made standing up in your cubicle. E.g., "I'm going for coffee. Does anyone want anything?" Okay, back to the book.) It's a sort of little-women's fiction. Now, I don't have much interest in "women's fiction"—all those sassy smart Alexises addicted to shopping and shoes, who dart and dance like hares (or bark and boss like border collies) and manage, in spite of themselves, to find happiness. I find those women tiresome. They are not real to me, whether I find them in books, on the TV screen or in life. Likewise, I find Zoe Lama tiresome—even though I can see bits of Jane Austen's Emma in her. (How is it that Emma feels real?) Also, I found the design of the book tiresome. What was the meaning of those sentences (and half-sentences!) in a different type? But I suppose girls like Zoe or her friends will be entertained by this book. I wish them joy of it.

A friend told me that Road to Perdition (the movie) started life as a graphic novel, a fact I forgot until I saw the thing (by Max Allen Collins; art by Richard Piers Rayner: Pocket/Simon & Schuster, 2002) at the library. Read it, loved it. Am thus spared from hearing and seeing all the violence acted out in technicolor. While in the graphic novel section, also picked up Summer of Love (Debbie Drechsler: Drawn&Quarterly, 1996, 1997, 1998, 2002, 2003). Also very good.

Pumpkin Power

2007-01-15T09:06:00.000-05:00

I knew I forgot something. Me and the Pumpkin Queen by Marlane Kennedy (Greenwillow/HarperCollins, July 2007 release) is a sort of Wynn-Dixie with a well-adjusted Dad and pumpkins instead of a dog. Sort of. The book started oddly—the question that is introduced in the first short chapter isn't answered until the fifth, and that feels to me like those five short chapters should be one. I wonder if the short chapters are part of the same decision to pitch this story young, with a cute cover illustration, a large, open typeface and lots of white space on the page. Yet our heroine is ten, and there are bras and talk about teenagers', er, social behaviour. I'll have to wait until Daughter is ten to see if this young/old approach is valid.

Meanwhile, the story is touching, the relationship between our heroine and her best friend (a boy) solid and unfussy, and one learns a lot about giant pumpkin growing.

Madame Bovary

2007-01-14T13:51:00.000-05:00

My bedtime reading for the past couple of months—erratic, what with the move and all; and accompanied by several conjugal attempts at a suitable limerick, involving the word "ovary"— has been the Francis Steegmuller translation of Madame Bovary. Somehow in my education I escaped reading this. The impression I had formed of Madame and her story was of a long life; of a middle-aged rouée (if such a thing exists!) looking back on her many lovers and her extraordinary parlour adventures, looking forward into the mirror, with a sigh. I was off, just a bit. Madame was really more of a mademoiselle, and her story surprisingly brief, really. And fresh: her expectations for passion and true love are as star-struck and hopeless as any small-town, half-educated 14-year-old's today. The reason she commits suicide in the end is not a grand love at all, but debt, collected in dribbles and puddles and streams into a drowning tide. As Madame observed, it turns out that "adultery is as banal as marriage."

My Sunday read (okay, I started it yesterday) has been Anne Fine's On the Summerhouse Steps (1979; Corgi ed. 2006). Told in two parts, the story is that of one Ione, a girl (eleven? twelve? thirteen?) who listens at doors (and sometimes not even that, as her father is blind and talks to himself) and uses what she discovers to get (not deliberately, just in a feeling-out way) what she needs: more family, and more meaning in her life. This is not to say that novel is heavy in any way—it's very comico-British (I hereby name this thing) and full of eccentrics and half-spoken thoughts and people caring for one another in slanted ways. Quite a bit like the Hilary McKay books, actually.

Speaking of Novels in Verse...

2007-01-12T08:17:00.000-05:00

... here's another: Dark Sons, by Nikki Grimes (Hyperion, 2005). Yes, Nikki Grimes, the African American poet. And this IS verse, with noticeable rhythm and frequent internal rhyme. A pleasure to read. But, here's the kicker: this book is soaked in Judeo-Christianity. Two parallel (not completely alike, though—and that's one of the book's strengths, that the author let each story develop the way it had to, without forcing the similarities) stories are told, in the voices of their protagonists: Ishmael, Abraham's son, and Sam, an African American teenager whose father, in the beginning, leaves his mother, and subsequently marries a (white) Jewish woman. Ishmael, obviously, worships the God of his father; Sam is a worship-band-playing, Bible-study-attending, Jesus-following Christian. Nothing about this is incidental—his walk with God, as he deals with his anger toward his father and negotiates the changes in his life that his parents' action bring about, is the point of his story, just as Ishmael's story is about holding on to the thin thread of promise (what God has promised for Abraham, what God has promised for Ishmael's mother, what Ishmael himself chooses to make of these promises, for himself) through the buffets of a hard life. Here's how David sees it:
...Ishmael,
someone a lot like me.
A guy whose father
ripped his heart out too.
Me and you, Ishmael,
we're brothers,
two dark sons,
the spawn of
kick-butt mothers,
adopted sons of a Father
who hears.
I wonder . . . was Nikki Grimes thinking, while she wrote this, of the fact that Muslims trace their lineage in the family of the One God through Ishmael? Hm...

I am astounded that this deeply religious book has been published by Hyperion. Can it be that the anathema against all things Christian in the mainstream is lifting? The cynic in me wonders if "they" have figured out that Christians, being people of the Book (as they so quaintly put it in the fields of Islam), and Christian young people, especially, are the only ones still reading, these days.

Glass and Ice

2007-01-08T12:12:00.000-05:00

Rescued By a Dog Called Flow by Pippa Goodhart (Barn Owl Books, 2005): Looking at the pub date, I see this book was first published in 1994. That explains why the approach to the book’s central subject—the struggles of a boy with undiagnosed dyslexia—seems dated. You’d have to be a capable reader to follow this very British story, whose appeal is young but whose language is tricky for a young Canadian.

A friend in the business has sent me a number of advance proofs to read, which is always delightful, but makes me feel, in the reviewing of them, as if I am walking on glass. Funny, that’s the title of the first one I picked up— Walking on Glass by Alma Fullerton (HarperCollins, 2007 release). This is another free verse novel offering, about which I feel somewhat ambivalent (there’s an earlier posting about this, which I’ll look up and reference later). But it seems to me that it might be a good way to go with a tender subject (the attempted suicide and long coma of the narrator’s mother) and the voice of a teenage boy—spare, not too mushy, not too many words. Is the name “verse” accurate? I don’t think so, not here. It’s not verse (not having some kind of rhythm or specific pace, at least that I could feel) so much as terse and unremarkable descriptions of almost photographic moments, whose cumulative effect is unexpectedly touching. A sort of stealth effect—which again strikes me as a being perhaps a good way to go with this. A walk on glass, if you will.

Anne Fine is the author of the original book Mrs Doubtfire, which was made into a (better, I thought) movie which no doubt has helped in her rise to the level of fame that makes it profitable to reissue her (astoundingly many) backlist titles as a visual series. (And these new [2006] Corgi/Random House editions are striking.) Fame or not, though, Anne Fine obviously has fans in the publishing world. Round Behind the Icehouse, for example, was originally published by Methuen in 1981, and then reissued by Penguin in 1990. It’s dedicated to her sisters, but it is about the relationship of twin brother and sister as they move out of childhood into adulthood. The brother has always felt less than his mercurial, quick, sparky sister; typical, then, that in this story he is trailing her, slowly figuring out what her “change” means, for her, for him and for their friend, the unfortunate daughter of the despicable hired hand.

As I write this, I understand that the confusion of time in the novel (it’s hard sometimes to know what the narrator means by “then”) may be quite deliberate, instead of the annoying clumsiness that it felt like while I was reading. The narrator (the brother) is confused and slow on the uptake (though less so than he thinks); he’s always figuring out too late what the significance of an interchange he’s just had means. Anyway, a fine novel. Ha ha.

Fighting the Enemy

2007-01-04T12:40:00.000-05:00

In my continuing pursuit of things Dutch, I picked up A Traitor among Us by Elizabeth Van Steenwyk (Eerdmans, 1998). First, let me say that I find it remarkable that Christian publishing houses are selling to public libraries, not in itself but that it seems to be happening all of a sudden, in quantity. I know Eerdmans from long ago, a publisher sprung from the (American) Christian Reformed Church. This particular book isn't particularly Christian--in fact, the boy hero is a trench Christian, with little use for church. He is engaged in courier work for the Dutch Resistance during the German occupation of the Netherlands. The author doesn't spend much time getting in or out of the situation, just goes from one fear-charged skulk to another. For example, there's a tiny indication to the reader of the identity of the traitor, but we don't know, really, that Pieter knows who it is. The focus is only on Pieter's plan to lure the traitor, the dangers in carrying it out, the moment of revelation--when suddenly we learn that Pieter knows whose face he is going to see. And it's his best friend's father. I suppose one might say that the author is being true to life in choosing this way of telling the story: Resistance workers can't afford anguished thoughts, but must focus on controlling their fear and carrying out their task. But Pieter finds time for romantic mooning about his fellow worker, so. . . .

A possible antidote to Little House on the Prairie is Bear Dancer: The Story of a Ute Girl by Thelma Hatch Wyss (Margaret K. McElderry/Simon and Schuster, 2005). Based on historical reports of Cutshutchous, "Elk Tooth Dress" or Susan (Johnson), this story tells of a Ute girl taken captive by a Cheyenne band, then traded as a slave to an Arapaho band, liberated by white soldiers and taken to live with them, then finally conducted home, only to find her people greatly demoralized and weakened by the encroaching settlement of their lands. This story ends at her return, not what she expected but nevertheless welcome; the historical note tells how, as a grown woman, on the strength of her relationship to the Ute chief Ouray (her brother) she persuaded a Ute band who had taken some white women and children captive after a massacre to release their captives.

This story gives her credible reasons for her negotiations. On the surface, the reader can see her gratitude to the white people who took her in as a friend. But it is her relationship with her brother that gives her her strength of character. Ouray understands, and teaches his sister, that they have been born into a time when "fight words" aren't useful anymore, not against a powerful enemy who has already won. If the Utes are to survive as a people, they will need to practice a different kind of strength. The author thanks the great-great-great-granddaughter of Elk Tooth Dress herself, who coordinates the Ute Language Program of the Ute Tribe Education Division, for reading the book in manuscript. Does the very existence of this descendant, and the works she does, not speak of the nature of that strength?

Coffee Break

2007-01-03T11:57:00.000-05:00

Just had some coffee and read Interplanetary Avenger by Caroline Luzzatto (Holiday House, 2005), an amusing tale of alien hijinks and getting out from under in a new school/bullying situation. Disgusting at times (boy appeal) and quite funny. Particularly amusing is the poke at school bureaucracy, apparently the same in every galaxy.

Love, Grief and Anger

2007-01-03T08:59:00.000-05:00

Went looking for Notes From a Liar and Her Dog by Gennifer Choldenko (recommended by a sister) and not finding that title took home Al Capone Does My Shirts (Putnam/Penguin, 2004) instead. A very fine book. You could use it as an example of an extended metaphor. Our hero is a 12- or 13-year-old Depression-era American boy just moved with his family to Alcatraz Island, where his father has taken a job. Meanwhile, his elder sister is in a prison of her own, on the shady end of the autism spectrum. In this book one can see how the natural soup of love and frustration present in every family is set on a constant boil when one of the members is a child with autism. Our hero's love for his sister saves them both. The scene of his father telling his children how proud he is of them is very, very moving. But this is a funny book, really. The angle-working dishonest daughter of the head warden is a wonderful character.

Work led me to pick up Chickenpox...Yuck! by Josie Montano (Lothian, 2002). I couldn't get past the first few pages. The writing was choppy, the print too large and I didn't like the narrating character's voice. All outrage and no depth.

Julius Lester (or his publisher, anyway) calls his book Day of Tears (Hyperion, 2005) "a novel in dialogue." That pretty much describes a play, to me, and this is pretty much like a play, with the addition of interior monologue. Which could be delivered on stage simply as monologue. So, why not simply call it a play? There's even a cast of characters list at the beginning. Maybe because plays don't sell to fiction readers.

Whatever. The form serves its purpose very well, which is to give voice to silent victims of history. The story works out the human implications of "the largest auction of slaves in American history" in Savannah, Georgia on March 2 and 3, 1859. All the slaves a came from one owner and one plantation. Here is what Lester himself says about this book: "History is not only an accounting of what happened when and where. It includes also the emotional biographies of those on whom history imposed itself with a cruelty that we can only dimly imagine. This book is another in my attempts to make real those who did not have the opportunity to tell their stories from themselves."

Finally, the one I've been saving. I, Coriander by Sally Gardner (Orion, 2005) is so attractive a book, I finally could not resist and bought it while doing some Christmas shopping. It is excellent. English literature is lucky, lucky, lucky for having such a deep tradition of faery to draw from. The story is that of a girl uncovering her mother's otherworldly past while she struggles in Cromwellian England to survive the absence of her father at the hands of an ignorant, wrathful stepmother. Just that word, wrath, is one of the richnesses of the this novel, for it perfectly describes the people TV and the newspapers are full of, the ignorant, sly, cruel, angry people who abuse children and beat up old women. Shut up in a chest to suffocate and die, Coriander instead finds herself in her mother's world. When she emerges from the chest, three years have passed and she is a young woman, no longer smaller than her abusers and old enough to make use in the world of the friendship and love of her neighbours.

Interestingly, Coriander's escape is an echo of her mother's experience. Her mother was abused in her own world, escaped to the mortal world and found safety in love and marriage with Coriander's father. For her, death in the mortal world was preferable to returning to her own world and the power of her mother (stepmother? can't recall right now), who rules there.

Coriander's salvation comes not through love (her lovers' reunion is anticlimactic) but through wrath. The evil stepmother goes truly mad; her boyfriend's life is sucked from his body by the evil power he has been serving. When Coriander defeats her (and her mother's) enemy, this is what she does: "I allowed myself to feel all the anger, all the misery, and all the grief for everything that had happened to me. It was like a tight knotted ball and it came to the surface, passed through to the mirror and like an arrow shot from a bow went straight for Rosmore." The Judeo-Christian tradition teaches that only good overcomes evil: love your enemies, turn the other cheek, a soft answer turns away wrath. But Rosmore is from another world, where (as Coriander observes earlier) there is no God. She must be defeated by her own tools, of fear and rage.

I would love to talk about the symbolism of faery vs mortal world and the Restoration after Cromwell. It's so easy to see the lightness in the one and the heaviness in the other, but the faery world in this book has its own Cromwell, for whom only one Will matters.

Pippi Fishstocking

2006-12-30T14:21:00.000-05:00

Tried The Electric Telepath by Jan Mark (Random House, 2005), part of a series or grouping of books for young people called Definitions, which includes I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith. I wonder what the motivation behind the series is. I couldn't get into Telepath at all (the main character is much excited by electricity, but hampered in his desire to study it by his membership in a repressive Christian sect), but I'd like to try another Jan Mark title in the series, Useful Idiots.

I enjoyed Pippi Longstocking, but she wasn't my favourite Lindgren character. Even when I was young, I thought her extreme tale-telling and anarchic behaviour a bit much, and her feats of strength cartoonish. (Lindgren herself preferred Emil over Pippi.) Gillian Johnson creates another such worldly innocent in Thora, who is ten (Pippi was sort of nine), has spent her life so far travelling the seas (with a mermaid mother instead of a sea-captain father) and now is obliged, in order to satisfy a cryptic prescription for surviving her miscegenation (in order to satisfy her father's desire that she experience normal life), to settle in a small village for a while, and live like a human. Like Pippi, Thora charms and holds the attention of the children she meets with her fearlessness (especially around adults) and her tales that, even when they sound untrue, show off her huge experience of the world. (And as with Pippi, that fearlessness is the flip side of a sometimes dangerous innocence about the perfidy that adults are capable of. ) Pippi was absolutely forthright about her fantastic strength, which she viewed as nothing more spectacular than, say, an extreme case of double-jointedness, or perhaps the ability to hold her breath for a long time. Thora is a bit more careful of hiding her true nature, wearing a bodysuit to cover her purple, scaly legs and feet, and arranging a ponytail over the blowhole in her head. (I'm not sure why a mermaid has one, equipped, as she is, with a nose. Does a whale have a nose and a blowhole? And how come Thora spouts water, when she's walking about in the air? Perhaps one should not ask.) The big difference between Thora and Pippi is that Thora has depth. Pippi hardly exists away from Tommy and Annika; when she is alone, we see her at a distance, as if standing outside in the dark, looking at her through a lighted window (as in fact we do, narratively, a few times). Thora has an inner life, plans for herself and for others, ideas—a voice. She writes to her new best friend at the end of the story, and it's a real letter. All this makes Thora her much less of a cartoon than Pippi, and makes me look forward to reading the sequel.

One last thing: we're told that Johnson "grew up in Winnipeg, Canada, and now lives in England and Tasmania". I'd say she's made the switch pretty thoroughly. Roald Dahl might have peopled this book, and the language is distinctly not North American. And one last last thing. Son said, "I'm suspicious of this 'half-mermaid' thing. Isn't a mermaid already half fish?" Indeed.

The Value of Education

2006-12-27T17:09:00.000-05:00

The Girl-Son by Anne E. Neuberger (Carolrhoda Books, 1995) tells the story of Induk Pahk, whose mother disguised her as a boy when she was seven so that she could attend the village school. At the turn of the last century, Korean girls were not allowed an education, but Induk's mother, a widow who had refused to live as the dependent of a male cousin when her husband died, was determined that her daughter would have the opportunity she herself did not. Induk achieved a college education for herself, then went on to found a technical high school for rural students as well as promoting education for girls. This was all during the two world wars, and the occupation of her homeland by the Japanese. The story is told in first person, and is based on Induk's own two books about her experiences. The book includes a sort of appendix about Chinese astrology, in which the reader can figure out his or her Chinese horoscope . The fact that Induk became a Christian in the course of her education, much of which was carried out in mission schools, isn't particularly highlighted. Hm.

Visiting Friends

2006-12-26T10:25:00.000-05:00

Friends are always welcome in our new home. When they come on Christmas Day, they are really great friends. (I recommend homemade pizza for Christmas dinner.) And when they come with books . . . well, I need to say no more. Children went quiet for about an hour after the welcoming, and then Daughter reappeared with the second Babysitters Club graphic novel in her hand, sighing, "That was a good book." I don't know if she read the other graphic novel Friend brought, Bone 1: Out From Boneville by Jeff Smith (Scholastic, 2005). I did. It's more traditionally comic-booky (the monsters are very much so), but I liked it well enough. I can't help attributing some rude characteristics to the Bone cousins, which Friend can ask me about if she likes. The main Bone is like a cross between Pogo and . . . well, something, but I don't have enough comic strip experience to say what. The artist could not resist including some luscious female flesh. Bone, indeed.

I finally got my hands on Hitler's Daughter by Jackie French (HarperCollins, 1999), recommended to me months ago by a sister. This is a slim, simple book about a huge, complicated subject. It is the most excellent text I have ever seen to introduce the third generation since WWII to atrocities that haven't gone away since the conquest of Nazism. But to say that makes the book seem heavier than it is. The conceit is this: while waiting for the school bus, one child tells a few others a story, different from those she has told before. This one is more real, somehow—but how could it be? Hitler didn't really have a daughter, did he? One of the listeners, a boy whose voice is the narrating voice of the novel, can't stop thinking about the story. If his own parents were wrong, really really wrong, would he know? If he knew, would he have the courage to stand up against them?

BTW, the cover on the copy I read is much better than this one.

Happy Holidays!

2006-12-24T13:30:00.000-05:00

Holidays mean time to read! But Husband got tons of DVDs out of one of the library branches, too; and the day is so sunny and beautiful, we simply must get out and walk a length of the railway tracks. I know, there's a big campaign on to stop people doing this, but it's a no-train day and we'll be careful.

Tree Girl by Ben Mikaelsen (HarperCollins, 2004): ay, what a tragic tale—a teenage girl is the sole living witness to the pillage and destruction of a Mayan Indian village, and carries the guilt with her into the refugee camp where she finally connects with her one surviving sister. But it does give me a clearer idea of the very simple reality behind the complicated war politics of Central America: it's another case of clearing out the natives. Mikaelsen and Deborah Ellis have a lot in common, both taking on huge devastations and making them devastatingly simple through the voice of a young person.

The Vacation by Polly Horvath (Farrar Straus Giroux, 2005). I have a new rating for a story's value: the Snack-O-Meter. If I find myself getting up to fetch a snack too often in the course of a read, then the story isn't holding me. This book scored a 3/30 on the Snack-O-Meter: 3 snack searches in 30 minutes. So I gave up. Too many "colourful characters" and not enough plot. The two aunties are tedious : they might as well be Marge Simpson's sisters.

Back Again

2006-12-21T15:42:00.000-05:00

The move to the big suburban city has been accomplished, not without weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. As a friend put it, houses like surprises, because they do not like being taken for granted. I have certainly gained a new and tender understanding of home heating and cooling....

All the books packed, and library borrowing unwise—in the last week at the old home I couldn't take it anymore and had to go out to the secondhand bookstore and buy some reading material. First I read The Danish Girl by David Ebershoff (Penguin, 2000). This was a novel built around the actual story of the first publicized sex-change operation, which happened earlier than you might expect—before WW II. The subject of the operation was a married man (turned woman) and the author was particularly interested in what kind of a marriage would support such a transition. He conveys a loving tightrope of not-saying-aloud that goes on between these two; the book is about them both, together and separately, so the Danish girl of the title could either be the girl-who-became or the wife of the man-who-was. The Danish girl husband and wife create between them is the vehicle of the wife's success as a painter, so the wife is deeply beholden to her. But it was the wife's painting her that first caused her existence.

Next, I read The Known World by Edward P. Jones (HarperCollins, 2003). A friend recommended this to me a year ago and so I pounced on it in the bookstore. Wow! A novel built up like an oil painting, layer upon layer, each one directed at revealing this or that shade of meaning or key detail: as rewarding as an Old Master, and as hard to read, sometimes. But I loved it. It was totally absorbing.

Then there was The Dutch Wife by Eric McCormack (Penguin Canada, 2002). Who could resist the title? This was a story also built in layers, but not like an oil painting, more like a story withing a story within a story. There's the narrator, behind whom stands the author; the narrator tells the stories others have told him, the main one being that of Thomas Vanderlinden, whose mother was the Dutch Wife of the title, Rachel Rowland. Rachel's story of the mysterious husband she was not married to is also told by Thomas, but there's another story within Rachel's, that of the non-husband. An interesting way to write a novel.

Incidentally, a "Dutch wife" is a rolled-up towel or other device tropical sleepers tuck between their thighs or knees to prevent heat rash developing while they sleep. The extension meaning is something that exists to be used, usually ignominiously. As a Dutch wife, I object. In fact, I find it remarkable that so many of the references to Dutchness in the English language are uncomplimentary. Dutch courage, Dutch treat, for example. Dutch uncle and Dutch auction aren't exactly complimentary, either.

While staying at a friend's between moving and staying, I had a quick peek through Outrageous Women of the Renaissance by Vicki Léon (John Wiley and Sons, 1999). A very entertaining and enlightening book, that included Kenau Hasselaar (1526–1588), a Dutch widow (not wife!) who armed and led her own troops during the resistance war against the Spaniards. The author claims that "kenau" is a Dutch term for any strong, feisty woman. I'll have to ask my mother about that.

Which brings me to my new home, in which I have FOUR libraries at my disposal. Untold riches! To our sorrow, being closer to the big, big city does not get us more TV channels with our rabbit ears; nor can we find anything to match the utter perfection of the video/DVD rental place we loved in the old town. However, this means more time for reading. Such as:

Whittington by Alan Armstrong (SD Schindler, ill.; Random House, 2005). How I love illustrated children's novels. This one is the stories a cat called Whittington tells about the famous Dick of the name, stories passed down by the cat's ancestors, who have descended from Dick's cat. The stories are told to an assortment of livestock and a couple of children (Charlotte's Web-wise) in a barn, over several months, during which the younger child also learns to read (he has been struggling). From the next book I'll talk about I learned that there is such a thing as "neoclassical children's literature," and in such a category (pardon the pun) I would definitely place Whittington. It is rich and takes its time, and the barn is an old-fashioned place. Though Reading Recovery is a newfangled notion.

I nearly didn't carry through with Cornelia and the Audacious Escapades of the Somerset Sisters by Lesley M.M. Blume (Knopf, 2006). I found the grand dame character with her wildly decorated apartment (a tree growing out of the floor??!!) and her madcap sister stories hard to swallow, and though I myself was a girl who hid behind a large vocabulary, Cornelia, with her classical superstar mother and French housekeeper, didn't appeal to me. (I got tired of the definitions, too.) Everything was so extreme. But it was interesting to learn that "bookish" American girls play according to American Girl (TM) scripts. Actual scripts. Good heavens! The mark of the beast appears on more and more foreheads.

I had to check out the brand-new branch I drive past on my way to and from work. There were things I need there for work. Really! Actually, they were mostly out so I had to have them sent to my local branch. But I got some books I've been looking for. I started with Touching Spirit Bear by Ben Mikaelsen (HarperCollins, 2001), another title by the author of Tree Girl, which was recommended to me by a sister. Bear is a treatise on Native Healing Circles, posing as a novel, but that's all right. The change of the (anti)hero from angry lying blamer to honest self-controlled young man is convincing.

We will now return to shelving the book collection. We bought a wall's worth of books for the new office (a delightful room, almost the nicest one in the house) and it is already obvious a wall's worth is not enough. Some books will have to go into storage. And I had such high hopes!