Raising Orion

Raising Orion / Lesley Choyce
Saskatoon, SK: Thistledown Press, c2010.
300 p.

I've read quite a few of Choyce's books and generally enjoy his narrative approach and especially his characters. Set mostly in Halifax, this particular book drew my attention, seeing as how it featured a woman running a used bookshop that becomes a neighbourhood gathering place for people as diverse as a retired high school principal, a former history professor going through mid-life crisis, and heavy rock band made up of vegetarian teenage boys. Plus there is a thread of the story tying in the Titanic disaster. It ranges from Baffin Island to Ottawa to Halifax.

It was a good read -- a good choice to begin 24 hours of reading in the weekend's Readathon. I didn't love this book as much as some of his others (ie: The Republic of Nothing). But I found the characters once again the heart of the book.

Molly owns the bookstore, and is a naif -- a woman who grew up isolated on an island where her parents were lighthousekeepers. She doesn't seem to have grown up into adulthood in the way that most people have; she is a bit of a free spirit, a bit odd in some ways. Into her life comes Eric, the professor from Ottawa who has nearly died on a trip to Baffin Island and decided to change his life by flitting off to live in Halifax. He decides this on the spur of the moment and just locks his front door in Ottawa and flies to Halifax carrying only a plastic bag full of books. The bookshop also attracts a wealthy, elderly British woman who is tracking down the woman who pulled her dead son from the sea decades ago -- which of course turns out to be Molly. While she is in Halifax this woman also becomes absorbed in researching the Titanic disaster, which of course Halifax played a large role in, being the recipient of many of the dead.

All of these characters come together once Molly is in trouble with the law. This, I felt, was a weak element. Molly develops a strong relationship with a 14 yr old boy undergoing cancer treatment. He is the nephew of a friend of hers, and she begins to visit him where of course they develop an uncanny, strong relationship and he sees Molly as the 14 yr old that she once was. Also, it begins to get a bit fantastical as Molly can travel with him in his dreams and take him to the island she grew up on; this is in addition to the fact that she can save lives remotely -- people and animal -- through the power of her mind and intention. She doesn't succeed in saving this young boy, but makes his last weeks much more bearable. The key moment, the one that sends her to jail briefly, is when she is found in his hospital bed, naked. She isn't sure how that happened, and neither is the reader. Not to mention, this reader feels no sympathy or compassion for this event; it is simply weird and yes, if I was his mother I would have also been completely creeped out and had her removed by police. Nevertheless, despite this extremely bizarre occurence, Molly is sidelined briefly and then everything goes back to normal for everyone. I felt that the whole storyline involving Todd was weak and the least interesting of any, despite it taking up much of the book.

So, my main difficulty with this was Molly herself. I loved the description of her childhood, and her strange powers seem to fit in that wild and lonely setting. Once she's a bookstore owner and a grown woman with a weird relationship with a young boy they just seem delusional. I enjoyed the side characters and their lives, which were not developed nearly enough for my liking. Molly's childhood and the description of the wild nature of her island was wonderful -- it was all that was needed to make Molly into a fascinating character; the modern day part of the story could have been excised with no loss, in my mind. I also really appreciated the humour in the random appearances of Dumpster Teeth, the heavy rock band that is amusingly made up of three teenage boys who are vegetarians and social activists fond of sharing hummus.

So, lots to enjoy in this book, but ultimately not one of his best.

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For this year's Canadian Book Challenge I've chosen as my theme "Small-Press-Palooza" Thus, for each book I'm including a link to the small press who has published it. Take a look -- there are wonderful small presses all over Canada!

More about Thistledown Press

Widows of Paradise Bay

The Widows of Paradise Bay / Jill Sooley

St. John's, NL: Breakwater Books, c2010.
253 p.

I had a lot of fun reading this book -- it kept me going in the wee hours of last week's Readathon, with its funny take on a macabre situation: early widowhood.

It's set in Paradise Bay, Newfoundland, where the main character Prissy Montgomery retreats to lick her wounds when her husband, Howard, admits he's been having an affair. Prissy's mother thinks that admitting to a divorce would be too much shame for Prissy to bear, so takes out an obituary notice in the local paper announcing that Howard is dead. This leads to obvious complications, especially when Howard shows up in town after their son gets into some trouble with the law.

Alongside Prissy's story, though, there is a more sober story of Georgia, a local woman who has been in deep mourning for five years after the sudden loss of her husband and soul mate. Her struggles to deal with her emotional trauma and vast loneliness come into focus as she decides to set up a kind of support group for Prissy and Lottie, another local woman who has just been widowed. This foray into community begins her healing process.

As for Lottie, the third widow, she has the most complicated emotional situation. She is widowed during the narrative, as her depressed husband commits suicide. Not only does she have the fact of suddenly being alone to cope with, she also has the fallout from the stigma of suicide, and the deeply hidden truth that she actually didn't care much for her husband at all. Georgia's attempt at starting a local support group takes fire in Lottie's mind and she becomes, suddenly, the woman she always had the potential to be. She networks, finds support, and pushes for a government grant to set up a provincial organization to help widows across Newfoundland, calling it WHOW. (Widows Helping Other Widows). Each of the characters is young, in her thirties, and this adds to the pathos of their situation. These women are not young mid-thirties party girls, rather two of them are mothers of teens already and they are all living normal, everyday adult lives.

The three stories intertwine and each person is interesting in their own way. I found that I actually liked the main character least, although her mother was wonderful. Her brother, who liberally uses the word "fuck" and its many permutations as a noun, verb, adjective, and any other kind of speech possible, was an engaging side character and gently amusing despite the fondness for expletive. Prissy was a good character, but Georgia's fragility and Lottie's stolid forbearance drew me in a little more.

I wouldn't say this was perfect; there was some reliance on broad strokes in the characterizations, and of course with three storylines it became a bit uneven, but I really enjoyed reading it. It was a fun tale and unlike other Newfoundland books I've read there was precious little about fishing or history in this one, rather, it was a modern and funny story of three women facing up to the hard moments in their lives and carving out support through friendship, even with all its difficulties. It wasn't light subject matter, covering loss, death and betrayal, but was told with a light hand. It amused, and ended happily. A perfect summer read.

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For this year's Canadian Book Challenge I've chosen as my theme "Small-Press-Palooza" Thus, for each book I'm including a link to the small press who has published it. Take a look -- there are wonderful small presses all over Canada!

More about Breakwater Books

Queen's Court

Queen's Court / Edward O. Phillips
Toronto: Cormorant, c2007.
213 p.

As I looked over the last few books I've read, I had a strange feeling that I couldn't quite put a name to. The books were good -- I enjoyed reading them. Yet, there was a sense of something....something.... Then I read Kerry Clare's review of The O'Briens, and in her opening words my feeling is expressed perfectly:

There exists considerable difference between “a good book” and “a great book”, and lately I’d feared being so fixated on understanding the latter I had become unable to appreciate the former. Which would be a shame, I think, because there is pleasure in a good book, a big fat novel to while away a long weekend with.

And while this particular book is most certainly not a big, fat novel, it is still a good book, a pleasurable read for a warm summer afternoon.

The story follows Louise, a new widow who decides to do things backward -- from living in the retirement capital of Victoria, B.C., she decides to move back to her hometown, Montréal. A cousin, Diana, lives in the Westmount neighbourhood, and Louise stays with her while looking for a place of her own. While they are close friends, Diana is also quite managing, and Louise wishes to be independent. She finds a beautiful old apartment in downtown Montréal called Queen's Court and moves in, only to find her life complicated by her neighbours.

The highlights of this book for me were the descriptions of Montréal and environs (ie: Westmount), perhaps because that was my neighbourhood for most of the eleven years that I lived in Montréal and it was a lovely, nostalgic visit. But I think the sense of place is particular and pungent enough to satisfy any reader. Louise is an amusing narrator, an "old woman" who still loves her scotch and a bit of extracurricular adventure with an old lover. She vacillates between proper and pugnacious, with a fondness for strong language. Actually, the manner in which she describes her amorous adventures was a little bit jarring for me -- she uses "the F word" repeatedly and while I have no problem with that word it felt a bit cynical for her character.

She is also the least susceptible old lady possible, and becomes suspicious of her neighbour Jonathan, an antiques-dealing, old-lady-courting gay man. Phillips lets his pen run free with his satiric representation of Jonathan, especially when he has a friend visit -- their repartée is risqué and slightly catty. (I imagine he is allowed to do such as he is satirizing his own community.) Then Louise's son arrives for a visit and immediately (on his first day) falls in with Jonathan in an obvious enough manner that Louise has to do something about it. Not because she has confirmation that her son is gay, but because she can't stand Jonathan.

All these personality wrangles, plus a little bit of a mystery about the source of some of the antiques across the hall, lead Louise a lively chase. She investigates, finds satisfactory solutions to some of her dilemmas, and restores a more meaningful relationship with her cousin Diana. It is entertaining reading even while there are a few flaws.

Primarily, the dialogue sounds almost noir at times -- amusing but a bit wearing after a while. Some funny lines, though, and plenty of sharp observation. The novel is named Queen's Court and yet it opens with Louise yet to find her apartment, and at the end she leaves it and moves back to care for Diana when that lady becomes ill. Despite Louise's leap at independence, she ends the tale doing exactly what an old lady should do, and what she was rather vehemently opposed to at the beginning: living in close quarters with her cousin in Westmount, taking on companion duties. I would have wished for a more lively finale for this feisty woman.

Nonetheless, Phillips' portrayal of the varied characters of Westmount was entertaining enough that I'd now love to read Early Birds, his novel about three women preparing for a garage sale. I'm sure the gentle skewering would be plentiful there.

(Listen to a lovely, brief interview in which he gives props to George Eliot, Jane Austen & Barbara Pym, among others -- keep listening past the creepy computerized voice at the beginning!)

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For this year's Canadian Book Challenge I've chosen as my theme "Small-Press-Palooza" Thus, for each book I'm including a link to the small press who has published it. Take a look -- there are wonderful small presses all over Canada!

More about Cormorant Books

Wanderlust & A Book of Hours

And now for some reviews...
During last weekend's Readathon I kept these two "wordless novels" for the late hours, knowing they'd be restful on my eyes. And they were! I've read others in this series of woodcut novels put out by Porcupine's Quill Press as well -- these are the latest two that I have received.


Wanderlust / Megan Speers
Erin, ON: Porcupine's Quill Press, c2010.
128 p.

I wasn't really engaged by this one. It features a young woman into the punk scene in Sault Ste. Marie, in the mid 1990's. It shows the main character with various friends, skateboarding, dumpster diving, drinking in the woods and so on. Personally I wasn't fascinated by the subject matter.

Still, as a novel told in this format the story was visually strong -- lots of active moments which could be shared within an image. The woodcuts have quite a bit of dark space and the figures are slightly off kilter, reflecting the subject matter quite effectively.

The main difficulty I had with this was that it didn't seem to go anywhere. It was a slice of life, but didn't seem to have a narrative line to grab on to. Also, there was a quirk in the illustrations that I found a bit unusual: the characters, as shown on the cover, often have "voice bubbles" in which they are relating something in pictures. It gave me the sense that the story was being told rather than shown. Strange, I know, considering the entire book is made up of images; however, that is how it struck me.

Nonetheless, I still find this whole series fascinating and so outside my usual reading areas that I enjoy exploring them each time, even if it turns out that I don't absolutely love a title in the end.

A Book of Hours / George A. Walker
Erin, ON: Porcupine's Quill Press, c2010.
192 p.

This book is inspired by the medieval tradition of a "Book of Hours", which led the faithful in their allotted daily prayers. It's also visually influenced by the classic tradition of woodcut novels by artists like Frans Masereel (or so the introduction tells me; I am not familiar with this tradition so looked it up for more information -- it is a fascinating history!)

However, it takes as its subject matter the day before September 11. Walker reveals a society in which people follow their everyday routine, showing us small moments of normal life in the irretrievable time before terrorist attacks were considered possible on our own shores. The images are elegant, with a cumulative sense of active life, individuals captured in one moment of a full and personal existence. Rather than the story of one person, it accumulates the weight of narrative due to the reader's foreknowledge of what is to come. Each page adds another life that is going to be forever changed.

This results in a striking book, with an overhanging sense of doom to the images of casual daily life, all those people just going about an ordinary day completely unaware of what was coming. Even in the form of fairly straightforward, uncluttered images, often of a single person who isn't doing much at all -- sometimes gazing at a computer, sometimes lying in bed -- there is a sensation of alarm that grew stronger as I neared the end of the book. I didn't want to see what I knew what about to happen. It was surprisingly affecting, powerful in its simplicity. This is a wonderful volume in this series, and makes me look forward to more in the same vein.

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For this year's Canadian Book Challenge I've chosen as my theme "Small-Press-Palooza" Thus, for each book I'm including a link to the small press who has published it. Take a look -- there are wonderful small presses all over Canada!

More on Porcupine's Quill Press

Readathon!!

Today is the opening Readathon for the kickoff of the Canadian Book Challenge 5! So delighted. I'll be reading from noon today to noon tomorrow -- at least for as much of that time as possible. I'll be posting updates here throughout the event when I need a break from reading.

Starting things off, here's my stack of possible reading for the next 24 hours...plus a few that you can't see because they are ebooks! As you can tell, the library is my main supplier ;)

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3:00 update -- time for a tea & cake break, and an update...

So far I've been doing great. I'm reading outside on my porch, my favourite place to be, even though it's pretty warm and humid today. Good thing one of the books (Raising Orion) has a bit of ice and Baffin Island in it!

I've read parts of:

The Widows of Paradise Bay by Jill Sooley
The Sound of Living Things by Elise Turcotte
Raising Orion by Lesley Choyce
and
2 stories from Goodnight Sweetheart by Richard Teleky
3 stories from Mystery Stories by David Helwig

It's been a wonderful mix so far, and I am enjoying all of them.

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6:00 Update:

So unbelievably hot out! I was wilting out there in the heat so have retreated indoors. But the reading itself has been progressing nicely. I finished one book and then felt a bit restless so read the first chapter or so of a few different titles.

Finished:
Raising Orion by Lesley Choyce

Read parts of:
Monoceros by Suzette Mayr
The Canterbury Trail by Angie Abdou
Am I Disturbing You? by Anne Hébert

Tim Horton's Sightings: 2 (These are Canadian books after all!)

Hope everyone's doing well with their choices and enjoying themselves -- I definitely am!

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10:00 Update:

Thrown off my planned 3 hr updates by a huge thunderstorm that rolled through starting around 7:30. BLACK, black clouds, wind & thunder & lightning. Didn't want to turn the computer on during it but it lasted forever! Must admit it was a bit distracting from the reading as well. But seems to be settled down so here I am.

Since the last update I've spent my time reading books by and about Quebecers.
I've finished:
Am I Disturbing You? by Anne Hébert (it is a novella so not that impressive of a feat, really).

Read bits of:
The Sound of Living Things by Elise Turcotte
Terra Firma by Christiane Frenette

The funny thing is that all three of these French books have been translated by Sheila Fischman, one of my favourite French-to-English translators in Canada.

And read quite a bit of Queen's Court by Edward O. Phillips. This one is set in Montréal, right near the neighbourhoods I spent a lot of my Montréal life in, so I'm really enjoying the descriptions of the main character refamiliarizing herself with her new home. Always fun to recognize landmarks. And while there has been no Tim Horton's mention yet, she did mention Stratford. So that's been very enjoyable.

Also interesting, I found a few new words that I'm not familiar with.

From the Hébert, "equinoctial", an adjective meaning

1. Happening at or near the time of an equinox
2. Of or relating to equal day and night
3. At or near the equator

From the Phillips, "velleity", a noun indicating

1. The lowest degree of desire; imperfect or incomplete volition.
2. A slight wish or inclination.

So despite the storm, I've had an informative stretch of reading!

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1:00 Update

Still at it! I really got into Queen's Court after my last update and powered through to finish it. Lots of fun -- really enjoyed it and will have a fair bit to say about it later. I loved the Montréal setting! It was a great introduction to Edward O. Phillips' writing.

I also read 2 stories from David Helwig's Mystery Stories, and a few poems from some collections I have lying about waiting to be read.

Now that it's getting late I've returned to the lighter reading of Jill Sooley's The Widows of Paradise Bay (Paradise Bay is in Newfoundland) and I must say, I've been laughing out loud at this one, despite its rather macabre subject matter. It's a great pick for late night reading. I also have two books from Porcupine's Quill Press waiting for late night perusal: two titles from their series of wordless novels told in woodcuts. Perfect for these tired eyes.

Not sure how much longer I'll last but I'll give it a good try.

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4:00 Update

First off, I have to say I am utterly surprised that I am still up & reading. I just HAD to finish The Widows of Paradise Bay before turning in. Told in three voices, I wanted to know what happened to each of the three widows before I could possibly put the book down. And who would have thought, another Tim Horton's sighting! That makes 3 so far ;)

I've also read through the two wordless novels from Porcupine's Quill, Wanderlust by Megan Speers (meh) and Book of Hours by George A. Walker (very affecting).

But now my nice warm bed is calling my name... I need to sleep for a while but intend to jump up again in a few hours to finish off a few more stories. Good luck to anyone else who is still awake!

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Morning Update: Well, I slept longer than I intended to...but I still have a few hours to cram some reading in! Hope everyone else is back at it as well....

I have a variety of great titles...now to pick one!

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NOON - Final Update

I am so sad it is already noon! I feel like I'm just on a roll once more. To wake myself up I read a couple of Margaret Avison poems and a short story by David Helwig. Then I started Anna's Shadow by David Manicom. It's about Russia, Canadian diplomats and physics...so good! I've made it nearly 100 pages in and I am really loving it. Definitely going to keep reading this one even though the official Readathon is over for me :(

Here are the official stats for my day of reading:

Read & Finished: 6

Raising Orion by Lesley Choyce
Am I Disturbing You? by Anne Hébert
Queen's Court by Edward O. Phillips
The Widows of Paradise Bay by Jill Sooley
Wanderlust by Megan Speers
The Book of Hours by George A. Walker

Read Parts of and Planning to Continue With Immediately:

Mystery Stories by David Helwig
Goodnight, Sweetheart by Richard Teleky
Monoceros by Suzette Mayr
Anna's Shadow by David Manicom

Read Part but Marking as Unfinished:

The Sound of Living Things by Elise Turcotte -- I just can't seem to get into this one, perhaps because its about the intense relationship between a single mother and her precocious four year old. Just not really my style after all.

Tim Horton's Sightings: 3

The characters in Widows of Paradise Bay, Monoceros and Raising Orion all pop out to Tim's at some point.
And I wonder if they will in any of the Helwig stories I haven't read yet? One of my favourite Helwig books, Smuggling Donkeys, certainly had many Tim's mentions.



This was great fun, and I made it the closest to 24 hours that I have ever reached. Thanks to John for organizing!

I'll finish off with an excerpt from Margaret Avison's poem "In a Season of Unemployment" (in The Essential Margaret Avison from Porcupine's Quill Press). When I came across it this morning I thought it was perfect for our shared enterprise:

Not a breath moves
this newspaper.
I'd rather read it by the Lapland sun at midnight. Here we're
bricked in early by a
stifling dark.