You want me to do what?

You Want Me to Do What? Journaling for Caregivers / B. Lynn Goodwin
Mustang, OK: Tate Publishing, c2009.



I was offered a chance to review this book as a part of a WOW (Women on Writing) blog tour. I jumped at it because I love the topic of journaling, and think it is a very valuable part of self care. I was interested in seeing what B. Lynn Goodwin had to say, as she experienced firsthand the strain of caring for a parent with Alzheimer's, as well as having a background as a writer and English teacher.


This was also the first time I've read an ebook entirely online. I wondered if I would have trouble adjusting to the format, and truth be told, I did find it a bit discombobulating to read the entire book in electronic format. I am just used to paper copy and do prefer it. However, this kind of book is well suited to the e-format, as it has brief blocks of text and lists of questions with a lot of white space left for filling in answers, in the paper copy, or I suppose once you've printed off a page of the e-copy you've bought. In any case, reading it was not difficult, even if I am still more comfortable with hard copy.


But on to the content -- both my sister and I read this ebook; I have a background in libraries & literature, while my sister (K) is a Recreation Therapist specializing in seniors health (she runs a senior care business called Wayfinders). Both our impressions follow:



Me: Lynn introduces the book with a little information about the health benefits of journaling: to reduce stress, open up perspective, reduce feelings of powerlessness, to work through the range of emotions stirred up in the experience of caregiving. Journaling allows the caregiver some space for vital self care. She references some of the major research into journaling, including that of Dr. James Pennebaker. The value of journaling is made explicit, reassuring anyone who may feel that sitting down to write about their own feelings is somehow a bit flaky or self-indulgent (not my view but I know some people who would have difficulty focusing on their own emotions).
K: I agree that this ebook could be a very useful tool in support groups. Caregivers are not only dealing with the ever-shifting demands of Alzheimer's, but also with years of pre-existing family dynamics. In a support group, people may feel less guilt and fear at expressing to themselves the negative emotions they are feeling because others are doing the same exercise.


Me: She follows this introduction with a huge number of prompts, which are beginnings of a sentence to lead journallers into writing. For example, a few prompts are "The truth is...", "Yesterday I believed...", "It's hard to admit...", "If need be..." What should be mentioned is that she leads workshops in this area, and this is a kind of workbook which grows out of that experience. I think that this book would work really well in a group format, with a facilitator guiding the writers. Anyone in a caregiving situation who is accustomed to journaling or to any kind of self reflection could easily pick up and use this book as is, but if the person has not developed the habit throughout their lifetime, some guidance would be helpful. Also, a group setting may also appeal to people with a more kinesthetic or auditory learning style, while a visual learner would probably have the most success using the book on their own.
K: As a support group facilitator, you could use some of the open ended prompts as a way to stimulate discussion and problem solving amongst the group, in addition to using them as journalling prompts. Additionally, this stylized journalling could be turned into a creative arts program for those in care that have maintained their cognitive capacity, or even as verbal prompts to stimulate reminiscing activities with Alzheimer's clientele.



Me: From a literary perspective, I feel that this brief workbook is something to use in a hands-on setting. People new to journaling or just too tired to search out their thoughts while staring at a blank page could benefit from the prompts, which are intended to trigger recollections or awareness of what the journaller is feeling. It follows in the line of many journaling books, but in a more practical and immediately usable format; it's light on theory and heavy on the guided prompts. There is also a more literary bent at the end of the book: there is a section on turning your journaling into publishable writing. Lynn runs a website called Writer Advice, and her focus on writing and publishing comes through in this book as well. I am a big fan of journaling, but wonder whether turning the kind of personal writing which comes from journaling into publishable writing is always possible, or even desired by many who may be put off by the idea of having to create something considered publishable. I believe that journaling is a valuable and meaningful habit to cultivate, however, and enjoyed seeing Lynn's perspective on the topic, particularly how it applies to the needs of exhausted caregivers.
K: Having worked with family caregivers for many years as part of the professional care team this would be a handy resource to be able to share with certain ones, but the suggestion also carries a risk: I have met many that merely suggesting this type of an approach to self care would be perceived as insulting - why on earth would they need to do this? They have a COMPLETE handle on everything that is going on. Another risk is that it means actual writing that someone else could stumble across and read - once written, twice shy! Suggesting this resource could very well put someone on the spot and make them feel like they're not doing a 'good job'.

To maximize the various uses of a book such as this, a good recreation therapist could introduce it as a communication program and integrate the family into the program, and as they see the positive impact of using verbal journalling with their loved one, they could then be provided this book as a resource to use at their leisure, in their own personal time.



Over all, this book is full of information that could be used in many different settings, with caregivers and beyond. In a workshop setting, a facilitator could introduce basic techniques, elucidating the uses and benefits of journaling for people who may not be naturally inclined to use the written word as a coping mechanism. This is a good beginners resource for individuals looking to explore the journaling path.

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Christmas time is here....

Oh, it is that time of year again, the time when whole days disappear and you don't even realize that it has been a week since you read anything or even looked at your own blog....yes, Christmas time. I can't believe how neglectful I have been of my own reading and of my poor little blog in the last few weeks. Christmas is a busy time and I have been busy, doing quite a bit of sewing which I can not share here as some of the recipients read my blog! ;)

But I will share a couple of great crafting sites I've discovered lately - if you want some inspiration for last minute gifts, try one of these:

Sew Mama Sew - most crafters know this site, but I have had fun looking through it, especially her November posts, in which she lists an entire month's worth of fabric based gift projects. Wow. Lots to inspire you here.

Just Something I Made - This is my favourite new crafting blog - and more than that, it is a wonderful blog full of inspiration for all kinds of creativity. Author Cathe Holden is a graphic designer and has an amazingly creative turn of mind. She shares tons of her graphic work from vintage books and advertisements, free to download, to use for crafts, business logos, blog buttons etc. She just asks that you don't use her images and turn around to sell them. I spent literally hours looking through this site last week! (artsy-crafty button above by Cathe)

Make + Do - I came across the above site due to a random mention on this Canadian Living craft site (which runs all year round as well). There are lots of more traditional crafts here, lots of knitting, which I am hopeless at, but some other good ideas and good links too.

Tomorrow -- back to regular programming with a review of a book on journaling.

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The Blythes are Quoted

The Blythes are Quoted / Lucy Maud Montgomery; edited and with an afterword by Benjamin Lefebvre

Toronto: Viking Canada, 2009.

This is the restored, full version of a collection first published in 1974 as The Road to Yesterday. That version was expurgated, removing some of the darker elements of the stories, and all of the poems and dialogues which Montgomery had inserted between sets of stories. Anything new by LMM is exciting to me, and I was eager to read this.

I loved it; it was such a delight to be discovering something new in her voice - now I want to go back and read all her novels again, starting with the Anne series. The title comes from the fact that all of the short stories have some reference to the Blythe family; what they will think of the action, their children's behaviour, the good Dr. Blythe's advice, and so on. Everybody seems to know them! There is poetry between the short stories which is attributed to Anne Blythe, with some of it presented as her son Walter's as well. I really enjoyed the poetry interspersed with the stories in this book; a lot of LMM's poetry is very old fashioned; rhyming, full of overblown descriptions of nature and so on. But in this book we see some of her later poetry, and while it is still formal (she despised free verse) there are a couple of very touching pieces which break free from the adoration of nature and the sentimentality which characterizes much of her poetry. Perhaps it was just her changing outlook; in one of the stories a character says that believing all children are equally lovable is "sentimental piffle". Along with the poetry we have short dialogues from the family (and Susan Baker!) responding to the poems and referencing occasions from the past, which readers of the series will recollect from earlier books.

A couple of the stories really are very dark, for example we have a woman avenging her illegitimate daughter by murdering the daughter's abusive husband -- and no one knows that the faded older woman is both the birth mother and the murderer. Even more scandalous, she shows no shame when admitting it on her deathbed. Another story is amusing, if a bit risqué, as a man seeks out the woman he believes he loved when a young man, neglecting his own wife to do so (she was only his second choice after all). He gets his comeuppance when the youthful crush turns out to be bonkers and drives him madly around the countryside, in his pyjamas. Okay, it really was quite funny. There are shades of spiritualism, thwarted love, illicit affairs, cruelty to children and wives, all sorts of things one wouldn't associate with the author of Anne of Green Gables. Of course, if you've read the recent biography, The Gift of Wings, or any of LMM's journals, that darkness won't really surprise you.

But there is also a sad echo of Lucy Maud Montgomery's own troubles during WWI; the book is arranged so the first half is prewar and the second postwar. There are poems by Walter Blythe included, and as fans of the Anne series know, this is the romantic, literary son who dies in the war. There are family dialogues following the poems, and in these the sense of loss and sorrow is clear. LMM had extreme difficulty dealing with the tragedies of war, and the final poem in this book reflects a sense of the futility of war. The manuscript was apparently delivered to her publisher the day she died, in 1942. I wonder what part her view of the war which was then underway played in the themes of this book. It is a sad, powerful, fascinating and priceless restoration of the complete work that LMM originally intended. An absolute must have for any fan of Montgomery, and highly recommended to those new to her work.

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Canada Reads, 2010 lineup

Well the lineup of books and their defenders has been announced for Canada Reads. There is already a #CanadaAlsoReads hashtag to follow on twitter which is bringing up some interesting titles from readers which are more intriguing to consider, at least for me.



The five books which will be under discussion for Canada Reads are:



The Jade Peony by Wayson Choy (defended by Samantha Nutt)



Good to a Fault by Marina Endicott (defended by Simi Sara)



Generation X by Douglas Coupland (defended by Roland Pemberton, aka Cadence Weapon)



Nikolski by Nicolas Dickner, trans. by Lazar Lederhendler (defended by Michel Vezina)



Fall on your Knees by Anne Marie Macdonald (defended by Perdita Felicien)




These are all sturdy Canadian reads, all quite well known already, I'd say, except for perhaps Nikolski (which is, incidentally the only one I've read from this list, and I quite enjoyed it). There is always the question, is Canada Reads there to promote lesser known or older books, or just to talk about books which are familiar and more easily accessible? I guess it just goes by panelist choice, but the only book I'm enthused about this year is the one chosen by the one writer on the panel.


But I do have to admit, I don't usually read along with lists like this, so it really doesn't matter too much what I think: I know that each of these books will by this time have a waiting list at my library. Do you have a favourite on this list? Do you read along with Canada Reads, or is there another similar event in your area that you follow?

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Top 10s: the first list

Now that the month of November is over, meaning that NaNoWriMo is over, I have a lot of blogging to catch up on! I was so busy writing for NaNo that I did neglect this poor blog somewhat. But on the positive side, I have many reviews to post over the next couple of weeks!



I thought I'd ease back into things by participating in this week's Weekly Geeks assignment. This is a carry-over from last week, a request to post your favourite books so far this year, out of those which were published in 2009. I have my yearly roundup to post in a few weeks, which will cover all my reading this year, but for now I thought I would share a list of 10 great books I've read in 2009 which were also published in 2009.



1. Broken / Karin Fossum (mystery/literary)



2. Come, Thou Tortoise / Jessica Grant (literary fiction)



3. Family Album / Penelope Lively (literary fiction)



4. The Incident Report / Martha Baillie (literary fiction)



5. The Good Mayor / Andrew Nicoll (literary fiction)



6. The Children's Book / A.S. Byatt (literary fiction)



7. The Sweetness at the bottom of the pie / Alan Bradley (mystery)



8. The Earth hums in B flat / Mari Strachan (literary fiction)



9. In Bed with the word / Daniel Coleman (non-fiction; literary discussions, spirituality)



10. Where our Food comes from / Gary Paul Nabhan (non-fiction; food issues, sustainable agriculture)

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Year of Readers: Update

Since it is nearly the end of November, I wanted to give an update on my Year of Readers progress. Only one month left before all books read and all monies raised are totalled up...still time to donate a bit if you were thinking about it this year. :)

The charity I've been reading for this year is PLOW (Public Library on Wheels), an outreach program created by the library I work at, focused on family literacy. It goes out to smaller, rural centres and provides storytimes and book lending services, as well as organizing regional celebrations for Family Literacy Day in January.

I haven't been active enough in finding sponsors this year, I do feel a bit guilty about that. But still, my activities have drawn some local interest to PLOW and my family, friends and coworkers have supported the effort. A couple of my coworkers were even brave enough to pledge a certain amount per book read - I did warn them that I'd read 180 books last year!

This year's totals to date: Books read, 167.

A little less than 2008 -- so far. Please check out my Canada Helps giving page if you are interested in joining in at the eleventh hour. And do go take a look at the Year of Readers blog to see what everyone else is reading for this year; lots of good bookish charities if you want to find one to support. Thanks again to Jodie at Book Gazing for organizing this year-long reading effort!

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Mathilda Savitch by Victor Lodato

Mathilda Savitch / Victor Lodato
Toronto: Random House, c2009.
304 p.

I read this a few weeks ago and haven't had a chance to mention it yet. That's too bad, because I found it to be a very entertaining read and wish I would have shared my enthusiasm while it was still fresh. Still, I do want to talk about this book a little; it's been getting a fair amount of attention but I think it can stand a lot of discussion -- there's a lot in it.

It is the story of Mathilda Savitch, thirteen years old, precocious and obsessed with her sister's recent death. Her sister Helene was pushed in front of a train a year before and Mathilda is trying to understand what happened. She doesn't know how her parents can be destroyed by grief and yet not be making every effort to find Helene's killer. The event is tearing apart Mathilda's family, with her mother sunk into her own depression and her father working every day and isolating himself from the emotions swirling in the household. Mathilda herself feels overlooked, and as the book opens she states: I want to be awful. I want to do awful things and why not.

She spends the rest of the book acting out, doing things that perhaps a girl of thirteen really shouldn't be doing; hacking her sister's abandoned email account, taking the train alone to find her sister's lover and question him, sleeping over at her neighbour's house after sneaking out alone (in his bedroom, in his bed, with him in it as well). She becomes a troubled child, but one who is determined to discover the truth about Helene's death. It's a tale told from a very strong character's perspective; Mathilda's voice is consistent and very believable, a young girl on the cusp between childhood and a more knowing adolescence.

Mathilda is a wonderful creation; she is conflicted, both loving and hating her parents, both idolizing and revealing the flaws of her deceased sister. She has a sassy voice and is a clever and intrepid addition to the phalanx of fictional girl detectives. Her creative attempts to find solutions to the questions she holds regarding Helene's death are always entertaining though just on the edge of being just too cheeky. Fortunately, the end of the book offers us the hope that her psychic trauma is resolved, or has the potential to be resolved. The portrayal of all members of her family, parents and Helene herself, are really well done. They are all full characters with personality, and individual lives outside of their relation to Mathilda. I enjoyed finding out more about them as the novel progressed and small facts were added to the story about each of them and their motivations for acting the way they did, even if Mathilda hadn't been aware of these elements previously. Lodato does a great job of giving us all this information in a way that Mathilda, the narrator, would naturally discover; some of the information that we read and are able to comprehend as signs and hints to the real story, Mathilda herself does not understand. She is just passing on her observations, without knowing what the deeper meaning of such behaviours or statements by others could be. This novel is so well constructed and suspenseful to its conclusion.

However, there were a few points that weren't so marvellous for me. At times the influence of Catcher in the Rye comes through a little too strongly for my taste, and Mathilda starts sounding eerily close to Holden Caulfield. I'm thinking of one scene in particular. But that could just be because, unlike Lodato, I don't actually like Catcher in the Rye very much. The very Caulfield preoccupations Mathilda reveals could have been toned down just a little, to my tastes, but again, I never did like Holden. Also, Mathilda's tentative sexual explorations felt a bit unnecessary to me, I am sure she had some interests in those areas but it wasn't my favourite part of the story; I didn't like her neighbour whom she was interested in sexually. The tempo of the narrative is rapid, full of action and Mathilda's manic voice pulling us forward, but it did feel a little like Lodato wasn't sure where to conclude the book. After Mathilda's final discovery, the book kind of just stops. There is no grand conclusion but as I mentioned earlier, there is the possibility held out that Mathilda and her family will be okay.

Still, I enjoyed this book a lot and would definitely recommend it. The main characters are wonderful and the voice of the novel is refreshing and entertaining. Mathilda's road through grief was touching, funny, and very bittersweet. She is a convincing narrator and you want her to find the truth and be able to move on with her life. The truth will become evident to the reader much earlier than to Mathilda, and this engenders a lot of sympathy for her struggles. This was an original book that I liked despite my initial reservations. I'm glad I read this one; Mathilda has stayed with me.

Interview with Victor Lodato in Experience Toronto

Other bloggers' opinions:

Luanne at A Bookworm's World likes it, but also mentions the disconnect between theme and cover art

Deanna at My Tragic Right Hip liked it and compares it to other adolescent narrator driven stories

Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea was drawn in by the narrator's voice (and had a copy with the cover I prefer)

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Library Loot!

I've been too busy getting ready for the craft show I was a part of this week to do much reading, and certainly to do much blogging. Now it's over (yay!) and while it was fun, now I can just relax and read some new books. Ahhhhh. (and here's one of my flower quotes for your entertainment)


To celebrate, I want to share some of the great books I've brought home with me this week. I haven't done a library loot post in a while; I've been so busy I've mostly just been adding books to the list to bring home some other time. But since I finally have time to read again, I'll share my finds with you! I'm snatching some book descriptions from the publishers this week as I haven't had time to write up proper summaries myself, sorry.

The Spare Room / Helen Garner

From Publisher: The Spare Room is the extraordinary writer Helen Garner's first work of fiction in fifteen years, and an intense, moving investigation of the boundaries and limits of friendship. As the novel opens, Helen lovingly prepares the spare room in her home for her dear friend Nicola, who is coming to visit for three weeks while receiving controversial treatment for late-stage cancer. From the moment Nicola staggers off the plane, gaunt and hoarse but still somehow grand, Helen becomes her nurse, her guardian angel, and her stony judge. The Spare Room tells an unforgettable story of the complex humour, rage, and compassion that informs and changes a lifelong friendship.


The Heart Specialist / Claire Holden Rothman

I've been hearing a lot about this one, and it is published by one of my favourite Canadian publishers, Cormorant Books. I'm thinking this might be a good one for my upcoming list of books to read for the Women Unbound Challenge!

From Publisher: Inspired by the life of Doctor Maude Elizabeth Seymour Abbott, The Heart Specialist is the story of a woman pursuing her dream at the dawn of the twentieth century. Stripped of a regular childhood when her father is accused of a horrific crime and abandons the family, Agnes was never considered ladylike. She is drawn to the wrong things, such as anatomy and dissection, which lead to her calling as a doctor. Yet despite a rapid rise to stardom in the medical community, she finds herself up against the same glass ceiling faced by women in her field.

Find a quiet corner / Nancy O'Hara

From Publisher: Going beyond daily meditation, Find a Quiet Corner teaches us effective ways to release stress, boost energy, tap into creativity, improve our well-being, and above all, achieve spiritual fulfillment. Readers will benefit from its lessons on how to increase self-awareness and personal satisfaction through careful attention to breath.


Little Fingers / Flip Florian; translated from the Romanian by Alistair Ian Blythe

From the Publisher: In a small town in the mountains, a mass grave is discovered. Public prosecutors, journalists and former political prisoners arrive ; the issue becomes the main topic for the press and a daily source of political wrangling. The explanation that it was a crime perpetrated by the communists (in the 1950s) seems the most likely. Petrus, an archaeologist, researches old archives, visits and listens to the town’s old folk, seeking a convincing lead, in order to quell the furore surrounding the bones. As the credibility of the military prosecutors is zero, given their ties to the former and current regimes, a number of investigating Argentinean anthropologists arrive in the small mountain resort. Their verdict is disappointing for a country where communism murdered wholesale and mutilated lives: the mass grave is the product of the mediaeval Black Death and not red machineguns.

Heavy Words lightly thrown : the reason behind the rhyme / Chris RobertsFrom Publisher's Weekly: A librarian by night and a London tour guide by day, Roberts deploys an informal style of scholarship to dazzling effect, transforming a catalogue of familiar nursery rhymes into a treasure trove of tantalizingly slippery archaisms, hidden etymological layers, arcane associations and buried meanings. Having explained how the Victorians sanitized nursery rhymes' traditionally earthy content, Roberts attends to each ditty separately, printing obscure variants and tracing historical references, from British constitutional history to bygone pagan customs. Unlocking the secret meanings of the past, Roberts also finds plenty of refreshingly straightforward modern-day analogies for the nursery rhymes—the chanted taunts of the average British soccer fan illustrate certain rhymes' original tone and purpose. In a fluidly digressive style, he debunks accepted theories and confidently asserts his own.


I also received my first e-book ever from an author & her publicist this week! I'm excited to see how I like reading it in that format. It's a book on journaling (a topic I love to learn about, practice, and share information on); specifically about journaling for caregivers. It looks great; watch for a review soon. It's called:

You want me to do what? / B. Lynn Goodwin

From Lynn's website: Writing relieves stress and saves lives. As a caregiver, you spend every spare minute driving to medical appointments, stopping at the pharmacy, cooking, answering questions, paying bills, and helping with matters that used to be private. Why write about it? Journals never argue. They let you vent, expound, rationalize, elaborate, and imagine best and worst outcomes. They let you breathe. A journal welcomes your questions and invites you to explore and analyze possible answers. Journals never talk back. Journals let you finish your thoughts and offer silent, unconditional acceptance. Writing gives perspective and restores sanity. Writing is a lifeline as well as a record. Writing saves lives. Do not underestimate its power.


So that's what I have ahead for myself this week. Let's see if I get as much reading done as I hope to!

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Deck the halls...

Despite the absolutely gorgeous sunshine and nearly 20 degree weather today, it is still only six weeks until Christmas! One of my favourite things about the pre-Christmas season is the appearance of church bazaars and craft shows. I love to make things for my family and friends but I am not a super crafty kind of girl -- most of the things I know how to make I've already given in years past. So, bazaars and craft shows are the next best thing; handmade crafts by people from my local area. I have the satisfaction of knowing I am supporting local business and finding some great, unique gifts. Today I had the chance to go the to Rotary Club's "Rotary Arts and Crafts Christmas Show", an annual tradition. It's a large show with crafts, jewellery, cosmetics, food products and even some books and music. I bought a variety of items, but this is my score for this year:

(the crazy pencil in the background is there for size comparisons!)

Utterly new and unlike anything I've bought there before, these are pins created from the pages of vintage dictionaries, hand colorized, and lacquered. The artist, Vivian Hutcheson, is from a small town just down the road called Shakespeare, where she runs a wonderful shop called Green Cottage Gallery. She specializes in masks, as seen on her Etsy page, but has a variety of other things like these pins (and others using poker cards & sayings) as well. How could a good, book loving librarian pass up one of these pins? Well, I couldn't, and although I wanted to buy about six of them, I kept myself under control and only bought one for myself and one for a gift. I couldn't resist the hoop skirt pin for the lovely image and for the addition of the word "hoose-gow" at the bottom ;)

So many great discoveries to make at shows like this, and they make me admire crafty people even more. I will be participating in a craft show myself again this year; but it is more of a small, inhouse one with only a handful of participants - I am making pictures with quotes and dried flower bits, they are one thing I can make and enjoy creating - but will mainly be featuring my health products (it's a show for anyone who has a side business besides the one we all have in common, to raise money for the United Way). A much craftier participant is my coworker who has an Etsy page as well, Needle Pulling Thread. Looking forward to some fun and some fundraising!

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Karin Fossum's Broken

Broken / Karin Fossum; translated by Charlotte Barslund.
London: Vintage, 2009, c2008.
264 p.

I've read all of Karin Fossum's mysteries: she is a Norwegian writer who has a marvellous series of thoughtful yet bleak crime novels, in the recent Scandinavian mystery tradition. Featuring Inspector Sejer, they are about the human implications of crime on victims, police, wider society and the perpetrators themselves. They have a strong sense of place, and unforgettable imagery. They are very good, and since I don't generally enjoy dark, police based mysteries, I have been surprised at how much I admire her work. So I knew I wanted to read this book as soon as I heard it was being published -- but this is not one of the Inspector Sejer novels. In fact it is a standalone, and an unusual one. It is also one of the best books I have read this year.

Though this isn't quite a crime novel it is very suspenseful, and has a natural tension which builds up throughout. There are two narratives underway; as the book begins we are in the company of a middle aged writer, home alone and on her way to bed. Once it's dark she realizes there is a man entering her house, coming into her bedroom. After her fear dies down she realizes he is one of her characters, who has jumped the queue outside her home, so eager is he to have his story told. She gives him a name, Alvar Eide, and this begins the second narrative, the story of Alvar's quiet and very orderly life.

Alvar is a man who likes things in his life to be fully under his control. He works in an art gallery, almost entirely alone; he has his habitual lunch, the same every day; he goes home to his quiet apartment where he reads and sometimes indulges in a glass of sherry. He considers getting a cat but then decides it would be too needy for his taste. His life is running along smoothly until a point of conflict enters his story: a young girl, a heroin addict, turns up in the gallery one winter day and he kindly gives her a cup of coffee. His actions have far flung repercussions as she keeps returning, then appears at his apartment door, throwing his controlled existence off its centre.

Interspersed with the tale of Alvar's struggles are chapters in which the writer discusses the trajectory of the story with Alvar himself. He is a character who finds it hard to demand anything but is desperate to know what the writer is going to do to him. These chapters are full of musings on the creative process, of discussions about free will and destiny which apply both to Alvar's actual story and the ability of the writer to control the direction of the story. They are brilliantly thought provoking interludes and make this book into something really special. Although it could have seemed gimmicky with a lesser writer, Fossum has such control over both elements of the book that both are equally fascinating. Alvar is illuminated as a character within and outside of his actual story, he becomes an extremely sympathetic character as we see him struggle with the idea of somebody else directing his life -- and the thought that his character is his destiny.

It's a seriously brilliant book, I really loved it and will be recommending it to all the writers I know, and to readers who are interested in metafictional devices. I was also struck by what a perfect fit this book is for NaNoWriMo: it begins and concludes in the month of November, and it is partially about the writing process itself. Despite Fossum's straightforward, generally unadorned prose, there are moments of pathos and of poetry, moments that made me stop and consider my own reactions to the ideas in the book. It's beautifully written, original, and has the deepest empathy for all its characters, including the author's doppelganger - our narrator. Again, amazing book, one of my top five this year for sure.

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