Today I Learned It Was You

Today I Learned It Was You / Edward Riche
Toronto: Anansi, c2016.
224 p.


I really wanted to like this odd little book more than I did. I thought it was a clever premise, funny in parts, and intriguing in some of its ideas. And that beautiful cover! But the voice of the book didn't catch me fully, and so I felt as if I were reading it from a bit of a distance.

The set-up is that a man has decided to live wild in a city park; rumours abound that there is a man transitioning into a deer. Local politicians, animal rights activists, police and various locals all get into the act, with this situation serving as the impetus to changes in many lives.

Like the academic infighting found in many university-set books, this one features lots of infighting within a local city council. Small town politics offers a lot to satirize, and Riche has fun with it. 

He also satirizes a few other areas, like aforesaid animal rights activists as well as social media, and it doesn't always work for me. Sometimes satire just comes across as meanness, especially if it is about a topic you as a reader have a connection with. And somehow, the most eccentric and silly characters always seem to be female.

I also felt that many characters were mostly ciphers, and the ending was inconclusive and felt unfinished. An issue I've had with many "humorous" novels is that my sense of what's funny is so different from an author; this is another of those situations. 

But it's still a lighthearted read with some serious undertones. With Newfoundland as a setting, the idea of wilderness, a man/deer, starving artists, a former hockey star as current mayor, and Tim Horton's all rolled in to the story it certainly has its Canlit cred. It was generally well-received, even making it onto a Canada Reads longlist. 

But it wasn't the book for me; I found it pleasant enough reading, but, well, forgettable in the end. 

Stars and Laments: Mysteries of East Coast Canada

Fire in the Stars / Barbara Fradkin
Toronto: Dundurn, c2016.
324 p.


Amanda Doucette, recently returned from Nigeria where she experienced trauma as an aid worker caught up in violence, is supposed to meeting up with a friend and fellow survivor in Newfoundland. A camping trip together will be restful, restorative, he says.

But when she gets to Newfoundland, he is not there to meet her. Amanda hops on her motorbike, hooks up her dog trailer, and heads off for his place -- only to find his wife Sheri alone there, suspicious and angry. Phil has already left for a camping trip, taking their son Tyler with him.

Feeling a bit worried herself (and unwelcome at his home) she heads off in the general direction that they were planning on going, hoping to track him down. She partners up with Chris Tymko, an RCMP officer from out west now stationed in Newfoundland, who believes her when she says something is wrong. Together they follow up on rumours, sightings, and eventually murders. There is a social conscience in this book too; one of the threads has to do with illegal foreign workers on a fishing trawler who are trying to escape their servitude, while another is Amanda and Phil's PTSD and how it's affecting their lives. 

It's a straightforward mystery, with a strong setting, and a strong character setting up a new series. There were a couple of things that I didn't like personally; Amanda's dog Kaylee travels with her in a motorbike dog trailer & she's a big part of the story. Unfortunately I'm not much for pets and mystery stories together like this. One more little quibble for me; Chris Tymko is a Western Canadian of Ukrainian descent, and at one point relates that his grandparents came from "the Ukraine". A Ukrainian would not say "the" in this case. It's actually quite a contentious issue -- the country is Ukraine, not "the" region of anywhere else.

But apart from my very individual taste, this is a rapidly moving and easily read mystery that keeps you guessing and evokes a definite sense of place.

Lament for Bonnie / Anne Emery
Toronto: ECW Press, c2016
332 p.

Set in Cape Breton, this is a book full of music, and family, and the way the past can rise up and disrupt the present.

Twelve year old Bonnie MacDonald -- the youngest member of her family's famous Clan Donnie highland band, and a step-dancer -- has disappeared after a family party. Nobody has seen a thing, and as the days go on, they all begin to suspect the worst.

Bonnie's disappearance highlights the fractures in this family, between spouses, cousins, generations. As RCMP officer Pierre Maguire (from Montreal, which he left hoping for kinder, gentler work) investigates, the threads of the mystery tangle so tightly the reader is suspecting everyone at once.

Except for the other children, of course. And Emery has created some great characters here; the children are children -- realistic, thoughtful, trying to interpret what they are seeing and hearing. Bonnie's cousin Normie, visiting for the summer, has visions she's not sure what to do with, but connects deeply with her great-grandmother who is also gifted with the sight.

While the conclusion gets a bit over the top and melodramatic for my sensibility, it was at least not horrific. This family is a complicated and interesting one, and the Cape Breton setting with all of its Highland ancestry shines brightly.

If you're looking to take a trip to the East Coast in the company of some mysterious circumstances and strong female leads, either one of these may provide you with the means to do so.

The Fortunate Brother

The Fortunate Brother / Donna Morrissey
Toronto: Penguin Canada, c2016.
260 p.

This is the third in a trilogy about the Now family -- but I haven't read the first two. I didn't realize at first that this was a part three; there is nothing that requires you to have read the first two (Sylvanus Now & What They Wanted) This works perfectly as a standalone read.

And what a read it was! The Now family is in a state. Elder brother Chris died suddenly in an accident far away at his job in the Alberta oilsands. His sister Sylvie was there and feels a lot of guilt about it, though it wasn't in any way her fault. Youngest brother Kyle is the centre of the book, as his confused emotions and understandings form the viewpoint of this tale. 

He is still living at home with his parents, Sylvanus (who has turned to drink to face his grief) and stoic mother Addie, who discovers that she has breast cancer but only announces it immediately before going for treatment. Into this fraught family comes another problem: an abused woman has turned to Addie, and soon after, her violent husband is found murdered basically at their door, well, at the end of their dock anyhow.

Morrissey ties together the mystery itself -- a classic, replete with police, red herrings, suspects right in the Now family, and hidden motives among other locals -- with the literary focus on character development and fine writing. Her Newfoundland is clearly evoked in speech patterns and expressions, while not being too heavily laded with dialect; you simply get the feel for these characters through the descriptions of both people and settings.  

While there are a lot of grim issues covered in the book, they're approached with an unsentimental eye. There is an honesty to the reactions of all the Nows to the loss of their son and brother, and a realism in their suffering. The story holds unexpected revelations, fear, and grief, but also a lightness, an eye for humour and/or irony as well. The conclusion really gathers the threads together and leaves the reader satisfied with the plot resolution, but also feeling hopeful for this family's future, with the sense that they've weathered this storm together. 

This was a quick read, one that kept me flipping pages to see what was going to happen, while also engaging my sympathies for the characters. I haven't read many of Morrissey's books so far, but this one was a very good one to encounter, one which I really enjoyed. Recommended. 

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

Come thou Tortoise

To My Tortoise Ananke

Say it were true that thou outliv'st us all,

O footstool once of Venus; come, renew
Thy tale of old Greek isles where thy youth grew

In myrtle shadow, near her temple wall;

Or tell me how the eagle let thee fall

Upon the Greek bard's head from heaven's blue,

And Apathy killed Song. And it is true

that thy domed shell would bear a huge stone ball?

O Tortoise, Tortoise, there are weights, alack!

Heavier than stone, and viewless as the air,

Which none have ever tried upon thy back;

Which, ever and anon, we men must bear --

Weights which would make thy solid cover crack

And how we bear them, let those ask who care.

Eugene Lee-Hamilton (1845-1907)

Come Thou Tortoise / Jessica Grant

Toronto: Knopf Canada, c2009.

412 p.

I recently read this charming book, one of Random House's New Faces of Fiction. I was a bit leery about it at first, as it seemed to be consciously 'quirky' and eccentric. But I was quickly disabused of my preconceptions; the narrator, Audrey Flowers, is a sweet girl and hilarious storyteller who is dealing with one of those weights which Lee-Hamilton mentions above, a weight which has never been tested on a tortoise's back. The book opens with the news that her father is in a coma, and Audrey is flying home to St. John's, Newfoundland from Portland, Oregon to be with him and her Uncle Thoby, in the process leaving her pet tortoise Winnifred to be cared for by friends. En route, in the second chapter, she disarms an air marshall named Marshall -- it is becoming clear why Audrey is known as Oddly by her family.

She has a unique way of speaking, disdaining most punctuation beyond the period. It works wonderfully. For example, upon leaving Winnifred she says:

My own heart is all apatter. This is being alive. Can you feel the body worry before every beat. I can. Will this be the last. No. Will this be the last. No.

And then my favourite, in reference to two swans swimming in lonely splendour on an apparently bottomless pond behind Audrey's St. John's home:

When the swans put their heads underwater, they look like baby icebergs. When they lift their heads, they look surprised. Did you see the bottom. No. Did you. No. Let's check again.

When Audrey returns home she finds that her father has already died, and her grief intrudes on the light tone of the narration. The emotion is very real but not at all sentimental. Her Uncle Thoby's grief is also all-consuming, and it leads to the action of the rest of the story: he flees back to England, from whence he came when Audrey was seven years old. Audrey must first cope with his absence and then follow him to England to figure out the mystery of her life and upbringing. The elements of the story which are necessary to the 'mystery' are pretty clear to the reader, but it is handled so much from Audrey's point of view that you are still waiting for her to figure everything out. It is clear that she is much loved, both by her father and Uncle Thoby as well as their neighbours and friends (ie: Clint the Taxi Driver, neighbour Byrne Doyle, her father's secretary Verlaine). Her developing romance with a Christmas tree light technician is perfect as well.

It's a touching story, both moving and very funny. Grant's use of language is clever and Audrey is a truly original narrator. Winnifred's existence as a kind of reality check, a tortoise who has seen everything and will be straight with us about it, is a good foil to the very personal perceptions that Audrey shares with us. I found this book a fresh, intellectually invigorating experience but I also just fell in love with nearly every character. I recommend it.

Oh, and I nearly forgot to mention, I found the perfect new word to add to my vocabulary -- in reference to her father, Audrey comments that he has his "grognard face" on. What's that?
"A grognard is someone who has just woken up and is not yet happy about it."
Now if that isn't the perfect word for me I don't know what is! ;)

Other reviews:

Chris at Book-A-Rama
Kerry at Pickle Me This
Jay at The Quickie Book Review

Jessica herself guest-editing the National Post's weekend Afterword

Blasted with Kate Story

Blasted / Kate Story

St. John's, NFLD: Killick Press, c2008.

Remember how I went to Book Expo this year and saw Paul Gross? Well, when I was in the long, long lineup to see him, the book gods smiled upon me. I was standing right in front of a small publisher's booth, one I hadn't scheduled in. At that very moment, there was a first time author giving away copies of her novel, Blasted. As it was a Newfoundland based book I thought instantly of the Canadian Book Challenge and accepted a copy after a nice chat with said author. I am so grateful I did, as I've just finished Kate Story's novel and is it a delight!

The voice is fresh and the story unexpected; the blurb does not fully prepare you for what the story holds within. Here's the blurb:

Blasted is a story of Ruby Jones, an irreverent, exuberant, and troubled woman who lurches between love affairs and cities. The narrative shifts between generations and geographies, between contemporary life and stories as old as the hill that looms over Ruby’s birthplace. All the while, she is haunted by mysteries that surround her father and the generations before him. When Ruby unravels at last, she must face the demons that pursue her. Steeped in Newfoundland folklore, Blasted mines a rich vein of experience, layering the mundane and the magical, and evoking the forces that inhabit the land.

Well, okay, on second thought that does pretty much cover it! But it doesn't truly hint at the originality and lively action of this tale. The character of Ruby drives the book; she's a fantastic creation, realistic and yet a force of nature. She's hard-living, yet vulnerable, foul-mouthed yet charming, and full of other contradictions as well. She loves her grandparents back in Newfoundland, yet she lives in Toronto, and has surrounded herself with a family of fellow artistic originals there. Balancing Ruby's messed-up life with her family history and her connection to the folklore of fairies and the little people in Newfoundland, Story creates an astonishingly fresh and fascinating read. If you enjoy a story with shades of urban fantasy, strong characters and wonderfully three dimensional settings (Toronto and Newfoundland both) -- and don't mind some really powerful cussing -- try Blasted. It is a Canadian novel which breaks the mould. (I'd say it doesn't meet the guidelines as laid out by Ian and Will Ferguson...)

What a surprise this was! It's a great book that, after the trepidation I felt through the first chapter, totally sucked me in and kept me reading eagerly. Even though it was too late and I should have been sleeping and reading it just before bed while half asleep gave me really weird dreams... nevertheless! Read it. It's something new, and definitely worth it.

Gifts & Bones

I don't know what it is this week, but I seem to be running in place and the days are simply flying by! I haven't had a chance to do much reading -- I am not sitting still long enough to read many pages at any one time. Sigh. But, I have finished one novel, a light mystery I received from the author last year (!!) at the Canadian Book Expo. I was in the mood for something mysterious, and it is set in Newfoundland, so I'm counting it toward the Canadian Book Challenge as well! Here's my take on:

Gifts & Bones / Barbara Murray

Soames Point Press, c2007.

I really enjoyed this one! (and also enjoyed the publisher's website -- someone has a great sense of humour). This mystery is the first is a projected series, called the Bea & Mildred Mysteries. The second, Isabella's Passion, is due out in 2008. The actual physical heft of this book was satisfying; it was nicely produced, with an atmospheric cover, good paper weight, and a good choice of font and typesetting. I notice these things, because especially with very small presses or self-published books, sometimes the physical book is off-putting or amateur. Not so this one. I don't think I caught a single typo in the whole thing -- which is good, because that just so distracts me from the story. (obsessive, I know). ANYHOW -- on to the story.

Set in 1902 Newfoundland, it features one class of person, shop employees and servants, who work for a second class of person, rich newcomers to St. John's. The Stevens, comprised of Henry, Penelope, and their sons George and Brian, are the family that our main character Bea eventually works for. The family is dysfunctional, and Bea's friend Natty (who first works for them) complains about the cold way they treat Brian, who swats his hands at the air and is very confused much of the time. Natty feels that, poor boy, he is touched. However, the day she discovers the truth, she runs away and goes into hiding. Bea, insatiably curious, takes over as housemaid, and tries to discover the ties between the Stevens and the recently arrived Nortons, a father and daughter whom she thinks may be blackmailing Henry Stevens. The plot is twined together like the multitudinous threads making up the cross-Atlantic telegraph cable (which plays a big part in the blackmail scheme). In addition to the very human elements of jealousy and revenge there are supernatural elements at play. In fact, one of the most important facts about our characters is only revealed halfway through, and came as an utter surprise to me. I don't often find that a fact in a mystery story surprises me, unless it comes out of left field and has not been set up for us to see; I usually figure it out early on. But this one shocked me, even though after I read it I could see it was perfectly supported beforehand. Very clever! And it really makes me want to continue with the series. The plot makes great use of Morse code, and as such has a table of the Morse alphabet preceding the story. I found myself flipping to it a few times to try to figure out plot points before they were revealed.

Bea, along with Mildred, and their young cousin Jean (gifted with the second sight, this is Newfoundland after all) investigate and eventually come to discover the whole truth. It is a meticulously plotted story which is difficult to tease out into its separate strands, as everything is nicely meshed. Mildred saves the day and she and Bea bring the villain to justice. Throughout, however, there are discussions of the role that Newfoundland took in trans-Atlantic telegraphy (Marconi and Telegraph Hill appear in a roundabout way), family fishing, the landscape of St. John's and surrounding area as well as the commercial centre of the town. I think I enjoyed this book because it wasn't a dark and dreary family saga about fishermen and isolation and the degradation that women suffered, etc. -- even though it was about darker themes, it was done in a lighter cozy mystery way. I do have a couple of caveats: the writing is not perfect, at times coming across as quite clunky and expositional. Also, a few of the actions the main characters take slide awfully close to cliché. However, I see this as a series with potential, as it is creative and has nicely drawn leading characters (Bea, Mildred, Jean and their varied friends and relatives). It has a unique approach, featuring Morse Code and telegraphy, and feels very Canadian. I would recommend this to many of the regular mystery readers at our library, though if you prefer the harder-edged Scandinavians this probably isn't the one for you. It was a good read for a busy week!