2013 Challenge Wrap-Up

image via The British Library
on Flickr (amazing resource!)

2013 held a lot of reading challenges for me. I've always enjoyed taking these on even if I don't get close to finishing, although in 2014 I'll be limiting the number of challenges simply because of the scope of the Century of Books!

I didn't do too badly this year, though -- I read quite a lot. Actually I am surprised by how many of these I completed! Here is how I've done with my challenges.

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Canadian Book Challenge -- ongoing, as it runs from July 1 to July 1 (hosted by John at Book Mine Set)

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Colourful Reading Challenge -- hosted by Becca at Lost in Books
I finished this one! The challenge was to read nine books with a colour, any colour, in the title -- and I did it, just squeaking in with my last pick this week. My final list of colour books

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What's In A Name -- hosted by Beth Fish Reads
I've been doing this one for a few years now. I like the random categories and the varied reading they lead to. I finished this one, and much more quickly than usual! Here are the categories and my reads for each.

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Tea and Books Challenge -- hosted by Birgit at The Book Garden
The challenge here was to read massive chunksters. I read one supermassive tome with counted toward my goal of 2 books, Sir Charles Grandison (1600+ pages)

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RIP VIII Challenge -- hosted by Carl at Stainless Steel Droppings, running Sept 1- Oct 31
This seasonal challenge is always a delight. I chose to participate at the level of 4 books, but ended up reading 6. Here's the original challenge, and the books I ended up reading, plus a couple that I simply did not finish.

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The TBR Pile Challenge -- hosted by Roof Beam Reader

This one challenged you to read 12 books that you've had on the shelves for more than one year. I have plenty of those, so signed up and actually completed the challenge :) I even read the 2 alternate titles on my list, though didn't make it to the full 20 I'd suggested I would. All the titles are listed and linked on the original post.

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Science Book Challenge -- hosted by Jeff at Scienticity

Wow, I failed miserably on this one. I need to focus on more good science reading! Lots of ideas for where to start at Jeff's website, too, so no excuses!

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To finish up, I mustn't forget my very own challenge, the first I've hosted -- the Postal Reading Challenge! I finished up 15 epistolary books, and sent plenty of mail this year. I hope you'll consider joining in for 2014, too. You can get to all the reviews for books read by participants by following the links at the 'gateway post' (including my own). Or see the full run of my own postal reading and comments on the post here.

Comfort Foods for Breakups

Comfort Foods for Breakups: the memoir of a hungry girl / Marusya Bociurkiw
Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, c2007.
171 p.

This memoir blends the power that food holds to evoke memory and emotion, with the author's experience of ethnicity, sexuality, and loss. It was wonderful.

Marusya Bociurkiw is a Canadian-Ukrainian author, one whom I've only discovered fairly recently (The first work of hers which I read was her novel Children of Mary, a while ago now). This book includes many Ukrainian themes, mostly in the sense of personal history, and how ethnicity affects the larger experience of life.

It consists of a set of essays, broken up into four thematic sections, but all the essays link into one another, with resonances between them no matter what section they live in. It's loosely arranged by these four themes:

• Mama's Kitchen and Beyond
• Food for the Soul
• Food Voyages
• Food for the Body

Bociurkiw is also a lesbian, and much of the angst in this writing comes from her struggle to balance her Ukrainian identity, and her family's expectations, with her sexuality. She writes about the many relationships that she has had, and has lost, and how food plays a role in those as well. "My lovers never go hungry." she states, and after reading page after page about her love for food, both in its reality and as a symbol, you immediately believe her!

There is a comment early on that perhaps reveals the impulse toward memoir. It's a statement that resonated with me -- the truism that you begin to live differently at forty has been more than cliché in my own life, and so I appreciated this:

Turning forty, you see the expanse of your life for the first time, like getting onto a rise of land after driving through prairie for a very long while: where you came from, where you need to go. It hurts, to turn forty.

Bociurkiw has close but difficult relationships with family members, and much of the heartbreak in this memoir revolves around the loss of a brother, a brother who had already estranged himself in many ways but occasionally connected with her through their shared culinary heritage. She also shares the ups and downs of a rocky mother-daughter relationship over many years. When she shares a story of the two of them making varennyky (perogies) together, each in their own way, I felt the emotional pull of that moment. When sharing her life stories, she also meditates on the vagaries of memory. In the preface she shares this insight:

I am my family's self-appointed bearer of memory, recalling the absent spaces, recording the recipes, searching for the glimmer of devotion, the aroma of happiness, the back beat of bitterness. Between recipes and stories, I will ask myself a thousand times: who owns these memories? How is it that each of us remembers in a different way?

The second to last essay is simply entitled "Varennyky" and I would have bought this book for this essay alone. It was entertaining and  quite magical for me, as Bociurkiw describes a potluck-style Ukrainian Christmas Eve dinner (brilliant idea, by the way, I think I'll adopt it) for which one of her friends suggests she'll go buy perogies at the grocery store. Bociurkiw is struck dumb by this unthinkable suggestion. But despite her horror at her non-Ukrainian friend deciding to make the varennyky herself, and using a Transcarpathian recipe besides, it turns out to be a hit. And when she later tells her mother -- and all of her mother's varennyky-making church lady friends --  this tale, they simply pause and note the differences, then her mother comments, "I'd like to see her recipe." It's a moment that speaks to me of the danger of fetishizing, or freeze-framing, tradition, making it into an historical curiosity rather than an ever-evolving daily reality. Perhaps this is more of a danger for those of us who are hyphenated Canadians, further down the line from 'the source'.

Bociurkiw shares that recipe, by the way, and a few more besides. It was charming to find the first recipe unexpectedly at the end of one essay, "Sunday Soup", a recipe for minestrone. She plays with the idea of food and heritage, and the symbolism of hospitality, comfort, and identity that lies within those concepts. Sometimes food even fails her. As she says in the essay "Potatoes":

Dionne Brand writes, in A Map to the Door of No Return, "Too much has been made of origins." Some days you eat and eat and it just doesn't feel like home. Roots can nourish, but they can also develop a bitter taste. Sometimes, they can make you ill. That day, at the Plaza of Nations, I ached for something to feel familiar, but none of it did, not even the food. 

While this was appealing to me especially because of the Ukrainian themes, there is much more besides. The author has lived in many parts of Canada, and she shares impressions of Toronto, B.C., Alberta and her travels to and from all these places. She also shares essays about her travels, to Ukraine, but also to France, Italy, Turkey, Greece, Switzerland, even homely places like Nova Scotia. There is a lot of traditional memoir, with the sharing of both family stories and details of her many romantic relationships. Food plays a role each time, and reading this book you get a sense of the physical pleasures of food, of the beauty of scent and flavour and even texture of the food we choose to eat.

But we also get the sense that food is, and always has been, part of our identity. Our childhood foods are comfort foods, familiar to us and echoing with meaning, while our willingness to accept and sample the foods of other cultures as we mature may become a sign of our worldliness, a move beyond a single sense of identity. Bociurkiw skillfully intertwines the elements of food, ethnicity, and sexuality, showing that each of us has to choose how much of each ingredient we incorporate to develop our personal identity.

The writing flows, and her choice of detail illuminates each story. This was an absorbing read, full of struggle, and losses, and sorrow, but also containing joy and pleasure in the small beauties of life.

A Little Love, A Little Learning

A Little Love, A Little Learning / Nina Bawden
London: Virago, 1990, c1965.
233 p.

Another book off my shelf, this is Virago Modern Classic #333. I find that Viragos are nearly always a good bet, and this one lived up to its Virago-ness.

I've never read Bawden before, and after this I will be actively looking for more. This novel follows the story of Joanna (18), Kate (12) and Poll (6), who live with their mother Ellen and stepfather Boyd (the local doctor) outside London. Set in the 50's, it deals with many contemporary elements of women's lives, things that we wouldn't necessarily consider now -- the fact that Ellen has left her first husband and is trying to stay out of sight so he doesn't take the girls away because of course he has legal custody as their father, for example, an idea that I found repellent. Or the arrival of their Aunt Hat (not actually an aunt, but an old friend of Ellen's who is unlike her in nearly every way). Aunt Hat arrives to stay while her husband is being tried for beating her and attacking her stepson by another marriage when he was visiting. She is continually making excuses for him, rationalizing his abuse with apparently common statements like, he was overworked, he was tired, etc.

But those elements make up the background of the story, which really centres on the sisters, especially narrator Kate. I found Kate a fascinating storyteller; for one thing, she readily admits that she lies constantly, making up stories to make herself more interesting, to gain some attention. Her lies are continually blowing up  into problems for her and for her family, but she can't seem to stop herself. In the end though, it is something Joanna does that precipitates a crisis in the family. I've never read a narrator quite like Kate -- unabashedly lying throughout, she is still very understandable, and even endearing in her adolescent awkwardness. She is aware of her own tendencies but can't yet see a way past this habit. Bawden was able to hold this tension successfully over the whole novel.

I was intrigued by the relationship between the girls and their stepfather -- he took on all three of them along with Ellen, and he is a good man, a reliable and loving man with character. He respects all three girls and loves them deeply, often giving advice, comfort and understanding as they go about their youthful dramas. At one point, Kate is arguing with him about a situation in which her lies have nearly caused a very problematic situation, thankfully averted.

"But it can't be both," I said, suddenly feeling stiffly hostile. "A thing's got to be either right or wrong."

"Only in arithmetic," said Boyd, and went on to say that this was the trouble with most people, that they wanted a straight, comfortable answer to all their questions, yes or no, and this was the reason why they thought as little as possible and took the first answer that came, because thinking made them uncomfortable: the more you thought, the more you realized there was no right, true answer to anything. All you could ever do was to think round each individual question and through it, and try to get an answer as near right as you could get it.

"Truth often sits on the fence," he said, "The trouble is that we have to get down on one side or the other."

Another element I found interesting was their relationship with their mother. Ellen is not a warm and fuzzy person. She dislikes sentimentality and expects intelligence and decent behaviour from her children. They have Aunt Hat to provide all the sentimentality, and she does that in spades. There is no romanticizing of 'motherhood' here, just a very real woman who happens to be a mother, and despite the lack of overt displays of affection, we know she loves the girls fiercely and will defend them to the end. I thought that the relationships between all the women, Aunt Hat included, were wonderfully drawn. There is such a variety in the personalities and behaviours of all these characters, and there is an spinster neighbour as well as an older lady in the 'big house' nearby who both add yet another element to the feminine characterizations Bawden is presenting. It is all quite fascinating.

Kate's development from beginning to end as she tells us this story is the point of the title, I think. She goes through a lot of upheaval trying to figure out relationships, and what people who love each other owe each other as well.  Her experiences over this rocky year culminate in her confronting a rather unwelcome visitor and defusing a lot of tension, without intending to or even quite understanding that she'd done so. Love and learning are themes in her life from the opening sentence to the final page, and I am glad I was able to follow along.

Embers

Embers / Sandor Marai; translated from German by Carol Brown Janeway (written originally in Hungarian)
New York : Knopf, c2001.
213 p.

This is a book I've meant to read for years: it's a classic Hungarian novel from 1942, in a quite beautiful English edition. The tale is all about the meeting after many, many years of two men in their seventies who were best friends as children and young men, until one shattering event broke their friendship and resulted in one of them fleeing the country.

It begins from the perspective of Henrik ("The General"), a Hungarian aristocrat holed up in his countryside manor. He hasn't left the small area around his home for many years, while his former friend Konrad has been living in England and the tropics since leaving the area forty years previously.

Henrik has spent forty-one years obsessively mulling over the facts of that long ago day that changed both their lives, and wants to hold his visitor to account. When Konrad arrives, they have dinner in the room they last ate in together, with everything from chairs to decoration to table settings to menu exactly the same. I think that this is a fine way to illustrate the General's absolute 'stuckness' in a past moment. Over the course of the evening he lays out the facts of that long ago day, and about their shared past, to try to determine the truth of what happened.

It's a fencing match in words between two men who as young soldiers learned the art of fencing very well. And, unfortunately for me, I began to find it as dull as watching a real fencing match. Who is scoring? Who knows. The General went on and on, parsing every second of the event, in order to understand it. I saw him as a symbol of the old order, a pompous man who was stuck in the past in every way, and desired to make the world answer to him for it.

The writing itself was masterful, the description of the political environment and all of its minute effects on daily life was strong. There were very quotable bits, and some lovely phrasings. I loved the fact that Konrad was the poorer friend, that he was Galician, that his parents lived a frugal life in Galicia in order to educate him at the centre of the empire. And I felt much more sympathy and interest for this more complex character. The evocation of a pre-war Europe, especially an area that I haven't read much about, was rather fascinating and beautifully drawn. Every carpet and portrait and piece of furniture in the General's manor house becomes present in the imagination. Most intriguingly, in the General's pocket is a little yellow velvet diary tied with a ribbon, formerly belonging to his long-deceased wife, awaiting its turn in the story.

But the actual story was too annoying for me to love it. Tales of jealous husbands tire me, and bore me. And this turned into a type of story like that, with two men wrestling over the possession of a woman's affections. When I read stories like this I begin to feel impatient rather than sympathetic. Also, there were a couple of sentences in the book that caught my attention in a particularly irritating way, though I know perfectly well that they illustrate the thoughts and mores of the time that the book is set (and was written). The first, talking about the relationship between the two men, states that:

And yet, beyond their roles and lives in society, beyond the women, something else, something more powerful made itself felt. A feeling known only to men. A feeling called friendship. 

And the second, revealing the way that the General in particular looks at the wider world, assumes that it exists for human delectation:

All of a sudden the objects seemed to take on meaning, as if to prove that everything in the world acquires significance only in relation to human activity and human destiny.

Both of these statements, or beliefs, were sticking points for me. Perhaps I wasn't in the right mood when I read it, as I couldn't sink far enough into the story to overlook these.

Objectively, it was interesting, and as I've mentioned it was very visual, like a miniature painting with tons of detail. I also enjoyed the reverberations of the title: the fires of jealousy, love and betrayal have been banked for many years, and when these two attempt to fan them up again, the emotion is still there but in a much lower intensity, all in embers. There is no resolution of the dilemma; they realize that there is nothing to be done now except part once again and simply go on. It's well drawn, and an unusual read, but just not one I loved.

Did you read it? What did you think about the motivations behind the "big event" that separated the friends? Was it planned or spontaneous?

100 Year Old Men, Windows and Disappearances

The 100 Year Old Man who Climbed out the window and disappeared / Jonas Jonasson; translated from Swedish by Rod Bradbury.
Toronto: HarperCollins, 2012, c2009.
384 p.

This is a crazy story, a worldwide bestseller that was brought to my attention by... my dad! He found it and read it before I'd even heard of it, and recommended it. So I relaxed with a copy over the holidays. It is frenetic adventure tale that reads like Forrest Gump, if Forrest had been a curmudgeonly Swedish explosives expert with the knack of falling on his feet.

It reminded me quite a lot of the Ukrainian novel The Case of the General's Thumb, in its reliance on black humour, violence and unbelievably absurd happenstance. It had the same casual criminal element as well. But this book is also quite different.

One hundred year old Allan Karlsson climbs out of the window of his nursing home on the morning of his 100th birthday party, wishing to escape the saccharine occasion. He wanders away and trusts to chance to make his way in the world. His first mistake is to steal a suitcase at the bus station, hoping it will have an extra set of clothes for him. It doesn't. What is inside leads directly to his life on the lam, escaping some petty crooks, meeting up with a few others (plus elephant) and creating a haphazard group of travellers that keeps growing, until they all escape to a tropical paradise.

That's the modern-day tale. Interspersed are memories of Allan's long past. He became a wanderer as a young man, after his explosive experiments came a little too close to a local notable. Leaving his small Swedish town he makes his way from country to country, coincidentally meeting up with world leaders wherever he goes. He encounters Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, Harry Truman, Kim Jong Il, and countless other celebrities, like Einstein (Herbert, not Albert). He makes miraculous escapes from untenable situations, he maintains his sense of the ridiculous and his brazen attitude to any sense of privilege that those he encounters may hold. As he makes his way through life, he says things that change history, without his realizing it or being recognized for his input (for example, he makes a tiny suggestion when he is working as a waiter at Los Alamos...) The whole concept is ridiculous and yet amusing, though I did feel it was starting to go on a bit and was glad that the book tied everything up when it did.

If you want a light, yet absurdly dark, story, one which amuses with its historical references and the chutzpah of its main character, this is it. Full of oddball characters and a setting ranging over the entire world, it is a lively book that certainly has found a wide readership. I was entertained with Allan's shenanigans, and with his motley group of fellow outlaws. This is not your typical Scandinavian mystery. Thank goodness.

Larry's Party

Larry's Party / Carol Shields
Toronto: Random House, c1997.
339 p.

I've owned this book for quite a while now, and finally picked it up to read. I'd heard it had some elements involving mazes and labyrinths in it, which is the main reason I was interested. But I hadn't realized until I started reading how very much the labyrinth is involved in this entire story -- everyone interested in mazes and labyrinths should really read this! Each section opens with a title page and an image of an historical maze -- I enjoyed identifying each one and noting the discussion about the names and forms of mazes and labyrinths in the text. As this is what really struck me about this book, I will review it from my perspective as a labyrinth facilitator and aficionado.

The story is this: Larry Weller, the main character, starts out as a florist in Winnipeg (and the city is given a fairly nice role too). It's the career he sort of stumbled into after high school. He gets married young, and on his honeymoon in England he encounters Hampton Court maze, and it is true love.

He builds a maze in his yard, carefully planting and pruning shrubs to form a design of his own making. His wife Dorrie, unfortunately, dislikes both the maze and Larry's devotion to it so much that she has it partially destroyed. The marriage is also destroyed in the process.

Larry moves out; he finally leaves his floral career to move to Chicago and become a professional maze builder. He meets a new, young wife: they go to England on a Guggenheim fellowship and visit many, many continental and British mazes. Then she leaves him as well.

Larry finally moves back to Canada, this time to Toronto where his sister lives. He finds a new girlfriend and they host the titular party when both of Larry's ex-wives are coincidentally in Toronto on the same weekend. As they all have dinner in a glorious confusion of voices and personalities, Larry realizes some long-hidden truths about himself and about love.

The novel finishes with an excerpt from Bradfield's 'Sentan Wells' (1854), and at this point some of the things that had been bothering me about the story made sense.

Some run the Shepherd's Race - a rut
Within a grass-plot deeply cut

And wide enough to tread - 

A maze of path, of old designed

To tire the feet, perplex the mind

Yet pleasure heart and head;

'Tis not unlike this life we spend,

And where you start from, there you end.

If you think of the entire book as a labyrinth, the progression of the story and the manner of telling it are perfectly balanced. The book is made up of various sections, each named "Larry's *whatever*" and this gave me the impression of a set of linked short stories. This impression was made stronger by the constant repetition of certain elements, such as Dorrie's dislike of his maze, or Larry's experience with his father, within many sections. It happened too frequently to be an editing slip-up so I pondered the significance of this initially irritating habit -- and decided that it was representative of the way we think about our lives. Certain stories keep being retold, either to others or in our own minds. We dwell on certain facts and not others.

Then again, looking at the story as a labyrinth, it makes sense that things repeat. As you walk a labyrinth, you circle around and come back to nearly the same spot you were before, just one path over. The perspective changes depending on where you are on the path, and where you are in relation to others who may also be walking the same path. You circle around the central question both coming and going. And as T.S. Eliot said so pithily, "And the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time."

I'd held off on reading this because (gasp) I am not really a big fan of Carol Shields' style. And here too, I found her style a bit tedious at certain points. The time frame of the book kept me puzzling over where and how the action happened as well. But, Larry's life was full enough that it worked beyond the details. Of course, his fascination with mazes parallels mine so that was enough for me. However, Shields does give us a fairly complicated cast of characters who were interesting on their own, enough that I would like to see this story told from the women's point of view! Using this metaphor, however, shaped the story a little bit artificially, fitting it into the frame neatly. The ending, happy as it might be considered, and concluding with a verse, recalled some of Shakespeare's romances -- all is apparently well and both true love and the power of words have triumphed in the end.

In any case, this book explains Shields' connection with the labyrinth, and is a clear reason for the Carol Shields Memorial Labyrinth that is found in Winnipeg. A fitting tribute.

Carol Shields Memorial Labyrinth Design

(there is an interesting discussion of Shields' use of this symbol and its metaphorical resonance in the book "Garden Plots", some of which can be read online via Google Books if you are interested)

Unusual Uses for Olive Oil

Unusual Uses for Olive Oil / Alexander McCall Smith
Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2013, c2011.
203 p.

This is the fourth book featuring the hapless Professor Dr Dr Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld. (the first three, from some years ago, can now be found in omnibus format as The 2 1/2 Pillars of Wisdom)

Not much has changed for poor von Igelfeld -- he still has monstrous bad luck and always does the wrong thing. Yet he always comes out of his disasters unscathed. Perhaps that's because he doesn't seem to have the self-awareness to be crushed by the huge gaffes he makes, rather, he is focused on maintaining his touchy position in regards to his co-professor and rival, Professor Unterholzer. He is very sensitive about his level of scholarship as opposed to Unterholzer, and that sometimes leads him to overreact. But, as stated early on in this book, after his suspicions of Unterholzer have been proven false:

There was no doubt that Unterholzer was telling the truth, decided von Igelfeld, as he looked down into his cup of coffee. How complex this world is, he thought; how easily may things appear to be one thing and then prove to be another. And how easy it was to see the worst in humanity when what we should really be looking for is the best.

This book is made up of five chapters, each a tale of von Igelfeld's adventures. From a nascent romance, to a marvellously risqué reading party at a mountain villa, to an awkward dinner with his coworkers Prinzel, Unterholzer and wives (in which poor Walter the dachshund reappears), to a brief moment in the spotlight as an 'inspirational speaker', von Igelfeld reigns as the awkward, unfortunate man he doesn't even realize he is.

McCall Smith terms these books "entertainments", and they are awfully funny, even while they are much sharper and less gentle in tone than his other series. These characters are skewered and I begin to feel sorry for the constant bad luck and disharmony in poor von Igelfeld's life. (that, and the Institute librarian, Herr Huber, does come in for some rather ignominious portraiture as well... which, as a librarian reader, can be a bit much!) I do find these lighter in the sense that there is not much internal deliberation in these characters, as found in his other books. Also, these stories are much more comedic in their reliance on appearances and misunderstandings. Character flaws lead to truly ridiculous situations, which are all too easy to laugh at, under the auspices of the expression "better to laugh than cry".

I do enjoy the shenanigans of these professors, and the idiocy of the infighting is tempered somewhat by the presence of the relatively normal Prinzel, head of the Institute, and his charming wife Ophelia who is very hopeful and sees the best in everyone, even von Igelfeld. If only poor Walter hadn't suffered from von Igelfeld's pride, I'd be more likely to forgive him his flaws... but otherwise, this book is another entertaining foray into the particular German scholarly world that these odd professors inhabit. A fun, light, amusing read with which to start off my reading year!

Challenges Ahead, 2013 Edition

Flaking out on this year's Challenges does not mean I won't be signing up for any more in 2013. But I think I'll be a little more circumspect this time around! There are a few stalwarts that I join religiously, and then a few new ones I'm going to try out. One of the ways I'm going to challenge myself a little more is to try to create all my possible booklists from the variety of titles I already have on my own shelves.

Still going on: the Canadian Book Challenge, which I have 3 books left to read in order to officially complete. And of course the seasonal challenges like the RIP which I will sign up for again.

But as for the year-long challenges starting January 1st --

Definitely signing up for What's In a Name 6, hosted by Beth Fish Reads once again. This has always been one of my favourites -- I love the random nature of book selection and the wide variety of titles it turns up. It runs all year, and the 'rules' are very broad. This year's categories, and my possible options for each are:

  

1. A book with up or down (or equivalent) in the title:
        Up, Up, Up / Julie Booker
        The Underpainter / Jane Urquhart
        Break it down / Lydia Davis
        Read: Comfort Foods for Breakups / Marusya Bociurkiw

2. A book with something you'd find in your kitchen in the title:
       Read:  Unusual Uses for Olive Oil / Alexander McCall Smith
        Honey and Ashes / Janice Kulyk Keefer
        Liquid Jade / Beatrice Hohenegger

3. A book with a party or celebration in the title:
        Party Going / Henry Green
        Read: Larry's Party / Carol Shields
        Read: John Saturnall's Feast / Lawrence Norfolk

4. A book with fire (or equivalent) in the title:
        Read: Embers / Sandor Marai
        Fire in the Blood / Irene Nemirovsky
        Pale Fire / Nabokov  
        Read: The Firebird / Susanna Kearsley
      
5. A book with an emotion in the title:
        Read: A Little Love, A Little Learning / Nina Bawden
       Where Angels Fear to Tread / E.M. Forster
       Ardor / Lily Prior

6. A book with lost or found (or equivalent) in the title:
        The Lost Dog / Michelle de Kretser
        Read: The Disapparition of James / Anne Ursu
        Read: The 100 Year Old Man who climbed out a window and disappeared / Jonas Jonasson

I'm going to try the Colourful Reading Challenge 2013 again since Lost in Books has revived it. This is another random selection kind of challenge which I find fun to do. The challenge is to read 9 books that have a colour in the title. Any book you like, any colour you like. Fun! Some possibilities from my shelves may include:

• The Blue Flower / Penelope Fitzgerald
• Crome Yellow / Aldous Huxley (read)
• A Few Green Leaves / Barbara Pym (read)
• Black Elk in Paris / Kate Horsley
• Heart so White / Javier Marias
• The Golden Arrow / Mary Webb
• Liquid Jade / Beatrice Hohenegger
• Plum Bun / Jessie Redmon Fauset
• Crimson Petal and the White / Michel Faber

Also read: 

• Unusual Uses for Olive Oil / Alexander McCall Smith
• The Blue Guitar / Ann Ireland 
• Riders of the Purple Sage / Zane Grey
• Brown Girl in the Ring / Nalo Hopkinson
• Black Narcissus / Rumer Godden
• Sassafrass, Cypress, and Indigo / Ntozake Shange
• Rose Cottage / Mary Stewart

And I'm going to try, once more, to read a chunkster within the outlines of the Tea & Books Challenge! I completely flunked out in 2012, so am going to be cautious and simply sign up hoping to read 2 chunksters over 650 pages in 2013. That will put me at the Chamomile Lover level, and while I am not a huge fan of chamomile in everyday life it is what I am striving for here ;)

Some of the giant books that have been patiently awaiting my attention on my overflowing shelves, those that I may pick up for this one are:

• Bleak House / Dickens
• Moby Dick / Melville
• Sir Charles Grandison / Samuel Richardson  -- over 1300 pages, so counts as TWO books ;)
• Crimson Petal and the White / Michel Faber

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So I am going to limit myself to these ones for the present, perhaps one or two may may pique my interest later on but I'm signing up for simply these ones for now. Are you signing up for challenges? Do you like them, find they spur on your reading, or find them too constraining? I love making up lists and so I keep signing up each year!

The New Moon's Arms

The New Moon's Arms / Nalo Hopkinson
New York: Warner, c2007.
323 p.


This is a book I've been meaning to read for a while now, and have had a copy on my shelves for a long time.  When Aarti's reading challenge, A More Diverse Universe, came along, I knew the time was right to read this!

Nalo Hopkinson is based in Toronto, where she's lived since she was 16, after growing up in the Caribbean. I enjoyed what Nalo said on the FAQ page of her website about her identity as a writer:

Q: Do you think of yourself as a black writer, or as simply a writer?

A: Both.

Q: Do you think of yourself as a Canadian writer or a Caribbean writer?

A: Both.

Q: Do you think of yourself as a queer writer or just as a writer?

A: Both.

Q: Do you think of yourself as a woman writer, or --

A: Both. All the above, and more. All those identities are very important to me. I don't need to claim just one.

All of these elements are wrapped into this novel. Calamity Lambkin (born Chastity, until changing her name to reflect how she sees her self) is living on the fictional island of Dolorosse. She's been nursing her father through his final illness, after many years of estrangement due to her teenage pregnancy. Now in her mid-50's and going through 'the change', Calamity's life is turning upside down, starting at her father's funeral as the book opens.

She rescues a lost toddler washed up by the sea (where the magic in this story comes from; he is a first suspected then shown to be a mer-boy) -- she is forced to be civil and reconnect with her first love Michael (her daughter's father) plus his lover -- she finds that her long lost prepubescent power of 'finding' things has re-emerged with menopause. Things appear out of thin air when she has an unexpected hot flash and a tingling in her fingers. And not just little things, though it all begins with a long-lost brooch...no, eventually she's finding entire orchards popping up in her yard overnight. 

Calamity is a complex character. She is prickly, hard to get along with, demanding, and very focused on herself. She is very unhappy with the thought of getting old and is fighting it with everything she's got. She is a sexual being, and she is powerful in her own right. She is a flawed, realistic individual who can be very loving with the rescued toddler, Agway, while spewing homophobic vitriol at Michael and his boyfriend.  You never feel that Calamity is trying to win over the reader; she could care less what you might think of her, she'll follow her own instincts in all cases. It makes for a fascinating reading experience, as Calamity reveals things that she doesn't seem to see as problematic about herself, like her intolerance or her extreme resistance to aging.

There are many subplots and side characters in this novel, which is both its strength and its weakness. I loved some of the side stories, like the snippets at a seal house in the Zooquarium, or the mythological story of a slave ship and its connection to the sea people, and there just wasn't enough of those elements for me. Also, a major mystery and developmental milestone for Calamity was the loss of her mother at age 12 or so -- it seems to be very important and yet that storyline kind of gets left behind in the conclusion of the book. 

Nevertheless, this was an intriguing novel that I really enjoyed. I felt that the rhythms and phrases that Calamity and her neighbours spoke with added to the sense of place. The many  offhand references to politics and ecology and mythology -- and family dynamics! -- gave shading and depth to the main story, that of Calamity's life change. While the presence of Agway and the sea people gave the tale its magical elements, they weren't the sole focus of the book. Instead they were woven in to Calamity's life story. She was a strong protagonist, not necessarily a likeable one, but a powerful anchor for the story. 

It was an appealing introduction to Hopkinson's work, and I'll definitely be picking up another of her novels. 

To see a list of all of the participants, check out this post.

Textbook of the Rose

The Textbook of the Rose / Joann McCaig
Dunvegan, ON: Cormorant Books, c2005.
168 p.

Another tale of a middle aged woman having a bit of a life crisis: but this one was much more satisfying for me.

It has heft, it struggles with the questions of love and relationship, power, friendship and more. Stella is a professor of medieval literature, and the novel's structure is influenced by medieval narrative conventions -- it begins with a prologue, proceeds through a series of passus, and ends with an epilogue. It's also shaped by taking the form of a romance quest, with mentions of Gawain and of the Canterbury Tales throughout. I found that this layered the story in a way that I found rewarding to explore, with deeper meanings echoing through the pages.

Stella is in her forties; she has an ex, Jake, who left her for a younger grad student. She has two children. She has a love affair with a much younger man, an innocent, halfway through the book. Or does she? The way Stella tells her story, revises her story, recants and reasserts what is truth, makes reading this a continual fascinating puzzle. What is going on and why is she telling us what she does? It's not so much that she's an unreliable narrator or that she is delusional -- not at all. It's the shaping of her story to hold meaning for her, taking imaginative flights into what could hold meaning and shaping them to fit her reality. The interplay of structure and story really appealed to me, and I enjoyed the surprises and doubling-back within the narrative.

Stella has friends and acquaintances within her work world, many women, and they get along for the most part. They are able to share their experiences and feelings about the way their disciplines are changing, what the new trends in scholarship are and how that makes them feel about the security of their positions. They also frankly discuss the place of older women in their situation.s and ponder what is to be done. I liked the fact that Stella didn't see every other woman as a rival, even with the betrayal of her protege, the promising grad student who ended up leaving her studies to start up a relationship with Stella's husband. And even that grad student isn't portrayed as an evil villain but has some complexity to her character.

This novel has enough plot to keep you reading -- a good main character -- fairly straightforward language even with the medieval influence -- and a nice sense of a prairie summer particularly in the middle sections. I enjoyed this and think it will be one I'll read again.

***********************************

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 Cormorant Books

Gold Boy, Emerald Girl

Gold Boy, Emerald Girl / Yiyun Li

Toronto: Random House, 2011.
256 p.

This is a set of short stories by Chinese writer Yiyun Li. I'd seen it mentioned a long while ago and thought it sounded appealing. Then Eva of A Striped Armchair gave it a rave review and I knew I'd have to take a look!

I like short stories, even if I don't read them as often as I read other forms of fiction. This collection was wonderful: no one story overwhelmed the others, or seemed pale in comparison to the others. The opening story, "Kindness", was long and in-depth. It told the story of a woman who is fairly unconnected to those around her, unhappy in a passive way. She is looking back on her experience training in the Red Army with other young women, at a time when they were all conscripts. The subtle clues to relationships and individual differences were outstanding; in a time when everyone was supposed to be identical comrades Yiyun Li is able to create an atmosphere of individuality revealed in small, particular moments.

In many of the stories, older women feature prominently. They are reviewing their lives, or wondering what went wrong, how they've missed out somehow. But the characters are all different people, despite their commonalities. There is no one character that always seems to be speaking for the author. I really admired her skill at creating settings that were alive, that seemed to be the natural place for each character to exist in. Most of the stories were set in China, but a few had American elements as well, and one of these ended up being a favourite for me. By chance, it's the title story, "Gold Boy, Emerald Girl", a phrase denoting an equally handsome married couple.

This is a tale of a older woman, a former professor, who matchmakes for her 44 year old son. He's been in America for many years and has decided to return to China, where he moves in with his mother and tries to decide what to do next. As the story progresses, it's revealed that he is gay, but he still goes along with his mother's decision that he should marry a former student of hers. The student is herself a middle-aged woman, who has a strong affection for the professor. The three of them will live with this new configuration, but not necessarily happily ever after:

They were lonely and sad people, all three of them, and they would not make one another less sad, but they could, with great care, make a world that would accommodate their loneliness.

This kind of calm, assured writing which never promises that things will be perfect is found throughout the collection. I enjoyed this read and all of the varied characters introduced to us. The Chinese setting was matter-of-fact and not "exoticized", as Eva mentions as well. Very rewarding read and I know I'll be looking for more by this author.

Warm the Children, O Sun

Warm the Children, O Sun / Olena Pchilka et al.; trans. by Roma Franko; ed. by Sonia Morris.
Saskatoon: Language Lanterns, c2000.
471 p.

This is the fifth volume in a unique series called "Women's Voices in Ukrainian Literature". It compiles short stories on the theme of childhood and adolescence by a varied group of Ukrainian writers, most of whom were writing in the years between the late 19th and early 20th century. (for bios on each of the writers, check the Language Lanterns site; they share a lot of great information there). The brief biographies of each of the writers are also included in the book.

It's a good book to follow my last read, as it focuses on women and girls' lives in mostly peasant families, in 19th century Ukraine. And it makes me very glad I don't live then. Their lives are unrelenting work...childcare, food growing and preparation, housekeeping, submitting to their (often drunken) husbands and so on. One story delves into the cultural expectation of early marriage and how these lovely young girls, so finely dressed, expect only marriage in their lives -- and then are utterly disillusioned and realize they were only really free before marriage but now it's too late and they keep encouraging other young girls and their own daughters to get married asap.

In one tale, a husband is considered a gentle man and a good catch because he only beats his wife once a month. In another, all the local girls mock another, who is a frail and indulged only child, because she can read. They are merciless in pointing out the ridiculous nature of that talent and how it will make her unfit for a good marriage. (fortunately she finds a husband who, when he discovers her talent, is amazed and happy, as he is himself illiterate -- it is the only 'good' marriage in the entire book).

The strength of one girl who is determined to become a dancer, in one story, highlights the way that most people stayed put, never leaving even their villages; she makes a shocking escape by faking her own death, and travels Europe as a famous performer. She is perfectly safe because the people of her childhood home are so isolated and insular they'd never know it. Just the narrator moves between worlds.

I love reading this series because of the continual surprises. My expectations are always being challenged and changed when I read these stories -- I think I know what their lives were like but reading contemporaneous accounts, though fictional, reveals things that were taken for granted by the society in which these tales were written. The class structure is quite startling, and to me reveals a lot about the reasons for the patterns of immigration to places like Canada.

Not all of the stories are at the same literary level; the series points out that they are translating these previously untranslated works for the social importance as much as the literary. All the contributing authors worked as writers, but some (like Olena Pchilka) have much more of a literary profile. Of all the books in this series that I've read so far, I found this one to be a tough go -- mainly because it is unrelenting on the limited options for girls in this time and place. The story about the reading girl (entitled "She's Literate!") touched a nerve; and the constant reminder through most of the stories that wives were generally considered necessary evils and shrewish, and beaten regularly, was quite dispiriting. The whole book tied the theme of poverty and misery together rather effectively, however, and is certainly an important collection. I am once again impressed and grateful to Language Lanterns for undertaking this translation project on.

Into that Darkness

Into that Darkness / Steven Price
Thomas Allan, c2011.
273 p.

Steven Price had no idea that his novel about the aftermath of a devastating earthquake in Victoria, B.C. would be released shortly after the disaster in Japan. He started writing it seven years ago and it was released just a week or so after the earthquake and tsunami. He is quick to point out that is is unnerving timing, in an interview with his hometown paper.

This book takes the idea of a shattering disaster, and investigates what would happen to those in the midst of such a tragedy. What would the human cost and human reaction be? It turns out that the world quickly turns to chaos and self-interest, with the landscape of the novel nearly apocalyptic. There seems to be little order, no outside assistance, and hordes of marauding criminals.

The main characters are Arthur Lear, an old man, a former painter who has lost his artistic edge; Anna Mercia, a younger mother with two children, who runs a cafe downtown, and her son Marcus, home from school on the day of the tragedy. Anna Mercia and Marcus are trapped in the rubble, while Arthur is one of the rescuing team who pulls Marcus out of the wreckage (they think Anna Mercia is dead) and ends up taking charge of him. Marcus is convinced his mother isn't dead, and drags a reluctant Arthur into a search for her. She is indeed alive and after locating her all three continue their quest to find her missing daughter. This takes them all across the wild west that Victoria has become, encountering murderers, brigands and the odd person just trying to help somehow (these generally seem to be doctors and nurses).

The book was certainly exciting. The description of the earthquake itself, the simple moment when everything was unbalanced and the street rose up like a wave, that was stunning. The aftermath was pretty graphic in parts, and felt as alarming and grimy in the writing as the participants must have found it. Price also uses the situation to discuss the larger questions in life; what is human nature made of? Why would a God let this happen? How much do we owe to our fellow human beings? It was an intriguing premise, and the story held together for his purposes.

There was some thoughtful writing in it, as suits a poet's first novel. For example:

He had little time for those who would suggest men should not seek answers.
But an answer is only ever the edge of an outer question. And all of us keep
moving outward.

He told me a question doesn't have to be something you ask. It's a way of looking at the world.

However, in the end I seemed to have the same problem with this book as I do with others that are similarly post-apocalyptic in feel. I just couldn't feel truly engaged with the situation. It seemed so improbable that chaos and self-interest would immediately come to the fore, with men organizing themselves into roving gangs, and the patriarchal viewpoint unquestioningly restored, with women seen primarily as adjuncts to the action, with sexual violence hinted at. Even though Anna Mercia was a strong character she still faces gender specific dangers.

In other books like these, I have struggled to suspend disbelief. In this book I ultimately found it harder because unless such an earthquake had also paralyzed most of the continent, there would have been instantaneous assistance flown in. Here we have a world isolated from any outside help. So, read it if you like disaster stories. It is certainly evocative of the scale of destruction that we've just seen in Japan. But if you're going to continually question why nobody is coming to assist the city, well, it might not be worth your time to puzzle through it. If you can let the niggling details slide and simply appreciate the deeper philosophical themes and the ideas of human nature vs. wider nature, then you will find the writing deep and rewarding.

Steven Price holds degrees from the University of Victoria and the University of Virginia. His first collection of poetry, Anatomy of Keys (Brick Books 2006), was shortlisted for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize (BC Book Awards), won the Gerald Lampert Award (League of Canadian Poets) and was named a Globe & Mail Best Book for 2006. He lives and writes in Victoria, British Columbia.

photo credit: Esi Edugyan

Four Letters of Love

Four Letters of Love / Niall Williams
London: Picador, c1997.
342 p.

I've had this on my shelf for a long time; in fact, it is on my "20 Books To Read This Year List" which I made in an effort to clear some space on my overloaded shelves. I kept this book so long because I wanted to read it, and there were some good bits in it, but as a whole I have to admit it didn't really do anything for me.

Here's the storyline: Isabel and Nicholas live separate lives in Ireland. Nicholas is an only child whose dysfunctional family includes a father who thinks he is called by God to wander the countrysides and paint and a mother who locks herself in her room once her husband disappears. Isabel is an Island girl, a clever one, and heads to school on the mainland once she outgrows the small island school run by her father. She gets into all kinds of mischief and ends up convincing herself that she is in love with a lumpish kind of fellow she meets while in boarding school, while Nicholas gets himself a job as a government clerk until the moment when both of his parents are dead. They still haven't met by this time, by the way.

Their two stories run parallel and then finally meet as Nicholas decides to reclaim his father's one painting still known to be in existence, a painting that was given as a prize in a poetry contest that had been won by Isabel's father. So off he goes to the island where he meets the family (Isabel is back in Dublin by this time, having been married the day previous to his arrival). And he falls in love with her in one brief meeting, returning to the family to write her four letters, the four letters of LOVE I suppose. But there is no resolution, Isabel doesn't come and Nicholas doesn't recover from his infatuation.

Did I mention that Isabel has a twin brother Sean who has been in a strange coma since childhood, and Nicholas' arrival mysteriously restores him to full speech, movement and awareness? And that the painting mystically spreads itself out into the air of the schoolroom as Nicholas and Sean walk by? And that I wasn't sure if I was reading an Irish novel or some South American magical realism kind of novel? It was all too much for me, and I failed to really grasp the point of all this to-ing and fro-ing between Isabel and Nicholas. If you build it up there should be something for the reader in the end. At least I thought so.

If you like dreamy, meandering Irish novels with eccentric characters you might like this. It all felt a little too suffocating for me, though. At least it's one more book off my shelf and passed on to unsuspecting others ;) It just wasn't the book for me at this time. Everyone else -- and I mean everyone -- seems to love it, so don't trust my opinion... you'll have to try this one for yourself and see what you think.

The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party

The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party / Alexander McCall Smith

Toronto: Knopf Canada, c2011.

213 p.

This is the 12th volume in an extremely popular series...and is available here in Canada as of today. I've read them all and enjoy McCall Smith's writing greatly. In this volume, Grace Makutsi -- the secretary and assistant detective at the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, for whom I have a soft spot -- is finally getting married to her gentle suitor, Phuti Radiphuti.

There's nothing really new in this book; the mystery is slight, more concerned with human behaviour and relationships than with anything truly mysterious. Grace Makutsi and Mma Ramotswe drink tea and discuss life in their office, with Mma Ramotswe offering some pre-wedding husband management advice. Apprentice mechanic Charlie is as irritating as ever, but gets a big scare when he is told he is the father of twins -- is it enough to turn his life around? We hope so but it is not quite certain. Charlie has always been an irresponsible kind of fellow, but McCall Smith seems to treat him quite leniently, with some fondness. There we must agree to disagree, as I am more of the opinion held by Mma Makutsi: Charlie is an annoying young man who must be shown the error of his ways!

But the charm is still there, and the landscape is strongly evoked. The people of Botswana have become more nuanced as the series has grown; there are nasty people and even the good ones are not above some finagling to prevent an unwanted situation (ie: Mma Makutsi and Mma Potokwane, matron of the orphanage, join forces to stop Grace's archnemeis Violet Sepotho from running in a local election). I've heard a few rumblings that this might be the last book in this series, and if so, McCall Smith has nicely tied up all the loose ends, with relationships mended, both Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi happily married, and the future of the detective agency assured. The final scene, that of Mma Makutsi's wedding, is delightful, full of high spirits and beauty. If this is indeed the end, it is a high note to finish on. Of course, I fervently hope that it isn't the end, as I've come to enjoy spending time with these characters and to love Botswana itself through his presentation of the traditions, the beautiful landscape and the people.

Once again, a lovely read, full of pithy words and gentle reminders of the need for kindness and understanding for all.

Soucouyant

Soucouyant : a novel of forgetting / David Chariandy
Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, c2007.
200 p.

This was an unusual book that I've been meaning to read for ages, ever since it arrived at my library and I saw this stunning cover. It's perfect for the story, almost as if it was created by the designers immediately after reading this book! I loved the fact that the cover is an original photograph by the (very dark) visual artists The Sanchez Brothers, rather than duplicated stock photography.

The story is about a family which has immigrated to Canada from the Caribbean - specifically about the younger son and his relationship with his mother, who has suffered from increasing dementia over many years. The title comes from the Caribbean belief in the soucouyant: a vampire like creature, who appears as an old woman during the day but by night sheds her skin and becomes a ball of fire, and can travel into people's homes while they sleep in order to suck their blood. The story circles around the vague memory that Adele, the mother, seems to have of the time she saw a soucouyant, until near the end we discover what trauma she experienced in her youth that is being reexperienced as this memory.

The narrator, whose name we never learn, is the younger of two sons. After his father dies and his older brother abandons them for his own dreams of a poet's life, our narrator becomes overwhelmed. He leaves home, leaving his mother to the vagaries of chance. After two years, he comes home, to find a woman who he believes is a nurse living in the family home, caring for his mother.

This book was full of poetic, ruminative passages, as well as contrasting, sharply drawn moments. I copied out a few paragraphs about memory, about the way a homeland and a past can creep into the present and colour the next generation's lives as well. The setting and Adele's life are both drawn beautifully and the story carries you forward effortlessly. Elements of the book, such as the racism both Adele and her future husband experience as new immigrants to Toronto, were shocking. It seemed so severe, so very limiting, and I was shaken into the realization that it was really not so long ago that these kind of attitudes were common. The flashbacks to Adele's childhood were quite moving as well, and the slightly textbookish add-ins about the history of her homeland Trinidad was a necessary addition to the text for those readers who wouldn't have been able to understand the nuances (like me!)

But, there were some flaws that bothered me also. Primarily, I wondered how this woman, so clearly and debilitatingly a dementia sufferer, had been left to her own devices for so long. The neighbours didn't seem to do much except criticize the family; but if they were so concerned with the neighbourhood surely one of them would have called social services once Adele was abandoned and on her own? Also, the ending comes quickly and there are some threads that get neatly wrapped up a little too easily -- with some predictable yet ultimately avoidable situations.

Nonetheless, this is a moving and original book, well deserving of all of the award nominations it has garnered. I found it a quick read but it has stuck with me over the past couple of weeks since I finished it. The characters are complicated and contradictory, and very memorable. Really interesting read.



David Chariandy lives in Vancouver and teaches in the Department of English at Simon Fraser University. His novel Soucouyant has received great attention, including a Governor General's Literary Award nomination for Fiction, a Gold Independent Publisher Award for Best Novel, and the Scotiabank Giller Prize longlist.