Twilight and New Moon, by Stephenie Meyer

First, let me say that if you are one of those people who refuses to read something just because it is popular, get over yourself. You’re missing out. These books are popular for a reason. I will unabashedly say I read both of these books in just over 24 hours.

Perhaps I don’t read enough pop fiction, but I forgot how refreshing it is to read a skillfully plotted, suspense driven novel. And Meyer’s certainly are. Add a some forbidden love and the supernatural and you’ve got this former Buffy fan hopelessly hooked.

Twilight, the first novel in the series, tells the story of Bella Swan, a junior who moves to the sleepy town of Forks, Washington and goes through all the horrors of being a teenager in a new place. She manages to make some new friends though, and she even falls hopelessly in love - it just happens to be with a vampire. Luckily, Edward and his family are “vegetarian” vampires - they don’t prey on humans. Mind you, there’s still a number of expected obstacles in their relationship, but no one said forbidden love was easy. Despite the fact that the novels are PG, Meyer still manages to make the scenes drip with sexual tension. The novel really takes off when Bella is hunted by a bad vampire (the non veg - variety) and Edward and his family must try to protect Bella.

In New Moon, Bella is shattered when Edward leaves her, and spins into a deep depression. Eventually, she befriends a boy named Jacob from the reserve who helps her out, but he is soon faced with his own serious problems (which to any but the slowest reader, should be immediately obvious). At first I was a little disappointed with Bella’s inability to pull herself together (my mother complained she is a poor role model), but set in the context of great love stories (and Meyer is playing heavily on Romeo and Juliet), Bella couldn’t recover and couldn’t live a normal life. If Juliet found Romeo dead, got up, shed a couple tears but later married happily and had 2.4 children, it wouldn’t be a great love story. Perhaps the effacement of self that makes me cringe so often in song lyrics is necessary to the melodramatic, life-altering love in many books. I’m sure there are many authors who depict everyday love, but every once and a while, it’s nice to indulge in the stuff of legend. So in any case, I cut Bella some slack and lived vicariously through her relationship with Edward.

When Buffy was on t.v. it got a lot of great critical attention because Whedon was simply using the supernatural as a vehicle for normal teenage problems - being different from the other kids, facing changes you can’t control, falling in love with someone you shouldn’t, hiding things from your parents, the consequences of sex…I won’t belabor the point anymore, but that’s exactly what Meyer is doing here for another generation.

So read them, just make sure you’ve set aside a nice chunk of time, because once you’ve tasted blood, you probably won’t be able to stop yourself…

Late Nights on Air, by Elizabeth Hay

This year’s Giller winner Late Nights on Air tells the story of a group of radio personalities in the seventies in the Northwest Territories. It is a character driven story, and the characters are indeed endearing and very real. The plot is perhaps the shakiest part - the first half of the novel sometimes lacked cause and effect, for which Hay tried to overcompensate  by rather heavy-handed foreshadowing. However, when four co-workers recreate the canoe trip re-create the canoe trip of the ill-fated John Hornby, I thought the novel became fascinating - but that could just be the part of me that loved Little House on the Prarie books as a child.

But the greatest strength of the book is Hay’s quiet voice - like a mother whispering bedtime stories in the evening - but you must listen carefully. Reading Late Nights requires a certain inner stillness and quiet - easily likened to that of the Great White North - to fully appreciate the beauty of Hay’s language. A brief sample:

“Here on the Barrens there wasn’t music, but a hum, a vibration, the sound of the earth, he thought, and she agreed. In moments of silence, she’d heard it too. It reminded her of Buddhist singing bowls vibrating at their lowest octave.
She noticed crawling specks of light in Ralph’s hair, even the mosquitoes were beautiful. She noticed how smooth his mouth was without whiskers, his lovely mouth, and how their bed was mostly white labrador tea.”

Was it Giller worthy? I’m not sure. But nevertheless it’s certainly worth turning in and having a listen.

The Tenderness of Wolves, by Stef Penney

I chose this book in the same manner that I choose many books: I look at the cover, and if I like it, I read the book jacket, and if I like that too, I write down the book title or pick the book up then and there. It’s not the most discrimminating process, perhaps, but it really hasn’t failed me thus far. When I first began reading The Tenderness of Wolves, however, I did have a few doubts. There was nothing wrong with the book that I could exactly pinpoint - the writing was excellent, the plot was interesting, the characters strong and believable - but somehow I wasn’t grabbed. It might have been my own fault - I think I couldn’t fully commit to the book…I kept thinking about other books to read. Anyways, I kept reading, and then BAM! Around page 100 something changed, and though I can’t really lay a finger on what it was that changed, suddenly I was hooked, and hooked I remained until the end of the book, some 300 pages later. This work is stellar. Honestly, it is stellar. When I finished the novel, I thought back to why I hadn’t really been so drawn to it from the get-go, and I thought about all the little things in the beginning of the book (the multiple characters and POVs, the slower movements of the story, etc) that had made it, perhaps, more difficult to really engage right away, and I realized that those things were actually really key to the novel, and I wouldn’t have elimated any of the sections or any the characters. And may I just say: Stef Penney’s prose is really magnificent. It’s poetic, it’s touching, it’s bleak, it’s insightful. In fact, all in all, Stef Penney seems so remarkably confident and competent in her writing that many of the aspects of the book that might have really failed with other writers seem just right in this work.

The book takes place in 1860s Canada, in and around a small town in Northern Ontario. It follows the development of the Hudson’s Bay Company, along with other companies, that make their money off of trade, particularily the trade of animal furs. The trapping and hunting (and trading) of furs has become so rampant, however, that the animals are increasingly wary and the trading increasingly tense. When a French trapper is murdered in his cabin, various people attempt to solve the crime, some for reasons of justice and some for other reasons altogether. Using the murder as the key plot event, Penney spirals out to a variety of topics and themes, including, but not limited to, love, family relationships, female identity and roles of women, race relations, Canadian identity, disappearing sisters, adopted children, archaeological discoveries, cultural exploration, and so on. In Penney’s expert hands, these disparate plot strands weave together and form a tale that is mysterious and romantic and adventurous and exciting. Read it!

The Frozen Thames, by Helen Humphreys

Between the years of 1142 and 1895, the Thames River froze over 40 times. In The Frozen Thames, Helen Humphreys writes one short story for each of those 40 occasions. Perhaps to say “short story” is misleading, however, since each of these 40 tales is but a few pages long, or even less. Each one is, if I dare say it, like a tiny snowflake - carefully rendered, crystal clear, and in Humphreys’ characteristic sharp, poetic, and beautiful prose. And like snowflakes, no two of these tales are quite alike. The scope of the time period involved (1142-1895) offers Humphreys a rich historical pool from which to draw upon, and draw upon it she does. Her characters are diverse in terms of both social position and narrative voice, which is to say, we might be told one tale in third person about King Henry VIII and Anne Bolelyn and the very next tale, a few years later, might be the first person account of a pair of lovers trying to survive freezing temperatures and the raging plague. Humphreys make the most, too, of something that might hinder a less talented writer: the fact that each tale must centre around the same thing, namely, the freezing over of the Thames River. It’s fascinating to see how such an event affects the social strata in completely different ways. To the nobility, it means perhaps a day of entertainment at the Frost Fair and nothing more. To the ferrymen who make their living carrying folk back and forth from one side of the river to the other, however, it means a complete loss of income, and, when coupled with freezing temperatures, it could mean potential starvation.

It isn’t simply the direct relationship of the frozen river to human endeavours that Humphreys explores, however; in her capable hands, the frozen river becomes a backdrop, a theme, a motif for an investigation of a variety of topics. For example, a husband feels as though he and his wife have grown apart, and believes that

“the freezing of the Thames has changed everything. All that once allowed him, included him, has now locked him out” (37).

A Jewish man disguised as a Spaniard (Jews at the time were not allowed to live in England) notes a ship frozen in the slowly thawing Thames and thinks

“I can feel the tight grip of the ice around me, around my life, and what I want, this evening by the edge of the river, is to be cast back upon the water, to be set free” (77).

By 1895, the year the book concludes, London Bridge has been reshaped and remade, and the flow of the river around has changed. Henceforward, the river is no longer the “wild thing” that

“will simply arch its back and throw anything off that tries to tame it” (122).

Instead, thanks to the new design of the bridge,

“the Thames would never, will never, freeze solid in the heart of London again”. (179).

In these 40 tales, then, the most important character is the river itself, which is at turns passive, complying, helpful, sly, or destructive, but in the end, ultimately (and always) transitory. The 40 glimpses into its frozen history are the only glimpses that will ever be. The ‘frozen Thames’ has melted into the vast river of history and is gone.

A History of Forgetting, by Caroline Adderson

“The first thing she learned working at Vitae was about history: that the present rests upon layers of the past, but is a stratum so unstable, so shot with fault lines, that now and then the then rears up and knocks down the now.”

Often, when I’m choosing a book to read, I stand in front of my bookcase and pull possible titles. Usually there is one that just feels right. In this case, it took me by surprise, as did the story itself. A History of Forgetting has two protagonists: 1) Malcolm, a hairdresser who is dealing with his partner’s worsening Alzheimer’s and 2) Alison, the salon receptionist, the story’s ingenue. Both are shaken by a brutal event that leaves Alison diving into the history of the Holocaust, and Malcolm even more unable to recover from the loss of his lover. Both are plagued by remembering what others would rather forget - for Malcolm it is personal history, and for Alison, social history, which all of the sudden, has become personal. This painful situation is laced with such love and hate that neither can adjust to normal life and so they take a pilgrimage to Auschwitz together.

Adderson’s language is compelling and poetic without ostentation. I read this book in two days, charmed by the wonderful relationship between Malcolm and Denis, horrified by the cruelties inspired by hatred, saddened by our obligation to remember. This book is a fantastic illustration of what I would have explored in my never-written phd thesis: that fiction is as an effective a vehicle for history as so called “historical” writing, indeed more effective, permitting multiple perspectives and forcing us to participate imaginatively and emotionally in the past.

The only part of the book which I felt didn’t work was the intrusions of strangers linked by the use of second person. While I understand the need to draw the reader into the story, Adderson’s prose is quite sufficient to the task. Each of these passages is heralded by foreign signs, here signposts of a history we can’t quite understand as we journey back. Thus Adderson forces the reader back outside, away from intimacy with the characters, staring at the incomprehensible actions of others - in the present and in the past. For this is the most dangerous thing of all - to forget the personal, to generalize, to fall prey to History and forget the “histories”. Even as the “you” draws us into the story, it makes us spectators, complicit in the violence of inaction and lack of empathy. Unfortunately, the heartbreakingly beautiful final scene of the novel is somewhat overshadowed by one of these heavy handed interludes. But at the risk of ending on a similarly unsatisfactory note when the novel was for the most part well-wrought and moving, let me leave you with a piece of Adderson’s beautifully rendered prose that contains what I think is the novel’s principle message. [Looking at a case of leftover shoes in Auschwitz]:

“The shoes were once all colours - here a red slipper, there a white Cuban heel - but only just. Most are now a near-uniform lustreless brown. Gradually, they have blended together into a mass, indistinguishable and, again, impersonal. They are becoming, once again, abstract. The shoes are fading as memory is fading, melding as they disintegrate…How to put ourselves into these shoes, when these shoes no longer exist?”

JPod, by Douglas Coupland

I have to say that if I could spend the day in any writer’s head, I’d probably choose Douglas Coupland’s. If this book is any indication (although I’ve also read his Miss Wyoming), it would be a riot. JPod is a glimpse into the life of Ethan Jarlewski and five other computer game programmers whose names all begin with J. All are brilliant, unashamedly eccentric and completely bored. Part of JPod simply relates the things the pod does to get through the day including random challenges such as writing the best love letter to Ronald McDonald, finding a non-prime number in 30 pages of digits, making arbitrary lists and seeing how many clicks it takes to get to porn. The loose narrative that exists outside of the JPod involves the protagonist Ethan’s wannabe actor dad, grow-op running mom and Kam Fong, the Chinese people smuggler who becomes part of their intimate circle of friends. Needless to say, it’s a fairly amoral world, but it’s all the more entertaining for it. The narrative is punctuated by spam, random information and gaming code - simulating how technology has permeated everyday life while enacting our inability to concentrate in a world of constant media interruption (Curiously though, I was able to read this book in large chunks, perhaps because it had the distractions built in). Coupland also makes a guest appearance in his own book, tellingly stealing Ethan’s computer to reconstruct his life. On the whole, Coupland made me laugh and held my attention, and he even managed to keep me away from my computer for a few hours.

2008 Booker Prize Longlist

• The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
• Girl in a Blue Dress by Gaynor Arnold
• The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry
• From A to X by John Berger
• The Lost Dog by Michelle de Kretser
• Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh
• The Clothes on Their Backs by Linda Grant
• A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif
• The Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher
• Netherland by Joseph O’Neill
• The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie
• Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith
• A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz

Has anyone read any of these?

Inkheart, by Cornelia Funke

I had high expectations for this book as it got a fair amount of hype. Furthermore, a book about the magic of books struck a chord with my little bibliophilic heart. I’m not sure if my expectations were too high or if the book wasn’t up to snuff, but I found myself a little disappointed.

Inkheart is the story of a young girl named Maggie who discovers that her father, Mo, can actually read characters right out of books - a magical gift that has had dire consequences. It turns out many years earlier Mo read out some heartless villains from a book called Inkheart, and now those very same villains have captured them. They have other sometimes sidekicks such as Dustfinger, the fire-eater, and Elinor a rather corpulent and cantankerous bibliophile. The plotting is fairly adept (though I think there’s a little more back and forth than is necessary) and most of the characters are fairly entertaining, though personally I never found myself really connecting with Maggie - though maybe if I had read this as a 8 year old I would have.

Sadly the most enjoyable aspects of this book are the literary epigraphs for each chapter and the frequent references to classic texts - everything from Treasure Island to the Princess Bride. Yet for me it was these references that reminded me of the magic of books, while Inkheart, despite its readability failed to light the same spark.

Garden Spells, by Sarah Addison Allen

If you loved the movie or the book Chocolat or you loved the wonderful novel Like Water for Chocolate or if you just generally think life would be better with a little magic realism, Garden Spells is the book for you. I believe this is Sarah Addison Allen’s first novel (her second and latest is The Sugar Queen), and while it isn’t, perhaps, so-called “great” fiction, it is smart, delightful, and oh-so-charming. Allen’s writing is perceptive and insightful, and her prose reads with ease and fluidity, which might not sound like a great compliment, but for me, it is. I find some books have writing that feels choppy, or the inflections feel off and the voice is awkward, and I have to really work to adjust to the style of writing. This book, on the other hand, just flowed. The writing alone isn’t really why you would pick up this book though - you would pick it up for the charm, the romance, the witty moments, and the characters. I love reading a book and thinking about how I could turn it into a movie, and some books lend themselves so well to that exercise. This book played like a movie in my head, and I love books that do that. I could see it all so clearly and I could feel the attraction between certain characters and I could see the old mansion house with its magical garden and the little Southern town and the delightful and humourous and engaging characters - everything about this book felt vivid. If you want a book that is without pretension and that you can dive into from the start and just thoroughly enjoy (I read it in about a day and a half) for a summer day in the hammock, then this is the book for you.

Happy Reading!

An Interrupted Life: The Diaries of Etty Hillesum 1941-1943

To begin, I must thank the lovely Anne Lewis, for introducing me to Etty. Even in the first few pages of her diary, I felt I knew Etty well. She was the kind of woman that transcends time. As a fairly well-off Jew living in Amsterdam, in the beginning her diaries are not unusual for a young girl. She writes about learning, about her friends, about the men in her life, including the one that she loves though she knows she should not. She is extremely well-educated and self-aware, though her diaries reflect those little ironies that often creep into our journals – for example, a declaration not to need to be with men, followed a few lines later by the need to call a particular man. I could not help but smile, and feel I had found a friend.
But aside from her candour, what is most special about Etty is her astute and poetic observations about herself and the people around her. Being a reader, my favourite passage of this remarkable book is the following:

“Slowly but surely I have been soaking Rilke up these last few months: the man, his work and his life. And that is probably the only right way with literature, with study, with people or with anything else: to let it all soak in, to let it all mature slowly inside you until it has become a part of yourself. That, too, is a growing process. Everything is a growing process. And in between, emotions and sensations that strike you like lightning. But still the most important thing is the organic process of growing.” 106

And it is this organic process of growing that we follow over the course of the journal. As the situation from which she has thus far been sheltered grows steadily more threatening, Etty leaves behind some of her concerns about her oft put off translation of Dostoevsky and her many lovers, and turns to concerns about human nature and about God. Though a Jew, she often sounds like a Christian, though ultimately the God she seeks is deep inside of herself. It is an ever renewable sense of strength and conviction, and consequently devoid of any specific religion – a remarkable thing in a time of religious persecution. Eventually her diaries become more like a prayer, with frequent refrains of “Oh God”(which I’ll admit does become a little overbearing eventually) But despite the horror unfolding around her, Etty embraces all of life, the good and the bad, and finds the beauty in every day.

“And so I can sit for hours and know everything and bear everything and grow stronger in the bearing of it, and at the same time feel sure that life is beautiful and worth living and meaningful. Despite everything. But that does not mean I am always filled with joy and exaltation. I am often dog-tired after standing about in queues, but I know that this too is part of life and somewhere there is something inside me that will never desert me again.” (160)

Eventually Etty is sent to a work camp, and she goes passively, feeling her life is no more important than anyone else’s. She sends a few letters from the camp, describing the situation, but she is still not hateful or embittered, rather the remarkable last line of her diary is “We should be willing to act as a balm for all wounds.” (243)

Etty died in Auschwitz in 1943, but left a remarkable gift for generations to come. Her confidence, her love for life and her good faith seep out of the page and into the reader. I would like to give this book to my daughter at this age, because this simple, but profound wisdom deserves to be shared. I think that Etty will be with me for a long time.