EVEN DOGS IN THE WILD

Ian Rankin. EVEN DOGS IN THE WILD. 2015.

Rebus is retired and consults on a case involving Big Ger and historic crime. Drives to Ullapool & stops to visit daughter and granddaughter. 

SEVEN FALLEN FEATHERS

Tanya Talaga. SEVEN FALLEN FEATHERS: Racism, Death, and Hard Truths in a Northern City. Anansi, 2017.

An incredible account of the loss of seven students from Northern Ontario attending high school in Thunder Bay. Precedes the inquiry about the TB police and police board. 

COVENTRY

Helen Humphreys. COVENTRY. HarperCollins, 2008.

A story of Harriet and Maeve who meet at the beginning of WWI and reconnect the night Coventry is bombed. I felt as if I were right there with them. Yeats' "terrible beauty". 

THE SACRED HEADWATERS

Wade Davis. The SACRED HEADWATERS: The Fight to Save the Stikine, Skeena, and Nass. Greystone, 2011.

I cheated a little on this coffee table book, reading only the photographs and captions. I am a great fan of Wade Davis' writing and this is local to British Columbia. 

HEART BERRIES

Terese Marie Mailhot. HEART BERRIES: A Memoir. Doubleday, Canada, 2018.

December 15, 2018. I read this memoir a second time, as the writing is so dense, like poetry, with every word and phrase needing to be attended to. Very brave. And complicated. The dual and triple diagnoses, with mental illness complicated by racism and obsession. Anxiety-producing in that the reader worries/hopes the writer is well now. 

I was watching more closely this time for the subtle cultural references of Little Mountain Woman who goes to the river and the desert. 

STARLIGHT

Richard Wagamese. STARLIGHT. M & S, 2018. 

An unfinished novel by the late Richard Wagamese. This is one of those books that you do not want to end, because you do not want to leave that place, and because you wish to hold off the intrusion of evil for as long as you possibly can. The way the publisher has chosen to finish the story makes it seem very modern, allowing the reader to participate, to choose, using biography and creative non-fiction as source material to add to the existing infrastructure. I also enjoy the poetic musings on nature and on art (Frank Starlight is a photographer.) 

JAPJEE

Khushwant Singh. JAPJEE: Sikh Morning Prayer. Picus, 1999.

Beautiful book of prayers in original and translation, with an intro to Sikh faith and bio of Guru Nanak. 

EARTH ALWAYS ENDURES

Philip, Neil (selections) & Curtis, E.S. (photographs). EARTH ALWAYS ENDURES: Native American Poems. Viking, 1996.

A wonderful gift of iconic photographs accompanying words from rituals and occasions. 

ALL MY PUNY SORROWS

November 23, 2018. 

Miriam Toews. ALL MY PUNY SORROWS. The narrator's sister Elfrieda, a world-renowned concert pianist, has lost her will to live. I love Toews' writing. So convincing, it is hard to acknowledge that it is fiction. Set in Winnipeg and Toronto. 

GLASS HOUSES

November 4, 2018.

Louise Penny. GLASS HOUSES. St. Martin's Press, 2017. An Inspector Gamache mystery, about the hooded cobrador haunting Three Pines, the mystery of who the target is, and the banality of evil. 

MEDICINE WALK

October 31, 2018

Richard Wagamese. MEDICINE WALK. M & S, 2014.

Hawthorne Book Club selection. The first time we have all liked the same book. I love the underlying theme -- that story is medicine. 

BUDDHA'S LITTLE INSTRUCTION BOOK

Jack Kornfield. BUDDHA'S LITTLE INSTRUCTION BOOK. Bantam, 1994.

One of my "finds" at the annual Rotary Book Sale. This is the way I need to learn. Too much abstraction does not work for me. Very calming. Excellent addendum on six types of meditation. So grateful. 

HOW TO KNOW GOD: THE SOUL'S JOURNEY INTO THE MYSTERY OF MYSTERIES

Deepak Chopra. HOW TO KNOW GOD: THE SOUL'S JOURNEY INTO THE MYSTERY OF MYSTERIES. Running Press, 2000.

Spiritual. Inspirational. Seems to me to apply Maslow's hierarchy to images of divinity and to stages of spiritual development. 

THE ART OF RACING IN THE RAIN

Garth Stein. THE ART OF RACING IN THE RAIN. Harper, 2008.

Hawthorne Book Club Selection for October, 2018. Love it. Set in Seattle. Race car metaphor. Dog Enzo narrates. 

CITY TREATY

Marvin Francis. CITY TREATY. Turnstone, 2002.

Wanted to re-read this one for research on my TRC Quilt. It still stands up. Still reminds me of Martin Luther nailing the Protestant manifesto to the church door, and of Chris Woods sacred urban spaces--McDonalds, West Edmonton Mall, Vancouver street Stations of the Cross, etc. Questioning what are our priorities, and whether the sacred can be resuscitated, and Indigenous culture given space to breathe. 

BURY YOUR DEAD

Louise Penny. BURY YOUR DEAD. 2010.

Chief Inspector Armand Gamache is resting up in Quebec City with Emile Comeau, his old mentor, when he agrees to help investigate a murder of a Champlain fanatic whose body is found in the basement of an English-language historical society. As he investigates, Gamache re-lives the trauma of a recent hostage-taking terrorist take-down which led to four dead officers. The funeral was national news. Both he and Jean-Guy Beauvoir are injured.The details of the terrorist plan are sketchy, helping us anticipate further revelations. 

Jean-Guy has been sent to review a murder in Three Pines, to ensure that the convicted felon is really guilty. 

Beautiful evocations of the Quebec winter. 

ROALD AMUNDSEN

ROALD AMUNDSEN: Canadian Explorer

A quick illustrated Children's book about the inspirations and achievements of Norwegian Arctic and Antarctic explorer Amundsen who my Great-Uncle Murray is rumoured to have met when he was stationed at Cape Fullerton, in what is now Nunavut.

(Not this book, but I can't find an image of the one I borrowed from FVRL.)

HOW THE SCOTS CREATED CANADA

Paul Cowan. HOW THE SCOTS CREATED CANADA. Dragon Hill, 2006.

Very interesting round-up of Scots presence in Canada, mostly (but not all) since 1763. Trying to contact the writer to suggest additions. The Piper Richardson story and statue in Chilliwack, and his pipes now in the Royal BC Museum. Place names like Abbotsford, Banff, McGregor, etc. And the most famous of all in Canadian literature--Margaret Laurence, especially her novel The Diviners, in which the protagonist Morag Gunn traces her family's Scottish roots (Gunn, Logan, Wemyss, Simpson) as a step in her growing Canadian identity. Actually, now that I think about it, there is almost no reference in Cowan's book to the contribution of Scots women in the creation of Canada. Nellie McClung? Alice Munro? See her The View from Castle Rock. European traditions die hard. 

THE LOVE OF A GOOD WOMAN

Alice Munro. The LOVE of a GOOD WOMAN. 1999.

Why do I own so many unread books by Canada's Nobel Prize-winner Alice Munro? Partly, the collections of short stories do not have the push or pull of plot to get me into and lead me on to the end. But reading this book club selection makes me admit: she is such an intimidating writer, she knows so much about human beings and their motivations, it's almost frightening. 

Our club decided to each pick story and present it. I was going to do "Save the Reaper" because at first I was confused, lost in the present/past switches, and unclear what the title could refer to. Then the main character Eve remembers a fragment, not correctly, seemingly inspired by the fields ready for harvest. An allusion to the Lady of Shallot, long fields of barley and of rye, before she looks into the mirror at Lancelot and the curse is realized. So the reaper is a harvest machine. It is also the grim reaper, time, approaching death. It is also the biker hive Eve stumbles into, alluding to Grim Reapers, a biker group, and the way fear of aliens from outer space is nothing compared to the cruelty and evil just down the road. 

But then I read the title story. Wow. A murder mystery without any police or detective. In effect, we the readers are the investigators. And Munro deals out the clues from the first card, hiding the mystery under a tale of a specific town in a specific time--the happy days of childhood, the variety of home life, the aspirations of women for careers, the professionals who make house calls, the challenges within relationships and within marriages. 

Who is the "good woman" and whom does she love? 

PLAYING WITH FIRE

Peter Robinson. PLAYING WITH FIRE. 2004.

Two people die in a fire on two narrow boats. Then a man dies is a fire in his caravan (RV). DCI Banks and his team look for the connections in the worlds of forgery and art fraud. 

BERRY FLATS

Helen Rose Pauls. BERRY FLATS. Chilliwack, 2017.

Very interesting collection of short stories about a Mennonite community in the Fraser Valley in the twentieth century. Gently, subtly feminist. Illustrated with great photographs and ephemera. 

A WANTED MAN

Lee Child. A WANTED MAN: A Jack Reacher Novel. 2012.

533 pages read in 2 days. Yeah! Reacher is hitchhiking, picked up by two men and a woman to get them through roadblocks. Somewhere in Nebraska, and ending up near Kansas City. 

LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA

Gabriel Garcia Marquez. LOVE In the TIME Of CHOLERA. 1988. 

This is a Hawthorne Book Club selection discussed on August 9, 2018, so I am just going to post our post-discussion notes: 

• Gabriel GARCIA MARQUEZ, “Gabo”, born in Colombia, South America, March 6, 1927. Died Mexico City, April 17, 2014. Raised by grandparents near a banana plantation. Studied in Barranquilla on the Rio Magdalena, Bogota, and Cartagena. 14-year engagement to Mercedes Barcha Pardo. M. 1958. Began publishing in the early 1950s. ONE HUNDRED YEARS Of SOLITUDE 1967. Sent on assignment in Europe, stationed in Paris, for safety. Home. Exiled to Mexico 1981. Befriended Castro in Cuba. Denied entrance to USA 1962-1996. Wrote & spoke only in Spanish (a political statement). Nobel Prize for Literature 1982. LOVE In the TIME Of CHOLERA published 1985, translated into English in 1988. Film 2007 starring Javier Bardem Benjamin Bratt. GGM also published Non-Fiction - The STORY Of a SHIPWRECKED SAILOR 1970, LIVING TO TELL the TALE 2003, MEMORIES Of MY MELANCHOLY WHORES 2005.

• COLUMBIA, northern South America, bordering Caribbean, Panama, Ecuador, Peru, Brazil, and Venezuela. Pop. 42M. Capital: Bogota. Home of the Medellin drug cartel. Spanish colony. Independence 1819. Civil War 1860-62. Thousand Days War (Conservatives vs. Liberals) 1899-1902. La Violencia Civil War 1948-58. Cholera killed 10sK in 19^th century. 2016 President Santos awarded Nobel Peace Prize for attempts to end 50+ years of civil war.

• Reasons NOT to read LOVE In the TIME Of CHOLERA: in translation, small font, 100-word sentences, page-long paragraphs, no dialogue (Spanish), 50-page chapters, omniscient narrator, unknown/unnamed setting, unknown history, parrots, magic realism (because I did not know what it meant).

• Reasons to GO ON READING: see above--learn something about South America, learn something about magic realism, humour, physicality, sensuousness, surprises, flowers, insightful observations about character, politics, society, AGED protagonists (not another coming-of-age novel), glimpses into private lives, sex lives, many more themes beyond “unrequited love”.

• Plot/Characters/Setting: In a city near the Caribbean with connections to Europe & the Andes, at the mouth of the Magdalena River, Florentino Ariza documents his 51 years 9 months and 4 days of unrequited love for Fermina Daza who was married to Dr. Juvenal Urbino for 50+ years. What do they each want? Does what they want change over 50 years?

• Structure/Style/Magic Realism: The story begins with the death of the husband. In 6 major chapter divisions, it shifts back and forth between present and past—the history of Florentino’s love life (622 relationships documented in 25 journals, one-night stands do not count), the history of the marriage, the history of the couple’s (Florentino and Fermina) interactions and sightings. Omniscient narrator; little dialogue because, G M says, there is still a gap between spoken and written Spanish. This makes the style seem Victorian/Dickensian. Yet it is full or surprises, spot-on observations.
• G M is celebrated as a writer of magic(al) realism. Ignore the “magic” as the term does not refer to fantasy or interiority or imagination. Magic realism means SHOWING SOMETHING COMMON or daily as unreal, MARVELOUS, or strange. Almost the opposite of abstraction. A combination of metaphor and heightened observation. The opposite of poetry which takes the real and finds the metaphor. Magic realism starts with metaphor and ends in reality. [the symbolic wedding night > Fermina remembers hearing her husband urinate] “Poetry is a plane taking off; Magic realism is a plane landing.” In magic realism, the emphasis in on the REALISM.
• Humour: the parrot soup; the firemen in the house; the naivety; the sex positions; the woman using the pacifier; the strong sense of smell—corpses, sewers, urine, dirty clothes, flowers.
• Themes: GM said that if you think this book is a soap opera about romantic love, you have fallen into his trap. What is he saying about love? Sex? Romance? Aging? Marriage? About private and personal communications (by stalking, letter, telegraph, telephone, government news releases, gossip)? About relationships, truth? About politics, the centuries-long civil war between Liberals and Conservatives? About technological advances and environmental degradation over fifty years? What really are the important things in life? Is the ending dark or light? Despair or hope?
• Wiki: “…that lovesickness is literally an illness, a disease comparable to cholera. . . . The term cholera as it is used in Spanish, colera, can also denote passion or human rage and ire in its feminine form.  [Thus] the title is a pun: cholera as the disease, and cholera as passion, which raises the central question of the book: is love helped or hindered by extreme passion?”

KALEIDOSCOPE

Gail Bowen. KALEIDOSCOPE. M&S, 2012.

Still enjoying these Joanne Kilbourn mysteries set in Regina. In KALEIDOSCOPE, Joanne retires, her house gets firebombed, and her running partner shot. Issues include urban blight, gentrification, cross-cultural communication, and the sources of violence.

WHEN THE MUSIC'S OVER

Peter Robinson. WHEN THE MUSIC'S OVER. M&S, 2016. 

Banks has been promoted. His first two cases involve sexual abuse--one historic, from 1967, and one involving a grooming ring of underage girls. 

CHILDREN OF THE REVOLUTION

Peter Robinson. CHILDREN OF THE REVOLUTION. Hodder, 2013.

I think my favourite D.C.I. Banks story yet. The body of a disgraced university professor is found on the tracks beneath a bridge, with an envelope containing 5K pounds in its pocket. Banks is warned off pursuing a line of inquiry which involves a local lady. 

THE CAT'S TABLE

Michael Ondaatje. The CAT's TABLE. Vintage, 2011.

Inspired by re-reading ANIL'S GHOST, I wanted to read this story of 11-year-old Michael's 21-day voyage on the Oronsay from Ceylon to London to reunite with his mother. It reads like memoir with subtle shifts into the future and how it was/is informed by the past. Also wanted to read this, waiting in a pile for several months, so that I am ready to read WARLIGHT which sounds so good. 

HANDWRITING

Michael Ondaatje. HANDWRITING. McClelland & Stewart, 1998.

Re-reading a favourite. Now I see how it is such a source for Anil's Ghost.

ANIL'S GHOST

Michael Ondaatje. ANIL'S GHOST. Vintage, 2000.

You know how you wake from a dream and you don't remember the details but you remember how you enjoyed being in it? That's what I felt about my first reading of Anil's Ghost. I enjoyed it, but could not remember any details (except it was about a female forensic anthropologist working in Sri Lanka during internal political strife). After re-reading this novel for book club, I still like it. Enjoyed a vicarious trip to Sri Lanka. Enjoyed a female protagonist who has a work and family and love history not dependent on some man. Enjoyed the importance of art and spirituality to the plot. And am reminded again of how lucky we are here in Canada where opposing factions as of yet are not going at each other with grenades, machetes, and guns. 

BUFFALO JUMP: A WOMAN'S TRAVELS

Rita Moir. BUFFALO JUMP: A Woman's Travels. Coteau 1999. 

Love this Canadian non-fiction about writing, women's stories, and travelling territory so familiar to me--#3 highway past Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump to Medicine Hat, driving side roads to Winnipeg and beyond. Love the image of her writing meandering like the old Assiniboine River with its braids, oxbows, and wide deep valleys. Love the motif of the buffalo and putting on the skin, the robes, the clothes of the past. Love the truth that "the voices won't come to you unless you sleep alone." Sigh. 

CONVICTIONS

Donna Gannon. CONVICTIONS: Journey Beyond Innocence. 

Hearing the writer read from her novel CONVICTION at the Chilliwack Book Man Local Writers Festival inspired me to order the book and read it on Kindle. So convenient, and fast. The story follows Shelley as her common-law husband is investigated, tried, convicted of fraud and sentenced to prison. Shelley's job as a social worker / counsellor, along with the tribulations of the step-children, and the traumas of her own family including her younger brother, occupy her emotional energy. It does seem to me that professionals with this type of training must struggle to separate private and professional boundaries, always shouldering the burden of being the one with the answers who is expected to "fix" things for everyone else. Or, at least, to help them fix things for themselves. 

THE SONG OF LEONARD COHEN

Harry Rasky. The Song of Leonard Cohen. Mosaic, 2001.

An account of interactions between filmmaker Rasky and singer songwriter Cohen while making a film of a concert tour. Some insights in the poet's answers to probing questions. Additional information about an aborted film of Dylan in the early '70s. This slim volume will take its place along my 'sacred texts' shelf. 

FORGIVENESS

Mark Sakamoto. Forgiveness: A Gift from My Grandparents. HarperCollins, 2014.

A memoir of growing up in Medicine Hat, Alberta, in a dysfunctional family, bookended by Canadian grandparents with similar but different experiences during World War II. Grandpa Ralph MacLean was a POW in Japan. Grandma Mitsue Sakamoto and family were removed from Vancouver and resettled in Alberta. 

The sixth selection for the Hawthorne Book Club. 

WATCHMAN

Ian Rankin. WATCHMAN. Orion, 1988/2004.

A very early Rankin without Rebus. Miles Flint is a watchcman, a spy for MI5 whose main work is surveillance. He is pulled off a botched assignment, redirected to Belfast where he evades an ordered assassination, and returns to London then Edinburgh to root out the bad guys. Not as interesting a character as Rebus. Nor do I find spy capers very interesting. Without proper supervision, the worst of humanity seems to surface. An interesting picture of Great Britain during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. 

BLUE HORSES

Mary Oliver. BLUE HORSES. Penguin, 2014.

OMG this is beautiful. I just want to find someone, a group, and be allowed to read these poems aloud to them. Sigh. 

And I paid New price for it (very unusual for me to do that). And I chose it from several other Mary Oliver titles. It was the cover image I could not resist, and the poem about the painter and his blue horses is equally beautiful: "I would rather die than try to explain to the blue horses what war is."  The volume seemed to be calling to me, longing to be included in the CNF piece about horses I was working on at the time. "Bearing the Brunt."

Mary Oliver knows and writes about mindfulness and choosing to see and celebrate the miracles which surround us.

THE WRECKAGE

Michael Crummey. The Wreckage. Anchor, 2006.

May 2018 selection for the Hawthorne Book Club. A novel of Newfoundland and WWII. 

The Wreckage by Michael Crummey is a novel of Newfoundland and World War II. It opens in the Pacific, with a Japanese soldier with a Canadian connection promoted to work in a POW camp.

The main plot line involves a young couple, Wish and Sadie, who meet and are attracted to each other in an island outport. Religious prejudice is one of the problems keeping them apart. Wish, thinking he has killed Sadie’s brother Hardy, runs away to Halifax and enlists. Gets to Singapore. Is captured and sent to the POW camp where the Canadian-Japanese guard tortures him and his friends. 

In the meantime, Sadie escapes the island and moves to St. John’s, looking for and then waiting for Wish. With nothing heard in over three years, she gives in to her American suitor and, pregnant, moves with him to the States where they marry and raise a family. Fifty years later Sadie returns to St. John’s with Johnny’s ashes and she and Wish re-connect.

We had an interesting discussion centering around: writer bio; writing style where emotions are concerned; character motivation; links between settings in space and time and between the stories of various characters (use of post-modern writing techniques); and the issue of “sadistic arousal” which is crucial to Wish’s self-image and decisions. Readers agreed that they would read more Michael Crummey.

HEART BERRIES

Terese Marie Mailhot. Heart Berries: A Memoir. Doubleday, 2018.

Love this memoir by American Indian writer Terese Marie Mailhot, formerly of Seabird Island Band, Agassiz, BC. Heart Berries is a memoir about mental health, emotional and relationship challenges, complicated by race and culture and artistic/writer gifts. It is about parenting skills, and about repressed memory. If this were my daughter’s story, I’d be counselling her not to waste herself on undeserving men. Because most of us have been there, done that, and, hopefully, survived to tell the tale. What elevates Mailhot’s tale is the addition of the cultural wisdoms braided with Catholic symbolism, and the wonder that someone ill is still able to see and record the anguish as she lives it.

PS I forgot to mention. The part of this book which is about co-dependence and female martyrdom reminded me a lot of Elizabeth Smart's novel By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept.

PATTERNS of VISION and EXPERIENCE

May 1, 2018

Keane, Mary. PATTERNS of  VISION and EXPERIENCE: An Art Concealed in the Poems of Thomas Hardy. MA Thesis. Dalhousie, 1972.

A close reading of the poetry of Thomas Hardy focussing on techniques and intentions. Inspired me to make a blog of my Hardy photos, from two visits to Dorset.  https://www.jmbThomasHardy.blogspot.ca/ 

MORTAL CAUSES

Ian Rankin. MORTAL CAUSES: An Inspector Rebus Novel. Orion, 1994.

It's at least five years before the Good Friday Peace Agreement in Northern Ireland. Around the fringes of Edinburgh's Fringe Festival, sectarian criminals are stockpiling weapons in Scotland to arm for the anticipated civil war. Big Ger Cafferty has escaped from prison. Rebus is still living with Dr. Patience and still driving his old car. I still love Rebus.

The GUYND: A Scottish Journal

The GUYND: A Scottish Journal. Belinda Rathbone. Norton, 2005.

I chose this memoir at a local library book sale for several reasons:  

1. I've been reading widely in memoir as background for my current CNF-in-progress; 
2. I love reading about Scotland (Ian Rankin, Alan Cumming) and this story sounded a bit like Monarch of the Glen; it is about marrying a Scottish laird some fifteen years her senior and moving into his crumbling mansion north of Edinburgh.
3. I love houses and interior design (decorating); 
4. I'm curious about why/how couples get together; 
5. I'm curious about cross-cultural interactions (here, American vs Scots; female vs. male); 
6. I'm curious about how/why relationships end.

I would say that my curiosity was satisfied with 5 of 6 of the above. As for the relationship ending, the reader is left to infer, which is probably sore subtle, more respectful of the other parent of your child, and not really part of the story. Enough said that it seems inevitable, and it involves awakening self-awareness on the part of the narrator. 

I certainly enjoyed the story, partly, no doubt, because it confirms my belief that renovations/restoration projects are always fatal. 

THE MIDNIGHT LINE

Lee Child. THE MIDNIGHT LINE. Delacorte, 2017.

Another lost weekend spent with Jack Reacher. This time, we meet in Rapid City, South Dakota and travel to Wyoming looking for a missing veteran. The plot centres around opioid addiction and options available to patients seeking pain medication.  

NO CURE FOR LOVE

Peter Robinson, No Cure For Love. Viking, 1995.

Set mostly in LA and the victim's home in Santa Monica, with a Christmas holiday to Yorkshire and a police investigation in San Francisco, NO CURE FOR LOVE departs Canadian writer Peter Robinson's Yorkshire crime series featuring Inspector Banks. I'm a great fan, and of the television versions, with the Inspector played by former Ballykissangel priest Stephen Tompkinson. No Cure is a fairly routine stalker story, escalating letters to fragile actor Sarah Broughton (aka Sally Bolton), gifts of bodies, alternating points of view between victim, detective, and suspect, warped and delusional extras. A satisfying twist.

THE RIDERS

Tim Winton. The Riders. Scribner, 1994.

Fourth book for the Hawthorne Book Club. An Australian writer. Story begins in Co. Offaly, Ireland, and moves around Europe--Greece, Italy, Paris, Amsterdam. 

GENTLEMEN OF THE SHADE

Jen Sookfong Lee.GENTLEMEN OF THE SHADE. My Own Private Idaho.  ECW, 2017.

I special-ordered this book because I too am writing about movies and their influences upon individual growth. I call mine GOING IN. I also wanted to read Gentlemen Of the Shade because I too was obsessed with this movie, and with River Phoenix, when I first saw it, in the 1990s. And I'm 30 years older than Ms Lee. 

Jen Sookfong Lee's essay about My Own Private Idaho reassures me that what I am doing is different. Mine is Creative Non-Fiction, Hermit Crab. I do not try to place the movie in a cultural context, usually. Rather, I'm interested in the individual watcher, the movie's (the story's) influence upon the individual. I am interested in how movies are one of the few ways we learn about emotional intelligence. 

Ms Lee's interpretation seems to say that watching the lost boys on the street expanded her personal horizons, letting her know there were more options than she had been aware of previously, and that it is cool (all the pretty boys do it) to choose alternatives. I am as I said 30 years older and less interested in permission to rebel. Permission to choose. Yes. Of course. I had a professional curiosity (as a caseworker at the time) in how young people choose prostitution. I was more interested in Gus Van Sant's answer to the more important question: "What happened to you?" What brought you to this place? I think that's the answer to one of her unanswered questions. Why is this not a "gay" movie? Because the boys are not necessarily there because they are gay. They are there because they have been abused. Finally, someone has broken that link in art which implies that abuse causes homosexuality. 

As I was reading about the cultural context, I was also thinking: Where's Midnight Cowboy? That too, a generation earlier, is about prostitution and brotherly love.

BEL CANTO

Ann Patchett. bel canto. Harper, 2001.

Third selection for the Hawthorne Book Club. A hostage taking in an unnamed South American country. Music is the only common language. Roxane Coss, the opera singer. Gen, the translator. Mr. Hosokawa, the Japanese businessman, whose birthday was being celebrated. Messner, the Red Cross negotiator. And the terrorists--3 generals, Carmen and Beatriz, Ishmael and Cesar. 

SET IN DARKNESS

Ian Rankin. SET IN DARKNESS. Orion, 2000.

I still love Rebus. This older story is set around 1999 while the new parliament building is being constructed in Edinburgh. Big Ger has just been released from prison. Rebus is still drinking too much. The Farmer is cruising to retirement. 

NOT MY FATHER'S SON

Alan Cumming. NOT MY FATHER'S SON: A MEMOIR. Harper Collins, 2014.

A wonderful memoir, partly because: he's an attractive celebrity on PBS; he's a Scot; he was inspired by being featured on the British version of Who Do You Think You Are?; he gracefully shifts between childhood and present, between painful memories of abuse and resulting adult anxiety; and he has a wicked sense of humour. 

DESCANTS

Eileen Doyle Evans. DESCANTS. sp, Chilliwack, 2010.

Lovely collection of poems by a friend, Eileen. Local settings, familiar scenes, and universal experiences of love and loss. 

THE END OF EAST

Jen Sookfong Lee. The End Of East. Knopf, 2007.

The End of East is Vancouver. This novel was a good read to complete on BC's Family Day. The story of immigrants from China, three generations of a family, coming over, living in Vancouver. Moving from Chinatown to East Van. The grandfather a barber, the son an accountant. Subtexts involving the importance of sons and the challenges of mother-daughter relationships. 

THE BEGGAR'S OPERA

Peggy Blair. The Beggar's Opera.

Second selection for the Hawthorne Book Club. Peggy Blair is an Ottawa-based writer, former lawyer, who writes about crime and police inspector Ramirez in Havana, Cuba. I was interested in exploring this setting and the novel does not disappoint. Although it is told from the Canadian tourist perspective, we still get a lot about Cuba, the economy, the different laws, etc. And how so much of the crime comes from outside the island. A complicated plot centering around the death of a beggar boy, pedophilia, marital discord, and secrets, the twists kept me reading for both the surprises and the resolutions. Will definitely want to read the next installments.