Val McDermid. THE SKELETON ROAD. HarperCollins, 2014.
A book loaned by writer friends, this is my fifth Val McDermid and I only discovered her last year. A Karen Pirie story set in Kirkaldy, Edinburgh, Oxford, and Dubrovnik, the plot returns to the Balkan wars of the 1990s and the ethical grappling with "war crimes" and the International Criminal Court. The skeleton initiates the quest for a killer seeking private justice.
David Whyte. ESSENTIALS. Many Rivers, 2020.
One of my finds at Arundel Books in Seattle. I never knew Whyte was located in Washington State. My promise to myself was that every new book I bought on the trip had to be read before being shelved. I started with this one. Inspirational. My copy looks like a porcupine, with all the post-its sticking out. A poem about Kevin and the blackbirds, from a friend of Seamus Heaney. Beautiful cover too.
Sarah Bernstein. STUDY FOR OBEDIENCE. Knopf, 2023.
Found this Giller winner at Village Books in Bellingham (along with a fancy Montaigne). My rule is that any new books have to be read by me before shelving. The final total included one Mary Oliver, Vol 2, New & Selected, and three David Whytes. Who knew he is from Washington State?)
The Bernstein is interesting as a female reaction against the traditional "tumescent" arc of the story as quest. One female POV, one setting in some unnamed foreign country where communication is difficult; the only other relationship, strained, is between the narrator and her brother.
This is a story I will have to read again. The first time through, I was just looking to see if anything happens.
Ian Williams. REPRODUCTION. Random, 2019. Giller Prize winner, 2019.
A family saga of sorts, three generations of unplanned
reproduction. Cultural differences within homes and families. Families in
various configurations. Obsessions and difficulties communicating. The
challenges of being a successful modern male, and of mothering, parenting. The
scramble to earn or deserve money complicates all.
This is the first novel I’ve read where STYLE is dominant.
Variety of style, with most of the plot communicated through dialogue. In
different voices, some with accents. Set in Brampton and Toronto. With a
soundtrack covering fifty years, from the 1970s to the early 2000s.
Only the last section started to leave me behind a bit. No
chapter breaks. The name Edgar degenerates every time, to a different spelling.
The video-obsessed child shifts from videoing masturbation, paint drying, to
adults dying.
I began by READING for PLEASURE, loving the style, sharing
examples with fellow writers:
Felicia meets her ex-lover she has not seen in 14 years: “He
had gained weight in the face so now he looked like three rectangles stacked on
each other: head, neck, the rest. His hair was between the colour of pennies
and loonies, but streaked throughout with dimes.”
The son, Army, finds weight-lifting equipment and imagines:
“By the end of the summer, most of the boys would have V-shaped torsos and tiny
legs, like martini glasses.”
“Heather’s breasts grazed his chest then she set them
firmly against him like the paddles of a defibrillator.”
Sorry, the newness of these comparisons just made me laugh
and then gasp at the writer’s mastery of word and image. STYLE
trumps story yet I hesitated to finish, not wanting to leave these people, this
family.
Sean Mactire. MALICIOUS INTENT: A Writer's Guide to How Murderers, Robbers, Rapists and Other Criminals Think. Writer's Digest, 1995.
It is dated, and I ignored the less than useful arguments about vampirism and blood lust and crime as illness. I also omitted the chapters I am not interested in--terrorism, cults, kids, career criminals, gangsters, drugs, women. Which seems like a lot of omitting. I feel my info gathered from experience in corrections, and more from television--Law & Order, Without A Trace, Cold Cases, etc is stronger than this source.
I was looking for ways to improve my manuscript IN YOUR DREAMS, especially for ways to improve the villain(s), and I got some ideas. Organized/disorganized. Psychopath, psychotic, and personality disorders. Good. The point about all family members and others within the victim's circle are also victims. Good. The idea that profiling the victim is just as important as profiling the possible criminal. Good. This book still uses the term "rape" if, when replaced by "sexual assault", makes it obvious that the crime is not about sex. Sex is just another tool to use to harm or attempt to control. Not new. That most criminals can be described as having some form of "arrested development" makes sense. They all put themselves first, like adolescents. The fact that there is absolutely no reference to incarceration, to the difference between punishment (penitentiary) and reform (corrections) never comes into it. Nor the idea that any criminal can change. The word "cognitive" does not appear. "Coping mechanisms" are mentioned. The wide-spread interest in crime and true crime suggests fear, but also that we are all very interested in "the dark side of human nature" but would rather not have to go there ourselves.
Don Lemon. THIS IS THE FIRE: What I Say to My Friends About Racism. Little, Brown, 2021.
Found this at the library booksale and bought it as research for my TRC workbook. I did enjoy reading this. My notation bookmarks make it look like a post-it porcupine. I found the personal material most interesting. He is from Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
I do not get CNN so am not that familiar with the writer. I suspect he no longer works for that network, although the book is current, Trump-era and COVID lockdown.
It seems difficult to imagine a journalist being objective where this subject, racism, and inequality in America, is involved.
At this time, my takeaway is: ANGER & ACTIVISM.
Later.
Howard Norman. THE GHOST CLAUSE. Houghton Mifflin, 2019.
I picked up this novel at the library book sale because I know the author. Because he is American but has written about Canadian and Indigenous stories and settings. His WISHING BONE CYCLE: NARRATIVE POEMS OF THE SWAMPY CREE INDIANS I used teaching high school. A student made a mural of its image. I also read THE MUSEUM GUARD which was set in Nova Scotia. I was also intrigued by the title, as I am working at incorporating a ghost in IN YOUR DREAMS (although it can also be explained as 'haunted by the memory of her dead sister').
This 'ghost clause' idea is so interesting. If someone buys a house which then turns out to have a ghost, to be haunted, then the seller is obligated to buy the house back. A clause written in to the bill of sale.
I did enjoy the book. I also enjoy its representation of a marriage of equals which is passionate and happy.
Bill Stenson. ORDINARY STRANGERS. Mother Tongue, 2018.
Picked up this novel in the library book sale because it is Canadian and because the story begins in Hope, BC and ends in Fernie. The concept is great: a couple driving through town picks up a crying child in the downtown park and drives away with her. There are so many ways this story could develop. Intriguing.
What startles me is the "old-fashioned" storytelling. Totally "telling". Third person omniscient, he, Sage, she, Della, and she #2, Stacey. And how the POV often switches between the three, sometimes in the same paragraph, sometimes in the same sentence.
Interesting ideas are explored. Early mistakes, such as marriage. How certain choices the female adult makes, wanting to stay home to raise the child, guarantee her dependence. How the male breadwinner exploits her dependence, knowing that she will not react to his emotional betrayals or criminal behaviour because she has no economic option. How despicable behaviour is excused or responsibility for it is reduced by mixing in alcohol and pot. How medical emergencies change everything. And how facts about birth and genetics are weighed against parental care and love.
Peter May. ENTRY ISLAND. Quercus, riverrun, 2014.
Another loan from writer friends. This British mystery writer sets a story in two times, 1840's Isle of Lewis and Harris in the Outer Hebrides, during the Clearances, and 2010s, Iles de la Madeleine, PQ, Canada. The languages are English, Gaelic, and French. It is the type of book I as a female reader love, with its old diaries, boxes of history and genealogy, graveyards and headstones, and talismans handed down through the generations. And the mystery of "familial familiarity" I first heard of by that name in a Val McDermid Trace episode where something physical about a stranger reminds you of something in your family or your history.
A woman on Entry Island is charged with murdering her husband. The Surete want a quick resolution; one of the lead investigators, Sime Mackenzie, brought in because of his English, is less than convinced. Personal issues, including insomnia, intervene.
I amused myself watching the use of language in the Canadian scenes. The fly screen door eventually becomes the screen door. I know what a fisherman's creel is but are lobster traps or lobster pots also called creels? Does the Gatineau River flow to Quebec City? The only obvious mistake is that the writer does not understand permafrost.
Personally I found the Quebec story line much more engaging but that is probably because the story of the Clearances is more familiar, has been told before, although probably not with the addition of what happened to individuals after they boarded the boats. The sense of place is palpable in both countries.
I know that at least one of my grandmothers spent time in quarantine on Grosse Isle.
This book was gifted to me over one year ago but today, this month, it seemed to be calling. It is the exact same story three hundred years later. What happened to Matthew Shepard is the same thing that happens to Marie in DAUGHTERS of the DEER. Cruelty. And the origins of such violence from cruelty.
The poetry is very accessible. As I was reading I was thinking how well this would fit a high school English class. I read it aloud to myself. I never watched the movie. Too sad.
Danielle Daniel. DAUGHTERS OF THE DEER. Random House, 2022.
Highly recommended by a trusted writer friend. In fact, he loaned me his library copy for me to return, now that there are no longer late fees.
I have two hesitations in general. The first, my distrust of historical fiction as my mind is always questioning--was it really like that or is this a 21st century imagining of what it was like? The acknowledgements suggest that this writer has done important secondary research on New France in the 1600s. And the Indigenous world view is convincingly presented although I have no way to assess how authentic that is. The second hesitation is my leeriness about "trends" in society reflected a few years later in "trends" in publishing. The trend in this book is the losses inflicted on Indigenous women and "others" especially "two-spirit" or in this case, lesbian-leaning girls who become lovers. The good thing is that the protagonist, Marie's family, never stops loving her. The tension centres around the way the new religion insisted on rejecting some people and making so many, non-males, lesser than they had been before contact and conversion. Once I let the river take me, the story hook me, I was able to float, luxuriate in the beauty of the land and its many "People".
Tommy Orange. THERE THERE. Penguin, 2018.
Set in Oakland, 21st century. A series of characters, each allocated chapters, are readying themselves to attend a big powwow.
A lot of personal, familial, and social trauma. Incredibly beautifully written. It seems to me that the overall theme, what most of the characters are thinking about, is what does it mean to be an Indian today? Is the writer asking, when you get right down to it, back to it, will there be any there there?
The title, from a song, originally a quote from Gertrude Stein's memoir of her home city. That when she returned to Oakland to visit, there was no there there. Who knew?
Val McDermid. THE DISTANT ECHO. Harper, 2003.
A 25-year old cold case murder of Rosie Duff haunts the four suspect lads from Kirkaldy, attending St Andrews at the time, and the surviving family members. Introduces Karen Pirie.
I cannot believe that this is my fourth Val McD and I had never heard of her before this year. I am re-watching TRACE on Knowledge Network, also set in Dundee. The writer made a cameo appearance in an early chapter of the story of another cold case re-opened.
Sherman Alexie. BLASPHEMY. Grove, 2012.
This man is an incredible writer. I hope he is still writing. I hope he is well.
This and the previous collection WAR DANCES have taught me how to read short stories. I limit myself to one a day, giving each new plot and set of characters time to sink in and become part of me, my memory. I also found the story "This Is What It Means To Say Phoenix, Arizona" which became one of my favourite movies, SMOKE SIGNALS, starring Adam Beach and Evan Adams.
I am impressed that Alexie writes characters of all genders and leanings. And that he seems to reject a racist denigration of any or all people according to their race.
This is one of the books I found serendipitously in Fort St. John, BC, in Bill's Books and Bongs, six or seven years ago.
Agatha Christie. AT BERTRAM'S HOTEL. William Collins, 1965.
A young woman, her estranged mother, Miss JANE Marple, and an absent-minded clergyman are all staying at an old-fashioned Edwardian-style hotel in London in the 1960s. Miss Marple is afraid the young woman is being exploited. Others are concerned that the clergyman is missing. The police become suspicious. They notice anomalies in licence plate numbers, cars parked nearby, unconfirmed sightings of famous people around a series of armed robberies. They investigate the ownership of the hotel, the background of staff, the proximity of suspicious characters. Miss Marple is the eyes and ears; she shares what she has seen and heard when asked. Then, someone is murdered.
Monica Furlong. MERTON: A BIOGRAPHY. Harper & Row, 1980.
A very interesting story of one man's life, someone who died before I was aware of him, in 1968. A writer who chose to live as a monk in 1940/50s America. Who, after Nuremberg, began to question choosing to live by the law of obedience. Who became famous for his spiritual writings and his literary work and then as a voice for peace during the Vietnam War. Who was seemingly kept imprisoned in Gethsemani by his abbot. When he was finally allowed to travel, visited the Dali Lama, the Buddhist statues in Ceylon (Sri Lanka), spoke on the links between Marxism and monasticism, and died within minutes of leaving the stage, from an accident possibly involving an electric fan.
The biographer relies almost exclusively on Merton's own writings, published and unpublished, and on interviews with people who knew him. She concludes that his death was not a suicide. There is no mention of the subsequent "conspiracy theory" which suggests that, as an anti-war writer, he may have been targeted by his own country.
I am glad to learn of this one man's struggles. I am now excused from feeling I should read his writing. Not interested in theology, Catholicism, or abstractions.
Peter Robinson. PLAYING WITH FIRE. Pan, Macmillan, 2004.
Another thrift store find which will be donated to the SOAP free library. Banks, Annie and WInsome are investigating two fires, arson used to cover murder. Banks and Annie's former relationship interferes with their working together. Art forgery seems to underlie the murders, with a side order of the link between sexual abuse and drug addiction. I still love Peter Robinson and am sad that there will be no more.
Sherman Alexie. WAR DANCES. Grove, 2009.
Found this copy of Alexie's award-winning WAR DANCES at a thrift store. One of my most enjoyable and rewarding reads in years. A mixture of poems, prose poems, and longer short stories. "Fearful Symmetry" caught my eye as it has been a month of William Blake references. It starts out as a writer, attempting a screenplay of a CNF book by the same title about the first time white people used an "escape" fire or backfire to fight a wildfire in Washington State and morphs into a story about writer's block, crossword puzzle obsessives (crazies), and learning to recognize and read the metaphors we live within, the escape fires we set for ourselves.
BLASPHEMY has been waiting on my shelf for six or seven years. It comes down now. I have read and enjoyed, years ago, his THE LONE RANGER AND TONTO FIST FIGHT IN HEAVEN (2010) and YOU DON'T HAVE TO SAY YOU LOVE ME. Ooops. Found two waiting beside these. THE TOUGHEST INDIAN IN THE WORLD. & RESERVATION BLUES.
Romeo Dallaire. SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL: The FAILURE of HUMANITY in RWANDA. Vintage, 2004.
I have long been an admirer of Lieutenant-General Dallaire but I've hesitated to read his memoir because I was just too afraid of the darkness of the story. When a copy appeared on a favourite thrift store shelf shortly after I'd been thinking that I should read it in prep for writing about TRC, I took it as a sign.
My admiration has not diminished. However, I have to confess that, once the killing starts, near the middle of its 560 pages, I did not read every word. I tried to train myself to speed read. First and last lines of each paragraph. Concluding paragraphs. The most useful is the final chapter, "Conclusion". I shall be citing more than one of his comments.
Craig Johnson. LAND OF WOLVES. Viking, 2019.
A Walt Longmire mystery, found at the library book sale. Read it in two days. Walt is getting old. People are hinting at retirement. He is still wounded from some trouble in Mexico. A dead sheep, then a dead shepherd, brings Walt back into contact with the Basque community around Absaroka, Wyoming. Henry Standing Bear makes only a brief appearance, with some input about shamans and wolf legends. Vic continues to come on to Walt but his wounds make him too tired to take her up on it.
Reading this makes me angry. I assume Johnson writes for an all-male readership. That that's why his female lead, Vic from Philly, sounds like "male athlete of the year with boobs"? Has "me too" not reached Wyoming yet? Not that she is harassed at the workplace. But she is sleeping with her boss. Office politics and work cannot help but suffer. And, as much as Walt is an upstanding ethical and educated man, he should know better. One of them should resign.
Sorry. Never say 'should'. I've broken one of my own rules.
Ian Rankin. A QUESTION OF BLOOD. Orion, 2003.
Another older Rebus novel found at the Sardis OAP clubroom. I remember this one from television. The novel seems more convoluted, detailed, with more examples of police incompetence. Rebus has scalded his hands which makes him look guilty in a death by fire of a low-life who had been hassling Siobhan. At the scene of a school shooting, conclusions are jumped to before evidence has been analyzed. Themes of gun violence, mass shootings, ex-military PTSD, government cover-ups, shady politicians, unethical journalists are still relevant, even rampant, today, twenty years later. And Rebus is in pretty bad shape, with smoking and alcohol. Lucky for him, his old out-dated techniques still seem to get results.
Ian Rankin. BLACK & BLUE. Orion, 1997.
Found two unfamiliar Rebus titles at the Sardis OAP free library. Exchanged for a Jack Reacher. This one, quite early, is about the chase for Bible John and his copy cat, Johnny Bible. Involves much travel, Edinburgh to Glasgow to Aberdeen to Shetland and out to the oil rigs, one named after Bannockburn. An old case haunts Rebus after two suicides, interviews interfering with the two or three cases he is working on. Jack Morton assigned to shadow him. Gill and Siobhan providing backup.
David Bezmozgis. NATASHA. Harper, 2004.
A linked collection of seven short stories about a Russian immigrant family in Toronto, told from a young boy's POV. Very engaging, especially the eponymous story.
Stuart McBride. DYING LIGHT. Harper, 2006.
This is my first McBride. Set in Aberdeen. Manic. Brutal. Violent. Funny. DS Lazarus Logan is trying to work his way off the Screw-Up Squad while staying out of the boss's way. Good instincts but somehow, not quick enough. Coworkers and friends are falling as collateral damage as the nasty vanguard of blackguards from Edinburgh attempt to move in.
Mary Keane. IN the ROUND: TRACES of LIGHT. 2023.
A creative non-fiction memoir by my writer friend and former writing group mate, Mary. Superbly written. Centering on her early experiences living near Weymouth on the UK coast during WW II. With the focus on her childhood relationship with a severe and critical grandmother. Weaves time and place, childhood and adult, with the sea linking and separating, giving and taking life. Touches on the way we take too long to ask the important questions then have to use ephemera and imagination to create our own collage of the lives of our ancestors, whose presence is revealed in flashes in the mirror.
The round refers to the lighthouses her grandfather tended. The cover, a Victory brooch.
Lee Child. WITHOUT FAIL. Penguin, 2002. An earlier Reacher story. A friend of his late brother Joe calls Jack in to do an assessment on the security procedures around the vice president elect. Set in Bismarck, DC, and Wyoming. Found this copy at a thrift store and could not resist. Another lost weekend, 550 pages.
David A. Robertson. THE THEORY OF CROWS. Harper, 2022.
Picked this up from the National Indigenous Day display at the library. Would like to own a copy. DAR's first adult novel. Set in Winnipeg and the rivers around Norway House. Two more good reasons to want to read it. Matthew McIvor and his daughter Holly decide to take some of Moshom's ashes home to the trapline where he grew up. Their relationship has had its tensions. Holly feels that her father has failed to support her, did not show up at her water polo meet. And that he is skating on thin ice (sexting a woman from work). She learns through counselling, dreams, secret letters, that his behaviour is part of his own being "fucked up" by anxiety (and medication) which he has not yet learned to manage on his own. Once the plot gets to their being in a canoe on the river, think a kinder gentler more northern Deliverance.
The land remembers you and you remember the land, even if you nave never been there before. And the crows remember too. Bears are our relatives.
Gail Bowen. 12 ROSE STREET: A Joanne Kilbourn Mystery. Penguin, 2015.
This mystery should come with a trauma trigger warning. Joanne and Zach are still at it like rabbits. Bad news about the dead puts a damper on the election. Not to mention murder and attempted murders. City politics, slum landlords, disrespect for the urban poor all play a role in the tense campaign. Along with criminal sexual behaviour, unprofessional medical treatment, questionable journalistic ethics. Oh, Regina!
Joan Thomas. CURIOSITY. McClelland & Stewart, 2010.
I seldom to never re-read books. Just too many to read, too little time. But I chose to re-read Joan Thomas' CURIOSITY after a brief conversation with a friend about Mary Anning, the heroine of this novel. Besides, I read it more than ten years ago, before my latest trip to Lyme Regis. Before I visited Mary's grave and the Lyme Regis museum, and brought home ammonites from her cliffs, as talismans from the area where one of my grandmothers was born. It is a wonderful read, made even better by knowing that all the characters are based on actual people. Really makes me wish that I still had a copy of The French Lieutenant's Woman, the film, and all its scenes on the Cobb and in the forested Undercliff. The landscape is also part of the pleasure of watching the BROADCHURCH series too.
Mitch Albon. for one more day. Hyperion, 2006.
Chick Benetto's life started going downhill when his father abandoned the family. Then it was worse, when Chick was injured out of his career as a professional baseball player. Unresolved family issues, career problems, alcohol abuse make everything worse. In an effort to return to where everything started, Chick is driving drunk when he is in a collision with a truck. In the interim before we know what happens, he spends one more day with his late mother. Some of the issues and some of the mysteries are resolved, before the end.
Very engaging. A clear story of how the problems of one generation continue to haunt the next. And of how children so often get things wrong.
John Dunning. BOOKED TO DIE. Avon, 1992.
A great thriller making the rounds of my book-reading friends. Cop Dr. Cliff Janeway loves books and decides to make a new career as a bookman. But bookscouts start to turn up dead. And then others, closer to home. What is behind the crime wave? The doctor uses his out-dated ID to investigate. A love-at-first sight plot is intertwined.
Tomson Highway. PERMANENT ASTONISHMENT: A MEMOIR. Penguin, Random House, 2021.
Memories from Tomson Highway's early years with family and nine years at Guy Hill Residential School. All the time I was reading it, I was wishing I had the audio book read by the writer. He has such a beautiful voice, and he would be able to say the names and the Cree words properly. His way of speaking is OTT as always, hyperbolic. Which is part of the humour and part of the culture--especially his insistence in naming a person along with his position in family, both parents' family of origin, and home community. Such a positive attitude. So determined to see the best possible way to interpret even traumatic situations (such as routine molestation of boys at school) or the disappointment when a promised gift did not materialize because of a loss at gambling. A musical prodigy. A student who loves learning and performing and dramatic ritual. I am hoping there will be a sequel talking about his high school years in Winnipeg, his musical and writing careers, and the loss of his beloved younger brother.
Billy Collins. The RAIN IN PORTUGAL. Random, 2017.
A request find from the Bookman, only two years later. Must have ordered anything by him when I was taking his Masterclass. Read it for pure pleasure, aloud. There are several poems I will remember. "Speed-Walking on August 31, 2013" which commemorates Seamus Heaney's death. I too remember where I was and what I was doing the moment I heard that news. "Basho in Ireland" and "Poem to the First Generation of People to Exist After the Death of the English Language" & of course, the title poem.
Leina Wann. SPIRIT FAMILY TREE. Otter Point of View Communications, 2023.
My friend Leina brought me a copy of her new book. It is wonderful. I’m so glad she followed through with it and did all the work to get it out there. I especially like: 1) the non-sensational way she shows what happened to people during the Communist takeover; 2) the references to the grandmother’s bound feet; 3) the way she has expanded upon the image to suggest binding in other ways, especially with unquestioned social expectations; 4) the way the section on spirituality is presented as the writer’s personal experience, learned in several different ways, and not as proselytizing or a “spiritual how-to”; and 5) the way her 'positively delightful' artwork (on beautiful paper) adds to the writing.
I was reading an article about the coronation and came upon this quotation which reminded me of this story, if we read God = Beloved: In [his book] Harmony: A New Way of Looking at Our World (2010), [King] Charles argues against scientific rationality and for a practice of revelation, which he describes as “when a person practices great humility and achieves a mastery over the ego so that ‘the knower and the known’ effectively become one. And from this union flows an understanding of ‘the mind of God.’”
Mary Lawson. The OTHER SIDE OF THE BRIDGE. Vintage, 2006.
Found this book at the thrift store on Saturday and finished reading it in 4 days. That is fast for me. I chose it because I have enjoyed two other novels by this writer, CROW LAKE and A TOWN CALLED SOLACE.
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE BRIDGE braids three time periods, pre-1939, post-1939, and mid-1950s, in a small northern Ontario farming community. The family dynamics, sibling rivalry, is fascinating, especially around the difficulties of dealing with a child who lies and manipulates. The struggle to make decisions for himself for Ian, the doctor's son, is also convincing. And the types of trauma common to such a place and such a time--accidents, suicide, betrayal, drunkenness, peer pressure--are well told. I was somewhat skeptical at the twice-referenced return of soldiers for R&R from WW II. Canadian troops travelled by sea and no one got to come home on a break in the same way members of the armed forces did in England. Members on R&R at home would have been troops in training who never left Canada or the training officers. This caused a credibility problem for me, in an otherwise gripping story.
Darlene Foster. AMANDA IN ENGLAND: THE MISSING NOVEL. Central Avenue, 2012.
Because I have never read any YA before. This appears to be part of a Canadian girl travel series. The British vocabulary is a highlight, as are tourism favourite sites.
Helen Humphreys. THE EVENING CHORUS. HarperCollins, 2015.
Set during WW II and a few years after, The EVENING CHORUS begins with an RAF pilot shot down, picked up, and imprisoned as a POW, somewhere in Germany. The different rules for officers and enlisted prisoners surprised me. And the difficulty the officers had, trying to keep themselves busy, amused, while unable to work. The protagonist takes up bird-watching. Subsequent chapters focus on the wives left alone in England, and other family members, a sister who lost her home during the Blitz. The couplings, shared accommodations that happen because of the bombings, the loss of the men, the disruptions to routine--daily, seasonal, and generational. Enjoyable in the same vein as this writer's COVENTRY.
Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch, ed. KOBZAR'S CHILDREN: A Century of Untold Ukrainian Stories. Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2006.
I was looking for a collection of Ukrainian folklore. This is not that, but this is well worth the read. It is a collection of poems, stories, memoirs written by Ukrainian Canadians, covering most of the trauma of the twentieth century from the beginning of immigration to the Orange Revolution in Ukraine. The story which most impresses me stylistically is "It's Me, Tatia" by Brenda Hasiuk which takes us inside a mind struggling with old age and dementia. The most devastating story is Stefan Petelycky"s first person account of "Auschwitz: Many Circles of Hell".
A kobzar is the traditional wandering minstrel of Ukraine. It is also the title of Taras Shevchenko's first book of poems and the title of one of the Leo Mol sculptures in the Garden in Assiniboine Park, Winnipeg.
Lorna Crozier. GOD OF SHADOWS. McClelland & Stewart, 2018.
I love this writer's work. This collection of prose poems does not disappoint. My favourite is one of the first, "The God of Arithmetic".
Frances Itani. REQUIEM. HarperCollins, 2011.
Finished this April 10, after reading THE COMPANY WE KEEP for the U of M Book Club. I preferred this one, mainly because of the local interest and the historic connection. Itani is Canadian but I just discovered her. Requiem is about Bin O, a Japanese-Canadian artist whose wife just died and who decides to drive from Ontario to BC because some family crisis is calling. Turns out he was interned as a child in a camp near LILLOOET but they do not name the town. It is the first I knew there were camps up there along the Fraser, in the mountains, with sandy soil and hot summers. I only knew about Greenwood (where my mother was born), TASHME near Hope, and the several in the Kootenays – Sandon, Solcan, Kaslo, New Denver, etc., places Joy Kogawa wrote about and David Suzuki talks about. The structure trades off chapters of the travel across country, memories of his marriage and his wife’s sudden death, and memories of what happened to him as a child--moved off the island, off the coast, to Hastings Park, then inland, 100 miles from the water. It seems the camp they had was self-supporting, self-governing, more so than the others where there were overseers. I also enjoyed the parts about how Bin thinks as an artist, the role of water and the river linking his life and work.
Found this U of M book club selection at the FVRL and borrowed it. Bonus: Large print, which always seems to read faster.
I love reading Canadian writers and ITANI is prolific; she has published fiction, poetry, and children's books. This is my first. I enjoyed it. The way it is organized around a poster advertising an informal grief support group. The way it is character-centred, with each chapter taking a different POV and some describing the meetings. The way the characters are of varied backgrounds but are all "mature", ranging in age from 45 to 80. And the underlying theme, of the power of grief to overwhelm us, and change our lives, short and long-term.
I have a second novel, REQUIEM, ready to read.
READING IN PROGRESS
I can't read when I'm writing. Too much else going on inside my head. And, I cannot concentrate for long periods of time when, like now, January and February, 2023, I am working at an almost overwhelming course on Editing and Revising my own draft novel, In Your Dreams. Hence, I have six opened books sitting beside my reading chair.
I had started this one, from my shelves, partly because the selections are short and easier to pick up and put down. And she is a known master writer. And because I love the title.
So I went down to the bookstore to order a title recommended in my course and now listed as one of this year's Canada Reads books, Michael Christie's GREENWOOD. While there, could not resist picking up another memoir by a favourite Canadian voice, Tomson Highway's PERMANENT ASTONISHMENT. Love it.
When the store called to say GREENWOOD was in, I couldn't resist checking the stacks. Well actually, I saw a new title I want to read but it is over $30. So I went to see if there might be a used copy in the stacks. No, but I found a writer I've heard about but not read. Bought it. Tommy Orange. THERE THERE (and left an order for a used copy of the new book I was looking for).
Kari Anne Roy. HAIKU MAMA. Quirk, 2006.
Haiku about young motherhood including breastfeeding her boy. Light and amusing as it promises.
Louise Penny. The GREY WOLF. Minotaur, 2024 Borrowed from a friend who had borrowed it from the library. No due date, making reading it so...
