January 6, 2014

Eat It edited by Nicole Baute and Brianna Goldberg

Eat It: Sex, Food and Women’s Writing edited by Nicole Baute and Brianna Goldberg | Published in 2013 by Feathertale | Source: Review copy from editor

My rating: 4/5 stars
Goodreads

Synopsis:

What’s the best way to poison one’s husband? What happens when the body itself becomes a source of food? Can a potato be political? EAT IT ’s contributors explore these questions and more with equal parts humour and gravitas, revealing that for many women food is about love but also power, biology, social obligation, experimentation, nourishment, pain and pleasure.

My husband says that my sister and I are obsessed with food. It’s true that any time we’re together, the conversation tends toward it, but, isn’t it normal, almost necessary, to talk about something you do three, (okay, seven,) times a day? I suppose it’s true that a vegan (her, not me) always has more to consider and plan. But are we really that weird for talking about recipes and restaurants and our mutual crush on Chef at Home?

Eat It made me feel a little more normal. Here’s a whole bunch of people just talking about food, and writing poems about food, and imagining menus and remembering childhood meals. Of course, it’s not only about food. As the subtitle suggests, there’s more at play, and for women there are usually extra helpings (sorry) of guilt and shame on the one hand, and love and acceptance on the other.

Let’s address the all-women thing: this book isn’t *for* women. Anyone who enjoys a good short story or poem or creative non-fiction will get something out of this. But I love that this book is written, edited, and published by women. I’m paraphrasing @snpsnpsnp (again!) when I say that feminism isn’t making stuff for women, it’s women making stuff, and so this right here is feminism in action!

The stories are grouped into sections that correspond to life stages. This made me wonder: what is it about relationship status and food? The ice cream for the single and broken hearted, the home cooked meal for the domesticated, pickles for the pregnant? Why are these images so enduring in our culture? I don’t have an answer after reading this book, but I do have a whole bunch of perspectives on food and life from some awesome writers.

Now, the stories: I have a few favourites to tell you about, but the whole collection is quite strong. There aren’t many big names; former Giller short lister Sarah Selecky is probably the biggest. The variety of forms and tones and voices is quite impressive for such a slim book. It really would have made a perfect stocking stuffer for my food-obsessed sister; I just wasn’t done reading yet.

“Pot Luck of Nutritional Tips” by Sara Hennesy. You may have seen Sara on Video on Trial, which I shame-watched regularly back before I had to worry about my kids repeating everything they hear. Her monologue had me laughing and nodding (“Slather my lady junk in yogurt for all the right reasons? Done and done.”) and it’s a pretty good commentary on the ridiculousness of media messages about women and food.
“A Lady’s Gotta Eat” is the story of one woman’s quest for the perfect hamburger and also maybe an orgasm? I don’t know, I was reading all sorts of stuff into this one.
“Left Over” by editor Nicole Baute is a very short piece about loss and remembrance and it made me cry.
“Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrows” by Katie Daubs, for the title, and the first line, “Girls started dressing like sluts for Halloween in 1997,” because that was the first year I did it, too.
Stories about breastfeeding! There are two, one poignant and one hilarious. This is very relevant for me as my two year old nursling shows no signs of stopping, and even I, pro-breastfeeding, quasi-attachment parent, am questioning whether it’s time to shut it down. The whole “if he can ask for it, he’s too old” thing is clearly baloney, but where’s the pithy saying for a 35 pound toddler who motorboats you and screams “I need it,” because this was not covered in What To Expect. Uh, your mileage may vary on this one.

A note on how to find this book: it’s a little tricky, as it’s likely to be stocked with literary journals, but I’m told the easiest way to is to order online here. I would lend you mine, but it’s going to my sister next.

(Psst, Cait: I made Isa Chandra’s vegan chocolate cookies last night and they were amazing. It’s the molasses, I think. We ate them all, sorry.)

Thank you to the editors for providing a review copy of this book!

December 31, 2013

Reading in Bed Year in Review #4: Best Books and Blog Stats

I love statistics. You’re probably sick of them by now, what with the many end-of-year blog posts, but I love how they’re both meaningless and mean everything; how “numbers don’t lie” but they can tell whatever story we want them to tell. Here are the numbers that made up my year of reading.

…but first, a public service announcement: Goodreads has a sweet stats thiny that shows you how many books you’ve read, how many pages you’ve read, how you rated your books, and more! Go to “My Books,” then “stats” which is on the left side in tiny font, then click “details.” It’s magic! Here’s mine. You can also export your books to Excel to do EVEN MORE analysis – click “import/export” in that same tiny, left hand menu.

Books Read

Books read in 2013: 52 (Book a week!!)
Books read in first six months: 12
Books read in last six months: 40

I knew my reading picked up after I finished Moby-Dick this summer but I didn’t realize the extent till now. I never thought I’d read 50 books in a year, but it looks like I could reasonably go for 75 next year!

About the Author

35 Female (67%) 16 male (31%) 1 various (2%)
22 Canadian (42%) 16 American (31%) 9 British (17%) 2 French (4%) and 1 each: Columbian, Russian, Irish.
48 white (88%) 6 visible minority (12%)

I didn’t restrict myself to female authors this year, but I did stack the deck a bit by choosing female authors on the Classics Club list, and, by accepting review copies from independent presses – I have a feeling that female authors are over represented in smaller publishers. I won’t set any specific goals for next year, but I’d love to read more books by minorities. I’m sure I’ll still read lots of CanLit, butI gotta read some more World Lit too, beyond the States and the UK. Anyone got any good world lit reading challenges happening? I’ll probably do the Russian Lit one but would love to broaden my horizons even further…

Genres and Lists

18 classics (35%), 25 contemporary lit fic (48%), 3 non fiction (6%), 3 YA (6%), 2 romance (4%), 1 anthology (2%)
11 1001 Books for a total of 115 read
11 Classics Club picks for a total of 11

Ratings

10 five star reviews (19%), 19 four star reviews (37%), 14 three stars (27%), 3 two stars (6%), and 2 one star reviews (4%).

Compared to the average Goodreads rating…

I rated 22 books higher. The most underrated book was The Testament of Mary, which I rated a 5, compared to average 3.56 rating.
I rated 28 books lower. The most overrated book was Dragon Bound, which I rated a 1, compared to average 4.19 rating.

Blog Stats

17,000 page views in 2013. Compare that to 900 in 2011 and 3,500 in 2012. As Disco Stu would say, “if this trend continues, HEY!”
Most viewed post of 2013: What’s The Deal With Infinite Jest? It’s a year later and I still don’t know what the deal is! It’s funny because I wrote it in a very unplanned, stream of consciousness style, which I don’t often do. I’m just happy to share the WTFness and the DFW love.
Most viewed post that was actually written in 2013: The Fault in Our Stars: Use Your (Literary) Allusion. I get searches for “Fault in our stars allusions” on a daily basis, particularly in the summer, which tells me that a lot of students write papers on TFioS, and makes me realize how different writing papers must be these days.

And now, on to the good stuff: my best and worst reads of the year!

Continue reading →

December 22, 2013

Reading in Bed Year in Review #2: Shorties

The year in review continues! See my first post about literary crushes here.

I read (or am reading) a few longer books this year, notably Moby-Dick and Middlemarch, but today I’m celebrating my favourite short reads: sentences and short stories.

Favourite Sentence (Tie)
1. “Her head was back, looking up at the stars, if there were stars.”

–Michael Ondaatje’s The Cat’s Table, which I already gushed about here. “…if there were stars” gets me every time.

2. “Ladies can eat me and call it a juice cleanse.”

–Sarah Nicole Prickett railing against “ladies” in “Where Are All the Women.” This was my first encounter with @snpsnpsnp and I’ve faithfully read her articles and essays since. Sometimes her writing fuels my “don’t call me a Millennial” angst and sometimes I don’t get what she’s saying at all. Often, though, she nails it. This line made me do a reading double-take – did I really just read that? Yes, I did.

Favourite Short Story
This should have been a tough call, seeing as I read several wonderful short story collections this year, including Hellgoing, The Progress of Love, and 40 Below. It wasn’t tough at all, though. Incarnations of Burned Children by David Foster Wallace from the collection Oblivion wins by a mile.

Calling it my “favourite” doesn’t feel quite right – should your “favourite” cause so much trauma? I read this story near the end of the day at work. I had an inkling it might be a harrowing read, but it was only nine sentences long – perfect for a little mental break. How bad could it be? Nothing could have prepared me for the emotions I experienced. It wasn’t just that it deals with a young child’s severe injury, it deals with parenting, love, life, death, and most traumatizing of all, how each of us is utterly alone and can never really know another person. Reminder: Nine sentences. After attempting to calm myself down for ten minutes, I left work early and picked up my kids because I just couldn’t deal.

It wasn’t Infinite Jest, or any of his essays, or his famous Keynon College commencement speech that convinced me of DFW’s genius. It was this completely devastating story, that left me reeling for weeks. Part of me wants to buy Oblivion, but part of me can’t allow these words to physically exist in my house. Hence the trouble with “favourite.” Here’s the story, but please, please, do not read this at work or if you have to function anytime in the near future.

December 13, 2013

Middlemarch and Girls Who Read

I’m supposed to be writing my first update for the Middlemarch Read-Along hosted by Too Fond, but I keep thinking about this video:

Girls Who Read made the rounds a couple weeks ago. I didn’t watch it at first, because I’m pretty burnt out on “aren’t readers super special” memes. Most of them make us sound like smug assholes. Eventually I clicked, and I thought it was cute, well read, and funny. Who wouldn’t sigh at “passion, wit, and dreams?” I’m also a sucker for any kind of accent, so that helped.

A few days later, I noticed a minor backlash, including this article which contained the following from Portrait of a Lady:

He didn’t wish her to be stupid. On the contrary, it was because she was clever that she had pleased him. But he expected her intelligence to operate altogether in his favour, and so far from desiring her mind to be a blank, he had flattered himself that it would be richly receptive.

And I got to thinking: there’s nothing wrong with wanting a Girl Who Reads but in 2013 is this something that needs to be pointed out and celebrated? This guy seems to think he’s quite something because he can go one baby step further than tits and ass in his dream girl checklist. Not to mention that the video’s Girl Who Reads is also young, thin, white, and conventionally attractive, so it’s not reading over T&A, it’s reading AND T&A.

The Portrait of a Lady quote is pretty apt, and there’s even more to draw on from Middlemarch. She’s more of a Girl Who Drafts Ambitious Plans Relating to Cottages and Farming but same difference. I don’t have a great pull quote, though I found a few – damn Kobo annotations letting me down, as usual – but I think Dorothea and Casaubon are both guilty of using each other for their intellects. Dorothea wants to be educated and lifted up out of ignorance She says: “There would be nothing trivial about our lives… It would be like marrying Pascal. I should learn to see the truth by the same light as great men have seen it by.” Casaubon, well, I haven’t quite figured him out yet. I think he may have wanted a competent secretary as much as he wanted a wife, but finding Dorothea too smart and too able to see the shortcomings in his work, becomes jealous and shuts her out.

Despite ranting about it here, I’m not that bothered by this video. But it is making me think carefully about Dorothea and her passion, wit, and dreams. I’m paraphrasing someone on Twitter but I think it’s pretty telling that it’s Girls Who Read rather than Girls Who Write who are being celebrated. Reading, by itself, is pretty innocuous. Passive, even. Writing is a lot messier. Similarly, if Dorothea were passive, if she wasn’t compelled to speak her mind and didn’t have ambitions outside of marriage, she’d probably be a lot closer to Casaubon’s vision of an ideal wife.

As for the read-along, I’m just managing to keep pace. At 45% through the book, I’m finding it such a light read, not in the sense that it’s easy or quick or not thought provoking, but in that it doesn’t feel like a burden, even though at 800 pages, it surely is! There’s a perfect balance between all the plot points and characters and themes. Next week I’ll try to write a regular update but suffice to say that Ms. Eliot does not disappoint.

December 8, 2013

It’s a Bookstravaganza, Bitches

Note: it helps to imagine the title of this post read by Dave Chappelle as Rick James.

For the last three years, I’ve challenged myself to finish a long, intimidating book before New Years. In 2011, I read The Magic Mountain, in 2012 I read Infinite Jest, and this year I’m reading Middlemarch. All the while, a group of Edmontonians have been reading ambitiously for the past three Decembers too and they call it a Bookstravaganza! They took a different, and I gotta say, more fun approach and made it competitive and charitable. It’s like a readathon and Movember combined without the creepy mustaches. I love the idea, and you can expect to see me in on this next year! In the meantime, follow the Bookstravaganza blog, and check out my quick primer:

The concept is pretty simple: read as many books as you can during the month of December. Participants post short reviews to the blog as they go and the most books read wins.
Matthew’s stack. Pretty jealous that he’s going to be reading The Girls soon.

There’s no criteria for choosing books, but the choices are seriously great. Most of the participants posted a stack of books at the outset and in each one there are SO MANY books that I am jealous of and want to be reading RIGHT NOW (no offense Middlemarch!) My favourite stacks: This one including Slaughterhouse-Five, She’s Come Undone, Ficciones, and JPod and this one including Into the Wild, Outlander, Lullabies for Little Criminals, and The Sisters Brothers and this one (pictured) because of The Girls, The God of Small Things, and Naked Lunch.
C haritable donations are encouraged, on a one-time or per-book basis, to the Indigo Love of Reading Foundation, which puts books in underfunded school libraries. I’ve sponsored founding member Matthew Stepaniac at a modest per book rate. He is on fire right now, reading at a book-a-day pace, so I’m a little nervous!
The ten readers have some pretty impressive stats. One of them read 31 books last December. That’s insane!
The reviews are great because they’re quick reads and there are multiple updates each day. Here’s a great little review of Todd Babiak’s Come Barbarians which simultaneously made me want to read it immediately and lock it up somewhere because I know I will be traumatized!

Thanks Matthew for answering my questions and letting me participate next year! Follow along on Twitter and at the blog.

December 5, 2013

Reading Roundup: November 2013

Is there a statute of limitations on monthly roundups? Let’s hope not! Already 20% into December (and #Middlemarch13,) so let’s do this.

Book Events:
40 Below Official Launch #1: I’m really impressed by the continued buzz around this local, indie book. I only attended one of the two official launches, but it seems everywhere I turn I’m hearing about a TV appearance, or seeing the book on the bestseller list – really well done, 40 Below crew!

Dani Paradis reads her contribution to 40 Below

I got my book signed straightaway by mastermind Jason Lee Norman and contributors Michael Hingston and Dani Paradis. Dani read her poem about her hippy parents, which may or may not be based on a true story. There were a few awkward moments when people asked me to sign their books because they thought I was her – I guess I can see how brown hair + glasses + purple sweater + sitting as same table was confusing. I’ll take it as a compliment as Dani is much younger and more fashionable than I!

Vernon R. Wishart was my favourite reader. His story about his wife’s speedy Christmas Day labour and delivery was even funnier read aloud. I learned that it was a true story, as that Christmas baby, now in her 50s, was in the audience.

Don Perkins didn’t read, but he did write my favourite sentence in the whole book, and signed right next to it with a real fountain pen! Check out his take on the event here.

Before heading home, I bonded with fellow 40 Below reject Matthew Stepaniac and had a good chat about book blogging. Watch for a post very soon about his Bookstravaganza project.

(I also attended a little event with Margaret Atwood this month, which you can read about here.)

Books Read:
For once I actually posted about most of the books I read this month, thanks to Novellas in November and #ReadWilkie. Here are the two exceptions:

Tigers in Red Weather by Liza Klaussmann: I was let down by this book, which was billed as The Great Gatsby meets The Talented Mr. Ripley. It’s a character study that moves through five people’s perspectives, and unfortunately, each narrator is weaker than the last.
Why Here? by Michelle Ferguson: Similar thematically to her debut From Away, Why Here? is a better written sophomore novel but has a terrible title. Full review to come.

Books I Want to Read:
I suddenly have a slew of non-fiction books to read. I’ll probably wait till January to get to them, given my Middlemarch ambitions. Non-Fiction New Year? More about those later, but let’s give a quick shout-out to Eat It, a collection of women’s writing on sex and food, for having a great title. I also added On Beauty by Zadie Smith, my Classic Club Spin pick (was to lazy to do a post) and discovered it’s the only Smith book that doesn’t appear to even exist at the library.

Coming up on the blog:

Middlemarch Read-Along hosted by Too Fond: Intro post coming soon (hopefully no statute of limitations on those, either) but so far, so good. I feel like I’m learning a life lesson on every page.
Storytellers Book Club: Finally getting into this! I’m reading Alice Munro’s The Progress of Love. I’m five stories in and each one is better than the last.
2013 Wrap Up: Might do another vlog. Hope I can do it in fewer than five takes, unlike last time.

In the interests of time, I’m skipping the list of blog posts that usually appears here. Tell me all of your December reading plans! Are they ambitious like mine, or are you taking it easy for the holidays?

December 3, 2013

Novellas in November Update #3: The Suicide Shop, The Testament of Mary and The Wizard of Oz

November is over so in the interest of time, these are going to really short reviews of really short books! Lost? Check out my previous posts:

The Suicide Shop by Jean Teule

My rating: 4/5 stars
Goodreads
Synopsis:

With the twenty-first century just a distant memory and the world in environmental chaos, many people have lost the will to live. And business is brisk at The Suicide Shop. Run by the Tuvache family for generations, the shop offers an amazing variety of ways to end it all, with something to fit every budget. The Tuvaches go mournfully about their business, taking pride in the morbid service they provide. Until the youngest member of the family threatens to destroy their contented misery by confronting them with something they’ve never encountered before: a love of life.

This book is like The Addams Family: morbid, cheesy, campy, and ultimately harmless. I was reminded of my years working in a haunted house – the one located under the roller coaster in West Edmonton Mall, which is supposedly haunted by the people who died in the derailing in 1986. We had a Addams Family “electrocution test” machine which supposedly tests your ability to withstand electric shocks conducted through two metal rods that you hold onto, but the rods actually just vibrated. But I digress. This book was weirdly great. It was all those things the Addams Family are – cheesy and campy in the extreme – but somehow it worked. It’s a futuristic fairy tale with a strong moral message at the end, and usually I hate that, but I don’t know, I guess my 90s nostaligia got the better of me. What can I say, I really loved laughing at dumb tourists who paid $2 to hold on to what were essentially a couple of vibrators.

The Testament of Mary by Colm Toibin

My rating: 5/5 stars
Goodreads

Provocative, haunting, and indelible, Colm Tóibín’s portrait of Mary presents her as a solitary older woman still seeking to understand the events that become the narrative of the New Testament and the foundation of Christianity.

I’m not going to do this book justice in a short review like this, so I will direct you to Another Book Blog and urge you to read it and I will quote this passage, which says absolutely everything:

‘I was there,’ I said. ‘I fled before it was over but if you want witnesses then I am one and I can tell you now, when you say that he redeemed the world, I will say that it was not worth it. It was not worth it.’

Okay, I will also say that this book reminded me of Emma Donaghue’s Room, which might seem odd, but they’re both stories of mother and son (or Mother and Son in this case,) maternal guilt, and the inability of parents to protect their children from the world. Even if he’s locked in a room. Even if he’s the son of god.

The Wizard of Oz by Frank L. Baum

I’m not done this one yet, but must note that I’ve been reading it to my (almost) four year old, and it’s been a delight. As readers, we get so excited about reading to our children, but we don’t realize that the first few years are torture – most baby and toddler books are awful. If it’s not super-schmaltzy Love You Forever, it’s some Disney marketing material barely disguised as a book. This is my first experience reading a real chapter book with my kids, and I get it now. Reading to your kids IS awesome. Especially when you get to read about messed up stuff like killer flying monkeys and opium-induced stupors.

Bonus: Some Novella Publishers of Note

So, you probably enjoyed this event SO MUCH that you want to read a bunch of novellas, right? Here’s a few publishers that specialize in novellas to get you started:

Melville House: The Art of the Novella Melville House Books publishes a collection of novellas by the likes of Austen, Eliot, Proust, Dostoyevsky, and Mr. Melville himself. You can buy the whole collection of 52 novellas for a pretty decent price ($410 US) or you can subscribe and receive a novella every month. You can give this as a gift, too – like the Jelly of the Month Club, it’s the gift that keeps on giving. (Hint, hint to a certain sister of mine who is my secret Santa this year.)
New Directions: Pearls Confession: I hate these covers. But it’s a great collection of classic novellas, reissued, and includes works by Fitzgerald, Gogol, and Borges. I am giving this collection the side-eye for not including any female authors, though.
Black Hill Press: The only publisher on this list that deal exclusively in novellas, and American novellas in particular, this indie press doesn’t boast any big names, but wouldn’t it be cool to discover a new author through a novella? I’m expecting a review copy of Another Name for Autumn any day now.

Thank you Another Book Blog for hosting! Go check out his epic vlog wrap up – literally epic, it’s 45 minutes long!

November 30, 2013

A Conversation with Margaret Atwood and Alanis Morissette

This event had me confused for months. I finally found out that it’s a sort of teaser for next year’s Festival of Ideas at the U of A (which will be headlined by Twitter-infamous Joyce Carol Oates.) For just $50, you could listen to Margaret Atwood and Alanis in conversation about “Life. Love. Art” as per the promotional material. That’s pretty vague, and I had no idea what to expect.

The books editor for the Globe and Mail attempted to moderate the conversation, but he was a little out of his league. I have a problem with vicarious embarrassment and I was starting to squirm as both women pretty blatantly ignored him. Thankfully, Atwood took over handily and dominated the conversation throughout.

Alanis seemed starstruck, Atwood bemused – very true to her reputation as one who gives few, if any, fucks. My favourite bit was when Alanis tried to toss off a cute remark, “and that’s why I started my own record company when I was ten!” and Atwood grilled her: “how did you do that? What did you do first”? Did you put out a record? Then what?” and it was impossible to tell if she was genuinely interested or subtly calling bullshit, but I pretended it was the latter.

Much of the talk concerned the creative process – how it’s different for music versus books, vulnerability, autobiography (or not,) and it was fairly interesting, if a bit predictable. They also addressed their roles as trailblazers for female (song)writers. I’ve always found it strange that Alanis is presented as a trailblazer because when Jagged Little Pill came out I was listening to Hole and Garbage and wearing homemade Riot Grrl t-shirts, and Alanis seemed so sanitized, movie theatre blow jobs notwithstanding. In my experience, people who listened to JLP were the same people that listened to, like, Hootie and the Blowfish.

It’s somewhat tough for me to appreciate Atwood’s trailblazer status too, being just a kid when The Handmaid’s Tale was released, and not crediting it with my awakening as a feminist – just bad timing, I’m sure (I happened to read The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf years earlier, and that’s the one that opened my eyes.) Atwood, as I expected, dismissed the designation all together, saying that it was so hard out there for a Canadian writer back in the day that she barely had time to register the difficulties of being female.

Alanis bemoaned the sexualization of female artists (yep, Miley was mentioned) and the over-commercialization of music; and I swear it was a coincidence that I noticed her pristine Louboutins while she was saying something about how it’s not all about the money. I don’t deny her the right to comment as such but it was kind of ironic. I think. Am I using that word right?

Overall, Atwood was deadpan funny, sharp, and just a smidge more self-deprecating that I expected. I could have listened to her talk much longer. I wanted to hear more about Maddaddam and what’s next. Alanis was alright, but speaks in this weird, half hippy, half business-speak lingo that was setting my teeth on edge. She kept using the word “serviceful,” meaning serving your community (or something) – why not just say “serving” or “being of service?” Then she went and misused “begging the question” which is a pet peeve of mine. As far as I’m concerned, most people use that expression to look smart, and 90% of them use it incorrectly. Isn’t THAT ironic?

Ms. Atwood must have stayed two hours after the event to sign books, and she was gamely chatting and taking pictures (I was too scared to ask!) I didn’t think there would be a signing and didn’t bring my own books – major disappointment. I bought a copy of Cat’s Eye and one of the Winspear staff told me she hadn’t seen anyone else with that book for signing, so at least I was original in my failure.

Photo Credit: My sister who stood with me for that hour and a half!

Photo Credit: My sister who stood in line with me for an hour and a half!

Worth it.

I was more blown away by Atwood’s stamina than the event itself, but I’m so grateful that I got to meet a true heroine of CanLit.

November 26, 2013

Hellgoing by Lynn Coady

Hellgoing by Lynn Coady | Published in 2013 by Astoria | Paperback: 240 pages | Source: I bought it

My rating: 4/5 stars
Goodreads

Synopsis:

With astonishing range and depth, Scotiabank Giller Prize winner Lynn Coady gives us nine unforgettable new stories, each one of them grabbing our attention from the first line and resonating long after the last.

Equally adept at capturing the foibles and obsessions of men and of women, compassionate in her humour yet never missing an opportunity to make her characters squirm, fascinated as much by faithlessness as by faith, Lynn Coady is quite possibly the writer who best captures what it is to be human at this particular moment in our history

I apologize for posting the following self-congratulatory tweet, but for book bloggers, I don’t think it gets better than being acknowledged by an author you love. The Giller Prize’s Twitter account asked us to review a long-listed book in 13 words exactly:

It’s true, though, “trapped” was the first word that came to mind after reading this collection. Reading these stories was uncomfortable and claustrophobic. I was literally squirming at times. Coady gets us so close to her characters, it’s almost embarrassing, and I have a real problem with vicarious embarrassment. I’m one of those people who have to change the channel when a character is too exposed, or being made a fool of.

The first and last stories were the strongest. Maybe that’s just primacy bias, or maybe it’s my own experience that made these stories devastating – the first is about an alcoholic, the second about a teenage pregnancy, both topics that tend to punch me in the gut.

“Wireless” opens with a hangover, and it’s one of the best descriptions of one I’ve read:

She lay flat on her back for twenty minutes, gauging the pain, the depth of her dehydration. The song in her ears. She sat up, and a second later her pickled brain slid back into its cradle in the centre of her cranium. Time to throw up.

I haven’t had a hangover in five years and reading that made me shudder. The whole story is disconnected and fuzzy, like that poor, pickled brain. What’s with the two mentions of Beanie Babies? What’s with the title? What’s the deal with Ned, the man Jane meets, another alcoholic who is lying to her for unknown reasons? We never find out.

The last story is “Mr. Hope,” and it’s another strange one. This is the one that really prompted my “uncomfortable” response. There’s something off about the whole thing and I can’t figure out what. Is it because the narrator refer’s to her teachers large belly as his “D,” as in the shape of a “D,” given the (gross) internet meme thing “she wants the D?” Because the way Mr. Hope interacts with the kids is kind of age inappropriate, and you wonder what else inappropriate is going on? Like this scene, where he is inexplicably trying to force a grade one class to come up with a definition for “love:”

“You: gap-tooth.”
“Love is when you hold a puppy.”
Mr. Hope slammed his fist against our sweet-faced grandma-teacher’s desk.
“LOVE IS NOT,” he bellowed, “WHEN YOU HOLD A PUPPY.”
Behind me, I could hear someone’s breath hitching rapidly in and out and I tried to shush whoever it was as quietly as I could.
“Where is it?” Mr. Hope demanded to know. “What is it? Think about that, people. You’re all so sure about this thing, and you can’t even answer the question. I’m not asking you when it is. A rock is a small hard round thing. Okay, that’s not great, but at least it’s a start. So what kind of thing is love? Big or little? Soft or hard? Black or white? Or coloured?”

And it gets more awkward from there. I reread this story in it’s entirety for this review, and it struck me differently this time. That’s the great thing about these stories – they’re ambiguous, not in an unresolved way, but in a way that you can read into differently each time.

A few of the other notable bits include:

A story that’s made the best use of texting I’ve encountered in fiction- and I know that’s quite a feat, have heard from authors who’ve set their stories in the past specifically to avoid having to deal with technology,
An Edmonton winter story that should have been in the 40 Below anthology; I know so because I drove myself nuts searching for it in my copy of 40 Below while writing my review,
Stories about self-harm, anorexia, self-doubt, and general dysfunction. Cheery stuff.

Some of these stories stuck with me. Some of them made little impression at all. I want to see what Coady can do with a novel-length story. I know, it’s probably a book-snobbish way to think, but it’s true. Rather than the recent and critically acclaimed The Antagonist, I want to start with Strange Heaven which sounds right up my alley. Another story about a teenage mom – I really should branch out.

The Giller Effect
Reviewing the book’s Goodreads page, I was surprised to see only 101 ratings. The Giller Prize was announced a few weeks ago, and the long and short lists have been out for months. I’m not sure if Goodreads ratings is a valid criteria, but it’s easy to do a few comparisons:

Past Five Giller Winners:

Hellgoing – 101 ratings
419 – 4000 ratings
Half-Blood Blues – 6563 ratings
The Sentimentalists – 1691 ratings
The Bishop’s Man – 3187 ratings

The other 2013 shortlisted titles have around 100 ratings each too, so maybe they just need more time. Though somehow long-lister Claire Messud has nearly 10,000 ratings for The Woman Upstairs!

To ensure this wasn’t a Canada thing, I checked out the recent National Book Award recipient Good Lord Bird – 500ish ratings. Maybe people (or, more specifically, people who are active on Goodreads) don’t give a shit about award winners. Compare (and weep) with Dragon Bound’s 15,000 ratings.

As for whether or not Hellgoing deserved to win, well, you’ll have to wait for my review of Caught for my final thoughts. I only read these two, so I can’t weigh in on the travesty of The Orenda not making the shortlist. Totally a coincidence that I read the two female authors on the shortlist too, I swear!

November 21, 2013

The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

My rating: 3/5 stars
Goodreads
Read-along post #1

For someone who does a lot of read-alongs, sometimes I feel like I’m not very good at them. On the appointed day for our midway posts, I decided to post nothing and finish the book instead. I also feel like a bit of an outsider, as everyone else is positively swooning over The Moonstone, while I was left a little cold.

For a detective/mystery story, I didn’t feel much suspense at all for 90% of the book. It was only at the very end, when reading the factual, precise account of what happened to the moonstone, that I felt any real urgency to keep reading. Oh, I was curious about what happened to the moonstone. Sure. Who wouldn’t be? But the book utterly failed to make it matter beyond the whodunit aspect and that just wasn’t enough for me.

I think the ambivalence was intended, because the heroine and owner of the jewel is just awful, not to mention it comes to be in her family’s possession through murder. And colonialism. Her uncle is basically looting in India and kills a few Indians in the process. I don’t know what the general feelings on colonialism were in 1850, but the set up is so egregious I can’t help but think Wilkie (yes, we’re on a first name basis) wanted us to root for the Indians. India was still nearly 100 years from independence (wow) but really, it’s their damn diamond, maybe, I don’t know, give it back rather than be cursed and ruin everyone’s lives. JUST A THOUGHT.

What I don’t think was intended was the failure (to me) of the romance between Rachel and her first cousin Franklin. I struggle with the cousin thing. I know, different time, different culture and so forth. Maybe it’s because I share a family resemblance with a lot of my cousins so I just imagine these two making out and looking the same and it’s very Flowers in the Attic. Maybe it’s because Rachel has two romantic interests and they’re BOTH first cousins and I just think she needs to get out more. But I really didn’t care if Rachel and Franklin ended up together or not.

All that said, I did enjoy the book and would recommend it on the strength of the narrative structure alone. I’m a sucker for an epistolary novel, and Wilkie does it so well. We begin the novel with sweet, self-deprecating, sexist Betteredge, the Verinder family butler, hopelessly devoted to his Lady, his pipe, and Robinson Crusoe. You’d be hard pressed to find a more endearing narrator (in spite of the rampant sexism) or a funnier one. Pretty sure I snorted when I read this:

On hearing those dreadful words, my daughter Penelope said she didn’t know what prevented her heart from flying straight out of her. I thoughts privately that it might have been her stays.

Betteredge repeatedly addresses himself directly to the reader, here admonishing us to pay attention. Guilty as charged, I was totally thinking about my new bonnet while I was reading this…

Clear your mind of the children, or the dinner, or the new bonnet, or what not. Try if you can’t forget politics, horses, prices in the City, and grievances at the club… Lord! haven’t I seen you with the greatest authors in your hands, and don’t I know how ready your attention is to wander when it’s a book that asks for it, instead of a person?

The next narrator is one Miss Drusilla Clack and she was my favourite part of the whole book. I wish she’d narrated the whole thing. I wish the book was about her. She’s so delightfully hypocritical and a loves to play the martyr. She has a way with words; remarking on France’s “popery” and her aunt’s “autumnal exuberance of figure.” And then there are her tracts. Modern readers might be familiar with Chick Tracts (I was personally handed one at a Marilyn Manson concert in 1997 which is definitely in the top ten of “most 90s things that ever happened to me”) but Miss Clack’s tracts sound much more entertaining:

Here was a golden opportunity! I seized it on the spot. In other words, I instantly opened my bag, and took out the top publication. It proved to be an early edition of the famous anonymous work entitled THE SERPENT AT HOME. The design of the book is to show how the Evil One lies in wait for us in all the most apparently innocent actions of our daily lives. The chapters best adapted to female perusal are “Satan in the Hair Brush;” “Satan behind the Looking Glass;” “Satan under the Tea Table;” “Satan out of the Window” — and many others.

Seems like Clack needs to reread a few of those tracts herself. #Humblebrag alert:

On rising the next morning, how young I felt! I might add, how young I looked, if I were capable of dwelling on the concerns of my own perishable body. But I am not capable– and I add nothing.

I made a ton of annotations in Betteredge’s and Clack’s sections, and nearly none in the ensuing ones, narrated by the family’s lawyer, that dreamy first cousin Franklin, and a Mr. Jennings who I can’t really explain without spoilers. The rest of the book was interesting and well written and the ending was satisfying, but I just missed the first two narrators so much, I couldn’t get into it.

The Read-Along
Despite not loving the book, I had a lot of fun with this read-along! The #readWilkie hashtag was active, the bloggers were committed, and there is something very endearing about a group of girls so earnestly in love with a 19th century author (no judgement, I’m currently crushing on Anton Chekhov.) I heartily encourage you to visit the other #readWilkie bloggers, who may do a better job of convincing you to read The Moonstone.