The Lost Salt Gift of Blood, Alistair MacLeod

Arthur Lismer, Igonish Dock, Cape Breton

(December 27) It was OK.

That sounds noncommittal or uninterested, but it is difficult to describe the impression of this book upon me. MacLeod is without question a very fine writer -- he paints vivid pictures of the East Coast that are amazing bits of writing. And the first story in the collection uses only a very few pages to make me feel like I’ve known a horse and a man and a woman all my life, or at least as if I’d read a 600-page novel. So that is breathtaking.

But all these stories are about death and loss, about how things that are beautiful to look at will kill you or the ones you love. This is not surprising because these are stories about Cape Breton, and if there’s one thing you know about Cape Breton whether you’ve been there or not, it’s that it is beautiful and tragic, that the people are charming and self-destructive, that the way of life is enchanting and unsustainable.

And so it is depressing, all the stories.

And I still don’t know what the title means.

Bel Canto, Ann Patchett

Heather Cooper, from Carnaval Perpetuel??

(December 26) Loved it.

Since from the first this seems to be based on the actual hostage-taking staged by a Peruvian insurgent group about 10 years ago, you suspect things are going to end badly, and very soon into it you do not, do not, want it to end badly. You hope that at least some of the endearing terrorists survive -- even just one.

Yes, Patchett created endearing terrorists in 2001... how awkward that must have been when September came along -- I must look that up. Nevertheless, the characters draw you in, with all their secret, unspoken loves, and the expression of the humanity and nobility of the terrorists is particularly tender and poignant.

I cannot encapsulate Bel Canto better than the New York magazine reviewer who called it a “dreamlike fable in which the impulses toward beauty and love are shown to be as irrepressible as the instincts for violence and destruction.”

In fact, on second thought, this book should not have been awkward in September 2001... it should have been heartening. It is a powerful, passionate and uplifting aria sung into the face of unspeakable horror. Such is human life exactly.

I think I will go on a bit of a Patchett bender.