Cool Water, Dianne Warren

Marlys Farn-Guillette, The Fence Is Down

(December 25) Got this when I heard it won a 2010 Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction. Can see why it won something -- it's very serious (reminds me of Ann Patchett) -- everything happens in one day and everything that happens echoes an event that occurred in the area 100 years ago (to the day) -- so the Saskatchewan landscape never changes and is the ultimate victor over puny human happenings à la Ozymandias -- and so on and so forth.

But a book like this -- you can never stop being aware that you are reading a book that has been carefully crafted to evoke all this symbolism -- it never lifts you out of yourself and out of the feeling that you are reading a carefully crafted book and into the realm of vicariously lived excitement, and that's what I really want from a book.

However, I was surprised and enchanted to learn that there's a desert in Saskatchewan. Everyone in the book acknowledges or comments fleetingly on the fact that no one knows there is a desert in Saskatchewan, and they are right. Which is kind of cool.

Cutting for Stone, Abraham Verghese

Aleka Gebre Selassie Adil, Mother Ethiopia, 1960

(December 6) Really liked it, especially at first: for about the first two-thirds, it was wondrous... vivid and evocative in a way that reminded me of Half of a Yellow Sun, with a mild hint of magic reality to it à la Gabriel García Márquez, which was lovely. (I'm thinking of the story of the parents, particularly.)

But then, once it left Ethiopia, the story seemed to think it was about medicine primarily; instead of being about people who also practiced medicine, it morphed into a creaking, artificial set-up for a medical drama. The symbolism groaned at you.

But the first two-thirds -- gold.

One Day, David Nicholls

Niki Sands, Love's Melody

(November 16) This book surprised me in two ways: first, I didn't realize it was a rom-com till I was well into it and really liking the characters. It was written by a man, after all! But it was totally rom-commy ... so light, so like a Sophie Kinsella book ... but with just a slight bit more.... complexity? I had to keep looking at the book jacket photo to make sure Nicholls was a man.

It was so likable. When at one point I had to return it to the library half-read, I really missed Em and Dex.

Second, this book blindsided me like no other in a long time. Well, Fingersmith blindsided me only six months ago... but, really, only those two books in my whole life, I think.

Ape House, Sara Gruen

Marc Johnson, Smoking Monkey

(October 21) She had me at "Ape," plus I already loved Water for Elephants.

This book was worth it for the information about bonobos alone, but Gruen also kept a few plot-plates spinning with great flair.

The book did devolve a bit into TV-sitcom territory eventually, but I was fine with that since the alternative might easily have been animal abuse and too much drama.

There were ironic-twist sub-stories showing how an L.A. lifestyle compels people to change everything that's unique and lovable about them (for example, the parallel between two characters who get a lot of plastic surgery, one because of injuries from an explosion and the other because she's trying to make it in Hollywood) and questioning whether prestige and integrity go hand-in-hand in the media (a writer only finds himself when he stoops to work for the worst rag in the country).

But mainly, it was the bonobos.

The Global Forest, Diana Beresford-Kroeger

Laura Milnor Iverson, Nature's Bright Peace

(October 13) Heard her interviewed on the CBC and was entranced with her descriptions of the biochemistry of trees, wanted to read more.

And this book is interesting, eventually... but I had a hard time getting past the style at times. She wants to invest her remarks with "ancient wisdom" and tries all sorts of methods of doing this -- writing in the style of fairy tales, children's readers, the Bible, and so on. (She even tries an erotic style once or twice.)

A favourite style is to machine-gun you with a lengthy series of short declarative sentences. I enjoy a short declarative sentence, but more than 10 in a row and you begin to think a writer's first language is not English. Sample:

There is a new violence in the world. This violence stands apart from all the other familiar forms. This one is silent and it shows no mercy to the young and the old. It is in the air we breathe. The air is no longer clean.

The new violence is measured in microns, a size smaller than a pollen grain. The violence is particulate pollution. This form of pollution is composed of tiny fragments of matter that will become airborne. Anything can become airborne if it is small enough or light enough or has the right kind of aerodynamic form to fly. These tiny particles are now finding a new name depending on their diameter, expressed as particle microns, or PM for short.

Size matters. Any pollution particles that measure PM 2.5 or less are lethal to the human body. They are also lethal to much of the rest of the animal kingdom.

The book is billed as a collection of essays, so I guess this entitles a writer to try different techniques of infusing grandiosity, but since none of the essays repeat information, you know they were intended to be published together, so "collection of essays" just becomes a license to not have a more intrinsic structural plan.

Plus, overall, there is this cliché of "we are destroying the planet" at every turn. I could maybe forgive her if the book were five years old, but the publishing date is 2010, and, lady, we've heard this refrain.

Don't know why the biochemistry of trees can't be treated as interesting for its own sake.

Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert

Pablo Picasso, Girl Before a Mirror, 1932

(September 29) Read this to be able to join in on the general sneering, for that's the only reaction to it I ever saw on my internet travels. Case in point: it was endorsed by Oprah, in some ways the worst thing that can happen to a book's credibility (though it means it will sell well).

But I liked Eat, Pray, Love quite a bit. I liked Gilbert's voice, I identified with her quest, I laughed out loud many times.

The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins

(September 15, September 20, September 25) This "Young Adult" series was getting all kinds of hype because Mockingjay came out in August... so I took it up in hopes it was the next Harry Potter or Golden Compass.

The Hunger Games was a bit disappointing, at first, because nothing can be Harry Potter or The Golden Compass or even Twilight, after all, and also because I found it really Young Adult, really teenagery... with teenage preoccupations (dating, clothes, rejecting authority). Collins worked hard to come up with a story that would allow her heroine to balance two amazing love interests forever.

But then, by Catching Fire, the story had built up momentum for me, despite the Contrive-o-matic Machine lumbering along in the background. It was interesting to see what Collins was going to do with this love triangle, after all.

Mockingjay took the series into darker and more horrific territory than I ever would have imagined. There were some really interesting points made about how a rebel movement can be just as corrupt as the government it attempts to overthrow; it wasn't just a Star Wars-style battle between good and evil. But the final book is one long blood-bath and the resolution of Katniss's love troubles is very anti-climactic.

Year of Wonders, Geraldine Brooks

Hendrik Kerstens, Shopping Bag, 2008

(September 5) I enjoyed this quite a bit, even though it is a tad grisly in its descriptions of plague victims and the day-to-day brutality of 17th-century village life.

It's a little like a Sarah Waters novel, in that the first-person narrator is crafted to have the preoccupations and language of a bygone age -- but Brooks is not as convincing with this as Waters was with her Victorians. On the other hand, if Brooks did try to make it as authentic as possible, no one would be able to understand it. See Pepys' Twitter account.

This is also a little like Diana Gabaldon's 18th-century novels with all the interesting details about medical knowledge and superstitions of the time.

What I really liked about it was that it set up certain expectations about the outcomes for certain individuals -- and then did not take us there at all! Quite surprising! In fact, the way the novel ends is basically a bolt from the blue. But an interesting bolt -- for our heroine is much better off and more empowered in the culture of "our enemy" than she ever was before.

What I found hard to take: all the sad dying. But, what are you gonna do? It's a novel about the Plague Year.

The Amazing Power of Deliberate Intent; Ask and It Is Given, Esther and Jerry Hicks

Goddess Selket, Pharaoh Tutankhamun, Egyptian Museum, Egypt, 1323 BCE

(August 31, February 20) This is another version of The Secret and The Science of Getting Rich; this one is a lot more sure about the way things are, especially death.

I really like Abraham's voice, actually -- "they" are very no-nonsense, balls-to-the-wall about everything.

Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov

Polixeni Papapetrou, Olympia as Lewis Carroll’s Beatrice Hatch before White Cliffs, 2003

(August 25) I am so surprised to be saying that this is a great book and that I enjoyed it. I never wanted to read about pedophilia and believed I'd never read this novel, but Lolita is always included on "best" book lists, including recently a "30 books to read before 30" -- which is really cutting it fine, right? -- so I gave in.

And so it is a great book -- an amazing book, all the more amazing because it makes an unsavory subject completely enjoyable. As Stephen Metcalf says, "with Lolita, you must work past its beauty to recognize how shocking it is", and it is sometimes very hard work to get past the beauty.

The Little Stranger, Sarah Waters

Bsidez, Photo of the Chateau de Miranda

(August 3) This is Waters’ fifth and most recent book; ::sigh:: now I will have to wait two and half years for the next one.

Like Night Watch, this is set in post-Second World War England; like Affinity, there is a supernatural element; like the first three (Tipping the Velvet, Affinity and Fingersmith) it is a first-person narrative.

But unlike them all, the narrator is a heterosexual man... and there is no lesbianism in it at all... unless you count the very slight hint that Caroline might be lesbian. (This is never resolved, nor in some ways even relevant.)

AND.

There’s no plot twist! Unless the lack of a plot twist is the twist!

For, knowing Waters, I paid careful attention all through the book to any doubts or suspicions hanging vaguely around a character’s words or motives, and yet none of the “planted” clues -- the narrator’s early destructive act in the house and his latter despair and recklessness over his broken engagement, Seeley’s pompousness, Caroline’s hardness, Mrs. Ayres’ snobbishness, Roderick’s shell-shock, Betty’s acting skills... and dozens of other little sinister moments -- none of them congealed into a villain responsible for a number of deaths.

The house was tagged as the villain from the start, and that is how it is left. In fact, it is a little alarming at the end that the narrator is still hanging about the house, although Waters doesn’t make him seem insane.

Nonetheless, I expected till the very last page that there would be a rational explanation, since Affinity created the same air of the possibility of supernatural events and then quite dashed it in the end.

Here it was not dashed; this time there is no real explanation. And, really, it’s the house that dominates the story like a lead character. The house has amazing presence for an inanimate object.

Atmosphere is everything in this story, and is actually very rewarding despite the absence of a neat tying-up of loose ends. It’s spooky and suspenseful... haunting... the more so because of those loose ends, really.

Furious Love: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and the Marriage of the Century, Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger

Howard Terpning, detail of art for Cleopatra movie poster, 1963

(July 22) It took two people to write this? Heh.

Actually, it was really professionally written -- really easy to breeze through, with lots of timely repetition and signposting so you don’t have to think too hard about anything.

The book doesn’t surprise with more inside dirt than I remember from the gossip mags of the time, which built an industry on Liz’n’Dick stories (today’s “Brangelina” phenomenon is a mere shadow in comparison). Still, it’s good at organizing everything into a linear narrative, drawing parallels and pointing out significant turning points.

It was surprising to get to the end of what is touted as the story of a romance and find out the book was really meant to be a biography of Richard Burton -- at least that’s apparently what the authors let on to Elizabeth Taylor it would be, since she wanted a memorial to Burton.

But I guess that’s not a cheat -- it’s clear Burton’s whole life was affected by Elizabeth Taylor, right down to how he’s memorialized.

The Night Watch, Sarah Waters

Clive Branson, Blitz: Plane Flying (1940)

(July 18) I’m still binging on Sarah Waters. This one is set during the blitzing of London in World War II and is third-person... so a departure from first-person faux Victoriana. The structural twist is in the sequence of the narrative; you know you’re going to find out why all the characters are behaving the way they do, and it’s fun to speculate on what those psychological turning points will be.

“Night watch” turned out to mean many different things, none of them dwelt on in a LOOK AT THIS SYMBOL way, which was a nice subtlety.

I liked it a lot, but Fingersmith is still my favourite.

Tinkers, Paul Harding

Dale Mathis, David Mechanica

(June 30) This is really a long poem, or that’s, at least, the kindest way of describing it... it’s another Housekeeping style description of lost souls, with the same aimless cataloguing of feelings and impressions as they wander in the wilderness. These people always wander in the wilderness for good lengths of time.

The thing is, it’s not a novel.

No wonder Marilynne Robinson is quoted on the cover (her comment: “Tinkers is truly remarkable”).

This is about the deaths of three generations of fathers and sons, all telescoping into one another. Because each of them tinkers in one way or another, I hoped that the climax of the “story” might be some tour de force of literary clockwork mechanics, something impressive in the invention of narrative. Alas, that was not to be.

Many BookCel members raved about it.

There were many beautiful moments in it; don’t get me wrong.

Tipping the Velvet, Sarah Waters

Portrait of Vesta Tilley, 1901 (artist unknown)

(June 11) This is Waters' first novel and is quite different from the second and third. The latter were more carefully structured and full of clever twists, and lesbianism was incidental; here, the narrative is a picaresque life, with wildly disproportionate pacing (like life), and lesbianism is first and foremost.

Also, the "voicing" of the Victorian narrator is not trying to be as authentic as it is in Affinity and Fingersmith; in fact, the narrator sounds quite modern.

But these are just differences I didn't expect. I can see why Tipping was an impressive first novel and won prizes, but I think Waters' best was yet to come.

It's odd to have read the second and third novels first, I suppose, but I don't think I would have been so keen to read more Waters had I read Tipping first. So... lucky for me.

Affinity, Sarah Waters

Evelyn Pickering De Morgan, Hope in the Prison of Despair

(June 1) Like Fingersmith, another well done twist... oh, Waters is good at making unreliable narrators seem reliable. Everything is so plausible. And this was a fascinating exposé of spiritualism. A little darker than Fingersmith in some ways -- different kind of dark, anyway... so interesting how one is quick to identify with a first-person narrator and see all her good points and empathize with her struggles, and ignore her weaknesses and illusions, even though they are all there for the observing.

Waters so authentically captures the way Victorians thought and expressed themselves. She has read a shit-ton of diaries, letters and novels of the period, fo sho.

The Little Black Book of Style and The One Hundred: A Guide to the Pieces Every Stylish Woman Must Own, Nina Garcia

(May 31, June 3) These are not "books" of course but, rather, really long fashion-magazine articles. But they're really good fashion-magazine articles. Nina Garcia has a good eye, in-depth knowledge and a charming writing style. Ah, it is so nice to read well-edited fluff! It's almost kind of "deep fluff." Garcia offers lots of practical, usable tips, as well as entertainment.





Ruben Toledo, Illustration for The Little Black Book of Style

Fingersmith, Sarah Waters

John Everett Millais, Twins, 1876

(May 21) This book Blew. Me. Away. By the end of Part One, I felt like an innocent country bumpkin who had wandered into Dickensian London and had been fleeced and filleted, and all my worldly goods fenced before I even knew they were gone.

Then the plot becomes a leeetle overcomplicated... but it is still a tour de force of mirroring and false identities and interweaving points of view. And -- the narrators! After Part One, I thought I could never invest in any other narrator but Sue... NEVER! Yet, the next narrator, Maud, was just as compelling, if not more. Sweet.

It's a faux Victorian novel, and hits all the beloved leitmotifs of the genre: pickpockets, orphans, grim prisons, lunatic asylums, "laughing villains," stolen fortunes and girls made out to be mad -- but it actually feels more authentic than even a genuine Victorian novel like The Woman in White (which it resembles a lot). It was well done.

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, Alan Bradley

Russell H. Tandy, detail of cover art for The Secret in the Old Attic, 1944

(May 4) As fresh and cheerful as a babbling mountain brook and as bracing as a flash flood.

Loved this book, love Flavia. Her picture should be in the dictionary to illustrate "plucky." Loved the dramatic similes.

The Help, Kathryn Stockett

Larry "Poncho" Brown, Black Is Black (Female)

(April 23) This was surprisingly gripping: that is, it's straightforwardly gripping because it's set at the beginning of the civil rights movement in the States, so the reader is well aware that death and destruction could occur at any moment; but the setting is also completely small and domestic -- it's about women with families fussing over food, housecleaning, raising children; it's not about laws and statutes. Thus, it is so odd to be worried about what might happen to any of the main characters, whether black, or white, or "high yaller," when all they are doing on a surface level is trading tips for making cakes or sewing curtains or potty-training.

Yet, of course, these homely, homespun activities are as fraught with racism and inequity as any Jim Crow law, for it's still a time of slavery, if only the last few gasps of it. So that tension is there and is built up very skillfully.

The characters are engaging, and the good and evil is spread pretty evenly throughout the cast, no matter their colour.

Lord John and the Hand of Devils, Diana Gabaldon

William Hogarth, The Ball

(March 27) Really liked it -- really like Lord John, love Gabaldon's way with details and human nature, don't think she needs to bring in Jamie Fraser so much -- that is no longer the reason I'm reading the Lord John books -- in fact, John doesn't even sound like himself when he "writes" to Jamie.....

Anyway, so this is a collection of three novellas containing "supernatural" elements... these paranormal mysteries are kind of murky and never clearly resolved, although nothing is ultimately attributed to the unexplainable... and plot is not the thing you look for with Gabaldon anyway... but the novellas were enjoyable and I'm sorry I've got nothing else to read till a new Lord John or Jamie-and-Claire comes out.

Note to self: Apparently, there are no stories about John's spy work. Why do I think he's a spy?

Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade, Diana Gabaldon

Sir Joshua Reynolds, Alexander, 10th Duke of Hamilton

(March 17) Have come to love John Grey as much as Jamie and Claire. Gabaldon has a fascination with homosexuality, and also gore. Is this supposed to be a mystery? I guess so. But John doesn't really do detective work in the usual way. Maybe this will be more pronounced in the stories about his spy work??

Gabaldon writes in a "screenplay" way. You can see the action... right down to each breath and throat-clearing.

Anyways, love John, enjoyed the book. That's Percy above.

Like Water for Chocolate, Laura Esquivel (translated by Carol Christenson and Thomas Christenson)

Frida Kahlo. My Grandparents, My Parents, and I

(March 3) After years of hearing about this book, I was expecting "Betty Crocker meets Love Potion No. 9," but it was not that kind of book at all.

It was wonderful magical realism à la Gabriel Garciá Marquez or Isabelle Allende, which I love. And what was really fascinating and kind of satisfying about this version of it was that Esquivel carefully contrived all the supernatural events to have a rational interpretation... "it was Pedro's and Tita's undying passion that immolated the ranch, but afterwards people said that spilt wax was what started the fire that burned down the place"... that kind of thing. It's about how history becomes mythology. Well done.

Love it when love is the driving force in major events, sigh.

The Outcast, Sadie Jones

Ron Francis, Dad (Self-Portrait as My Father)

(February 23) Sad, sadder, saddest.

Took me more than six weeks to read these 346 pages... cf the 600 pages of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest in four days and the 850 pages of Echo in the Bone in about two weeks.

Because it was just so effin' sad. So many miserable things to happen to a grieving boy. Relentless.

I bore with it only out of respect for the presentation... it was well written... economy of words and all that.

There is a lovely scene at the very, very, very end -- but it feels like scant reward for the price paid.

Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel

Hans Holbein, Thomas Cromwell

(February) So I went into Wolf Hall with a certain amount of skepticism, first, because I gorged myself on Henry-VIII-and-his-wives books, TV shows and movies when I was a kid, and thought I was jaded, and, second, because of the comments at the copy-editing list and elsewhere about the sloppy pronominal antecedents.

But I really, really liked it -- Cromwell as the "good guy" and More as the "bad guy"? That was fascinating. And I thought the ambiguous-pronoun business was effective in the end. After a few backtracks to figure out whether it was Cromwell, Wolsey or Henry thinking or speaking, I decided Mantel was making the point that one of Cromwell's great talents was the ability "get into the head of" the magnate he was serving (or anyone else's, really). It was a cool effect. In fact, the narrative would have quite a different quality if the antecedence were "properly" copy-edited.

Despite the date stamp on this post, I didn't finish reading Wolf Hall till May 14. I waited in line for it at the library three times, through a 150-odd person queue each time. Which tells you: I liked it enough to wait for it three times, but not enough to buy it. I endured three long waits for it because it was compelling, fresh... even haunting. But it was not hard to wait.

"Is it me or ---?" comment: I think Mantel has Cromwell and his scholar friends inventing the internet at one point. Their dream system for organizing books was very internetty, anyway. Fun.

Lord John and the Private Matter, Diana Gabaldon

Thomas Gainsborough, Gainsborough Dupont

(January 7) Like the Outlander series, what's enjoyable is the author's attractive voice and her great love of the 18th century.

Lord John is really likable; he's gentle, genteel, honorable, enlightened; he has a dry wit: there's lots to like. He's a sympathetic point of view, for sure... different from Claire and Jamie in temperament, but equally someone whose party you want to join.

The novel is nominally a mystery, and questions do get answered, but Lord John is not a professional or even amateur detective in the usual sense. He's just able to put two and two together if enough clues fall into his lap.

Gabaldon indulges her fascination with the history of medicine once again -- it's entertaining to read how 18th-century coroners had to work out times and causes of death, given the lack of modern instruments and science to do such things as distinguish pig's blood from human and so on, and there's some interesting trivia, like the belief that a malarial fever could cure syphilis. Plus it's a bit of an exposé of the gay underworld of 18th-century London.