Listen up, you wanker!

Yup, you read that right.  I have spent the week immersed in Dawn French’s A Tiny Bit Marvellous, and now I can pepper my speech with the best of British slang.  It’s a total cock-up!  So, you twatty wonk, here’s what I think about this book:

 

First, it’s not minging, in case you were worried. Second, it didn’t quite blow me away as I had hoped.  Dawn French is a British comedienne who has worked alongside Jennifer Saunders (of Absolutely Fabulous) in the hit show Saunders & French and has many TV, theatre and film credits to her name.  She’s bloody hilarious and I expected much of the book, especially since, when I picked it up at the library and read the first couple of lines I nearly laughed out loud.  Unfortunately, the rest of the book didn’t quite live up to my expectations.

 

The novel is written in a series of journal entries by three different people.  There is Mo, nearing her 50^th birthday, married and the mother of two teenagers: Dora aged 17 and Oscar aged 15.  While dad is basically the supportive glue that keeps this dysfunctional family together, he only gets one chapter or journal entry to give voice to his character.  The rest of the book is taken up by Mo and the kids.

 

Dora is a typical teenager, finishing up high school and unsure what she wants for the future.  She suffers from the usual teenage angst: poor self image, boy trouble and a love-hate relationship with the ole Mater.

 

Oscar, christened Peter, believes he is channeling the spirit of Oscar Wilde, and insists everyone call him Oscar.  He is enchanting, fashion conscious and very definitely gay.  His story is a real treat to read.

 

Mo, a child psychologist, is going through a mid-life crises while attempting to deal with her daughter’s tantrums, her son’s peculiarities, and the interest of a much younger male colleague at work.

 

The book is an interesting read, filled with wonderfully quirky British characters, but it never really seems to build or go anywhere.  Other than the rather weak family conflict there is really no actual story going on.  It was just a series of stream of consciousness jottings by three distinctly unique characters.  Plus a lot of British slang.  So A Tiny Bit Marvellous turned out to be a tiny bit disappointing for me. 

 

Till next time, happy reading!

L :)

 

TBR = 4

WPL =4

L Returns to the TBR Bookcase

Tomson Highway’s beautifully written novel Kiss of the Fur Queen is delightfully bizarre and mystical, tender and heartbreaking.  It begins in 1951, when caribou hunter Andrew Okimasis wins the World Championship Dog Derby, is kissed by the Fur Queen, arrives home in triumph and nine months later welcomes baby boy Champion (Jeremiah) Okimasis.  Two years later, the caribou hunter’s wife gives birth to their twelfth child, Gabriel.  The young Cree brothers grow up on Mistik Lake in Northern Manitoba, where at the age of seven, children are flown south to Birch Lake Residential School, run by the Jesuits.  Anyone aware of Canadian history will know sexual abuse was rampant at these schools.  Tomson Highway himself was born on an Indian reserve and sent to a Residential school.  He knows firsthand what went on there.  His book does not sugarcoat this knowledge.

 

Jeremiah and Gabriel are two incredibly gifted boys.  Jeremiah’s musical talent leads him to a career as the first Indian pianist while Gabriel dances his way to cities around the world.  Both must deal with the abuses suffered at the Residential School in their own unique ways.  Jeremiah by suppressing it, which leads to a life half-lived, drowning in alcohol, and Gabriel by embracing his sexual proclivities which leads to disease.  Neither is able to overcome the past, but for Jeremiah, after years of struggle, there is hope in catharsis through his art.

 

Worse than the sexual abuse, though, seems to be the loss of culture, of language, of religion that alienates these boys from both their own people and the white man’s world.  The Cree in Northern Manitoba have been forced to embrace Roman Catholicism and their myths and shamans deemed evil, never to be spoken of.  At the Residential School, Cree is forbidden, and so the boys struggle to walk in both worlds, never truly fitting in.  It’s a horrific account of the alienation of an entire generation of native peoples, with consequences that continue to trickle down through the years.

 

Kiss of the Fur Queen in an enchanting book filled with myth, sorcery, heartbreak and the essence of humanity.  It is a book I wholeheartedly recommend.

 

Till next time, happy reading!

L :)

 

TBR = 4

WPL = 3

L Reads a Page-Turner

I must be one of the last people in the known universe to finally read Stieg Larsson’s acclaimed The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  Everywhere I go, people are talking about this book and the movie.  Some months ago I watched the movie and blogged about it.  I found the movie riveting and immensely enjoyable.  It was one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time. 

 

Having now finally gotten around to reading the book, I can confidently say the same about it.  OMFG this book is a totally awesome read!!!  Seriously if you haven’t read this book, put down the book you’re currently reading and go out and get it.  It won’t disappoint! 

 

As I progressed through the story, I was fascinated to discover how close the movie was to the book but despite already knowing the denouement, I simply could not put the book down.  Larsson has an easy way with words that will draw you in and keep you enthralled as the story progresses from one revelation to another and just when you think you’ve reached the end, he’s got another surprise in store in the next chapter.

 

The characters are intriguing and fascinatingly portrayed and the story of the 30+ year old disappearance of sixteen year old Harriet Vanger is wonderfully complex and never tiring.  Having turned the final page, I am left wanting more.  More Larsson, and even more Lisbeth Salander, a most intriguing heroine with a dark, mysterious past I can only hope is further revealed in the next two books.

 

If you like crime novels and mystery novels you will love The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  It completely lives up to the hype.

 

Till next time, happy reading!

L :)

 

TBR = 3

WPL = 3

Beatrice & Virgil

Henry, following upon the success of his first novel, attempts to sell the idea of a “flip book.”  Not the cartoon-kind, in which each page has a cartoon drawn slightly differently than the page before so that when you flip the pages of the book, it appears to be in motion (a horse galloping for example).  Henry’s flip book will consist of a novel on one side and an essay on the other, both addressing the same subject matter and when you reach the centre of the book, and thereby the end of the novel, the essay will be written upside down, so that you will have to “flip” the book in order to read it.  A novel idea if you’ll pardon the pun.

 

Henry wants to re-imagine the Holocaust.  He wants to write about the Holocaust only represent it differently and when his sales pitch falls on deaf ears, Henry has a crisis of faith, moves out of the country and gives up writing entirely. 

 

Though Henry now spends his days taking music lessons and learning new languages, his pivotal, critically acclaimed first book is still impacting people’s lives and these readers write to him, care of his publisher, who diligently forwards on the mail.  Henry faithfully reads and responds to each letter.  One day, in the mail is an envelope containing pages of an unpublished play about two characters discussing a pear: Beatrice and Virgil.  The playwright, who lives in the same city, encloses a brief note asking for Henry’s help.  Henry decides to hand deliver his response and this is how he comes to meet Henry the taxidermist and playwright.  Together they form an unusual alliance, meeting irregularly to discuss the play and as Henry becomes more and more involved in the taxidermist’s drama, he realizes the playwright has accomplished what he himself failed with his second novel: “he was representing the Holocaust differently.”

 

Pieces of the play are interspersed throughout the novel, and reveal a horror that only Holocaust literature can.  Beatrice and Virgil are a donkey and howler monkey and the play is told from the perspective of the animals, imagining they are being tortured and killed just as sadistically as the Jews during the Holocaust (or the Horrors as Virgil calls it).

 

A truly riveting novel that is not for the faint of heart, Yann Martel, author of the critically acclaimed Life of Pi, has created another masterpiece with Beatrice & Virgil.  This is a book that will linger, long after the final page has been turned.

 

Till next time, happy reading.

L :)

L reads new CanLit: This Cake is for the Party

In an effort to read new-to-me Canadian authors, I picked up one of the 2010 Scotiabank Giller Prize finalists, Sarah Selecky and her collection of short stories entitled This Cake is for the Party, and spent the weekend delightfully enmeshed in her tales of urban and small-town fiction.  This is not your typical prairie harvest CanLit.

 

Selecky writes in a number of voices, tackling both female and male points of view.  Relationships are the focal point of her work and she explores how we relate to each other in very unique ways – like looking through a microscope she brings us to the heart of each relationship, examining its strengths and conflicts in thought-provoking ways.

 

This is a small collection of stories that left me wanting a whole lot more Selecky.  Her characters are endearing, quirky, wonderful and lovingly brought to life through the simplest details of life.  In some instances, specifically with Standing up for Janey, I felt the story ended too abruptly and I was left yearning to know what happens next.  This is the magic of Selecky, who has a terrific gift for storytelling and if you haven’t read her yet, do so at once!!  You won’t be disappointed.

 

I very much enjoyed my CanLit read for January, discovering a new-to-me author I’m dying to read more of. 

 

Till next time, happy reading!

L J

 

 

TBR = 3

WPL = 1

The Book Borrower

Alice Mattison’s delightful novel about female friendships pairs Toby Ruben and Deborah Laidlaw, two young mothers who meet in the park one day.  Stolid Ruban has baby Peter in his carriage while outgoing Deborah watches her two young girls scamper at her feet.  They strike up a conversation and soon become friends, meeting regularly for walks in the park while the children grow and play.  One day, Deborah loans Ruben her husband’s favourite book, The Trolley Girl which kicks off an interesting story within a story plotline.

 

The novel spans twenty years of Ruben’s life and chronicles the ups and downs of her friendship with Deborah as their families grow and weave around each other.  Ruben and Deborah both teach underprivileged students prepping for the GED and later college English composition courses.  Ruben, in her plodding, structured way, is the more successful of the pair.  Deborah, the more egregious personality, fails where Ruben succeeds, and blames Ruben – honest, perhaps jealous Ruben who truthfully answers in the negative their supervisor’s question: “Do you think Deborah is a good teacher?”  Yet, their friendship endures.

 

The story is told from Ruben’s perspective, and thus the story’s viewpoint is very limiting and isolated.  Missing is the omniscient narrator who knows all and sees all.  Instead, we know and see only what Ruben does, and so we experience her friendship from her limited perspective.  It’s a very intriguing way to tell a story between two women.  After all, how well do we really know each other and what goes on in other people’s lives?  As good of a friend as Deborah is to Ruben, Ruben will always be an outsider to Deborah’s life and so when tragedy strikes Deborah, Ruben can only experience so much, can only infiltrate Deborah’s family so far to lend her assistance and support.  The result is a book rich in emotion and experience, one that highlights the delightful ironies of life.

 

Till next time, happy reading.

L :)

The Mating Season by Alex Brunkhorst

The back cover blurb call’s The Mating Season “a dazzling work of the imagination and a piercing look at the human heart.”  I could not have said it better myself.

 

Alex Brunkhorst’s novel is a whimsical journey through love and loss.  On her eleventh birthday, Zorka Carpenter’s father walks away.  No goodbye, no explanation, just exits from her life.  Her mother arrives home moments later with candles for the birthday cake claiming the candles can’t be lit and the birthday cake not eaten until Daddy comes home.  But Daddy doesn’t come home, and Zorka’s mother sits beside an ever more stale cake as the hours and days pass.  She is convinced Daddy will soon return and spends the next six years of Zorka’s life perpetuating this fantasy until one day she expires from heartbreak.

 

“What makes you love another person?” [Zorka asks]

“It’s impossible to know, sweetheart,” [her mother replies] ... “Your heart will know, but your mind won’t.  And you can spend years trying to figure it out, but you never will.”

“How do you fall out of love?”

“That’s the part I haven’t figured out yet.”

 

The now orphaned Zorka fills her life with creatures, 310 to be exact.  Birds, bugs, fish, everything but humans.  She creates a dialogue for them and forms her own family unit.  Living in a glass greenhouse with her menagerie she is content until the day she meets Richard and falls in love herself.  Richard is a man obsessed with the past, specifically a lost love of his own and cannot offer Zorka a future.  Determined not to be like her mother Zorka finds the strength to let Richard go, and move forward into her own future.

 

A very poignant and moving story filled with whimsy and magic.  A great read that I highly recommend.

Till next time, happy reading.

L :)

 

TBR = 2

WPL = 0

Reading Kafka

I picked up a lovely little volume of Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis at Chapters some time back and have been itching to read it.  The afternoon of New Year’s Day, I finally did.  Call it starting out my new year’s resolutions on the right foot, hitting the TBR bookcase right out of the gate and all.  Or perhaps it was just that I’d finished up all my library books.  Either way, I devoured Metamorphosis in one brief sitting and quite enjoyed it, despite its buggy references, though I now have a better appreciation for the little creepy crawlies and will think twice before I squash one again.

 

In Kafka’s story, Gregor Samsa awakens one morning to discover he’s been turned into a bug.  Something crossed between a beetle and a cockroach.  The sole breadwinner for his family, he is mortified that his metamorphosis is keeping him from work and fears his family will suffer with additional debt for his transgressions.

 

Kafka’s story is an interesting one.  When five years earlier, his father lost the family business, Gregor stepped up, receiving a promotion and increase in pay that kept the family (mom, dad and little sister) in comfort.  His parents eased into retirement life and his sister whiled away the days playing her violin while a charwoman kept house, all while Gregor spent long hours working as a travelling salesman.  There is no appreciation for his hard work or sacrifices and this is quickly revealed when he is suddenly incapacitated and can no longer earn a wage.  Father is furious, being too old and fat to return to the work force, though he soon has to, to keep the family afloat.  And though mother and sister Grete at first sympathize with Gregor’s predicament (much as they may be revolted by the transformation of his physical being), they at least keep him fed and safe in his room.  However, as the family further degenerates into poverty, Gregor is seen as more of a burden and hindrance than a member of the family and is further ostracized from the familial circle.

 

A powerful story about family relationships, I quite enjoyed my afternoon with Kafka.

 

Till next time, happy reading!

L :)

L Goes Back to High School

While I am a huge fan of the HBO series Sex and the City, I have never particularly enjoyed Candace Bushnell’s writing.  However, when The Carrie Diaries came out this past summer, I was curious.  The book is about Carrie Bradshaw in high school, before she found her voice as a writer and moved to New York City, and I have to say, it was surprisingly good.  I enjoyed the trip down memory lane, looking back on my own high school days and adventures.

 

Carrie Bradshaw is a senior in high school with the sole aim of snagging a boyfriend for her final year.  It is 198- (we’re never given an exact date) and Carrie and her misfit motley crew of friends are just trying to survive high school with its assorted cliques, and heartbreaks.  It’s high school, with the usual hook ups and break ups and senior year is all about figuring out who you are and what you want out of life.

 

When I first started the book, I kept flashing back to the TV series Square Pegs.  Maybe because I so deeply associate Sarah Jessica Parker with the character of Carrie Bradshaw, and SJP’s infamous teenage role was as the quirky misfit Patty Greene in Square Pegs.  Or maybe it was that Bushnell named the head cheerleader and most popular girl in school Donna LaDonna, a name too closely related to the “LaDonna “ character in Square Pegs, but thankfully it wasn’t long before I was immersed in Carrie’s teenage story as she struggles to find her feminist voice and resist sexual peer pressure.  Bushnell has thankfully been faithful to the character I have come to love on the small and big screen, as she portrays Carrie’s early years as a small-town girl wanting more.

 

One criticism I have of the book (and which revels the depth of my fandom of the franchise) is the continuity errors between book and TV series.  In the fifth season of the show, Carrie reveals her dad left her and her mom when she was just five.  Yet Bushnell writes a teenage Carrie, the oldest of three girls, being raised by her father, after the death of her mother.  Also, one of my favourite episodes stars David Duchovny as Carrie’s high school boyfriend Jeremy.  The show does this great homage to the girls’ high school personas.  However, the Carrie Bradshaw of The Carrie Diaries and the Carrie Bradshaw of this episode really need to compare notes, because there ain’t no mention of Jeremy anywhere in The Carrie Diaries.  And yes, I’ve just revealed how much of a SATC nerd I am.  But for the diehard fans, the book would have been more fulfilling I think, if it had stayed true to those details of the past that were peppered throughout the series.  That being said, I still found the book to be a fairly enjoyable read.

 

Till next time, happy New Year!  May it be filled with wonderful books to read.

L :)