…Or Not to Be: A Collection of Suicide Notes

Marc Etkind’s book of suicide notes is, he says “pornography” and that we are “sadistic voyeur[s], transforming someone else’s pain into [our] own pleasure.”  He continues to state that “it seems wrong to make public someone’s private pain.  But this assumes that all suicide notes are meant to be private.”  All of the suicide notes in …Or Not to Be have been previously published.  Etkind brings them into this collection to discuss the similarities of these notes and to try to shed some light and understanding on the mind of a suicide completer.

 

On Easter Sunday in April of 2004 (I don’t remember the exact date, either the 11^th or 12^th – I’m terrible with dates, but I remember the Christian holiday well), my eldest brother completed suicide.  He was 50 years old.  He left no note.  For most of the year following his death, I was haunted by that eternal question: why?  I am resolved to never knowing the answer, however I had not realized until reading Etkind’s book that six years after the fact I am still asking: why?  I guess I always will.

 

Excerpt from …Or Not to Be:

 

Resume

 

Razors pain you;

Rivers are damp;

Acids stain you;

and drugs cause cramp.

Guns aren’t lawful;

Nooses give;

Gas smells awful;

You might as well live.

                                    ~ Dorothy Parker

 

Dorothy Parker attempted suicide five times, and “died at the age of seventy-three of a heart attack.”  I guess she took the advice of her own work.  Many artists complete suicide, in large part because they are often manic-depressives.  In fact, mental illness is a contributing factor in the decision to end one’s life, if not the factor for suicide. 

 

What I have learned from Etkind’s book, which not only presents suicide notes from all walks of life and eras of history, since notes were first published in the eighteenth century with the birth of literary, but also analyses their contents, that even for those who leave notes, no answer is found as to why the individual chooses suicide.  There just is no answer.

 

A remarkable book.  …Or Not to Be: a Collection of Suicide Notes by Marc Etkind, published by Riverhead Books in New York, 1997.

 

Till next time, happy reading

L

Indulgence in Death

The latest installment in J.D. Robb’s (aka Nora Roberts) In Death series starts out in Ireland, with Eve Dallas and Roarke on vacation, visiting Roarke’s mother’s family.  Of course, death never takes a break, and Dallas soon stumbles over a body.  But as the entire book isn’t set in Ireland, this murder is an open and shut case and it isn’t until the happy couple return to New York that the meat of the story takes off.

 

While Ireland was a nice interlude, it started the book off very slowly for me.  I would much rather have been thrown in to the “real” murder mystery right from chapter one.  Because it is only when Eve sinks her teeth into the murder of a limo driver does the book finally take off and become the usual page-turner Robb/Roberts is known for.

 

That being said, I still had issues with the book.  I like the In Death books, in great part due to the continuing story of Eve and Roarke and their circle of friends.  But lately, their relationship has stagnated.  They’ve settled into the happy married couple rut you know your beloved romance novel couples do, but you just don’t particularly want to read about it.  I miss the emotional angst of the turbulent early days of their relationship and marriage and having them both deal with the skeletons in each others’ past.  Perhaps Robb/Roberts has mined that part of the story for all she can.  What’s left is mediocre mystery, where the bad guy(s) stand out like sore thumbs because there’re only a handful of characters in each book and most of them are recurring.  Once again, in Indulgence in Death, we learn who done it before we’re halfway through the book and it’s just a matter of how Eve proves it.  I don’t generally like mysteries that read this way.  I’m more of an Agatha Christie fan who loves to read a book peppered with possible suspects and so many red herrings I end up smacking my head at the end, wondering why I didn’t see it, ‘cause once Dame Agatha explains all, you feel pretty silly for missing her clues.  I guess when I read, I want to think, not be instantly gratified with the solution presented before the problem is even read about.

 

But to give Robb/Roberts her due, Indulgence in Death is still one of her better installments to the series of late and although I knew who done it, the fast pace of the story kept me turning pages till the end.

 

Till next time, happy reading.

L J

The Johns: sex for sale and the men who buy it – Victor Malarek

Victor Malarek is a journalist living in Toronto.  He has done hard-hitting news segments for the fifth estate and other news outlets on the sex trafficking of women and children for prostitution and sex exploitation.  In his book The Natashas, he explores the stories of these trafficked victims.  The Johns, looks at the problem from the opposite side of the coin – the men who buy sex and create a demand for trafficked women and children.

Malarek presents the various faces of the men who frequent prostitutes, compiling research from interviews, websites and internet forums.  The picture he draws is both heartbreaking and disturbing.  Malarek posits that if there were no johns, there would be no prostitution, yet there are so many factors that drive some men to “pay for play,” many of which had me alternately shaking my head and biting back tears.  How have we come to be a society where people (men) feel so unlovable they would pay for a brief moment of pleasure because no woman could possibly want to be with them otherwise?   Or that older men see it as a rite of passage for their sons, to lose their virginity to an “experienced” woman, often setting up the encounters for them.  The scores of homicides attest to the number of men who see prostitution as an outlet for their violence, their rage, their hatred of women.  Malarek rightly points out that no other profession on earth is as dangerous as prostitution. 

Yet, how do governments fight back?  When it is the victim being prosecuted, we can’t.  Currently it is only the women who face jail time and criminal records.  The men who buy sex are cloaked in secrecy, among the so called “Brotherhood” – the cops and politicians who also “pay for play.”  In the last decade, Sweden passed into law an act that criminalizes the purchase of sex.  Johns are now fearful to buy as they will be criminally charged for their actions.  The country has seen a sharp decline in the sex trade.  If only the rest of the globe would follow suit.  Unfortunately sex tourism brings billions of dollars into impoverished countries like Thailand, the Philippines, Costa Rica and others.  Money the governments of those countries don’t want to turn away.  And so women and children continue to be trafficked and exploited.  Thankfully, voices like Malarek’s are speaking out against this travesty.

The Johns: sex for sale and the men who buy it

Victor Malarek

Key Porter Books, 2009

 

Till next time,

L

The Sittaford Mystery

I am slowly clearing out the last of my books on hold reads from the public library.  Agatha Christie’s The Sittaford Mystery was one of them.  Normally I enjoy Christie, but perhaps this read was too close to the last one or because I thought this was a Miss Marple mystery and she was nowhere to be found, but for whatever reason the book fell flat with me and I just didn’t get my usual Christie enjoyment out of it.

 

As I read further and further into the book I started to wonder why there was no mention of Miss Marple, when I was sure this was a Marple book.  No mention of her was on the cover, or the back blurb, yet when I did a Google search on the title the name Miss Marple inevitably came up.  Upon turning the final page of the novel and still no Miss Marple to be found, I returned to Google only to find the book was turned into a movie with none other than Miss Marple solving the crime.  Hmm.  Bit of literary license taken there, I’d say.

 

Well.  Humpf. 

In the novel, a neighbourly group descends upon Sittaford House one Friday afternoon for tea with the Willets, a mother and daughter new to the neighbourhood.  They have recently rented Sittaford House from its owner, Captain Trevelyan who has taken a place nearby in Exhampton.  A game of table turning is soon suggested and everyone gathers round for some physic fun.  Little are they aware that murder is about to occur or that the victim’s name will be spelled out by the “spirit” called forth.  Upon hearing that Captain Trevelyan has been murdered, the group disbands, shocked, upset.  None more so than his good friend Major Burnaby, who insists on leaving at once for Exhampton to check on the Captain, despite the snowstorm rapidly approaching.

 

In the habit of visiting, by foot, his friend each Friday, Major Burnaby trudges through the driving snow the six miles to Exhampton only to discover the murdered body of his late friend.  Who, how and why must be discovered and it is soon revealed that the Captain’s nephew had visited Exhampton on the day of the murder and left by the six o’clock train the following morning.  Highly suspicious behavour.  The nephew is quickly arrested, but his fiancé, one Emily Trefusis, insists he is innocent and sets out to prove it while discovering the real murderer.

 

All the elements of Christie are present.  Quiet village life with the usual assortment of oddball characters and a whip-smart young girl searching for truth while devoted to her true love.  I guess I just missed Miss Marple and her clever ingeniousness or Hercule Poirot with his “little grey cells”.  Stock characters perhaps, but for me, they bring Christie to life.  The Sittaford Mystery was not a terrible read, I just had trouble getting into it as it was not at all what I was expecting.

 

Till next time, happy reading.

L J

Got Debt? Get Gail!

OMFG this book is amazing!  And Gail Vaz-Oxlade is my new hero!  So many financial gurus are great at telling you what you need to do to get your finances in order.  Gail goes one step further and shows you.  Step by step with instructions that any idiot (namely me) can follow, Gail can help you turn your finances around.

Lately I have been feeling the pinch.  The pinch of spending more than I make, living off credit too often, and watching my credit balances go continually upwards instead of down.  I was playing a disastrous juggling game with my finances and my little house of cards finally came tumbling down.  Enter Gail and her wonderful manual that will help you get Debt-Free Forever should you so choose.  And baby I choose!!!  I’m so very tired of playing the credit game and knowing if I should lose my job tomorrow, I would have very little savings to carry me over to the next job, and in this economy, there’s no guarantee the next job will be there before the money runs out. 

So, I started with Gail’s first exercise:  Track your spending.  I gathered my financial papers together for the past 6 months and sat down, plunking the numbers into a most conveniently provided spreadsheet (you can change the categories, delete some or add more.  It’s a great tool to get you started).  OMG eye-opener!  Was I really spending that much each month?  No wonder I have debt.  Sigh.  Time to grow up, knuckle down, cut back, do whatever it is I need to do to get me out of this mess I’ve made for myself,

But before the budget is made and the cutting back begins, Gail takes you through a much needed exercise -- one I unfortunately skipped in my immediate need to polish up my spending habits, but that I have every intention of doing: Sit down and write out your dreams, what it is you truly want out of life and then make them your goals.  Then, when you begin to budget and pay down debt and save and cut back on your fun spending money, you have a purpose for all this hard work (because let me tell you, I desperately want to just say “budget smudget” and do all the fun things I was doing before, but reality is, that behaviour if left unchecked will put me into the poor house faster than you can pronounce Gail’s last name!).

So I’m two weeks into a new budget, one I’m managing to stick to, because it’s based on realistic figures.  Figures gathered from my 6-month spending tracker and advice from some incredibly supportive friends.  I have a solid plan for paying off my consumer debt in three years or less, a plan I feel really good about,   And I’m working on those goals – where I want to be, and what I want to accomplish 3, 5, 10 years from now,  It’s not going to be easy.  Gail doesn’t promise easy.  But she does guarantee results, if you’re committed. 

Should you embark on Gail’s plan, however, one word of caution which Gail herself addresses:  Be prepared to find out who your true friends are.  I certainly have, though not without much surprise, grief and disappointment.  Well, Gail will not only help you shed your debt, but also the users and spongers in your life.  And we can all do without users and spongers, am I right?

Gail is changing my life for the better, one penny at a time.  Cheers Gail!

Till next time, happy reading!

L J

From Stone Orchard

Timothy Findley’s endearing memoir of his experiences living at Stone Orchard, a farm near Cannington Ontario he and Bill Whitehead purchased in 1964.  Together, they lived on and loved the farm for thirty years.

 

A collection of vignettes, many of which published originally in Harrowsmith magazine Findley shares with candid detail and much humour, his adventures as a city dweller coping with rural living, the people he encounters and befriends and the many animals that shared his home there.  Stone Orchard was not only a beloved home, where many of his books were written, and some set, but it was also an animal sanctuary as Tiff and Bill rescued many cats, dogs and even horses.  Not even the mice that invaded their very walls were turned away.

 

Beautifully written and heartfelt, From Stone Orchard reminds me of the best of rural living, of community, of being neighbourly – it is the best of small town Ontario.  Findley’s love for place and people permeate every word, every sentence.  He has opened up his home and his life to his readers and it is truly a treat.  A very enjoyable read.

 

Till next time, happy reading!

L J

L manages to read a book. Hurrah!

Yes, hurrah!  I am horribly behind in reading my programming text for the course I’m taking this Fall semester, and I’ve managed to get sick again, but all that doesn’t matter because I read a book ... purely for pleasure … and it was wonderful!!!

 

The Ice Queen by Alice Hoffman, author of Practical Magic (which was made into one of my all-time favourite chick flicks starring Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman) is, according to the dust jacket, a book that “illuminates the bonds and mysteries that connect mother and daughter, sister and brother, woman and man.”

 

When she was eight years old, our unnamed narrator made a terrible wish.  She wished that her mother would die.  And her mother did.  Wracked with grief and blame, our narrator creates a fairy tale for herself in which she becomes the girl who climbed a mountain and refused to move, becoming frozen in place for all eternity.  The Ice Queen continues to function, moving through the motions of life, never really living or feeling until one day she relocates from New Jersey to Orlon County, Florida to be closer to her brother Ned.  Orlon County is a place renowned for having the most lightning strikes and lightning strike survivors and not long after her move, the Ice Queen is struck, causing a miraculous awakening in her life.

 

Told from the first person perspective our unnamed narrator leaps to life through Hoffman’s prose.  It is only as I write this, trying to describe this book, that I realize the woman whose life I so intimately followed has no name.  Yet, she is as real to me as I am, as you are.  A powerful, moving book, The Ice Queen will keep you turning the pages.

 

Till next time, happy reading J

L