hurtling to the end of a road trip

Well, I finished The Flying Troutmans.

I guess.

If, indeed, Miriam Toews actually finished The Flying Troutmans.

Coming to the end of the tale of Hattie -- a woman who loves her family but is not a star when it comes to making good decisions -- and her road trip with her sister's children, I was struck by how Toews seemed to be hurtling to an end-point. The last hundred pages seemed hurried and disorganized and not thick on character development. Which is really too bad, because I actually think there are some real gems when it comes to character in this tale. It just, unfortunately, falls flat.

I feel like I need to qualify all these criticisms -- I love, love, love A Complicated Kindness. I think A Complicated Kindness should be taught in school, if it isn't already. And, from that, I still believe Toews has a magic touch when it comes to writing about children in a way adults can relate to. But her aim with the Troutman family is off.

In other news....

The BBC offers a sneak peak of their Emma project.

Bookshelves! These are pretty. And this site is meant to inspire. C'mon. Give into your book nerd.

What would you say to you when you were 16?

And.... Ok, I'm not sure I trust myself to read Audrey Niffenegger without a box of Kleenex nearby. Nonetheless, I'm willing to take a gamble on her new book....

ladies in peach (go crazy)

"I entered the relationship world thinking it was all based on how loudly those butterflies were beating their wings in my tummy. I could have used some warning at twenty-one when I met Adam and began my first serious relationship, a relationship that would last ten years and bring me to where I am now, consulting self-help books and consoling myself with cheap Merlot."

And so begins -- more or less -- the tale of The Prairie Bridesmaid.

But where should I begin....

Yeah, I did not really enjoy Daria Salamon's debut. I tried, though. I mean, Chantal Kreviazuk likes it, according to the cover. And I often find myself singing Kreviazuk songs in the shower, so clearly.... Also, Nia Vardalos. Who doesn't love My Big Fat Greek Wedding?

But the thing is, the main character's voice is too much. She's too ironic. She's too punchy with the jokes as she's gazing at her navel. She's too separated from herself as everything falls to pieces around her.

It gets hard to believe she has a single feeling that's real. Especially when she starts talking to a friendly neighbourhood rodent.

Meanwhile, if the storyline of Bridezillas gone pure evil weren't too much, Salamon suddenly got a case of the Days of Our Lives. When things started to slow down, she threw in an adoption storyline. And a childhood abuse storyline. And a scary pregnancy storyline. And a religious cult storyline.

I am actually not ruining the book for you, because none of those storylines have anything of any substance to do with the actual narrative.

Hm. I should stop ranting. You should skim the book. While standing in Chapters. And don't believe Steven Galloway when he says, "Every bit as entertaining as A Complicated Kindness...." This is a falsehood.

Ok. Calming down. Back to Margaret Atwood, who never lets me down.

so what?

It's stories like this one that make short fiction so frustrating to me.... Gorgeous writer (of course, it is Miriam Toews, after all), funny and quirky observations, but absolutely no story arc. I don't expect a Da Vinci Code-packed plot or anything in a couple thousand words. But seriously -- what is the point of this story?

The Geist piece highlights why Naomi K. Lewis's work is so good in Cricket in a Fist. The book is a novel, but it wasn't developed that way. Lewis wrote each chapter as a short story for her university creative writing courses, and so each tale reads as a rather separate piece. Still, she manages to apply plot to her chapters, which makes them all the more readable.

(I love Lewis's prose -- I must admit I am not yet finished her book, but I love her way with words. Thought I'd share this wee excerpt: "Esther looked up from her cards as though surprised to find herself in such an unlikely setting. She waved her hand, seven of spades fluttering. 'Three generations and not a man to be seen. All gone. Like this.' A butterfly had left Ginny's basil to flutter past the railing. Addressing Ginny's bulge, she concluded, 'Such a family you'll be born into.' Ginny put her hand protectively over her middle." p. 53)

Totally off-topic and pointing to another link to Geist, I offer this to make you giggle.

a late ode to Canada Day

In honour of our 140th birthday (ha ha! we secured Confederation before Germany or Italy!), I offer up my Top 10 picks for best Canadian books.... Recognizing, of course, that this is a rather sad, English-only list. But taking pride for a moment that it's also a rather woman-heavy list.

1. Anne of Green Gables. Long before I fell for Tennyson, we were kindly introduced by L.M. Montgomery. Was there a girl more imaginative than Anne Shirley? I wanted curly red hair. And freckles. Without any real understanding of what a gingham dress might be, I longed for one. I wanted a group of little girl friends who would join me in my story-writing and play-acting. I wanted a Gilbert Blythe of my very own....



2. Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood. If Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale was a harrowing look at where humanity could go -- in its worst-case, women as little more than baby-producing cattle, way -- then Oryx and Crake is a worst-case tale of where science could go in a world poisoned by man. And woman. This is not a book of lyrical feminism but achingly dirty and ego-driven masculinity. A world where one needs lots and lots of sunblock. And hope. For something.



3. I just finished reading a story as told through the eyes of a very young girl. And while admirable, it was no A Complicated Kindness. Miriam Toews gently imbues her tale of a young woman living in a small Manitoba Mennonite community with angst and confusion and hope and hopelessness. For example: "Travis told me that when I was dying to get high was when I was the most together and brilliant. Well, I said, it's the dying part that makes me feel alive."



4. There are moments when Ann-Marie MacDonald's Fall on Your Knees feels like the worst kind of melodrama. They are tiny glimpses of moments buried amongst all the overwhelmingly excellent prose. Her The Way the Crow Flies, however, may be a little shorter on the poetic prose and a little longer on the excellent story-telling. Maybe it's because my mom grew up on an Air Force base, maybe it's because there's a hopefulness and news-worthiness to her tale of Madeleine McCarthy -- an eight-year-old girl accidentally drawn into the biggest news story of her time, whose ripe fear keeps her silent -- but I would have to say MacDonald's second major novel outshines her first.



5. Remember when Maclean's was really really good? And you always read the back page first? Fotheringham's Fictionary of Facts and Follie is an ode to that time, an ode to the days when you ran to the post box on Tuesdays, eagerly awaiting that week's periodical. And then you laughed and laughed.



6. If I was astounded by Atwood's ability to depict a man gone wild in Oryx and Crake, I was far more blown away by Richard B. Wright's tale of two sisters in Clara Callan. Was Clara a realistic, representative small-town Ontario woman of the 1930s? I still can't decide. She was daring in her silence, in her privacy, in her life choices.... More daring, really, than the sister who pursued adventure in the United States. Clara is a tragic anomaly, and Wright created her so perfectly.



7. Rilla of Ingleside is the somewhat melodramatic final tale of Anne of Green Gables. Rilla is Anne's youngest daughter, a girl so feckless and unimaginative she is completely unlike her mother. Instead of the bouncing chapter-to-chapter fun of L.M. Montgomery's first novel, Rilla's story speaks to the author's last wishes for peace and love in this world. I have long loved Rilla, even for her self-centredness. Her tale brings the whole story to a close -- a close that allows us to remember Anne forever as an adult, too, a mother who hurt and cried and laughed and loved....



8. Okay. This list is making me gross sentimental. Time for some harsh come-uppance. Cue Naomi Klein's No Logo. I don't think there's any Canadian between the ages of 20 and 30, who went to university or college at some point during that time, who doesn't remember when this book came out. When it kicked ass (depending on your opinion). When it made you feel guilty (again, depending on your opinion). When it made you want to make a change in your world. (Come on!)



9. No list of top Canadian books is complete with Timothy Findley. (I'm sure people would say the same about Mordecai Richler. I'm not one of them, but I respect the opinion.) I offer you the mystical, sepia-toned tale of The Piano Man's Daughter.



10. In The Strangest Dream, Merrily Weisbord tells tales of Canadian communism. Of sweatshops in Montreal and the Cold War. Of spies and treason and, yup, I'm going to say it again, hope. I have almost as many folded-over corners and drawn-in stars and arrows in this book as I do in More's Utopia. Perhaps that says more about me than the book.... "What now? What do we believe now after the death of what was at once the most noble dream and a soul-destroying nightmare? Is global capitalism all there is? What remains of the impulse for social justice? What, if anything, is the legacy of the strangest dream?"

the cool table

Thank goodness I'm not afraid of being late to the cool table. Or missing it altogether.

By this, I mean that I often am the last one to know what is cool. For example, every Christmas my brother and his partner have to introduce me to new and cool music.

(Side note, last week my sort-of sister-in-law introduced me to a local band. In Edmonton. She and my brother live in Ottawa. This is really but a window to my uncoolness.)

For example, I was years behind everyone else in getting to A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews and The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger -- two novels that changed the way I want to read books, two narratives that struck me by how gently one can and should handle the characteristics of love and childhood.

Another example: despite my love for Atwood's stories, The Blind Assassin still sits, unread, on my bookshelf, seven years after I purchased it in hardcover. Alongside it is Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, which incidentally has been very popular over the last, say, century and a quarter.

And I still don't know why the caged bird sings. Even though, again, my brother and his partner have tried to show me.

All this does come around to a point -- something else that is new for me but likely old to everyone else. A blog about London's Tube. I know it must be old to everyone else because it's included in blogspot.com's list of must-reads. But I only just discovered it -- and it's very cool.