Category Archives: Erin’s Favourite Books

February 27, 2011 · 1:36 am

In the Skin of a Lion: Here be Short

    I read In the Skin of a Lion again for my class, and can’t seem to fit it in anywhere in the 10-10-12 list, so I’m putting it in “Short” both because that’s the category I’m meant to be reading right now, and because – perhaps more importantly – the book might be thought about in short thematic, chronological and character sequences. It’s a beautiful novel. There are descriptions that catch your breath, beautiful scenes between people who connect by allowing one another the space to be different, cartwheeling images that subtly shift over the course of the narrative.

I wrote an essay on the book in undergrad; I can’t remember what the essay was about. I feel like I had things to say about the novel’s representation of history. A representation that doesn’t strike me as very interesting anymore (the history of labourers and immigrants finds a space to be heard – okay), but is there for those of you interested in labour history. I was far more taken with the imagery this go around and tried to pay attention to how each operated, but found myself – perhaps appropriately – overwhelmed by the number of images and the way they worked together. So great to read a novel by a poet. I think, anyway.

Other news: 1/5 done 10-10-12. (Is this good news? Or worrisome that I’ve spent Jan/Feb reading 20 books and not finishing T?)

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January 15, 2011 · 10:19 pm

Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage: Too many ships; so much brilliance

                                    So it’s something of an admission to confess I’d never read a full collection of Alice Munro’s stories before now. The thing is – as faithful readers will know – I dislike short stories, even (or maybe especially?) short stories by brilliant authors. Before this collection I’d read one of Munro’s stories (“Boys and Girls”) for a class I taught, and really enjoyed it, but all the same resisted reading a full collection because, as with all short story collections, I feel (violently) opposed to the brief introduction to characters, which must inevitably end too early. I appreciate the short story as a compressed form, one which achieves great thematic feats in a short space, and yet all the same, I can’t help feel cheated by what I’ll never find out about characters (this from someone who writes her own – shoddy – short stories).

In any case, this collection (poorly named, I think – far too many ships) almost makes up for the failings of the form by introducing brilliant characters and having some long (novella length?) stories. I even took the new e-reader into the tub because I couldn’t wait to finish a story (new splash bag for the reader comes this week, have no fear).

I will say that amid the triumph of rendering nuanced and hopelessly believable characters in heart-breaking situations, I loved the collection, but didn’t always like it. I felt that after another hopeless ending where things don’t quite work out, or people aren’t reunited, or are miserable, or find their lives are not the lives they ought to be, that I could do with an ending where things work out. And maybe Munro’s talent is in capturing the reality of lives – the impossibility, the failure, the absence, the missed connections – and perhaps I ought to turn to another author if I want to read stories were things feel resolved, but all the same, I wouldn’t have minded a couple of stories to pick me up along the way, to restore some faint sense of hope in humanity. L. suggested that I might read one Munro story a month rather than a whole collection at once, and perhaps she’s right (but there’s no time for that kind of spacing in a year of 100 books…). Maybe I can only handle a confrontation with what is true in small, once a month doses. A complaint about me then, I suppose. Me and my desire – my commitment? my faith? my hope? – for a happy ending needs monthly dosing with Munro. Maybe all of us need monthly Munro to help us find out about others and to remind us that we are, all of us, after all, always in some kind of ‘ship,’ always colliding with others. 

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January 11, 2011 · 11:27 pm

The Diviners: Thanks, Margaret Laurence

     There are some things that enrich my life beyond all expectation or proportion: baths, bike rides, sex, and let me say it now: Margaret Laurence. I’ve long suspected she might be my favourite author (despite my discomfort with A Jest of God, I loved the book; The Stone Angel is near perfect in its characterization of Hagar), but on (re)reading The Diviners I’m ready to settle the matter: Margaret Laurence is my favourite.

I don’t mean to suggest she’s the best author out there (let’s leave conversations of ‘best’ to another day), but when reading her books I feel uncanny feelings. I feel like maybe my fears and hopes and expectations for life have been somehow borrowed from a Laurence novel; put another way, I wonder whether Laurence doesn’t anticipate and – perfectly – describe my feelings through her beautiful and flawed protagonists.

You’re thinking, yes, but in A Jest of God, Rachel is nothing but a simpering pathetic woman who longs for sexual realization, freedom and above all the “strength of conviction,” and in The Diviners Morag seems to embody this very strength (often describing her own strength, vivid in her eyes, and making difficult decisions that no doubt call upon this certain kind of strength). I do wonder though whether Morag’s strength isn’t a kind of yearning too, a recognition of “what means ‘strength of conviction’” and a realization that she doesn’t quite have it (though Christie does, and Jules, too). Maybe I most identify with and admire this yearning, and this imitable belief that you might – but haven’t yet – take what you believe you deserve, or brave enough to be the person you believe yourself to be. Admire yes, but find heart-breaking, too. The recognition that sometimes/often women do not find the strength of their conviction, do not find their strength at all. So when I find myself crying (sobbing) at the end of another Laurence novel, I say thanks to Laurence: thanks for recognizing in me (and presumably in countless others) the yearning and the nascent strength and for giving us characters who both do and do not meet their own expectations.

(If you haven’t yet read anything by Laurence I demand that you go out and do so now. Even if you are not a young woman. Or an artist. Or a mother or father. Or a… She’ll still shine a light into your soul, heart, mind  , a light into you. Read. Oh, read.)

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November 10, 2010 · 1:23 pm

A Jest of God: Best Worst Mother

I love Margaret Laurence. (I know I’m supposed to feel some ambivalence about her because she’s sometimes racist, and maybe classist, but for what it’s worth, I don’t care. Sometimes I wonder whether the politics of a writer  can be left aside when considering the merits of the writing. We’ve been talking in class about this idea: whether because an author does terrible things in their work/public life, whether we then need to dismiss their writing because of their unsavory personal story. We concluded in class that, no, you can appreciate the writing while holding the author accountable for their public actions/beliefs. I don’t know if it’s the same when an author writes about their unsavoury ideas, but does so in a beautiful and compelling way.)

Not a problem in “Jest of God,” though. Margaret Laurence is paying attention to the mother-daughter relationship and the power a mother has over a daughter. Our protagonist, Rachel Cameron, is perhaps more anxious than I am (and that’s saying something these days) and her narrative reads painfully as we experience with her her (almost) never-ending monologues of self-doubt, anxiety and self-loathing. Her mother is such a horrible, horrible mother. And Rachel knows it! And the mother does, too! And the novel is more about how the two of them figure out how to make their relationship work. Sort of. It’s also about Rachel figuring out how to be in her own skin without feeling like her skin is crawling.

I appreciate the book for its merits: beautifully plotted, rich character development, haunting narrative voice. I can’t say I enjoyed it though, if only because Rachel’s anxiety was portrayed so well – and her narrative voice captivates that anxiety so well – that I found reading the novel more anxiety producing than relaxing. So I’d suggest this book only so long as you’re reading it safely on a beach somewhere and not, for instance, trying to get your own life sorted.

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