So why didn’t I like Lynn Coady’s The Antagonist? Short-listed for the Giller Prize in 2012 and named as one of the best books of the year by Canadian papers The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star and even Amazon, it seems like everyone else thought/thinks this is a terrific read. Is it because I don’t care much about hockey (with the exception of gold medal games and stanley cup finals?) and the book is – on a surface level at least – about the violence engendered in the sport? Is it because the experiments with form – shifting from straight epistolary to metafictional commentary on the purpose of narrative – were neither subtle nor reflective of content (I reveal my bias here that I like formal play best, and perhaps only, when the form compliments or challenges the content)? Perhaps it was because the long delayed climax and been so overly built-up, so assured of its own cataclysmic significance, that when it finally arrived I read it as anticlimax and disappointment: this is it? this is what he’s delayed telling us? this is the source of so much shame? Or maybe it was simply that the experience of the narrator – an experience far removed from my own – was not offered or rendered in a way that invited empathy or connection, such that the distance between his experience and mine felt like that – distance – rather than as an opportunity to inhabit the skin and experience of someone else and in so doing to change my perception and reactions.
With all these complaints I should say that the novel does carefully and fully explore the consequence(s) of using the stories of others for our own purposes: the ways we can exploit one another’s histories and stories for our advantage without intending to perhaps, but just by using the stories as adage rather than as the complex, idiosyncratic experiences that they are.
This is all to say that I didn’t enjoy The Antagonist but it may be more my fault than that of the novel. Or it may just be a case where I disagree with the critical reception. Convince me otherwise – I promise to exploit your comments.
I started reading Alice Munro’s *Best Stories* last night. Actually I started reading Margaret Atwood’s forward to the collection. Whatever. Atwood told me that ‘short stories’ are better called ‘short fiction.’ I suppose there’s something dismissive in calling something a ‘story’? Not as meaty as ‘fiction’? Fair enough. Henceforward I will register my complaints with “short fiction” rather than the stories.
That said, I have few complaints with Andrew Hood’s *Pardon Our Monsters*. Here are the things I enjoyed: I was impressed with the endings of the stories as they did well to provide a punch that registered with the theme of the story and those of the collection. In a few cases the endings similar work to that of *The Family Fang* in that the plot and characters were full enough that I could readily imagine what might happen next (or should happen next). There were some brilliant similes/metaphors in this collection – utterly surprising ways of describing a sunset – that were delightful and didn’t (quite) fall into the Tom Robbins trap of being so unexpected as to be jarring. I loved many of the characters who were at home in their corporeal bodies (there is a disproportionate number of fat children and redheads in this collection, perhaps a commentary on the additional ostracization these genetic ‘monsters’ encounter in daily life?) with all the grotesque attendants of being bodily: tumours, gasses, smells, lusts and urges, itches and sweats. The everyman quality of these characters meant this reader could easily identify with aspects (that all but one protagonist is a young(ish) man – if I remember correctly – speaks to the identify-ability of the characters beyond their gendered or aged bodies). Did I mention some gorgeous writing? Yes, there’s that, too.
The few complaints I do have: Some moments in the stories read like “this is the moment I’m going to tell you – by being oblique and Literary – what the theme or question of this story is.” It’s an odd complaint, and let me try to explain again. The stories *have* compelling questions (how do we connect with other people? can we get past our own insecurities? how can we support and care for those we love while being simultaneously selfish souls?). The stories *have* wonderful ways of revealing these questions through character thoughts and actions. The plot and let these questions surface. The stories resist telling you what they’re about, but then somehow they do: in one story there’s a moment where the reader reads something to the effect of ‘the moments/scenes you’re least expecting or the most unusual are the moments that tell you what it all means.’ The reveal happens a character’s thought process, or a paragraph break that says ‘this is important stuff.’ I suppose it’s a complaint that comes from a place of love for the stories: I love the story and I’m a good reader – trust me to figure out the question/importance on my own.
Given that it’s hardly a complaint to wish the stories gave me *less* – I’ll leave off by saying it’s a collection well worth seeking out. Oh! And it offers a terrific sense of place, too, so if you’re looking to get a sense of where I’m living these days…
For some reason I forgot about Mary Lawson. I read *Crow Lake* and *The Other Side of the Bridge* and liked them both, but then forgot who she was. And so this summer when I moved to Guelph, ON and saw ads at the (charming) local bookstore that Mary Lawson was coming to read I sort of shrugged. The ads billed her as “local” and I somehow didn’t connect that “local” in this instance could have been replaced with “international bestseller.” So imagine my delight in hearing her read and putting the two together: ah! Mary Lawson + Crow Lake! And then my enthusiasm to pick up Roads End – expecting (and receiving!) a Christmas read of the same kind of great character and plot of her earlier work.
What makes a great character? I’ve argued elsewhere for a character that makes believable – if difficult – decisions, characters who develop, change, regress, over the course of the narrative. In this instance its the development *after* the narrated plot that I’d highlight as an indicator of a successful character. This novel takes the narrative point of view of three characters — Megan (third person), Tom (third) and Edward (first) — and lets the reader alternately inhabit their perspective on past/present events. Overlapping chronologies require the reader to piece together plot through the disparate narration in a manner that rewards attentiveness and lends a certain (perhaps unnecessary?) suspense. In effect the decision to narrate in this way allows the reader to get “close” to all three and imagine their conflicts and aspirations continue after the book ends. For me – and perhaps an indication of my proximity to the character more than anything else – I was most interested in Megan’s journey and her ultimate decision. Since finishing the book a few days ago I’ve been lamenting that I don’t know – for sure – what happens to her next. And hoping that in Lawson’s next book (as in this one!) characters from past novels will reappear to provide a soothing “it works out fine for her” kind of answer.*
The plot itself doesn’t demand grandeur, instead it takes quotidian drama, adds the tragedy unique to small towns — the suicide/affair/birth/illness/injury/crime that everyone both knows about and is affected by — and allows characters the space and time to fully respond to the events. The book is worth reading if only for the way it lets the reader argue against the character’s decisions, seeing in all the ways their lives could be easier, more satisfying, more… something.
And it’s there – in the wanting what’s best for the characters – that I come to my minor complaint with an otherwise terrific read. It’s that it read to me like Lawson couldn’t quite leave her characters as hurt and as bewildered as they deserved to be. Which is not to say the changes they experience are unjustified or rushed – they’re not – but rather that the “roads end” for the characters, while not quite headed to the sunset, is decidedly smoother than I found believable or fair. Am I sadist? Maybe (count me in with Munro there), but I expect that for all the effort spent making the characters utterly believable, fallible, frustrating and *human* they might have done better to end with a little more bleak – and not the hope of the (literal) spring on which the novel concludes.
*My caveat: So I loved *Gone With the Wind* as a teenager. I loved the sex and the brutality of the ending. (I tried to re-read it in my early 20s and discovered I couldn’t make it through the racism). So, of course, I devoured the sequel (authored by Alexandra Ripley) *Scarlett* as I wanted – desperately – for the characters to live on and to find love, reconciliation, etc, blah blah, love. But, of course, the novel was terrible. It had to be terrible. Readers didn’t deserve and shouldn’t get “answers” or “solutions” to what-happens-to-characters-after-the-last-page. That should be the work of the novel itself. If readers can’t predict, or at least imagine, what the next decisions will be then perhaps the novel and its characters weren’t very good in the first place. Which is not to say I don’t want to see Lawson’s characters reappear, just that I know my desire to see them again is a selfish one borne of liking them, and not a literary one.
I love thrillers and police procedurals. So much. Law and Order is a staple in my life – feeling anxious? watch the predictable unfolding of 44 minutes. With Andrew Pyper’s *Lost Girls” (see a few posts ago for his Demonologist) I wanted to be swept up and riveted by the book. The back cover made me hopeful. The early chapters even more so. But, like the Demonologist, the premise and the opening salvo left so much to be desired.
In reading the acknowledgements (aside: I *love* the acknowledgements in novels. I wish they were longer – see Dave Eggers’ acknowledgements in AHWOSG for a good model – just kidding, but not really) I noticed that Pyper had previously published sections of the novel in journals. I suspect (because the book makes me a detective?) that the few chapters at the beginning – briefly returned later in the novel – focused on the young kids at the lake was a brilliantly written and published short story. But the rest of the novel that tries to take this exceptional opening premise and extend it is just… not good.
The suspense isn’t suspenseful. I don’t care about our protagonist. I don’t believe his fear. Even if I did, I don’t care whether he’s scared. The unbelievable elements – ghost woman at the lake who steals children – is introduced as a ghost story within the narrative, not as something compelling or real in her own right. As a result the story-within-a-story that lacks the thematic depth that you might expect from a story-within-a-story and instead serves a simple plot purpose: to introduce the complicating “ghostly” element of the murder mystery. It’s a weak way to introduce this element and that the rest of the plot is premised on this weak element means that well… the rest of the plot is similarly shoddy.
So no, I won’t read anymore Andrew Pyper. Even if all the Canadian presses keep telling me he’s all that. I get it. He’s got some great components, and I’m guessing he’s a brilliant short story writer. But going 0-2 makes me less willing to climb on board again.
Literary Vice 