Category Archives: Prize Winner

November 2, 2010 · 10:32 pm

Barney’s Version: Brilliant

               There is so much I love about Barney’s Version. So many things, in fact, that I had drafted a letter to Richler expressing my thanks that he created Barney. Only on planning to post the letter did I realize (much to my Canadianist chagrin) that Richler has been dead for awhile. Sigh. All the same, thank-you Mr. Richler, wherever you are: Barney is brilliant.

I loved and hated Barney. I wanted him to be happy, to be miserable, mostly to be happy. I knew he deserved to be miserable, but wanted, so much, for him to get what he wanted – what he didn’t deserve. I experienced an unusual (for me) reading response in that I cried at the end of the book, both because I was devastated that the narrative had ended and that Barney’s version ended the way it did. Only in the last pages to be wam-powed into extremes of emotional reactions. Such an affecting story. Cripes.

They’re making a movie! (Who are they? I don’t know.) Or maybe they already did. I only found out when I finished the book and went around telling everyone I knew that in case they missed it when it was an international bestseller and winner of prizes, that they should check it out – immediately. I was told it was a movie. So there you go, if you like movies, you can get your Barney that way, too. Only I say read the book. Read the book for character, for ideas of memory and aging and for the love of a good book. Will I regret making this decision in a few months? Hard to say, but for now I’m listing Barney’s Version as the best read of 2010.

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October 16, 2010 · 1:44 pm

Galore: Gorgeous

                   I picked up Michael Crummey’s Galore because a friend of mine suggested it was “the best book he ever read.” Bold claims from a well-read man. I admit being reluctant to read it because I’m using Crummey in my dissertation, and the idea of reading – for pleasure – an author that I’ve spent endless hours thinking about worried me.

(Aside: Longstanding debate between me and M. about whether or not someone can “read for fun” or whether any sort of reading is inherently “critical.” I err on the side of “reading for pleasure” and “reading for work,” and find that when I’m reading for pleasure I do not annotate; I do not fixate on symbols/images in the same preoccupied way I might while working; I do not consciously consider the novel as a national work… But, of course, I write this blog, and I *think* about what I read as I’m reading it: that is the work of a reader, right? I’m not sure why reading critically cannot also be pleasurable, for me, at least, reading and thinking are pleasurable activities. It just becomes “work” when I then have to write about it, compare it, map the themes and ra ra ra – gag).

I shouldn’t have worried. Galore is beautiful. The poetry of description, the balance of third person limited with third person omniscient sweeps the reader between the intimate thoughts of characters – spanning generations – and the intricacies of the community and the relationships in that community. I suppose it was purposeful that the reader is denied the third person limited perspective of Jonah (the man who opens the novel being born from the belly of a whale), but all the same, my only complaint is that we don’t get the chance to hear his thoughts. Of course, it’s appropriate that we don’t (Jonah is mute), just frustrating because of how much I *wanted* to read his view: a testament, I think, to the strength of his character.

Ambitious in its time-line, Galore maintains a surprising (and pleasurable) balance between the intimate lives of the families on the shore (set in Newfoundland) and the “bigger” concerns of a settlement coming into the 20th century (medicine, education, union organization). Highly recommend.

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July 23, 2010 · 2:13 am

Black Swan Green: Breaks the Rules

                                     I received Black Swan Green as a birthday gift from a friend with whom I regularly exchange books. And while he is responsible for the misadventure of All Their Names, he did not let me down in the slightest with the gift of David Mitchell.

I’d given him Adrian Mole to read and so he gave me this book of teenage angst in Thatcherite Britain as a compliment. The comparisons end at the age of protagonist and time period.

Black Swan Green delivers in every possible way: compelling narrator and protagonist, subtle and nuanced symbolism, simple – yet impossibly engaging – plot line, evocative setting.

It was such a relief to read something unquestionably good.

My favourite line in the book?

“Me, I want to bloody kick this moronic bloody world in the bloody teeth over and over till it bloody understands that not hurting people is ten bloody thousand times more bloody important than being right” (118).

Because isn’t that it? And Jason Taylor brings adages of this sort to the reader in ways that are neither cliche nor trite, but that remind the reader of what it might be like to be a better – or to want to grow up to be better.

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July 16, 2010 · 12:18 am

Never Let Me Go: Great premise

                               As part of my great “find an amazing summer read that I can then recommend with good conscience to everyone I know” project, I played around with the website What Should I Read Next (www.whatshouldireadnext.com). You insert a book you liked reading and the site spits back a list of books you might like based on user-generated lists of books people like. The site suggested I might like Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go. Never one to be immediately persuaded by an internet suggestion, I checked out some reviews and found that not only was it nominated for the Booker, but my mum liked it, too. Off to the library!

I did like the book. At first I really liked it. A lot. I had a few glimmering moments where I thought “yes!” But, as with so many things (icecream sundaes, for instance), the glory of the first few moments was not sustained through to the end. The premise of the book is really neat, and I won’t say much about it because part of the enjoyment of the first 1/3 is in trying to work out the “mystery.” That said, the “mystery” element is my chief complaint, if only because it seems Ishiguro has a fairly limited range of ways to introduce “mysterious” elements. The first person protagonist would drop some juicy information and then immediately say “but I’ll get to that later,” and then proceed to give the back-story. This sort of plot structure “tantalizing detail – extended back-story – bit of a reveal – repeat” continued throughout and became quite distracting. At a certain point the “mystery” stops being mysterious and should no longer be treated that way.

The protagonist, Kathy H, is also a bit of a whiner and yet oddly still a bit full of herself. I’m not sure I like to dislike the first person protagonist, or even if I was supposed to dislike her – but I did.

All by way of saying: great premise (kept me thinking about the ethics of the novel for days after I’d finished), but the form is repetitive and frustrating and the protagonist is sulky. I continue my search for the great summer read (happily tomorrow is my birthday and I am bound to get a least one new novel…).

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