July 14, 2012 · 12:53 am

Blackout: History! War! Time travel!

        So I loved *Blackout*. Not only for the fact that its set in WW2 (is it weird to have an immediate attraction to a WW2 novel? probably.) and not only because it features historians and historical fiction and not only because it’s about time travel and the risks therein. No, I also loved *Blackout*  for its masterful use of form to play with the readers’ expectations and sympathies.

The book opens with a split chronology as the reader moves between 2060 and the Blitz. In 2060 the time traveling historians are busy planning their research trips: finding period costumes, implanting period knowledge (the dates of bombings, available technology, current cultural references) and language (American accents), determining a back story, a job and necessary papers. Throughout these sections the reader is presented with bits of information from the third person omniscient narrator that suggest all is not well with the technology of time travel; however, the historians themselves remain entirely oblivious to the potential hazards of their upcoming trips.

Meanwhile, the Blitz chapters introduce us to our three protagonists – Polly, posing as a nanny for evacuee children; Merope, posing as a shopgirl on Oxford street; and Mike, posing as an American reporter covering the evacuation at Dunkirk.

SPOILER ALERT**

As the reader becomes familiar with the general pattern of chapters – 2060, WW2, WW2, 2060, WW2, WW2, 2060, 2060, WW2 etc. –  the reader comes to expect a necessary “return” to 2060 as inherent in the structure of the book itself. So when the three characters find themselves *stuck* in their respective WW2 temporal-spatial locations and unable to access the “Drop” that is meant to return them to their own time, the reader is jarred right along with the characters as the reader too, finds herself without access to 2060. The chapters narrating this period simply stop, allowing the reader to feel the same disorientation, anxiety and bewilderment as the characters: what *has* happened to 2060? And we don’t find out! The narrative ends without letting the characters OR the reader return to 2060 and so we are all left puzzling whether the course of history has been changed such that time travel *no longer exists* or whether their colleagues in 2060 have met some unfortunate end or whether they have simply been “lost” by their 2060 protectors.

And perhaps this will be my frustration with the novel – even if it’s a necessary frustration in order for the brilliance of the book to be realized – I would have liked the book to resolve these questions. There’s a second part to this series – All Clear – where presumably the conflict is resolved or at least further climaxed, but for this reader I could have done just as well with a serious division between the two parts but the amalgamation of the two parts in one text. I suppose I’m just not a fan of the deliberate cliff hanger that requires seeking out the next book. I can easily borrow it from the library or download it, but wouldn’t it be just as easy to package it as one narrative in the first place?

Small complaint for an otherwise fascinating book that does terrific work highlighting the complexities and possibilities of formal play.

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July 3, 2012 · 8:57 pm

The Knife of Never Letting Go: This is Why I Blog

      I blog because of my (absent) memory. My ability to read a book, enjoy a book and immediately forget the plot is honed and practiced. Case and point: I finished reading The Knife of Never Letting Go last week. IknowI liked it because I messaged S. who recommended it to me to say I liked it, but do you think when I sat down to write this review I could remember what I liked about it or why I enjoyed it? Nope. Zip. I couldn’t even recall the plot without turning to wikipedia for a reminder. It’s a sorry state of affairs up in my brain.

What I do remember liking – on jogging my memory by way of Wikipedia – is a plot that is neither so implausible as to be entirely fantastic nor so realistic as to be realism. The integration of fantasy elements succeeds in defamiliarizing the real in such a way as to encourage the reader to ask questions about social interactions, use of the environment and those truths we believe to be “self-evident.” The thrust of the plot has our protagonist – Todd Hewitt – drastically reconsidering all he felt to be true about his community’s history, politics and way of life. He’s made to question authority figures, familial trust and received wisdom as he repeatedly encounters evidence that those he trusted lied to him. It’s a masterful plot in paralleling what any young person must encounter as they realize that adults lie and that promises made to children (you can be anything you want to be) are in not mendacious they are at least false.

His companion, Viola, is a charmer too, and I’d like to see her narrative point of view introduced in later books to balance out her character and make her less of an accessory and more of an actor in her own right. Personal preference, maybe.

I liked the fight sense, the quest narrative and the climax. Less settled with the conclusion of the text and the requirement for later installments. I’m a firm believer that a book – even one in a series – should be a selfcontained unit.

So there you go. I’ll likely read the next in the series, but I can’t say it was a memorable read (though admittedly this is more my fault than that of the text…).

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June 18, 2012 · 10:41 pm

The Darren Effect – Really great

      What an unexpected pleasure in finding Libby Creelman’s -The Darren Effect. My brother, I., got it for me for Christmas in a stack of other books – 20 odd or so (I think I may have blogged about the stack already as I’ve slowly been making my way through his selections). In any event, the whole stack has its own shelf and so this time, without reading the back or deliberating on a title, I randomly stuck out my arm and picked a book. And boy was my intuitive snatch rewarded. -The Darren Effect- is smart, funny, challenging, engaging and altogether too unknown for this reader to be satisfied.

The book is set in Newfoundland, follows a small network of people as they navigate falling in love, falling into depression, dying, forgiveness and regret. The shifting third person limited narrators – but usually Heather – are open, honest and uncomfortably familiar. A small town heartbreak, a family drama, but without the kinds of cliches you’d expect and without the saccharine writing you’d find annoying. Just simple, sweet, beautiful and totally engulfing. I read the whole thing on the flight from Vancouver to Montreal and am feeling the delicious hangover of a well-spent read.

Recommend! And recommend it to someone you know. I’m a little embarassed that this hasn’t been on my Can Lit radar, but then maybe I’m also just glad to have been so pleasantly surprised. (Thanks, I.)

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June 16, 2012 · 12:17 am

A Man Melting: I Really Liked This One, But I Still Don’t Like Short Stories

       Everything I knew about New Zealand up until reading -A Man Melting- I knew by way of N. and L. (and The Lord of the Rings). Things I gleaned from these dear friends: flip-flops are jandles and sweaters are jerseys, voting for your favourite bird is Very Important, singing the anthem in Maori for the Zealandish is more important than singing the anthem in French for Canadians, Wellington is windy, the method of electing ministers to parliament is much more civil and rational than in Canada, there are mountains and ocean, exports include sheep and fish, there were some gold rushes, the New Zealand rugby team is a Big Deal, N. wore a uniform to school and might have been the Prefect (I hope he was), cookbooks are better in NZ than here, eggplants are aubergines, walls accrue mould because it is Damp, it is preferable to say “dodgy” and (my favourite) “heaps” than the Canadian “sketchy” and “lots.”

After reading Craig Cliff’s -A Man Melting- I can now report on similarities between Canada and NZ: a certain colonial defensiveness re: America that is manifested in a quiet insistence that Things Are Different Here, an admission that many people are from elsewhere (but dammit we’re still unique) and the all out angst of the 20 something hipster/suburban youth.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed -A Man Melting- and its take on the challenges of figuring out who you are, what you want, what makes you special, what you’re meant to do with your life: these are the questions that preoccupy me (that is, *cough* when I actually stop to think about them) and I expect preoccupy many of my fellows in my cohort. And for the most part Cliff gives fresh, imaginative and inspiring explorations of these questions. Hilarious plot events, unsuspecting character voices, interweaving thematic questions about heredity, aspiration and failure.

I suppose my complaint is one I hold for most (if not all) short story collections and that is that I wish it was a novel. This is entirely my prejudice (and very likely the outcome of a terrible memory that cannot hold disparate plot lines long enough in my head to connect them) and so shouldn’t be read as discouragement for picking up -A Man Melting-. On the contrary the collection offers some zinger sentences of exceptional originality and beauty and some thoughtful character studies. But I was, on the whole, rather disappointed (as I always am) that these characters were so swiftly introduced and then denied me. So hear this, Mr. Cliff, write me a novel, okay? Because you’re one bang up writer with heaps of talent.

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