November 27, 2019 · 2:44 pm

City of Girls: Jazz Hands

I was so disappointed to piece together midway through that the author of City of Girls, Elizabeth Gilbert, also wrote Eat, Pray, Love. Not sure what that was so disappointing, except I think there’s something silly about Eat, Pray, Love and so I extended this silliness to City of Girls. And despite being at the top of a bunch of the best of lists for 2019 I think it’s only okay.

We follow Vivian Morris as she gets kicked out of school and joins up with the aunt’s theatre company in New York. Sex, scandal and romping through the streets ensue, as Vivian stretches the bounds of her small town upbringing and confronts the Big City. After a massive betrayal, Vivian is castigated by her once-friend and told that she will never be anyone important and never do anything important (or something to that effect). We take this ‘curse’ and follow Vivian through the rest of her life as she tries to atone for this betrayal. Finding herself never in the arms of ‘true love,’ (thank goodness) but rather making her own family and forming close and meaningful friendships. The message being I suppose that we have to create our own meaning and that friendship is a life work and project.

I think the ‘only okay’ part comes from the saccharine message and the pulp feel to the writing. But there are some fun parties and the occasionally thoughtful scene about what we owe our friends and ourselves when we make mistakes. So sure, read it, but I’d never put this at the top of 2019.

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October 30, 2019 · 6:00 pm

The Innocents: The Unexpected Gripping Plot in 19th Century Rural Newfoundland

Michael Crummey is one of my favourite authors. I read River Thieves in graduate school when I had lots of Thoughts and Ideas (I suppose I still do, but they are buried deep beneath Responsibilities) and loved it. Since then I’ve loved Galore and Sweetland and you would do well to read them all. Actually they all make pretty good Halloween/winter curl-up reading, Sweetland in particular (as a ghost story).

Anway. The Innocents follows Evered and Ada on this totally barren and isolated outcrop of Newfoundland in the I’m not-sure-when-but-at-least-a-few-hundred-years-ago as they struggle – like really struggle – to stay alive after their parents and sister die. They struggle in the physical ways of starvation and storms and bears (those Can Lit majors looking for another bear novel on which to write a thesis need look no further). They struggle more in the psychological loneliness of being without any other companionship than one another. Not knowing how to read, and with limited access to stories, in the few instances when others cross their paths, one of their most heart breaking revelations is how much is unknown and lost to them because they don’t have stories to share.

The land is a character of its own with incredible richness in its description (though not in a bogged down detailed way) and the tension between its claustrophobia and endless – if dangerous – expanse is yet another way in which horror is visited upon the two children.

They do encounter horror both from the natural and human worlds. Human horrors in the form of colonialism, the barbarity of humanity when pushed to its extremes (think cannibalism), the cruelty of capitalism in the early fisheries and the stricture of religions. Actually, in contrast, the natural horrors feel less vicious and purposeful, more accidental in their cruelty, though still: flooding rain, short crop seasons, storms.

But the real heart and horror of the book is who and how Evered and Ada come to mean to one another. Alone for so long and dependent on one another for physical and psychological survival, their relationship encounters strain and then pushes into spaces of incest with a delicacy and sensitivity you might not believe til you read it.

It doesn’t sound like it would make for a compelling story: two orphans survive by fishing cod and have a complicated relationship. But boy-oh-boy is it gripping. Well worth the wait since Crummey’s last novel and one I strongly urge you to seek out!

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October 22, 2019 · 5:03 pm

Fleishman is in Trouble: Super. Funny. Smart. And other adjectives.

Since Emily Bazelon first suggested reading Fleishman is in Trouble on the Slate Political Gabfest (one of my favourite podcasts ever), I have been excited to read it. I both like Emily and the general premise: divorce unfolds and man learns about emotional labour. Explaining emotional labour is emotional labour, so I’ll just let you read about it if you’re not super familiar. Continue reading →

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October 11, 2019 · 7:33 pm

The Septembers of Shiraz: Revolution

Dalia Sofer’s The Septembers of Shiraz follows the Amin family as they navigate their lives post Iranian revolution. Isaac, the father, is arrested and imprisoned, accused of being a spy. His innocence is clear to everyone involved and equally irrelevant. More interesting than the scenes of torture, solitude, desperation and panic (and these are interesting) is the moment when he negotiates for his life with his captor. In this moment we learn that his captor, too, has been wrongly imprisoned and tortured, that he, too, has feared for his life. That the lines of ‘good’ and ‘wicked’ are arbitrary, shifting and dependent on self-survival. Whatever you can do for yourself and your family you will do, the novel suggests, and history, heritage, ‘common humanity’ are elusive ideals held only by those safe and privileged enough to exercise them.

What allows Isaac and his family escape from Iran is wealth. I initially wrote ‘What saves Isaac and his family is wealth’ but they aren’t saved by that at all. ‘Saved’ with all its connotations of safety, purpose, comfort are not what they find at the novel’s conclusion. And saved from what? The novel does well to expose the ways those taking power are doing so out of long felt experiences of powerlessness, that these are not fixed states, but arbitrary divisions easily reversed. The son, studying in America, is not ‘saved’ by wealth, nor the daughter, lonely, isolated and incredibly afraid. Farnaz, the wife-mother, too, believes wealth a bulwark against any danger, discovers that while money can buy an exit it does not buy love or home.

It’s a profoundly sad novel in its consideration of the privilege so many occupy, and the abuses of this privileged power so routinely and callously delivered. Perhaps hopeful for the exploration of what genuinely offers meaning and value in life (family, poetry, community, love). Perhaps.

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