Tag Archives: canadian literature

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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August 29, 2010 · 11:22 pm

The Outlander: Half-Half

            Gil Adamson’s The Outlander focuses on “the widow,” a nineteenth-century woman we quickly learn who has killed her husband and, as the novel opens, is on the run from his two brothers.

The widow herself is unremarkable. The plot, likewise, leaves something to be desired. The widow encounters a series of figures who help/hinder (but mostly help) her escape in the fashion of a children’s book where a lost lamb tries to find its mother and must first meet a duck, horse, pig and cow before at last finding its true mum. So follows the plot of The Outlander. That said, by the time the novel gets to the “cow” in the series of chance encounters, I found myself rooting for the widow’s escape and invested in her finding something of a happy ending. Not overly invested, mind you, but interested, which is more than I expected throughout the first half of the book where (I confess) I only kept reading because I suspected the novel might be of some use to my thesis (it will not be).

Meh.

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July 23, 2010 · 2:18 am

Galveston: Forgettable

    Id never tell anyone not to read Paul Quarrington’s Galveston, but neither would I recommend it. The novel sees three storm chasers arrive on a small island – Dampier Cay – a day before the arrival of a category 5 hurricane. Two of the chasers have traumatic pasts. One is just in it for the glory.

The parts I liked? Learning bits about hurricanes. Descriptions of the wind.

Parts I didn’t? Endless and extreme symbolism, such that I felt battered myself by the barrage of this-means-this and look-out here comes another symbol, duck! you might get hit by significance!

Meh. Not good, not bad. Nominated for the Giller, if you’re into that sort of thing.

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