After the Plague by T.C. Boyle

Why had I never heard of this guy? This collection of stories by the incredibly prolific American writer T.C. Boyle, is stellar. From bachelors trying to find love in Alaska, to a bartender who gets obsessed with an Internet "peep house", to a post-apocalyptic world peopled by loners, the stories never disappoint. Boyle has an incredibly dark sense of humour that hovers between satire and irony as he explores the foibles of contemporary society. Highly recommended.

We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver

Pretty much a sociopath from the moment he's born, at 15, Kevin Khatchadourian kills seven students, a teacher and a cafeteria worker at his school. Told after the fact in a series of letters from his mother, Eva, to her husband and Kevin's father, Franklin, Eva relates the history of the family, trying to find a reason for Kevin's actions.

A nasty book, in the best possible way, Kevin's upbringing is full of horrible events that may or may not have anything to do with him.

An intelligently written book with a surprise ending. Recommended.

Barrel Fever by David Sedaris

I never realized David Sedaris wrote fiction until finding this book in a box of cast-offs in my apartment hallway. Sedaris' first publication, this collection of stories and essays is enjoyable, but lacks the refined wit of his later work.

The stories are undoubtedly funny, often taking an unconventional form. One story is a suicide note to be delivered at the funeral, another is a holiday letter from a family who has experienced a bizarre tragedy, and one of my favourites - a homophobia newsletter from an oversensitive young man. A reader familiar with Sedaris' later work can almost feel him trying things out, learning how to approach comedic writing and adopting the intelligent deadpan he is famous for.

Similarly, the essays are not as polished as I'm use to, lacking strong conclusions and feeling more like anecdotes. A quick and fun read, but his later work is really when he starts to shine.

Remainder by Tom McCarthy

After a mysterious accident in which debris falls from the sky, a man receives an 8 1/2 million pound settlement. A few days later, at a party, the man sees a crack in the wall of the bathroom which expands into the very specific memory of a place he used to live. He remembers the stairwells and banisters, the neighbours and their habits, and even the view of the roof of the building next door. Using his vast wealth, he goes about re-creating this scene, buying buildings and hiring an armada of designers, tradespeople and actors to re-create this space. What follows is a chain of increasingly complex re-creations as the man looses all sense of reality.

Often an irritating read as the protagonist goes over the minutiae of his faux worlds again and again. Remainder is unique, but frustrating more than compelling. McCarthy's cyclical narrative impedes much from actually happening and the protagonist is treated more as a prop than a human being.

If you're a fan of existential no-plot narratives (see Knut Hamsun's Hunger and Kazuo Ishiguro's The Unconsoled) give it a read, otherwise, not recommended.

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Contrary to popular belief, Frankenstein is not the monster. Frankenstein is the scientist that creates the monster. The monster is just the monster, he doesn't have a name. 

Dr. Frankenstein has been a bad scientist. After creating a living being, he flees from his creation in fright. The doctor's life returns to normal until those close to him start to turn up dead.

It's a timeless story and a painless classic.

Barometer Rising by Hugh MacLennan

Until reading this book, the extent of my knowledge about the explosion in Halifax during World War I comes from a Joel Plaskett song where he sings;

"Wanna know the truth? / I was thinking 'bout ships / in the Halifax harbour / before they blew the city to bits / in nineteen hundred, seventeen."

The truth of the matter is that this event was on par with the World Trade Centre attacks. The blast had 1/6th of the power of the blast that destroyed Hiroshima as a ship that contained 3000 tonnes of explosives blew up in the harbour. 2000 people were killed, 6000 wounded and 9000 left homeless.

It is this event that provides the climax for Hugh MacLennan's novel. Taking place over eight days in December 1917, Barometer Rising is a war novel situated not in the battle fields of Europe, but at the third most important port in the British Empire, Halifax.

Neil McCrae is hiding out in the city, searching for the one person that can clear his name from a court martial. He needs to avoid Geoffrey Wain, his uncle and the commander of his battalion, whose order he disobeyed. McCrae's cousin and Wain's daughter, Penny, is showing herself to be an expert ship designer having only got the opportunity because the men are at war. Penny is being pursued by an aged Colonel, Angus Murray, who was a Medical Officer before an injury sent him back to Canada, though Penny is still carrying a torch for her cousin who is presumed dead.

A surprisingly good read, though MacLennan obviously has an affinity for Halifax and its environs, describing the harbour, shipyards and areas of the city to the point of tedium. The plot is slightly botched as the explosion renders the character's problems moot, but this is not enough to ruin the read. 

An important artifact of Canadiana both for its literary quality and its historical significance.

The Flying Troutmans - Miriam Toews

I knew little about Winnipeg author Miriam Toews personal life until listening to an episode of This American Life. In the episode, Toews talks briefly about a road trip with her teenage son and 12-year old daughter. Her son is quiet and brings his CD's for accompaniment. The daughter is chatty and precocious and occupies herself with art supplies and comic books.

Toews' newest book, The Flying Troutmans, concerns a similar road trip. When Hattie Troutman's sister, Min, is hospitalized, Hattie gets temporary custody of Min's children, Logan and Thebes. The three then embark on a road trip to find the children's father. Teenage Logan carves morbid sayings into the dashboard and looks for places to play basketball at every stop. 11-year-old Thebes never washes and talks incessantly. Hattie calls her ex-boyfriend in Paris and tries to keep it all together.

As usual, Toews' prose is funny and lucid. It manages to be both smart and conversational. However, the star in this novel is Thebes. Her purple hair, bizarre outfits, and fondness for making and writing out over sized novelty cheques, are totally endearing and come off as sincere rather than smarmy.

Despite echos of other books (Summer of My Amazing Luck is also about a road trip to find a missing father), this is another gem from Toews.

Wetlands by Charlotte Roche

I like to read on my lunch break. I hunker down outside on the grass, or in a chair in the staff room, eat, and enjoy a book. "Wetlands" proved to be a problem to this routine.

Explicit. Before the second page, we know that 18-year-old narrator Helen, has terrible hemorrhoids, but has still enjoyed a fulfilling anal sex life. From there on, we're taken into a world of pubic hair shaving, creative masturbation, home-made menstruation devices, and vaginal secretions. 

Now I'm certainly no prude, but this is shock for shock's sake. Admittedly, I read the whole thing, but it was just to see what levels of perversity Helen would achieve. The writing isn't particularly spectacular, the only thing that could save this book, and I felt in the end, that I had wasted a couple hours of my life. Thumbs down Ms. Roche.

"The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald

I had to re-read this book. It's on numerous best-ever lists, lauded in academia, among the favourites of a few friends, and all literate men seem to have a hard-on for femme fatale Daisy Buchanan. I have a dim memory of reading it when I was pretending to be a precocious early teen, but could not recall much more than a vague notion of rich socialites. 

The story of narrator Nick Carraway who happens to move right next door to wealthy and popular Jay Gatsby. Gatsby is a tremendously wealthy young man who has a gigantic house and throws lavish parties. Nobody is quite sure where Gatsby got all his money and rumours abound as to his past. Carraway and Gatsby become fast friends. 

Carraway's cousin, Daisy, and husband Tom Buchanan also live by. Daisy and Tom's marriage is coming apart as Tom has a mistress and does nothing to conceal it. (sort of spoiler alert) Unknown to Daisy, her first love, Gatsby, lives just across the water and the story brings them together and apart in an ultimately tragic ending.

The writing is tremendous; Fitzgerald has a way of putting words together that makes you stop, re-read, and really consider the phrase. However, other than that, I wasn't too blown away. The character of Gatsby is as confounding and attractive to the reader as he is to the narrator, but the rest are somewhat flat. 

A quick read, I'm glad I can now speak authoritatively when I say "what's the big deal?".  

 

"The Withdrawal Method" - Pasha Malla

Go here.

"In Transit" - Mavis Gallant

There's something very appealing about the foreigner abroad. It makes me think the characters in "Lost in Translation", vulnerable and lonely in a strange world. Like that film, this collection of stories is more about the characters themselves than how they experience their environment.

The 19 stories in this collection all deal with protagonists who are away from home. Apart from their own culture and language, not quite living in the real world, these people are perpetually in transit.

Gallant's prose is simple and elegant and peppered with startling and astute observations.

"'Digby is slightly restless, and marriage would settle him,' said Mrs Glover, pitying Digby, who now joined the company of men whose fate had been settled by a pair of women over empty cups." (from "A Question of Disposal")

"Every day had to be filled as never at home. A gap of two hours in a strange town, in transit, was like being shut up in a stalled lift with nothing to read." (from "In Transit")

"He had the soul of a carpet." (from "Good Deed")

Gallant is one of Canada's most treasured writers, but people would be hard pressed to recall her work. Her short stories are highly anthologized and she's often read in the course of English-Canadian literature studies and then forgotten. Gallant deserves much more. 

"Birds of America" - Loorie Moore

I think short story collections are underrated. These books sit on library shelves, passed over time and again for a novel, but the narrative snobbery is unfounded.

Or maybe not. Some of the stories in this collection by Lorrie Moore I loved and can't wait to read again. Some of these stories I was continually flipping through to see how many pages were left. However, when Lorrie Moore is on, she is so on. She is able to portray seemingly ordinary people with such wonderful attention to detail that they practically leap off the page. The word play is tremendous and witty and humorous, though sometimes gets a little out of hand and gives off a "look at me, I'm so clever" vibe.

While I appreciate the melancholy of every day life and not necessarily happily ever after endings, by the end of this collection, I was ready for something more upbeat. The second last story, "People Like That Are the Only People Here: Canonical Babbling in Peed Onk" (makes sense after you've read it, sort of) follows the parents of a baby who has cancer. I mean, come on. A baby with cancer. It's hard to read and hard to put down, a combination that yields unsettling results. However, the emotion in it is so real that the story itself practically aches.

I think Moore is at her best when portraying the modern romance as seen in stories such as "Willing", "Community Life", and "Terrific Mother". The dysfunctional couple archetype is blown  apart and treated with an empathy rarely found.

These stories are beautiful, sad and funny at the same time. Moore goes on my list of authors to keep an eye out for.

"The Accidental" by Ali Smith

Ali Smith's writing is fun, whimsical, intelligent and breaks all sorts of rules. The trivialities of day-to-day existence are blown apart and rendered fascinating in this curious novel.  

The Smart family has left London to spend the summer in the countryside. Eve, the mother, writes her tremendously popular historical fiction in the shed. Michael, the step-dad, thinks of his liaisons with many, many, students. Magnus, the depressed teenager, mopes and has a sexual awakening. Astrid, the precocious daughter, videotapes the world around her and ponders the mysteries of life. All the narratives are mysteriously interrupted by the presence of Amber, a stranger who appears at their house and ends up staying there. 

The structure of this book is part of its appeal. Three large sections titled, "beginning", "middle", and "end", each containing a chapter for one of the characters. All the characters observe the world uniquely - the step-father's "middle" part is a sonnet sequence and the teenager often thinks in math equations. 

Adventurous, inventive and most of all, fun. Thumbs up. I'll read more of Ms. Smith in the future.

"Hunger" by Knut Hamsun

If I had read this book without any context, I would have assumed it was a modernist work highly influenced by Kafka. It's hard to believe that it was originally published in 1890.

The narrative is a first-person account by an unnamed Norwegian writer. He wanders the streets of Christiana (current day Oslo), starving and trying to sell his work to the local newspaper. As he becomes more and more hungry, he loses his grasp on reality and is driven to do some perplexing and awful things. He is a masochist, playing survival as if it's a game of him versus the world.

For those who like linearity, this book should be discounted. The narrator and story move in circles until the very end. This can be frustrating, but there is something mesmerizing about the character that keeps you reading. 

A quote on the front deems the book, "one of the most disturbing novels in existence". You've been warned.

"Zofloya; or, The Moor: A Romance of the Fifteenth Century" - by Charlotte Dacre

"there is certainly a pleasure...in the infliction of prologned torment"

This novel is quite shocking. Even more so when you consider it was written in 1806. Use to the Jane Austenish Romantic novels of sensibility, whereby much is made over refusing to dance with someone, the heroine protagonist of "Zofloya" tortures, imprisons, murders and makes a deal with Satan. 

Poor Victoria. As a girl, her mother run off with a lover, leaving Victoria to shoulder her family's shame. Growing up she is improperly educated and neglected and becomes evil. She eventually marries, but then falls for her husband's brother, Henriquez. She poisons her husband and emprisons Henriquez' lover in a cave in the mountains. Henriquez refuses Victoria's love and eventually kills himself. Victoria, enraged, stabs Henriquez' lover multiple times before pushing her off a cliff.

Dacre is a little wordy and has a loose sense of grammar, but the incredibly depraved and malicious characters are compelling. A fascinating glimpse into another side of Romanticism.

"winesburg, ohio" by sherwood anderson

while for the most part, school feels like penance, occasionally it opens my eyes up to an amazing book i never would have read otherwise.

this novel first came to my attention last semester when a professor told me i should mention it in a funding application as it relates very closely to my thesis. i quickly read it's amazon and wikipedia entry and promptly forgot about it until it appeared on a syllabus for class.

this novel is a collection of short stories that deal with the inhabitants of a fictional small american town. though each story concerns a different character, they overlap and intersect, as happens in these types of intimate communities. the characters are lonely and are written with an incredible sense of sympathy and skill. this novel was published in 1919, but feels way ahead of its time. a quick and beautiful read that is not only revealing in terms of the human psyche, but also shows how simple words and simple stories can create a very real world.

Summer of My Amazing Luck - Miriam Toews

Miriam Toews (pronounced "taves", figure that one out) Governor General award-winning A Complicated Kindness is among my all-time favourite books, so I was a little ashamed when I realized that I haven't read any of her other novels. While looking for a fast and entertaining read that I could sneak in between essays and theory, I came across Toews' debut and thought it would be a perfect fit.

Summer of My Amazing Luck revolves around two single-mom's living in a Winnipeg housing project. There is Lucy, the narrator, who is unsure of who the father of her young son, Dillinger, is; and Lish, an eccentric with four daughters, two of whom were fathered by a travelling fire-eating busker. When lish decides to find the father, the two women and five kids pile into a van for a road trip to Denver. 

I did enjoy this book, but at times, it felt a little like a role-call of all the characters in the Winnipeg housing project. Yes, there's a plot, but this story is more about character than what actually happens. It's nice to see how Toews has progressed as a writer from this first novel to where she is now. Gives me hope.

"louis riel: a comic-strip biography" by chester brown

i think it is appropriate that i finally got around to reading this now that i'm living in winnipeg. louis riel is a hero 'round these parts, with numerous establishments named after him and a couple imposing statues.

a graphic novel portraying part of the very interesting life of manitoba founder and politician, and metis rights activist, louis riel. a beautifully drawn, interesting read, i like this book more for what it is than its literary quality.

"what we all long for" by dionne brand

there's a tenet in play writing of don't show us, tell us, and i think this novel could have benefited from that mantra. the majority of this novel takes place in the character's heads as they ponder their feelings. why couldn't these thoughts be shown through dialogue or action? i guess that's a benefit of writing prose, but i found myself at times getting a little fed up with how internal the story was. 

at its heart, this novel is the story of four friends: tuyen, carla, oku and jackie, who all have complicated family and personal backgrounds. their stories are interspersed with chapters from the perspective of quy, the child tuyen's parents lost when they were immigrating to canada. 

at times, "what we all long for" felt like an advertisement for multiculturalism in canada. all the characters are visible minorities. there are two minor characters who are white; jackie's boyfriend who is referred to as "the german", and carla's mother, who killed herself. i'm not saying that this book is prejudice towards whites, but when tuyen, the vietnamese-canadian lesbian artist, is cycling through little italy and coming across spanish speakers, it was kind of like "ok, great, toronto is a mecca for everyone, let's move on".

i did enjoy this novel, but it's not one i would gush about to others. a quick and enjoyable read.

"boys in blue" by rebecca york, ann voss peterson, patricia rosemoor

this is only the second romance i've read, but i think i've got the formula down. take one strong career woman (lawyer, business owner etc.) with deep-seated insecurities, mix with an archetypal alpha male in the form of a cop or firefighter who is battling with his own demons. have each character save the other, mix in some fleeting glances and incidental touching, one sex scene and a proposal at the end.

this is part of the harlequin "intrigue" series that combines a romance with a mystery. it's broken into three parts that all deal with a different eligible male cop as he and his lady companion, attempt to solve the overarching mystery.

terribly written, but highly entertaining. in the absence of tv, this is my mindless fun.

"Lightning crackled in the sky above him - as though nature has conspired to provide a backdrop for danger."

"She reached out and laid a hand on his arm, which was rock hard under her fingers. She fought the urge to run her hand over the thin cotton of his dress shirt, to massage his tension away."

"Slipping an arm under her back, he lifted Becca so that they were sitting face-to-face and chest-to-chest. She shifted and slid her arms up around his neck, and this time when their lips met, so did their worlds."