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 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.

"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.

"goja" by suniti namjoshi

don't read this book unless you have to.

"sorry" by gail jones

this book is really quite something.  a unique take on the girl-growing-up-with-dysfunctional-family-and-environment, the story takes place in western australia in the 1930's and 40's.

perdita is a lonely child growing up with parents who are indifferent to her existence. she makes her own family of billy, the mute-deaf son of a neighbour, and mary, a "half-caste" aboriginal taken out of a convent to care for perdita when her mother enters an asylum. when perdita's father is murdered, mary confesses and is sent away, and perdita is left alone and with a terrible stutter that renders her almost speechless.

told with tremendous skill and beautiful language, 'sorry' is a book that will stay with me for a while.

"kiss of the fur queen" by tomson highway

oh contemporary fiction....how i miss thee.

the language of this novel is stunning.  1950's cree life in northern manitoba explodes into life with highway's lush and lyrical descriptions.  the narrative jumps between the real world and a spiritual cree world where the fur queen and other fantastical, almost surreal myths exist. 

semi-autobiographical, 'the kiss of the fur queen' is about jeremiah and gabriel okimasis.  the narrative follows these brothers as they go from a magical and rustic life in the north, to a residential school where they're abused by their teachers, and finally to life in the big city of winnipeg.  wherever they are, a trickster figure in guise of a fur queen watches over them as they struggle with balancing their cree heritage with their new world.

i'm always weary of novels like this.  yes, it was terrible what happened to aboriginals at residential schools, but it's not my fault because i'm white.  this novel doesn't place the blame or ask for an apology, but just tells a lovely story that is beautiful, melancholy, funny and clever - everything you require from literature.  

"the penelopiad" by margaret atwood

there's no doubt that margaret atwood is good at what she does, but i've never been crazy about her.  i've read a few of her novels and while enjoyable, there was nothing about them that really spoke to me.  that saying, i loved this book.

perhaps it was due to the fact that i just read 'the odyssey', but i found this novella a brilliant retelling of homer's epic poem from odysseus' wife's perspective.  as one critic put it, penelope is the perfect atwood heroine and i couldn't imagine a better author to tell this story.

atwood's penelope is very sly and sarcastic as she tells her story from the underworld.  atwood has brilliantly made penelope's (spoiler alert for the odyssey!) 12 hanged maids a sort of vaudevillian chorus that pop up to sing witty and dark and sardonic interludes.  

i'm not sure if i would have enjoyed this as much had i not been familiar with 'the odyssey', but in my mind, atwood has pulled herself out of the humdrum and into the sublime.

"the odyssey" by homer, translated by robert fagles

this was actually really good.  perhaps it's the translation, perhaps it's because i've been reading a lot of heavy academic shit, but i quite enjoyed this novel.

odysseus has fought for ten years in the trojan war and is now on his way home.  however, before he can get there, he is held captive by the lovely nymph, calypso, has to fight the cyclops, get past the beautiful and deadly sirens, travel to the underworld to speak with a dead prophet, outwit the monsters charybdis and scylla and a whole host of other seemingly impossible tasks that make my schoolwork seem like paint-by-numbers.

i was dreading this book, but it turned out to be a lot more accessible than i thought.  i could actually follow the story and with the one undergrad course i took in greek mythology, found myself recognizing characters and situations.

i may feel differently about this story after i spend the next two weeks reading about the penelopian aesthetics so i can deliver a seminar on gendered readings of this text, but as a pure piece of entertainment, it was worth the time spent reading.