"The Withdrawal Method" - Pasha Malla

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"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.