Blogging hardcore.

You'd have no idea, but I have been blogging hardcore all week. Unfortunately, none of you are seeing the products of it (are there any of you, anyways?). That is because I exported my posts from this blog and transfered the data to another site I have started that provides me with more versatility - giving me a way of producing a blog and book-reflection site at a much higher standard. I just hope that my writing follows suit.

To get to the new site and see what I've been doing all week, follow the link below.

LiteReader.

Regeneration - Pat Barker

I came upon Regeneration accidentally - or, at least, that is how it descended from my book shelf and into my hands, was spread onto my lap and its infectious words started to swoon me. "I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority, because I believe the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it." Well this is going to be interesting...

When I started reading Regeneration, I thought it was a not-all-entirely different book. You see, I thought it was Pat Barker's Booker-Prize winning novel Ghost Road. I am rather grateful that it wasn't, because I now have the opportunity to read two novels before I get to the third, Ghost Road, and will have a chance to understand her vision of the war all the more for it.

Regeneration is the first novel in the Regeneration Trilogy. It portrays the transformation of a man, or two (or more), in a mental health facility for those soldiers sent home from France in the First World War because of their mental afflictions. Shell Shock is not a generally accepted concept, so many of these men are not highly regarded by the society to which they are returning. Indeed, most have a sense of guilt for coming back mentally scarred rather than physically scarred. Moreover, most have a deep sense that they are missing out on the biggest clubhouse event of the century because of their inability to fight, or to ride horses, or to throw anymore grenades, or to run through no-man's land once more. Many do anything they can to return just so that they don't have to face their families or friends or communities as the weakling who died mentally but not physically.

The protagonist, Siegfried Sassoon, is a unique character in the mental health facility. You open the book convinced that there is nothing wrong with him mentally, and come to the conclusion (by the end) that there must be something wrong with him. He is a decorated soldier, a published poet who is relatively celebrated - and he refuses to fight. He knows there is nothing wrong with him - and he can't be convinced that there is. Which is the purpose of the antagonist William Rivers - a psychiatrist at this relatively isolated mental healthy facility: restore Sassoon to 'sanity', which means convincing him that he is wrong and them convincing him to become right, and then send him back to the trenches.

Rivers becomes the protagonist in this novel, unexpectedly. And everybody else in the hospital becomes his antagonist - so the transformations of heart that he is expected to push onto Sassoon and the other patients start to affect him. Perhaps this sounds cliche in this context. But the way that Barker does this, with subtlety and perfect characterization, is phenomenal.

Of course, and much to my ignorant surprise, Barker is well-known in the UK for her writing. I felt that, years ago when I selected her novel from the discount bin because I liked the First World War, I was discovering a new novelist. Not at all. Her bibliography is extensive, as is her list of awards and her list of literary talents. Many of which are displayed in this novel.

Being a novel about mental health in the wake of a war there are flashbacks that Williams has to pull from his patients. And Barker handles these with the highest degree of expertise. They are short - no longer than a paragraph - they are sparked - by the shape of the beach, or the storm, or by a smell that doesn't really exist but is imagined - they are graphic. And they are so well imaged with the text that you see them in the flashbacks to photos and movies, and you are affected.

The amazing and unexpected side of this novel is that it about more than the war - meaning the characters' interactions and stories and much more developed than one would expect. Women who don't want their husbands to come back but would prefer the war pension - or men who love other men but can only do so in the trenches because the war halted any developments in society's acceptance - or families that are angry at their mentally dishevelled sons - or women in need of sex and men trapped without sex. These characters are people to Barker (and this is the central part of her novel) - they become people to the reader.

Yesterday I posted my list of favourite reads from this year. This novel was included. I've now collected the second novel in the trilogy from my local library, and upon its completion will procure the third. Barker's accomplishment is to our benefit as a reader, and as a society - she helps us understand the war not in its immediate consequences but in the forces it places on its victims. Newton's first Law of Motion: Every body continues in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a straight line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed upon it. Read this novel, and presumably the second and third novel, and see how impossibly strong the force of war is on the minds of young men.

Half Years and Such

I'm behind again, aren't I. Three books. Honestly, it is not intentional - there has been so much to do over the past couple of weeks that I've not really had time to reflect on my reading experiences with you. But I can assure you that the adventures I've been having, the pages I've read, have left me thoroughly impressed. I'll do my best this week to get you caught up.

This post is not about anything of that nature though. Instead, it is a celebration of a year of reading - or rather, six months of reading. I've counted, and have had the pleasure of reading 19 books thus far. Not an overly impressive number, but seeing as one book (Atlas Shrugged) took me nearly two months to get through rather than my standard 4 or 5 days, I'll take what I can get.

This gives me a great opportunity to look back at what I've read, and the places I've been. And the places I've been.

I've crossed into Japan and back with a man named Jacob de Zoet, traveled to the Ukraine and altered the lives and deaths of entire towns, witnessed the split of Czechoslovakia in the midst of a political art crisis, traveled to the backwoods of Canadian Identity in lakes of Quebec, discovered a post-Civil War Southern United States where lawlessness is terrifying, traveled to St. John's from Labrador with a transgendered almost woman almost named Annabel, perused Norway's backwoods where the war still haunts the memories of man and woman, and built a railway with a female tycoon only to have it taken away and be transported to a utopia while the world falls to pieces.

I've done well for myself, considering I've not actually left my town since New Years, no?

So where do I stand so far? What are my favourite reads?

I'm going to keep the number to six, just under a third of what I've read. A challenge, because, as you'd know if you've been following me all year, I don't really think I've read anything particularly bad this year. Here goes nothing...

Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer - I'm sure this surprises nobody. After finishing this novel, I was in a reading funk; I could not convince myself that the books I was picking up to try and fill the void were doing it. The language and characters that fill the pages are truly special, and I look forward to reading it again.

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde - This is a haunting tale, and I'm sure that an academic could place it in a historical genre of magical realism if they were so inclined. I would listen, as I am sure that Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre is also rightfully placed in it (and it also, is rightfully placed among the classics). What impressed me most was Dorian Gray's character, and how Oscar Wilde took hold of a theme and illustrated with a painting. Terrifying.

Regeneration by Pat Barker - Part One of a trilogy, I was impressed with this novel's subtlety. You'll find out more about it later this week (I promise), but the characters and their attachments to each other thoroughly impressed me, and the delicacy with which Barker captured the flashbacks horrified. The second novel is waiting for me to pick up from the local library. Truly, this trilogy should be exalted into the highest echelons of anti-war literature.

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand - If you knew me, you'd be shocked by this selection. My entire family scoffed at me for reading it, and then slowly came out of their respective closets: my mother read it in University, my Grandma read it while she was pregnant with my aunt. This highly controversial novel, though not perfectly written, is phenomenally constructed. While not a masterpiece in literature, it is a masterpiece in the mixture of ideology and plot and character. I battled with Rand throughout the story, because it challenged so many of my ideals - and still does. A powerful and demanding read expertly constructed.

Beatrice and Virgil by Yann Martel - Yann Martel wrote about Pears and Bananas and stole my heart. This story, this allegory, this symbolic portrayal of the destruction of an entire race of people - it proved to me that Martel can make me react to animals with more empathy than almost any other author can with human characters. Not only is the ending heartbreaking and confusing, but it asks for you to become involved. A short, disconcerting read.

Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy - Mr. McCarthy has something to say about the human condition, and he does by no means sing its praises. It does not trust, it does not see beauty. It destroys, and turns the world to darkness. There is no respite. And McCarthy's incredible painting of a landscape, both detailed and mysterious, and his populating of the world with people, both detailed and mysterious, astounds - he writes as though he has seen this, and though the world he portrays is the world he recognizes. And by the end of every novel he writes you are only more convinced. The characters and the plot of this story, neither elaborated beyond the bare necessity, feel like an exploration of the unknown, and the discovery of monsters turns this two-hundred page novella into an epic. Stunning.

Honourable Mention: The best parts of my judgement are telling me that I can't include The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell on this list. I just finished it tonight, but it impressed me immensely. I look forward to reflecting on it over the next week.

Everything is Illuminated.

This novel starts out like a fairy-tale, and never completely leaves that literary domain. Beginning in an unnamed town in an unnamed part of Eastern Europe, and starting out with a humorous though violent death that somehow manages to weave its way through two hundred years of history and act as the starting point of something completely original and absolutely moving, you don’t know what to think about it until well past the first hundred pages.

And by then you’re enamoured.

Everything is Illuminated is the story of the history of Trachimbrod - a town split in two in Eastern Europe. And then it is the story of a trip taken by a character named after the author to Eastern Europe to find a town named Trachimbrod. And then it is the story of the correspondence, by letter, between a character, named after the author, his tour guide during his trip to Trachimbrod. It is in fact all of three of these, told through a half dozen different narrators spanning two hundred years.

The story that it tells - of a thriving small town with a bustling Jewish population, of a bizarre friendship where a lost Eastern European young man finds himself in the wilderness of the Ukrainian Steppe, of that same man who argues for his right to leave his father as a result - is absolutely compelling. And somehow so tightly constructed, so imbued with humour, that it fits together just perfectly - like watching the pods of water collect in the vein of a leaf just before the weight gets to be too heavy and the water is released to the ground below. It is something special.

It is also told in a totally different kind of language. On the back of my edition is a quote from a review, suggesting that the English language had not been so radically used and changed since A Clockwork Orange. That is quite the statement. And though what is accomplished here in terms of language is not quite up to the standard set by Burgess in his masterpiece, it is totally disorienting at times - until you learn the language that is used. One of the narrators is speaking as an English as a Second Language User. Another is using truly language reflecting the Judaic community. And the English that is used is so frequently used to produce conceptual and emotional outrage and understanding that traditional sentence structure is occasionally foregone. This is largely done to the author’s credit - the result is the sense that what is interpreted could only have been presented as it had been.

Everything if Illuminated is also nothing that you expect. It is a fairy tale - somehow magical, and somehow entirely tragic. None of those chapters reserved for the history of Trachimbrod, particularly for the history of Brod (the maybe daughter of Trachim - who may be the first man in the story to die), seem plausible. They are legendary. And they never have to be proven true - indeed, they fit into the reality of myth just as well as they may fit into the reality of truth. Perhaps the history provided is that of Trachimbrod - most likely not. Nonetheless, you do become attached to the town without a name, then given a name, then given another, and then divided into two (and then three) partitions.

And then destroyed.

And then rediscovered. As nothing.

In some of the most heartbreaking language I have ever encountered.


I read the most heartbreaking section in the break room at work. I couldn’t finish it. I put the book down for a few minutes. Picked it up again. Put it down. Left it there and left it there. Picked it up - I needed to know. Couldn’t read any further. Needed to finish it - my break was getting close to being done. Didn’t finish it, and had to come back to it again after work. It bothered me.

What works for Everything is Illuminated is that it is nothing that you expect it to be. You only briefly encounter the Nazis and the threat they pose to the town of Trachimbrod. It isn’t a story of survival, or a story of the gas chambers. In fact - and this is what caught me most off-guard - it has pretty much nothing to do with the Nazis at all. Far more paper is dedicated to the history of the town. Far more paper is dedicated to the vacation to find the town again. Far more paper is dedicated to the letters sent across an ocean as a man in Eastern Europe battles for independence. Indeed, much of this paper is moving - the text that blackens it blooming like a flower of insight and humour and tragedy and joy.

I cannot highly enough recommend this novel. It is not without flaws - but while you are reading it, if you can accept the language and the structure, if you can hear the philosophy singing through the pages, then you will almost surely overlook them. Is it the best book I have ever read? No - not quite. But it is certainly the best I have read all year. Upon putting it down, I immediately wanted to pick it up again and figure out where the fairy tale becomes real and vice versa. Ever since, I have spent time reading some of my favourite passages over and over again.

Read. This. Book.

So Cool!

So the day of my great nation, Canada, is rapidly approaching. I've spent the past three out of the country, so it will be nice to watch fireworks sprayed into and spreading across the sky on July 1st. Eating steak and corn, and hoping you don't get rained out. Going for a hike through one of our many, many beautiful ecosystems (Wascana Trails, I'm looking at you!).

And then I discovered The Book Mine Set. This is a book blog with a Canadian Bias - and it is hosting an event on July 2nd entitled "Under the Midnight Sun Readathon". From noon on July 2nd to noon on July 3rd you read. Not much more than read. Try and finish a book - blog about your progress and your thoughts. Not much more.

So cool!

Now, I've long thought that Canadian literature is some of the best that the world has going for it. I'm totally biased too - but that doesn't stop me from suggesting it is true. There is far, far too much wealth in our literary vault for our population. Thank goodness so many of our authors are sufficiently popular to gain some international recognition.

The other 'So Cool!" part?

The 5th Canadian Book Challenge, also hosted by The Book Mine Set. You grab thirteen books, one for each of the Canadian provinces or territories (though not necessarily coming from them) and you read. You have a year. Starting on the country's birthday. Does not sound too hard, does it?

So what should I read? What Canadian masterpieces are out there for me to yet discover?

Here is a tentative list of what I am hoping to enjoy:

1. The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz - Mordecai Richler
2. The Fire-Dwellers - Margaret Laurence
3. Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood
4. Three Day Road - Joseph Boyden
5. Pilgrim - Timothy Findley
6. The Love of a Good Woman - Alice Munro
7. A Season in the Life of Emmanuel - Marie-Claire Blais
8. Lives of the Saints - Nino Ricci
9. In the Skin of a Lion - Michael Ondaatje
10. A Whale for the Killing - Farley Mowat
11. The Golden Spruce - John Vaillant
12. No Great Mischief - Alistair MacLeod
13. Galore - Michael Crummy (the only book on this list that I do not yet own)

Tom McCarthy's Men in Space

I saw this item at my local book store on the shelf reserved for sale-price items. I nabbed it, recognizing the name as that man who had written C - a nominee for last year's Man Booker Prize. I had not yet read that book, but I have heard it is fantastic. And that the other book that people speak about when they speak about Tom McCarthy, Remainder, is also reportedly fantastic (conveniently, it was located right beside Men in Space on the sale-price shelf, and it was also collected for my book shelf). How could I go wrong in picking up this book, reading it - surely I will fall in love with it.

Right?

Men in Space is about life in Czechoslovakia as it becomes a Republic, and the reign of the Soviet States collapses in eastern Europe. Or, that is what the back of the book told me. It is, more specifically, about an attempted art heist, using the confusion of a new state to successfully transport a one-of-a-kind religious icon. Impossible to explain, completely unique. Christ-like but entirely anti-Christ-like. A unique piece of art.

Admittedly, the book lost me early on. There are many characters, many narrative styles. Some of the voices that are used are quite interesting. One of them, the personal records of a surveillance officer who feels increasingly neglected by his commanders and starts to go deaf as a result of his work (he specializes in audio surveillance), is quite interesting. Some golden moments of character are wrapped up in his narration. Others are completely forgettable, interesting in the instant that they are read, but not interesting afterwards.

Men in Space is not one of those books that you read and get slapped in the face with a theme. It feels like a movie plot written out in book form. And it likely would make more sense in that format.

Not that it is nonsensical. One of the features I noticed late in the novel was just how tightly constructed the novel was. And soon after I started reading I realized that I was in for a treat in reading - there are moments where the writing is simply sublime:

Behind these people, perched at tables, groups of American collegiate types. They're talking politics, shouting above the music and each other. They're discussing the splitting of Czechoslovakia that's to take place in - what, less than one hour from now, the reconfiguration of Europe it'll bring about. The phrase transitional geographies keeps coming up: one guy keeps saying it and another jumps up each time and shouts Fuck your transitional geographies! East Coast, probably: Yale or Princeton. Mladen's seen the films: woollen sweaters and striped scarves, clean young boys running after girls in pleated skirts who look like Heidi, only slightly pretier, and clutch books to their chests. Frat parties. Weird rites.

A little further down the bar is some Czech kid whose face is vaguely familiar: classical, high-chekboned, blond locks swept across the forehead. Mladen knows that face, from a gig maybe, only then it belonged to a girl. Or to a girl and a - yes, that's right, it's David, one of those twins Roger, at that party, just before he got his eyebrow cut, said came ftraight off the one-hundred-crown note: the peasants. David's standing at the bar alone, looking down into a beer, morose.

Quite enjoyable to read. And impressive construction of details. So what is missing?

Characters. Setting. Circumstance. Motive.

Nobody, no place, leaps from the pages and fills your imagination. I kept thinking I was missing this in the pages - perhaps there were sentences fit in between the lines of text on the pages that my eyesight was not allowing me to see. Blind to important information, I continued to read that which I could see and was only getting half the story. Half of the ideas. Incomplete characters, flattened.

And the voice, which only occasionally was given to a character that really impressed you, was transferred from one character to another too quickly - so characters never developed a personality. Or circumstance. Or place. They just seemed to be characters in a story about something that was bigger than they were - but still managed to be boring. Boring despite the considerable research that surely went into it; the amount I learned about Art History in Easter Europe in the 1800s was shocking.

And yet I did not care. Nothing clicked.

About 60 pages from the end, exhausted and hoping I could just breeze through it, I turned to the end. Just to see if maybe, just maybe, the book had magically reduced it's size and thus my commitment to it. I started reading the acknowledgements. And this is part of what it shared with me:

The manuscript of Men in Space has had a long gestation. It started as a series of disjointed, semi-autobiographical sketches written in what seems like another era, and grew into one long, disjointed document from which a plot of sorts emerged from time to time to sniff the air before going to ground again. That it eventually found a kind of warped coherence as a novel about disjointedness and separation is to a large extent thanks to the intervention through the years of several people...

Well then, now it makes sense. I am not liking this novel because it was never meant to be a novel. And the novel is about being disjointed - no wonder it makes me feel that way as a reader. What a masterful construction technique - if only the theme had played out that well in the text. Some of these people feel disjointed. Others feel connected, in round about ways, to other characters in unexpected ways. And they are not likeable (lies, three or so of them are. Two of these die, the third, as mentioned above, loses his hearing and starts getting paranoid).

Moreover, you can feel, in the last 20 pages, how Mr. McCarthy tries to connect the novel into a coherent story, drawing on the symbolism of the entire novel. The painting. A man in space nobody wants to take credit for. And these pages are enjoyable, if lacking in power. None of these symbols were used consistently enough, or explained well enough, to justify their involvement in the conclusion.

This novel would likely have been a more enjoyable movie than book. It's pacing and story is more akin to that media - and certainly any novel that makes frequent reference to a painting and it's features would benefit enormously from the visual aids of a film. As a novel, it fails. But I am willing to give the author a second chance eventually - I do already own another one of his works. I just hope that Remainder is much better than Men in Space ever got to be.

Not recommended.

Trying to catch up.

I woke up this morning. Finished my most recent reading (Regeneration by Pat Barker) - only had another ten pages to go, so it didn't take me long. Collected some books, and selected a new novel.

And realized I am now officially three novels behind on this blog.

Expect a note about the quality of Tom McCarthy's Men in Space tomorrow. Hopefully a note about Everything is Illuminated by mid-week, by which time I expect I will have finished my current novel (Waiting for the Barbarians by J. M. Coetzee). Regeneration the following week, putting me only behind by a single novel, and perhaps some Non-Fiction and a note about short fiction.

Regarding the Non-Fiction - I am currently fighting every desire to quit my journey with An Irish Heart. I'm getting close to finishing it though (after months of fighting the reading). I don't have much to say, other than that Sharon Doyle Driedger is not a historian - and the historical training that I have (and will be getting in the near future when I start my M.A. in Canadian History) is somewhat concerned that this piece of work can be regarded as a product of notable quality. But I'll tear it apart later - perhaps it will thoroughly impress me in the final half.

Books you have to read.

As I will once again be a student in the fall, pursuing my M.A. in Canadian History, I have started organizing in my head a list of literature that I have to read between now and then. I'm trying to limit it to 5 pieces of fiction - just to be realistic. Many of them are quite large and will likely take me a week, or two, or three (or more), so I have to be mindful of budgeting my goals.

I also have to accept the fact that, when I am finished my current book, I am unlikely to find one of these books on my shelf and decide to read it. It is just a goal of mine that I will.

The Wars - Timothy Findley
2666 - Robert Bolano
The War at the End of the World - Mario Vargas Llosa
Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood

Realistic, right?

I wasn't lying when I said that Everything is Illuminated was going to change the way that I read literature - was going to raise my expectations substantially. Since finishing it, I have read one novel, started a series of short stories, started two other novels. Nothing has stuck (though the novel that I have most recently picked up may be worth putting the effort into reading). Nothing has inspired (though another novel that I started reading I could tell needed more time and dedication than I could offer it at the time). No author has had the same originality of voice - reading seems easy and simple.

I still don't know what to say about Everything is Illuminated though. While I was reading it and came across particularly impressive sections or chapters, I marked them. Folded the page in half, lying the outside of the page into the spine and putting a crease in the page. My book is littered with a half dozen of these desecrations. It is a practice that I have never done before - one that I have not felt the need to do again since.

I am slowly reading through these passages again. Just to give me the opportunity to really consider the novel before sharing my views with you.

The novel I have read in the interim, by Tom McCarthy, is deserving of a note or quasi-review. Expect that later this week.

Apples and Oranges

Can you hear that? Its a soft movement, like the way that waves lap over each other again and again on the shore of a Canadian lake. Or the way sound that geese make - their wings really - as they ascend into the sky. flap flap flap flap flap.

The blogger world is all aflutter as a result of tonight's announcement of the winner of the Orange Prize. It seems that every year (or at least over the past several that I have cared enough to follow) the flutter has three wavelengths.

One is a debate about whether or not a major international prize should be available only to women. Judging by the number of female authors that I am committed to reading completely (limited to maybe two or three names), I am going to go ahead and say that we still have a long way to go as literary consumers before there is a semblance of equality in the industry.

One is about the winner. Oftentimes we find ourselves welcoming a 'new giant' to the folds of literature. The historian in me wants to leave the proclamation of monsters in our midst to time - we shall see if we find ourselves reading a modern day, female version of Charles Dickens in fifty years. Or one hundred. Or more.

One is about whether or not the winner deserved the award. And this year this debate seems to be particularly pronounced in the blogosphere.

The winner this year is Tea Obrecht, for her debut novel The Tiger's Wife. I only encountered this book as a result of the Orange Prize, though this is more a result of my recent conversion to literary news. In reality, Ms. Obrecht's debut novel was very hotly anticipated.

Very received with decidedly mixed opinions.

And this is why I have not read it yet. Well, that and my collection of hundreds of other books that are deserving of my time.

But with the acceptance of this award, and with becoming the youngest author to have ever received it (she is only twenty five, a mere one year older than myself), it is nearly guaranteed that I will put the time in to find out what is so wonderful about the novel. I am not sure what to expect.

From what I can tell, it is that I will enjoy it. The writing is top-notch. The story interesting. The metaphor somewhat contrived.

Many are saying that they are hoping that Tea Obrecht's best work is ahead of her. Many are saying that her novel is very, very good. Not many are saying that it was the best book short-listed for the prize, though apparently enough judges were for it to receive the prize (but even there the judges have publicly admitted that the decision was far from unanimous).

Controversy and literature. Definitely going to get me to read this book.

Zeitoun - David Eggers

Many weeks ago, I finished this book by David Eggers called Zeitoun. Before having finished it, I wrote that there is a special place in the world of contemporary literature for a man like David Eggers. This is the second book of his that I have read, and I am quite certain that I will read more by the author in the future.

I remember reading What is the What? while doing my undergraduate degrees. It was a nice diversion from my studies, and I can recall being sucked into the storyline as much as I could possibly allow myself to be sucked into any novel at the time. It likely took me two or three weeks to finish the book because of the amount of time that I could commit to reading, but I'll be damned if I didn't enjoy it. In the end.

What is the What? struggled with the pacing, if I recall properly. There were some really, really painful experiences captured in the book. And captured vividly. But it was only during these moments that I was fully consumed by the power of the novel. I recall one scene, a robbery of Deng's American home, that I found particularly frustrating and particularly frightening. Interesting, considering the majority of the novel was about Deng's flashbacks to the Darfur/Sudan Genocide tragedy.

Zeitoun does not suffer from this pacing problem. Throughout you are drawn in. Right from the beginning I could tell that it was a special novel, though once again I couldn't quite figure out why. The pacing was phenomenal, the dialogue fantastic, the characters thoroughly enjoyable. Zeitoun, the protagonist, is an immigrant from the middle east living in the city of New Orleans when Katriana starts to develop in the Gulf of Mexico. He sends his family away, but himself refuses to leave.

What is captured in the novel is the story of New Orleans' destruction as a result of the storm. The physical world is recreated. It becomes a post-apocalyptic scene - buildings burning, people trapped. Tenuous relationships developing into dependencies, and then being lost. Throughout Zeitoun acts as a hero would - feeding animals that had been left behind by owners who expected to be back sooner rather than later. Getting Americans who needed to leave the city to aid stations. Helping some escape from their flooded homes. Zeitoun becomes a saint. This section of the novel is thrilling to read.

And then somebody arrives on Zeitoun's doorstep, quite literally, and we don't hear about him for more than 60 pages. We read about his wife's distress. His wife is also a convincing character, with complicated family issues as a result of her conversion from Baptist Christianity to a Muslim. She finds that she does not have any people in her family upon which she can depend, she when she flees New Orleans she crosses the continent to meet with one of her lifelong friends, her children in tow.

As her world collapses, her anxiety rises, the pacing of this novel is at its peak. It adopts a psychological magnitude. The tragedy of New Orleans is clearly not just in its destruction of an entire city, or the thousands of lives lost, but also the lives and persons that were changed as a result. This character reveals this. And continues to do so through to the end of the book.

I do not want to give away anything else of this novel. I will tell you that it picks up with Zeitoun. I will tell you that it is in this moment that you become angrier at government than you likely ever thought possible. The post-apocalyptic world adopts a Hollywood-like control scheme that fails - a government trying to maintain control over a world that nobody can possibly control. And doing some terrifying things to accomplish this.

It seems as though Eggers' greatest strength in literature may not be reporting about events around the world, but how the United States, his own government, must be indicted according to the crimes that exist here and the promises to Americans about America that are broken by other Americans. His aim is affirm the American dream and confront it with the American reality. And he does so with the vision of a journalist.

A journalist. Yes. This is what he is trained as. And it shows. Though his writing, his characters, his pacing is all top-notch, it is not literary. You read correspondences from the frontline of America, and they are short and thrilling and short again. It keeps the novel moving, but if you are looking for a story that is imbued with language that lights up the world with colours unimaginative, then i recommend you go elsewhere. Indeed, this style would not fit what he is writing. He is a journalist - what we are reading is essentially very long-form journalism with some liberties taken.

And this is the special place that Dave Eggers has in modern American literature. His dark world is not created by his words - you do not see this environment illustrated in the same way that you do with most other American authors. It is minimal. To the point. Your mind fills in the blanks. What is included though, the dialogue and characters, the events followed by other events. It is all very effective.

Zeitoun is an engrossing read. And it made me angry (I know I said this about Flowers for Algernon, but this is a particularly strong anger - and anger that I had forgotten about.). I imagine it will have the same affect on you if you choose to read the novel. Which I think you should.

Two things.

Firstly, I've given up on War and Peace.

It breaks my heart, believe it or not. But I got wrapped up in other books, and other parts of life (the joy of the season is that I can be working in my yard!). What I read I loved. And I want to read it again - or the parts that I have read so far. I really enjoyed it, just could not be dedicated to it and other books. It is far too complex.

Secondly, I've finished Everything is Illuminated.

Last night as I was nearing the end, I heard a voice in my head. Don't move on, it said. Read this book again. Right now. Figure out something else.

I did not listen. I've moved onto a new book. But I'll be damned if I am not distracted by thoughts of Everything is Illuminated.

What a fantastic novel. I'm going to be mulling over it for a long time. I do think, though, that it has altered my understanding of what is included in a quality novel. It puts other books that I have read this year into perspective, and makes me want to reread some of them - just to see if they are actually as good as I remember.

This novel makes me think that they are not. They are not half as tightly constructed. Or half as creative. Or half as fascinating to read - with so many voices, and so many lovely characters, and so much philosophy. Everywhere. Philosophy. Absolutely brilliant, and totally moving.

Important Books

I'm still one hundred pages away from finishing this book, Everything is Illuminated. I have been reading it very slowly. 10 days and I've not quite finished 200 pages. This is an unprecedented slowness for me. Particularly for fiction.

As stated, I have been reading it slowly. But this is both a product of circumstance and non-circumstance. Firstly, I've been working a lot in the yard over the past week, so most of my free time has been consumed by something other than reading. Secondly though, this book is not a fast read.

It is a challenging read, that is for sure. Two narrators, three or four audiences that the narrators address in three or four different styles. Each very, very distinctive.

The other reason that this book is inherently a slow read is because it is filled with philosophy. Brimming with it. The fact that so much is contained to the less-than-300 page novel is very impressive. But it is more than that.

This book is painful to read. In a good way. Today, I was eating a quick supper on the run, and, as I do my best not to waste time doing nothing, I was reading while I was eating in my solitary state. I read something and it broke my heart. Completely. I was half-way through a paragraph and I put the book down. And I was disturbed.

It cannot be read fast.

I can sense that, somehow unlike most of the books that I have read this year (all of which I have enjoyed to varying degrees), this book is an important one for me. It is bothering me, and making me uncomfortable, and making me laugh. It takes what it is doing so seriously that it includes humour - something I have for so long avoided in literature - and the humour is also heartbreaking.

This man, Jonathan Safran Foer, is a very, very talented writer.

Regarding Zeitoun. I finished it. I have been thinking about it - thinking of what to share with you. I'm torn about Dave Eggers, and about the book. Just as I was with What is the What?. But I'll let you know what I think about it... eventually.

Bright lights.

Everything is Illuminated.

By Jonathan Safran Foer. A brand new reading experience for me. I've managed to read only a hundred pages this week. Only a hundred pages in 7 days.

I've reread a lot of things. Entire chapters have befuddled my mind. I can't tell yet if the fairy tale that is being constructed by one of the narrators (as of now I think there are two) is going to lead into the second story just yet. But I've still almost 200 pages to find out.

And, though it is a challenging read (and I mean that wholeheartedly - I've not seen the English language treated in this manner since reading Burgess' Clockwork Orange), it is a thoroughly enjoyable read. The characters are likeable. Beyond likeable. And their language, once you get into the swing of it, is endearing.

Here is a hint of one of the writing styles (this author must be a somehow genius, or something like that):

From space, astronauts can see people making love as a tiny speck of light. Not light, exactly, but a glow that could be mistaken for light - a coital radiance that takes generations to pour like honey through the darkness to the astronaut's eyes.

In about one and a half centuries - after the lovers who made the glow will have long since been laid permanently on their backs - metropolises will be seen from space. They will glow all year. Smaller cities will also be seen, but with great difficulty. Shtetls will be virtually impossible to spot. Individual couples, invisible.

The glow is born from the sum of thousands of loves: newlyweds and teenagers who spark like lighters out of butane, pairs of men who burn fast and bright, pairs of women who illuminate for hours with soft multiple glows, orgies like rock and flint toys sold at festivals, couples trying unsuccessfully to have children who burn their frustrated image on the continent like the bloom a bright light leave son the eye after you turn away from it.

Some nights, some places are a little brighter. It's difficult to stare at New York City on Valentine's Day, or Dublin on St. Patrick's. The old walled city of Jerusalem lights up like a candle on each of Chanukah's eight nights. Trachimday is the only time all year when the tiny village of Trachimbrod can be seen from space, when enough copulative voltage is generated to sex the Polish-Ukrainian skies electric. We're here, the glow of 1804 will say in one and a half centuries. We're here, and we're alive.

I've read this passage several times. Imagined it. And moved on several times more.

This author must be a genius, or something like it.

Real-life Science Fiction

Dave Eggers is a special kind of author, who can turn a novel into a cry of the human heart for justice. Or vice versa.

I'm reading Zeitoun, a novel released last year. An absolutely fantastic read, a true treatise on a broken America. He has managed to turn the real, the actual events of the recent past, into an apocalyptic story - rivalling the predictions of 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 in its regime and The Road in its universe. How though, does Eggers manage to fill the novel with hope?

Zeitoun's office was unharmed, but it was no more than twenty feet from the fire. They tested the winds. It was a still night, with heavy humidity. There was no predicting where the fire would go, but it was certain that nothing could stop its course. There was a fire station four blocks away, but it was empty and flooded; there were no firefighters in sight. And with the phones down, with 911 inoperative, there was virtually no way to alert anyone. They could only watch.

Zeitoun and Todd sat in their boat, the heat of the fire pulsing at them. The smell was musky, acrid, and the flames swallowed the homes with remarkable speed. One was an old Victorian Zeitoun had always admired, and a few doors down was a house he had considered buying when it had been on the market a few years earlier. Both homes were devoured in a minute. The pieces disappeared into the dark water, leaving nothing.

The wind was picking up, blowing away from Zeitoun's office. If there had been any gust in the other direction, his building would have succumbed, too. He thanked God for this small mercy.

As they watched, they glimpsed a few other watchers, faces orange and silent. Other than the crackle of the fire and the occasional collapsing wall or floor, the night was quiet. There were no sirens, no authorities of any kind. Just a block of homes burning and sinking into the obsidian sea that had swallowed the city.

It is like reading science fiction.

Flowers for a Guinea Pig, again.

Strikingly original.

I've never read anything quite like it. Science Fiction that is totally believable, completely engrossing. Set in a world that I understand and can somehow relate to - a world that, unfortunately, seems just as real now as it would have 50 years ago when the novel was first published.

What works most for Flowers for Algernon, though, is that you really get into the protagonist's head. His name is Charlie. He was born a little slow - learning disabilities transferring to social disabilities. And in his older age he is used in an experiment to make him truly brilliant - one of the smartest men on the planet. And the world is not ready for him - he is too brilliant for them. Neither is he ready for the world - it is too unfamiliar to him.

The novel is written as a collection of progress reports that Charlie is expected to complete as documentation for his experiment. This approach really allows you to fall for Charlie; you care about his development, and the discoveries that he makes about how people have treated him throughout his life, and you sympathize with his frustrations as a genius. He never feels as though anybody is treating him as a human, but merely as an experiment - a guinea pig.

Indeed, his only real friendship is with a fellow Guinea Pig - a rat named Algernon. Algernon was treated with the same experiment as Charlie, and initially Algernon's intelligence is well beyond that of Charlie. It is quite interesting to see this connection to the other guinea pig - his only compatriot in the test tube.

What really works for Daniel Keyes in this book is the character. You care for Charlie more than you have cared for most other characters you have read about. Part of this is the personal nature of the writing structure - we are reading his most intimate, and sometimes inappropriate, feelings and ideas. And you watch him blossom into a dark and depressed flower incapable of trusting anybody that surrounds him, except for Algernon.

This book did two things for me that are quite rare. The first was that it made me angry. About a quarter of the way through the novel, Charlie begins to remember his past, and moments when his coworkers and his family treated him poorly. You hear these stories, and you are angry. Anger - a feeling I have not felt since reading Dave Eggers' What is the What.

The second was that it got me excited to read about Charlie. There was a point, about three quarters of the way through the novel, when I was driving home and I was thinking about Charlie. I was worried about him. I wanted him to be ok - I didn't want to witness his demise. What was happening was heartbreaking - what was bound to happen was heartbreaking.

A note about the writing style. This novel was originally written as a short story, and then expanded to include more characters and a prolonged story. You rarely get the sense that this transformation was a challenge for Keyes. The writing is mostly seamless, mostly believable. But it is a testament to the transformation that the English language was going through in the 1950s and 60s - this book does not feel contemporary even if the world that it produces can be mistaken as such.

June 24 - Today I went on a strange kind of anti-intellectual binge. If I had dared to, I would have gotten drunk, but after the experience with Fay, I knew it would be dangerous. So, instead, I went to Times Square, from movie house to movie house, immersing myself in westerns and horror movies - the way I used to. Each time, sitting through the picture, I would find myself whipped with guilt. I'd walk out in the middle of the picture and wander into another one. I told myself I was looking for something in the make-believe screen world that was missing from my new life.

Then, in a sudden intuition, right outside the Keno Amusement Center, I knew it wasn't the movies I wanted, but the audiences. I wanted to be with the people around me in he darkness.

The language is not flowery, it is not poetic. It is not stream of consciousness, or even a false steam of consciousness. It feels completely planned out - it is planned out and edited. Not a bad thing, but something I noticed. And it suits the character of the narrator and of the novel - it is both personal and impersonal. The language that a high academic may use to talk about themselves, no?

I made the comment in my last post that this would be a more valuable novel than Tortilla Flats in high school curriculum. I stand by that. Even without having read Tortilla Flats. It is a novel that I recommend to everybody. Captivating, though not perfect. Original, though not contemporary. A nice diversion, and a valid awareness-raising novel.

Flowers for a Guinea Pig

So I finished Atwood earlier this week in search of something different.

I thought that would be a challenge. I have a lot of books, but I perceive many of them to be relatively similar. I started reading covers to decide what to read - my thought process (abridged):

"They loafed and drank and loved and stole, and lived the brave life with innocence and outrageous disregard for scruples.." (Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck)... sounds familiar, like a novel you read in a high school english course (which is probably where I got this edition years ago). Maybe some other time.

"...traces the intersection of four damaged lives in an Italian villa at the end of World War II. Hana, the exhausted nurse; the maimed thief, Caravaggio; the wary sapper..." (The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje)... maybe not just yet. I loved what I last read of yours (which is supposedly your worst novel)... but something about that feels like I already know where it is going.

"...Like so many others, Lev is on his way... changing British Society at this very moment.... a singular man with a vivid outsider's vision... In his innocence, his courage and his ingenuity, he is perhaps Rose Tremain's contemporary version of Candide." (The Road Home by Rose Tremain) I love comparisons with iconic literary characters that I am not familiar with... but everything else seems so familiar. Listless. Plotless almost. Familiar.

"The true story of one family, caught between America's two biggest policy disasters; the war on terror and the response to Hurricane Katrina." (Zeitoun by Dave Eggers) Well reviewed. I like what I have read of the authors (even want to revisit it). Still though, it seems almost too topical. And we all know that topical literature is only really important when it is no longer topical... maybe not. I just might read this one...

And then I reached to the top of an old shelf, to books whose papers have not been ruffled in years. Hello recommendations and borrowings from grandmother - it has been so long since we have spoken. And that is how I discovered Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes.

"This fascinating tale of a daring human experiment has been described as 'a love triangle between two people,' 'a suspenseful, gripping story,' and 'a brilliant fantasy.' It is all these things. It is one of the most strikingly original and engrossing novels of our time!"

It was written in the 1950s. I didn't know what to expect. The cover told me nothing. I had heard nothing of it other than that it should be read. So I opened up my 45 year old edition and started reading the aged text on the yellow paper.

"progris riport 1 martch 3

Dr Strauss says I should rite down what I think and remembir and evrey thing that happins to me from now on. I dont no why but he sais its importint so they will see if they can use me. I hope they use me becaus Miss Kinnian says mabye they can make me smart."

I was intrigued. And read further. And further. I wasn't hooked by the writing, but I was intrigued by the story. And I figured out very quickly why it is that I had heard nothing about this novel's story - the plot reveals itself early on. Mostly. And it is difficult to explain part of it without giving the majority of the book away.

And I don't want to give anything away.

I just finished the novel though, and I am thoroughly impressed. One of the best works I've read? Not at all. But still a fantastic novel. That perhaps, just perhaps, deserves to be in high school curriculum far more than something like Tortilla Flats.

More on it next time. I want to go read some more War and Peace, and I need to get ready for my next book (oh, where to go?).

A mostly disappointment

When I last wrote about Surfacing, it did not appear that I was the biggest fan of what Margaret Atwood accomplished with it. I was at page 70 at that point - the novel was still figuring itself out. It didn't seem to have anything stick long enough to matter. That changed soon after page 70; around page 80. Page 80 was when I started caring about the protagonist and narrator, a powerful female character with an incredible intelligence but a penchant for paranoia.

I also wrote last that this novel seemed to have captured 1970s Canadiana in a single, self-contained story. I still stand by that, and perhaps would say that this is its greatest detriment, but it serves as much as a historical document as it does a literary one. And, admittedly, as a Canadian nationalist, I quite enjoyed the symbolism that it used to raise concerns of national identity.

Surfacing is about a group of friends who leave the urban safety of Toronto to the just-over-the-Quebec-border of wilderness, lakes, and silence in search of the protagonist's missing father. It starts with a world of logic, and quickly descends into a natural mystery, viewing the natural world with reverence and fear just as it has always been viewed and always deserved to be viewed. The protagonist's three friends, Anna, David, and Joe, are all urban-dwellers. They are lost in the wilderness without a guide, but they take each temporary success at conquering the wilderness as a sign of their true Canadianism.

And that, I think, is the central theme of this novel - Canadianism. And a very 1970s concept of Canada; the one proliferated in magazines like Canadian Geographic and not Chatelaine. It is about the encroaching power boats of the Americans, their baseball, their killing of the environment for personal gain. It is not a pretty picture, and ultimately you realize, with the protagonist, that the Canada we all imagine existing - the wilderness, trees, rocks, the shield, the lakes, the mystery of the ancient and the unfamiliar - is all to be drowned in the rising tide of American culture. And that we have to accept that, and give in.

Depressing, is it not?

The cast of characters are ultimately more enjoyable to watch than the protagonist. They are classic archetypes thrown out of their element - the anti-feminist but progressive nationalist of David, the loving and desperate Joe (and it is amazing to watch the protagonist move away from this archetype in her flashbacks to her current inhuman person), and the materialist Anna using anything she can to maintain a sense of power and control over her husband, David. Other characters that pop in are minor but support the themes of feminism or Canadianism, or environmentalism. All of which Atwood presents as essentially Canadian, but essentially struggling in a modern world.

Unfortunately, you can't find yourself caring for the narrator enough to love the story. All the elements are here - her flashbacks to her husband and child, her brother and mother and father and growing up in the wilderness and then the playground once she moved to the city with her mother and the realization that it is the city that is dangerous rather than the wilderness - the technique is quite impeccable. But you still don't care about her at all. So, when she descends into madness at the end, and the language becomes inconsistent and delirious and beleaguered, you don't care - you are confused, but you also know what is happening though you don't know why it is happening. Atwood trying to show the mystery of the wilderness and how it affects humanity, and the loss of logic as a valuable thing that no longer makes sense.

I also mentioned mentioned that this novel had an identity crisis - at first I thought this was thematic, though it is clear now that this was a means by which Atwood was portraying the depression of the protagonist. Everything connects and triggers memories and ideas, provides a reason for hate and a reason for love that is not good enough to still feel disdain and refuse to trust the people around her. I now would argue that the identity crisis that this novel faces is in the genre it is a part of; this is a psychological thriller that has been written in the drama genre. As a result, it is missing out on the suspense that could've developed and totally wrapped the reader into the story.

So then, why would I finish it? Well, first of all, I never doubt Atwood - and as you can see above, there is a great deal in this novel that is worth discussing, even if it is not the most enjoyable reading. This is the impressive genius of Atwood, visible even at this early stage of her career. The other reason is the writing - I absolutely loved this early-Atwood writing. It was experimental, almost stream of consciousness, but calculated for a careful character creation.

"You're screwing around with me," he said, till not looking at me. "All I want is a straight answer."

"About what?" I said. Near the docker there were some water skippers, surface tension holding them up; the fragile shadows of the dents where their feet touched fell on the sand underwater, moving when they moved. His vulnerability embarrassed me, he could still feel, I should have been more careful with him.

"Do you love me, that's all," he said. "That's the only thing that matters."

It was the language again. I couldn't use it because it wasn't mine. He must have known what he meant but it was an imprecise word; the Eskmoes had fifty-two names for snow because it was important to them, there ought to be as many for love.

"I want to," I said. "I do in a way." I hunted through my brain for any emotion that would coincide with what I'd said. I did want to, but it was like thinking God should exist and not being able to believe.

She writes well, doesn't she.

Now, do I recommend this book? Yes, and no. I think that Atwood accomplished many impressive things with this book - her use of images and language and sentence structure, her way of creating themes and developing them with violence that disgusts and transforms some and amuses others. You acknowledge good people in this book, and you hate others - you get a good snapshot of Canadian identity in the 1970s, and you recognize parts of it in our identity now.

I will say that, having finished this book last night, I felt exhausted. I needed something different. Something without a depressed protagonist or something like that. Where is the happiness in Canadian fiction? We are all lonely, sad, depressed authors. Now it is my task to find something that inspires me rather than saddens me.

Don't allow yourself to be disappointed just yet...

Last night I could not fall asleep. How frustrating when that happens. I got home from a music rehearsal and had a quick snack of some toast, and then tried to sleep. And tried to sleep. I read a bit. Tried to sleep. Read a bit more. Tried to sleep again.

I failed in the trying to sleep, but definitely succeeded in the reading.

Thank goodness

Now for a little note on Surfacing, Margaret Atwood's second novel which is currently casting a shadow over my nightstand (actually, I took it to work today to read during my breaks, and so I suppose it is casting a shadow in my daypack at this very moment). For some reason it was grabbed yesterday instead of Hisham Matar's In The Country of Men.

And I am thinking that was a mistake.

My mother and my brother both swear against Margaret Atwood. My experience with Alias Grace, one of my favourite novels, turned me into a fan. 70 pages into this short novel I am not sure I really know where it is going - I'm not sure it knows where it is going. I don't know what it is about, or what it isn't about. Every paragraph has an identity crisis.

This novel has certainly captured in the universe of 1970s Canadiana. Not a bad thing, but maybe, just maybe, not a good thing either. I'll finish it, out of necessity - but I may come away with a bit of a sour taste, wondering how it is that Atwood managed to go from this piece of schlock to the glorious literary adventure I experienced in Alias Grace.

Regarding last night - because I am consciously trying to slow down my reading of these novels, I used War and Peace to keep me entertained in my restlessness. Damn, this is a great book.

A New Reading Strategy - Part 2

I think I may have a handle on this new reading strategy. Hopefully it will slow down my consumption of literature and allow things to settle a bit more in my psyche. Affect me more deeply - just as Annabel did in its 6-day long lifespan.

I have not allowed myself to pick out my next book since completing Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy. It has been four days now, and I have focused my reading on Tolstoy's War and Peace. And the barbs have sunk in. I am enamoured by the writing and the characterization. Truly, this is a piece of impressive creativity.

I have already laughed in this book. I was out in public at the time, and I laughed at a book - and I am sure that I got the awkward and confused glances that I often send in the direction of people who do the same around me. But I couldn't help it. Tolstoy captures that frivolity of Russian socialites that seems to fit so well into my understanding of their aristocracy from this period. And yet each and every single one of them (and there are lots of them) has a purpose that they intend of following through - be it the acquisition of money from a dying man, or the movement of a son from the fighting line as they start training for a war with Napoleon. It is really impressive to see all of these stories weaved together.

Enthralling.

I can't decide what the read next. As I mentioned last week, I have purchased more books (but no more book shelf space) to read recently, as though I hadn't already collected an amount above and beyond what I can hope to accomplish this year. I'm thinking though that Hisham Matar's In the Country of Men may win out. Or Atwood's Surfacing. I'll be making a decision today so that I can start slowly delving into a universe parallel to that of Tolstoy's.

A Dark and Divided World

So I have finished Cormac McCarthy's novel Outer Dark. In the final day of its reading, Sunday, I unintentionally read 170 pages - I had intended on letting it last for another couple days. But the story picked up, and the suspense of the novel kept me turning pages, and the flow of the language made me completely unaware of how far I had gotten into the book.

This is the third of McCarthy's commentaries on human nature that I have read, and it may actually be the most dark. Not quite as depressing as The Road, and not quite as violent as No Country for Old Men, but I think it is far more mysterious. It starts with a brother and sister, who have a child together. The child, on the eve of its birth, is put outside by the brother out of shame for what he has done with his sister. Once there, the child is collected by a tinker (or tradesman), and taken to a nursing mother so that it may survive.

Once discovering this, the mother sets out to find the child. The brother of the mother and father of the child sets out the find her. As their adventure takes them through a long-lost world of American Appalachian wilderness, deliriously careening down mysterious roads, sleeping in forests, and relying on the kindness of strangers for water and food and work and accommodation, they leave behind them a wake of destruction. Lives are destroyed or lost, and there is fear in the air.

Nobody trusts anybody in this story, and yet everybody is friendly enough to ensure that others survive. Until the one group of people who isn't arrives at your doorstep and ensures that you don't.

This novel is filled with tense moments, written in action-focused prose acted by characters that seem simple but are undeniably complex. They are products of a time completely unfamiliar to our own, and yet in whom you recognize aspects of yourself. I was amazed, and frightened, at how frequently I would read dialogue between strangers and think that I have had those conversations before - and enjoyed them about as much as the characters appeared to be.

I don't know if I agree with McCarthy's stark and concerning portrayal of the world, but I have to admit that I come from a part of the world where I have not been affected by enough of the violence and hate that animates his universes to be able to relate. I am certain that there are places and people that can far better. I hear about it in the news - I know it exists. And, part of the intention of those novels I have read (particularly Outer Dark and No Country For Old Men) is the outline the randomness of violence, and how it can affect those who suspect it just as rapidly as it can alter the lives of those who don't.

The way that McCarthy writes about violence is shocking. It isn't graphic. He invites mystery into his novels and tells your imagination to fill in the blank. I last wrote about this novel marking the massive difference between his voice and that of Kathleen Winter, and I believe this to be the primary result: Winter paints the picture for you to see, McCarthy provides the underlying sketch and then asks your imagination to add the colour. Going from a rather poetic voice to this one requires an effort of mind at first.

I would recommend this novel, if you are a fan of suspense. It is a period piece, and it is alarming, and it tells something about human relationship (I would love to consider the relationship between Culla and Rinthy Holme, the mother and father of the lost child), and tells something of human suffering in an imperfect world, and tells something of human attraction to committing acts of violence. It asks the question of innocence, and points out that nobody is - and yet, it seems that it also notes that nobody is deserving of violence. This is a story about suffering, not redemption or justice; of mystery made from the natural and myth from the normal.

I exalt Mr. McCarthy to the halls of my most preferred authors, and look forward to reading more of his writing so that he may be confirmed in this place once more and once more and once more.

Annabel and Labrador Hunters

I've been trying to write about this book for days now. It isn't coming easy.

Sometimes you read a book and it just gets you and you wonder, 'where did that author come from?' I want to say that this happened with Annabel. And when you look at where this author came from, in this case a former writer for children's television show Sesame Street, you hope that some of her moral magic managed to slip into her previous work so that children have in some way been touched by her humanity.

I did not fall in love with book at the beginning. It was interesting and fast-paced, but then it slowed down, and I didn't find myself interested in the characters just yet. I could see some elements being tossed in that were interesting, like Wayne's interest in geometry and symmetry, and I knew that they would come back to play later in the novel in some way (and are used quite satisfactorily), and I enjoyed it but didn't fall in love.

Until Wayne got to Grade 7. If you can read this book till the point of Grade 7, I will be amazed if you can successfully wrench it from your hands before you have finished it.

I can only possibly recommend this book, though it comes with reservations. Sometimes the author appears to be lost in the wilderness of her words. Sentences say something, say many things, but not what you think they are suppose to say, and you don't know if they are saying what the author wanted them to say either. There are ocasional moments where you read a sentence and you don't know why it was included. But you've read it, and enjoyed it.

And there are moments when the characters don't quite do it. They seem two-dimensional, but also classical archetypes. I loved them, particularly Treadway and Jacinta, and Thomasina. But they didn't quite do it all the time. And in those moments when they did, they made the book seem unbalanced - like in the last quarter of the book, when characters other than Wayne seem to become more prominent than they ever deserved. It isn't really to the book's detriment though, because you don't become annoyed by it. Enamoured would be a far better term.

And then there is the ending. Particularly the epilogue. The ending is far more enjoyable then you want. There are roses in it, somehow. And you are not sure where they came from. But from a book that is so repeatedly, gently blasting its reader into knowing how horrible Wayne's life is - his loneliness, and sadness, and lack of intimacy, and confusion about himself - you come to the sudden happy ending and you give a sigh of relief.

So, somehow all of these weaknesses feed into the novel. You read then and you are puzzled by them, but you enjoy them, and are thankful for them somehow. You have been wooed, either by a fantastic debut novel or by a very clever author who knows how to woo an audience. I hope it is the former.

This novel tells an important story, representative of so many lives in Canada and around the world. The sorrows that Wayne experiences, and the panic and pain of his family, is all very real. And in its poetic portrayal, Kathleen Winter has managed to grasp some hint of that pain in this novel. I am curious though, if many of us will recognize how this story is representative of all of our lives - as it is a story about a gender minority, it runs the risk of becoming representative of a life shared by 'them' rather than one experienced by everyone.

And I think that the life that Wayne tells is actually a life shared by everybody in some way.

Wayne had been watching people. He watched men and women who passed him on their way to get pea soup at Shelley's at lunchtime ro croissants at the new bakery across from the Bank of Montreal. The street smelled of cigarettes, perfume, and coffee, and Wayne saw that the faces, bodies, clothes, and shoes of the men and women who passed him had been divided and thinned. The male or female in them had been both diluted and exaggerated. They were one, extremely so, or they were the other. The women trailed tapered gloves behind them and walked in ludicrous heels, while the men, with their fuzzy sideburns and brown briefcases, looked boring as little beagles out for the same rabbit. You define a tree and you do not see what it is; it becomes its name. It is the same with woman and man. Everywhere Wayne looked there was one or the other, male or female, abandoned by the other. The loneliness of this cracked the street in half. Could the two halves of the street bear to see Wayne walk the fissure and not name him a beast?

Kathleen Winter gets something in this novel, something truly profound in content and presentation. It comes with the highest, though occasionally puzzled, recommendation. Read this book and allow it to affect your understanding of society, others, yourself, and the way that people are as a part of who they were.

Finished. Again. Annabel.

I'm finished Annabel. It is too early to say that I have been changed by it, but I think it is not too early to say that I have been challenged by it. Many of its themes were so closely tied to things that I have been thinking about for the past several weeks that the last couple hundred pages just wrapped me in words and gently set me down on a bed of Caribou Moss.

I will write about it soon. This is a book that deserves a good amount of reading. Though I am going to have to read the epilogue again between now and then. I am not sure that I liked it much...

I started reading a new book this evening. Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy - one of the books I purchased today even though I have plenty of other books to read. It is his second published novel, dating back to 1968, and the voice of the author is so drastically different than that of Kathleen Winter in Annabel that I have found myself racing through the text without comprehending it.

Clearly I had forgotten that you cannot do this with a Cormac McCarthy book.

I have had to go back and read paragraphs and pages, and remind myself to slow down in my reading. It isn't a race, Neal - it is a measure of comprehension and impact. That is why I read. Not to see my 'finished' bookshelves expand, but to be moved.

I had the same problem when I started reading Annabel, whose voice is different still from that of Yann Martel's Beatrice and Virgil (have you started this book yet, by the way - it is beyond fantastic). It is difficult to switch between author's in the same day - this is my fourth in less than two weeks. Fifth and sixth if you include War and Peace and An Irish Heart. I need to slow down my reading, apparently.

On a side note, if this novel is as enjoyable as both The Road and No Country For Old Men were I will be prepared to exalt McCarthy to an internal list of some of the greatest writers I know of. I suppose I will keep you informed as to how this goes. I don't expect this novel to last more than the weekend - and then I don't know what to pick up afterwards. Faulkner? Atwood?

Isn't this why I am reading War and Peace too?

Annabel is a red-head named Wayne.

Well. I have failed at my new reading strategy so far. Which is heart-breaking for me, because that means I have been rushing through this Annabel book far faster than I think I should. Oh, Leo Tolstoy - why does the beginning of your novel not intrigue me more? Perhaps I should switch to Ulysses.

I realized today, as I was driving home from the book store where I met for coffee with a friend and spent more money on books that I won't have time to read for quite some time, that I had not yet written about this book.

Which is sad, because this book is quite a fantastic read. And it is transformative - it may actually be one of the better novels I have read this year (and, if you've seen the list of books I have read this year, there really are none on that list that are bad). I should admit that, as a young gay man, this book's attempt to walk in the divide of gender existence has really intrigued me - I have been able to relate to it far better than I anticipated.

I am all of 100 pages away from the end of the novel, and the most recent 100 that I have read have easily been the best that the book has offered thus far. It is heart-breaking absolutely; there is no reason to be joyful. But the characters are transforming into something beautiful and not beautiful at the same time.

The edition that I have includes a small set of questions that you can theoretically discuss in a book club. I only read the first one, and I thought it was rather presumptuous when I first came across it before opening the book. "How is Wayne a litmus test for the humanity of others in the novel? How does he challenge their preconceptions?"

This question is everything that the book is about - and it succeeds absolutely in what it is doing.

If my position in 100 pages is the same as it is now, I am going to very strongly recommend that you read this book - with some reservations (to be explained in the nearish future). If it is not, I will have some explaining to do.

A Moment of Genius

My experience with Beatrice and Virgil started more than six years ago. In my final year of public schooling, the English Department somehow managed to have Yann Martel come to my auditorium and speak. What it is he spoke about I haven't an idea. I remember being in awe of the fact that an author, and an author of award-winning book, was in my school - speaking to me. I remember being in awe because I thought that was how I was supposed to be.

I had not yet read Life of Pi. In fact, it would be another 5 years before I would. So I was completely unfamiliar with why this man was actually important - other than that I was told he was by the media and by my teachers.

In the question period that followed his speech, somebody asked what it was that he was working on next.

Without going into too many details, or really any at all, he talked about his interest in the Holocaust, and how it is portrayed in literature, and his hope of talking about the Holocaust through the use of animals - a monkey, named Virgil, and a donkey, named Beatrice. I was intrigued.

I thought to myself, "I like symbolism! I like metaphors! I like history, and the Holocaust is interesting! I think I will like that book when it comes out. Which can't be far from now..."

I bought the book the first week it came out. I've only just read it. Some of the reviews that I read, only after having spent my hard-earned cash, made it seem as though it wasn't very good.

Those reviews were wrong.

But they made me wait to read the book until now - in fact, I am not entirely sure why it is that I took the leap to read a book that is so reportedly bad when I have so many others that are demanding of my attention, that are not reportedly bad; that are, in fact, reportedly fantastic.

But I am glad that I did. And I hope that you do in the near future.

The story is about Yann. Or rather, about a man named Henry, though I think it would be wrong for any person to deny that there are a few moments of autobiography in this book. Or that it is tainted by it throughout. And that the book thrives as a result.

Henry is a writer, who has won awards, and whose previous book had done very well internationally. His follow-up book is about the Holocaust, writing about it as though it has meaning, but treating it as fiction rather than historical fiction. In doing so, the entire novel is immediately cast in the thematic brilliance of truth - a theme that does not arise in Life of Pi until the last chapter. And the book thrives as a result.

Henry's publisher do no much like his latest book. They don't know how well it will sell, or how it will sell, or where in the store they will even shelve it so that people can see it so that it can sell. They make suggestions for his re-writing of it. Henry does not take them very well. And stops writing. For years.

At this point in the novel I was disappointed. I figured I was reading a novel about an author who cannot seem to succeed again - and we have all heard that story somewhere. It is very common in the field of music. I wanted a story about the Holocaust.

Henry still received letters from fans around the world in those years where he was not writing. His publishers forwarded them to him. He decided to read them all, respond to them, help answer regular questions about themes from his award-winning book that was immensely successful. And then he received one that changed his life - that introduced him to a man that astounded him, and aggravated him, and gave him a way to write again. The creative block, and the self-imposed writer's block, ended slowly but eventually. And the end of the novel he releases a new book - a memoir.

But in between the beginning and the end is something that is quite extraordinary in literature. It is a story about the Holocaust without being about the Holocaust. It is allegorical, filled with allusions. It is about truth and literature. And about animals and humans and how the interact and how we perceive them. In a mere 198 pages is produced perhaps the most compelling book about the Holocaust that I have ever read.

Indeed, perhaps even more compelling than Eli Wiesel's Night.

Because it isn't about the Holocaust. And the author of the characters that represent the Holocaust - they do not belong to Henry - is an amazing character that, at the end of the novel, shocks you. Three times. In two pages. Two very quickly read pages.

Throughout the novel, Martel uses the semi-autobiographical plot to encourage the reader to undermine his story. And there are moments when you do. For example, the constant reference with the inability to write, and the involvement with a local acting troupe and music lessons to make something creative happen, and the inability to successfully replace writing with another outlet despite his successes, and the references to a pen-name. And the use of animals. Martel wants us to discount him because once again he is using animals to tell the story.

But the animals in this story are different. They suffer. And we love them before they suffer. They have voices, and fears, and a friendship. They love. And when they do suffer I cringed. When they suffered again, I cried. Which I don't do with books. And when the novel ended with some Games for Gustav I cried again - the parity between this allegory and the Holocaust was complete.

With this book, Martel succeeded totally and completely in writing about the Holocaust without writing about the Holocaust. This is a much more tightly written and convincing piece of literature than Life of Pi. This is the book that should be read in classrooms around the world. Everything draws on everything else, and when the ending arrives, it feels complete and still raises some harrowing questions about truth and meaning, animals and people. Read this book.




As a side note, this book made me want to read Gustav Flaubert - it will likely have the same effect on you. I won't tell you why, but I will tell you that, come the ending, you will realize how important it is to the story; you feel as though reading him will only possibly enhance that which you have experienced in this book.

On finishing books of considerable magnitude.

I have finished Beatrice and Virgil.

I couldn't help it - I couldn't hold back. The writing sucked me in, so did the characters - even those that were merely fictitious characters within this work of fiction. And it comes away with such moral power, it disrupts your comfort and your compass. The ending shocks you - in 30 pages you feel twisted and abused as a reader.

But it is so good.

I am going to need time to let this book germinate in my head. And then I will write more.

For now I will tell you only that you should read this book. It only takes a day or three, but it is absolutely worth it.

On to Annabel, by Kathleen Winter.

And War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy. Let's try out this new reading strategy.

A New Reading Strategy

VIRGIL: The taste of a good pear is such that when you eat one, when your teeth sink into the bliss of one, it becomes a wholly engrossing activity. You want to do nothing else but eat your pear. You would rather sit than stand. You would rather be alone that in company. You would rather have silence than music. All your senses but taste fall inactive. You See nothing, you hear nothing, you feel nothing - or only as it helps you to appreciate the divine taste of your pear.

BEATRICE: But what does it actually taste like?

VIRGIL: A pear tastes like, it tastes like... (He struggles. He gives up with a shrug.) I don't know. I can't put it into words. A pear tastes like itself.

BEATRICE: (sadly) I wish you have a pear.

- Yann Martel, Beatrice & Virgil; pg. 51


This was the moment when I finally looked up at the number on the top right corner of the page. I read it 2 days ago and have been trying to think ever since of how to present the glory of the pear-revelation since. But this is when I looked at the page number for the first time while reading this book.

It is a fast read, but engrossing. There is something about Yann Martel's writing - it had the same effect in Life of Pi. It reads like a speaker who is intelligent but is never trying to convince you of their own intelligence - who is quirky with their experience and loves and descriptions, but not disruptively so. I like it.

But it is just because of its fast-readi-ness that I am thinking of adopting a new reading strategy. Most of the books I want to read I anticipate being fast-reading novels. A good 350 pages (this latest by Yann Martel is just shy of 200, and if it wasn't for the joy that I was experiencing on each of those 200 pages, I would be quite frustrated by my full-priced purchase of it); few are much more than that. But the rare one is in the thousands.

And my new reading strategy, just to slow down the pace at which I read these shorter pieces of frequent brilliance, will be to read (as well as my nonfiction literature) a long piece; those books occasionally called masterworks because of their content and their length. I can't decide what to read in the background though (and which, I am sure, will come to the fore more often than not).

Ulysses? War and Peace? The Brothers Karamazov? The Pillars of the Earth?

Perhaps War and Peace. It is on my Kobo already, requires no further spending. And it was only recently the centenary of Tolstoy's death. But... what about James Joyce? I will have to keep you informed on where my decision lies. I am certain it will be made this week, and I will likely complete Yann Martel's fable by the end of tomorrow, and would like to not rush through another three or four novels in the coming week-long holiday.

Mr. Rochester... Part 2

I did not want that ending. I wanted Jane Eyre to be as depressing in ending as it was during its peak. I shouldn't have expected anything different (how immensely uncharacteristic of the literary period if it had been), but that does not change the fact that I wanted Charlotte Bronte's tale of love, deception, and love again to be more about deception in the end than about love.

I cannot lie though, I felt, for a moment, a few pages of disbelief as it seemed that Miss Eyre was going to marry another man out of anything other than complete and total love. It felt like it was impossible for a woman so particularly characterized as a woman as principle to do anything but that which absolute principle supported. And I did not want to read it happening - I was frightened; and for it to have happened without her meeting her real love once more! Why! that would simply be unacceptable.

Thank goodness it did not happen that way (though if this were a modern novel, with modern themes on humanity, I am sure it would have - my how we seem to have lost those rose-coloured glasses with which we once allowed ourselves to envisage our species).

I appreciated the romantic theme of the novel a great deal more than I anticipated - and how it, though similar to other works from the period, is a bit more particularly defined. In its way of honouring true love above convenient love or practical love, it made the female protagonist a strong and demanding individual, educated and smart and powerful in her relationships. This is similar to other major works from the period, such as Pride and Prejudice, but, unlike Pride and Prejudice, we are aware of the protagonist's love throughout this novel. Nothing is hidden. And she is confronted with a choice in the end, not given the thing that she desires most in a final few rousing chapters without a considerable fight.

The ability of the author to outline the different ways that we can love others, and the lengths we are almost willing to go for those we love in ways other than romantic, was really quite impressive. St. John Rivers, a character introduced late in the novel but who becomes intimately involved in outlining the theme, is a perfectly executed foil to Mr. Rochester (indeed, this perfection comes in one of the last moments of extended dialogue in the novel, between Mr. Rochester and Jane, in which you cannot help but laught.) Charlotte, like many of the authors of her time and locale, was quite the observer of the human condition - of that there is no doubt.

She was also, clearly, quite attached to darkness, superstition, and deception. Though the first chapters of the novel come off as a criticism of the church, the last few chapters and the introduction of St. John Rivers seems to affirm the church as a home of good-hearted persons (just with a few bad eggs in the carton). Moreover, odd events take place that are always raising the hairs on the back of your neck as you are reading - attempts at murder, suicides, cataclysmic destruction of estates. Laughter, or cackling, at night. Beckoning voices that are coming from nowhere but calling you to somewhere. How intriguing that love and superstition are exalted into the same sphere - given the same book to reveal themselves.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading about Jane Eyre. She was a fascinating character, as were many of the others in the story. A hero of sorts - whose world was being thrown into a confusing state of flux. And at times the story is written in this manner - there were moments where the dialogue and the writing made me delirious with confusion. And the characters, the dialects, and events which bring them together - all features worth praising. A highly, highly recommended read.

And now onto something decidedly more modern - Yann Martel's latest novel about truth, Beatrice and Virgil.

Mr. Rochester...

There is something about Jane Eyre. I am not quite sure what it is. But like so many of the great novels written in its time period, it didn't grab hold of my heart until well after I finished the first third of the novel. It took me 10 days to get that far; and now, in about five more days, I am only two chapters from being finished.

My assumptions about this novel were completely false. And how refreshing it is to have one's assumptions about a novel be proven completely false.

I should admit that the reason I am reading the novel is because of the compelling trailers for the recently released film. I wanted to read the novel before seeing the film - which has proven to be far easier than I anticipated, as it is yet to arrive in the small city of Regina.



I was compelled by how dark the film came across in this teaser.

And I assumed that this was a matter of post-modern reinterpretation; I anticipated reading a love story coloured merely by the confusion of the protagonist. How wrong I was.

This is a dark, compelling novel. With moments of hope, ever-so brief, touching your heart. Only to be dashed and dashed again. I cannot imagine this novel, rewritten by modern authors, with modern story-telling approaches and language and characterization. How desperate and sad it would be!

This is no love story; this is a story of infatuation disappointed. You hurt and are shocked by the events that twist the story - and the supernatural darkness that hovers throughout is terrifying. The humour, the satire and criticism of society and religion, they are very carefully intertwined with the story - and the bite hidden within is one that hurts. Charlotte Bronte is not kind, and neither is Jane Eyre; both are just.

I shall have to slow down my reading in the coming days to make sure that I do not soon find myself without more of the story to read. But I have so many options to start afterwards...

The Great Haul

There is nothing else to call it. Nothing. Anything else would be a euphemism; as it stands, it may be.

Every year the local professional symphony does a sale of used books as a means of raising a few more funds. Every year I tell myself I won't attend. And yet, for the past five years, I religiously attend.

And spend money. On books that I don't need, but want to read because they are supposed to be phenomenal and because I want to have the experience of being flown away onto another plain of existence for a moment or two.

And I honestly don't need these books - I have far too many unopened treasures of gold sitting on my shelves already, just waiting to be given the opportunity to have their spine broken by my caressing hand.

And now they shall be joined by another collection of books - which will hopefully not sit and wait on my shelves to be opened (though, because of the size of the addition, some waiting will be necessary).

This is a new blog - it will detail my literary life, reading through the shelves upon shelves of novels and poetry and historical knowledge that I need to digest. It will include reviews, and frustrations, disappointments and, assuming I can overcome my obsession with myself, news of the latest literary events (particularly awards).

Below is a list of the books I bought today. For a grand total of $75.00.

Farley Mowat - Aftermath: Travels in a Post-War World
Vincent Lam - Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures
William Faulkner - Intruder in the Dust
Jennifer Johnston - Fool's Sanctuary
Jane Urquhart - Storm Glass
Michael Ondaatje - Anil's Ghost
Jim Thompson - Savage Night
Timothy Findley - You Went Away
Robertson Davies - The Lyre of Orpheus
Robertson Davies - What's Bred in the Bone
Alistair MacLeod - The Lost Salt Gift of Blood
Robertson Davies - Fifth Business
F. Scott Fitzgerald - Babylon Revisited and Other Stories
Margaret Atwood - The Edible Woman
F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Last Tycoon
F. Scott Fitzgerald - This Side of Paradise
Miriam Toews - A Complicated Kindness
F. Scott Fitzgerald - Six Tales of the Jazz Age and Other Stories
Jane Urquhart - The Stone Carvers
Alan Paton - Cry, the Beloved Country
Margaret Atwood - The Blind Assassin
Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse Five
D. H. Lawrence - Aaron's Rod
Geraldine Brooks - People of the Book
Dostoyevsky - The Brothers Karamazov
Annie Proulx - Close Range: Wyoming Stories
Farley Mowat - Sea of Slaughter
Linden MacIntyre - The Bishop's Man
Carlos Ruiz Zafon - The Shadow of the Wind
Oscar Wilde - The Canterville Ghost, The Happy Prince and Other Stories
Kathleen Winter - Annabel
Heinrich Boll - The Clown
Dave Eggers - A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Mordecai Richler - Solomon Gursky Was Here

and

An Anthology of Yeats' Poems

That, my friends, is The Great Haul.