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.