Yet Another Review Catch-Up #s48, 49, 50

Well, we were up north for about two weeks and got home the other day. A massive storm hit the greater Peterborough area, and so many trees were knocked down on our property that we were lucky that no one was hurt and/or no buildings were damaged. But goodness, as my RRHB exclaimed when he drove up just after the storm, "It's like the apocalypse hit." There are empty spaces where trees have stood my entire life. My uncle took this picture -- this pine tree just caught the edge of our sun deck and it took my husband and brother the better part of a day to chainsaw it out of there. For a while, my aunt and uncle were trapped as about six huge trees fell right by our gate making sure there was no way to drive out. I kept exclaiming, "Oh my god!" when the baby and I drove up on the Sunday after the storm. It was crazy. The biggest storm anyone has seen in 40 years. What up weather?

I did very little reading. The RRBB is a moving maniac, inches away from crawling, he's a going concern. You can't leave him alone on the floor any more. Within moments, he's miles away from where you first put him down, and he's going through a funny stage where he fusses a little if I'm not sitting right behind him as he plays. That, my friends, can't continue. But I indulged him a little only because we were at the cottage for the first time and he needs to be comfortable there.

Anyway, I am, of course, behind in my reading, my reviewing, my list-making, my life, my correspondence, just about everything. So here are some mini-reviews:

#48 - The Shape I Gave You - Martha Baillie
I have almost completely forgotten about this book, which doesn't bode well for an extremely positive review. Half-way through reading it, I decided, absurdly conceitedly, that I had solved all of the issues with Canadian publishing, it's that we read far too many Canadian books, publish far too many semi-high-brow literary novels, so that just about everyone, myself included, thinks that's what they should write. First of all, any of you who know me as a reader, know how frustrated I get on occasion with modern novels in epistolary format. It's a rare format one can make successful. This novel, the bulk of which is a long letter from Beatrice Mann (who lives in Toronto), a middle-aged woman who has just lost her teenage daughter, to Ulrike Huguenot (who lives in Berlin) explaining everything about her marriage, her motherhood, and the affair she had with Ulrike's father. It's an odd book -- a little too Ondaatje-esque for me, heavy on "literary" and light on plot, which, in my early years, I adored, I emulated, in fact. But as I get older, I like simpler prose, novels that are well paced and jolt like lightning. This isn't a fault with Ballie's writing -- it's more a personal preference. Anyway, it's not that I disliked the book, I just found it a little rough around the edges, and really wanted it to get to the point.

#49 - Voyage in the Dark - Jean Rhys
This is one from the shelves too, thank goodness, at least I am clearing off some books, even if I skipped my alphabetical order. Funny, just sentences above I lamented about authors who are heavy on the literary and light on plot, and now I am about to confess that modernist writer Rhys (whose lilting, patient sentences might define "literary") is one of my favourites. I might have read this book years and years ago; I picked up my copy to find all kinds of sentences tucked away inside the back cover -- not related to the book, just odd thoughts I must have climbed over a pillow or two in the middle of the night to scribble down on the nearest paper. They don't make any sense now. Anyway, the novel, the story of a young West Indian girl who loses herself in London and becomes a "fallen" woman, caused quite a controversy when it was first published. Now, with the state of the world almost completely fallen, and the stereotypical "hooker with a heart of gold" making an appearance in many George Clooney movies (well, maybe just in the terrifically boring The American), the fate of poor Anna Morgan isn't necessarily shocking, it's more tragic. Truly, honestly, utterly tragic -- if only because of the naivety, the utter essence of the girl's misery (a lack of fortune and a misunderstanding of her place in the world) comes across in every single page. She's displaced, disorganized and utterly incapable of unassisted survival -- yet, you can't help but ache when she makes poor decision after poor decision. Your heart pulls when she describes the relationship with Francine, a black servant in her father's house, with whom she was very close. And when the inevitable happens, and Anna finds herself in a world of trouble, it's not surprising the lengths she goes to fix the situation, and even less surprising, is the outcome. Rhys, whose stream of consciousness style isn't for everyone, inhabits Anna like a tic in a mattress, and its amazing how deep the character runs through language alone, not necessarily action (if that makes any sense). It took me ages to finish this book, both because I was up north alone with the baby and also because I kept starting and restarting paragraphs just because I liked them so much. She's such a wonderful writer.

#50 - Sisterhood Everlasting, Ann Brashares
There's not much to say about this book, it tugged away at my heart because I am sentimental about these novels. I think they are great YA fiction and wished I had them to read as a young girl (vs. the trashy Harlequin-esque crap I filled my brain with). I love their magical quality, and the ethereal nature of all of the characters -- but it isn't necessarily down to earth. Yes, it'll make you weepy, especially because Brashares does something shocking (even if her readers are now mature enough to handle it -- what happens still smarts) and forces her characters, through tragedy (and not just the loss of the pants) to truly grow up. It's a sweet book, a sweet read, just perfect for lying immobile after a kidney biopsy, and that's all I really have to say. Wait, just one other thing to note, having met Brashares in person, I will say that she is as lovely in person as her books, which is always a blessing and means I am ever-inclined to continue to read said author's work...

#19 - In The Time Of The Butterflies

When tackling this whole "off the shelf" challenge I have consigned myself to this year, I've been judging books by their page length, which, in my reading world, translates to how long it'll take me to get through it. In the Time of the Butterflies, from start to finish, clocks in at 324 pages. That's about three hours for me -- so maybe a day and a half in baby time. But GOOD GRIEF this book took me forever to read because I just couldn't get into it.

While I have no doubt it's an important novel -- the weight of the language, the heavy-handed metaphors and sentences dripping with meaning, tells me as much -- and the history that forms its central plot, the murder of the Mirabel sisters in the Dominican by the ruthless dictator Trujillo, is actually really fascinating. But the book does not, in my mind, "[make] a haunting statement about the human cost of political oppression."

In a way, this is women's history. The novel centres around the 4 sisters and their daily lives -- their marriages, the birth of their children, and it's a domestic novel for the most part. And all the while, the four sisters are charging forward with a revolution. I just wish there was more revolution in the book and less meandering. I wanted to know more about the revolution and less about ribbons. I know that's probably quite sexist of me, that the fact that these were women revolutionaries challenging the male-established dictatorship means the novel should necessarily include discussions of the domestic, but it slowed down the action to a crawl. And by telling the story from all four of the sisters' points of view, Alvarez manages to disjoint the narrative so completely that you only get a fraction of each of their lives. Personally, I would have preferred the novel centre around Mirabel, the most dynamic and active of the four sisters. But, I didn't write this book.

First published in 1994, I think this book suffers a little from the trappings of the time -- long-winded and overly descriptive, I'm reminded of the Seinfeld episode where Elaine goes to see The English Patient (let me just state, for the record, that I loved both the book and the film), rolling her eyes the entire time in boredom. At least I think that's what happened -- I think that might be the only episode of Seinfeld that I've actually seen from start to finish. Annnywaay, she just doesn't get what the big deal is, and I feel that way about this novel. It's a national bestseller, nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and blah de blah, accolades and great blurbs. Yet the book failed to keep my interest and over and over again I found myself not wanting to finish. It was written at a time when long, flowery sentences and the cult of Gabriel Garcia Marquez was going strong. And the importance of the novel, the politics, the very real struggle, the incredibly tragic murder of these four women, gets lost within the precious nature of the prose, the inevitable storytelling that never seems to actually tell a story but circle around it, planting pretty flowery sentences along the way.

Overall, I was disappointed, and found myself just wanted to get to the end, to see how they die -- and then, of course, it all happens off stage, which made me furious. They died violently, brutally, unnecessarily, and Alvarez should have had the bravery to write it. Instead, the book simply stops and then switches perspective again, heads back into its dreary narrative and tries to cover it up by describing their dead bodies as the remaining sister, Dede, identifies them. There's no power to this narrative; the power is in the truth of the events themselves, and Alvarez coasts along because of it. I know it's harsh but, again, books should stand the test of time, prose shouldn't feel dated, and a story of such importance should actually read that way, and not hold itself up on some bronzed pedestal.

READING CHALLENGES: Off the Shelf, and Around the World in 52 Books. Alvarez was born in the Dominican, and I usually really love Caribbean literature, but not so much in this case.

#3 - In a Free State

The last thing I expected this morning was to get caught up in V.S. Naipaul's truly excellent In a Free State. I woke up early, as I usually do, crawled out of bed, grabbed my book and cuddled up under the duvet on the couch. My RRHB slept. I read. He slept. I read more. He woke up. I crawled back into bed, fell asleep for a bit, and then finished the book. What a perfect lazy day before the craziness of real life picks up again the moment the alarm goes off tomorrow morning.

The last Naipaul book I read was A House for Mr. Biswas way back in second year university. I was captivated but that never brought be back to Naipaul. My post-colonial reading in later years turned back to Canadian, I left university, did my M.A., and never picked up another of his books. Another of the surprises that I found on my shelf, I must have ordered this book back when 1001 Books came out. In a Free State was first published in 1971 and it won the Booker that year. Bookended by two diary-like travel journals, the collection contains two short stories and a novella, from which it takes its title.

The first story, "One Out of Many," follows a servant brought to Washington from Bombay. One day he steps away from his employer, leaves everything behind in the cupboard where he was sleeping, and becomes an illegal immigrant with an under the table job at a local restaurant owned by a fellow countryman. The story explores themes of alienation as Santosh makes his way in the United States, and slowly he discovers that he'll need to leave almost 100% of his old life behind to survive.

This idea, of the cost of freedom and the impact of the realities of immigration, is carried forth into the second story, "Tell Me Who to Kill." Leaving everything he knows behind, the narrator picks up and heads to London with the intention of giving his brother a better life, a life of studies, so he too can become "something." He works hard, saves his money, and then as so many stories go, makes a bad decision that ruins everything. Told through flashbacks as he takes the journey to his brother's wedding, the story becomes alive through his rich dialect, the obvious affection he feels for his brother, regardless of how he disappoints him, and the necessity of change when faced with adversity. It's a crushing and heartbreaking story.

"In a Free State" inverts the situation. Here a white, homosexual man has come to Africa to serve the government,under ideals of serving for the greater good. Away from the safe collective where he lives, Bobby attends a seminar and then must make his way back during a time of political upheaval. His passenger, the wife of a British journalist named Linda, makes pleasant enough conversation to begin with, but it soon becomes obvious she isn't happy either on the journey or in Africa. As their trip becomes even more arduous (they miss their curfew and are forced to stay at a ramshackle colonial resort), the polite nature of their relationship disintegrates. Armed with a sense of misapprehended colonial idealism, Bobby soon finds himself in all different kinds of trouble, some of his own making and much as a result of the political situations, and it's damning. Like in the first two stories, Naipaul explores themes of alienation and separation, of family and work, of place and displacement.

I couldn't put this book down. It's a book I'd love to study. A book that reminds you how words can sever a problem from its root, pull it apart and set it down in a way that makes you see things more clearly, even if in the end, for all three protagonists, little changes despite how hard the world presses up against them to force their currents in a new direction.

READING CHALLENGES: In a Free State is on the 1001 Books list, and so I'll cross it off there. But Naipaul was born in Trinidad, so I'll count this book on my Around the World in 52 Books list as well. It's actually a perfect book for that challenge. The landscapes, from the unknown African country that's the setting for the novella to Egypt, from London and Washington as seen through the eyes of those who settle and are not born there, there's an interesting sense of place that grounds the entire collection.

COMPS AND OBSERVATIONS: I couldn't help but think of Blood Diamond when I was reading "In a Free State," not because the stories are at all similar (it's a terribly mediocre film in the end), but because when Bobby speaks to an African man in the book, he uses that patois that Leo uses at the beginning of the film: "Who your boss-man? Who?" As Naipaul describes the country as it slips from colonial to post-colonial rule, I kept hearing, "T.I.A. This is Africa, right?" from that scene at the bar. In terms of comps, for much of the story, I kept thinking of Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants," despite the fact that it's obvious that Bobby and Linda are not at all lovers, their conversations have that same read-between-the-lines feel to them and the dialogue is excellent.

WHAT'S UP NEXT: I picked up Amanda Boyden's Babylon Rolling while my RRHB was using the computer. Fingers crossed I'll finish it tonight, which means I'll have managed to finish 7 books while I've been off for vacation. Not bad indeed!