#60 - A Long Long Way

Sebastian Barry's A Long Long Way surprised me, and that's not easy to do. Yesterday, I had plucked it and Sarah Waters's Affinity off my shelves to start reading upon finishing up the Mo Hayder. I don't know why I chose one over the other -- except the beginning passages of Barry's novel reminded me in a way of A Star Called Henry, and once I started, I couldn't put the book down until I was weeping at the end.

Willie Dunne, the son of a police commander in Dublin, hasn't grown tall enough (you must be six feet) by his teenage years to join the constabulary so, instead, he joins the army at the very beginning of the First World War. Willie and his three sisters live in the Police Castle with their father, their mother having passed away in childbirth years before. The Dublin before the war is a very different Dublin during the war and even more so once the war is over. Home Rule becomes an issue, and the Irish soldiers fighting for freedom, country and King, go from heroes to villains in one fell swoop. And while Willie is far away from the politics invading his country, his life, his identity, stuck in the mud at the Somme, breathing in mustard gas at Ypres, and seeing death and destruction all around, the very nature of the issues are never far away either.

Barry, from what I can gather from his short bio at the beginning of the novel, is a playwright, and often you can sense this throughout. The dialogue and characters are so very well developed, so pristine in their environment, that you know there's been a sure hand in their creation. But, often, much of what sits outside the characters and their dialogue, and this is a rare criticism for I enjoyed this novel very much, feels like stage direction -- a lot of repetitive details, re-used observations, and a little bit too much of a dependence on heavy metaphors.

Yet, you can't help but have your heart on your sleeve when reading Willie Dunne's story. He has tender feelings for Gretta, a girl whose father was injured by Willie's dad himself during a particular uprising; and this love keeps him alive as he sits covered in lice, grime and his own piss at the bottom of a trench. The horrors of the First World War have been fictionalized by Canadian writers so exceptionally over the course of our literary history. The horses sinking into the mud in The Wars, the morphine-addicted character in Three Day Road; the First World War defined Canada as a nation, we were exhalted for our bravery, we held positions, and this is how I'm used to reading the events. Yet, Barry has an entirely different perspective -- Willie's split in two. He's on furlough when Easter 1916 happens, and he sees the violence in a way that changes his mind about how or why he should be fighting. But it's so easy to be political when you're not the one in the trench, in a way, when you're the one throwing the rocks and refusing to go, abandoning the boys that went -- but those boys are still suffering, barraged by mortars and attacked at every corner by the enemy, their lives are not their own, but they must own their actions.

And when Willie is left for his second furlough, and aspects of his homecoming are inevitably difficult, your heart breaks for him. Nothing has stayed the same in Dublin during the time he's been at war, but he needs the stability, and needs to come home. What happens to a man no, rather, a boy born into his manhood by seeing and participating in unspeakable horror, who can't go home again? It's fitting when he arrives upon his doorstep that his youngest sister doesn't recognize him, and when everything he hoped to come back to falls apart, Willie still does the honourable thing -- he goes and visits the family of his fallen Captain, a man he respected because he held the line during the first instances of the gas when everyone else, rightfully, fled to save their lives.

There's a cast of motley characters that survive alongside our hero. My favourite, Christy Moran, the second in command, a brash, ballsy, opinionated brave fellow who hands away a medal as easily as he would share a ration, manages to add a lightness to many situations. There's the usual stereotyping of the Irish by the brass -- and by some of the other soldiers -- but the perspective on this war, the sacrifices that these boys made, and how it all changed because of what was happening at home, well, I've never read anything like it. While Henry Smart was holed up in the Post Office in A Star Called Henry, Willie Dunne was holed up in a trench in France and Belgium. They come from different places but they represent two very distinct aspects of Irish history, and Barry, alongside Roddy Doyle, creates an interesting, almost bookended reading experience should one choose to tackle the two novels together.

In the end, I wept, and wept, and there was more than one moment where I put my hand over my heart and held tight to my baby. This is not a post-partum emotional reader talking -- this is the result of a powerful story wrapped in a wonderful character. In the end, I was very sad to see his story close.

READING CHALLENGES: The Off the Shelf Challenge of course, and as Barry is Irish, I'm counting A Long Long Way for Around the World in 52 Days. Over the last couple weeks, I think I've managed to get through about 10 books from my shelves. There are hundreds more to go but I doubt I'll make my annual reading goal of 100 books. Simply too much went on this year. I think, too, I'll forgo my annual top 10 books list as well -- I'm just going to keep plowing through titles in the wee hours of the morning and actually enjoy the fact that our baby still wakes up a couple of times in the night to give me those stolen moments when everything is so quiet and my mind can wander over words, imagination, and impressive stories I don't expect to enjoy as much as I do.

#59 - Birdman

Mo Hayder remains one of my favourite crime writers. I had the good fortune to interview her a couple of years ago when she was in Toronto promoting the Walking Man series, still Jack Caffrey mysteries, but with the introduction of Flea Marley, the police diver, who becomes the other central character in the books. She's self-educated, incredibly smart, and it was one of the best interviews I had ever done (and she was very gracious when she signed my book).

Annnywaaay, I've had Birdman, the first Jack Caffrey mystery, on my shelf for about four years. Every time I look through my books to see what I should pick up next, I think, I should really read that Mo Hayder novel. I guess, with everything, and with my own superstitious nature about reading (books are ready for you at the right time in your life and never before... that's why you can't finish them if you start and put them down again , and why it took me at least seven tries to get through Crime and Punishment; it just wasn't the right time), it languished. There were always other books to read first. But I had just finished The Post-Birthday World and wanted something that I could read in a day -- and grabbed Birdman on a whim.

I don't know what it is about motherhood that inspires me to want to watch and read about murder and mayhem. I've been only keeping up with shows like Law and Order UK, Detroit 1-8-7, and watching the boxed set of Prime Suspect. My friend Duncan suggested it's because crime novels are easy to pick up and put down. You feel like you've accomplished a little something when you get to the end of a police drama: there's a mystery, it gets solved, people are punished. It's all my overloaded, exhausted brain can handle. Well, he's got a point. And maybe the escapism I used to get from watching movies, I'm finding in a good, solid, mystery/thriller here and there.

So, Birdman. It's a fairly typical crime novel, of course, because it's Mo Hayder, it's extremely well written and utterly readable. It charges along at a fast clip and before you know it, Jack's done it again: ruined another relationship, pissed off a whole bunch of people, and solved a heinous crime (in this case a lot of dead prostitutes/strippers/addicts) involving a serial killer (or killers). In a way, this novel is more structured than Hayder's later books. I'm not sure if this is part of a series with anything more linking it than Caffrey as the main character because it's all tied up very neatly at the end -- that's not to say it's a happy conclusion -- but there's a finality to this book that the Walking Man novels don't have. They all seem to pick up where the other left off in a deliciously addictive way.

Jack's new to the force in London, and it's his first big case. When they uncover the bodies of five women, all mutilated, all murdered, there's conflict in the force. There are clues that lead a racist, repugnant DI Diamond in the wrong direction and Jack, along with his partner Essex, have to fight against the curve to get everyone working in the right direction. His profile is correct, and when we meet the villain about eight pages in, you get the feeling that it's all coming together a bit too quickly, you know, like when the cops disappear too soon on Law and Order, and you know there's trouble with the case...and low and behold, once the villain becomes known to the police, the killing doesn't stop. So who is the real Birdman? Of course, it's a race against time for Caffrey and Essex to figure it out because there are real people involved now -- not just victims, but people with personal relationships to these officers.

Part of Vintage Canada's World of Crime series, I love how the jacket copy says, "For some killers, murder is just the beginning..." It's a pretty terrific tagline and utterly relevant to this particular book. I love it when there's a twist that's hinted, ever so slightly upon toward the beginning of the novel, and explodes at just the right time in the reading. Hayder's exceptional at creating completely creepy villains who do absolutely disgusting things. Yet, the level of (for lack of a better word) "grossness" that Hayder employs in her writing is consistently balanced with razor-sharp prose, snappy dialogue and intense research. These novels are solid, have ripping plots (how else do you read them in a night while breastfeeding a baby?) and hinge upon a fascinating character that she's created in Caffrey. I mean, he does remind me a little of Jackson Brodie -- Kate Atkinson's protagonist -- they're both damaged in a way that makes them so good at their job. In Caffrey's case, it's the disappearance of his younger brother when he was eight and the passionate way he's convinced his next-door neighbour, whom he still lives beside, is responsible for his murder.

Unlucky in love seems to be the MO for these kind of men, which, of course, makes them irresistible on the page, both to the reader and to just about every woman in their path. But romance never works out for Jack and it's a good thing too because how else would he solve the crime and save the day? I'd highly recommend any Mo Hayder novel for the crime/thriller lover. She's such an exceptional writer that it'll totally satisfy your craving for good sentences as much as your craving for, as my grandmother used to say, "a good whack on the head."

READING CHALLENGES: The Off The Shelf Challenge, of course. I already have a British writer for my Around the World in 52 Weeks, so I can't double count Hayder.

WHAT'S UP NEXT: I started Sebastian Barry's A Long, Long Way this morning and it absolutely reminded me of one of my all-time favourite books, A Star Called Henry, and so I'm hoping to continue it this evening. Not too much time to read today as I was alone with the baby and we took an amazing nap this afternoon. How delicious is it to lie in bed with your baby tucked into your chest, and then wake up with him snuggled right into your arm all smiley and sleepy when you both wake up. Even if the moment only lasts for about five minutes before he wakes up fully and discovers he's got shitty pants and is starving and, therefore, starts screaming, but it was a bit of bliss on a cold blustery day.

Notes From A House Frau III

RRBB trying out his chair for the first time. He lasted about 10 minutes before getting fussy. My lesson for this week? Appreciating stillness. I have been sitting in this same position, feeding, trying to get SOMEONE to sleep longer than 25 minutes and NOT on me, since noon. A lot of thoughts go through your head, especially when you're by yourself, and there's something about stillness, sitting, in one place, for so long that lets your mind wander and wonder.

A couple of friends from work came over yesterday. They brought beautiful presents for the baby. And I got to pass along some of the stuff RRBB has outgrown (he's out of newborn sizes!) to one friend as she is due in January. It was good to see them, but it was even better to hear about work -- it's everyone's dream to have time off, paid (albeit the misery that is UI) from work -- because I never thought I would miss it as much as I do. It's not just the routine. The very get-up-and-go and the nature of having something to do each day where there are expectations on you to get there at a certain time and be a certain kind of productive. No, it's something I realized about myself over the last little while. I am at a place in my career, and yes, I'm actually using that word now, where I truly, honestly and completely love my job. It's fast-paced, I have great colleagues, and I was doing really interesting work. Work that got me excited and thrilled to go in to the office each day.

But it's also a blessing to be able to stay home with the RRBB. It's a different, much harder kind of job, with no fixed schedule and little breathing time, even when you do sit for hours. In the last few, I've been resenting the disease a lot, and I think it goes hand-in-hand with my resenting the doctors (as excellent as they are) for all telling me, repeatedly, since the beginning of my pregnancy, that everything would be fine. Funnily enough, everything was so far from fine it's as if fine is the moon and I am the earth and there's no hope in hell of us ever colonizing it for human life. Does that even make sense? Probably not, I'm sleep deprived and therefore metaphorically challenged.

All I know is that from the very moment the disease was diagnosed, it started taking things away from me. Dance, my appearance, my sanity at times (the prednisone crazies), and even when it gives something back -- like our wonderful RRBB -- it takes so much just to get here. My energy, my good health (I was so HEALTHY when I got pregnant; the healthiest I'd been in 15 years!), and now it's still so angry that it's even taken away all of the stuff I was looking forward to about having a baby in the first place: birth (don't mock me; I wanted to experience it) because they didn't want the stress on my body so up comes the epidural and then the pre-eclampsia put the kibosh on a natural delivery; and now it won't even calm down long enough for me to feed the baby if I have to take stronger meds because all my levels are going in the wrong direction. It's hard not to anthropomorphize the disease. To turn it into something separate from me -- a Jeckyll to my Hyde (have I got them right?). The devil to my right-shouldered angel. Yet, the still teaches you things. It teaches you to reimagine all of this in a way that's necessary. They have me on a higher dose of prednisone right now and I'm hoping that'll kick-start the remission again. By Wednesday, I should know what they've all decided but I've decided somethings too.

1. I need to go back to restorative yoga.

2. I'm dying to get into a pool for a swim.

3. There are lots of people out there who love me and the RRBB a lot.

4. Blogging is a form of writing so it's okay if it's not the novel right now. I'm moving my fingers, forming sentences, and the rest will follow. I am willing to wade through the rejection. The book is worth it. It will eventually get published. I have to believe this, it was my one regret last year when I almost died the OTHER time, you remember, the whole appendix nightmare. All I kept thinking was: "I never published my book."

5. Every day RRBB gets older, bigger and more experienced. And so do we as parents. These are not small steps.

6. We made it through three weeks in the hospital and more than one near-death experience. And now, weeks later, that seems like a world ago. Time heals. It's cliched but true.

7. The stillness encourages patience. Patience is something that I could always use more of, and it's something that only comes when you least expect it.

8. Books are wonderful and necessary to my life. They are worth losing sleep over.

9. Television, not so much.

10. When you come to visit me, please, always bring food -- I can barely get dressed in the mornings I'm so exhausted. Having a meal, a snack, a drink, anything, means so much. I can't even tell you.

That's all from the House Frau today. No tears.

Oh, and the baby has started smiling. We've tried to catch it on the camera but he's like Snuffle-smile-agus, every time he does it the camera's either just missed it or he won't do it again. Sneaky RRBB.

#58 - The Post-Birthday World

The Post-Birthday World, like many of Lionel Shriver's novels, manages to defy the reader's expectations both in its construction and its central thesis -- that a life can change drastically based upon one split-second decision. This is no rom-com, and while it might feel like Sliding Doors, there's little beyond the premise, that to act or not to act (and in Shriver's novel, it's very much an action that splits the protagonist's life into two distinct futures vs. happenstance, Gwyneth missing the tube or not missing the tube), in that one moment can change your life forever.

Irina Galina McGovern, children's book illustrator and common-law wife of Lawrence, both American ex-patriots living in London, against her better judgment, goes for a birthday dinner with the infamous, rakish, handsome professional snooker player, Ramsay. Lawrence is away on business. They have a standing birthday dinner date -- but it used to be a couple's thing. Ramsay's wife, Jude, was a collaborator of Irina's, and when their marriage fell apart, it fell to Lawrence and Irina to entertain Ramsay (who'd always pick up the cheque) on his birthday.

The story splits into two over a kiss: something much more than a birthday peck on the cheek, a knee-shaking, earth-shattering, fall-in-love-on-a-street-corner kind of kiss, that will determine two very different futures for our Irina. If she kisses Ramsay, she says good-bye to her lovely life with Lawrence; if she doesn't kiss him, she would be denying herself the chance to feel passionate love, one that involves great, great sex.

As each chapter vacillates between the two realities, each relationship breaks down and apart for different reasons. Love becomes deconstructed through the everyday reality of what it means to make a choice to be with someone. Irina's not a woman who can live without a man yet she isn't an anti-feminist character -- she's someone who has always prized life with someone above life on her own. Her past butts up against her future in various places throughout the novel: a self-obsessed Russian dancer of a mother; a life that she left behind in the States; the need to assimilate in some ways to her new life in London.

In a way, Irina is always in relation to something, to someone -- whether it's her art (and the forward momentum of her career) or the two men in her life. The chapters that deal with her life with Lawrence, are deemed "safe" -- he works for a think tank, is intelligent, but he's also controlling in strange and obstinate ways, turning his moral eye upon a drink in the afternoon, calling her a "moron" every now and again. And it's a relationship without passion. For years, Lawrence hasn't kissed her, I mean, really kissed her, and Irina misses this desperately. When she asks if they can't get married, his utterly crushing response is, "okay."

Her relationship, and subsequent marriage to Ramsay, is the polar opposite, even when it runs along the same time line -- Shriver is careful to keep the details just the same so the book does veer off and the reader gets lost but she also makes the two storylines distinct enough that you truly get a sense of how disparate Irina's life becomes from that fateful moment -- it's passionate, vibrant, even violent (with wicked fights; not fists), and full of absolutely fantastic sex and happy moments (when the two aren't battling).

Two sides of the same coin, Irina remains the same person, the same character, but the subtle changes in her that you see when she's with either man bring her sharply into focus throughout the novel. Success means different things in either of her worlds and aspects of her personality get lost in either relationship. Shriver is keen to point out that love is sometimes separate from sex and other times as tangled as your bodies get. She writes of mature, intelligent, adult relationships -- and she's the only author with her sort of aesthetic, her brutal honesty, her ability to make things palatable even when you dislike so many of the characters and their decisions, but still keep you utterly engaged as a writer. Irina is flawed, deeply, and you are the more interested to read each chapter for this reason.

There's no doubt in my mind that Shriver is one of my favourite working novelists. I adored So Much For That, especially in light of my own health issues, and the very essence of her writing always boils down to one thing for me -- if we can harken back to my second-year university course on existentialism -- Shriver writes so very convincingly of the human condition that I would challenge anyone to find a contemporary writer better. It seems she tackles an issue with each of her books, plants it solidly in a plot that would seem tepid to a lesser novelist, and while the themes might be love, relationships, sex and marriage, you know instantly that you aren't reading the Jennifer Weiner or Jodi Picoult versions of reality. There's depth and heft to Shriver's sharp intellect and the piercing nature of her pen ensures that no characters comes out unscathed.

In the end, it's up to the reader to imply, in a way, which was the right choice for Irina Galina to make, but the ending is just so satisfactory, and being a woman, I know what kind of relationship I'd prefer, but I don't want to spoil it -- it's actually worth getting through the 500-odd pages. And it's not often someone in my particular situation would have the patience to read a) a book this long and b) be willing to give up precious bits of sleep (like the hours between the feeding at 3 AM and the 6 AM feeding; it wouldn't have mattered, I'm on so much prednisone that sleep is hard to come by anyway, I'm no martyr, I'm just on meds) just to finish it.

READING CHALLENGES: The Off The Shelf Challenge. Yes, another one bites the dust or, rather, another book is banished to the magic box in the basement that every single guest coming into my home is forced to go through. My high school friends brought brunch over today and left with over 15 books between them. Go baby go! There will actually be space for dust to collect on my shelves by Christmas (if I have anything to say about it).

Notes From a House Frau II

Portrait of a Baby Whisperer baby, not. We tried the Baby Whisperer "EASY" program for two days and it made our RRBB the most miserable he'd ever been in his short life. He had two terrible nights, two awful days, and the program just didn't work for us. I also made myself insane consulting the book and trying umpteen different things because I thought I needed to fix something that wasn't broken. Anyway, we're back to normal now, and back to our actual easy baby. Sleeping, eating, waking, and doing quite well at night. My lesson for the day, not every book has the solution, and you don't need to listen to every one just because it's written down. You can make yourself crazy trying to do the right thing if only to stop listening to your instincts, which aren't always wrong, even if they are inexperienced.

I was at the kidney doctor this morning, and it broke my heart. The disease is going in the wrong direction -- my tests are rising when they should be falling, and the meds aren't controlling the Wegener's in the way they were supposed to. I see my SFDD next week and they'll probably suggest alternative treatment, which means no more breastfeeding. But to let things continue in this way means I'd be on dialysis in six months, and I can't lose my kidneys.

It's been so long of dealing with the disease, and being sad and frustrated is par for the course these last few weeks. I'm trying hard to find the life lessons. To see the silver lining in the cloud; to not get disparaged or angry or resentful of the disease and my broken body. Feeling scared has pervaded my days, I don't want to get sicker, I want to get better, so desperately, but I also have to be patient. Funnily enough, the doctor today described my pregnancy as one of the hardest she's ever seen. When I was in it, it was only rough for the last few weeks -- for the most part, it went exceptionally well considering the circumstances, and all of that is how our beautiful RRBB managed to be so healthy by the time he landed in the world.

So, I've spent today being sad, frustrated, and upset -- all in equal measure. Yet, there's something about my family, my RRHB and my RRBB, that I find utterly delightful. Whether it's how we spend the mornings, or how lovely the baby is at 2 AM when he's just about to fall asleep, and if this is all I can do right now, be here, with my family, because that's all I have energy for, that's all the disease will allow, then I need to be calm and careful. Take it day by day and understand that I will get better, it'll just take a long, long time. Yesterday, I did 10 sit ups. Today, I'm going to do 11. And that's how I'm going to do it, one small change by one small change, take the new drugs, deal with the side effects, and find the strength to be the best house frau I can possibly be under the circumstances.

#57 - Little Bee

I am of mixed mind when it comes to Chris Cleave's Little Bee. On the one hand, it's an interesting novel that deals with important political issues; on the other hand, overall, I didn't find the novel entirely plausible. Cleave has definite talent writing characters in voices that are atypical -- female characters that read well, but there's just something that rings false. I felt especially this way about Little Bee herself, that she was perhaps a bit too precocious for her age, but when you factor in what she'd been through (horrific, awful events in her home country of Nigeria; unspeakable violence and two years in a detention centre in England after stowing away in a boat), maybe it's not so inconceivable that she would be wise beyond her years. Yet, it all didn't sit quite right with me.

So, the plot of the novel revolves around two women, the aforementioned Little Bee, an asylum-seeking refugee from Nigeria who was subjected to an horrific experience of seeing her entire family destroyed by oil men; and Sarah, the wife of Andrew, a couple who met Little Bee on a beach on a fateful day that would change their lives forever. When Little Bee is finally released from the detention centre after spending two years essentially in jail as the British government evaluates her refugee claim, the only people she knows are Andrew and Sarah, and so she makes her way to them, which sets in motion a series of events that have tragic consequences.

And it's not just the plot that felt forced but the relationship between the two women was awkward in many ways. I kept comparing the novel in my head to Dave Eggers's What is the What, and to Lawrence Hill's The Book of Negroes, both novels that have protagonists that go through unspeakable horrors, but both of these novels just pull it all together in a way that doesn't make the reader feel as though the situations are jammed in just to make a point. Granted, it's an important point -- or an important book -- and you can't fault Cleave for his research or how hard he worked to create the voice of Little Bee. But how he chose to wrap her story within that of Sarah's and how their lives are intertwined just doesn't work. Further, there's a fairytale element to the penultimate action that rang false and the end of the novel was quite flat compared to how hard he had worked to set up the situation from the start of the book. I didn't believe the drama -- and this book is ALL about dramatic situations that forever change people's lives.

Overall, as much as I was looking forward to reading this book, I am not at all sure what I think or how I feel about it. I want to like it A LOT because I believe strongly in fiction that pushes the boundaries and tells important, political stories. But in a way, I don't think they should be shoehorned in when they don't fit the characters or the voice that's actually telling the story. I wanted more for Little Bee -- and I wanted more from the book. But maybe I'll feel differently if/when I think about it some more.

Has anyone else read this book? What did you think?

WHAT'S UP NEXT: Lionel Shriver's The Post-Birthday World. It's a chunky, chunky book so I probably won't finish it in a day but we'll see how many hours my RRBB spends awake tonight.

READING CHALLENGES: The Off the Shelf Challenge -- I think I've had this book on my TBR pile ever since it came out almost two years ago. Also, Chris Cleave is British, so that counts too for Around the World in 52 Books -- he can be England.

Notes From A House Frau I

Something strange has happened to me now that I am spending so much time at home. I just want to get rid of stuff. Like, all kinds of stuff. I want to clear up, clean out, and reboot. Maybe that's what happens when you have a near-death experience. You simply want to take all the crap out of your life and symbolically take all the crap out of your system too. It's been a short weekend to a long week -- not a lot of visitors this week, which was good. I really needed to rest, but I am also starting to get bored of being in the house all the time, which isn't surprising. The other day, we walked to the Dufferin Mall and that was actually my favourite walk of the week. Not because we were in a mall but because we had great conversations along the way and my RRHB made me laugh. In fact, the two of us being at home so much has brought out a lot of patience and heightened sense of humour. There's a comraderie between us when it comes to the RRBB -- there's patience and understanding, the odd sharp word or misconstrued tone/meaning, but for the most part, it's been really terrific to have this time together.

Anyway, that's not the purpose of Notes From a House Frau. I'm trying to find ways of fitting my own life back into this new life we have created. Whether it's getting a closet back in order or finding a moment to write a new opening sentence to my novel (it was recently rejected by not one but two agents; I'm not giving up -- both of their feedback was excellent but I can't say I'm not disappointed). There has to be a way to balance what I want out of life, all of the things I had planned pre-RRBB and what I know I need to provide for him. Tips, tricks from experienced mom/writers out there?

On the whole, I haven't found a good moment or a good writing routine yet. Colour me silly for imagining that would be the easiest part of mat leave -- that the baby would have to nap sometimes and I'd be all awake and intense and ready to go. Writing for me is an amazingly slow process. I mean, I write quickly, but it takes me a long time to get what I write, well, right. I know the problems with my book and how to fix them, now I just need to find the right house frau routine to work that in with the other more intense things I'd like to do in a day.

It's amazing how just accomplishing one or two things from your to do list makes you feel like a regular person despite the muddy, foggy loss of true distinction between night and day. Right now baby has those mixed up and therefore so do I -- I take my iPad to bed and get email finished at 3 AM. I've got a whole whack of projects, knitting projects, getting out my mum's sewing machine and sharing my writing desk with it, clearing out all kinds of crap I've been carrying around for decades. I mean, I don't need my Nancy Drew books. I'll never re-read them and RRBB won't either -- as it's a well known fact in my industry that girls will read boys books but boys won't do the same, so out they go (to a very good home and a very lovely girl, mind you).

The disease has taken its toll on me in so many ways. At the height of the baby's fussiness, I sent an email to a friend stating, "How did you do two, TWO!" and she wrote back, "How have you almost died X number of times and survived!" It's all a matter of perspective. Right now, my world consists of very little sleep, a lot of words bashing around my head, plenty of unread Globe and Mails, and entire bookshelves full of titles I am going to work my way through. I've gotten my reading back or, rather, I've managed to fit that back into my life, now I just need to find a nook and a cranny for the writing because if I don't get this book done and dusted this year I might just have to shelve it -- and I don't think I want to do that at all. There's value there, there's a book there, it just needs another draft. And maybe an agent willing to work with me to get the book into better shape.

I also would love to start writing articles again. I miss that a lot -- I did a lot of it when I worked for Alliance Atlantis, lifestyle-type fluffy pieces on road trips and lipsticks. The first one I would pitch, should I ever pluck up the courage to actually pitch anyone, which so isn't me, is a bed rest/hospital stay survival guide for high risk pregnancy women. It's such a hard situation. When I was on the 7th floor of Mt Sinai there were women there for months. I mean MONTHS. Can you imagine spending that much time in a room you have to share with another person or, at the worst, three other people. Walking the same hallways, eating the same poor excuse for food, finding a way to feel human isn't easy in those situations -- everything about it makes you realize just how sick you are, and the implications for your mind when your body is failing are very hard to come to terms with, especially with 52 doctors coming in and out on a regular basis. Somehow, I think it would be a good story for people to read -- mine, but I'm not sure how or where it could go.

Anyway, I cleaned out a closet yesterday and it was very rewarding. It added more items to the rolling to do list, which is the greatest organization invention of all time as every intern who ever worked for me knows (I make all of them do them), but I now know where my other Michael Kors strappy sandal is, and that actually felt like an accomplishment. Not that I have anywhere to wear them, but at least they're a pair instead of being stranded and lost within my own house.

My second favourite photo of RRBB. He's finally started to semi-enjoy the bath.

#56 - The Senator's Wife

My bookshelves are lighter by another title this weekend as I finished Sue Miller's The Senator's Wife this morning while feeding the RRBB (well, technically he had finished and fallen asleep and I was approximating life before him by staying in bed and reading, one of my favourite Sunday pastimes). It was an interesting novel to read as one of the main characters, Meri, a woman approximately my age, gives birth to her first child and for the latter half of the novel somewhat loses herself in terms of having to redefine her life now that her son, Asa, is in the picture. The senator's wife of the novel's title is Meri's next door neighbour, Delia Naughton, an older, graceful woman, whose character reminded me a little of Jackie Kennedy, whether or not that was Miller's intention.

As the novel moves back and forth through time from the perspectives of both women until the ultimate climax, you get the sense that Miller was trying to create a very domestic kind of drama. Most of the action of the novel takes place in the semi-detached houses that the two women share (that's not to say they don't leave nor do they have jobs: Meri works at a radio station as a producer; Delia volunteers during the summer months at an historical house in town) and it's a book that's very much about the lives of these two women as they relate to their husbands, their children and each other.

From the beginning Meri's obsessed with Delia. For years, she's lived a very separate life from her husband, Senator Tom Naughton. A ceaseless philanderer, their marriage was ruined years ago, but they have maintained an interesting, connected relationship regardless. Meri and her husband Nathan, newly married, make the transition from lovers to that deeper bond that develops over time when you're married. And the novel explores all of these domestic issues: how children change a relationship, what it means to sacrifice your sex life as your body, your desire, your life changes; and how Meri comes to terms with all of this after the birth of her son (can you see the parallels, can you!).

It's interesting because while this is a women's novel, and there is literary merit to Miller's writing, it's also not truly the kind of book that I would enjoy. It's something I'd recommend to my aunt's book club -- a book that they can relate to in their personal lives, something that would generate a lot of discussion over a glass of wine about the value of monogamy, the fatal flaws in Meri's character, and how Delia's mistakes finally drive her to becoming a much stronger, even more independent woman finally free of the bonds she didn't even realize were holding her back.

Yet, there's not an ounce of chicklit in this book -- and I've finally figured out why -- there's no melodrama. There's no obvious heightened emotional situations meant to manipulate the reader. I was comparing this book while reading to Jennifer Weiner's Fly Away Home. Both protagonists have politicians for husbands who cheat on them, but in Weiner's novel, the sheer over-wrought-ness (I know that's not a word) of the situation carries the novel away for me. Miller's book is far more grounded. The women are more mature, if that makes any sense, more complete, because they're more fully rounded and realized characters -- they're not situations masquerading as people, which is often what happens in chicklit, authors mistake the need for a certain kind of plot and plop in a character that fits the description of where they want the novel to go.

That doesn't happen in The Senator's Wife. It's more of a meditation of home, of what it means to build a family, of what family means, of what marriage means, of what you need to sacrifice for your children, for the life that you want to lead, and how love informs it all in ways that neither women can control. The journey to self-realization for both Meri and Delia takes the better part of the book and that either women becomes the catalyst for the other to get there is not lost on the reader. The situation that finally spurns them both forward seems so innocent as it begins and then it ultimately reads as a subtle, yet brutal, form of betrayal. Yet, it's something that they both needed to go through in order to fully realize who they are -- who they needed to become. That this kind of self-realization needs to happen to women in their 60s as much as women in their 40s, their 30s, is an interesting theme that runs throughout the book.

The Senator's Wife is a solid, readable novel, but not something I'd recommend as my "best books of the year" or anything. It's a quiet book, with quiet implications, and in a way, that makes it perfect for the 2 AM reading slot that occupies my nights these days.

What's up next? I started Little Bee by Chris Cleave -- see, this clearing off the shelves challenge is absolutely working! I've gone through almost three novels this week.

#55 - The Man From Beijing

Henning Mankell writes gripping, engaging novels and, for the most part, I've enjoyed every one of his books that I've read. And there were aspects to The Man from Beijing that I enjoyed but overall it really wasn't as successful as many of his other novels. It's a stand alone, so not a Kurt Wallander mystery, and it's full of fascinating details about China, early development of the railroad in the US, the migrant/slave workers and colonization.

The novel opens with a lone wolf tracking the scent of blood, human. A man lies dead in a remote village in Sweden. In fact, the entire small hamlet, with few exceptions, is brutally murdered. And there is no apparent motive for the crime, no reason an entire village should be brutally slayed -- the likes of which have never truly been seen in Sweden before. The police can find no motive and the only link seems to be the fact that all of these people lived in the small, remote village.

When Swedish judge Birgitta Roslin hears about the killings in Hesjovallen, she realizes that she has a connection to the victims. Her mother's foster parents lived in the hamlet, and her mother grew up one of the houses where the massacre took place. In a way, she's somewhat related to the people who were murdered, and Roslin discovers that they were all relatives of the Andren family...and soon suspects that something much larger is going on than a madman gone wild with a machete. Although, as you plod (and I mean plod) through the complex backstory, you discover why it's so much easier for the police to arrest their suspected madmen than to believe what actually happened, and why.

Partway through the mystery, Mankell digresses into a narrative that follows the story of a young Chinese man in 1863. As he and his two brothers make their way to Canton, poor, starving, looking for work and food, they are confronted with the harsh reality of life. San, the protagonist, and Guo Si and Wu, are forced from their village and sent to wander. Like so many, they end up in a crowded city hoping to find a new life. They come upon tragedy after tragedy, and eventually San and Guo Si are captured, stolen and forced to become slaves building the railroad in the US. It's an impossibly hard life and as the novel progresses you understand the true toll progress takes in human life. In the end, San finds his way back home, but not before horrible things happen, things that would make a weaker man question whether or not he was cursed. How does all of this fit in to the massacres? Well, it would spoil the novel too much to truly explain, but let's just say that some of the things that happen while San is working on the railroad are avenged years later by one of his descendants.

Eventually, Roslin figures out there's a link to the murders with China and sets off to uncover exactly what happened. It's a dangerous thing to do, and she's really not aware of the kind of trouble she's stepping in. I enjoyed Roslin's character -- she's tough as nails, smart, and doesn't stand for any messing about. But I've always had a problem with revenge plots. I think they are the weakest in terms of thrillers -- I don't like them in movies and I'm even less fond of them in novels, which is why this book sort of fell flat for me. It's not a page-turner, and at 2 AM when you've got a RRBB feeding away, you need something active, and fascinating, to peak your interest. That's not to say that the novel isn't well researched and that the information contained within isn't valuable, I'm just saying it didn't all fit together as nicely as one would have expected from a novelist as solid as Mankell.

In the end, the parts of the book that I liked the best were the ones where Birgitta was out and about trying to solve the mystery. I doubt that Mankell will develop a series around the character but I do have to admit that I really, really liked her and wanted more from her in the novel. The far fetched nature of the entire book just didn't ring true despite Mankell's excellent prose and I was disappointed in the bad guy. He seemed very Hollywood, a little too Gordon Gecko for my liking, but I did learn a lot about China, or at least Mankell's version of China, and the very interesting political things that are happening these days -- in that sense, the novel doesn't disappoint.

And, because Mankell's Swedish, here's another book that counts for my Around the World in 52 Books challenge. One day I'll tally everything up. I've got four weeks left in the year. Maybe I'll get caught up on all of my reading challenges. Um, yeah, right.

The End of Life Outside My House - A Top 10 List

Seems like I am starting to feel a bit better. I have good days and bad days, today I am weepy and feel heavy with disease, but yesterday I felt terrific, and the day before that I walked as far as I have since leaving the hospital, all the way to Ossington from our house, which is at Dundas and Brock. But the days are blurry and there's little difference between one half and the other -- time just stops in a way, even as it moves along. I have lists, I don't finish them. I have things to do, but I don't do them. I have so little energy but as least they are all slowly getting done. No pressure, that's the trick.

1. The Walking Dead is an excellent, and not too, too scary zombie show. My RRHB tried to get us to watch another zombie show, made by the BBC about a Big Brother-esque reality show that gets invaded by the chompers but I couldn't stand it -- it was terrifying. But I like the story they're presenting and the characters in the AMC drama. It's a PVR keeper.

2. I am not ashamed to say, well, actually, I am ashamed and embarrassed, but I've started taping BOTH Oprah and Dr. Oz. Yes, I am that cliched house-frau at the moment. But at least I won't miss J-Franz on Monday and today I learned that willow bark supplements might stop the creaking in my knees. See, useful, even if you're only half watching and half either breastfeeding or trying to get caught up on blogging.

3. There was a time where I watched movies. Now, I watch portions of movies. And haven't seen anything good in weeks. Any suggestions? I miss movies. We have, however, been watching the boxed set of Prime Suspect, and it is excellent. Truly phenomenal. In fact, I half-watch just about everything. Television shows, especially. Often, I fall asleep.

4. I have not finished a cup of tea since the RRBB was born. Or a sentence. Or a blog post in one sitting. Or a household chore. In fact, if I get one thing done a day from my rolling to do list, I feel like I have run a marathon. Time melts when there's no significant difference between day and night. That's not something they tell you when you're pregnant.

5. Law and Order: Los Angeles is a pale, pale, pale, pale replacement for the mothership. The closest you can get these days is Law and Order UK. Hell, it's got Apollo from BSG on it, and Danny Baldwin from Corrie Street, and they are both aces. It doesn't even matter that they're simply reversioning old Mothership episodes for a UK audience. We still watch it every week. It might be my favourite show. Either that or Cougar Town, which I adore. Don't judge.

6. Before I came home from the hospital with the RRBB, we had carpet installed upstairs. It's so cozy and awesome. There are many plusses to having carpet in your bedroom and in the hallway when you walk down after having a shower. But to prepare, my RRHB had to move all of our furniture and all kinds of other life rif-raf from the upstairs. We had friends and family help him, which means our stuff is spread out all over the house. ALL OVER THE HOUSE. I can't find anything. We didn't even know where our camera was (has since been found) so Sue, my nurse in Labour and Delivery at Mt. Sinai, had to take pictures of RRBB's birth. They're great shots. I am glad we have them. But how unprepared is that? The carpet was literally being laid at the same time they were, ahem, putting some gel somewhere to get things started. We just didn't expect him to come so soon. Hence the fact that I have one, that's right ONE, outfit that's fit for more than a walk around the block and it's still maternity clothes. Hopefully doesn't look too, too like I'm still pregnant but I literally have nothing else to wear.

7. Speaking of clothes. I have lost all sense of self respect. These days, a perfectly acceptably outfit for a walk to the grocery store: no bra (don't ask; it's a disaster) or the one nursing bra that I bought from the hospital breast feeding clinic store because I was trapped in the hospital for three weeks; a pair of blue jogging pants, with extra long legs, so I need to TUCK THEM INTO WORK SOCKS; sneakers and a sweatshirt and/or, well, a different sweatshirt.

8. Often, I'll wake up with a terrifically itchy head. Like, I'm convinced I've got lice or we've got bed bugs or a terrible case of dandruff. No. It's none of those things. It's just the fact that I haven't washed my hair in gosh-knows how long, like over a week, and hadn't noticed. Oh, I've had showers. But I can't even seem to remember to wash my hair when I'm under the water and in the tub. IN THE TUB.

9. No more books until I read everything in the house that I haven't read. I am making a promise to myself. So far, it's going well. But Amazon.ca is very hard to resist. VERY.

10. I'll have to say that it's lucky I am breastfeeding. It's definitely combating the prednisone appetite. It's not, however, doing anything for the other side effects for the meds. The puffy face. The hair falling out. The crazy dreams. The weepies. But, for the first time in a long time, I don't have the psychosis. And that's a first. There's a silver lining in every single cloud, right?

10.5 This is my favourite photo of the RRBB we've taken so far.

Around the World in 52 Books - 2010-2011

Instead of trying in advance and failing miserably to get through the books/countries on a predetermined list, I am going to simply keep track of the titles that fit this challenge and see if I make it to 52 -- starting December 1, 2010 to November 30, 2011.

I wish I had a pushpin map where I could mark things off one by one, country by country, but I'm not sure Blogger has such a plug-in...

Around the World in 52 Books

1. Sweden: The Man from Beijing by Henning Mankell.

2. England: Little Bee by Chris Cleave.

3. Ireland: A Long Long Way by Sebastian Barry.

4. Norway: Calling Out For You! by Karin Fossum.

5. Zimbabwe, Blue Shoes and Happiness by Alexander McCall Smith

6. Nigeria, Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

7. Dominican, In the Time of the Butterflies, Julia Alvarez

The Off The Shelf Challenge - 2011

The only reading challenge I am going to set for myself, with the exception of Around the World in 52 Books, because even if I never get there, I think it's important to keep reminding oneself to read books by authors from countries other than one's own, is The Off The Shelf Challenge. I have so many unread books lining beautiful bookshelves that I have collected, bought, got, asked for but never read, and always meant to get around to, that I am determined to try and read as many of them as possible, then pass as many of them as possible along to other people, throughout this mat leave year.

Instead of listing them in advance, I'm just going to keep a running tally here, starting this month of the books that came off the shelves vs. new books coming in that I have purchased or read for book club.

1. The Senator's Wife by Sue Miller.

2. The Man From Beijing by Henning Mankell.

3. Little Bee by Chris Cleave.

4. The Post-Birthday World by Lionel Shriver.

5. A Long Long Way by Sebastian Barry.

6. Calling Out For You! by Karin Fossum.

7. Payback by Margaret Atwood.

8. Pearl by Mary Gordon.

9. Amy and Isabelle by Elizabeth Strout.

10. The Keep by Jennifer Egan.

11. Abide with Me by Elizabeth Strout.

12. The City Man by Howard Akler

13. Weight by Jeanette Winterson

14. Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

15. Emma by Jane Austen

16. Showbiz by Jason Anderson

17. Pretty Little Dirty by Amanda Boyden

18. In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez

19. The Lemon Table by Julian Barnes

20. You or Someone Like You by Chandler Burr

#54 - Started Early, Took My Dog

Kate Atkinson remains one of my favourite writers. I will drop any other book I've got for her new novel -- she's a lot like Laura Lippman in that way. She writes engrossing, utterly readable, quasi mystery books with flawed protagonists (ahh, Jackson, I knew exactly when you showed up in the narrative and it actually made me smile) and great, rollicking plots. In her latest, Started Early, Stole My Dog, Jackson Brodie is no longer a true private eye, semi-retired but working the odd case, he's on a road trip inspired by a case: a young woman wants to find out more about her birth family. Seems simple, right? But, of course, this being a book with Jackson Brodie as the main character, there are twists, turns, and some solid punches before he gets to the bottom of the mystery.

There are plenty of other stories woven into the narrative... a retired DCI, Tracy Waterhouse, does something so out of character, she has to go on the run. And then, she's chased. The group of police Waterhouse worked with, the old boys' club, has something to hide that Jackson stumbles upon. Lastly, an actress on her last legs, literally, as her mind starts to wander due to dementia, and the way her final action turns the tide on the entire story feels shocking, to say the least. Of course, Jackson, even when he tries his damnedest, can't stay out of the middle of all of it, and how Atkinson pulls it all together remains impressive throughout the novel.

It's the kind of novel that you can read in one sitting, the perfect for a book-a-day challenge. It just breezes along, pulls you in from the beginning and doesn't let go of your hand until you're absolutely on the last punctuation mark of the very last page wishing that you didn't read so bloody fast. There's really not much more to say except I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and won't spoil it at all for those of you who haven't discovered Atkinson yet.

Lastly, she was born in Scotland, which means that Kate Atkinson's novel counts as another Around the World in 52 Books, which means, maybe I'm at seven or eight now... Yay!

#53 - The True Deceiver

Trying to read more books published by NYRB remains one of the never-ending "should-do's" on my reading life. I admire just about everything about the publishers: the packages they create, the books they choose to publish, the authors they choose, and the quality of the writing. Yet, I never seem to get around to reading, well, ANY of them. So, I was pleased when our book club, The Vicious Circle, picked Tove Jansson's The True Believer as a monthly pick.

Tove Jansson was born in Helsinki, and she was an illustrator as well as an author. She grew up spending the summers on the Gulf of Finland, in a small fishing cabin, and the setting of The True Deceiver seems absolutely informed by the time she spent in that kind of an environment. The setting is stark, snow-filled, cold, and austere. The novel opens, "It was an ordinary dark winter morning, and snow was still falling." The darkness isn't frightening, it's not meant to create the Let the Right One In kind of environment, it's a fact of life, a season to get through -- life still goes on, groceries need to be delivered, dogs need to be walked, boats need to built. I like how Jansson creates the setting, it informs and layers the story but it doesn't overwhelm the novel.

The story revolves around two women who live in the small village. A strange, awkward girl named Katri Kling who lives above the general store with her brother, Mats (whom everyone thinks is simple but is truly just quiet and introverted). And Anna Aemelin, a relatively wealthy (as compared to the people in the rest of the village) children's artist who is a bit of a recluse. From the beginning of the novel Katri has a plan -- she wants to gain an "in" with Anna, she has a very specific, calculated plan to ingratiate herself into her life, and nothing will stop her from getting her way. The entire village thinks the girl is strange. She has a gift with numbers and with honesty, and so many people come to her for problems: is so-and-so cheating on me, was I charged too much by the grocer, is blah-de-blah taking advantage -- the villagers are ashamed to ask for Katri's help but they continually do it. With this premise, she begins to be helpful to Anna. There's just one difference, Anna didn't ask for Katri's help, and doesn't necessarily want it. She lives in her own kind of blissful ignorance, like the dark of winter, Anna closes herself up in her house, illustrates her woodland characters, idealizes the childish way she has of creating a world in the undergrowth of the forest, and wishes she could do it differently, but change isn't something that comes naturally to Anna.

Eventually, Katri and her brother move in with Anna, into her house. Gossip starts. But as with anyone who sets out with a plan, things go astray. And the spareness, the sparsity of Jansson's prose nicely echoes the setting. Her words are cruel when they need to be, sparingly kind in places, but always clean, if that makes any sense -- she's an incredibly clean, crisp writer, she sort of writes like the snow itself, cold, but melts when the temperature reaches a certain point. The title refers, naturally, to Katri, but it's also pointedly about Anna, as well -- deception when it comes to yourself, deception concerning another person, they are both themes that run from beginning to end. What's simple doesn't always seem so, and telling the truth, and then recognizing the truth about yourself, both happen to these characters by the end. Overall, I can't tell you how much I enjoyed this novel, I read it quickly, in every spare moment I had, and I do have them these days, not necessarily to write long blog posts, but to read at 2 AM when the RRBB is breastfeeding. It's very easy to balance a book on The Breast Friend, let me tell you, as long as it's a teeny paperback. I'm having a little more trouble with my giant hardcover copy of The Man from Beijing by Henning Mankell.

Also, Jansson was born in Finland, which means I can use this book for the Around the World in 52 Days challenge I do every year. I am sure I have managed about six weeks in total, but, still, I don't think I've ever read a Finnish author before. And I am sure I would read more of her books in a heartbeat considering how much I loved this one.

#52 - Tinkers

Paul Harding's novel, Tinkers, won the Pulitzer Prize last year, and it's a novel more than worth its success. First published by the Bellevue Literary Press in NYC, the novel will hopefully find a wider audience now that it's being published by HarperCollins. Anyway, the publishing history isn't really the purpose of writing a review on the blog, is it?

In a way, Tinkers will feel familiar to Canadians, it's premise, an old man lays dying and reflects on his life, is one that we're quite familiar with. If it were only called Stone Tinkers, it'd probably be a bestseller. The novel intertwines the stories of son and father, George and Howard Aaron Crosby, as George lays dying, system shutting down, in his living room. Surrounded by family, sometimes George knows what's happening, sometimes his body betrays him, but Harding has a particular talent for writing his death honestly and without pretense.

Both George and his father are good, honest people, but that doesn't mean they always make the right decision. Without necessarily wanting to spoil anything (and it's written in the marketing blurb), they've been estranged for years when Howard, who is epileptic, abandons his family on the pretense that his hard, hard wife has finally reached the end of her rope with the burden of his disease, and is about to commit him to an institution.

Howard, a tinker, who walked the cold backroads of Maine with his cart selling anything and everything, simply turns in the other direction and doesn't go home. He begins an entirely new and fulfilling life that seems at peace with his utterly good nature -- but, then again, it's not an honourable thing to leave your family behind with no way to support itself. But the way its written, you actually feel sympathy for Howard, you feel like it's the right thing to do, and are convinced that everything will be fine.

George, a clock repairman, has led a happy, quiet life. Precision guides him, even in death, and as his body shuts down, its elements of machinery, the very same things that guided George through life, are failing. His mind wanders, he can't recognize the family members by his bed, but he notices that his favourite clock isn't wound. In this simple example, it's apparent that one of the most moving aspects of Tinkers remains Harding's ability to describe a body deteriorating into death. Tears came to my eyes more than once throughout my reading of this novel -- I was reminded of my mother, of how her body failed in the few days it took her to die. Sometimes his descriptions were so apt that I felt the pain of the loss in my chest. To me, that's the sign of an exceptional writer. Someone who can move you to remember or feel something so personal yet so unrelated to the story by the simple power of a sentence.

Harding attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and worked with Marilynne Robinson, and you can feel her influence all over this novel. It's quiet but intense, the characters are wholly good people with complex flaws, and the novel's simple story betrays the power of the prose. Overall, I'd highly recommend this book -- it's a quick, emotionally satisfying read -- it's perfect for a rainy day when you have some time to spend just laying about on the couch. But have a tissue or two on hand...

#51 - By Nightfall

The moment you read the first few pages of Michael Cunningham's excellent novel, By Nightfall, you are reminded of Virginia Woolf. It's in his sentence structure, in the simple, effective way he uses description, and the way that time defines itself by almost disappearing throughout the narrative -- I can't help but think of Woolf when I read Cunningham and I don't think that's a bad thing.

By Nightfall, the story of Peter and Rebecca Harris, a middle-aged couple grappling with the state of their lives, their marriage and how they ultimately want to live, not just in the world but with each other, seems simple at first. But it's full of complex human relationships and the politics of family -- which is often just as dramatic than the politics of every day in the House of Commons. Rebecca's youngest sibling, Ethan, called "Mizzy" as he was a mistake (their mother was 44 when she got pregnant), is coming to stay. Troubled, addicted, and having lost sight of what he wants out of life, Mizzy has come to NYC to stay with Rebecca and Peter to find himself. Apparently, he's clean, but not for long, and a strange, awkward relationship evolves from his visit, something that changes Peter's life irrevocably.

Peter and Rebecca have jobs in the arts -- she runs a failing literary magazine and he a small gallery -- and the premise of Mizzy's stay is that he wants to investigate a career in the arts too, only it doesn't come to that. He remains terribly lost throughout the entire novel and seeing the very gentle way he manipulates everyone around him is one of the most effective strains in the narrative. You know, in your heart, that you can't trust an addict to tell the truth, to keep his word, to not fall off the wagon, but it's an impressive way that Cunningham weaves Mizzy's own capacity as a true deceiver into the novel. He's a beautiful boy, one that can't be resisted.

The moral conflict in the novel, the decision that Peter must make, for his relationship, for his livelihood, for the future, confounds him. He simply can't move from the one place that seems to be forcing him to go. The crux of the novel, how simple it seems at the beginning, a book about a brother coming to visit, becomes so much more as it explores the past and present of Peter and Rebecca -- how they met, what their days are like, what their marriage is like, and how they'll continue after Mizzy's eventual departure -- truly feels complex by the end. It's a quiet narrative but the writing is just so superior, so effective, that this novel might just end up being one of the best I've read all year.

#50 - The Beauty of Humanity Movement

Camilla Gibb's previous novel, Sweetness in the Belly, truly, is one of the best novels I've ever read in my life. Pitch perfect with an amazing story, the novel honestly moved me in ways that books are supposed to, breaking your heart and pulling tears from your eyes. So, you can imagine the kind of pressure I was putting on her latest novel, The Beauty of Humanity Movement. But a good friend had told me that the novel wasn't as good as her last, and that's what I went in thinking. You shouldn't have preconceived notions before you read a book, truly, it changes your perspective.

When I first started reading, I couldn't get Kung-Fu Panda out of my head. Jack Black chasing his dream of being a Kung-Fu artist while working hard in a noodle shop. It was all about the noodles. The pho, and its integral part of the lives of the men who devour the soup made by one of the novel's main characters, Old Man Hung, takes a central role. And I couldn't stop seeing a giant panda balancing a bowl of pho on his head. It took a while to get passed that silliness that my brain created, and it took a while for me to get into this novel. Vietnam makes for an interesting setting, its customs, the after-effects of the war, the divided nature of the politics that define the modern state, they all combine to create something exotic (and I hate to use that word but it fits) that balances the very real and human interests of the novel with something different, something more.

The unrequited love that Old Man Hung has for the neighbour, Lan, was the thread throughout the book that I most appreciated. His love for her lasted decades, and she wronged him in a way that couldn't be forgiven, and how it all comes together in the end was fitting, strong and ultimately lovely. The novel is about generations, fathers and sons, respecting your elders, daughters searching for stories of their fathers, and about how politics turns into something so much more real when one is faced with the colossal change over the last forty years. Change comes quickly and change sometimes shows the utter strength of all of the people in this novel. Hung, his adopted family in Tu and Binh, Maggie, a Vietnamese-American trying to find her father, and Lan, their lives intertwine in ways that you don't expect when the book opens, and it ends in ways you don't expect. It's a solid journey in between. It's not Sweetness, but it's a very good book, even if it feels uneven, and even maybe unfinished in certain ways. It's almost as if the book needed something more to pull it all together, the human relationships work on one level but I was looking for something a little deeper. Maybe I was expecting too much.

It's funny, the only other Canadian novel that I've read set in Vietnam, David Bergen's The Time In Between, felt kind of the same way -- the setting, as much as it informed the novel, as much as it defined the novel, also served to alienate the novel in ways that, as a reader, I felt often throughout the narrative. However, Gibb is such a lovely writer, has such a way with human emotion, with weaving important political meaning and messages with her more personal stories of the people living through the revolution, through the Humanity Movement itself, and consistently reminds us that art has to be worth dying for, that even the novels failings can be overlooked.

#49 - The Imperfectionists

The Globe and Mail called The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman, universally beloved by just about everyone and on numerous "best of" lists for 2010, "note perfect." And there are elements of the book that I would agree with this praise, but there are also problems, especially with the female characters. They definitely could have been more well rounded and less like caricatures, but on the whole, it's an especially readable book.

I finished the novel the first day that I landed in the hospital. It was unfortunate that I was reading the book a little under duress, maybe that's clouded my judgement. On the whole, I agree that it is a sharp, intriguing, intelligent look at the demise of an English-language newspaper publishing out of Italy. The idea of media, in general, throughout the book provides and interesting backdrop -- newspapers are failing all around the world, trying to figure out how to stay solvent, and the idea that news is no longer about a perspective, but rather ratings and sensationalism (Glenn Beck, COME ON), The Imperfectionists is a timely book. My two favourite characters, the managing editor (and forgive me, I no longer have my copy; my RRHB gave it to the resident at the hospital because she loved to read and was going to Africa to practice medicine the next week) whose love affair fell down in flames (because all of the women in this book are truly incapable of grown-up love, don't you find?) but who knows the business, who is the business, inside and out,

My least favourite character, the female copy-editor who almost defines the word "spinster" as it was meant fifty years ago, truly disappointed me. But I'm not sure if Rachman meant for any of the characters to be completely whole. Perhaps they echo the disintegration of their paper -- struggling to find the right pause to end a sentence that isn't quite complete. Chasing a story that will never materialize in a world that cares more about how many times Lindsey Lohan can end up in jail or rehab. The social commentary and the utter inability of the latter generations to save the paper, how the corporation that owns the media simply shuts it down, and how new media essentially contributes to its demise, well, these are stories we (I) live every day having worked in both television and magazines before landing in the relatively stable (don't believe what you read) world of book publishing.

It's a quick read, and an engrossing one. Rachman has a talent for characters and for pulling together what are essentially short stories wrapped within the larger tale of the end of the paper. What starts off as a labour of love ends up an empty room, papers left of the floor, staff pilfering computer equipment, when I read that, it truly reminded me of the last days of Saturday Night magazine in Toronto, when the National Post took the magazine over, and I lost my truly awful job. In that moment, I was an incomplete, unhappy character, I could have easily been one of the women in this book, but luckily, I've got some pluck, some spunk, and maybe that's what they were missing. I mean, truly, letting the dead beat butthead into your life just because you're too "old" to find anyone else. I HATE that storyline. I am so sick of female characters like that...but I am rambling. Trying to get more than one sentence down before my RRBB hollers out for something.

Now That It Is Over (Maybe) I Can Talk About It

The last few weeks of my life have been the most terrifying and joyful I have ever known. The purpose of this blog has never been to document every aspect of my life, and I purposefully kept my pregnancy quiet because of all the complications that could have arisen as a result of the disease. But I do think it's important to talk about the disease, if only for other people in the world that have Wegener's Granulomatosis. If someone searches and ends up here, and knows about what I've gone through, maybe it can help someone else going through something similar.

We managed to make it to 34 weeks without very many problems. In fact, all of the problems that I did have, swollen joints, exhaustion, some other minor things that could all easily be explained by pregnancy. There's just one thing... they could just as easily been explained as the disease flaring. It was impossible to tell what was what: was I developing pre-eclampsia or was it the disease or was it just pregnancy in my case. Because it's so rare, both my disease and then women with my disease having babies, there were so many unanswered questions. The main thing I knew was that I was being followed by exceptional doctors. Then, my lab results showed disease activity, and that was that, things were flaring. It was minor and we'd get it under control. Only it didn't end up being minor at all. It ended up being dramatic, violent and life-threatening.

Five weeks ago my lungs started bleeding. I had just seen the OBGYN that afternoon and was so very tired. For the previous couple days, I couldn't catch my breath, but when the baby gets big enough, it too pushes on your lungs. Hence, yet another explanation for a disease symptom that can be confused with pregnancy. But when I coughed and a chunk of blood the size of a toonie landed in the sink, my heart stopped. That's how the disease first presented itself. That's how I got sick in the first place all those years ago. So, I sent a quick email to my pregnancy nephrologist (doctors give you email addresses now!) and asked her what to do. She sent us to the Labour and Delivery section of Mt. Sinai and then the ordeal really started. It's called hemoptysis -- I always used the term hemorrahging to describe what the disease does to my lungs -- but essentially, they were bleeding internally and it wasn't stopping. Because it's an OBGYN ward and not a disease ward, there was some confusion about what to do with me and the first night I spent in the hospital, the orders didn't get transferred over. I spent a miserable, freezing cold, uncomfortable night with a bone dry IV and coughing up bucket loads of blood for hours until they started rounds in the morning.

By then, the severity of the situation had dawned, and the chaos began. The words "life-threatening" were uttered more than once and they floated around the idea of putting me in Intensive Care. In the end, they moved me back to Labour and Delivery for one on one care. Through the course of the day, I saw, no word of a lie, 52 doctors that first day. They decided to treat the situation aggressively because of the baby. Let's not forget that I am still pregnant. They decided to do plasma replacement therapy. It's kind of like dialysis. They take out all the bad plasma, the stuff that contains the antibody that is the cause of the disease, and replace it with donated blood product. The machine is hooked up to you via a central line, and out goes all your plasma into a bag that gets destroyed. The treatment takes about three hours all tolled and then you get unhooked. We did seven days of this, plus IV steroids, to try and stop my lungs from bleeding. It took over 1o days but it worked. The disease somewhat settled down at that point, and the "plex" therapy as they call it is quite amazing -- in short, once it was finished I could feel no disease in my body whatsoever, but it only lasted until the next treatment. It did, however, contribute to my condition becoming stable. We had one little glitch with the plex, and on the second day my hemoglobin dropped, and so I had my very first blood transfusion. Of course, it didn't work the first time, so we had to do it twice. I signed a lot of consent forms and tried not to worry about all the risks. I suppose when you weigh the pros and cons, it's better not to be dead.

Things looked up from there, at least for a while, until I started developing pre-eclampsia, which is pregnancy induced hypertension. With women with underlying renal problems, the likelihood of pre-eclampsia developing is high and, of course, it's hard to tell whether the disease encouraged the pre-eclampsia or whether or not my pregnancy would have ended up with the complication anyway. The higher my blood pressure went, the more medication I had to take, everything, luckily, is safe for the baby, who, by the way, is perfectly fine. So, I am in the hospital, taking more medicine than ever, sicker than I've actually been since I was first diagnosed with the disease, and pregnant on top of it. The prednisone's making me a little batty, so I'm cleaning my hospital room at night and trying not to lose it being hooked up to all the machines, poked for blood everyday. The one saving grace was listening to the baby twice a day on the monitor and knowing that he (we didn't know "he" was a "he" at this point) was just fine.

After I had been in the hospital for two weeks and seen probably over 70-odd doctors, they called an "all doctors" meeting to decide what to do. According to my OBGYN, the plan was to get me stable and then let me go home and deliver the baby naturally, but when the pre-eclampsia started to rear its ugly head, they changed their mind and they decided to induce at 36 weeks. And when they make that decision, it starts immediately. Like, that same day. So, over we go to Labour and Delivery again and they being that process. It takes forever. I was still doing work because I was so bored just sitting there waiting for it all to happen. It's all a bit clinical, but it was the safest way to deliver the baby, and when my contractions really started they gave me an epidural because they didn't want my body to be under any more stress and for the disease to go haywire again.

So, we were mid-way through the next day, Friday, October 22, when they discovered that my placenta had really started to act up and was causing the baby distress. So, no labour for me -- they whisked me into an operating room and we had a c-section. Our RRBB was born at 3:04 in the afternoon and weighed an impressive 6 pounds 9 ounces. Not bad for 36 weeks.

The next few days are spent just dealing with being new parents, something that many people go through, we had plenty of rough starts, namely with feeding, and only because we didn't quite realize that just because the baby falls asleep after eating that he's actually full and/or had enough to eat. I was also really anemic and taking tonnes of medicine, so it took forever for my milk to come in. In the end, they let us go home, finally, after two weeks and five days in the hospital. Oh, but before we left? We had another transfusion because the surgery dropped my hemoglobin to 72. Imagine this -- having a blood transfusion while trying to breastfeed, the tubes stuck in your arms, the baby in your arms, grabbing at everything, but it worked and my iron counts were much better the next day. That gave me some much needed energy to just be home after all those days cooped up in a tiny hospital room.

We spent a glorious 24 hours at home.

Then the baby developed a little jaundice and the family doctor's scale miscalculated his weight so we were back at the hospital for him. That was a rough night. We weren't in our nice, private room any more but on the maternity ward. The couple next to us had their own baby, and baby schedule, so we didn't sleep a wink. Of course, my blood pressure was sky high, from worrying about the baby and from no sleep, so when they checked it for me, it was in a state where it wasn't safe to let me go home. We were admitted back into the hospital again, and I almost lost my mind. The resident, who was only trying to help, wouldn't let us leave. I tried to explain that I could monitor my BP at home (I had a cuff) and was seeing a team of doctors in a week, all of whom know about all of the conditions -- she kept trying to diagnose me and I kept saying that all I needed was proper rest and to get my baby out of the hospital. So, I tried to check myself out at night and the nurses and my RRHB convinced me to stay -- they didn't put anyone else beside us and my BP came down slightly. But that was it for me, it was now Friday and I had been in hospital for three weeks, one of which with my poor newborn who had seen his sweet bassinet only once in his life.

Then I did something completely out of character and checked myself out against doctors orders. My BP by the time I got home and relaxed and got some sleep? 123/71. Perfectly fine, as I knew it would be. But those last couple days were the breaking point for me. I just couldn't take anymore. Luckily, things are now starting to calm down, we think. The disease is still scary and active, and I am still recovering from all of it, but the baby is thriving, gaining weight and doing really well with breastfeeding. The last time I was this sick, it took over two years to get better, and who knows if my body will ever recover. Funny, all the doctors told me it would be fine -- well, that there would be risks but that they'd catch the disease before anything too terrible would happen. Oddly, just like when I was first diagnosed, the disease is mysterious and difficult to diagnose until it's on you like a tsunami, dragging you down and drowning you in your own blood.

Now, the really hard part begins. The recovery. Dealing with the exhaustion is one thing, I mean, we have a glorious little newborn at home, but dealing with everything else that happened on top of it took its toll. I feel a lot like I am just coping. Just getting through the days hour by hour, and that's all I can do: plasma replacement, IV steroids, bucketloads of drugs, two transfusions, another disease (pre-eclampsia that apparently lasts for six weeks post-partum), a life-threatening flare, surgery, a new baby, and prednisone-induced crazies. It's a lot. I am at loss for words but we are also incredibly lucky. We have a lot of support, my RRHB is amazing, and we have some of the greatest friends and family two people could ever have surrounding us.

Plus, we have him. And he's beyond words.