Me at writersfest. |
One of the many great things about hearing authors is
learning how to pronounce their names and the names of their characters. Miriam
Toews (rhymes with ‘saves’) read from Irma
Voth (rhymes with ‘boat’)… except that nobody bothers with the Mennonite
pronunciation in this book, so Voth rhymes with ‘goth’ instead. Toews read a
compelling excerpt in which 19-year-old Irma was travelling in Mexico with her
squalling baby sister. Irma admires the infant’s fierce honesty and imagines
she was communicating something like: “I possess vital intangibles and when I
begin to talk the world will know its shame.”
The four authors at Saturday's Coast to Coast event let their sense
of humour come through in their writing. Anita Rau Badami said a sense of the
absurd helps for survival in India, where she lived until moving to Canada in
1991. Her newest book has a creepy mood, however, so there isn’t much room for
humour in it. She “got tired of writing nice characters” so she filled Tell It to the Trees with horrible
people. The seed for this book came from visiting a family whose house was so
pristine it made her suspicious of what all that perfection might be
concealing. I was surprised to hear that the setting for Tell It to the Trees is a composite town in northern BC, not a real
one, and I will update my review of the book accordingly.
Zsuzsi Gartner said “my favourite writers all make me laugh
and then punch me in the gut at the end.” That’s exactly what Gartner does to
me. She said she writes her endings first, and then figures out how to get
there. The audience laughed all the way through her reading of “Mister
Kakami,” a typically satirical short story from Better Living Through Plastic Explosives.
Toews signs books. |
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