September 2020 Reading Round-Up

I've encountered a bumper crop of great reads in September! Here are brief reviews and passages from of some of my favourite audiobooks, novels, comics, memoirs and other nonfiction.

My Autobiography of Carson McCullers by Jenn Shapland

A thoughtful memoir by lesbian archivist Jenn Shapland, who documents her search for facts about writer Carson McCuller‘s lesbian identity. Chapters are brief. The depiction of McCullers is nuanced. And yes, she was a lesbian; the evidence makes this obvious.

        Euphemisms.
To her husband, whom she married twice, Carson called her woman lovers "imaginary friends." Her biographers called them travelling companions, good friends, roommates, close friends, dear friends, obsessions, crushes, special friends. I'm over it. I, for one, am weary of the refusal to acknowledge what is plainly obvious, plainly wonderful. Call it love.

        Queer embodiment, like Carson‘s, like mine, requires a presence, a negotiation with publicness. Invisible identities insist on being seen, or masked, or transformed. Women are straight unless they give themselves away. It is impossible to wrestle with/determine/express queer identity without some negotiation with public scrutiny; presenting yourself to the world requires costumes and costume changes, which Carson was well known for.

        Carson‘s focus on clothes in her therapy sessions and in Illumination reveals their importance to her, which I intuited while I catalogued them. Clothes give her a way to express an identity that was fluid, a way to change who she was to the world each day.

        Clothes make visible what we feel about ourselves, even if that identity is invisible to others. What we put on externalizes interior feeling, like a facial expression, but more intentional. This self-representation takes as many forms as there are selves, and Carson‘s expression was by no means static.

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
Audiobook [14 hr] read by Robin Miles

“Caste is the operating system for economic, political & social hierarchies in the United States from the time of its gestation.” Isabel Wilkerson illuminates the daily realities of the social construct that is race. The atrocities, the injustice—it‘s all about power. Hitler‘s Nazis looked to the US for its treatment of blacks & to American eugenics advocates for ideas on how to elevate the “Aryan race.” Caste is a must-read.

        It was in the making of the New World that Europeans became white, Africans became black, and everyone else yellow, red or brown. It was in the making of the New World that humans were set apart based on what they looked like, identified solely in contrast to one another and ranked to form a caste system based on a new concept called race.

        As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power—which groups have it and which do not.

Vesper Flights by Helen Macdonald
Audiobook [10 hr] read by the author

A collection of thoughtful, lyrical essays about the natural world and a woman‘s interactions with nature. It's a calming, grounding experience. I recommend the audiobook narrated by the author. Helen Macdonald also wrote H Is for Hawk, which is just as wonderful. 

        A hawk turned out to be a terrible model for living a human life.

        At times of difficulty, watching birds ushers you into a different world, where no words need be spoken.

        In the winter of 1934, Norfolk farmers learned that skylarks in their fields were migrants from the continent. They shot them for raiding their spring wheat. NO PROTECTION FOR THE SKYLARK ran the headlines in the local press. ‘Skylarks that sing to Nazis will get no mercy here.‘

        So often we think of mindfulness, of existing purely in the present, as a spiritual goal. But winter woods teach me something else: the importance of thinking about history. They are able to show you the last five hours, the last five days, the last five centuries, all at once.

        She told me of a childhood memory: her father carefully opening prickly sweet chestnut cases for her to uncover the glossy marble nuts inside. She was entranced. Early moments like this planted the desire for discovery inside her, an urge to find the wonder of seeing hidden things brought to light.

        Spring has, of late, become thin to me. It‘s starting to mean supermarket daffodil bunches & Easter promotions, rather than its richly textured changes: the scent of new herbage; algae greening on the trunks of oaks; the echoing drum of woodpeckers; rising skies & the return of that undefinable light to hollow out winter. All things I‘ve missed after years of mostly working inside.

Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency by Olivia Laing
Audiobook [10 hr] read by Sophie Aldred

Short, brilliant essays about art and artists. David Wojnarowicz‘s disturbing photo on the cover will alert readers that Olivia Laing is not a shrinking flower. She writes with gusto about art that matters and she makes clear WHY it matters. I listened to the audiobook narrated by Sophie Aldred. She switches from British English to different accents (American/French/Russian/etc) for quoted passages when the people being quoted aren't British, which gets annoying.

We‘re so often told that art can‘t really change anything, but I think it can. It shapes our ethical landscapes. It opens us to the interior lives of others. It is a training ground for possibility. It makes plain inequalities and it offers other ways of living.

“Art is one of the prime ways we have of opening ourselves and going beyond ourselves.” –Ali Smith

Is gardening an art form? If it is, it‘s the kind of art I like: embedded in the material, nearly domestic, subject to happenstance and weather.

For our time is the passing of a shadow and our lives will run like sparks through stubble. –Derek Jarman

Having and Being Had by Eula Biss
Audiobook [7 hr] read by Alex McKenna

Brief, episodic chapters are a cross between essays and poetry, grappling with the ethics of money, profit and consumerism within the intersecting contexts of class, caste, gender, ownership, work, play, parenting and art. Brilliant and philosophical while remaining clear-eyed and down-to-earth.

        The lies we want to believe tell us something about ourselves.

        “I don‘t believe that you think what you do is worthless,” my sister says. I don‘t. I just mean financially worthless. Writing poetry doesn‘t usually produce money, for most people. Free verse is doubly free, in that it is unfettered by metre and has no market value.

        “You spend your life accumulating things,” she said. “And then you have to maintain them. Your house, your car, your body. You have to maintain your children too, and your parents.”

        He‘s been talking for 35 minutes, the entirety of this meeting, with six women sitting around the table, listening. He speaks slowly, deliberately, softly, using the cadences of someone who is unfolding a story. He allows himself ample preamble and endless asides, but he says nothing.

Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell
Audiobook [25 hr] read by Andrew Wincott

Can a song change the world?
“If a song plants an idea or a feeling in a mind, it has already changed the world.”
If a novel plants feelings in me, feeling that I care so much about the characters that I‘m outraged when they are betrayed and weep when they suffer, I have been changed. I loved all 25 hours of this stupendous, mind-altering audiobook.

        “I saw the Jackson Pollock retrospective at the New York Met,” said the Duchess of Somewhere. “Do you rate him?”
“I rate him most highly,” says Francis. “As a lacemaker.”

        “So, would ‘why doesn‘t he play the damn tune the way it goes?‘ be a silly question?”
“Only if ‘why doesn‘t Van Gogh just paint the damn sunflowers the way they look?‘ is a silly question.”

All Among the Barley by Melissa Harrison

An atmospheric novel set in the British countryside in 1933. Fourteen-year-old Edie Mather will have her life turned upside down when a young woman journalist from London shows up, wanting to document the old ways that are disappearing. Nuanced characterization, a vivid depiction of rural life, and a powerful story. It resonates with today's attitudes of intolerance and I loved it.

        Our barley was well along now, flaxen from a distance and with the beards tipping over almost as we watched. The wheat, too, was ripening: the stalks were still blue-green, but the tops of the ears were fading to a greenish-yellow, a tint that would become richer and spread down the ears as they fattened to finally gild the stalks and leaves. Then the sound of the cornfields would alter: dry, they would susurrate, whispering to father and John that it was nearly time. The glory of the farm then, just before harvest: acres of gold like bullion, strewn with the sapphires of cornflowers and the garnets of corn poppies and watched over from on high by larks.

        She laughed. “Or perhaps it just means you‘re the kind of person who thinks too hard about things.”
I straightened up for a moment & tried to fasten my hair better, away from the perspiration on the back of my neck.
“I don‘t know how to stop, though.”
“Stop what?”
“Thinking too hard. I don‘t know how else to be.” I was surprised to feel my eyes swim with sudden tears.
“Oh Edie, you don‘t need to be any different at all, don‘t you know that?”

        I read The Midnight Folk and spent my days pretending to be Kay Harker and embarking on imaginary adventures involving knights, smugglers and highwaymen, Rollicum Bitem Lightfoot the fox and a coven of witches so terrifying I eventually wrapped the book in a feed-sack and buried it under the dung-heap in case they should burst from its pages and carry me away, so consuming had my enthusiasm become.

The Fixed Stars by Molly Wizenberg
Audiobook [6 hr] read by Erin Mallon

I enjoyed this memoir about marriage, motherhood and sexual identity. Molly Wizenberg thought she was straight until she began obsessing over a woman she met during jury duty. Molly and her husband explore opening their marriage, and learn to talk about feelings they hadn‘t voiced previously. They end up divorced, yet remain friends. The whole journey is interesting.

        As I envisioned it, my husband and I would be separate people. We would be as important individually as we were together, as a couple. We‘d be discrete entities with our own histories, energy and motion, but we‘d be bound to each other like stars in a constellation, a union born by the force of imagination and emotion, by the curious work of the human mind.

Catfishing on CatNet by Naomi Kritzer

Captivating and fun, this techno-thriller is set in the near future, peopled with queer teens and sentient AI. If you're a fan of Martha Well's 'Murderbot' series, check this out.

        My two favourite things to do with my time are helping people and looking at cat pictures. I particularly like helping people who take lots of cat pictures for me. I have a fair amount of time to allocate; I don't have a body, so I don't have to sleep or eat. 

Dancing After TEN by Vivian Chong and Georgia Webber
Comics format, nonfiction

A reaction to medication left Vivian Chong with Toxic Epidermal Necrolysis, a severe skin condition that left her blind and nearly deaf. This moving and inspiring memoir, created in collaboration with artist Georgia Webber, documents Chong's challenges as she is determined to continue living a creative, independent life.

I've already reviewed the following favourites because they are part of my Shadow Giller project. Follow the links for my full reviews:

Clyde Fans: A Picture Novel by Seth
Comics format, fiction

Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies by Leanna Betamosake Simpson

Coming Up for Air by Sarah Leipciger

The Baudelaire Fractal by Lisa Robertson

All I Ask by Eva Crocker

Consent by Annabel Lyon

Consent by Annabel Lyon

Consent by Annabel Lyon
Random House Canada, September 2020

Two pairs of sisters, two stories that intersect.

In one storyline, there are identical twins Saskia and Jenny, who are nothing alike in personality. Jenny is a sociopath from childhood onward.

        "That's boring. Play with me. You have to play with me or I'll set your book on fire."
        She would, too, in the bathroom sink, with the barbeque lighter. She had got a spanking last time, but it would not deter her from doing it again. Only Saskia could save her, by giving in. That was her one power. Still: "You're not the boss of me!"
        A lie. Jenny always got what she wanted, always. She could twist Saskia into any trouble she wanted.
        Jenny's eyes sparkled. Saskia was serious. That was how you told them apart.

In the other storyline is Sara, who has an academic mind and a taste for luxury goods. She is three years older than sweet-natured Mattie, who is intellectually disabled. When their mother dies, Sara takes responsibility for Mattie's well being. It's the third Canadian novel I've read this year with that premise, that of a sibling taking charge of an adult sister who has disabilities. Lynn Coady's Watching You Without Me and Andrew David MacDonald's When We Were Vikings are the other two. 

Consent and Watching You Without Me are both on the Giller longlist. While reading the latter feels like waiting for the train wreck that you know is coming, Consent is more like a puzzle, with the image not quite visible until all of the pieces have been confidently slotted into place.

Annabel Lyon has created vivid characters with complex emotions, the real stuff of familial love: loyalty, resentment, guilt and regret. Tragedy strikes both families and grief permeates this novel, but it's not all doom and gloom. There are surprises and touches of wry humour.

        She wore a black sheath and, round her neck and tucked into her belt, an indigo scarf of some impossible fabric, fairy wings, probably. Ten pounds of fairies to make a single scarf, harvested at dawn by peasant women in kerchiefs as the dew began to steam and the field fairies were just drifting up out of the grip of gravity. 

The Vancouver setting and weather ground the story in reality. 

        They met in Stanley Park, near the Rowing Club, and walked the seawall. It was a day of soft edges, grey drizzle, mist on the ocean and shreds of mist caught in the trees, and [he] told her some things he had never told her before. His life came into slightly sharper focus for her, though she said little.

For months, I've been looking at the cover design -- an upturned wine glass against a pink background -- in its thumbnail size online. It wasn't until I held a physical copy that I could see two additional details: there's a lipstick print on the glass and there's a spider trapped underneath. I'm not giving away any spoilers here, so I will just say that those little details are significant. This is a story with plot and I loved it.

If you haven't yet seen the full Giller longlist, check it out my reaction here or on booktube here. 

------------------

This post is part of a series. I'm on the Shadow Giller jury this year, so I've been reading as many qualifying Canadian titles as possible. To see my other posts that are a part of this project, click on the Shadow Giller tag. Also, please visit our Shadowing the Best of CanLit website to see what the rest of the Shadow Giller jury are up to. Thanks for visiting my blog.

The Shadow Knows... A Discussion about the Giller Longlist

My friend Shawn Mooney is originally from Saskatchewan and has been living in Tokyo for eleven years. He chatted with me about the Scotiabank Giller longlist recently, then posted our discussion on his Shawn the Book Maniac booktube channel:

Link: https://youtu.be/N3QiNt3Uq-M

-----------

This post is part of a series. I'm on the Shadow Giller jury this year, so I have been reading as many qualifying Canadian titles as possible. To see other content related to this project, click on the Shadow Giller tag. Also, please visit our Shadowing the Best of CanLit website to see what the rest of the Shadow Giller jury are up to. Thanks for visiting my blog. 

Clyde Fans by Seth

Clyde Fans by Seth
Drawn and Quarterly, May 2019

An ambitious, insightful "picture novel" about the inner lives of two brothers who own a family business.

Let's get format out of the way first. 2020 is the first year that graphic novels are eligible for the Scotiabank Giller prize, and the jurors have included Clyde Fans on the current longlist. To anyone who thinks graphic novels aren't serious literature, you are seriously behind the times. That viewpoint was proved invalid in 1992, when Art Spiegelman's Maus won a Pulitzer. Words and pictures together are a powerful way to communicate stories. Onward.

The story opens in 1997, but most of the action takes place in the 1950s. The atmosphere is steeped in melancholy. Neither of the brothers in this dysfunctional family is actually suited to salesmanship. Both men were resistant to change, and their Toronto business eventually failed when electric fans became obsolete. What gives this book such emotional resonance is its deep excavation into the lives of ordinary people. It also explores memory, the passage of time, and the power in the objects we collect.

Seth's meticulous art style evokes 1950s nostalgia, while telling a story about the dangers of dwelling on the past. The colours are somber blues, greys and black on brownish paper. 

Clyde Fans is a sophisticated, layered, existential masterpiece. I'm glad that some sort of special dispensation has allowed this book to be considered for the Giller, even though it was published outside of the eligibility timeframe. 

-----------

This post is part of a series. I'm on the Shadow Giller jury this year, so I have been reading as many qualifying Canadian titles as possible. To see my other reviews that are a part of this project, click on the Shadow Giller tag. Also, please visit our Shadowing the Best of CanLit website to see what the rest of the Shadow Giller jury are up to. Thanks for visiting my blog. 

Here the Dark by David Bergen

Here the Dark: A Novella and Stories by David Bergen
Biblioasis, March 2020 

If this collection of stories hadn't been on the Giller longlist, I would have abandoned it unfinished. I would therefore have missed the best part, the novella at the end, which is the title story. I remain mystified as to its presence among the other Giller prize contenders.

The cover copy claims these are stories of faith and grace. I concur. The narratives taken to arrive at the message of grace grated on me, however. Five out of seven short stories follow a similar pattern: a white guy learns a life lesson from someone different from himself. These teachers are: an Indigenous man, a little black boy, an overweight white woman, a white woman with MS who uses a wheelchair, and a deeply religious white waitress. These characters seem idealized, fetishizing otherness, rather than celebrating diversity. The women are lusty and frank about their sexual desires, thereby helping the men to overcome their alcoholism/emotional unavailability/loneliness.

        Perhaps it was loneliness, perhaps need. He did not think, he just said, "Are you sure?"
        She said, "I'm thirty-five and you're forty-three and my mother doesn't babysit often and I'm not gonna wait till you divorce your wife and besides I've been thinking about this for the last week, so how about it?"
        "That's a great speech," Leo said and he took her into his room and made coffee while Girlie explored the bathroom and looked out the patio doors to the alley. She turned and said, "I love hotel rooms. Our family could never afford them."
        "This one's a motel and it's cheap," Leo said.
        Girlie made a little noise in her throat. She sat on the bed and took off her boots and socks and stood and slipped out of her jeans. She sat again and bounced on the edge of the bed. Her legs were thin and white. Leo watched. The coffee gurgled through the maker. She shrugged off her tank top. She wasn't wearing a bra and her breasts were small and she bounced again and her chest barely moved and she said, "Come on, Leo Fisher. We'll drink coffee after."
        Leo went to her. He said, "I've never done this before."
        "You want to stop?"
        "No."
        "Then, can I ask you something?"
        "You can." Her hands were locked at his spine. He could feel her ribs with his own hands.
        "Could we pray first?"
        "How's that?"
        A car passed in the alley. The headlights scraped the curtains and then passed on.
        "Come," she said and she kneeled by the bed and Leo kneeled beside her and she said, "Dear Jesus, here I am. This is Girlie. I want to thank you for Leo. I'm so happy that he came into my restaurant and sat at a table where I was serving. It's like you reached down your hand and guided Leo my way. Amazing. I want to say thanks for sex, too, for the joy of horniness, for how I feel right now. Wow. Thank you, Jesus. Amen." 
        ('Leo Fell')

The remaining two short stories are set outside of Canada. 'Saved' is from the viewpoint of a young man in Vietnam who is connected to the death of an American missionary. 'Man Lost' is from the viewpoint of a young fisherman in Honduras who is connected to the death of an American tourist. The stereotyped portrayals of Americans abroad bothered me. I kept hoping for better.

The novella at the end of the book is more nuanced. 'Here the Dark' is from the viewpoint of Lily, a girl coming of age in a strict Mennonite community in Manitoba. She asks too many questions, according to the people around her. "It was dangerous to question and it was dangerous to doubt, for questioning and doubt were forms of sin and sin could only lead to hell."

Lily longs to continue her education but high school is forbidden by her father. On one occasion, she and her father are in a vehicle together when classes let out.

        The students fell through the school's doorways. Animals released. Girls standing in groups like tall birds, boys tumbling in the grass like dogs, a few slow and singular turtles, young couples kissing like doves. A conflagration of desire and violence. In her heart.
        "I can be true," she said.
        It is impossible," her father said. "Ideas are strong and insidious."
        "Ours or theirs?"
        He looked at her then and his eyes were sad and she was sorry for her words. But only because he had heard them. She said that a tree, in order to thrive, needed a harsh wind.
        "That," he said, pointing at the school, "Is a hurricane. We'll hear no more such talk, Lily. Your longings are of the devil. You must forsake them. Ask for guidance. For clarity."

Novels are forbidden too, but Lily reads them anyway, in secret. She navigates her faith and her doubts as she gets older, following her own path. Lily is the most intriguing character portrayal in this collection, so I was dismayed when I realized, at the end, that this story is more about her husband Johan, and the grace bestowed upon him by Lily's devoted love.

The prose is fine, as you can see from the quoted passages. David Bergen won the Giller in 2006 for The Time In Between, which I haven't read. And don't plan to. I fear that the content of his earlier works is like that of his latest collection, and so I have no interest in reading anything more.   

-----------

This post is part of a series. I'm on the Shadow Giller jury this year, so I have been reading as many qualifying Canadian titles as possible. To see my other reviews that are a part of this project, click on the Shadow Giller tag. Also, please visit our Shadowing the Best of CanLit website to see what the rest of the Shadow Giller jury are up to. Thanks for visiting my blog. 

All I Ask by Eva Crocker

All I Ask by Eva Crocker
House of Anansi, August 2020

A sexy, realistic portrayal of the complicated lives of contemporary women in their twenties.

The first-person narrator is Stacey, a shy and awkward aspiring actor. She has part-time jobs that barely pay enough to get by in her shared accommodations in St John's, Newfoundland. Her story opens with a memorable scene, that of police storming in through the front and back doors with a warrant.

        They took my computer and phone so they could copy the contents. They called it a mirror image. They said it was the fastest way to prove I wasn't the suspect and also I didn't have a choice.

Friends and family also have stuff going on in their lives, yet they are a source of support as Stacey copes with having no access to internet or her phone. Viv is Stacy's best friend since childhood.

        I've never been to mass in my entire life. Most of what I know about the Bible I learned from Jesus Christ Superstar, starring Ted Neeley. From the time we were seven until we were about ten, Viv and I rented that movie over and over again. That one and Titanic. We would rewind and fast-forward Jesus Christ Superstar to find our favourite songs. On the screen, Jesus and his disciples walked backwards through the desert, chopped up by two thick lines of static.
        We loved the high priests. We wrapped ourselves in navy sheets and stalked back and forth across the coffee table singing along, each of us taking a specific role. Viv hated Jesus, she hated his lank blond hair and she thought his voice was whiny. When he stormed through the temple and smashed a slowly rotating rack of mirrors she sighed. "What a drama queen."

Eva Crocker's genius in this novel is how real everything seems. The psychological acuity, the mood, the voice. In the next passage, Stacey meets a butch lesbian named Kris for the first time. The attraction is immediate and mutual.

        Viv introduced Kris before I could come up with anything: "This is Kris, she's a poet; this is Stacey, she's my best friend and an actor."
        "I don't know if I'd call myself a poet," Kris said.
        "Why not? You write poetry," Viv said.
        "I work at Ready to Ride. I repair bikes, pedal bikes," she said.
        I threw my coat on the post at the foot of the stairs and held up my wine. "I need a glass."
        Viv followed me to the kitchen and tried to ask how I was feeling. I stretched up on tiptoe, reaching for the only glass left in the cupboard. Her eyes were too wide. She was high.
        "I don't want to talk about that," I said. "And don't tell people I'm an actor."
        "Okay."
        "Is Holly here?" I asked. "Have you heard from her?"
        "I texted her, haven't heard back," Viv said.
        "Are you doing drugs tonight?"
        "Yeah."
        "Do you have more?" I filled the glass to the rim and hid my wine behind the bottles of olive oil and vinegar on the counter.
        "Ask Heather," Viv said.
        We all got too wasted to make it elsewhere. All night we were finding each other, gearing up to leave, someone was just finishing a cigarette and then someone really had to pee and then we'd be sucked back into the party. Hauled into a conversation or down to the basement where people were dancing to someone's favourite song, handed a fresh beer.

The police bureaucracy is an ongoing hurdle. At the station, when Stacey is finally allowed to regain her electronic possessions:

        "Who looked through my hard drive?"
        "Not me -- trained officers. Good people who have been doing this work for a long time."
         I tried to pull myself back into the room, to focus.
        "What makes them good?"
        "Pardon?" Constable Bradley asked.

The idiosyncrasies of people. The abuse of power by law enforcement. The politics surrounding the controversial Muskrat Falls dam project. Life is happening in this novel. There are missteps and betrayals. There are the lies we tell ourselves. There are ramifications to actions. There are sustaining friendships. There are uncertainties and surprises. It's all there. I understand why the Giller jury chose this for their longlist.

-----------

This post is part of a series. I'm on the Shadow Giller jury this year, so I have been reading as many qualifying Canadian titles as possible. To see my other reviews that are a part of this project, click on the Shadow Giller tag. Also, please visit our Shadowing the Best of CanLit website to see what the rest of the Shadow Giller jury are up to. Thanks for visiting my blog. 

The Baudelaire Fractal by Lisa Robertson

The Baudelaire Fractal by Lisa Robertson
Coach House Books, January 2020

A feminist, philosophical novel about gender and creativity.

Poet Lisa Robertson's first novel is a tour-de-force that's hard to describe. It's semi-autobiographical and reads like a memoir, looking back on the travels of her stand-in, Hazel Brown, as a young Canadian in France, right through into present-day middle age. It also takes the form of an academic essay in the fields of cultural and gender studies. Sometimes I understand exactly what is meant, other times I feel on the edge of understanding, rereading passages to grasp their meaning. Robertson's prose is arresting, both for her tantalizing ideas and her vivid descriptions.

        This morning I'm at the round table under the linden tree, in a sweet green helmet of buzzing. Each of its pendulous flowers seems to be inhabited by a bee. They don't mind me -- they're rapturously sucking nectar. I'm at the core of a breezy chandelier of honey.

The central premise is that Hazel Brown wakes up one morning with the realization that she has become the author of the writings of Charles Baudelaire, slipping into them "as one slips into a jacket."

        I simply discovered within myself late one morning in middle age the authorship of all of Baudelaire's work. I can scarcely communicate the shock of the realization. 

The male perspective of Baudelaire and other creatives is troubling to Hazel. Women as individuals are erased and objectified. Baudelaire did this with his longtime companion, a black woman named Jeanne Duval.

        Baudelaire scorned Jeanne Duval and every female he dallied with, or at least did so on paper, Ted Hughes scorned Sylvia Plath, Ezra Pound scorned Djuna Barnes, George Baker scorned Elizabeth Smart, everybody scorned Jean Rhys. Proust did not scorn Albertine because Albertine was a man. The she-poets perished beneath the burden of beauty and scorn. This is what I observed.

Hazel's observations include the potentiality of fashion for its role in self-reinvention or the expression of personas.

        I found a tailored black mid-nineteenth-century gentleman's jacket at a flea market at Bastille. I suppose it would be called a frock coat, or perhaps a morning jacket. Its fitted sleeves were mounted quite high on the torso, its shoulders were softly rounded in an unfamiliar manner, and slipping it on I felt a freshened awareness of the articulations and expressions of my arms. I longed for a decorative walking stick. From a slightly accented waist its longish skirt flared a bit behind, encouraging a brisk, decorative enunciation of my step; this jacket added a grain of wit to its wearer's walk, like a mild sartorial drug.

Tangential musings develop subtle notions about the creative process and being a writer who is also a woman. Perhaps creation is more an aspect of becoming, rather than being. Meanwhile, I found it easy to identify with the concrete storyline, that of Hazel's travels and self-education through experience, through following her own desires, and learning to ignore the disregard of men.

I predicted The Baudelaire Fractal would be on the official Giller longlist, but it wasn't. It's not a book that will appeal to everyone, but for readers like me, it's intellectual dynamite.

-----------

This post is part of a series. I'm on the Shadow Giller jury this year, so I have been reading as many qualifying Canadian titles as possible. To see my other reviews that are a part of this project, click on the Shadow Giller tag. Also, please visit our Shadowing the Best of CanLit website to see what the rest of the Shadow Giller jury are up to. Thanks for visiting my blog.

Giller 2020 Longlist Reaction

I'm pleased with the official Giller longlist. My predictions regarding six of the titles were correct, so that feels good. They are:

Five Little Indians by Michelle Good
Dominoes at the Crossroads by Kaie Kellough
Indians on Vacation by Thomas King
Polar Vortex by Shani Mootoo
The Glass Hotel by Emily St John Mandel
How to Pronounce Knife by Souvankham Thammavongsa
(My full list of predictions is online here.)

Surprises:

Watching You Without Me by Lynn Coady
There are fourteen titles on the list instead of the usual twelve -- that's the surprise. One of the titles that I cut from my own list during the final throes is Watching You Without Me. If I had known that I could include fourteen, this would have been another one of my predictions.

Clyde Fans by Seth 
It's a masterful graphic novel, and I'm delighted to see it on the list, but it doesn't fit the Giller's own eligibility guidelines. It was published in May 2019 and the stated timeline is October 2019-September 2020. My best guess is that, because this is the first year that graphic novels are allowed, a special dispensation was created for publishers to submit this format. Is there another explanation? I'd love to know.

Ridgerunner by Gil Adamson and The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue
After reading these, I considered them to be "maybes" because they are highly engaging. However, both have flaws that seem even more glaring upon reflection now. Our reactions have much to do with individual circumstances and preferences, so I will give these another look. If you are a fan of either, you are invited to persuade me in the comments.

All I Ask by Eva Crocker
I'm only halfway through reading this. I'm enjoying it, but had set it aside temporarily because it didn't seem to be a likely candidate for the Giller, and I had other books to sample before the longlist deadline. I will pick up where I left off to see what I was missing.

Here the Dark by David Bergen
I don't have an explanation for why this surprises me because Bergen did win the Giller in 2005 for his novel The Time in Between. I have a digital copy of the story collection Here the Dark, but I just haven't made the time to get to it yet.

Butter Honey Pig Bread by Francesca Ekwuyasi and Consent by Annabel Lyon
These are a different kind of surprise, the surprise of the unknown, because neither have yet been published. It's a bit of an annoyance, actually, that some of the eligible titles aren't yet available when the longlist is announced. I'm excited about getting my hands on both.

Noopiming by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
Of those that I predicted, I'm most surprised that this outstanding novel from House of Anansi isn't on the list. I wonder if it has to do with limitations on how many titles each publisher can submit. They are allowed either one or two, depending on their previous success at placing titles on the Giller longlists. New titles by previous Giller winners are exempt from the quota, which I assume is how it happens that House of Anansi has three authors on the 2020 longlist, Gil Adamson, Lynn Coady, and Eva Crocker. (Lynn Coady having won in 2013 for Hell Going.) As it happens, I had predicted an additional House of Anansi title would be on the longlist: Coming Up for Air. Hooray for them, for acquiring great books!

What's next? Guessing which books will make the shortlist. I will also continue posting reviews of Canadian literature here on my blog.

This post is part of a series. I'm on the Shadow Giller jury this year, so I have been reading as many qualifying Canadian titles as possible in order to come up with my own longlist prediction before the official one, which was announced today. To see my other reviews that are a part of this project, click on the Shadow Giller tag. Also, please visit our Shadowing the Best of CanLit website to see what the rest of the Shadow Giller jury are up to. Thanks for visiting my blog.

My 2020 Giller Longlist Predictions

The Scotiabank Giller prize is awarded for the best Canadian book. I couldn't find anything on their website that elaborates on the parameters for a "best book." Obviously, since it's a literary prize, literary quality is paramount. But what, exactly, is a literary piece of literature? There doesn't appear to be a definitive answer, so I will rely on my own sense of the beast, which is that it's writing that deeply engages with the human condition, and that the author's style is an important aspect of my reading pleasure. Another thing: I expect my pleasure to increase every time I reread the best books.

Here's my list of the best Canadian books for the October 2019 - September 2020 period, in alphabetical order, with links to my reviews:

Noopiming by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson

Five Little Indians by Michelle Good

Dominoes at the Crossroads by Kaie Kellough

Indians on Vacation by Thomas King

Coming Up for Air by Sarah Leipciger

The Glass Hotel by Emily St John Mandel

Polar Vortex by Shani Mootoo (and here in my May reading round-up)

The Baudelaire Fractal by Lisa Robertson

The Subtweet by Vivek Shraya (and here in my May reading round-up)

Vanishing Monuments by John Elizabeth Stintz

Misconduct of the Heart by Cordelia Strube

How to Pronounce Knife by Souvankham Thammavongsa (and, once again, in my May reading round-up. It was a good month for CanLit.)

I would be happy to see any of these declared the winner of the Giller. But which twelve books will actually be on the longlist? The official announcement will be made tomorrow morning (September 8) and you can join me in watching it streamed live online.

This post is part of a series. I'm on the Shadow Giller jury this year, so I'm reading as many qualifying Canadian titles as possible in order to come up with my own longlist prediction before the official one that will be announced on September 8, 2020. To see my other reviews that are a part of this project, click on the Shadow Giller tag. Also, please visit our Shadowing the Best of CanLit website to see what the rest of the Shadow Giller jury are up to. Thanks for visiting my blog.

Graphic Novels for the Giller Prize

2020 is the first year that graphic novels are eligible to win the Scotiabank Giller prize. I assume they must fit the guidelines for other eligible books, which is that they be novels or short story collections. YA novels and comic books are NOT eligible. 

There's a helpful Crazy for CanLit list on the Giller site, put together to celebrate Canadian titles published between October 2019 and September 2020, which is the eligibility period. Unfortunately, only three graphic novels are listed, and none of those appear to be eligible. Two were published too early: Clyde Fans by Seth and The Structure Is Rotten, Comrade by Viken Berberian and Yann Kebbi both came out in the spring of 2019. The third is nonfiction: Dancing After TEN: A Graphic Memoir by Vivian Chong and Georgia Webber.

Not on the Crazy for CanLit list, but a possible contender, is Familiar Face by Michael DeForge. It's an exploration of what happens to individuals when there is too much change. Bodies and dwellings are constantly changing form overnight, and so is the urban infrastructure. DeForge's brightly coloured art is witty and strange. It's frenetic and surreal, a rewarding reading experience. If any graphic novel earns a spot on the longlist, this is the one most likely to be chosen. But not by me.

I own a couple of other Canadian graphic novels that are unlikely to be eligible: 

Constantly by GG is a tiny (24 pages) almost wordless story about living with anxiety. It's lovely, with strong graphic outlines drawn in pale, neutral colours. I'm not sure if it's fiction or nonfiction. It's a little gem that seems more a candidate for the Doug Wright awards than the Giller. 

I Will See You Again by Lisa Boivin is in the format of a picture book, with one image per page rather than panels. Like Constantly, it's about 24 pages long. It's a story about an Indigenous woman travelling overseas to bring home the remains of her deceased brother. Boivin is a member of Deninu Kue First Nation. Her art is vibrant with plant life and rich colours. Portage and Main is the publisher, and they call this an all-ages title, suitable for children, teens and adults. It certainly deserves award consideration, perhaps for the Elizabeth Mrazik-Cleaver Canadian Picture Book Award or the Governor General in the category of illustrated literature for young people.

I haven't laid eyes on the following, but Veronica Post's Langosh and Peppi or Walter Scott's Wendy, Master of Art might be worthy. We don't have long to find out if any graphic novels make the Giller longlist: it will be announced on the morning of September 8. 

This post is part of a series. I'm on the Shadow Giller jury this year, so I'm reading as many qualifying Canadian titles as possible in order to come up with my own longlist prediction before the official one that will be announced on September 8, 2020. To see my other reviews that are a part of this project, click on the Shadow Giller tag. Also, please visit our Shadowing the Best of CanLit website to see what the rest of the Shadow Giller jury are up to. Thanks for visiting my blog.

Noopiming by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson

Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
House of Anansi, September 2020

A stunning experimental novel about the web of life.

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is a Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg member of Alderville First Nation. "Noopiming is Anishinaabemowin for 'in the bush' and the title is a response to English Canadian settler and author Susanna Moodie's 1852 memoir Roughing it in the Bush," (as stated on the back cover). 

And what a response! In Noopiming, the bush is the place of shelter, of home and healing, rather than a place of hardship. Even scraps of treed park areas in the city are a refuge for the urban Indigenous humans in this story. The nonhuman people--animals, trees, ancestors--also find their place in the city. Their perspectives are equally important in this wholistic tale.

        Esibanag moved back in and then learned all kinds of new shit like how to break zip-ties and open the green bins and the new, extra-expensive green bins and how to do public relations. They learned to tilt their heads at the cameras to look omg so cute. They learned to parade out their babies in a line, ride the subway and steal donuts. 

Anishinaabemowin words are used throughout the novel, especially for names. There are online sources, such as The Ojibwe People's Dictionary, that make it easy to look them up. (If you couldn't guess from the context in the previous excerpt, esibanag = racoons.)

This is set in today's Canada. It's the Anthropocene, the epoch of plastic. Blankets and lodges are made of tarps from Canadian Tire. Lodge supports are constructed from water bottles or wire from leftover NDP election signs. The chemical formula for polythene is carved onto a sacred cliff. 

        Things seem pretty fucked for the humans, to be honest. The white ones who think they are the only ones have really structured the fucked-up-ed-ness in a seemingly impenetrable way this time. A few good ones get their footing, and then without continual cheerleading, succumb to the shit talk. It is difficult to know where to intervene or how to start. There are embers, but the wood is always wet and the flames go out so damn easy.
        Everyone thinks the Ancestors have all the answers, but sometimes, most times, it takes more.

They/them pronouns are used for everyone, including Akiwenzii (Old Man) and Mindimooyenh (Old Woman). Ninaatig (Maple Tree) is nomadic, wandering far while pushing their shopping cart. Adik (Caribou) wears a small blue backpack that contains a voice recorder. The entire frame of reference is not exactly disorienting, but enough to make a reader sit up and pay attention. Betasamosake Simpson conveys oral storytelling tradition through repetition, and a generous use of white space on the page for silent pauses. Humour and poignancy are interlaced.

        On our way out, the mean post office lady yelled that Mindimooyenh could no longer just Scotch tape the correct amount of change to their letters and mail them, that they had to buy stamps like everyone else.
        As if Mindimooyenh will ever buy stamps like everyone else.

This wise and funny novel is like nothing else I've read. I am already looking forward to rereading it, to discovering more meaning in its layers.

Giller chances: HIGH

This post is part of a series. I'm on the Shadow Giller jury this year, so I'm reading as many qualifying Canadian titles as possible in order to come up with my own longlist prediction before the official one that will be announced on September 8, 2020. To see my other reviews that are a part of this project, click on the Shadow Giller tag. Also, please visit our Shadowing the Best of CanLit website to see what the rest of the Shadow Giller jury are up to. Thanks for visiting my blog.

Songs for the End of the World by Saleema Nawaz

Songs for the End of the World by Saleema Nawaz
McClelland and Stewart, August 2020
Audiobook [15 hr] read by 16 narrators plus the author

There's nothing quite like reading a pandemic novel set in late 2020 during an actual pandemic in 2020. It's even about a coronavirus. Saleema Nawaz wrote and revised this story between 2013 and 2019, based on research. It's eerily prescient. One big difference between the fictional virus and COVID-19 is that, in the book, children are the most likely to die of the illness.

The narrative switches between multiple characters, interspersed with news reports and online forums. One of the main characters is a writer named Owen. A decade earlier, he was stuck for ideas for his next novel. His wife wanted kids and he didn't.

        Even with his office door closed at the top of the landing, he could hear her washing dishes. there was recrimination in the sound, in the almost indistinguishable clatter of plate on plate. The water running into the sink might as well be a bucket of tears.
[...]
        He could already see how it would go. For her, the future was children. But children would be the end of their relationship, the end of his writing, the end of his days alone. Children were like a plague upon the earth eating up everybody's time and freedom. And then, he knew what was going to happen in the novel.

In 2020, there's renewed interest in Owen's plague novel and it jumps back onto the bestseller list. Other characters include Owen's publisher,  a New York City police officer and his sister, members of a popular music group, several university professors, and a family that spends five years touring the world on their boat.

It's a propulsive and hopeful tale that kept me enthralled.

Giller chances: MEDIUM-LOW - A smart page-turner that deserves to be on the bestseller list, but not the Giller list.

NOTE: I've transcribed passages from the audiobook. The printed text may be different.

This post is part of a series. I'm on the Shadow Giller jury this year, so I'm reading as many qualifying Canadian titles as possible in order to come up with my own longlist prediction before the official one that will be announced on September 8, 2020. To see my other reviews that are a part of this project, click on the Shadow Giller tag. Also, please visit our Shadowing the Best of CanLit website to see what the rest of the Shadow Giller jury are up to. Thanks for visiting my blog.