Always Brave, Sometimes Kind by Katie Bickell

Always Brave, Sometimes Kind by Katie Bickell
Brindle and Glass, September 2020

A jigsaw puzzle of a novel that appeals to my social justice warrior self.

Set in various parts of Alberta, we follow about 40 recurring characters as their lives intersect over the decades between 1994 and 2016. Painted in broad strokes, these people are nonetheless surprising: a saintly person who is closed-minded on one issue, or a mean person who does something selfless.

The two central families are multigenerational. One is headed by a medical doctor, a South Asian immigrant and widower, who lives in Edmonton. The other is headed by an Indigenous woman, widowed while her three children were still young, who lives on a First Nations reserve in northern Alberta.

The chapters are episodic pieces to a larger picture of interconnectivity. What I enjoyed most is the portrayal of Alberta's social fabric over time, and the way it has been affected by government policies and the vicissitudes of oil prices. It's a novel that touches on many social and economic issues such as missing and murdered Indigenous women, mental health, racism, protests at abortion clinics, gender inequality, online harassment, mad cow (BSE) disease, homelessness, the Temporary Foreign Workers program, the opioid addiction crisis, religious extremists, labour disputes (hospital support staff and teachers), minimum wage, and the rise of white supremacists in Alberta. 

The most crucial issue of this novel has to do with what has been called the "Sixties Scoop," the four-decades-long governmental policy and practice of removing massive numbers of Indigenous children from their homes and placing them up for adoption or in foster care. "Private adoption agencies made a killing," as one of the characters points out.

        Dolly thought of the first photograph she'd ever seen of her son. The child had been listed for adoption in a Keep Sweet magazine her visiting sister had brought up from Utah. There were three [siblings] pictured: wee little Jack with the sparkly eyes, a girl about the same age as Susan, and an older boy listed as Wilf. [...] The ad suggested Wilf as a good fit for rural families in need of free labour, but that the little ones were sweet and playful and all three were in excellent health. The children's mother had been recently widowed. In the section listing the reason why the Albertan government had apprehended the children it simply read: Impoverished.
        [...] A Child Is Waiting, Jack's caption read. The Quentin family could have him for as little as four thousand dollars. Dolly so wanted another, and the boy obviously needed a home.
        "It isn't right," Earl said at first, adopting a child like they were ordering a Chatty Cathy from Sears Roebuck. But Earl had always wanted a son, Dolly argued, and little Jack was from Alberta. That meant he was already one of their own -- they couldn't let him go to America or Europe or Timbuktu! So many little Indian children were being scooped up and scattered all around the world. Now that just wasn't right.

Righting historic wrongs is a theme that left me with a hopeful feeling after I finished reading Always Brave, Sometimes Kind.

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Note: Thank you to the publisher for supplying a review copy.

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.

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. 

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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.

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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.

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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.

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.

Some People's Children by Bridget Canning

Some People's Children by Bridget Canning
Breakwater Books, May 2020

A fatherless girl's coming of age story set in Newfoundland.

Is this a novel primarily for teens or adults? The Scotiabank Giller prize rules disqualify YA (Young Adult) titles, so that question was one that I asked of my YA book group when we discussed this title yesterday. I agree with our general assessment: it's an adult novel with crossover appeal to older teens.

Imogene Tubbs is 12 when the novel opens in 1986, living with her grandmother in the tiny settlement of St Felix in the western part of the island of Newfoundland. It's an 11-hour journey by bus from there to the provincial capital, St John's. Imogene's mother Maggie is in Ontario; her promises to have her daughter join her have not been kept so far. Everyone in town suspects they know who Imogene's father is, a terrible man named Cecil Jesso, although Maggie denies this and the prologue scene shows otherwise.

The story spans about a decade of Imogene's life, into her early adulthood. It's a clear-eyed and compassionate look at adolescence and the search for identity. The characterizations have nuance. The sense of small town claustrophobia, the landscape and weather are all vividly portrayed. 

        There's always some kind of wind in St Felix's. Sometimes a cold wind off the water to spoil a warm summer day. Or a Wreckhouse blast that gouges the breath from your mouth and tries to suffocate you right out in the open.

Imogene has been sheltered from the larger world, which she mainly knows through books. Readers who were bookish children will understand her need to bring three books along on a bus journey.

        That night, Imogene goes to bed early so she can read Harriet the Spy. She likes how Ole Golly takes Harriet for egg creams. She doesn't know what egg creams are, but imagines it's what people in New York eat all the time, like vanilla cake batter you can drink.

Newfoundland English appears now and then, such as "b'y" at the end of sentences; Tipp's Eve (December 23); "now the once;" "a bit drove;" and Jiggs' dinner.

        She's never been able to get excited about Jiggs.' Boil out all the nutrients and salt it like it might come back to life and haunt you.

One of the reasons that this novel doesn't fall into the YA category is its absence of prudishness. The characters take a pragmatic approach to sexual intercourse and underage drinking. When Imogene's grandmother is out of earshot, profanity abounds. In this passage, Imogene is attending university and her friend Jamie describes his older brothers to her:

        "They're bastards. They really are. Just because someone's related to you, doesn't mean you have to like them. And Eric is a dirty fucker. He's the kind of guy who would show up at your house when you're having a party and steal your CDs."
        "That's fucking vile."
        "Nasty behaviour. That stuff's an investment, especially if you had to buy the bands you already have on tape over again."

Mental health is an important issue, addressed with sensitivity.

        The days get shorter and darker and Maggie follows suit.

1980s popular culture finds its way into the smallest of Canadian communities. And teenage hormonal angst is pretty much the same everywhere. 

        He has started spiking the front of his hair with gel that makes his fleecy blond fringe dark and geometrical. This new hair irritates Imogene and she feels guilty for her irritation which is also irritating. Liam can do whatever he wants with his appearance. But it annoys her that he didn't ask her opinion on his spiky hair, like she will just go along with whatever stupid decision he makes.

Imogene learns to forge her own path forward. Some People's Children is a rewarding read for anyone who loves character-based novels with a strong sense of place.

Giller chances: MEDIUM 

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.

Ridgerunner by Gil Adamson

Ridgerunner by Gil Adamson
House of Anansi, May 2020

A literary historical novel with the propulsion and atmosphere of a western.

I loved Gil Adamson's Outlander (2007), in which a 19-year-old white woman, Mary Boulton, is on the run from the law across the 1903 Canadian West, so I was delighted to learn that her new novel is a follow-up to Mary's story. In Ridgerunner, it's 1917 and Mary has recently died. Her widowed husband William Moreland and her son Jack Boulton are the main characters. There's also an ensemble of colourful secondary characters, including Sampson Beaver. Formerly a US marshall from Oklahoma, Sampson is now an old man living in seclusion in the mountains, and the nearest neighbour to William and Jack.

        Sampson took off his hat, turned his face up to the moon, and closed his eyes like a man sunbathing. Perhaps, he thought, we are toughest when we are young, and life wears us down; we become increasingly tender with age. 

Jack is indeed tough and capable at twelve, living on his own in the wilderness while his father is on the run, blowing up banks and stealing money so that his son will have choices instead of living in poverty. Everyone seems to struggle with their mental health, including Sister Beatrice, the nun who initially took charge of Jack after his mother died. Her inherited family house is in Banff, but town life didn't suit the boy.

        But a small town is a living engine run on talk, innumerable bees grumbling in their paper cells. Jack heard it everywhere he went. Gossip, opinionation, conjecture, speculation, debate.

Gil Adamson's prose is a pleasure. She evokes time and place beautifully. This is the kind of story where you can really sink into the atmosphere. Most of the story takes place in the Rocky Mountains near Banff and Lake Louise, but Moreland travels far. The following passage is an example of his experience of the prairies:

        But the prairie had puzzled him; the way you could walk for hours and seem not to advance. All around him were roads that ran so long and straight between wintering fields of unknown crops they seemed to vanish over the curve of the earth. He saw a ranching truck in the distance heralded by nothing but a soundless dust plume leaning with the wind. He watched it go, wondering where the driver was headed. Ranches, feed barns, maybe a killing house, where someone was making money on wartime bully beef. To the truck's right, a tiny fist of terrible weather hung over the land, so corralled by the miles it would never make it to where Moreland stood. How beautiful to watch weather work at a distance, without the slightest need to decide what that weather would mean to you. Rain, snow, lightning, it was happening to someone else.

Remote as the setting is, the outside world encroaches. Young men are scarce, having gone off to fight in the war in Europe. Hundreds of civilians deemed "enemy aliens" are imprisoned in internment camps at Castle Mountain and Banff, where Jack sees them being used as forced labour.

Moral ethics, loyalty, the class divide, motherhood, and father-son relationships are some of the issues that provoke thought. Overall, the plot and pacing make this a page-turner. It's intelligent and very readable.

Giller chances: MEDIUM HIGH - As enjoyable and well-written as Ridgerunner is, I don't see a larger truth, something that would lift this into award territory. I guess what I mean is that I didn't feel changed after reading this.

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.

Secret Lives of Mothers and Daughters by Anita Kushwaha

Secret Lives of Mothers and Daughters by Anita Kushwaha
HarperAvenue, January 2020

Shifting viewpoints reveal the lives of several South Asian Canadian women, linked through adoption.

I am always up for stories about women's lives, especially those that describe lives different from mine. I am also fond of narratives told from more than one perspective, so The Secret Lives of Mothers and Daughters seemed perfect for my tastes. The epigraph is from Jane Eyre, however, which raised a red flag. Jane Eyre is too gothic and too romantic for me. Many of you adore Jane Eyre, so keep your own tastes in mind as you read this review. The aspects that didn't work for me might be perfect for you.

Nandini and Prem Shukla adopt Asha when she is eight months old. They were given a letter for Asha that was written by her birth mother, but Nandini has an underlying jealousy of the birth mother and a fear of maternal inadequacy that prevents her from telling her daughter she was adopted. Asha is told the truth and given the letter on her 18th birthday. She doesn't take the news well.

        The awful sound of their daughter's weeping overtook the room. Nandini stared at Prem, bewildered, wondering how their close little family could have split into so many jagged, ill-fitting pieces.

Asha's birth mother is Mala Sharma. Mala is a PhD student and she's attracted to a white guy. Mala's mother Veena, meanwhile, is busy arranging for her to meet a suitable (i.e. South Asian) husband. The choices that immigrants make from day to day are well portrayed. Which traditions to keep or discard. How to balance fitting in to the larger settler Canadian society with family values and expectations. When one of Mala's friends asks what's troubling her, she considers how best to explain.

        Mala paused. She often encountered confusion, if not disdain, from her non-Indian friends -- although less so if they were also children of immigrants -- when she tried to explain to them certain realities of hr life, which many deemed insupportable. She tended to fail at impressing the importance of respect over rebellion. The group over the individual. Responsibility over want.

Mala starts keeping secrets from the people she loves. It doesn't go well.

        Like a strip of tape being slowly pulled away from a wall, Mala felt herself split in two, the way she always felt whenever she told lies, her true self sinking below to safety while her other self pushed through her pores like a numb second skin.

Anita Kushwaha's writing relies heavily on metaphor and simile. "A monster of grief tried to scratch its way out through her skin." Here's a passage from newly-widowed Veena Sharma's point of view:

        She woke as sprawled as a starfish. Sunken by a leaden feeling, she pictured her husband, Pavan, frowning down on her, clothed in white shrouds and wreathed in pale light. She heard his deep voice, whispering in her ear like a waft through the feathery leaves of a tamarind tree: "You've forgotten me already, champakali." A sudden chill ran through her like a trickle of melting ice along her spine.

There are three white characters in the novel, all named for trees: Willow, Rowan and Ash. I kind of like that: it gives me the idea that white Canadians are like a forest. The brown characters shine as they take turns on centre stage. While the melodramatic style is too theatrical for my taste, I enjoyed getting to know Asha, Nandini, Mala and Veena.

Giller chances: LOW 

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. 

Indians on Vacation by Thomas King

Indians on Vacation by Thomas King
HarperCollins, August 2020

A funny novel about living with depression and despair.

Mimi Bull Shield, from the Blackfoot Nation in Alberta, and her husband Blackbird Mavrias, who is of Greek and Cherokee descent, travel to Europe in search of Mimi's uncle's medicine bundle. Why her Uncle Leroy ended up in Europe is a story in itself, plus there's a whole lot more going on in this hilarious novel. So much that, by the end, my heart was broken.

But let's back up to the beginning, to when Bird and Mimi have newly arrived in Prague. He is grumpy, she is full of optimism and excitement.

        I'm sweaty and sticky. My ears are still popping from the descent into Vaclav Havel. My sinuses ache. My stomach is upset. My mouth is a sewer. I roll over and bury my face in a pillow. Mimi snuggles down beside me with no regard for my distress.
        "My god," she whispers, "can it get any better?"

Years of living together have given this mismatched pair a warm understanding of each other's strengths and weaknesses. Their relationship feels as real as the characters themselves. Their differences are a gold mine of humour.

        Mimi came home from her weekly jaunt to the thrift stores. She has a circuit that she works, much like a trapper on a trapline. 
        [...]
        For me, thrift stores are in the same category as the garbage bins behind fast-food joints. For Mimi, they're gold mines just waiting to be quarried.

It is clear from the opening chapter that something more than a reluctance to travel is bothering Bird. When they encounter an encampment of Syrian refugees, his despair comes to the forefront.

        "Are you depressed again?"
        "Just tired."
        "It's the refugees, isn't it?" says Mimi. "You don't like seeing children in distress."
        I can't imagine that anyone likes to see anyone in distress, but as soon as I think this, I remind myself that I'm wrong. For the most part, no one much cares what happens to other people, just so long as it doesn't happen to them. We have the capacity for compassion. We simply don't practise it to any degree.
        It's more an ideal that we hang on a wall where it's easy to see and almost impossible to reach.

The narrative flows back and forth in time. The present-day sections begin: "So we're in Prague," giving readers a rhythm that's easy to follow. There are no easy answers, however. As Mimi says: "The problem with human beings is that we can describe what we do. We just can't explain why."

Giller chances: HIGH - Thomas King is at the top of his storytelling game.

NOTE: I'm grateful to HarperCollins for providing a review copy.

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. 

Swimmers in Winter by Faye Guenther

Swimmers in Winter by Faye Guenther
Invisible Publishing, August 2020

This collection contains three pairs of astute stories about Canadian lesbians, the first one starting in the 1940s and the final one taking place sometime in our future.

In the title story, lesbian women live an underground life in Toronto, constantly in fear of exposure and arrest, because homosexuality is illegal. It's told in first person by Florence, a promiscuous musician and songwriter who sometimes longs for the company of her ex-girlfriend, a singer named Magda. The next story, 'Fight or Flight,' takes place about 55 years later, in the voice of Magda as an old woman. She looks back on her youth, a time when she took care to guard her heart. 

        But no one could own me. That was what I promised myself every night, on and off the stage. I was my own keeper, my own maker, and it would always be that way.
        Life has its own current, though. No matter your will, there's the rush and the undertow. The truth is that I'm not a swimmer. If I learned how to stay afloat, it was only because I knew what drowning felt like.

The second pair of stories follow women working blue collar jobs, in restaurants and as a security guard. Secrets confound their romantic entanglements. As in the other pieces in this book, the characterizations are vivid. The way exterior forces influence their interior lives is palpable.

The final diptych begins with 'Opened Fire,' about a soldier returning from Afghanistan. Carmen has PTSD and struggles with re-entry into civilian life. Canadian laws have changed since the settings of earlier stories in this book, but lesbians still aren't widely accepted in in the small town where Carmen grew up. When Carmen and a new friend from her running group decide to go on a first date, they choose a bar that they hope will feel welcoming. Carmen's brother tells her:

        "Of the four in town, it's probably the best one. It had one of those rainbow flags in the window for a weekend in June, last year. I mean up on the Friday evening, and down by Sunday night, but still."

There's a passage in 'Opened Fire' that reminded me of what it was like when I temporarily couldn't read because of anxiety during the first couple of months of the COVID-19 pandemic this year.

        Carmen loved the way Aurora peered at a book like it held a mystery, like it gave her some comfort. Carmen missed that for herself. She missed being able to concentrate on words and a make-believe world without the memories pummelling down, without images leaping in her mind, scrambling her vision and making her forget what she'd just read. Books and reading were a luxury, gifts she wanted back. She wanted her life back.

The final story, 'Flood Lands,' takes place in a post-apocalyptic future landscape. While each of the paired stories have links, I found the connections between the final two the most pleasing of all: a flood; a baby; literacy; and two women named Carmen (the second is the first Carmen's great-great-niece), who get around on two wheels.

I enjoyed all of these for their character studies and the way they covered a spectrum of queer women across a century of time. The format is also structurally appealing; I don't remember ever reading sets of diptychs before. 

Giller chances: MEDIUM LOW - It's a promising first collection. I hope to see more stories or a novel from Faye Guenther in the future.

NOTE: I'm grateful to Invisible Publishing for providing a review copy.

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.

The Glass Hotel by Emily St John Mandel

The Glass Hotel by Emily St John Mandel

HarperCollins, March 2020

Audiobook (10.5 hours, Harper Audio, 2020) read by Dylan Moore

A kaleidoscopic story of personal transformation, ethics and interconnectivity against the background of a Ponzi scheme.

This practically hits all of my reading sweet spots: careful crafting, multiple viewpoints, vivid fragments, propulsive storytelling, intriguing characters and an ending that leaves me wondering. 

It‘s fitting that this haunting novel does have actual ghosts as characters, because they help the living to reflect ruefully on their own actions. 

Perfect line for reading during a pandemic: “Me, my idea of a perfect weekend? Not leaving the house.”

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.

Aubrey McKee by Alex Pugsley

Aubrey McKee by Alex Pugsley
Biblioasis, April 2020

As you would expect from a book titled with a person's name, this novel is deeply character-based. Even the city of Halifax is a character here. Everyone, including the city, is full of surprises. The story is told in first person chapters that can also be enjoyed as standalone short stories. The timeline starts when Aubrey was five. He ran away from one of his sisters' birthday parties and met a strange child named Cyrus Mair.

        I thought him reckless and exuberant and smart. He was fabulously weird. I wanted to know what he knew. I couldn't really guess what he was dreaming up in his mind, nor what games and inventions occurred there, but I liked him. His world was in a constant state of becoming, and this September afternoon was the beginning of a fascination that would last a sort of lifetime for me because, even if I didn't know what I wanted, like everyone else I would not be able to stop paying attention to the creature known as Cyrus Mair.

Cyrus becomes not only a friend but an inspiration. Aubrey comes to understand that what you choose to believe in can determine what you become. He spends his growing up years floundering, trying to understand other people, such as his English teacher, Theo Jones.

        He is working, he tells me, on a long poem. "Miranda," it's called. He keeps his drafts and fragments in a wooden box on his desk. the box, as I contemplate it now, seems like a piece of his own personality, so confidential it is, so worn with care. "I've been working on it for eight years," he adds. I nod appropriately but privately I think: Eight years? To a thirteen-year-old it's more than half a lifetime. On one poem? A poem was homework you did between TV shows. What was it doing taking eight years? I walked away reverential, astonished at Mr Jones's conception of his own poetry, yet to my young mind there was something odd and flawed about the enterprise. 

Mr Jones sums up Aubrey -- and the point of this novel -- in a comment on Aubrey's report card:

         "A vivid mind slowly coming to grips with itself --Theo"

An oddball cast weaves in and out of the narrative. Much alcohol is consumed.

        My mother grabbed a plastic juice glass from the dishwasher and poured herself four fingers of white wine. "They're anti-war, you know, these people. Flower children. They think anything's possible. The wife's a women's libber. Vivien. But very sweet. Him? I'm not so sure. Wes is the saintly type. Wants to do good. Like build a barn for mentally retarded kids in New Brunswick." She tossed back half the wine. "Sure. Why not? But what are they going to do with a barn -- shear sheep? Honest to God. Be careful of these so-called saints, children. Believe me, people who act like saints -- a lot of so-called saints are trouble. Living in a dream world."

A strong sense of time and place is created using cultural references like Pixy Stix and Lik-a-Stix candy, drinking Orange Crush and Kool-Aid, his sisters "stockpiling Barbies in a velvet Crown Royal bag," the smell of Tide laundry detergent, and watching 'The Six Million Dollar Man' on TV. Music plays an important role too.

        The last year I live in Halifax, the winter I decide to leave the city for good, I arrive at the Palace much more drunk than sober. I am twenty-two years old and grief-struck by the recent death of a friend. So I stare at the giant video screens on the walls. I am watching the music video for The Police's "Wrapped Around Your Finger," sort of trying to figure out how Sting can be dancing in slow motion in a maze of tall candlesticks while his lips are in sync with the song, which is not in slow motion, when I become aware of someone beside me also watching Sting. It's Theo Jones, holding a beer to his chest, and swaying slightly. He is past forty now, but looks roughly as he once did, though puffier and shorter.

Unfamiliar (made up?) words make perfect sense in context, like when Aubrey talks about his uncle Lorne growing a "greebly" moustache. Lorne is only eight years older than Aubrey. He came to live with them when "Nanny and Dompa, living Montreal, were moving into some marital hurly-burly." When Lorne reaches adulthood, he can no longer bear living in Halifax. He tells Aubrey:

        "This burg --" He sighed as if unable to delay a judgment that had become screamingly obvious. "It's like living in the Bottle City of Kandor. It's so cut off, it's bogus. It's beyond bogus. It's so bogus, it's rogus. It's an embarrassment of rogusness. And everywhere fossified. Fwa!"

It takes nearly 400 pages to get there, but eventually, Aubrey has had enough of Halifax too. Sometimes the bantering wordplay between Aubrey and his friends gets to be a bit much, but it's an enjoyable experience overall. I've now lived an alternate Nova Scotia childhood and adolescence, and I've met vivid characters who will live on in my head.

Giller chances: MEDIUM HIGH - Not only is this the kind of literary fiction that you can really sink into, it also contains layers that reward rereading.

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.

Home Sickness by Chih-Ying Lay

Home Sickness: Stories by Chih-Ying Lay
Translation from Mandarin by Darryl Sterk
Linda Leith Publishing, March 2020

Ten insightful, melancholic stories set in contemporary Taiwan.

Born in Taipei, Chih-Ying Lay is now a microbiology research scientist in Montreal, as well as a singer and the author of previous short stories and a novel. This is the first time his fiction has been published in English. The author is gay and some of his stories include gay characters. In 2019 (which is after these stories were originally published), Taiwan was the first country in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage.

Music is a common element in these stories. Here's a passage from 'The Seafaring French Horn.' 

        The sound of the French horn isn't overbearing like the trumpet's. It often struck me, as I listened to you practise, that the sound was just like the shape, convoluted, meandering. It was like liquid light that would fill a room -- a sunbath of notes, so languorous and warm.

Lay introduces every story with an epigraph and I happen to be fond of epigraphs. I like the way they open my brain to the author's possible intentions. Like a corner piece for a jigsaw that I'm about to start, they put me in some sort of frame of mind for what comes next. In this book, they also help to give a sense that Lay's writing exists within a larger context of Asian literature and culture.

The epigraph for 'Epitaph for a Worm' sets its nostalgic mood. 

    I don't even know how long I've been melancholy. -Wang Anyi

I flagged many passages that struck me, whether for their originality, or vividness, or because they had me looking at something in a new way. COVID-19 has quashed my travel plans, so this part in the title story caught my attention:

        At university, you'd read a book by the writer who'd killed himself in the inn. He claimed that people used to be fearful of travel, avoiding it when they could. Leaving the realm of their daily life was a kind of exile. It represented danger, maybe even death. What travellers were most afraid of in the olden days was to be stuck in a forest at night, far from the nearest town, when the sight of any light would turn anyone into the proverbial moth to the flame.

Darryl Sterk lives in Taiwan and is highly regarded as a translator. I heard him speak at the Vancouver Writers Fest last year about his translation of Wu Ming-Yi's The Stolen Bicycle. In the introduction to this collection, he explains Chinese kinship terminology as its used here, particularly in the last three stories, and advises: "If you get lost, check the dramatis personae at the beginning of 'Tomb Raiders.'"

While there are aspects of the stories that clearly belong to Taiwanese culture and landscape, the human motivations will be familiar to anyone. People looking for love and respect. People grieving. People wanting a better life for themselves or their families. People balancing the pull of tradition versus the desire for modern convenience and style. People coming to terms with things that cannot be changed.

Giller chances: MEDIUM HIGH - Not every story is equally strong, but the characters tend to live on beyond the page. I think this collection might be on the periphery of the longlist, so it will depend on the strength of the other contenders whether this makes the list or not.

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.

The Last High by Daniel Kalla

The Last High: A Thriller by Daniel Kalla
Simon & Schuster, May 2020

A medical thriller about the opioid crisis, set in Vancouver.

Who would have guessed that as part of the Shadow Giller project I would read three books in a row that are partly set in the Downtown Eastside neighbourhood of Vancouver? Five Little Indians, No Going Back, and now this. One of the things I appreciate about The Last High is the way it shows the broad spectrum of people who are addicted to opioids. While some are junkies living on the streets, others are wealthy lawyers, project development entrepreneurs, medical doctors, or high school students from stable families.

Julie Rees, an ER doctor and non-using drug addict, is the central character. Author Daniel Kalla is also an emergency room doctor, so I trust the medical details. Like Kaie Kellough does in Dominoes at the Crossroads, the author slips reference to himself into the prose:

        "Why do you work two jobs? Is there some issue with the ER doc's union?"
        "The issue is we don't have one." She laughs. "I don't work full-time ER. A lot of us at St Mike's have secondary interests. We have two docs who do ICU part-time. And two others who also work palliative care on the side. One guy even writes books -- medical thrillers -- they're not half bad. I happen to have specialized training in toxicology. It's a nice balance, actually."

A particularly lethal form of fentanyl is suspected when overdoses aren't responsive to the naloxone antidote. Opioids are explained:

        "All these opioids -- whether you're talking morphine, heroin or the fentanyls -- basically work the same way." She knows it's an oversimplification, but she doesn't want to get bogged down in the insignificant differences in the drugs' actions. "It boils down to potency that separates one from the other. Fentanyl is about a hundred times more potent than heroin. But carfentanil? It's a hundred times more powerful than fentanyl... "
        "So we're talking ten thousand times as strong as heroin?"
        "Exactly. The stuff was developed for tranquilizing elephants. Literally. A single grain of it can kill a person."

Illegal drugs and their distribution, loan sharking, money laundering: a snarl of criminal gang underworld activities are integral to the plot. There's also a romance developing between Julie and a police detective, Anson Chen. Canadian identity comes up at a dinner party:

        Dinner is served over several courses while they discuss everything from politics to films, and even take time to compare their upbringings. Maria grew up comfortably in Manila, the daughter of two doctors, while Goran's parents struggled as farmers in Communist-era Yugoslavia.
        After Julie mentions that her dad's parents emigrated from Wales, Anson folds his hands together and proudly announces, "I guess that makes me the most Canadian at this table."
        "How do you reach that conclusion?" Goran asks.
        "Well, my dad's parents came here from Hong Kong when he was a kid, but my mom's parents were born here. By my calculation, that makes me third-generation Canadian."
        Goran laughs. "You win, then."
        Anson's expression turns serious. "Never really felt it, though. I always had a bit of an outsider's complex. Like I always had something to prove."

The dinner conversation turns to the recent spate of overdose deaths, until one of them asks, "Can we please talk about Trump instead?"

Giller chances: LOW - While this novel is well-written and will suit anyone looking for an entertaining and informative thriller, there isn't that special quality that would shift it into literary award territory.

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.

No Going Back by Sheena Kamal

No Going Back by Sheena Kamal
Audiobook [9 hours] read by Bahni Turpin
HarperAudio, April 2020

Third in a series featuring Vancouver private detective Nora Watts, a woman of mixed heritage -- a Palestinian mother and an Indigenous father -- who is (somewhat unsuccessfully) dealing with past trauma. You don't need to start with the first book, The Lost Ones, because you can get caught up on what's happened previously through clues in the third. Still, it's best to do so. Part of the appeal here is getting emotionally invested in the character development through the series, plus the plot in No Going Back is tied to activity in the previous books.

There isn't much humour in this atmospheric novel, but I did chuckle at the following passage:

        He wanted to go to Alberta and see a new purple coloured ribbon of light in the aurora borealis that scientists are calling Steve. Even though it's now known that Steve is actually a 25 kilometre-wide concentration of hot gases, he still thinks it's worth a trip to Alberta, which is insanity. Nothing is worth going to Alberta.

Noir thrillers aren't my usual fare but I do appreciate a feisty female lead who isn't great at interpersonal relationships. She's an outsider, a recovering alcoholic, living amidst the social disorder of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. She is still in the process of discovering her own self worth. The suspenseful audiobook is performed by the incomparable Bahni Turpin.

Giller chances: LOW - I would say the third in any series doesn't stand a chance at a literary prize, but then there's Hilary Mantel's The Mirror and the Light, third in the Cromwell series, that could prove me wrong by winning the Booker.

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.

Five Little Indians by Michelle Good

Five Little Indians by Michelle Good
Harper Perennial, April 2020

How do residential school survivors cope with the trauma they've experienced? In this heartbreaking, hopeful novel, Michelle Good brings five characters to life to answer that question. 

Kenny, Lucy, Maisie, Howie and Clara have grown up in the same church-run institution on the northern coast of Vancouver Island. They were forcibly taken from their families at a young age, then kept from them until they either succeeded in escaping, or were aged out on their 16th birthdays. At that point, they are given a bus ticket to Vancouver and left to fend for themselves.

Chapters shift between the five, following them forward through decades as they move in and out of each other's lives. People who haven't had a similar experience cannot fully understand them.

        She looked at me and reached for my hand. "I knew you had a story. You know, my dad went to one of those places. He would never talk about it. Not to anyone, not even my mom. She was Metis, so she didn't have to go. My dad gave up his Indian status so they couldn't take me there.

In their later years, Lucy and Kenny talk about what will later become the largest class action suit in Canadian legal history, which was on behalf of residential school survivors.

        "They call us survivors."
        "Yeah."
        "I don't think I survived. Do you?"

Human beings are amazingly resilient, but trauma leaves scar tissue, and the effect is intergenerational. My heart opened to these wonderful characters. I feel like I've been given insight into the challenges that the real people who survived residential schools continue to face.

Giller chances: MEDIUM HIGH - I hope this important book makes the longlist, and is promoted to readers through other methods too. Pick it for your book club! Settler Canadians like me have much yet to learn about the contextual realities of Indigenous lives in this country.

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.