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.

You Will Love What You Have Killed by Kevin Lambert

You Will Love What You Have Killed by Kevin Lambert
Translated from French by Donald Winkler

End-of-the-world surrealism in the voice of a child in Chicoutimi, Quebec.

Are you up for something totally weird? Something in a macabre vein? Faldistoire, the gay boy who narrates this tale, is already jaded by the time he's in Grade 2. 

        They teach us all sorts of stupid things at Rejean-Tremblay School. They boil down the meaning of life for us and make us swallow it in little pills to calm us at lunch or when the nurse comes to see us and meets us privately to deliver her messages: don't trust anyone you don't know, get vaccinated, this is how to brush your teeth, my-body's-no-body's-but-mine, beware of Halloween candies where old perverts have hidden long poisoned needles that will send you right to your grave, you have to inspect them and throw away anything suspicious.

Children in his neighbourhood are abused by adults, they die by accident and by homicide. Toads watch over their graves in the local cemetery. Transgender folk don't have it easy in Chicoutimi either.

        Thanks to our family connection, I find pictures of Paule before her operation in the photo albums of Angele, my grandfather Fernand's sister. He had been her golden boy before he was disowned by the whole family because of his transexual lunacies. When you eat at my great-aunt's and, a bit tipsy, she starts talking about her only son abducted by the demons of sodomy because his father was never there to discipline him and to alert him to sexuality's most twisted vices, I pretend to go to sleep on the couch and I listen to her song and dance as she curses a life that always gives all good things to the same people, Mother Nature who makes families of ten children without a single one that's fucked up, while my great-aunt is there all alone to shovel the shit of the entire world.

After he has completed Grade 6, Faldistoire's father chooses to send him to the private school in town.

        The Lycee charged money for the admissions test, each year's registration, the uniform that had to be changed every two years because we grew too fast, the shorts and T-shirts for physical education because of the new logo, every extracurricular activity and the materials required for it. The Lycee, a business masquerading as a school, with all the good intentions--bogus--of the teachers who, only once a year, on the day for parental visits, made as if they gave a damn.

The students' favourite teacher in high school is Madame Marjolaine:

        We were sure that she was the queen of sexuality, we imagined that she knew everything about blow jobs, anal penetration, cunts and cunnilingus, all those things we knew the names of but didn't know what they really were, and in time we would go and check out Google and watch a video that would give us our education, the real one.

Faldistoire is expected only to "survive as one raises one's head out of murky and toxic water." But doesn't everyone have a right to more than that? To thrive? In this novel, the ghosts are bent on revenge, on blowing up the status quo, on demolishing "beautiful things prized for no reason." It's a wild ride.

Giller chances: MEDIUM - It's unusual and strangely compelling, but probably too nihilistic for the Giller.

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 Swan Suit by Katherine Fawcett

The Swan Suit: Stories by Katherine Fawcett
Douglas & McIntyre, March 2020

A fresh and imaginative collection of short stories, bursting with humour and magic. 

Each story has surprises. 'The Virgin and the Troll' is a feminist retelling of Rumplestiltskin. A pig starts a wolf broth business in 'Ham.' The devil gets distracted at a daycare in 'The Devil and Miss Nora.' In 'Mycology,' the firing of a longterm employee brings a whole new perspective to the term ‘deadwood.‘ In 'Happy,' a married couple negotiate differing sexual needs:

        By their third decade of marriage, sex simply didn't seem worth the effort. Like cooking risotto, she saw it as a messy nuisance with results that didn't justify all the stirring.

Katherine Fawcett's playful wordsmithing is evident in the following passages, which are from two of the three interconnected stories about a witch.

        The place is a disaster. Witches are terrible housekeepers and this one is also a hoarder. There are bags of bones and boxes of buttons. Food scraps and beeswax. Birch bark and bike parts. Crumpled silk and rotting milk. Under floorboards are mushrooms; in the drawer, a dead duck. As for the grimoire? Alas, no luck. ('Mary Wonderful's New Grimoire')

        One way for a witch to amuse herself, when the usual avenues of entertainment have been exhausted, is to have a child. [...] Everyone knows having a baby can be very, very good for getting a lady out of a rut, for breaking up routine when life begins to feel same old, same old. ('The Maternal Instinct of Witches')

My favourite story is 'East O,' told from the perspective of an ovum.

        Conditions were crowded in East Ovary.
        Imagine a quarter million eggs, each tethered to the rubbery pod wall by her own personal follicle, all squeezed together into a space the size of the twist-off cap from a two-litre bottle of Canada Dry. Honestly, you couldn't swing a papillomavirus around in there without hitting someone in the corona radiata. But we didn't complain. We were evenly spaced and everyone got along fairly well. We avoided calling it "cramped," with its negative cultural stigma, and instead referred to our East O home as "cozy."

To anyone who protests that fantastical writing isn't worthy of serious consideration, I offer these words from Lloyd Alexander: "Fantasy is hardly an escape from reality. It's a way of understanding it." 

Giller chances: HIGH - This whole collection is delightful. It's going on my longlist and I hope the Giller judges feel the same way.

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 Library of Legends by Janie Chang

The Library of Legends by Janie Chang

Audiobook [11 hours] read by Emily Woo Zeller 

HarperCollins, April 2020

Compulsively readable historical fiction with fantastical elements.

The story opens in September 1937 in Nanking during the second Sino-Japanese war:

        The approaching aircraft were too far away for Lian to tell whether they were Chinese or Japanese. A moment later, she didn't need to guess. The spiraling wail of sirens churned the air. Then the bombs began falling, like beads slipping off a necklace.

        She had been on her way to the train station. She'd gotten off the rickshaw to buy a steamed bun for breakfast. Now she stood outside the bakery as though rooted to the pavement, uncertain what to do. The nearest air-raid shelter was two blocks away, across from the railway station, its entrance already besieged. Even if she were willing to abandon her wicker suitcase, she would never reach the shelter in time.

Nineteen-year-old Hu Lian, a university scholarship student, had intended to take the train to Shanghai to meet up with her mother, who was fleeing the fall of Peking. But during the time it took her mother's letter to reach her, thousands of refugees have already been flooding the International Settlement area of Shanghai. 

As a consequence of the uncertainties of war, Lian ends up joining her fellow students in the evacuation of their university instead. They are to walk westward for 1,000 miles, travelling by night to avoid aerial bombing and sleeping on floors in meeting halls and temples. Classes continue along the way, whenever possible. It reminded me of the flexibility required of education during a pandemic. 

The group that Lian travels with consists of over a hundred students plus professors and staff. Each student has been entrusted with a single volume from an ancient collection of myths and legends. They are to carry this cultural treasure to safety along with them. 

It soon becomes apparent that guardian spirits are making a similar journey, and that a supernatural being is travelling with the student refugees. The fantasy elements are beautifully woven into a plot that also features murder, betrayal, political manipulations and romance. 

Giller chances: MEDIUM LOW - It's a hopeful page-turner with a great message about the supportive power of community during hardship. Genre fiction doesn't fare well in literary prize judging, but this book will please many readers.

NOTE: I recommend the immersive experience of the audiobook read by Emily Woo Zeller. 

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 Sweet Girl by Annabel Lyon

Told in the voice of Pythias, daughter of Aristotle, Annabel Lyon's The Sweet Girl opens when she is seven years old.

"The first time I ask to carry a knife to the temple, Daddy tells me I'm not allowed to because we're Macedonian. Here in Athens, you have to be born an Athenian girl to carry the basket with the knife, to lead the procession to the sacrifice. The Athenians can be awfully snotty, even all these years after our army defeated their army."

Lyon's use of words like "snotty" is one of the playful elements in this novel that's based on real people in ancient Greece. Another is that gods make cameo appearances and interact with Pythias. The blend of historical fact with myth is very appealing. I don't remember any fantastical elements in Lyon's earlier novel,  The Golden Mean which is set about 20 years further back in time, when Aristotle tutored the 15-year-old prince who grew up to be Alexander the Great.

I read one of Aristotle's works, Poetics, and blogged about the experience a few years ago. Pythias has, of course, read all of her father's writings. As a precocious prepubescent, she is given a rare opportunity to speak in a room of men. Impressed, one of them says:

"The question, then, is whether little Athena is unique, or whether she is an example of what many girls could be, if they were encouraged by such fathers."

Another says: "A freak. Oh, I don't mean that unkindly. But how could such a great man produce an ordinary child? The tallest mountains have the tallest shadows. She's not representative of her sex."

Perhaps Pythias is a freak, because she is an early version of a modern woman. Orphaned at 16 when her father dies, she discovers there are few options open to her. Somehow, she must find a place for herself in society. This book really made me appreciate how far we have come since then in terms of women's rights.

Music for Wartime by Rebecca Makkai

The short stories in Rebecca Makkai's Music for Wartime are wonderfully varied in style, setting and length. I didn't need to pace myself with one story per day, my usual habit, because each one remained distinct in my mind. The longer ones (around 20 pages) reminded me of Alice Munro's work, in the way it feels like a whole novel is contained within a short story. The shorter ones (2 or 3 pages) are the most stylistically diverse, and act like palate cleansers in between the longer pieces. At the same time, it is the shorter pieces, those which draw on Makkai's Hungarian family history, that tie the collection together into such a satisfying whole.

In an interview in Harper's, Makkai explains: "When I began putting together Music for Wartime, I decided I wanted these family legends sprinkled throughout the fiction. In the collection, they come at you separately, so that as you read you're not just getting my short stories, but also some of my own psychology, the reasons a young American writer would be drawn to write fiction about refugees and war zones."

"The Museum of the Dearly Departed" is a longer story with an elderly Hungarian couple in a supporting role. Laslo and Zsuzsi (a Holocaust survivor) were away in Cleveland when everyone else in their Chicago apartment building died during a gas leak. The story is about Melanie, whose fiance Michael was one of the people who died, nine weeks before their wedding. He was in bed with Vanessa, his ex-wife, in an apartment Melanie learned about when it was left to her in Michael's will.

"Melanie waited for some dramatic feeling to wash over her. But she hadn't registered much emotion that summer, unless numb was an emotion. Grief would be an embarrassing surrender, considering the new facts. Rage was inappropriate, given Michael's death. The two reactions had stalemated each other. She was an abandoned chessboard."

Zsuzsi consoles Melanie by telling her about Rigo Jansci, a Hungarian cake named for an adulterer. (I'm going to make one of these chocolate mousse cakes. Sounds delicious.)

Photo source and recipe at: East European Food

Other stories include one about an American literature professor who accidently kills an albatross in Australia ("Painted Ocean, Painted Ship"); a cello player who must contend with an elaborate memorial to a traffic fatality that has been constructed on her front lawn ("Cross"); and producers of a reality TV show who manipulate participants into a romantic entanglement ("The November Story"). Two of the stories feature gay central characters: "Peter Torrelli, Falling Apart" and "Good Saint Anthony Come Around."

In "Couple of Lovers on a Red Background," Johann Bach climbs out of a woman's piano and moves in with her. "He's fond of Mozart, unsurprisingly, but for some reason Tchaikovsky makes him giggle."

I highly recommend this collection.

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

I've realized that I've got a poor track record as far as blogging about the audiobooks I read and my goal is to do better. I listened to seven audiobooks in April, the most recent being Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami [Naxos: 19 hrs].

The two main characters are 15-year-old Kafka (narrated by Oliver Le Sueur) and Nakata, a simple-minded old man who can talk to cats (narrated by Sean Barrett).

Miss Saeki, a former singer, is the enigmatic manager of a private library. Her name is pronounced in two different ways by the audiobook narrators. Barrett: Sah-eh-ki. Le Sueur: Psyche. I don't know which is closer to correct Japanese pronunciation, but I know which one I found more fitting. One of the other characters is Oshima, a transgender librarian, whom I wish had a greater role in the story.

There was a third audiobook narrator who performed the voice of a female teacher, but I couldn't find her name listed anywhere. I downloaded the e-audiobook from OverDrive and it had no publication credits at the beginning or at the end of the recording, which is something I've never encountered before. Searching for more information online, I learned that the translator is Philip Gabriel, who was awarded a PEN/Book of the Month Club Translation Prize for this work.

As I listened, I found myself checking off ingredients common to other books by Murakami that I've read:

• multiple narratives that come together
• parallel worlds
• a central character who feels alienated
• a ghostly, very beautiful girl
• music is significant
• libraries and books
• lost cats
• a menacing black dog
• supernatural entities
• sex while asleep or dreaming
• brief episodes of gruesome violence
• metaphysical musings

When I was about 11 hours into the story, I lost enthusiasm for a while. There's stuff about patricide and sleeping with both his mother and his sister and details about his cock and I needed a break. I switched to a different book for a while, then felt renewed interest in Murakami's use of symbolism and where he was going with this tale. 

I was glad that I finished it, because his work always makes me feel changed. Even so, I liked The Wind-up Bird Chronicles better.

Etta and Otto and Russell and James by Emma Hooper

I was hit in the heart by Emma Hooper's debut novel Etta and Otto and Russell and James… and I can still feel it pulsing there--warm, comforting and wise.

The story shifts back and forth between two time periods: rural Saskatchewan of the depression era, up to and including World War 2 France, and contemporary Canada, 60 years later. The main characters are easy to identify because they are listed in the title. Otto and Russell grow up as close as brothers. They fall in love with Etta, who loves them both. When Etta is 82, with her mental health failing, she leaves her prairie home and starts walking to the Atlantic ocean, over 3,000 kilometres away. Alone.

James is the only character who also is depicted on the cover of the edition I read. He's a coyote who starts following Etta like a dog, and then becomes her companion. Their conversations with each other are just one of the reasons why I love this book so much.

If you were to imagine a combination of elements from The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry (by Rachel Joyce) and Freddy's War (by Judy Schultz) and And the Birds Rained Down (by Jocelyne Saucier), plus the dog from The Back of the Turtle (by Thomas King), you might approach something like the magic of Etta and Otto and Russell and James.

Mermaids in Paradise by Lydia Millet

I fall hard for a good narrator and the voice is outstanding in Lydia Millet's satirical Mermaids in Paradise. The book flap description sets the scene: "On the grounds of a Caribbean island resort, newlyweds Deb and Chip--our opinionated, skeptical narrator and her cheerful jock husband--meet a marine biologist who says she's sighted mermaids in a coral reef."

In the first section of the novel, Chip comes up with all kinds of adventurous destinations for their upcoming honeymoon, and Deb vetoes each one in a kindly manner. For example, the "Peaks of the Himalayas" voyage, "with visits to monasteries, meditations and nosebleeds from the lack of oxygen up there. [...] The inner peace a monk projects, combined with never having sex, I don't know if that attitude is really honeymoon material. [...] I'll take a pass on that serenity, I said to Chip, I'm just not in the mood for it."

At the resort, everything gets crazy after mermaids are spotted. I'm going to blank out a bit in the next passage in order to avoid spoilers, while still giving you a sense of Deb's voice and the action of the plot. She's approached at the door of her cabana and asked to accompany some people to a meeting.

   "I found myself jostled and forced away from ____, surrounded by a wall of men.
   At that point I considered making a scene, even yelling/screaming. But that's where my personality got in the way, my personality that, especially as I got older, I hadn't worried about so much. I'm not a screamer, never have been, and it turned out this situation was no exception to the rule. The idea of screaming seemed foolish. Here we were in a Caribbean resort. What was the worst that could happen? Then I caught sight of ____ and thought of ____, but still the scream stuck in my throat."

The characters are all larger-than-life, yet so believable at the same time. Millet adeptly gets at the truth of how we obsess about ourselves and how we relate to other people.

Mermaids in Paradise is a dark and funny story about greed and altruism: human nature at its worst and best. Millet's style is exhilarating and fresh. I adored this book.

Readalikes with comic voice: Come, Thou Tortoise (Jessica Grant); The Blondes (Emily Schultz); and The Death of Bees (Lisa O'Donnell). Also, Beauty Queens (Libba Bray) - for the satire and island adventure.

Glory O'Brien's History of the Future by A.S. King

Every new book from A.S. King is reason for excitement. I know that I will find offbeat characters navigating this confounding world with wit and heart. Each one makes me feel that I'm encountering life in a new way. I am seduced every time.

Glory O'Brien's History of the Future begins with a quote from Walt Whitman: "The future is no more uncertain than the present."

"Prologue: The clan of the petrified bat

   So we drank it - the two of us. Ellie drank it first and acted like it tasted good. I followed. And it wasn't half bad.
   When we woke up the next morning, everything was different. We could see the future. We could see the past. We could see everything."

Yeah, so two teens on the cusp of adulthood mix a desiccated bat into beer and drink it. Then they start getting random visions of the future and the past whenever they look at people. That's the kind of crazy stuff that happens in A.S. King's novels. From then on, it's all really real.

Ellie grew up on the hippie commune across the road from Glory's house. All their lives, they have been best friends by default. Ellie has never talked to Glory about her mother.

When Glory was four, her mother committed suicide by sticking her head in an oven. Glory's father has never replaced that stove; they only eat microwaved meals at home.

Glory is now 17 and her aunt Amy still sends birthday cards with overly girly motifs.

  "Amy always had a way of going over the top because I told her I was a feminist when I was twelve, and she told Dad he'd brainwashed me into being some sort of half-boy.
   Which was bullshit. I was not a half-boy. I was still totally myself. I just wanted Aunt Amy to get paid as much as a man if ever she got off her lazy ass and got a job.
   Why did everyone mix up that word so much?"

Today on twitter I saw this:

In Glory O'Brien's History of the Future, A.S. King takes a dystopian crack at the ongoing equality debate. Glory foresees a federal Fair Pay Act being enacted 50 years in the future. It will require employers to pay women the same as men for performing the same jobs. (That's not the dystopian part!)

  "The loophole in the federal Fair pay Act will be simple. How can states make sure they won't have to pay women fairly? Make it illegal for women to work."

Whoa. Serious societal malfunction ahead. Meanwhile, Glory struggles to come up with a plan for her immediate future.

I loved this book to pieces. King is the ace of YA. You can't go wrong with any of her novels, including a couple that I've reviewed previously: Ask the Passengers and Please Forgive Vera Dietz.

Paradise & Elsewhere by Kathy Page

The dark, surprising stories in Kathy Page's Paradise and Elsewhere interweaves reality and myth. Celtic, Greek and biblical threads flicker in and out. Amy Bloom calls this book "moody, shape-shifting, provocative" and I can't think of better words. I was entranced.

There's a universality about the settings. The places are all over the planet, ranging from the seaside to a desert oasis, and from a stony mountain valley to a tropical locale. Each tale is quite short. They address isms - like consumerism, tourism, sexism and colonialism - from new vantage points.

The following is an excerpt from 'My Beautiful Wife'

"What use is a car, Liia says. Books are more important. A car can only take you half as far as the fuel you can pay for lasts, and then you have to come back; but books are infinite journeys and each one can be taken many times."

Paradise and Elsewhere is a journey into the truths of existence.

Readalikes: Diving Belles (Lucy Wood); Jagannath (Karen Tidbeck); and May We Shed These Human Bodies (Amber Sparks).

Seconds by Bryan Lee O'Malley

Seconds is a charming full-colour graphic novel stand-alone by Bryan Lee O'Malley, author of the Scott Pilgrim series.

Katie is a chef who started the restaurant Seconds four years earlier, along with some friends. It's owned by a gay couple who put up all the money and the place has come to be recognized as the best place to eat in town.

Now, Katie dreams of opening her own place. A house spirit and some magic mushrooms might be able to help... if Katie doesn't get too greedy.

Katie to Lis, the house spirit:
"...are you wearing an ironic t-shirt?"

Chef Katie is the star at Seconds.
Click to better see the food imagery.

Katie's new place seems to be a money pit.
Note the realistic background with cartoony figures.

Red is prominent in the art, and it's also the colour of Katie's hair. O'Malley's style has many elements of manga. Cartoony people with big eyes and exaggerated facial expressions are portrayed against highly realistic backgrounds. The food looks yummy! There are house spirits and multiple worlds. Katie is an independent young woman interacting with the spirit world in a way that reminds me of Hayao Miyazaki's animated films.

Seconds is a funny and heartwarming look at the pitfalls of perfectionism. Don't miss it.

Readalikes (and watchalike): RASL (Jeff Smith); Life after Life (Kate Atkinson); and the film Spirited Away (Miyazaki).

When a chef can't sleep...

The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains by Neil Gaiman, illustrated by Eddie Campbell

Eddie Campbell's art (detail)

The storytelling genius of Neil Gaiman continues with The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains: A Tale of Travel and Darkness. Gaiman says about this book: "It's not pure prose, not a graphic novel. It's a story with pictures unlike anything else I've written."

The illustrations by Eddie Campbell are comprised of paintings, comics and collage. Campbell's moody dark palette and visible thick brush strokes in the paintings are reminiscent of Van Gogh's 'The Potato Eaters.' The ink lines that create the comics are extremely loose, providing a buoyant contrast.

Eddie Campbell's art (detail)

Eddie Campbell's art
(photo collage detail)

The story has the feel of a traditional yarn and is set in an alternate Jacobite Scotland. It's told by a cattle thief searching for the truth about his missing daughter. He is a little man - a dwarf - accustomed to being mocked for his stature, who employs a guide to take him to a magical place on an island wrapped in fog.

Eddie Campbell's art in opening double page spread. "You ask me if I can forgive myself?"

This is a dark tale, as the subtitle forewarns, and it is in the adult collection at Edmonton Public Library. It is suitable, however, for readers in elementary school and older, except the most sensitive young readers. There's nothing more gruesome or scary than can be found in Jeff Smith's Bone series, or The Hobbit, or a production of MacBeth.

Readalikes: Mouse Bird Snake Wolf  (David Almond & Dave McKean); The Lady of Shalott (Alfred Lord Tennyson & Genevieve Cote, Kids Can Press edition); Mysterious Traveler (Mal Peet, Elspeth Graham & P.J. Lynch); Raven Girl (Audrey Niffenegger); Red: A Haida Manga (Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas); The Cats of Tanglewood Forest (Charles De Lint & Charles Vess).

Fauna by Alissa York

Wildlife and lonely humans in Toronto encounter and change each other in Fauna by Alissa York.

Edal, a federal wildlife officer at Pearson Airport, is on stress leave and finds herself befriending a mouse. Guy, who inherited an auto junkyard from the uncle and aunt who raised him, is rehabilitating a red-tail hawk. Stephen, a soldier on medical leave after traumatic service in the Middle East, works for Guy and cares for an orphaned litter of raccoon kits. Lily, a homeless teen, sleeps in the Don Valley with her beloved Newfoundland dog. Kate, a veterinary technician, mourns the death of her lesbian lover. And then there's the Coyote Cop, a blogger who believes that all coyotes in the metropolitan area should be killed.

Close third-person point of view alternates between these people, along with occasional urban wildlife individuals: a squirrel, a raccoon, a coyote.

I spotted this guy in Vancouver.

Edal was named for one of the otters in Gavin Maxwell's Ring of Bright Water. When she was a child, her mother often read to her, but Ring of Bright Water was the only book she read to Edal in full.

"Her mother explained nothing, and she left nothing out. Countless words slipped Edal's grasp and swam away, but they swam beautifully, some darting, others wagging long and languid lines. Pinnacles and glacial corries. Filigree tracery and tidewrack rubbish-heap. Clairvoyance and manna and quarry. Purloined."

Fauna is a graceful meditation on the power of stories, and the way that connecting with other beings can improve our solitary existence.

Readalikes: Prodigal Summer (Barbara Kingsolver); Five Bells (Gail Jones).

Diving Belles by Lucy Wood

Lucy Wood's distinctive short stories reveal "the miraculous in the everyday." That quote is from Karen Russell's blurb on the cover of Diving Belles. Russell also calls Wood "a sorceress." Ali Shaw writes: "It is as if the Cornish moors and coasts have whispered secrets into Lucy Wood's ears and, in response, she has fashioned exquisite tales of mystery and humanity." Yes! What they said.

Some of the tales incorporate Cornish folklore, such as leaving a fish offering to appease hobgoblins called buccas. The landscape is nearly a character in its own right, while thrift and other coastal plants are ever present.

"Nothing moved across the moor except the rain, which appeared as suddenly and soundlessly as a face pressed against a window."

I savoured these stories slowly, opening my heart to their charms. Things are often not as they appear. "What you mistook for sadness is love."

A woman is sometimes a hare, as in 'Blue Moon.' In this tale, a kindly receptionist narrates her experiences in a nursing home for elderly folk with witchy abilities. "We kept finding them down at the harbour trying to sell the wind to fishermen in lengths of knotted rope. [...] Most days the phone wouldn't ring at all so I was roped into doing extra cleaning. There had been a spate of pentagrams appearing on the common room carpet, marked out in salt, and I had to hoover them up. It's a real pain because the grains bind themselves to the carpet fibres and won't shift unless you keep a pinch of salt on your tongue. By the end of it you're parched."

Each story carries fresh astonishments, so I have readalike suggestions for seven out out of the twelve individually, as well as for the collection in general.

'Diving Belles' (title story) - The Brides of Rollrock Island (Margo Lanagan)
'Countless Stones' - The Girl with Glass Feet (Ali Shaw)
'Of Mothers and Little People' - Some Kind of Fairy Tale (Graham Joyce)
'Lights in Other People's Houses' - The Ghosts of Kerfol (Deborah Noyes)
'The Giant's Boneyard' - Yellowcake (Margo Lanagan)
'Notes from the House Spirits' - the chorus of maids in Penelopiad (Margaret Atwood); and the sentient house in End of the World Blues (Jon Courtenay Grimwood).
'Blue Moon' - Tenth of December (George Saunders)

Additional readalikes for the collection as a whole: Jagannath (Karin Tidbeck); Vampires in the Lemon Grove (Karen Russell); and Pretty Monsters (Kelly Link).

Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi

Helen Oyeyemi amazes me with every new book. I admired The Icarus Girl and adored Mr. Fox.  Now, I wonder how Oyeyemi could possibly get any better. Boy, Snow, Bird is perfectly brilliant. It's an inspired re-imagining of Snow White, set in 1950s Massachusetts, exploring racism and gender identity.

A girl named Boy runs away from her violent father, a rat catcher in New York City. Boy eventually marries a widower named Arturo Whitman and becomes stepmother to his daughter, Snow. Arturo and Boy have another child, Bird.

Bird:

"Mom looks foreign, like a Russian ice skater; her backdrop ought to be one of those cities that has a skyline topped with onion-shaped domes. I can just see Mom whizzing around with her hands inside a huge white muff, bloody sparks flying up behind her as the blades on her boots dig up all the hearts she broke before Dad got to her."

Boy:
"I couldn't make up my mind whether the baby was male or female; the only certainties were near baldness and incandescent rage. The kid didn't like its blanket, or its rattle, or the lap it was sat on, or the world... the time had come to demand quality."

"I was new to champagne, but as soon as I tasted it, spark after golden spark, I thought, well, there's magic in this water, no wonder Mia said to wish on it."

Alecto (owner of the bookstore where Boy works):
"[M]agic spells only work until the person under the spell is really and honestly tired of it. It ends when continuing becomes simply too ghastly a prospect."

I remain under Oyeyemi's magic spell.

Flora and Ulysses by Kate DiCamillo

Kate DiCamillo's children's stories keep getting funnier and more adorable. Holy bagumba! Flora and Ulysses had me laughing out loud. Flora is ten years old and a natural-born cynic. Ulysses is a squirrel who attains superpowers after a near-death encounter with a vacuum cleaner.

The vocabulary is rich with words like malfeasance, planetary dislocations, and existential terror. There are "astonishing acts of heroism" and a great many "unanticipated occurrences." I also loved the way that poetry is treated with due respect.

After vanquishing a vicious cat, Ulysses "was enormously, inordinately pleased with himself. He felt immensely powerful! He felt like writing a poem!"*

The waitress at the Giant Do-Nut had her name tag spelled out in all capital letters: RITA! "Flora narrowed her eyes. The exclamation point made Rita seem untrustworthy, or, at the very least, insincere."**

Flora and Ulysses is a rollicking and witty adventure that would make a fantastic family read-aloud, suitable for all ages.

Readalikes: Mr and Mrs Bunny, Detectives Extraordinaire! (Polly Horvath); The Boy Who Swam with Piranhas (David Almond); The True Meaning of Smekday (Adam Rex)

*Coincidentally, in Thea Bowering's short story 'The Cannibals' (in Love at Last Sight), a modern-day little mermaid out for revenge is similarly inspired: "She had been trained to attack: when you find your mortal enemy, don't hesitate, close in quickly and write a poem."

**In yet another coincidence, this time in Worst. Person. Ever., Raymond has frustrating encounters with a airline lounge waitress wearing a name tag that says LACEY, and each time LACEY is mentioned in the text, her name is always presented like that: in all-caps and in a contrasting bold font.

The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo

The Ghost Bride is an atmospheric debut novel by Malaysian-born Yangsze Choo.

Li Lan is a young woman in colonial Malaya who becomes entangled in the affairs of the spirit world when an evil ghost is determined to have her as his bride. The convoluted plot reminded me of a Cantonese opera that I attended in Singapore, but without the opera's farce. Li Lan is a plucky and sympathetic character, an innocent who learns quickly to beware those around her because few are who (or what) they seem.

One of the traditional stories that Li Lan has enjoyed since she was a child is about the cowherd and the weaver girl. A comics retelling of this tale can be found in the collection Once upon a Time Machine (Dark Horse): "The Shepherd and the Weaver Girl" is by Saajan Patel and Jim Giar.

Readalikes: Half World (Hiromi Goto); Stardust (Neil Gaiman); Tea with the Black Dragon (R.A. MacAvoy); and the supernatural elements in The Hundred Secret Senses (Amy Tan) and The Woman Warrior (Maxine Hong Kingston). The Ghost Bride also has a similar feel to Miyazaki's anime film, Spirited Away.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

Neil Gaiman weaves fairy tale elements into contemporary Sussex in The Ocean at the End of the Lane. A man revisits the place of his rural childhood and looks back on the ominous events that took place when he was seven. He was a boy who loved cats and books.

"I liked myths. They weren't adult stories and they weren't children's stories. They were better than that. They just were."

Three Hempstocks live at the farm at the end of the lane. They are straight out of  mythology: maiden, mother and crone. The youngest, eleven-year-old Lettie, is the boy's friend. 

"I do not miss childhood, but I miss the way I took pleasure in small things, even as greater things crumbled. I could not control the world I was in, could not walk away from things or people or moments that hurt, but I found joy in the things that made me happy. The custard was sweet and creamy in my mouth, the dark swollen currants in the spotted dick were tangy in the cake-thick chewy blandness of the pudding, and perhaps I was going to die that night and perhaps I would never go home again, but it was a good dinner and I had faith in Lettie Hempstock."

(I immediately wanted my own dish of pudding. A recipe can be found here.)

As with many of Gaiman's stories, this slim and haunting novel is suitable for a wide age range, about 10 and up.

Readalikes. In trying to come up with similar titles, the first ones that come to mind are, unsurprisingly, by Gaiman himself: The Graveyard Book, Coraline and Stardust. Stories with fantastical and mythical elements that would likely appeal to readers who enjoy The Ocean at the End of the Lane include: The Pull of the Ocean (Jean-Claude Mourlevat); Skellig (David Almond); The Snow Child (Eowyn Ivey); Some Kind of Fairy Tale (Graham Joyce); Ragnarok (A.S. Byatt); and I Shall Wear Midnight (Terry Pratchett).

Nocturne: Dream Recipes Varied and Easy to Make (in just 5 minutes) by Isol

I was up very late watching spectacular Canada Day fireworks over the North Saskatchewan river in Edmonton, so a book about sleep is perfect for this morning.

Nocturne is the singular creation of Isol, an Argentine illustrator who received the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award earlier this year. More artifact than book, Nocturne is coil-bound at the top and has a base that unfolds to make it stand sturdily at bedside. Two different whimsical illustrations are superimposed on each page, one printed with glow-in-the-dark ink.

"Before you go to sleep, open the book to the dream you've chosen and place it on your night table under a bright light. (A dream is like a moth that loves to get close to the light when no one is looking.) Wait for a least 5 minutes, and don't make any noise or you will scare the dream away. [...] Turn out the light! You will see the luminous traces that the dream leaves behind on the page. Look for as long as you like, then close your eyes and follow the dream to its hiding place."

Included are: the boring book Dream (with giant animals peering down at a reader who has fallen asleep); the Dream of going far away (to find friendly aliens on another planet); and the Dream underwater (complete with mermaid). In the Dream of growing, a girl waters three seeds under a tiny orange sun. The phosphorescent image shows the girl riding the tops of the grown plants, with the sun in the location of her heart. Magical!

The Cats of Tanglewood Forest, another children's book that I've read recently, coincidentally mentions dreams. In De Lint's book, under the branches of an ancient beech, "cats would come to dream and be dreamed." Nocturne offers a wonderful opportunity for adults to talk about dreams and dreaming with young people from about Grade 2 and up.

Children who enjoy Nocturne might also like The Dreamer (Pam Munoz Ryan) with its surreal illustrations by Peter Sis; Stormy Night (Michele Lemieux) about the thorny philosophical questions that keep us from sleeping; and The Rabbit Problem (Emily Gravett) another quirky book that is more of an artifact than container for a story.