Kindred by Tammar Stein

Miriam is so frightened by a visit from the angel Raphael in her college dorm during spring break that she wets herself. Meanwhile, her twin brother Moses has been chatting with Satan. As you can imagine from this set-up, the siblings end up working at cross-purposes. Their parents are both professors of theology - their father is a rabbi and their mother is a former Catholic nun. Miriam, however, isn't prepared to talk to either parent about angelic visitations. She won't even talk to them about her painful bowel problems.

I found Miriam's struggles with the symptoms, embarrassments and eventual diagnosis of Crohn's disease the most interesting aspect of the book. Miriam manages to resolve her crisis of faith, and this is how she sums up her feelings: "God watches over us and shows us the way, while the devil trips us and hopes that we fall. We can keep each other company. We can lend a helping hand. But we have to do the walking ourselves."

It's not really my cup of tea. I'd recommend this to teens who are questioning their faith and who also enjoy some paranormal aspects in a realistic, contemporary setting. Grade 8-12

Hagiography by Jen Currin

Vancouver poet Jen Currin describes a world where ghosts and trees fall to their knees, drunken fish take to the streets, and dresses are made of seaweed. Familiar things take on a strangeness that sort of tickles: "We can be sure of nothing - "

"I live in a watery soup / inside the huge vegetable / where ghosts wash / themselves to witeness." (from "Before the Birds)
"I have three pairs of pants / with which to drive out the moonlight." (from "It Seems")
"The city is always late / and missing its panties. It's best to pretend / we don't know why." (from "Once")
"I become the sudden murderer, / unable to recognize the radishes / of my hands." (from "A Bat Unveiled")
"I'm seeing stars on the stair." (from "Window Music")

Hagiography is divided into sections of Death, Childhood and Birth, with Intermissions in between. Time is not cyclical here - there is instead the sense that everything is happening in the present. Ancestors could be sipping soup at your table. I am both baffled and charmed by these poems. They have the logic of dreams. Sweet dreams.

Currin is one of the poets shortlisted for the Lammys (for her most recent book, The Inquisition Yours). I'll be there (in New York!) at the awards ceremony on May 26th, along with another finalist... my dear Laurie MacFayden.

Bitter Medicine: A Graphic Memoir of Mental Illness by Clem Martini and Olivier Martini

I was deeply moved by this memoir which is a joint creation by two brothers from Calgary. The subject is so close to my heart that it makes writing this review difficult. I've loved people with severe mental health issues. Some of them have committed suicide. Every day at work in the library, I interact with patrons who have differing degrees of mental illness. Alberta's health care system is failing too many of them and the shortcomings are outlined in Bitter Medicine.

Clem and Olivier Martini give a very personal look at the effect of mental illness on a family in which two out of four siblings have been diagnosed with schizophrenia. Olivier's line drawings and Clem's prose are woven together into a sort of hybrid graphic novel/ family memoir/ mental health treatise. It is inspiring, eye-opening and heartbreaking.


Bitter Medicine is one of the final five books competing for the 2011 Alberta Readers' Choice Awards. Have you voted yet? I'm having a hard time deciding. Letters from the Lost is too similar to other grim stories of holocaust survivors to stand out. The Grizzly Manifesto is decent, although the gun-toting bear on the cover really turns me off. Cinco de Mayo has a cover that's even worse, but if you ignore that, you'll find an engaging what-if novel inside. Gruffly charming Robert Kroetsch is in fine form in Too Bad... but my heart is leaning towards Bitter Medicine as the best of them all.

Please Look After Mom by Kyung-Sook Shin

In the past week I've read three books with sentences for titles: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?; Please Ignore Vera Dietz; and now Please Look After Mom. Odd. They are all told in multiple voices, too, if you count a play's dialogue that way. More odd. Anyway, I loved all three.

Kyung-Sook Shin's haunting novel is an international bestseller about an elderly Korean woman who goes missing at the Seoul train station. Park So-nyo and her husband had travelled from their village to attend a birthday celebration hosted by their offspring. When So-nyo's husband stepped onto a subway, thinking his wife was right behind him, she was left behind.

Four voices narrate the story: eldest daughter Chi-hon, eldest son Hyong-chol, the husband, and lastly, we hear from the missing wife. There are so many small details of domestic life that make the setting richly present. It's a story of family relationships, replete with regrets over things said and not said - a reminder that we often take our parents and spouses for granted. In addition to these universal themes of guilt and responsibility and love, I like Gary Shteyngart's astute observation (quoted on the jacket) that this book addresses "how the movement of people from small towns and villages to big cities can cause heartbreak and even tragedy."

Please Ignore Vera Dietz by A.S. King

Vera Dietz is in her final year of high school while also working full-time as a pizza delivery technician. She tries not to draw attention to herself because she's already got enough to deal with. Besides working her butt off to get good grades AND save enough money for college, Vera is being harassed by the ghost of her ex-best friend, Charlie, who wants her to clear his name.

If they hadn't had a huge falling out, maybe Charlie would still be alive, but Vera is still really mad at him. Too bad she's also still in love with him.

What really happened on the night Charlie died remains a mystery through most of the book. The story is told from Vera's point of view, but sometimes we hear from her dad (who includes flowcharts), sometimes from the dead kid (Charlie), and sometimes from the pagoda (a town monument with a wry sense of humour). Vera is an endearing character who struggles to do the right thing. You'll be cheering for her, even when the pagoda grumbles.

Grade 9 - adult. Readalike: The Sky Is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson, for a similarly fresh voice.

Vietnamerica by GB Tran

Author GB Tran's family "crammed into a U.S. cargo plane bound for America on the evening of April 25, 1975. It was one of the last to take off before the Viet Cong bombs destroyed the Saigon airport later that night." Tran's graphic novel biography pieces together the events that led up to that dramatic escape. He goes back two generations, covering the series of occupations of Vietnam by the Japanese, the French and the Americans.

Unlike his two eldest siblings, GB was born in the U.S.A. He didn't become interested in his family history until he was in his late twenties, when he happened to come across a book about the Vietnam war that his father had given to him as a graduation gift years earlier. Seeing the inscription that his father had written: "To my son, Gia Bao" and a quote from Confucius "A man without history is a tree without roots" spurred him to accompany his parents on their next trip to Vietnam.

In the way that we piece together history from the memories of living relatives, Tran's account sometimes seemed like a jumble of anecdotes. When I found it a challenge to keep track of who and when, the family tree drawn inside the book liners helped immensely. The ink brushwork is mostly in full colour, but the preponderance of black suits the sombre story. Pages of solid black, except for a drifting leaf, are especially effective. They convey the magnitude of loss faced by refugees - the severing from one's roots and culture.

This poignant account of the upheaval and displacement caused by war will appeal to readers who enjoy stories about resilience and survival.

Doing Dangerously Well by Carole Enahoro

In a dark comedy set in Nigeria in the near future, corruption and greed face off against grassroots resistance. Half a million people die in the flooding when a fifty-year-old dam on the Niger River bursts; TransAqua International seeks to privatize all of the water in Nigeria in the disaster's aftermath. Everyone in the extensive cast of characters stands out vividly larger-than-life.

Barbara Glass, a caucasian American working at Drop of Life in Ottawa to prevent the wholesale of African water rights is one example. "Barbara had sewn herself harem pants for winter. Unfortunately, the thick yellow tweed selected for its warmth also added volume to gathers that should have draped downwards. She looked like a balloon whose only countervailing effect was the balloon on her head -- a turban in light blue she had made from sheets. A turban, she felt, would identify their group for generations to come, much like Che Guevara's beret. [...] She walked into the boardroom, the fabric around her thighs creating a swishing sound, her Black Power pendant rattling against two Celtic necklaces and a brooch in the form of a Nigerian flag. As she entered, she bowed a Namaste to all and sat down, her harem pants puffing up around her waist."

Barbara's sister, Mary, an executive at TransAqua, is masterminding assassinations right and left, along with the Nigerian president. When the sisters unite at their parents' mansion for Thanksgiving, the atmosphere is tense. "In the dining room, each place setting was arranged with prickly attention to detail. The crystal glasses shot off sharp, disapproving glints; the silverware yawned with superiority. Although the candlesticks and vase of flowers framing the centre of the table initially appeared welcoming, once the guests sat down they loomed, obscuring the view."

In Nigeria, lawyer Femi Jegede is inspiring people to unite against their corrupt government. The new president, Ogbe Kolo, has three contract killers out to get rid of the folk hero, so Femi is on the run with his male lover, Igwe. Meanwhile, Kolo becomes so fearful of his political rivals that he sleeps in the trunk of his Mercedes. Dangerous times! Serious issues underly the farcical humour in this brilliant novel.