On Rereading The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

No matter how much I enjoy a book, I rarely read one more than once. Almost the only time I reread is for book clubs. It's been a decade since I read The Poisonwood Bible - too long ago to properly engage in a book discussion on it tomorrow evening. I could only remember that it's about an insane American missionary who moves with his family to the jungle in the Belgian Congo and that the narration alternates between the wife and four daughters. I also remembered that the pace slows down somewhere towards the middle of the book and that I wasn't as keen on the end part as the beginning.

Sometimes skimming is all I need to refresh my memory on a book I've read. Kingsolver is such an engaging writer, however, that I simply could not skim. I was immediately caught up in the story and read all 543 pages. It starts in 1959, at the brink of momentous changes about to take place in the Belgian Congo. After the immediacy of the girls' accounts of their experiences during their first year in the village of Kilanga, a larger view of political and economic upheaval is brought into perspective in the latter part of the book (the part that I had remembered as being rather slow) when the daughters continue to take turns, but their telling skips forward in big chunks of time. I found myself really appreciating Kingsolver's insights into the complicated current history of this part of Africa. 

If you haven't yet read The Poisonwood Bible, it's an epic family saga with memorable characters involved in an astonishingly foolhardy adventure not of their choosing. Highly recommended for rereading, too!

So Much Pretty by Cara Hoffman

One night, twenty-year-old Wendy White disappeared from the town of 2,000 people in upstate New York where she'd lived all her life. Five months later, her newly-dead body was found in a ditch near her home. She had obviously been raped and tortured. The murderer was most likely someone local.

Cara Hoffman's jigsaw puzzle narrative style - jumping around in time and juggling multiple points of view - was disconcerting at first, especially when I tried too hard to sort out the timeline. When I decided to relax and trust the author, I enjoyed the way the pieces eventually slotted into place. The result is stunning and intense.

Another tragedy is connected to Wendy's death. Reader suspense builds as details of Wendy's ordeal and the nature of the second crime are slowly revealed. Hoffman provides passionate insights into the issues of violence against women, xenophobia, vigilante justice and environmental degradation from factory farming. A thought-provoking book with memorable female characters.

Note added June 3, 2012: I think The Rejectionist sells this book a lot better, comparing it to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. "Like basically this is the book TGWTDT was trying and failing miserably to be. So Much Pretty is written out of a place of straight fury" See the whole thing on her blog here.

Swan by Mary Oliver

My two favourite poets are Carol Ann Duffy and Mary Oliver. What draws me to their work? Initially, it was the fact that they are lesbians, but the reasons I celebrate each new volume they publish are Duffy's witty irreverence and Oliver's tender reverence.

Oliver's Swan: Poems and Prose Poems (2010) is as wonderful as I've come to expect from her, "a literature of praise" for "this pretty, this perilous world." Each leaf "has a song in it" and the stones have heartbeats. The trees welcome her wanderings: "cool, beloved the household / of such tall, kind sisters."

Oliver explains why she goes alone into the woods: "I don't really want to be witnessed talking to the catbirds or hugging the old black oak tree. I have my way of praying, as you no doubt have yours." (from "How I Go to the Woods"). She goes on to say: "If you have ever gone to the woods with me, I must love you very much." I feel like I've walked at Oliver's side after reading her words. I feel loved, even though Oliver does not know me, and grateful for the opportunity to experience the world through her senses. She reminds me that we belong to the earth and the "tissue of our minds is made of it."

Several poems are in elegy to her dog, Percy, who died in 2009. In "The Sweetness of Dogs," Oliver asks: "And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?" Yes, I think have. In Oliver's words, it exists because "joy is not meant to be a crumb." I will reread these poems often.

Readalikes: Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard.

Christian, the Hugging Lion by Justin Richardson, Peter Parnell and Amy June Bates

This picture book is based on a true story and it rather horrifies me to learn that in 1969, a three-month-old lion cub was for sale in the exotic pet department at Harrods in London. A gay couple, Ace and John, bought the lion, called it Christian, and kept it in their apartment for a year, then brought it to a place in Kenya where it was rehabilitated successfully into the wild. The men missed him and returned to see him a couple of times.

Lions are the most social of all cats. The special thing that Christian used to do was to hug people, and he even did this when Ace and John visited him in Africa. Kinda cool to see it captured on video: http://youtu.be/TVeP4Jb1wsU . (I suggest muting the obnoxious music.)

Authors Richardson and Parnell also wrote And Tango Makes Three, which is a fabulous book. Christian, the Hugging Lion is aimed at the same preschool to Grade 2 audience, but it begs for additional discussion about the ethics of wild animals kept as pets.

The Woefield Poultry Collective by Susan Juby

Susan Juby's Alice, I Think is one of the funniest novels I've ever read. The Woefield Poultry Collective is even better. Twenty-something Brooklynite Prudence inherits Woefield farm on Vancouver Island and is determined to make a success of the rocky, mortgaged-to-the-hilt piece of property that comes with one curmudgeonly hired man (Earl) and one depressed sheep (Bertie).

The story has four quirky narrators: Prudence, Earl, Seth and Sara. I love each one them. Earl's voice reminds me of the earthy way several of my uncles talk. On one of the few occasions when Earl is lost for words, he says "I didn't know whether to shit or brush my hair."

A traumatic incident caused Seth to drop out of school in Grade 11 and in the four years since he barely left his room; most of that time was spent blogging about heavy metal music and celebrities. Seth lived right across the road from Woefield until his mother kicked him out and he knocked on Prudence's door.

Sara is a bossy no-nonsense eleven-year-old with a passion for fancy chickens. Talking about Left Behind, Sara says "It doesn't have a very good plot, but it's easier to read than the Bible, which Mrs. Blaine also lent me. Mrs. Blaine told me that Left Behind was based on true events that will take place in the future." Sara's preoccupation with the rapture brings recent real-life headlines to mind.

Prudence is good-hearted, enthusiastic and works incredibly hard. I knew it was useless to resist her charms. Go Prudence! Go Susan Juby!

The Big Bang Symphony by Lucy Jane Bledsoe

The Big Bang Symphony was a finalist in the lesbian fiction category of the Lambda Literary Awards last week and I thought it stood a very good chance at winning, although the competition was strong. I haven't yet had the opportunity to read the winning title - Inferno by Eileen Myles - but I love her writing too.

All four of Nancy Pearl's doorways provide equally good access into Bledsoe's novel about three women in Antarctica - character, setting, story and language - but I'm going to focus on the characters here. Cheerful Rosie is a cook, there for her third season and continuing to make the same bad choices in men as always. Taciturn Alice is a geologist doing post-doctoral research; she's fiercely intelligent but has difficulty comprehending emotions and metaphor. Mikala is a composer who is participating in an artist's residence program; she hasn't been able to write music since her partner Sarah died, but she's "hoping the South Pole would shock some music out of her." Mikala also has an ulterior motive - she plans to confront her father, a man she's never met, who is working at the South Pole.

Although only one of the three is a lesbian, someone shares a joke about the large numbers of them at the bottom of the world: "How do you get a woman in Antarctica?" "Be one." So perhaps it isn't surprising that Mikala meets the first person since Sarah's death who "seemed to exist in four dimensions, who billowed in her imagination." Alice is so perplexed by the attentions of three different men - including a lab tech with a "jaunty New Zealand accent, much more mountain and sea in it than a British accent" - that she tries to sort it out in a spreadsheet. And Rosie is the naughty girl with a generous heart, living dangerously but craving safety.

According to a science poster at McMurdo Station, "the environment caused the release of a rogue hormone that screwed up a person's judgement and memory." Rosie puts it more simply: "the Ice splits your heart right open." During the course of the story, the three women find themselves untethered and grappling for the ladder that will lead them into the next stage of their lives. Their friendship takes on critical importance when it becomes a matter of survival.

Readalikes: Tent Peg by Aritha van Herk (geology camp; bisexuality; bleak and beautiful landscape) and White Darkness by Geraldine McCaughrean (ignore an incident of homophobia and enjoy the vivid setting of Antarctica; passion for science; survival suspense).

The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond of Matches by Gaetan Soucy

It's hard to write about Quebecois Gaetan Soucy's haunting gem of a novel without giving away spoilers because so much is hidden from the reader at the outset. The story is told in first person by one of a pair of siblings  raised by their mentally ill father in total isolation from the rest of the world. When their father commits suicide, the pair of teenagers are forced to interact with other people and to face the reality of their past.

I admire translator Sheila Fischman for her skillful and lyrical rendition from French into English. The siblings' peculiar vocabulary and idiosyncratic use of language is evident in this explanation of mannikins and how they differ from people ('neighbours'):

"We called them halves because they had only a body, made of wax and wood. They lacked the portion of their insides that allows one to suffer and so to call oneself a full-fledged neighbour, if I'm making myself clear. We can also name them dummies, that's allowed, although it's not as strong and not as accurate, and you don't do speech any favour to associate with words that rattle around in your sleeve after the handshake."

A reviewer in Le Monde wrote, "While the tale becomes more explicit as it progresses, it also becomes more bewitching, more mysteriously pulsating." The title is a clue to the tragedy at the heart of this story. Be prepared for a series of surprising jolts, and for horror leavened with a sparkling hope that comes from the unforgettable voice of the unusual narrator.