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. 

Rabbit Foot Bill by Helen Humphreys

Rabbit Foot Bill by Helen Humphreys
HarperCollins, August 2020

A poetic novel based on a true story of friendship between a boy and a murderer in mid-twentieth century Saskatchewan.

The characters in Rabbit Foot Bill are the kind at which Helen Humphreys excels in bringing to life: emotionally distant loners, scarred by trauma. Leonard tells the story that begins in 1947, when Bill, a man his father's age, is living in a sort of cave he's carved for himself into the side of a hill, far outside of town. Leonard is twelve, son of the stationmaster in tiny Canwood, Saskatchewan. Leonard and Bill have a special bond, and the boy spends as much time with him as possible, avoiding bullies at school.

        The next day at school I try to keep well away from the group of boys who are always beating on me for reasons I never understand. It's raining, so I must be hit. We're doing sums in arithmetic, so I must be hit. The sky is a certain shade of blue, so I must be hit.

After witnessing Bill commit an act of violence, Leonard doesn't see him again for a dozen years. In the meantime, Leonard becomes a psychiatrist and takes a position at the Weyburn Mental Hospital, where scientifically dubious experiments with LSD are underway. There are 1,800 patients in the facility, including Leonard's old friend Bill. Something bad seems bound to happen.

Humphreys is one of my very favourite, must-read-everything-she-writes authors. Her writing has a quiet melancholic power, and her language use thrills my word-loving soul. Her stories are grounded in the natural world and her flawed characters are deserving of grace. Whatever place and time, I feel myself sink into her descriptions of setting.

        Supper is cold beef and potato salad. Father doesn't like talk at meals, so we sit there in the cool of the kitchen with the night noise of the prairie outside and the rattle of knives and forks against our plates. My parents won't be finding out about my missing school until tomorrow, so tonight I am safe and I sink into the calm waters of this, into our quiet supper in the kitchen, followed by my mother and I listening to the radio in the parlour and father sitting on the porch, smoking. I don't call it happiness, but looking back now I think it was a sort of happiness; that shelter is a kind of happiness.

 A novel like Rabbit Foot Bill is many things, including shelter, escape, and a window on truth about the human condition.

Giller prediction: MEDIUM HIGH - Much as I love it, I think this will be on the periphery of the longlist, bumped out by flashier novels. But I hope I'm wrong.

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. 

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 Ghost in the House by Sara O'Leary

The Ghost in the House by Sara O'Leary

Doubleday Canada, July 2020

In this brief, amusing and romantic novel about grief and letting go, Fay haunts her husband Alec after she dies in their Vancouver home.

Alec can't see Fay.

        He looks straight through me. I wonder how many times I've used that expression without truly understanding how wretched it could feel.

Fay does a lot of memory surfing. In the following passage, she relives meeting Alec for the first time, in a pub in Montreal:

        My eye is drawn to a man on the far side of the room sitting at a table by himself. He's older than me, I think, and he's handsome. There's something distinguished about him, but also a little rugged. His dark curly hair looks like it's trying to escape his head. His beard is dark, reddish, and full. He's reading an old, cloth-bound book. I can see the gold lettering on the cover. The Gist of Swedenborg.

Based on this description, plus a few other clues, I assume that these characters are White. The reference to Emanuel Swedenborg, a mystic who had visions of a spiritual world, dovetails neatly with the novel's premise. 

Fay has many regrets, thinking that she has squandered her days.

        How did I go through  my life and make all these decisions without realizing they were decisions? Why did nothing ever feel final? Until now. All my choices have been made.

While I wouldn't describe myself as entirely unsentimental, romance tends to make me gag. There's a lot of yearning for physical intimacy in this book, and those parts didn't work for me. This description of being married didn't either:

        I came to realize that I really did like being married. I liked the idea that we had chosen each other. That as improbable as it all might seem, all the days before we met had been leading up to that one day that was the start of our life together.

Since Fay's death, Alec has remarried and has a 13-year-old stepdaughter, Dee. ("The only good thing about being thirteen is that unlike being dead, it doesn't last.") At the start, Fay is totally self-absorbed, but she changes over the course of the story. Much of the credit has to do with her interactions with Dee, who is the first to see Fay as a ghost.

        I am in Dee's room. I leave Frankenstein on her nightstand. I took it from Alec's study, so perhaps she will think it came from him. That doesn't really matter. What matters is that Mary Shelley will help her more through her dark days than any twee tween nonsense about the sexy undead.

        Does the fact that Mary Shelley was nineteen when she wrote Frankenstein make her a young-adult author? I open the book and read: "Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world."

        A torrent of light. I have broken the natural laws by my return. And there are, as always, consequences.

"Till death do us part" from the dead spouse's point of view gives this novel a unique twist. It's bound to provoke rumination on mortality, the loved one's we've lost, our fears of being forgotten, and about being our best selves.

Giller chances: LOW - It's wispy. The content is conducive to discussion, so this would be a good pick for a book club looking for something light.

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.

How a Woman Becomes a Lake by Marjorie Celona

How a Woman Becomes a Lake by Marjorie Celona

Hamish Hamilton, March 2020

Audiobook (7 hours; Penguin) read by Laurel Lefkow

The premise and puzzle of this story is a woman who goes missing on New Year's Day in 1986. The issues raised include parenting after divorce, alcohol addiction, mental health, and dealing with the unintended consequences of our actions.

It takes place in Whale Bay, a small fishing town on the West Coast, "a stone's throw from Canada."

        People thought frozen lakes were stable, and they walked out onto them. People did this sort of thing all the time. They drove snowmobiles and trucks onto lakes! Lewis had done this as a boy every winter, in his father's red pickup truck, on Lake Mendota. Even there, two or three people fell in every year, fishermen mostly, their bodies pulled out -- sometimes alive, sometimes not -- covered in icicles. That was the trouble with frozen lakes. There was no way to tell the thickness of the ice, nor the depth of the water beneath.

The narrative unrolls in shifting third-person perspectives: 

• Vera is the missing woman; her voice comes from beyond death.
• Denny, an alcoholic jewelry designer, was Vera's husband. He's arthritic and severely depressed.
• Hot-tempered Leo, flaky and ill-equipped for parenting, is also an alcoholic. His wife Evelina had enough of his violence and kicked him out. 
• Evelina is fiercely protective of her two children, worrying about them when they spend time with their father. She is addicted to lottery scratch cards.
• Ten-year-old Jesse and his little brother Dmitri are Evelina and Leo's boys. 
• Lewis Cote is the young police officer who took a call from Vera about finding a lost boy. That's the last anyone heard from her. Lewis is new in town and lonely.

Loneliness pervades this novel. Both Denny and Evelina have let their friendships lapse after marriage, leaving them with nobody to turn to for support when their spouses are no longer in their lives.

        They trudged back up the hill, and Denny watched the policeman drive off. And then he and Scout went back into the silent, empty house. He looked at the ceiling. He looked out the window.

        Who did he have left? Who was there to talk to? Who could he tell about his day if Vera never returned? What he wanted to do was tell Vera about all of this. "Vera! Vera, you'll never guess what happened!" he wanted to say. "You disappeared!"

Lewis, the police officer, feels an emotional connection to Jesse:

        He couldn't tell whether Jesse was okay or not. There was an intensity to him that Lewis hadn't seen in a child before. It reminded him of his own childhood, the constant tension in his shoulders, the way he felt that if someone bumped into him, he would shatter.

The sections with Vera's viewpoint from the afterlife didn't work for me. It's not that I object to a ghost's perspective per se. Sometimes it's a perfect way to provide a wider scope. In this case, however, I found those parts sentimental and message-y.

        No one tells her to do anything, but she knows that what she is meant to do is float. To stop dipping back down to the surface of the earth. To stop caring. [...]

        It's okay, Denny. I am up here. I am up here. We did the best we could. We loved each other so deeply at first. Think of that. Think of how hard we laughed. She feels the absence of her own eyes and her own tears, and the absence of her own mouth and her own voice, and the absence of her own arms and the absence of the warmth of another person's arms around her.

While the majority of the novel takes place over the course of 1986, the final chapter leaps ahead to 2020, wrapping everything up neatly. Too neatly.

Giller chances: MEDIUM-LOW - The title of the book is great (Celona credits Jia Tolentino for the line), the rotating viewpoints make for in-depth characterization, and the puzzle of Vera's death is interesting. Vera's ghost hits a sour note and I have reservations regarding the denouement (left vague here for spoiler reasons).

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.