The Juliet Stories by Carrie Snyder

When my YA book discussion group chose to read Carrie Snyder's The Juliet Stories, I had already  placed it on hold at the library because it was shortlisted for the Canadian Governor General's Awards. (The group occasionally reads adult titles, like this one, that have appeal for teen readers.) I didn't end up making it to the discussion because I had to work that evening, but I hadn't yet read the book anyway. I've only just now finished it, actually, having several other books on the go at the same time.

I liked The Juliet Stories very much. The weird thing is that I never noticed that the book is a series of interconnected short stories until I'd finished it. I assumed it was a novel and didn't read the inside flap or back cover until today: "A stunning new novel-in-stories set against the backdrop of the political turmoil in 1980s revolutionary Nicaragua." The 's' on the end of 'Stories' should have clued me in. I love story-cycles in general but this is the first time I've read one all the way through without noticing the format. When I'm reading short stories, I usually read them one at a time, interspersing them with other reading. And that's exactly what I did with The Juliet Stories, putting it down between chapters.

One of the things that I read in-between was a post on the Ken Haycock blog which looked at readers who skip between books like I do. It's actually about how books in digital format allow companies to track reading behaviours.

"Barnes and Noble has determined, through analyzing Nook data, that nonfiction books tend to be read in fits and starts, while novels are generally read straight through, and that nonfiction books, particularly long ones, tend to get dropped earlier. Science fiction, romance and crime fiction fans often read more books more quickly than readers of literary fiction do, and finish most of the books they start. Readers of literary fiction quit books more often and tend to skip around between books." (Your E-Book is Reading You.)

Anyway, back to Carrie Snyder's wonderful stories/novel. The nuances of family relationships - between siblings, between husband and wife, and between parents and children -- are deftly delineated. Setting -- both time and place -- is another of Snyder's strengths, especially as seen through a child's experience.

"Ronald Reagan is the president of the United States of America. He is fighting the commies. Commie is short for communist, a thick plank of a word that is used often and ominously on American television; on American television communist means evil. But Juliet takes her definition from Gloria, who says that communists are people who share everything. (Imagine fighting against people who share! It is the punchline to a joke. Juliet writes a skit on the subject, and Keith plays Ronald Reagan with gusto: "I declare a war on sharing! There will be no more sharing!")"

Later, when Juliet's family moves from Nicaragua to Canada, there's a whole new cultural environment to negotiate. "Hockey is a violent sport that rewards angry men and boys. Ringette is an unsolved feminine mystery."

Snyder's memorable characters and poignant insights into family dynamics make The Juliet Stories a very rewarding book -- whether it is approached as a single novel or as individual stories.

Readalike: The Forrests by Emily Perkins

House Held Up by Trees by Ted Kooser and Jon Klassen

Illustrator Jon Klassen (Cat's Night Out; I Want My Hat Back) has created a powerful and delicate work in collaboration with award-winning poet Ted Kooser. House Held Up by Trees has an unusual storyline for a children's picture book. Set in the quiet beauty of the rural American midwest, it shows the life of a man who was apparently widowed at a young age, and how nature and time erase his efforts to make a lasting mark on the landscape.

The man is always shown at a distance, small against the wide open space where he lives. His preoccupation with maintaining a perfect lawn exhibits his need to be in control. He appears to have little connection with his children, who prefer the woods on the edges of their property to the barren expanse of their yard.

The man's constant battle is with tree seedlings that persist in taking root in his lawn. "This went on year after year, and the children slowly grew up, as children will, and in time became a young man and a young woman, ready to go off into the world." The illustration accompanying this text shows the young people facing the woods, the boy with his cap at his side in a gesture of respect, the girl holding a tree leaf. They do not value the same things as their father.

Klassen's restrained colour palette and liberal use of the palest shades evoke a mood of lamentation while maintaining the feeling of country expansiveness and fresh air. The man's missing spouse isn't mentioned in the text, but we see two chairs near the house, and one of these is occasionally used by the man, never by his children.

Later, when people have abandoned the property, the house is abused by weather and vandals. Trees inevitably take over the yard. "Some of the seeds had sprouted along the foundation, where water ran off the roof and into a deep crack, and these little trees were soon saplings, pressed against the side of the house." Practical details like this show Kooser's awareness and respect for the interplay between the natural world and manmade things. The trees growing against the house eventually lift it from its foundations. The result is otherworldly. Not a treehouse, which is purposefully built for play or refuge, but something else. Something of wonder.

House Held Up by Trees -- it took me a while to notice that there is no article at the start of the title (being as I am so used to omitting them in keyword searching and alphabetical filing). "House" has become an abstract concept here.

Children who live in dysfunctional families may see aspects of their lives reflected here. The tale is recounted without preaching or judgement and the ending is unexpectedly uplifting. It's a multi-layered picture book that can be enjoyed by readers of all ages.

Companion reads: The Little House by Virginia Lee Burton (for a different take on the movement of people from rural to urban life); Jack Pine by Christopher Patton (for another poetic celebration of the power of trees vs. humans); Grandpa Green by Lane Smith (for the contrast of a gardening aesthetic shared by a younger generation, rather than rejected).

Home by Toni Morrison

Fran Lebowitz tells a good story about the time she was Toni Morrison's guest when Morrison received the Nobel prize for literature and Lebowitz ended up sitting at the children's table at the banquet. Anyway, hearing that anecdote reminded me that I've been meaning to read Morrison's recent novel, Home... and so I did. It is a jewel of a book, a powerhouse in under 150 pages.

Frank Money comes back from the Korean war shell-shocked, but learning that his beloved younger sister needs his help brings him back to his senses and to his hometown. The first lines from each short chapter are enough to reveal the attraction of Morrison's style:

   They rose up like men.
   Breathing. How to do it so no one would know he was awake.
   Mama was pregnant when we walked out of Bandera County, Texas.
   A mean grandmother is one of the worst things a girl could have.
   Women are eager to talk to me when they hear my last name. 
   The actors were much nicer than the actresses.
   Lotus, Georgia, is the worst place in the world, worse than any battlefield.
   Jackie's ironing was flawless.
   Korea. You can't imagine it because you weren't there.
   The Georgian boasted a country-ham-and-red-gravy breakfast. Frank got to the station early to reserve a coach seat.
   Her eyes. Flat, waiting, always waiting.
   Frank walked down Auburn Street across from the station on Walnut.
   It was so bright, brighter than he remembered.
   I have to say something to you right now. I have to tell the whole truth.
   The next morning at breakfast Cee appeared to have returned to her newly steady self, confident, cheerful and occupied.
   Cee refused to give up the quilt.
   C'mon, brother. Let's go home.

Morrison's writing has become even better as it has become more spare in recent years.  A Mercy, her previous book, had only 167 pages. I particularly love her characters. Even her villains get fair treatment -- the mean grandmother in Home, for example, has her own chapter to provide context for her actions. The bigger issues are always present, too: social, cultural and political issues that add a rich depth and feeling. It's a treat for a reader to experience such masterful work; storytelling that seems effortless.

Paris, I Love You but You're Bringing Me Down by Rosecrans Baldwin

Despite having no experience and not speaking French very well, Rosecrans Baldwin landed a job in an advertising agency in Paris. He and his wife packed their stuff into duffel bags and left New York to spend a year and half living in Paris. I love that city so much and wish I could live there. Since that isn't likely to happen, I lived vicariously through Paris, I Love You but You're Bringing Me Down. The magic and the merde -- Baldwin is adept at capturing the whole baffling experience of life in a foreign culture. (LCD Soundsystem's "New York, I Love You but You're Bringing Me Down" plays in my head as I write this. Baldwin's book is funny, but it also feels wistful, like the song.)

"'French' became an umbrella term for me, describing things I liked before I knew why I liked them. but Paris was different. Paris was an umbrella, a dream I carried around in case the weather turned bad."

Parisian bar service.

Baldwin's first assignment was to create breast feeding pamphlets. His office mates shamed him out of eating at his desk, so he ate his lunch in a park most days, surrounded by other "office workers picnicking, students smoking and chatting, and college girls who would undress down to bikinis and sunbathe on the lawn while men gazed from their benches, eating their sandwiches with two hands. Not me, though. I was married. Plus I was fed up with breasts. I'd think, Oh, cover up your functionality already."

Pears at Luxembourg Garden
greenhouse display

During his lunch break, Baldwin worked on his own writing. Like me, he was curious about what books other people were reading. "The big book on the Metro that season was Millenium, a trio of crime novels by the Swedish author Stieg Larsson. At that point, the books were still unknown in America, but they were everywhere in France. Coworkers lugged their copies to the office each morning, walking through the front door with their noses buried deep. I wasn't feeling very hopeful about the future of books. The novel I was writing appeared to be going unhurriedly backward, sliding toward the trash."

When Baldwin asked his colleagues what symbol said France most of all, they were quick to reply. "The baguette. Or the Eiffel Tower. But this is a recent development." This pretty much sums up the Parisian preoccupation with food and cultural heritage. I wish I was there again.

The Whole Day Through by Patrick Gale

I was first introduced to Patrick Gale when I swapped books with a fellow traveller in Scotland in 2001. I'd just finished Timothy Findley's Pilgrim and happily traded it for Gale's Rough Music. Mine was definitely the better half of the deal.

This morning I finished listening to Gale's The Whole Day Through [Clipper Audio; 4 hrs 45 min] and I already miss the protagonists. Sandra Duncan and Ed Stoppard perform the limited third-person narration as it alternates between Laura and Ben, both in their mid-forties. Laura, who is single, comes back to England from her home in Paris in order to care for her mother. Ben, who was Laura's lover when they were at university but has since married, has returned home to care for his brother after their mother dies. Ben's brother has Mosaic Down Syndrome -- and he's gay. Laura and Ben happen to bump into each other in the hospital where he works and where Laura has just dropped off her mother for an appointment. Will their second chance at romance succeed?

Ordinary lives become extraordinary when examined with loving precision; Gale does that well. The Whole Day Through is understated and melancholy, yet uplifting. It has left me thinking about the unintended effects that words can have on our lives. And thinking about Laura and Ben too, and what might lie ahead for them.

Gale's newest novel, A Perfectly Good Man, made the Green Carnation Prize shortlist this year.

The Fran Lebowitz Reader by Fran Lebowitz

Since Fran Lebowitz was going to be speaking in Edmonton as part of the University of Alberta's Festival of Ideas, my book club decided to make the event a group outing. Instead of choosing a specific book, we agreed to read anything by Lebowitz beforehand. It isn't a vast oeuvre: Metropolitan Life (1978) and Social Studies (1981) are it, basically. The two works were combined in The Fran Lebowitz Reader (1994).

Lebowitz also wrote a children's book, Mr Chas and Lisa Sue meet the Pandas, published in 1995. Allan Gregg interviewed Lebowitz on TVO some years ago (during the Clinton era) and asked about her interest in children's books. Lebowitz responded that she has always kept reading them, along with other books. I was pleased to learn that, since I don't know many adults, outside of parents and librarians, who regularly read children's literature. The whole interview is great, by the way. You can find it in iTunes, or else here on YouTube.

So anyway, it was Eleanor Wachtel from CBC's Writers and Company who interviewed Lebowitz live on stage in Edmonton a couple of days ago. Wachtel is one of my very favourite interviewers, but she was a bit off her game that evening. She asked Lebowitz about Tales from a Broad: An Unreliable Memoir. Lebowitz responded that not only had she not written that book, but would be unlikely to even read a book with that title. Turns out that it's a different Fran Lebowitz who wrote that one. A member of my book club had made the same mistake, since we had agreed to read anything by Lebowitz and she happened to pick that one on Amazon.

Lebowitz (the New York lesbian one, not the Unreliable Memoir straight one) writes witty social commentary. Because her books are old, the cultural references in them are dated: macrame, est, mood rings, using the word "artistic" as a euphemism for gay, etc. I enjoyed The Fran Lebowitz Reader in small doses, setting it down to read other things in between. Here are a few lines from the piece titled 'Children: Pro or Con?':

"Moving, as I do, in what would kindly be called artistic circles, children are an infrequent occurrence. But even the most artistic of circles includes within its periphery a limited edition of the tenaciously domestic. As I am generally quite fond of children I accept this condition with far less displeasure than do my more rarefied acquaintances."

"Notoriously insensitive to subtle shifts in mood, children will persist in discussing the colour of a recently sighted cement-mixer long after one's own interest in the topic has waned."

Martin Scorsese's feature-length documentary about Lebowitz, Public Speaking, is an even better way to get to know her than through her writings. But I'm happy to give her the last word:

"Life is something that happens when you can't get to sleep."

Readalikes: Dorothy Parker and Oscar Wilde.

Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein

"Oct. 11, 1943. A British spy plane crashes in Nazi-occupied France. Its pilot and passenger are best friends. One of the girls has a shot at survival. The other has lost the game before it's barely begun." -- from inside the dust jacket of Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein.

This World War II adventure had me spellbound from the opening lines. The Gestapo have given Julie a choice: write down the details of her mission, or else be executed. Like Sheherazade, she spins out her tale over time, but it isn't enough to save her from ongoing brutality.

"Of course I was not allowed to take the paper into my room with me (in case I should tear it into strips and weave it into a rope with which to hang myself, I suppose), so had to wait for a while in the big outer chamber while von Linden was busy with someone else. See me, cowering in the corner in my wrist and leg irons, clutching my armful of blank recipe cards and trying not to notice what they were doing to Jacques's fingers and toes with bits of hot metal and tongs."

Code Name Verity straddles the boundary between adult fiction and YA. It is about a friendship so strong that it inspires extreme acts of heroism. It is such a good story.