Claire Messud - The Woman Upstairs

I have wanted to read this book ever since Claire Messud attended the Sydney Writers' Festival last year and impressed attendees with her obvious intelligence. I must admit, though, that I had very little idea what it was about until I actually picked it up to read. I did not know, for example, that the "woman upstairs" of the title refers to middle-aged women who have failed to partner up and surround themselves with children, in the way that society expects them to, and who therefore feel relegated to the "attic" of the world (they are not madwomen, Messud's protagonist is at pains to point out, with clear reference to Bertha Mason; but expectations hang heavy upon them for how they are meant to live, quietly, without causing trouble for anyone else).

Please note that this notion of modern late-30s female singledom as a "failure" is Messud's (or rather, her protagonist's), and not mine. So we get immediately to the crux of my issue with this book: the attitude of its protagonist towards age and ageing.

First, though, I must stress how much I really enjoyed most of the novel. Messud is an absorbing writer, and Nora Eldridge is superbly drawn in her self-absorbed, intense rage against the world. Her fury courses through the book, instilling each page with shimmering vibrancy. I understand this fire is missing from Messud's other books, and the extreme emotion here certainly makes for compelling reading.

Nora is a third grade teacher in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She is highly regarded and well-liked. She has few close friends, but those she does have are good friends indeed. She looks after her widowed father and her spinsterly aunt, the woman she fears she is becoming.

However well she hides it, though, Nora is angry, seethingly so. She is 42 at the time of writing and 37 when the events she describes unfolded, and during this, her "middle-age", she feels her life is over. She is furious with the way she believes she is regarded by society, and by what she sees as being her lot in life. She wanted so much more. "It was supposed to say 'Great Artist' on my tombstone, but if I died right now it would say 'such a good teacher/daughter/friend instead.".

Nora was born to a mother whose great dilemma had been "to glimpse freedom too late, at too high a price." By the time her mother saw that a career and independence were possible, she was tied down to a domestic life with children. And this, she cautioned, is what Nora must avoid at all costs. Which she has, so much so that Nora now has the opposite problem. She has never married, and has no children. She lives in a world that is increasingly about appearances, where she and other women her age are considered to be "invisible". She still makes her art, tiny replicas of other women's rooms, a series she intends to call "A Room of One's Own?", the question mark being key. But her art, too, is small and private and, in not being seen, this side of her, the artist's side, is also invisible.

When Nora meets the Shahids, a family from France whose worldliness and beauty and interest seem to rub off on her, she feels that something is finally happening. The world turns, once again. All of a sudden, where before there had been no possibilities, now anything is possible. Nora falls in love, with Sirena, the glamorous Parisian artist, with Skandar, her handsome Lebanese-Palestinian professor husband, and with Reza, their sweet, long-lashed dark-haired son. It is an obsessive love, a love that is troubling to read. We can see, even as Nora feels she is awakening in their midst, that she means so much less to them than they to her. But where this will take Nora is unknown until the powerful ending of this book.

I was absorbed in Nora's interior rant, in her obsessions. But I was torn because, whilst I understand that one's late 30s / early 40s can be a difficult time for a woman - that transition from desirable youth to something less obviously glamourous and yet unknown - I also feel (like many other reviewers), that Nora's self-perception is largely self-pitying rubbish. Another way, for example, of expressing the notion of "middle-aged" is "in one's prime". The middle of one's life is also likely to be the most productive time of one's life. No longer so caught up in finding oneself, one can hopefully start to enjoy life more deeply.

I think it is true that society is geared, in many ways, towards admiration of youth in women, rather than age. And I know that it is difficult to be childless, not by choice, but by circumstance, at a time when most women one's own age are subsumed in the time consuming endeavours of raising a family. I myself met my husband late and started having children in my mid-30s. But because I was single in my early 30s I also know for a fact that Nora, especially in Cambridge, Massachusetts (she is not living in rural Idaho, for heaven's sakes), could be living a seriously exciting life at 37. She could be saving up her teacher's salary to travel during her long vacations. She could be studying. She could surround herself with other single 30-somethings, she could be dating and eating out at fabulous restaurants and going to art galleries and meeting new people and filling her life with the stuff that us "smug marrieds" only have time to dream about.

Anyway. The frustration is misplaced because we are dealing, here, with a character who has persuaded herself that she will live in a shoebox for the rest of her life. Until this family come along, who interrupt that certainty. And then, when they leave, which we, as readers, know all along they are going to do (this is really not a spoiler) they destroy her. Because it becomes abundantly clear that she only ever meant very little to them. She was a placeholder in Sirena's life, but for Nora, Sirena had become the centre of her life.

Messud tells a dark psychological tale and I was left horrified, hoping that Nora's rage would indeed fuel her into some sort of extreme life-affirming action.

Overall assessment: 4 out of 5.

Pros: Terrific language, Messud fully engages the reader with this dark and disturbing tale which is, at times, un-put-downable. As well as a story about the energy and power of anger and obsession, this is a novel of ideas - there are fascinating discussions about what it means to be an artist, what defines art, about history and who writes it and about ethics and morality.

Cons: It is unsettling to get inside the head of someone whose views are so frustratingly self-destructive. And Nora's continous description of women of a certain age as "spinsterly" is unnerving for those of us reading who are in her age group! I mean - "death is knocking"? For heaven's sakes!! I hope I have another 40 years left in me! Life ain't over yet, sweetheart!

Select quotes:

"Sirena was turning, before my eyes, into my ideal of an artist - as if I'd imagined her and, by imagining her, had conjured her into being. And here's the weird thing: her existence as an ideal woman artist didn't feel as though it thwarted or controlled me, I didn't look at her and think, 'Why are you almost famous and I'm only your helper?' I don't recall having the thought even once. Instead, I looked at her and saw myself, saw what suddenly seemed possible for me, too, because it was possible for her."

"But to be furious, murderously furious, is to be alive."

Herman Koch - Summer House with Swimming Pool

 

I was keen to read Koch's new book because I really enjoyed The Dinner, which is a highly original, thought-provoking and ultimatey disturbing read. It shouldn't surprise me that Summer House with Swimming Pool is also disturbing. Or that, as with The Dinner, we don't find out what the crime is that lies at the heart of the novel until three quarters of the way through. But what did surprise me was just how hateful most of the characters are.

Koch is a good writer, but after reading this, his latest, book, I feel that he may not be a very nice person. His protagonist here, the good doctor Marc Schlosser, is really rather detestable. He has a distaste for the human body and the wellbeing of his patients is more or less irrelevant to him. He has built up a stable of patients well-known in the creative arts by turning a blind eye to their foibles (too much alcohol? Pfft, he says, many people drink too much and live long ), and by liberally doling out prescription drugs.

It is through his work that Marc meets Ralph Meier, an ego-driven actor who looks at women in a way that disgusts even Marc. Through a series of social occasions, Ralph's family and Marc's become friendly and end up, eventually, holidaying together. Here, at a summer house with a swimming pool, events unfold that cause Marc to behave in a manner contradictory to the hippocratic oath he has taken, and which land him in the quandary he is in when we meet him at the beginning of the novel: on the verge of possibly losing his medical licence, not through some mistake, but through a conscious and deathly serious infraction, the consequences of which he was well aware.

The story unfolds persuasively, but the book is too long, and the characters too distasteful. The nuances that made The Dinner a hit are largely absent here, though the final twist (it is no spoiler to say there is one) packs a punch.

The only redeeming feature of Koch's protagonist is his love for his daughters, and the way he speaks of drawing closer to his wife in a crisis. But even these characteristics are insufficient to keep one's skin from crawling after placing the book down.

Koch is clever, there's no doubt about that, but this book has persuaded me that there is no need for me to read the rest of his oeuvre.

Overall assessment: 3 out of 5. A good read if you can stomache it. And note that it took me a good quarter of the novel before I was drawn in to the story.

Joshua Ferris - To Rise Again at a Decent Hour

 

 

How strange: this is the second book I've read this year purporting to warn against the evils of social media (the first, of course, being The Circle). I chose this title for our bookclub at the beginning of the year after having read a blurb promising it was about a dentist who discovers that someone is impersonating him online, and who soon realizes the impersonator may be living his own life better than he is.

 

An intriguing premise, but unfortunately the blurb was written well before publication of the book and it is not an accurate description of the content.

 

Yes, Paul C O'Rourke, dentist, depressive, serial lover of women and their religious families, does discover soon into the novel that he is being impersonated online by someone who is au fait with social media in a way that O'Rourke himself is not and does not wish to be. But the story from there does not revolve around this identity theft in the comical way the publisher promised. Instead, the impersonator creates an identity for O'Rourke that is alternative from his actual identity in one important respect: whilst O'Rourke's defining drive throughout his life has been striving to find a place, belief system or a family in which he will find a sense of true belonging, the faux-O'Rourke has already discovered where he belongs and is not afraid to proclaim it loudly. 

 

Don't get me wrong: Ferris does deal with the problem of identity theft in the new world. There is a period in the novel during which O'Rourke is so troubled by what is happening that he calls a lawyer, the police, internet experts and so on, seeking redress against the impersonator. What is fascinating is the cold hard truth that there's not much he can do - and not much anyone could do in similar circumstances. The impersonator does not defame him. On the contrary, he builds up his reputation as a dentist, he creates a webpage for O'Rourke's practice where before there was none. The impersonator does not rob him (except of his online identity) or damage him. So what recourse does O'Rourke have against this act? It is a question worth pondering. 

 

But Ferris quickly moves on from this modern dilemma. Whilst O'Rourke is initially shocked by the falsity of what is being broadcast in his name, he soon becomes intrigued by it. The impersonator claims (as O'Rourke) to be a descendant of a long lost tribe of oppressed people, called the Ulms. This is a group, claims the faux O'Rourke, that has been more oppressed than even the Jews. It is the group that suffered the first genocide, recorded in the Bible. Fragments of documents are gradually parceled out, enticing O'Rourke into believing that he does in fact have a meaningful history, a past, a place in society. Having always felt lost, it is captivating to O'Rourke, this fairytale of oppression and meaning. He quickly becomes obsessed with the notion that there is a way for him to go 'home' without needing to adopt the religion of a girlfriend or her family.

 

This obsession results in comical lapses of concentration at work, and Ferris is a brilliantly funny writer. Surprising hilarity ensues from horrific moments like O'Rourke coming out of a daze to find himself about to drill into a patient's mouth with no idea why. Or O'Rourke sitting in his own waiting room observing his receptionist at work and spying on his own patients whilst his staff look around for him wondering where he's got to. Or the moment when he absent-mindedly asks a patient for a stool sample instead of asking him to spit.

 

The comedy is balanced by pathos, and Ferris portrays O'Rourke beautifully as a poor lost soul. The core of O'Rourke's character is perhaps best described by the fact that, when he was a little boy abandoned by his father, he couldn't bear the thought of being awake when everyone else was sleeping. He was eventually able to sleep only once apprised of the knowledge, imparted to him by his exhausted mother, that the Chinese are still awake on the other side of the world even when everyone in New York is asleep.

 

Most of the women in my bookclub found O'Rourke to be an unlikable character. I did not. It is true that he sometimes says the most despicable things. But so often when this happens he is actually trying very, very hard to say the right thing. When he comes across as anti-semitic to his ex-girlfriend's uncle, for example, he is actually trying to ingratiate himself into the family and decry the appalling things that have happened to the Jews throughout history. Other times he is brutally honest in a way that does not work in polite society. He is a complex character and I found O'Rourke to be strangely endearing. 

 

Moreoever, O'Rourke is quite clearly an unreliable narrator. His own deep insecurity colours his telling of the story and the portrait he draws of himself. But it is clear from the way other characters relate to him - his long-suffering assistant Mrs Conway, for example, or Connie, his receptionist and ex-girlfriend - that they care deeply for him, in spite of the exasperation he causes them on a daily basis. And O'Rourke's relationship with Mrs Conway, an older, Catholic woman, is one of the highlights of the book. Ferris is so clever with dialogue. As readers, we are only ever exposed to one side of the conversations O'Rourke has with Mrs Conway, and so we are left to guess at what he might have said. It is an odd, highly original way of describing a conversation, and it works brilliantly well, giving rise to many of the funnier moments in the book.

 

O'Rourke's interest in his new religion is matched only by his lifelong attachment to the Boston Red Sox, and by the end of the book I had grown tired of both lengthy passages about baseball and heavy, pseudo-Biblical passages from the Ulm's religious text, the Cantaveticles (although I will concede that these read convincingly as the Uhr-text of a long-lost belief system). Neverthless, the depth of meaning Ferris conveys through a story that is funny and sad and wise all at the same time is comendable.

 

Overall assessment: 4 out of 5. This is a dense but enjoyable novel, but it is not for everyone. It is darkly satirical, in the vein of Shteyngart and O'Toole, and it therefore perhaps an acquired taste.

 

Pros: This book made me start flossing again. And it made me feel awfully relieved I am not a dentist!

Cons: Lengthy excerpts of faux-religious drivel.

Stephen Colbert - I am America and So Can You!

This was one of my early Audible books, and at first I thought it was the ideal book to listen to rather than read. Like watching his show, it was fun having Colbert's voice (because yes, he narrates) wash over me as I walked to work, or stood crowded next to others in the subway. It meant lots of laughs out-loud at inopportune moments.

Unfortunately as the latter half of the book approached I found that the absence of a plot meant that it was also quite easy to tune out, so that sometimes I would suddenly realize I had missed a large chunk of a chapter. At least I am now more adept at 'rewinding' on Audible.

This is a difficult book to review because one's enjoyment of it is so subjective - somehow with humour I find this to be more obviously the case than with other books. Bibliohubby and I are huge fans of Colbert's, recording his show every night to watch the next evening. I find his brand of parody hilarious and self-affirming, as the real Colbert shares my political views and pokes fun at the people I like to see taken down a peg (such as gun-toting Tea-Party Republicans). It goes without saying, then, that I would enjoy his book, which is really an extension of what he gives us in his show. People who are not fans of Colbert's to begin with will not enjoy the book, and what really gives me pause is that - more than with his show, where his over-the-top antics should clearly indicate to most sensible people that Colbert is acting, that he is playing a character, and that what he says is satirical - I worry that this is not necessarily the case with the book. I'm sure there are people who could feasibly pick this book up in isolation and take Colbert at his word - a rather shocking prospect when his pronouncements include the following tongue-in-cheek sentiments: "The biggest threat facing America today - next to socialized medicine, the Dyson vacuum cleaner, and the recumbent bicycle - is gay marriage." Or - "Ever have a nagging suspicion you're poor? I know my staff does."

Each chapter of the book deals with a 'big subject' of life, providing Colbert's take on it, and his advice in relation to it. So, for example, he deals with family, religion, race, sex and dating. Because I 'read' this on Audible and don't have a hard copy to refer back to, I can't cite any of the more amusing moments here. But take my word for it: much of the book is very funny.

My guess is that this book falls a little flat on the page, without Colbert's energetic, deliberately over-enthusiastic delivery, so I was pleased that I opted to listen to it - although Colbert's natural delivery is so quick that it is quite easy to miss things.

There's not much more to say than this: I am a fan, I enjoyed much of the book, and I didn't worry about losing bits here and there when I got caught up in the mechanics of my commute. It was nice to have Colbert as my regular companion for a while there, and I didn't really need this book to be anything more than that.

Overall assessment: 3 out of 5.

Pros: Laugh out-loud moments.

Cons: Lacking in substance, and this book alone does not really do justice to Colbert's persona - you have to watch him. This is really more of a companion text to the show. My advice? If you don't watch The Colbert Show, don't pick up the book.

Author Reading: Tom Rachman and Emma Healey

One evening last week I battled gailforce winds and apocalyptic rain to get down to the Harbourfront Centre and hear three authors read from their new books. The event fell under the rubric of the International Festival of Authors which, though it ocurrs in the fall, hosts literary soirees of various kinds throughout the year in Toronto. I love author readings and would have wanted to attend in any case, but the real draw for me here was Tom Rachman, author of The Imperfectionists, which I read and loved and reviewed here last year. I knew he was reading in Toronto in late June, but my determination to attend was increased when I entered into a brief correspondence with him recently. I discovered that he had released a short story two years ago as an Amazon Single. Entitled The Bathtub Spy, it has received excellent reviews and I was keen to read it - but it is no longer available on Amazon. After a fruitless Google search, I emailed him directly, not particularly expecting a response. To my surprise, he wrote a very friendly email in reply, apologizing for the difficulty in locating a copy of his story, and suggesting that I should attend this IFOA event in June where he would be reading.

Well. As if I wasn't going to attend after that personal invitation!

It was a bit of a revelation to walk into the venue and discover that it had been set up like an intimate comedy club, with individual tables lit with votive candles, and a pop-up bar serving wine. So very civilized.

 

Our host for the evening was the charming Becky Toyne, a publishing industry personage who regularly appears on CBC Radio One to speak about books and writes a column about Toronto's literary scene for Openbooktoronto.com. 

 

Reading before Tom Rachman were Linda Holeman, a writer of historical fiction, and Emma Healey, whose debut novel, Elizabeth is Missing, has just shot her into literary super-stardom. The manuscript for Elizabeth is Missing was fought over at the London Book Fair last year by NINE different publishers, and so a real furor surrounds the book. It is so rare and therefore so exciting to hear stories about publishers fighting over a new author's work, and it was delicious to hear Healey speak about the lengths some of them went to in order to impress her. The book is about an elderly women who suffers from dementia, and who is fond of tinned peaches, so several of the publishers gifted Healey with boxes of tinned peaches (unfortunately, Healey said, her boyfriend is not fond of peaches, so these remain piled up at home), and one filled a boardroom with Forget-me-Nots.

 

As I sat there, by myself, listening to people speak about books and surrounded by others soaking up the atmosphere with the same intent pleasure as me, I felt filled with something akin to love. When Rachman got up to read, he noted how unusual it was for people in this day and age to gather for something that has nothing whatsoever to do with technology. As for me, being there reminded me how rarely these days I get to immerse myself in the literary scene. Books are what I am most passionate about in my life (other than family, of course), so it seems rather a pity that I am not able more often to engage with people who share my interest. But then, reading is by its very nature a solitary pursuit, as is writing. Any chance to turn these pursuits into something more social should, in my view, be seized upon with glee.

 



Rachman was as personable and energetic as I had hoped, and I can't wait to read his new book, which is receiving rave reviews. But the surprise of the evening was Emma Healey. She looks and sounds like Sophie Dahl (Roald Dahl's model daughter), with a sweet upper-crust English accent. She read from her book, a novel that shows great maturity and a deep understanding of the human condition, yet she looked just like a schoolgirl. She wore a long skirt and a modest full-sleeved blouse, and she made a habit as she stood at the lecturn of lifting her left heel so that only her toe remained fixed to the ground beside her right foot, an endearing trait that made her look about 12. I believe the hype around this book will prove to be justified, and I believe she may well go on to become one of the great writers of our time. I purchased her book at the event and asked her to sign it (I had pre-purchased Rachman's, of course, and very much enjoyed meeting him on the night).

 

Two more signed books to add to my collection, and a fond memory or two as well. 

Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction - Winner Announced!

It was a tough shortlist of brilliant writers, but Eimear McBride has taken them all out, winning the 2014 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction with her debut book, A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing. I haven't read it, though it's on my TBR list, but from what I understand this was the most experimental book on the shortlist, and perhaps a surprising winner.

The website for the award cites Helen Fraser, chair of judges, saying of McBride’s startling debut:

“An amazing and ambitious first novel that impressed the judges with its inventiveness and energy. This is an extraordinary new voice – this novel will move and astonish the reader.”

I can't wait to read it, but I am still all aglow from the experience of reading Donna Tart's The Goldfinch and I can't help wishing she had won.

I spoke some time ago of trying to read every one of the shortlisted books this year. Embarassingly, The Goldfinch is the only one I have thus far managed to get to reading! I haven't given up though.

Did not Finish: Charlotte Grey's The Massey Murder

I started reading The Massey Murder: a Murder, a Maid and the Trial that Shocked a Country by Charlotte Grey at the beginning of May, thinking piously that I would finish it well before my bookclub meeting, which falls on the last Thursday of each month. But in the week before our meeting, not only had I not finished the book, I had made a conscious decision not to.

I've spoken before about books one does not finish, for whatever reason, but it has been so long since this happened to me I thought it was worth remarking on again. Grey's book should have been a perfectly good non-fiction history lesson. It is set in Toronto in 1915, and purports (as suggested by the title) to follow and elucidate upon the events of a murder, whereby Carrie Davies, a maid, shot and killed her master, Charles Massey, a member of one of Toronto's most esteemed families.

I like history. I even studied it at University. I really enjoy learning. But if I am reading a book, fiction or non-fiction, I require it to have a story or a thesis or something that ties together the bits of information I am being fed. This book is notable for the absence of any such thing.

Ms Grey seems to have done an awful lot of research into the social history of Toronto in the early 20th century, but she appears to be so wed to all of this research that she was loathe to leave a single fact out of the book - whether or not it was relevant. I'm not sure why her editor did not encourage her to exercise greater stringency, but it seems Ms Grey was free to throw in whatever trivia she damn well pleased. And I. Was. SO. BORED.

Example: "Bert's twenty-seven-year-old first cousin Vincent Massey, then a member of the University of Toronto's History Department, attended the service. (He noted in his diary, "Went to Bert Massey's funeral from Arthur Massey's house.)"

Why was it necessary here to mention Bert at all, let alone state in the text where the note of his attendance of the funeral was recorded? If Grey was going to write a history text, she should have left that kind of thing to footnotes.

It should have been interesting to read about the history of the city I'm currently living in. And it should have been interesting to learn about the practice of law, my given profession, two hundred years ago. Admittedly I never got to the trial, and various reviews have said things improve in the second half of the book, but I was so put off by this book that I really couldn't imagine things improving enough that I would actually enjoy finishing it. After slogging through a third of it, literally forcing myself to choose this book over others I had going at the same time, I finally admitted to myself that there was no point in continuing, and I stopped reading. I decided that my precious reading time, restrained as it is by work and kids and everything else life throws at one, was not worth squandering on a book I really detested.

Let me try to explain why I disliked this so very much. The book opens on the murder. Of course the interesting aspects of this immediately spring to mind - motive, personality - who is the maid who shot Charles Massey and why did she do it? Did he deserve to be killed? What fate will befall his poor son who was in the house when this happened and who was both close to his father and  attached to Carrie, the murderer?

Unfortunately very few of these questions are explored except in the driest possible language and in the briefest possible manner. It is almost as though Grey wished to convey the history of Toronto in a given age and seized upon this event as a vehicle to do so, knowing she would need a selling point (and re-read the title, above - go on. See? It's shamelessly sensational, in direct opposition to the actual contents of the book. Even the publisher knew they would need to really push to make this sound exciting). In fact, the first quarter of the book is largely taken up by facts about the buildings and people of Toronto in 1915. But instead of choosing to talk about one building or one person at a time, and divulge all of the interesting facts about that topic and make that description and historical detail relevant to the tale at hand, Grey goes on a meandering marathon of fact dropping, as though she is a senile great-aunt trying unsuccessfully to tell a story at a family gathering. She never gets to the point. It was like listening to Bibliohubby's stoner friend who we dined with recently, and who dominated the conversation with a story that never ended and had no discernible point. Only that was quite funny. Ms Grey is not funny at all.

Here, this is what it feels like to read this book:

"Charles Massey is shot and killed. Oh, who else was in the Massey family? Let me tell you. There is this Massey, he was a farmer, this is what he farmed. This is where his farm was. This is what happened to the farm. There were a lot of tractors, let me tell you a bit about the tractor industry in early twentieth century Toronto. Oh, there were immigrants! Let me tell you a bit about them - but not too much. Because also, what about this Massey? He lived here. Oh, you know Massey Hall? This is the history of that building in one uninteresting sentence. You would like to know more about the architecture or how it came to be built or what it was originally designed to be? Too bad - there is this other Massey here I want to talk about now, he was really rich and this is what he did and this is where his wife came from. Oh, now we're at the court house. There is a magistrate who runs almost all the cases - let me tell you all about him and his entire life history and - oh! There are lots of ladies who come to the courthouse for all of these reasons, let me tell you about them, but also they are engaged in a lot of reformative early feminist activities, let me very briefly tell you about those without going into detail or explaining how this was relevant to the development of feminism in Toronto or Canada broadly - oh. Wait? Why are we at the court house? That's right! Cassie Davies has been accused of murder! I almost forgot! Never mind, nothing really happened that day, she was refused bail."

And so on. Reading it was like listening to nails on a blackboard.

As I said, I do understand that it improves towards the latter half. However, even if the trial was riveting, my understanding is that Grey had very little to go on by way of court transcript. So, ironically, what forms the very centre of the book is actually fictional - or biased, taken from the newspapers of the day. If only she had then treated this as a fictionalized account of a true story, like Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace or a book I am just starting to read, Burial Rites by Hannah Kent. She might have succeeded in creating a story at the same time as she presented an interesting, realistic, historic portrait of life in Toronto at the time. Which, frankly, is what I was hoping for when our bookclub voted for this at the beginning of the year.

Overall assessment: Look, she did her work, there is no doubt about that. And I will say that it was interesting to learn about the women-only courthouse and to get a glimpse of life for women at that time in Canada. But generally speaking, as if you couldn't tell, I really did not like this. Giving it a 2 seems a stretch. I am going to give it 1.5 out of 5.

Addendum: I held off on posting this mean review for some time, because I felt badly after attending book club, where most people had better experiences with the book than I did. I should have kept reading, they told me. The trial at the end is more interesting. So I borrowed a hard copy from someone else and thought I might squeeze in a few more chapters, maybe reassess.

Sadly: no. I just can't bring myself to do it. Sorry all! Life is too short, there are too many other books in the world, and I just recently finished Donna Tart's The Goldfinch, which was so very brilliant, on so many levels, that even good books I have picked up since then pale in comparison... I really just can't bear to open this one up again. So I won't.