Vale Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Gabriel García Márquez in Mexico City on March 29, 2004. © The Richard Avedon Foundation. From The New Yorker.

How sad I was to learn this week that Gabriel Garcia Marquez had died. He was truly one of my favourite writers. I started reading his work in high school, when our curriculum included the book of stories, Leaf Storm. I loved it so much I graduated to One Hundred Years of Solitude and then Love in the Time of Cholera, which remains one of my favourite books of all time. Since then I have tried to read as much of his work as possible. Most recently (several years ago) I read his novella, Memories of My Melancholy Whores. 

I loved Marquez's writing, but he also introduced me more generally to the world of Latin American fiction, and to magic realism. Marquez was my jumping off point into Isabel Allende, Mario Vargas Llosa, Laura Esquival, Jorge Luis Borges, Octavio Paz and Pablo Neruda. And my mother, a great reader and a great influence on me, also loved Marquez. It was her copy of  One Hundred Years of Solitude that I read, complete with her pencilled-in, ease-of-reference family tree covering the title pages of the book. That book contains one of the great opening lines in all of literature: 

“Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”

It's right up there with the opening lines of Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany and Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Perfection. 

Hearing of Marquez's death was a shock, for some reason, even though he was 87 years old. In honour of his writing and his life, I am going to turn back to his work in the next few months. I would love to re-read Love in the Time of Cholera, but I would also like to read some of his work I never got around to - like The Autumn of the Patriarch. 

Who is with me? Let's have a Marquez love-fest. I will post details when I have decided which book of his to read first.

Christina Baker Kline - Orphan Train



Between 1853 and 1929, 250,000 orphaned, abandoned or homeless children were transported on trains from urban centres in the U.S. to foster homes in rural areas of the midwest as part of a questionable welfare initiative. The founders of the orphan train program aimed to eradicate the existing system of institutional care which they believed stunted, rather than supported, children, and instead place them with families. It was what led to today's system of organised foster care. Unfortunately, the orphan train movement was insufficiently regulated and deeply flawed, and the families who sought to adopt children from the trains were often seeking free child labour, or worse, rather than a child to love and call their own.

This is the extraordinary history Christina Baker Kline draws on for her novel. Sadly it is a mediocre book, one that might have been better suited for a young adult audience, and Baker Kline fails to depict the fascinating phenomenon of the trains in sufficient depth to educate or enlighten a reader.

This was the first book chosen for the 2014 reading year of my Canadian bookclub. We sat down over dinner one night in February and mapped out our books for the year, a feat involving creative organisation, entertaining debate and numerous voting rounds. Most of the women enjoyed the novel well enough, and I admit that I was its harshest critic.  But my pet reading peeve is poor writing, and Baker Kline's writing is weak. By 'poor' or 'weak' writing I mean that the obvious is frequently stated, metaphors are drawn that don't really work, and events that should rightfully be shown are told, even glossed over.

Orphan Train tells the story of Molly, a 17 year old foster-child in modern-day Maine, who is sentenced to community service for stealing a library book, and Vivian, the woman to whose service Molly commits. It soon turns out that Molly and Vivian have much in common, Vivian having been orphaned at a young age. Vivian, of course, was one of the children shipped away from New York on an orphan train, and her tale of being tossed from foster home to foster home in rural Minnesota is appropriately bleak. The narration moves from Vivian's story to Molly's and back again, gradually revealing the secrets of Vivian's past as Molly's future becomes clear. Unfortunately Molly's story is less nuanced and far less interesting than Vivian's and it is hard to know why Baker Kline felt the need to tell the more interesting story of Vivian's life through this contemporary lense. Again, it feels as though she is using Molly to appeal to a younger generation of readers. If the book had been marketed as YA, I might have approached it differently, but for an adult novel it comes across as sappy and sentimental and a little condesending.

Nevertheless, I'm glad I read this and I'm glad to have learnt a little about the orphan trains, even if most of what I actually learnt came in researching around the novel rather than from the novel itself. For those of you looking for a light diversion, this may well be it - it has the feel of chick lit at times, especially in the latter half of Vivian's story, which is happier than her orphan train beginnings, and Baker Kline does succeed in getting her readers to keep turning the pages. All of the women in my book club were agreed that the novel became rather addictive in the second half, in the same way that a romance does when one is wondering who the heroine will end up marrying.

Overall assessment: 2.5 out of 5.

The Gift of Rare Books

I started writing this post months ago. It pertains to something that happened on my birthday, back in November 2013. So, you know, take that into account. I decided to publish this rather than scrap it because what I am really saying is this: I have become the kind of book-loving nerd who attends antiquarian book fairs and collects signed first editions. There is a passage in The Storied Life of A. J. Ficry where A.J. says that in the end, acquisitions don't matter - even the first edition E. A. Poe manuscript he treasured didn't matter. Only the people you love matter. And I really do agree with this. But I also believe that there is some joy to be derived, during life, from collecting things that give you pleasure.

So, for my birthday, months ago now, Bibliohubby went to significant trouble to track down bookstores in Toronto that carry rare books. He did the initial research without telling me, and then stumbled across an event that was happening on my birthday weekend, which he knew I would enjoy. And so it was that the four of us set out one Saturday in November to attend the Toronto International Antiquarian Book Fair at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Bibliohubby took Iggy downstairs to the learning centre whilst Lulu and I browsed (with Lulu on my chest in the Babybjorn, that most wonderful of inventions, leaving my hands free).

I have never before been to such an event but after this experience, I know I will be going again. Bookstores from all over the world were represented by small stalls, in which the rarest of books were displayed. Books from Hemingway's private library, inscribed to other writers. Original illustrations by E. H. Shepard from Winnie-the-Pooh books. First editions of classic novels. All manner of precious manuscripts. Textual history writ large. Amongst the stalls I honed in on two in particular, which held books by some of my favourite writers. That day we purchased a signed first edition of Alice Munro's Still Life and another signed first edition by Paul Auster - Yippee! I went home and placed the books carefully upon my new bookshelves.

A few weeks later, Bibliohubby arranged another surprise, taking me to one of the bookshops I had been introduced to at the fair. When we walked through the door, this is what we saw hung upon the wall in the vestibule:

 

"To care about words, to have a stake in what's written, to believe in the power of books, this overwhelms the rest and beside it, one's life becomes very small."

- Paul Auster

 

Those of you who know me well will know that Auster is my favourite writer. One of the quality assessment tests I give to new bookstores is whether they stock Auster's books and, if so, how many. To walk into this particular shop and find his words on the wall made it clear immediately that it was a place I would love.

Contact Editions is one of those bookstores you might want to live in. It is cosy and eclectic, hung with literary posters and prints and decorated with all manner of interesting bits and bobs, with a Chesterfield to sit and read in, green banker's lamps and, of course, walls lined with books. It is run by the most delightful couple, with the poetic names of Wesley and Lucia. I feel like a cat should live in the store too, a fat orange cat curled up on the sofa, with a bushy tail that slowly wags its disapproval when the door is left open to drafts.

Again we walked out with books, a signed Salman Rushdie, another signed Auster and Wesley threw in an additional first edition Auster at no extra cost.

I know that acquisitions are not what makes the world turn. I know that the words within a book are what matter, rather than the frame that holds those words and ideas. But the lovely books we bought in November adorn my shelves now, and I can't help it - they make me happy.

I am a book nerd, yes I am, and I make no apology for it.



Sue Monk Kidd - The Invention of Wings

I was so excited when I heard that Sue Monk Kidd had a new book out. I absolutely loved The Secret Life of Bees, and from the early reviews I read of this one I knew it would be good. I'm never quite sure whether the fact that Oprah likes a book means I will love it or hate it, but this time when I read about her enthusiasm for The Invention of Wings, the things she said about it made me hopeful it would be a case of the former.

As with The Secret Life of Bees, Kidd tackles a big subject here, writing about slaves in South Carolina. Loosely based on the true story of one of a pair of sisters from Charleston, who campaigned for emancipation, racial equality and women's rights, Kidd creates a world grounded in the household of the Grimkes, a large slave-owning family. Sarah Grimke is the privileged young daughter to this family, whose speech impediment and liberal conscience are born out of witnessing the gruesome flogging of one of the family's slaves. For her 11th birthday, Sarah is gifted with a slave girl her own age. Already immensely uncomfortable with the notion of slavery, she rebels against the gift, but Hetty - 'Handful' - remains enslaved.

Against all odds, the girls become fast friends, and the friendship that blossoms between them ultimately changes both of them forever. Sarah overcomes her stutter and her traditional Southern family's values to become a woman whose voice is heard across the nation. Handful, whose lively intelligence and fierce resolve stem from her mother Charlotte, the talented (and rebellious) seamstress to the family Grimke, becomes a key figure in a planned slave rebellion.

Sarah and Handful share the narration of the story as it winds from their childhood towards adulthood, when each becomes an influential force in America's history. And through these two strong figures, Kidd creates a compelling portrait of pre-emancipation life. During my reading, Charleston became a vivid place, from the docks to the industrial centre to the plantations and white-washed properties. The fences - literal and figurative - that surround both Sarah and Handful became almost tangible to me, so that I found myself filled with genuine anger and frustration at the walls that American society put up around women generally, and around slaves specifically.

In the first chapter of this book I was certain I would end up rating it five stars. The writing is extraordinarily powerful and evocative - just stunning, really. The central characters are immediately sympathetic, the story gripping. I read various passages out loud to my husband, convinced I had found one of my books of the year.

Unfortunately, the intensity of the first few chapters is not sustained as the story evolves. Kidd slips into a more sentimental style of story-telling and the book loses something as a result. However, the characters live on in my mind and the story is wonderfully rich. The realistic depiction of some of the horrors of slavery is appropriately horrifying - I had to put the book down, from time to time, to recover from some of the more gruesome episodes. I was moved to tears several times and desperately wanted Sarah, Handful and Charlotte to succeed in their endeavours. This is a big book which will resonate with you long after you turn the final page.

Overall assessment: This was on its way to being my first 5 star book of the year, but by the end I had re-assessed somewhat. Still a fabulous 4.5 out of 5.

Favourite passages: There really are too many too mention, but here are a few.

"It's mother, however, who descends the back steps into the yard. Binah and the other house slaves are clumped behind her, moving with cautious, synchronized steps as if they're a single creature, a centipede crossing an unprotected space."

"I would rove down the hallway to the front alcove where I could see the water in the harbor float to the ocean and the ocean roll on till it sloshed against the sky. Nothing could hold a glorybound picture to it. First time I saw it, my feet hopped in place and I lifted my hand over my head and danced. That's when I got true religion. I didn't know to call it religion back then, didn't know Amen from what-when, I just knew something came into me that made me feel the water belonger to me. I would say, that's my water out there."

"She laid the book down and came where I was standing by the chimney place and put her arms round me. It was hard to know where things stood. People say love gets fouled by a difference big as ours. I didn't know for sure whether Miss Sarah's feelings came from love or guilt. I didn't know whether mine came from love or a need to be safe. She loved me and pitied me. And I loved her and used her. It never was a simple thing. That day, our hearts were pure as they would ever get."

"I saw then what I hadn't seen before, that I was very good at despising slavery in the abstract, in the removed and anonymous masses, but in the concrete, intimate flesh of the girl beside me, I'd lost the ability to be repulsed by it. I'd grown comfortable with the particulars of evil. There's a frightful muteness that dwells at the center of all unspeakable things, and I had found my way into it."

Gabrielle Zevin - The Storied Life of A. J. Ficry

I had never heard of this book, or of Gabrielle Zevin, until I read the glowing review on one of my favourite book blogs, Love, Laughter and a Touch of Insanity. I was looking for something light and short to read in between more substantial books and this looked like it would do the trick.

I have just now finished reading it and wanted to sit down and write a review before the magic wore off. Because this truly is a little treasure of a book. One that I will read again, and which I will keep on my book shelf and take down from time to time like an old friend.

Zevin succeeds in creating a wonderful world of people who come to matter greatly to the reader, whose fates we care about and whose legacies we will remember.

A. J. Ficry owns a bookstore on Alice Island. As the book opens, he is a widow slowly drinking himself to death and sinking his business to the ground. Through a bizarre turn of events, a baby is left in his bookstore, and his decaying heart blooms as he grapples with the basics of childcare ("She's a terrorist! She wakes up at, like, insane times."). A. J. adopts Maya, and the love he feels for his daughter restores him. After reading a book left for him by a quirky publisher's agent named Amelia, he finds his thoughts returning to her messy blonde hair and gauche galoshes, and realises that life may yet hold more in stock for him than he had anticipated.

The quiet world of Island Books is quaint and intellectual and peaceful. Although the characters here do not lead big lives, they are lives filled with love and joy, the point being that this is the essence of a good life. Ownership, materiality, employment - none of this matters, as long as one is blessed with love.

Zevin gets the pacing of the story just right, and peppers the narrative with literary references that will please any bibliophile. Each chapter begins with a note from A. J. to his daughter, a reading recommendation, and through this brief correspondence the reader is able to guess at what twists and turns lie ahead for A. J. Although this epistolary device could have come across as contrived, Zevin's deft hand prevents it from interrupting the story in a problematic way. The writing is soft and unobtrusive, and, at times, surprisingly humorous - for example, when A. J. tells his friend, Chief of Police Lambiase, that "Infinite Jest is an endurance contest. You manage to get through it and you have no chance but to say you liked it. Otherwise, you have to deal with the fact that you just wasted weeks of your life." Or when, upon going for a run, A. J. notes that "There are many challenges to long-distance running, but one of the greatest is the question of where to put one's house keys." Or when A.J.'s mother gives Maya an e-reader and he says: "I would rather you have bought my daughter something less destructive like a crack pipe."

Overall assessment: 4 out of 5. I really enjoyed this book, and it will stay with me. A crowd-pleaser. If you love books and bookstores, this is a must-read.

Favourite passages: "A. J. watches Maya in her pink party dress, and he feels a vaguely familiar, slightly intolerable bubbling inside of him. He wants to laugh out loud or punch a wall. He feels drunk or at least carbonated. Insane. At first, he thinks this is happiness, but then he determines it's love. Fucking love, he thinks. What a bother."

"We read to know we're not alone. We read because we are alone. We read and we are not alone. We are not alone."

"We aren't the things we collect, acquire, read. We are, for as long as we are here, only love. The things we loved. The people we loved. And these, I think these really do live on."

AUDIBLE

As you all know, I am an avid reader of books both on paper and in electronic form. Until recently I had not thought to add audio books to my rotation. I'm not sure why. They make all the sense in the world. For someone who used to walk to school whilst reading a book (suffering occasional bumps to the head from encounters with lamp posts and the like), and who, as a child, habitually brushed her teeth with a book propped up behind the faucet, you would think this form of reading would be a no-brainer. I guess I thought it was all terribly complicated - figuring out where to buy audio-books, how to listen to them and so on. God, I sound old.

When Audible starting advertising through Amazon and I learned that it was not only easy to download audio-books, but that I could do so using my existing Amazon account and that, moreover, as an Amazon user I would receive one book credit free each month - well, it seemed silly not to try it.

I started last month and have almost finished 'reading' my second Audible book. The first was fiction and I deliberately chose non-fiction for my second, so as to better evaluate the overall experience.

And my initial assessment? Basically: HOW HAVE I NOT DONE THIS BEFORE????!!!

Finally, I can read while I'm driving and while I'm walking to the gym. Audio books conveniently fill the gaps in my time-poor life, making me more efficient.

Recently, even though I've been home with the kids, I have been finding it difficult to fit in a lot of reading. I am honestly in awe of women whose job it is to look after children all day long (their own or other people's) - it is more relentless than any paid job I have ever had. With just one baby to look after I had pockets of time to myself. But with two very little children at home, the opportunity to read while they nap or 'sleep while they sleep' (to quote the common advice given to new mothers) falls away completely. Generally, one of them will wake just as the other goes down. Or else neither naps properly because one seems intent on creating a large amount of noise just as the other starts to droop sleepily on the couch.

Since downloading Audible, my behaviour has changed in subtle but noticeable ways. I find that I will now look for reasons to load up the kids into the car and drive somewhere, anywhere, so that I can fit in some 'reading' time (the kids like it too, by the way; the narration combined with the motion of the car lulls them into soft sleep). I have taken up walking with my daughter in her stroller again, in spite of the bitter cold of this first Canadian winter, and these walks have become far longer than they once were - another time around the block means I get to find out what happens in the next chapter!

This newfound efficiency, a whole new level of multi-tasking, is the most wondrous aspect of listening to audiobooks.

Listening to a book rather than reading it also adds a new dimension: performance. The narrator is vital to the success of a particular audio-book. Luckily I have had good luck with the two I've experienced thus far. I will speak more to this in upcoming reviews, but I can imagine a bad narrator would seriously detract from one's enjoyment of a book.

There are downsides to this form of 'reading'. Continuity is a problem, for one. Even with my increased car journeys and walks, there have been periods of several days when I have not had the opportunity to crack open, as it were, the audio-book I was currently reading. This is not the case with hard copy or electronic books, which I make time for at night even if I can only read one, exhausted page at a time. Because of this continuity issue, and because listening is less conducive to intent concentration than the act of reading, I'm not convinced that I take in as much of the story or the language when I am listening to a book as I would were I reading it in other forms. With the novel that was my first Audible purchase, I ended up buying a hard copy version of the book too so that I could delve into it at home - but then I found that it was difficult to fast forward the audio version to precisely the point where I had left off reading the hard copy. I also really miss being able to flick back through actual pages to remind myself of a particular scene, or re-read a section. This is a problem for me with electronic books too, however.

In spite of these challenges, I will certainly keep using Audible. One thing I have discovered is that it helps me to read books that I might put down for one reason or another if I was reading the hard copy version. I might try to listen to some of the longer books I've been wanting to read but have put on the back-burner because of their size - Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, for example. Big books are hard to lug about, and these days, if I have one going on my Kindle, I'm likely to want a change halfway through and might read another book in between starting the lengthy tome and finishing it. Not great really, my reduced attention span, though probably an inevitable result of today's Twitter- and YouTube-fueled society.

But for precious books that I know I will truly love, I will be reading them on paper (or on screen) - or at least supplementing the audio experience with a hard copy version.

How about you, fellow readers? Have you tried audio books? How do you feel about them?

Dominic Knight - Man vs Child

I didn't review the first book I read by Dominic Knight (his first, Disco Boy) because I know the author. Not well, mind you, but still. It's always a bit tricky, reviewing a book on its merits and trying to separate it from one's personal knowledge of a writer. But I decided to put worry to one side after reading Man vs Child. The book engaged me and I wanted to write a review and decided it was silly not to simply because of personal affiliations. 

One thing I love about Knight's books is that they are unashamedly set in Sydney, Australia. Familiar bars and cafes and suburbs populate the narrative so that when I read this book as a newly settled Torontonian I could imagine myself back home. That's nice. Obviously it won't have the same resonance for people who don't or haven't lived in Sydney, but Knight's novels are a fun way to get a real glimpse of life in that city if you're interested. 

This is a book about a guy trying to make it in the world of stand-up comedy (day job: radio producer) and his relationship with a woman who has a baby, which changes his view on life and commitment and the notion of having kids. It's a funny book, genuinely funny, and made me laugh out loud a few times. The protagonist, 34-year-old Dan, is entirely believable and Knight's writing is confident and strong. I found the narrative addictive, particularly as Dan's radio production job starts to develop into something more exciting.

Like many 30-somethings, Dan finds that his social circle is shrinking as fellow singles hook up, get married, have babies and cease going out or (apparently) having any fun at all. Notwithstanding the pressure from his parents to tick all the right boxes and bring home some grandchildren, Dan is entirely uninterested in the prospect of procreating and can't understand his friends' fascination with their children's most banal activities. But when his old high school crush, Penny, walks back into his life, newly single and toting a toddler accessory, it doesn't take long for Dan to change his tune. Little Lloyd has a soft spot for Dan who suddenly gets how intoxicating it can be when a tiny human being regards you with love and adoration. As Dan's radio career develops and his stand-up takes off, he finds himself dreaming of a family life he had previously eschewed.

It's an absorbing story, a satisfying coming-of-age tale. I always enjoy finding male writers who come to grips with emotions and romance on the page in a light-hearted manner. It's rare, I think. Knight is like an Australian Nick Hornby, and that's high praise indeed, coming from me - I've read all of Hornby's books.

My only gripe with this novel is that Dan's ruminations on his friends' behaviour once they have children are irritating if you are someone who has children. His ignorance of what it's like to have children is understandable, but his total absence of any empathy with parents make it appear as though he is ignorant of more than just the state of parenthood. He comes across as slightly autistic or incredibly self-absorbed, unable to imagine what a change it would be to suddenly have a small being entirely dependent upon you all of the time. Instead of recognizing that his friends might be suffering some shock of their own in undergoing such dramatic life changes, Dan seems to believe that his friends are lording it over him as soon as they have children, that their absence in his life is more to do with their judgement of his life choices than their loss of actual physical freedom. 

It's fine for a character to embody such traits, and I guess it's partly the point of the story. But I experienced a high degree of frustration in moments where he exhibited such an unbelievably extreme lack of understanding for part of the human condition. 

Overall assessment: 3.5 out of 5

Pros: Funny, engaging, enjoyable read.

Cons: See above.