“Avoid writing if you can. If you can’t, avoid cliché, and be precise. Don’t try to ‘express yourself’; self-expression usually amounts to expulsion. Try, rather, to connect with another: picture a smart but demanding reader, and try to hold her attention.”
– Jason Guriel … on hoarding and keeping your best lines off Twitter
I’m pleased to welcome back guest book reviewer Rebecca Hansford, who previously reviewed Margaret Atwood’s The Year of the Flood here on the the Bookgaga blog. Rebecca recently graduated from Queen’s University, where she studied Biology and Psychology. As she previously observed, “Majoring in science instead of English was a tough choice for me as I have an electric passion for reading. I particularly enjoy fiction that integrates scientific facts, environmental issues and dystopian societies.”
In Jason Guriel’s Satisfying Clicking Sound, the poet explores the contrasting elements of nature and technology currently existing in our society. Guriel’s style is of writing demands the reader’s attention in a profound yet disturbing way. For instance, Two Girls Splitting a Set of Earbuds describes two girls as flesh conjoined by an iPod, illustrating our dependence on our newfound technology and our inability to communicate without it. This brutal yet honest style of poetry is seen throughout his work, causing any reader to pause and ponder his thought, even possibly becoming repulsed at times. In his poem Poetry is Barbarous, Guriel fully exposes the vulgarity of his writing, as he compares a snowfall burying plastic swans and rabbits to real animals being buried to the throat. This vicious, yet captivating style of writing is seen throughout most of Satisfying Clicking Sound.
Although most of Guriel’s poems are blunt and difficult to digest, there was some free verse poetry with a more flowing style. In the Washbasin, Guriel compares painting and watery reflections to emphasize how the narrator feels he can live up to his father’s shadow. This poem was genuine, and the painting metaphor was beautifully tied into the poem. Dead on Arrival was another poem that appealed to me. Guriel remarks that stars are not aware of the fact that they burned out light years ago and therefore, they may not be aware of who they are themselves. Similarly, since we live our lives with the knowledge that we will die, is life futile? Will we ever know who we truly are?
In short, Jason Guriel’s Satisfying Clicking Sound is a fantastic read if you are interested in a more modern style of poetry. However, the last half of his work does bring forth some beautiful poetry with a less hard-hitting and vulgar style. Nonetheless, Guriel uses imagery in an astounding manner as he broadcasts his ideas regarding technology and society in a brutally honest manner. He will almost certainly hold your attention throughout his work.
Thank you to Véhicule Press for providing a review copy of Satisfying Clicking Sound by Jason Guriel.
I’m excited to introduce Bookgaga readers to another insightful guest book reviewer who comes at things from some intriguing angles. Paul Whelan, over to you: I am an architect whose worldview has been shaped by a belief that cities and buildings are active participants in our real and imagined lives. My reading is evenly split between fiction and non-fiction, but usually underpinned by my deep love of human history.
A book titled Cockroach almost begs the reader to embark on an insect-metaphor hunt. And there are many here to find. If you are the type of reader who wants to make connections between for example Kafka and derogatory racial profiling, it’s all here for the counting. But for me there was so much more to this engaging novel. I read it twice as the combination of character, story and language aligned to keep me off-balance, but eagerly stumbling forward.
The nameless main character is simultaneously off-putting and endearing. His childlike attitude towards his shoplifting and break and enter crimes seems devoid of conventional morality. He oscillates from compelling observations of his adopted city through to being weirdly off-putting. Regardless I wanted him to succeed in his seductions and his crimes. I never lost interest in his interactions with Montreal and its inhabitants.
Cockroach inhabits a city that operates under rules that are invisible to him. His judgment of the naïveté of those around him is equal to his own unexamined naïveté. He coolly exposes the false posturing of both his fellow-immigrants and the soft lives of the Montreal well-to-do. Rawi Hage creates passages of power and beauty such as the hero’s musings on his state-appointed psychiatrist.
“She was quiet and I knew she wanted to ask me if I had killed Tony once I had the gun. I knew she was hooked, intrigued. Simple woman. I thought. Gentle, educated, but naïve, she is sheltered by glaciers and prairies, thick forests, oceans and dancing seals.”
Cockroach’s hero has experienced a far harsher world and has little patience for the morality of the well-fed.
Hage’s novel maintains a tight relationship to the viscera of Montreal. The reader is kept in constant contact with the ice and slush of winter, the hunger before the next welfare check and incessant sexual longing. The hero is desperately in touch with his physicality and is deeply grateful for every scrap of food or sexual encounter. Even his break-ins seem tempered by seeming simpler needs. He takes what he wants based on his assessment of the inhabitants, but mostly food and information.
What I have avoided writing about is the plot. For most of the novel I simply read along for the ride. I was equally intrigued by the hero’s direct pleasure from life and the inexorable unfolding of his story, which skirts around all the great issues – hunger, sex, love and revenge. But there is a great story here that slips through the entrails of Montreal and all its inhabitants.
Note: I’m approaching my preparations for Canada Reads 2014 a little differently than previous years. This year, I’m not reading and reviewing the books in advance of the debates. Instead, I’ve asked five wise and articulate readers – of whom Paul is the fifth and final – to review the contending books and convince me one way or the other of the value of the book and its suitability for this year’s Canada Reads theme of “What is the one book that could change Canada?”
I’m very pleased to welcome another terrific guest book reviewer with some fresh perspectives to the Bookgaga blog. Over to Rebecca Hansford, who will introduce herself: I am an undergraduate student at Queen’s University, completing my final year in Biology and Psychology. I am currently conducting a thesis, examining how lakes change over time due to climate-related issues. Majoring in science instead of English was a tough choice for me as I have an electric passion for reading. I particularly enjoy fiction that integrates scientific facts, environmental issues and dystopian societies.
Margaret Atwood’s The Year of the Flood tells the brilliant story of two contrasting women’s survival in a rapidly deconstructing society. The characters’ surroundings are devastating but familiar, a world focused on consumerism, flashy products and unnatural gene splicing. Humans have destroyed the environment and the government has a tyrannical hold over the population. However, the general population is so obsessed with consumption that little attention is given to the political chokehold.
From this corrupt and unnatural society, a small religion of naturalists emerges, the Gardeners. The Gardeners promote vegetarianism and minimalist life choices despite the current society’s focus on consumerism and unnatural product obsessions. At first glance, the Gardeners’ society seem to be a modern-day garden of Eden, however, by delving into two distinct narratives, Atwood exposes both the negative and positive aspects of this religion while telling the story of the Gardeners’ response to the impending doom of the Waterless flood.
Atwood jumps effortless between narratives and time describing the lives of the Gardener women, before and after the Waterless Flood. The juxtaposition of the two women’s characters is remarkable. Toby is a hardwired, strong woman, who learns to fend for herself at an early age. By using third person, Atwood distances the reader from the slightly closed off character. In contrast, Ren is an open, resilient but slightly dependent character. Ren’s narrative is first person and begins when she is a young child, giving the reader an easier connection to this character. The changing narrative is wonderfully done and keeps the reader engaged. Atwood also describes the Gardeners’ prayers, enabling the reader to see into this interesting religion.
By demonstrating Gardener prayers in addition to each woman’s view of the religion, the reader gains three perspectives into the Gardener religion. As a treat, the reader also gets a taste of Atwood’s renowned poetry as Atwood threads religious symbolism seamlessly into the novel. Using these prayers, Atwood comments on organized religion by emphasizing the positive, natural aspects while highlighting the problems and hypocrisy within its organization.
The Year of the Flood poses interesting questions regarding the current technology and economy focused society. In a world of gene-splicing, questionable medicine and secret-meat burgers, how far can society depart from the natural world before it becomes detrimental to human society? Atwood makes the reader question the society’s focus on playing God, while making us wonder if our society has also crossed this line. Atwood reinforces the inconvenient truth that current lifestyle choices are leading to a disaster of global scale and asks the reader if our society will also have to face the consequences of our consumerist actions one day.
Note: I’m approaching my preparations for Canada Reads 2014 a little differently than previous years. This year, I’m not reading and reviewing the books in advance of the debates. Instead, I’ve asked five wise and articulate readers – of whom Rebecca is the fourth – to review the finalist books and convince me one way or the other of the value of the book and its suitability for this year’s Canada Reads theme of “What is the one book that could change Canada?”
I’m really thrilled to introduce Bookgaga blog visitors to another wise and diligent guest book reviewer. Sue Reynolds is a life-long reader and animal lover whose sudden, passionate love for Bette Davis movies threatens to consume all of her reading time.
Half-Blood Blues has won or been shortlisted for an impressive array of prestigious awards since its publication in 2011. It won the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, was nominated for the Governor General’s Award for Fiction, the Orange Prize for Fiction and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, to name a few. The great success of the book has generated countless descriptions and reviews, both in print and online. In the interest of taking a different approach, the Bookgaga kindly suggested that my review might take the Canada Reads theme into consideration.
Half-Blood Blues, Esi Edugyan’s second novel, moves back and forth between Berlin and Paris in 1939-40, and Berlin and Poland in 1992. Its action revolves around a jazz band, the Hot-Times Swingers, which is composed of black and white musicians from the United States and Europe. With World War II looming on the horizon and harassment of “undesirables” (band members Chip and Hiero are both dark-skinned black men, Paul is a blond-haired, blue-eyed Jew) becoming increasingly violent, the Hot-Times Swingers flee Berlin for Paris, partly to escape the worsening situation in Berlin, partly to meet and record with Louis Armstrong.
Edugyan smoothly moves from the drama of the Swingers, their interpersonal tensions, artistic struggles and more serious challenges of avoiding the Nazi presence in Berlin and Paris, to future scenes with the surviving members, years later, who are now old men. The 1992 sections of the novel feel almost like a detective story, as Sid, our elderly narrator, and his best friend, Chip, travel to Berlin and Poland in search of Hiero, the genius trumpeter, assumed killed during the war but alive and living in obscurity.
Canada Reads asks: what is the one novel that could change Canada, that Canadians can look to for inspiration? That will compel Canadians to make a change in their lives, at home or at work, in their community, in their country or around the world? Although the bulk of Half-Blood Blues takes place on the world stage with the horrors of World War II as a backdrop, the novel has an intimate and personal feel to it. We are witness to the creative process that Sid and his bandmates live for and we watch Sid’s infatuation with jazz singer Delilah Brown play itself out.
Half-Blood Blues works its magic, not necessarily through its story, but in how it tells that story. Edugyan conveys the mysteries of jazz music through her use of the written word:
“Kid wasn’t even hardly listening, it seemed. Handling his horn with a unexpected looseness, with a almost slack hand, he coaxed a strange little groan from his brass. Like there was this trapped panic, this barely held-in chaos, and Hiero hisself was the lid.
…I might’ve been crying. It was the sound of something growing a crust, some watery thing finally gelling. The very sound of age, of growing older, of adolescent rage being tempered by a man’s heart. Yeah, that was it. It was the sound of the kid’s coming of age. As if he taken on some of old Armstrong’s colossal sadness.” (p. 278)
Whether Edugyan is describing the freedom found in creating music or the chaos of thousands of panicked Parisians trying to flee their occupied city, her prose sings and reminds us that we are interacting with a living, breathing language. This, I think, is her gift to her readers: she calls attention to the musical, evocative beauty of the English language, how it can be bent and twisted to do the writer’s bidding.
Should all of Canada read Half-Blood Blues we may end up with a nation of book-lovers who have decided to read aloud, the better to hear the music embedded in every text they open.
Note: I’m approaching my preparations for Canada Reads 2014 a little differently than previous years. This year, I’m not reading and reviewing the books in advance of the debates. Instead, I’ve asked five wise and articulate readers – of whom Sue is the third – to review the finalist books and convince me one way or the other of the value of the book and its suitability for this year’s Canada Reads theme of “What is the one book that could change Canada?”
Allow me to introduce Bookgaga blog visitors to another wonderful and perceptive guest book reviewer. Natasha Hesch loves novels. She started out as a public librarian, and now works at BiblioCommons. She regularly shares short reviews of what she has read as tegan on BiblioCommons’ library software.
I had been wanting to read Annabel by Kathleen Winter for quite some time, but it had just not made it to the top of my reading list. When Vicki asked me to read and review one of the 5 selected Canada Reads books, I jumped at the opportunity to review Annabel.
As I made my way through the novel on my daily TTC commute, I kept thinking about this year’s Canada Reads big question “What is the one novel that could change Canada?” I haven’t read the other 4 Canada Reads titles, but by reading Annabel I think Canadians could become more open-minded and accepting of other people’s differences. Discrimination against people who don’t fit neatly into sex and gender constructs persists today.
The main character of Annabel is a child who is born a hermaphrodite. Treadway, the father independently decides that the child should be raised as a boy: “[Treadway] knew his baby had both a boy’s and a girl’s identity, and he knew a decision had to be made.” (Winter, 26). Although Jacinta and Treadway’s baby is born in 1968, I wonder how different of a situation parents would be in today? I didn’t look into what the typical medical practices are today, but there is still a definite requirement to label a child: governmental institutions still impose the binary of male vs. female upon parents right from the start. I took a quick look at the Ontario and Newfoundland form for getting a birth certificate, and both forms still have only two check boxes available for sex: male or female. At a federal level, Statistics Canada also erases the existence of intersex individuals: on the 2011 Census of Population, only male and female populations are recorded.
Annabel really makes you think about the labels that are placed upon people, and the problematic nature of trying to label everything to try to understand it. Throughout the novel, there are numerous references to naming, defining and labeling things: “Everyone was trying to define everything so carefully, Jacinta felt; they wanted to annihilate all questions” (Winter 45). By labeling things, we are often imposing limits; as Winter eloquently writes “You define a tree and you do not see what it is; it becomes its name” (Winter 350).
As a reader you can’t help but want Wayne to just be who s/he is. There is a very sweet moment early on in the book where Wayne longs for a girls orange bathing suit. He begs his mother for one, but knows his father would not approve: “Could we get me a bathing suit like Elizaveta Kirilovna’s and not tell Dad?” (Winter 86). I wanted to buy the swimsuit for Wayne/Annabel. The innocence of Wayne’s desires are at times heart-breaking. I think if all Canadian’s read this book, they would empathize with Wayne, and be more open to accepting the blurry lines that exist with sex and gender identity.
There is much time spent in the novel on bridges. Thomasina, who accepts Wayne/Annabel for who s/he is, sends postcards of bridges to Wayne/Annabel. S/he is obsessed with these bridges, s/he is constantly looking at the postcards and redrawing the bridges. I couldn’t help but think that the bridges were a symbol of the interstitial space that Wayne/Annabel lives in. A space bridging two places, not male, not female, but in between.
Wayne/Annabel as a character is a very inspiring one. S/he never complains about his/her situation, no matter what happens to him/her. Although at times Winter writes Wayne/Annabel through very difficult experiences, I was very happy and relieved that Winter wrote Wayne/Annabel to a ‘happy ending’. I think that Annabel as a novel has the ability to create empathy for people who are different than one’s self. I look forward to the Canada Reads debates.
Note: I’m approaching my preparations for Canada Reads 2014 a little differently than previous years. This year, I’m not reading and reviewing the books in advance of the debates. Instead, I’ve asked five wise and articulate readers – of whom Natasha is the second – to review the finalist books and convince me one way or the other of the value of the book and its suitability for this year’s Canada Reads theme of “What is the one book that could change Canada?”
I’m delighted to introduce Bookgaga blog visitors to another thoughtful and insightful guest book reviewer. Cheryl Finch is an editor in the Greater Toronto Area. She specializes in non-fiction manuscript development; website copywriting and SEO; online article writing; and content marketing. Cheryl can be reached at cfinch999@gmail.com.
Set in the mid-1600s, Joseph Boyden’s The Orenda is a fascinating and often harrowing account of life during the French colonization of New France, when warring Huron and Iroquois nations fiercely battled for control of the fur trade, and resolute Jesuit missionaries were determined to convert their Huron allies to Christianity.
The Orenda chronicles the experiences of Bird, a Wendat (Huron) warrior; Snow Falls, a Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) girl; and Christophe, a French Jesuit missionary. As the story unfolds, Bird has led a small war party out to avenge the deaths of his wife and daughters, who were killed by the Haudenosaunee. Christophe is delivered to Bird’s temporary camp as part of the Wendat’s crucial trade arrangement with the French colonists, and Snow Falls is captured after Bird and his warriors attack a Haudenosaunee hunting party, killing her family. Christophe and Snow Falls are brought back to Bird’s village as captives.
Thus begins an uneasy and forced association among the three. They mistrust each other, but they also need each other. They feel superior to each other, but they also envy each other. They have many differences, yet they share common drivers: loyalty to family, spiritual conviction, the will to survive. And they are united in their fear of brutal torture and slow death by their current or future captors.
The Orenda is narrated alternately in the first person by Bird, Snow Falls and Christophe themselves, each character speaking directly to a loved one with the freedom and honesty accorded to only the most trusted of confidantes. They reveal their intentions, motivations and knowledge, giving us, the readers, a fully informed understanding of their conduct. We see that each character has virtues and flaws; each character is truly human, worthy of our understanding and empathy.
The characters themselves do not have the benefit of this insight about one another – they see the “what” but don’t know the “why”. They must simply interpret each others’ actions in the context of their own experiences and belief systems. Incorrect assumptions and misunderstood behaviour foster suspicon, judgment and intolerance. Bird, Snow Falls and Christophe slowly grow to accept, and eventually appreciate, respect, even care for one another, but this is a long and arduous process made all the more difficult by language barriers, religious differences and subjective frameworks.
Can The Orenda inspire social change? In some ways, things are no different today than they were for Bird, Snow Falls and Christophe 400 years ago. In both the national and international contexts, people of diverse cultures, belief systems, lifestyles, customs and languages live together but don’t necessarily understand or respect each other, resulting in misinterpretation, judgment and prejudice. Warring nations fiercely battle for economic and religious control, often resorting to ritual brutality rooted in tradition and vengeance. Change will only be possible if we make the effort to listen to each other, consider differing viewpoints, and understand the “why” behind the “what”. We must focus on our similarities rather than our differences, and learn to empathize. We must recognize that every human being is capable of great compassion and extreme cruelty, depending on past experience and present circumstance.
These are not quick or easy undertakings. Important change takes significant time and effort. But if we don’t start, it will never happen. The Orenda closes with the words “Now is what’s most important … the past and the future are present”. This book certainly has the potential to change Canada and even the world, if we choose to take its lessons to heart.
Note: I’m approaching my preparations for Canada Reads 2014 a little differently than previous years. This year, I’m not reading and reviewing the books in advance of the debates. Instead, I’ve asked five wise and articulate readers – of whom Cheryl is the first – to review the finalist books and convince me one way or the other of the value of the book and its suitability for this year’s Canada Reads theme of “What is the one book that could change Canada?”
I’m thrilled to introduce Bookgaga blog visitors to another lively and insightful guest book reviewer. Ruth Seeley rattles cages for a living via Twitter and at No Spin PR and occasionally reviews books on her blog and Goodreads.
Some Straight Talk About Big Brother by Lionel Shriver
Write a novel about The Post-Birthday World of a woman who leaves her sensible partner for a much sexier one – or not.
Write a novel about being the mother of a school shooter in the wake of Littleton, CO. We Need to Talk About Kevin.
Write a novel about the vaunted US health care system no one can ultimately afford. The one that puts profit ahead of quality of life. So Much for That.
Write a novel about The Troubles when you’re handicapped by having been born American. Welcome to The New Republic.
Write a novel about an anthropologist – The Female of the Species – who can’t resist a man she knows she should.
Write a novel about letting your Big Brother die from gluttony. Or not.
It’s hard to resist the temptation to reduce Lionel Shriver’s subject matter to exercises en style sometimes, because she persists in tackling big subjects. But despite the assertion on one of the front end papers that, ‘The dieting industry is the only profitable business in the world with a 98 percent failure rate,’ Big Brother is not about the dieting industry at all. It’s not even about the politics of obesity.
‘I have spent less time thinking about my husband than I have thinking about lunch,’ says Pandora Halfdanarson on the first page of Big Brother. Married to Fletcher, Edison’s perpetual little sister, daughter of a 70s sitcom star, Pandora’s an ex-caterer turned nasty Chatty Cathy doll manufacturer for the rich and passive aggressive. So it’s perhaps not surprising that she’s spent more time thinking about lunch and amuse-bouches than her husband. She’s married late and is raising two step-children. And she’s a busy woman. Her doll business is getting some national attention (think Newsweek cover), yet she feels a sibling twang when Edison’s friend Slack tells her he’s down on his luck. So down on his luck he’s unrecognizable when she picks him up at the airport for an extended stay, as he’s worn out his couch-surfing welcome in New York. The fat smelly guy in the wheelchair everyone who’s deplaning is complaining about is actually Pandora’s brother! How humiliating.
Pandora, whose brother has always loomed large in her life, makes it her mission to restore him – at least on the surface – to her image of her big brother as he was – big in the figurative but not literal sense. She herself manages to lose 60 pounds – 20 more than she needs to – and Edison loses closer to 200 after a year of serious exercise and not-so-closely supervised starvation. Herbal tea FTW! In order to accomplish rehab conditions, Pandora moves her brother out of the family home and into an apartment, abandoning husband and step-children. Since Fletcher is a very fit, cycling and raw food fanatic, it’s not quite clear why this is necessary, but never mind. Edison – whose jazz pianist career is on the rocks, having copped Keith Jarrett ‘tude without actually Keith – becomes a productive member of society, takes a day job in Pandora’s factory and reasserts his sexuality by having a one-night stand with a not-unattractive younger woman (enabled in this endeavour by sister Pandora, who’s replaced his buttery leather black jacket to aid in the restitution of her brother’s image as ‘jazz stud’). Or does he/do they?
Like all Shriver’s women, Pandora is a high achiever. The least competent of Shriver’s women are, at the very least, more than capable of supporting themselves nicely and supremely competent in their fields. But Pandora may well be Shriver’s least accessible and least charming character, and in a novel where the protagonist is a buffoon (of not-quite-Monty Python dimensions) and the antagonist remains shadowy (an angry cycling gnat, munching aggressively on celery stalks), the reader feels the loss of a plausible omniscient third-person narrator. Pandora’s not to be trusted. And with its surprise ending, Shriver proves she can’t be trusted either. And by that I mean, she refuses to write about we might like her to write about.
Ultimately, like all of Shriver’s novels, Big Brother is about family – or rather families. Dread families of origin, families we create, the collisions between the two; the children, parents, siblings and exes left in our wake; and ultimately our need to be known to a select group of individuals in a way far deeper and more significant than the personae we present to the world.
I’m thrilled to introduce Bookgaga blog visitors to a very special guest book reviewer. Amanda Earl is an eloquent and prolific literary supporter, and writer and artist in her own right. I suspect many of you reading this blog already know her and perhaps have met her in person at one of the many arts events in which she takes part.Amanda’s most recent poetry chapbooks and e-books are “Sex First and Then A Sandwich” (above/ground press, Ottawa, Ontario, 2012), “me, Medusa” (the red ceiling press, UK, 2012). Her poems appeared recently or are forthcoming in Rampike, fillingStation and In/Words Magazine. Amanda is the managing editor of Bywords.ca and the Bywords Quarterly Journal, and the (fallen) angel of AngelHousePress. Follow her on Twitter @KikiFolle or Pinterest pinterest.com/kikifolle/. For more information, please visit amandaearl.com.
If I understand correctly, the object of Today’s Poem (#todayspoem) is to expose the general tweeting public (the Tweetosphere) to a daily dose of poetry in 140 characters or less. These poem bits are also posted by ardent poetry enthusiasts or Internet junkies, take your pick, on Pinterest, along with a photo of the author or book cover. Today’s Poem is the brainchild of Vicki Ziegler, who I know as @Bookgaga on Twitter, but haven’t had the pleasure of meeting yet. I am trying to lure her to the Ottawa International Writers Festival this fall for tea and book mayhem.
I began taking part in Today’s Poem this year, most likely in January. At first, I simply opened a book of poems at random and tried to find an excerpt that was compelling and brief enough to post. I had some trepidations about this exercise. What if I wasn’t representing the poet’s work properly by excerpting those 140 characters? I found I often had to exclude parts of lines to fit within the 140-character limit or I could choose to continue in another tweet, thereby breaking the line with the noise from the traffic of other tweets. But the thought of the goal of the exercise, to help people (and myself!) rediscover or discover exciting poetry, motivated me to dive in. I think this is a very creative use of Twitter, which is often just a place for narcissistic self-promotion and the repetition of sweet homilies. I commend @BookGaga for her altruism and initiative.
My most recent month-long ritual has been to post lines from the work of Anne Carson, not just her poetry, but also her translations of Greek and Latin plays, her essays and her novellas in poem form. I am fascinated by Carson’s exploration of form, the tension between formal elements and the everyday. As a former translator myself, though never a literary translator, I am interested in Carson’s take on the translation, both in the essays she writes about a single word, such as “bittersweet” and the translations themselves in the way in which they enliven and create their own new spaces, much in the way Erín Moure, another literary hero of mine, does with her translations from the Galician or invented personas.
I think of Anne Carson as a model of literary exploration, my older poetic sister. She is eclectic and daring, willing to try anything to explore the limits of her craft, and I respect that, aspire to it for my own writing. Not to mention that she didn’t have her first book published until she was 42 when Brick Books published Short Talks, probably the most treasured of her books on my shelves. While I’m past 42 by many years, Carson demonstrates that there is hope for the spineless.
Starting August 1, 2012, I posted a line from the most recent collection of her work I own, Nox. I don’t have Antigonick yet, Carson’s update of Antigone in a form similar to that of a graphic novel.
My poetry shelves are arranged for the most part alphabetically, and for the most part, according to the order that the work was published, but books have a tendency to unsort themselves for the avid reader. I posted lines from Carson’s work in approximately publishing order with most recent first.
August 1: “The phoenix mourns by shaping, weighing, testing, hollowing, plugging and carrying towards the light.” Nox (New Directions, 2010)
I am intrigued by Carson’s focus on the retelling of myth and the reanimation of Greek and Latin literature to present day. I wasn’t educated in the classics, alas. Carson’s writing is a way to learn about them, a way in.
I love Carson’s wit and sense of humour:
August 8, 2012: “Always planning ahead that’s me, practical as purgatory my mom used to say.” Decreation: Poetry, Essays, Opera (Knopf, 2005)
Am astounded by the beauty of her lines, which aren’t sentimental, but visual and memorable, often with an edge:
August 12, 2012: “A fell dark pink February heaven/Was/Pulling the clouds home, balancing massacre/On the rips.” Men in the Off Hours (Knopf, 2001)
August 18, 2012: “Hotel gardens at dusk are a place where the laws governing matter/get pulled inside out,/like the black keys and the white keys on Mozart’s piano.” The Beauty of the Husband (Knopf, 2001)
Carson deals with concerns such as death, anger, youth, beauty in ways that resonate and strike a universal chord.
August 23, 2012: “Youth is a dream where I go every night/and wake up with just this little jumping bunch of arteries/in my hand.” Plainwater (Knopf, 1995)
For a very good overview of Carson’s work and insightful interviews, I heartily recommend:
I have been gratified by the responses of others on Twitter and Pinterest. Carson’s lines from Today’s Poem have been retweeted and repinned by people from all over Canada and the UK, possibly from the States too. One of the goals of this exercise for me is to spread the good word about poets whose work excites me.
August 31: “Sappho begins with a sweet apple and ends in infinite hunger.” Eros the Bittersweet (Princeton University Press, 1986)
I’m very excited to welcome my first guest blogger to the Bookgaga book blog – my 16-year-old niece H. Somewhat in the tradition of “Take Your Kids to Work Day”, I invited H to familiarize herself with book blogs, and to take a bit of a stretch beyond school book reports and try contributing some reviews herself. I selected the titles, and she very gamely read them, thought a lot about them and has put time and thought into her assessments.
Essex County, by Jeff Lemire and The Boy in the Moon, by Ian Brown are much touted and discussed books that I’ve read a lot about, am interested in … but have not yet read myself. I was curious as part of this exercise to see if H’s reviews would be consistent with other commentary and coverage, would bring some new ideas forth, and might possibly dissuade me on one count or the other. I can safely say that she has brought some fresh perspectives in, and while critical in places, her comments have further convinced me to keep both books on the tbr list.
I hope you’ll find H’s reviews and this new Bookgaga venture interesting and thought provoking.
Essex County, by Jeff Lemire (Guest review by H)
I found the book Essex County to be a light, easy-going story. It was a very relaxing book and I found it full of adventure, and writer Jeff Lemire used creativity, showing how all the characters share connections from their pasts which they don’t realize in the present.
You also watch the characters develop, building connections. I actually felt as excited reading a hockey game, with characters, Vince and Lou Lebeuf, as I would in an NHL arena.
The stories are made to be a light read, nothing really too dramatic or serious. I liked that it was portrayed as a comic book. It was a nice change of pace. I also found that seeing pictures makes it easier to create an attachment with each individual character and their situations.
The character I grew most attached to is Lou Lebeuf, who played for the Toronto Grizzlies with his brother Vince. The story shows Lou all grown up, and having difficulties. You then learn the past, and about regrets created between Vince and Lou, and the fates they cause.
This story I could see being for teenage or older audiences. The book is very mature, yet has a looser, easier edge. Essex County was a delight to read from beginning to end, and I would recommend if you haven’t read it to do so.
The Boy in the Moon, by Ian Brown (Guest review by H)
I found great disappointment in such a promising book, as The Boy In the Moon by Ian Brown let me down.
After a quick skim of the cover the book looked as if it would be a heartfelt tale of a man who wanted to know his son through the disorders. But in my opinion the book lost its focus. The focus at some points seemed to be how Ian and his wife Johanna would like to know if son, Walker understands them. They want to know if Walker grasps how much they love them and the situation he is in. I think the book comes off as more of a complaint. Many times Ian would mention how no one would take Walker for a weekend, or how much work Walker is. He even became to view Walker as the reason his marriage with Johanna was beginning to hit the rocks.
It was also uncomfortable when they mentioned Walker’s sister, Haylee, and how they wanted to give her another “normal” sibling, since Walker wasn’t “normal”. Yes, I realize Walker is disabled, but I do not feel it is right to mention in a book that is dedicated to your child that he is not normal.
Ian Brown makes Walker come across as an inconvenience to him, Johanna and Haylee, instead of having Walker come across as a battle the family would fight. That is where I found the story really lost all meaning and heartfelt hopes.
The characters were also very hard to connect with. At first I could see Ian’s point of view in the marriage difficulties but he frustrated me how he would admit after taking the nanny, Olga home to her apartment he would head to strip clubs and bars behind Johanna’s back, even though he knew she needed him at home to help with Walker.
Johanna seems to have given up all hope on Walker, as it was mentioned in the book, her wanting another “normal” child sparked many fights between her and Ian. She also at one point admits she no longer feels like Walker’s mummy, and had she known he was disabled and would be so much work she would’ve had an abortion.
The overall story could have been more compressed. I found often information is being repeated such as how much work Walker is, and the tasks needed to keep him alive and well. I also found Brown uses a lot of big medical terms, that in all honesty I would’ve been clueless about had I not taken grade eleven Biology. I think it would’ve been a key aspect for him to have the meanings of those words, or at least have attempted a little more to clarify them for other readers than myself.
The last few pages I found though made up for some of the book’s shortcomings. The beginning caught my attention…but the twelve chapters between one and fourteen didn’t grasp the reader’s attention or build much of a foundation to cause a connection. The middle was a little jumpy and also, I would find myself losing interest and having difficulty digesting what I read. The book seemed less about Walker and more about Ian and the negative impacts of Walker.
But the last few pages show a side of Ian I would have enjoyed to see throughout the whole book. It showed the real father-son connection between Walker and Ian, and how yes, Walker in fact does know he is loved.
