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?”