February 20th, 2012

Rose-coloured reviews *Small Change* by Elizabeth Hay

Another book that I read along with everyone else in Canada a few years back is Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay. And just like everyone else, I really enjoyed the novel–the exotic setting of the Canadian North, the real but somehow gentle characters, the fascination and nostalgia of the radio culture.

A few years later, though, I was completely blindsided by Hay’s work in The New Quarterly called The Last Poems. This story had sharply defined characters but a weirdly interior world of rage and psychology and love. I thought it was brilliant writing, far more insightful and memorable than even the novel I so admired.

I think Hay‘s short-story collection, Small Change comes from the same well of stories as The Last Poems–I even recognized some of the characters from the TNQ piece appearing briefly in this book. And these stories have the same brilliant intensity. I was completely immersed in and astounded by the first story in the collection, “The Friend.” In it, a protagonist with a husband and small daughter finds herself taken over by her new friend Maureen, a woman with a small child of her own, a problematic marriage, and a will towards pathos that allows no problems or indeed voices other than her own in the conversation.

*Small Change*’s back-cover bumpf says the collection “illuminates the changing seasons of friendship,” so I was expecting the stories to be linked only by theme–a sort of concept album-style collection, which is not exactly something I’ve seen before. But it turns out that the collection is also linked by protagonist–the same  not-quite-young woman appears in most of  the stories–though a few are in third or even second person, they are all about her. The second piece in the collection is actually still about her relationship with Maureen, sort of, and this former friend proves a touchstone throughout the book, though she is not actually onstage again.

There’s an incredible sense of insight into the worst kinds of human behaviours. “Hand Games” is the story of very little girls and their afterschool friendship that goes awry in a way that most of us will recognize, but I’ve never heard described so well–the power dynamic of refusing to play, of changing the game, of liking and then not liking. It’s persuasive and true and banal and utterly sad–a riveting story.

The problem with the book–or the problem with me that caused me to have a problem with the book–occurred to me about halfway through. In *Small Change,* all the friendships go awry, and they do so in a dramatic sad slide of envy and jealousy, boredom and insecurity, and quite often a desire to “win” encounters not so far removed from the story about the six-year-olds. I found the stories incredibly insightful about certain moments of intense emotions, but not awfully insightful about the rate of incidence of such moments in everyday life–for every friendship I’ve had that ended badly, I have lots that are still going strong, and a few that just kinda quietly drifted off. I don’t know any adults that bring a consistent level of drama to friendships–I really don’t.

When I found the statement, late in the book, “how difficult it is to have companionship without being encroached upon,” I felt like I had found the unifying philosophy of the book, and I didn’t agree with it. I find it easy and lovely to have friends, and I find most of them give more than they take. As a character study–a study of a woman struggling with her inability to keep friends over the long term–the book is perhaps perfectly realistic but deeply sad and finally hard for me to relate to. Each individual story was incredibly vivid, emotionally accessible and relatable, but taken in sum, the stories seem to come to the conclusion that  (I’m paraphrasing from the book itself) all friendships have an expiration date, like milk, and since friendships must end and it’s impossible to end them gently–chaos ensues.

I was so depressed by this book that I thought perhaps I read it too fast–sometimes when I do that, it’s like I’m living inside the text, becoming the characters. But my notes say it took me more than 10 days. Maybe the power of Hay’s writing is that it had me living inside it while reading only a few pages a day. I honestly don’t know what to say about this book–I think the artistic achievement of it is immense, but by the last page I was so miserable I can’t honestly say I liked it.

This is my second book for the 2012 To Be Read challenge.

February 12th, 2012

Buying Books–One Way to Support Authors

Occasionally folks say to me that they want to buy my book(s) to support me and ask what’s the best way to do that. It’s an interesting question–I never thought about it before I had a book of my own in the world. Of course, buying a book by *any* method is a lovely thing to do, but certainly not the only way to support an author. After the standard, “Of course you don’t *have* to buy my book, and if you are so kind as to want to, I’m not choosy as to method” disclaimer, here’s what I’ve come up with–I’ll be curious to know if other authors and book people have more/different thoughts.

Buy books directly from the author: Works for me! I mean, if I’m around, and I happen to have books on me, and you have cash–unlike a store, I can’t process plastic. Authors get books at a discount, so yes, we do make a little extra money on books we sell our own personal selves. But unless it’s a stated book-selling opportunity–like a reading–or you are actually in my house, this probably doesn’t actually work all that well as an exclusive book-buying policy–lots of won’t have books to sell unless you warn us in advance. But if you do–happy to help!

Buy books directly from the publisher: This is another good-but-occasionally-tricky idea. Not all publishers are set up for direct sales to individuals–check the website before you drop that cheque in the mail. But many are, and direct sales are great for them–the publisher gets to keep a larger percentage than from bookstore sales. There is no direct financial benefit to author from this sort of sale–we get the same royalty as normal–but most of us feel that’s what’s good for our publishers is good for us. And lots of eager customers clamouring to buy books from the publisher are a reminder of what a valuable little author they have in their hands. Some publishers will handle booksales at literary events in their general geographical area, but obviously this is limited by, well, geography.

Buy books from online retailers: Hey, you want to buy a book, I want you to do that–any way you feel comfortable with. But when I have options, online bookstores ones aren’t my favourites. Bookseller websites don’t handsell to other customers based on what they saw you buy; their algorithms just suggest further books that *you* might like. You can write reviews on these sites too, which is always a good way to support something you like. Each sale on certain sites makes your “ranking” on that site go up, but I think those rankings are only for author-ego purposes; I have never heard anyone say they bought a book because it was #10450 sales ranking on a given site. The financial aspects: publishers and in some cases writers (depends on the contract) take a smaller perecentage home from sales through the largest internet retailers than through other sales venues. Not that I want to dissaude anyone…just FYI.

Borrow it from the library: Another cocktail-party comment I get semi-occasionally is, “You must hate libraries–all those people reading your book for free.” Which is a crazy thing to say to someone who loves books and wants as many people to read them as possible, which is a description of many authors, and probably all of us who are playing the low-returns sweepstakes of literary writing. Libraries pay for the copies they buy, they talk up and promote books to readers, they host events, and they also support us through the Public Lending Right of Canada payments. Trust me, there aren’t many authors who don’t want you to use the library.

Buy books in bookstores, big or small: Books purchased from bookstores give authors a standard royalty, and sometimes publishers too, though some of the bigger stores charge extra fees for placement. However, bookstores sales can generate more bookstores sales in a way other sales can’t. If a book sells out in a given store quickly, they might make a larger order next time. With a larger pile of books, they might make it into a display or at least be more eye-catching on the shelf. The biggest thing, though, anyone in the book business will tell you, is handsales–booksellers talking about books with customers, make a real connection, and putting a book they think the customer will love into said customer’s hands.

Handselling happens more in small independent bookstores–where staff are likely to be true book people, or even just to be truly listening to what customers have to say. But I worked in a “big chain” store for a while, and I was always listening for customer opinions, if only because I couldn’t read every book myself. If a couple people bought the same book and said enthusiastic things about it, I definitely repeated that to other customers–and the guy who put in the orders.

I think reading a book–buying it, renting it, borrowing it–is always an act of support for an author, and I really don’t want to tell you how. But for those who insist they want to do something extra, walking into a store, asking for the book by name (even if you are pretty sure you know where to find it), and maybe even remarking to the salesperson how much you are looking forward to it–well, I think that’d be pretty amazing support.

I wonder what others think?

January 29th, 2012

Rose-coloured reviews *Beatrice & Virgil* by Yann Martel

I was one of the many many people really who liked Yann Martel’s second novel, Life of Pi–I found it fascinating, completely engrossing, realistically weird, and warm-hearted. Though folks have since attempted to explain to me the ins and outs of the book’s symbolism, and though those explanations strike me as plausible, at the time I found it to be the most novelly of novels, completely consumed with its own characters and events, a world unto itself. I liked it very much.

I also liked Martel’s first, and less successful, novel, Self. I mean “less successful” in that fewer people read it than *Pi* (it feels like almost everyone in Canada read *Pi*) but also that it works less well as a book. There, the symbols and politics are much closer to the surface and the world seems a bit too much created for the reader’s benefit, but I was nevertheless interested in the characters and their lives. *Self* seemed an ambitious and adventurous experiment, and I wasn’t overmuch concerned that not every aspect worked out.

I have not read Martel’s first book, a collection of stories, but someone gave me his most recent, Beatrice & Virgil, and I decided to go with it. The novel starts with a frame story in which a novelist much like Martel but named Henry, who had great success with a novel about animals, much like *Life of Pi*, writes a new book that combines essay and novel in a single volume, both treating the Holocaust as their central theme. The Martel-like novelist is then totally shot down by his publisher, gives up writing, and moves to a new and unnamed city with his wife, Sarah.

There, with the financial success of his previous book allowing him to eschew the struggle to make a living, he abandons writing in favour of amateur theatrics, music lessons, work in a cafe, adopting pets, and answering his fan letters. One of these letters comes from a fellow writer also named Henry, who is working on a play but is stuck. He sends an excerpt from his play, a completely charming bit of dialogue where one character attempts to explain to the other what a pear is like. He also sends an exceptionally gory story about the murder of animals, by Flaubert.

From the return postmark, our Henry sees that the other one lives in the same city. For reasons that didn’t make complete sense to me, the protagonist answers his letter and decides to hand deliver it. He finds himself at an ornate (and ornately described) taxidermy shop, drawn into conversation with his correspondent.

On the one hand, I’m embarrassed that it has taken me so many words to describe this simple setup, but on the other hand, the novel could be seen as little more than what I’ve described above. The rest of the book consists mainly of descriptions of the taxidermy shop (I loved these until I hated them; they go on and on), dialogue with the taxidermist, and scenes from his play. The play, pear scene above notwithstanding, is a grim metafiction about two creatures–a howler monkey named Virgil and a donkey named Beatrice–who have endured horrific events perpetrated against animals in general and themselves in particular–trying to find a way to tell their story. They name the events “The Horrors” and compile a lists of ways to remember them.

Beatrice and Virgil are not exactly real to me, but Martel brings them into my head if not into life in a way that’s affecting. Affecting enough that at the terrifying end of their story, I turned my face from the page in genuine horror.

Michiko Kakutani’s NY Times review of this book makes much of Martel’s “derivative recycling” of Samuel Beckett’s *Waiting for Godot*, a play I think has enough spacious genius within it for many retellings (I’m glad Kakutani hasn’t read this). Martel’s characters have more obvious tenderness for each other (though I do believe Vladimir and Estragon love each other) but maybe the problem is that they aren’t different *enough* for some. I don’t know–because we only read snippets of the play, out of order and incomplete, I find it very hard to criticize these sections. Much as I liked them, it was hard to fully enter Beatrice and Virgil’s experiences, because of all the meta-y double-lensing.

I didn’t do much better understanding the life and experience of our protagonist, Henry. The literary blow from his publishers–and his confidence-bordering-on-cockiness beforehand–sets things up as a kind of satire. The book never goes farther with the satire than those opening chapters, but the depth–shallowness–of characterization would’ve worked with satire. We know little more of Henry than his hobbies–certainly not where his interests in animals and the Holocaust come from. His wife, Sarah has no character at all and indeed almost never seen. The only truly affecting scene in the Henry sections is the death of his pets–I found that devastating, though nothing in his human relationships touched me. I sense that that was, to some degree, the point.

I am not entirely certain what “a novel of ideas” is, but i think that this sort of demi-character–half reliant on what we already know of the author, half only a carrier of plot and opinion–might be a signifier of one. And in that, I do find *Beatrice and Virgil* lacking. I wished I’d cared as much about the human characters as about the animals or, failing that, that the human characters hadn’t been so a large percentage of the book.

I didn’t read the reviews when this book came out but I went back and read a few online in preparation for writing this one. One thing that surprised me is that no one mentioned another very strange, very meta-y novel about another novelist struggling in the shadow of an early bestseller, who also connects crimes against animals to the Holocaust. JM Coetzee’s *Elizabeth Costello* is, like Martel’s book, concerned with representation, though perhaps more with *what* than *how*. That book asks a lot of different questions, though, and comes at them from many angles, whereas I felt *B&V* was pretty much stuck on one. More importantly to an emotional reader like me, Elizabeth lived in my mind as a real person struggling with a hard matter, whereas Henry always seemed a construct to me.

I don’t think *Beatrice and Virgil* a failed book, just an incompletely successful one, like *Self.* The writing is deft and absorbing, the bits of the play sometimes truly lovely, and lots of white space on the pages ensured I finished the book well before I was tired. I liked this book, though the ending was horrific without making enough sense to me to think of it further in any meaningful way. I really don’t know what the final section, “Games for Gustav” was *for*, you know? And I do feel that loss, for I think this novel is above all for thinking about.

If you’ve read the book, you’ll know the inscription in my copy–“To Rebecca, May you never have to play Game #13, Yann Martel”–is not entirely friendly. I have never met Mr. Martel–the giver of the gift got this signature for me–so it’s not personal, but it does seem to be a kind of challenge, words offered by an author concerned with something very different than being liked. That, if nothing else, is courageous.

This is the first book of my 2012 Off  the Shelf Challenge.

January 7th, 2012

The To Be Read 2012 Challenge

I really enjoyed the 2011 To Be Read Challenge from the Roofbeam Reader site; so much so that I’ve decided to do the 2012 one even though signups have closed and I can’t be an official participant. I think just having the list in mind will be enough to keep me reading.

I was pleased with the challenge because it got me to read books I bought or was given as gifts–therefore, books I had a good reason for wanting to read–but was intimidated by and had been avoiding. The challenge also got me to do another thing I should do but get intimidated by, which is review. There is no better way to study and understand a book than to form a cogent piece of writing about what you think of it. And I seriously doubt I would’ve written 12+ reviews, and thus been 12+ reviews smarter, last year if this list hadn’t been pushing me. So let’s do it again.

The first two books will the alternates from last year–those were no less desirable than the others on the list, just farther down the shelf and thus listed last. Ok, here we go:

1. *Little Eurekas* by Robyn Sarah
2. *Subways Are for Sleeping* by Edmund G. Love
3. *Hamlet* by William Shakespeare (illustrated version by Harold Copping)
4. *The Story of English* by Robert McCrum, William Cran, and Robert MacNeil
5. *Beatrice and Virgil* by Yann Martel
6. *The Bull Is Not Killed* by Sarah Dearing
7. *Small Change* by Elizabeth Hay
8. *The Beauty Myth* by Naomi Wolf
9. *Moon Deluxe* by Frederick Barthelme
10. *A Nail in the Heart* by Ian Daffern
11. *Mouthing the Words* by Camilla Gibb
12. *The Book of Other People* edited by Zadie Smith
13. *On the Road* by Jack Kerouac

Alternates
14. *Burning Ground* by Pearl Luke
15. *The Pickup Artist* by Terry Bisson

Wish me luck!

December 22nd, 2011

Liking: Not Just for Facebook

While I’ve been completely dug under with horrible work, some things I wrote early, before the weight of the world crushed me, have been going up online. Good to remember my more positive days!!

A book I like, on the Advent Book Elf: And Also Sharks by Jessica Westhead

A journal I like, on The Literary Type blog: The New Quarterly

A website I like likes me back: Salty Ink’s Top 10 Canadian Books of Short Fiction

An artist I like: Marc Chagall and the Russian Avant Garde. Ok, that’s not online, but if you have a chance to see the exhibit at the Art Gallery of Ontario, go. So good, so joyful.

Also, hey, it’s Hanukkah, and almost Christmas, and the weather is nice. I still have so much to do but I think I can be the light (candles? twinkle lights?) at the end of the tunnel, and it’s sparkly.

December 19th, 2011

The Year in Books

I read a lot, and I never feel like I’m reading enough. Everyone is always talking about some book I’ve never heard of, or worse, some book I’ve heard of a thousand times and want to read but haven’t gotten to yet. I am perpetually behind in my periodicals, searching for the next book-club book, seeing reviews of stuff I need to pick up, attending launches and buying those books, being overwhelmed when my library holds finally come in, and then cruising past a “new releases” table at the library or bookstore and going, “Hey, what’s this?”

I would not, of course, have it any other way. I’ve read more this year than ever before (since I started keeping track in 2006) but still not nearly enough. Lots of bloggers run reading stats just to see, and I never have but it looks like fun, so I did it this year, just for those I read cover-to-cover only; I don’t count it if I skim or flip or don’t finish.

I categorized by genre (anthologies, novels, non-fiction, short stories, YA, graphic, and poetry, and then again by author genre. I don’t know why I picked these categories, except that they seemed obvious. I had meant to do national categories as well, but I realized I don’t know where all my authors are from, some move around, and I actually don’t care.

I’m not posting the math because I couldn’t actually make the two sets of numbers total the same, which is embarrassing but not worth doing all the math a third time to see what the problem is. I would approximately 85 books, about half of those prose fiction. Surprises? Yeah, that the poetry and graphic novel numbers were so lame (guess I know what my reading resolutions will be), that gender parity is perfect (the book I have in hand is by a dude, so I guess the scales could tip). On the other hand, I am not surprised that the YA number is low; I respect the genre but I rarely enjoy it, and I don’t think I’m going to resolve to read more, at least not this year. The non-fiction number is respectable but it’s also kind of a lie, containing narrative non-fic like *Black Like Me* in the same category as wedding planning guides (yes, I read them cover-to-cover; I can’t help it).

This was a curious exercise, and it proves some blind spots (not least of which are my math). I might try to reflect on the year more qualitatively in my next post–ie., a best-books-this-year post. The quantitative method doesn’t seem to be doing to much for me.

December 17th, 2011

Rose-coloured Reviews *Songs for the Missing* by Stewart O’Nan

I have been working in publishing for way too long not to read all the extra book bits no one cares about. Card page, acknowledgements, note about the type, copyright page–I’m on it. And that page of quotations from reviews some poor intern who hasn’t read the book cobbled together (that was me, once)–that too, though since this only happens once I’ve purchased it, there’s no point.

In fact, it can be problematic to sit down with a brand new reading project and start with 7 or 8 contextless statements on it’s extreme brilliance. Songs for the Missing by Stewart O’Nan was an extremely well-reviewed book and had 26 such statements, and I daresay I would’ve like it better had I not had my expectations overwrought by promises such as “As we read, we, too, are changed, and in ways we cannot even understand.” (San Francisco Chronicle) or “O’Nan is on a kind of mission to restore a simple, true sense of humantiy to the novel” (The New York Times Book Review)

After getting about halfway through the book, I actually followed up and read the whole of some of those reviews, and found that the excerpts were largely faithful to the wholes; this book is pretty universally adored. So at this point I just feel stupid for not really liking it all that much.

I’m not immune to the achievement of this novel. It’s about a family and a community suffering, waiting, and mourning when 17-year-old Kim Larsen goes missing. I understood that the author loved his characters and wished for a happier story than he could write for them–always a stunner to see that kind of restraint in writing. And the book felt very true: O’Nan never stooped to melodrama, never exaggerated or sugar-coated.

However: I never felt I knew the characters; even when I was terribly sad for them, it was more the many left-behind of the missing that they *represented* that I was sad for. Kim’s parents, Ed and Fran, never seemed to come alive for me, and her friends and boyfriend were little more than teenaged *types*.

I think the problem might have been one of ambition–there are six points of view in this novel, and it covers more than three years, so I never really felt that anything had been portrayed with the sort of depth I wanted.

But let’s back up and work through the book as a whole. The chapters are narrated in third-person-limited. That first one is from Kim’s perspective. It’s only after you read the whole of the book and come back that you realize how gorgeous this opening is, how perfect and elegaic it is, the only part I thought that was consciously poetic, without ever seeming to be. Kim’s viewpoint seemed honest, irreverent and flip as a person who doesn’t know she’s about to disappear. I completely got her character, though I didn’t necessarily like her.

And then she does disappear, from the narrative and from the world. I only picked up halfway through the book that the characters only got a narrative viewpoint when they were in the small town of Kingsville where it was set, or planning to go there imminently. It’s not giving too much away to say that, after the first chapter, Kim isn’t in Kingsville anymore, so we don’t get her POV.

The other points of view that take over after are Kim’s mom, dad, sister, best friend, and boyfriend. I thought it was telling that a number of reviews mentions that the point of view of *two* of Kim’s friends were used, but they weren’t: Nina gets a POV, Elise doesn’t, but the characters appear interchangeable until quite late in the story so it is very hard to keep it straight.

The pace of the novel is gut-wrenchingly slow, because the pace of a missing person’s investigation is, too, or at least feels that way to those waiting. I was bored, but I was pretty sure I was supposed to be bored; it was accurate for the situation being described.

Some of the various blurbage on the book described it as a kind of procedural, and not that I’ve read many of those but I don’t think it is. Big swaths of the investigation are ignored because the family isn’t actually privy to what goes on; the police/family relationship isn’t good. Again, that felt accurate if the book is a kind of procedural of how to be the family of the missing, which includes a lot of grace under condescension and forced ignorance.

There were some weird errors that I caught–Old Navy isn’t an expensive store and the Killers aren’t a British band. That made me worry about the facts I didn’t know enough to catch errors in, like…what the police did and when, and what the Larsens’ legal options were. The errors I mention here are trivial, but they were important in that they made me trust the narrative less, and thus distance myself from it–never a good thing.

As well, particularly at the beginning and the end, there were lots of things going on that the reader is never fully aware of even though the family is, and we certainly don’t know the exact procedures of the officials involved, even when our various narrators are well-involved. The narrative flits through time, and I often would’ve liked more detail about, say, Fran’s community organizing, but the story skips to focus on flirtations between Kim’s old friends.

This review is probably sadly revealing of my own goals as a writer. I like to live with my characters in what feels like real time–the framing of the story is the decision to write about it, and I don’t like the reader to feel her chin being nudged, “Look at this, no, *this,* this is what’s important and the rest doesn’t matter.” O’Nan is not embarrassed to nudge, to elide and emphasize what he sees as important.

So I never understood why the drug connection Kim and her friends had couldn’t be properly explained; the stigma lingers until the last page but I never figured out exactly what they did. For a while this is a secret so people are afraid to discuss openly, but after everyone knows, it’s still kept from the reader. Or it’s possible I’m just obtuse. Ditto the amount of obsessive detail about Ed’s readying of the first house he represents after he returns to work as a realtor following Kim’s disappearance. This section is so detailed that I was expecting him to find Kim’s body in the house’s basement, or something equally important. But there’s no obvious reason for these pages of emphasis–it drifts away and you don’t even find out what the house sells for, or if it sells at all. Very strange.

The ending is an anticlimax for both characters and readers as it would pretty nearly have to be, realistically, given all that has and hasn’t happened previously. O’Nan handles it with quiet aplomb–he doesn’t leave us quite without hope, but to the last, he doesn’t give us anything undeserved either. *Songs for the Missing* wasn’t really the book I wanted it to be, but nor was the reading of it in any way wasted time.

This was the 11th book in my To Be Read Challenge. One more to go before the end of the year!

November 12th, 2011

Rose-coloured Reviews the Giller Prize Show 2011

To watch last year’s Giller show, Mark and I had to head for someone else’s house, but this year through the power of live-streaming, we could watch at home and keep the kitten company. I have no idea if CTV had a live-streaming version of the Gillers, too, but the CBC one was hitchless–no hiccups or buffering issues. Lots (and lots) of commercials, but I guess that was the point.

So there we were with our smartpop, our wine, our kitten going insane under the desk, watching the camera roll over the vast and glittering crowd at the Four Seasons up to…Jian Ghomeshi?? Hooray, I love that guy. He was the host at the Writers’ Trust Awards the year I was a presenter, and he did a lovely, low-key, and charming job of it. What a shock to find that at the Gillers, right off the bat, Ghomeshi was unfunny!

Worse, as the show wore on, he seemed to be rolling his eyes at his own jokes. He’d kind of grimace, look down at his notes, make the joke quickly, and then say, “C’mon, c’mon, that’s funny, right?” It was all a lot more Fozzie-Bear-ish than I was expecting.

But that was the cumulative effect of the entire show–at the beginning he just seemed a little stiff as he introduced Lang Lang, who played something lovely on the piano and was, unique among the men I saw on the telecast, wearing an open-collared shirt.

The next segment was a bit from the judges, talking about how hard it was to read so many (140+) nominated books. One of the judges (I don’t know who any of them were except Annabel Lyon–always nice to see her) said, “All of the books had something about them that made them worthy of the prize,” or something along those lines. “They’re talking about my book!” I squealed. (Full disclosure: I have no idea if *The Big Dream* was put forward for the Giller, I just know that–technically–it was eligible.)

Like last year’s event, things moved along at a good clip, and as I recall after that we got pretty much directly into the book presentations. As with last year’s, the presentaters were a random assortment of vaguely famous non-book-related people. The first one, “international celebrity” Lisa Ray was no one I’d heard of and her telepromtation delivery of the introduction to David Bezmozgis’ novel did not make me want to investigate further. Nelly Furtado, Robbie Robertson, and that guy from Hedley did slightly better jobs, but still–who cares? I seriously doubt anyone who was not going to watch the show would see an advert and say, “Hey, Nelly Furtado is not singing, but is speaking for 120 seconds? I’m so there.” As for me, who was looking forward to the show, there’s pretty much no one whose literary opinion I respect less than the Hedley guy’s, and I consider myself *un*curmudgeonly among litsy types–why not cater to your audience?

Weirdly, the only presenter who did such a good job that I believe (a) that he was speaking extemporaneously, and (b) that he had read the book, was Ron MacLean introducing *The Antagonist* by Lynn Coady. Mark explained that he is some sort of hockey commentator, and he certainly spoke bomastically, but also with genuine enthuasiasm for the book and its author, whom he address directly, as “Lynn”–he also said he was going to call her parents and congratulate them. If all the presentors had been like that, I could’ve forgiven their literary irrelevance.

I should admit that Michael Ondaatje’s book *The Cat’s Table* was introduced last and, though I genuinely liked the excerpt in the New Yorker, by that point I was not paying attention. I don’t even know who introduced it. Part of the problem was that the kitten had become increasingly destructive, flipping a folder off the desk and sending a plume of papers into the air, followed by partially eating a little rubber thing that could not be subsequently identified. But also, there was the fact that I was freaking bored.

The best parts, as last year, were the personal interviews with the authors. This year’s however had shucked off the lame invasive aspects–showing the writers with their partners and kids–in favour of actually focussing on the books, and writing in general. They had also left off the syrupy natural settings (strolling beside a river, anyone?) in favour of a really nice, book-lined studio, the same one for all six. The questions were interesting if not overly intellectual, and the editor kept in only the bits where the authors sounded thoughtful and smart. I liked last year’s pieces very much, but these were far better–weirdly, making the setup less personal allowed the authors’ personalities to come through far better. I was especially impressed with what Coady said about what the reader owes the book (nothing) and what Zsuzsi Gardner said about why she writes (to comment on the world). I also liked that the writerly questions were folded in with the life ones, so that no one was stuck standing in front of a white wall just after the commercials, talking about what is their muse. Really well-done segments, all six (fine, I didn’t really watch Ondaatje’s–the cat was trying to dig through the floor).

I said it last year and I’ll say it again–why are there no readings at the Gillers? The Oscars show clips, the Tonys show song-and-dance numbers, the Grammys have songs, the Gillers have…that Hedley guy reading the back cover bumpf. These are supposed to be our country’s best crafters of words–how come some speech-writer is crafting everything that’s said in the awards presentation? And if the worry is that the authors themselves would be too nervous and unprofessional for a CBC telecast, one could certainly hire actors to read passages–they’d be cheaper than Robbie Robertson, I’m guessing. Although I vastly prefer to see how a writer reads his/her own work, and anyway, this year the writers didn’t even get to stand up on tv (except the winner) and I wanted to see what they were wearing.

And while I’m ranting, with all the serious, respected, professional criticism and reviews that has been written about these 6 books, why was the only quotation in the broadcast of Nelly Furtado’s tweet that she was “consumed” by *Half-Blood Blues*?? WHO ARE THEY TRYING TO APPEAL TO???

Deep breath. Esi Edugyan won. I’ve only read Better Living through Plastic Explosives and The Antagonist (and loved both) but Mark read *Half-Blood Blues* and assured me it was strong novel and a worthwhile winner…though he, like me, was pulling for Coady’s novel. And Edugyan gave a calm, sweet speech and also is absolutely stunning, so it was pleasant to watch her (though for some reason I STILL couldn’t see what she was wearing).

So though we were happy enough with the outcome and were glad these 6 books were celebrated, I found the broadcast of the Gillers extremely lame and unrepresentative of the glorious books it was supposed to be showcasing. And there were *so many* commercials. I haven’t watched broadcast TV with any kind of regularity in nearly a decade, and almost never with my partner, and it turns out there is a strange kind of silence that comes the first time you watch a yeast-infection-treatment advert together…which was probably the most memorable part of the experience.

September 22nd, 2011

Wowsers

Well, the event on Tuesday was just about perfect! So many of the people I adore and admire were there, and I got to talk to many of them. We had great cookies (thanks, Jane) and cupcakes (thanks, Kerry) and so-so muffins (I have a weird oven, ok?) I did a lot of hugging. And then–yes there’s more–came the formal part of the evening, where Kerry Clare showed that cupcake-baking is the least of her gifts, and conducted a thoughtful and fun on-stage interview with me. She also managed to cross her legs whilst sitting on her high barstool, a stunt I simply could not manage.

Beyond baking and balancing, Kerry is brilliant because her questions are so intimate with the text, so much the opposite of the stock, ask-any-writer style of interview questions (“How much of your work is autobiographical? Do you write in the mornings or evenings? Who are your influences?”) And the questions at any given interview (she’s done lots) are tailored to the form, content, and style of the writer, so even when the questions were hard (no softballs at all), I was very interested in answering them for myself.

And then, after Rupert from Ben McNally Books, who did a superb job running the whole event, fixed the mike for me, I did a brief reading. Now that some people out there actually have the book I can say it was the beginning of the story “Research” and expect that someone might know what I mean! And yes, I did read far enough to say the “orgasm” to a room full of friends, strangers, my colleagues and my parents. It was a milestone of sorts.

And then more talking, a lot of book-signing, absolutely no more baked goods because they’d all been eaten, and lots and lots of fun! By the end of the night, it was down me and Mark and Dan, my publisher, and a few very lovely friends who helped me get every drop of celebration out of the evening possible. I never wanted to go home, because then the party would be over and it was so so so fun!

At my first launch, my edited John Metcalf warned me that it would never be so wonderful again, but I do think this evening was, in a certain light, just as good. It wasn’t as new, but the benefit of that was that I wasn’t as insane. I’ve had 3+ years of book events and stage fright and making bookish friends and I have, in words no one ever said but I’m sure a few were thinking, finally calmed the hell down. Oh, I was totally wired before the event, and pretty well afterwards, but I was able to have genuine conversations with people and enjoy them, and be somewhat aware of my surroundings.

So yes, a thrilling night. My only regrets are the people I didn’t get a chance to talk to in the flurry, and that the kitten had to spend 16 hours by himself that day and was hysterical when we got home. Oh, and the big one is that I cavelierly handed my purse to my dear friend Scott and instructed him to take the camera out and photograph the event, not realizing that the camera had fallen out and would spend the evening under the table. I’m really sorry for making you rummage through all my stuff for naught, Scott–thanks anyway! And I did eventually *find* the camera, so I’m not out $200.

However, I have no pictures, so if you were at the event and took a few, could you send’em my way? I’ll post them here with credit, of course, and it’s definitely worth 100 bonus points to me to have them. (Also, 30 points if you id who the title of this post is stolen from.)

Thanks to all who attended, who hugged and well-wished and book-bought, and ate cookies and stayed late. And to those who couldn’t but sent faraway wishes nonetheless. I’m a lucky, lucky writer!

August 23rd, 2011

The End of the Cohabitational Reading Project

Mark has really covered the wrap of the Cohabitational Reading Project: the boredom, the improbability, the strangely tepid wind-down of over 600 pages. The second half–well, latter two-thirds, really–of this book reads like a sad sophmore follow-up to a brilliant first novel. Only in this case, the “first” novel is part of the same book. The beginning of Owen Meany really is wonderful and deserving of much praise. I had wondered why I remembered the early bits 10 years later with such vibrancy, but couldn’t recall anything from the later sections. It turned out I remembered the good stuff.

On the topic of the Project itself–good fun. I did sometimes feel bad when M was 50 pages ahead of me and urging me to catch up when I wanted to nap, but by and large it was really nice to be sharing the experience and talking it over every day. I think we’re both happy to be choosing our own reading matters for the next little while, but I’m sure while try a sequel CRP at some point.

Anyone who has thoughts or opinions on Owen Meany, John Irving, reading with your partner, etc., feel free to share!