my life in books

His Whole Life by Elizabeth Hay 

this is a talented author that knows how to set a scene and tell you everything you need to know to understand a character - like Nan is on her 2nd marriage and her hubby is on his 3rd so it's obvious that their connection to each other would be tenuous, temporary, and convenient. They live in both the US and Canada, straddling both worlds as a couple, but each actually identifies more strongly with separate sides. comparing the feeling of separation within her marriage to the Quebec referendum was brilliant. and topical: everything that she says about how the rest of Canada treated Quebec could be applied to today's first nations' complaints. and this repetitive theme that men in your life will punish you but think they aren't. when we finally come to the last example - nan being written out of the her husband's will after 3 years of caregiving - the rage and frustration and shame is fully felt because we've stayed with Nan this whole journey. and even if she could legally argue the will away, what does that even matter? it's the fact he did it that you never to live with (and can't simply render down to demonizing him; he's was her son's father). and that another fine character - the son. so introspective, so concerned with how the world saw his father and conflicted with his feelings of ownership and embarrassment of him. 

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi 

what a heartache of a story, a true story. ready to graduate from med school as a neurosurgeon and given the diagnosis of stage 4 lung cancer. the author was a well read man who might have pursued English literature so he is qualified to write, and write well - especially about the beginnings of his life, his choice of what to study, a description of what med school was like, and his evolution of the patient/doctor relationship. I fear he must have died before he had a chance to finish the philosophy part; it wasn't as cohesive as the memoir section. anyhow, fierce is interested in becoming a doctor and I think the first half of the book is an excellent overview of what choosing medicine will look like, in practical terms. 

Liar by Justine Larbalestier 

actually my third time reading it :) in my quest to get Bosco reading, I am giving him books I have read and know well. this was 'Pushed on You' #1. Twisted by Laurie Halse Andersen is #2 (for the relatable male teen protagonist) and Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (to revisit the unreliable narrator concept and have it explode) is #3. anyhow, yes, the unreliable narrator. Liar was my first experience and it was for bosco too. he felt quite frustrated in not being able to believe the story, ready to throw the book across the room many times. for myself, I could so easily see the crumbs the author leads to the 'is she?' or 'isn't she?' that I feared the ending was telegraphed. but no, Bosco didn't even notice the alternative interpretation until I pointed it (and read it) out. I think Life of Pi would be good for him for that alternative way to read it... but after Gone Girl, I think some light fare - like the 100 Year Old Man who Climbed Out the Window - will be in order 

The Perfect Nanny by Leila Slimani 

supposedly the first 'must read' of 2018, this slim novel is direct in description, but aloof in emotion. it opens with an Albert Camus hook: "The baby is dead." so we have the ending, and the author doesn't get too bogged down in endearing details about the children who will be dead by the end. yet, one cannot be melancholy to read ANY mundane details about them. knowing what is to come. 

I can't say the whole thing held together well, but there were many sharp observations to the push & pull of motherhood, the unspoken racism/classism, the resentment and suspicion of dependency. it is obvious that the nanny is suffering from a mental illness in the end, but it's not truly explained how it started. and to mention, in one sentence after she is far gone, that she was in a hospital once is too little too late. wouldn't this information have surfaced earlier, even the nanny's own recollections? 

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas 

using the Trayvon Martin case as a template, this is told from the perspective of a girl present at the time of the racially motivated shooting. I did not relate to the writing style and language used by most of the characters but maybe it's best that I think some of them were base, and not deserving of a hero's platform, because that might be the very point: it's still not a valid reason to kill someone. 

that said, it's not a good book, yup, it's a bestseller but that's a reaction to the over-the-top brutality and racism of the police force being fictionalized and presented to young readers who NEED to know this sh*t has happened and is happening. it's almost a given that we will care about the issues presented; but a good author makes us care about the characters. isn't that the most important part? the humanizing aspect of inhabiting those characters inside a novel? this first time novelist is in for a pile of hurt when her 2nd novel is proclaimed as immature, cliché, and boring. 

The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton 

I am mostly proud of myself that a managed the full 830pages (the final 500 over the coarse of 3 days no less!) in time for bookclub, though I fear no other member will have finished it. 

it opened as a hint to a ghost story and quickly turned into a game of 'Clue' set in New Zealand during the goldrush. each chapter revealed a meandering and non-chronological telling of one man's perception of a trio of events (a whore's apparent attempt at suicide, a hermit's death, and the disappearance of a young, rich man) and it was with great dismay I found that the final chapter of this first part was the interloper's summation of all the men's stories: in other words, the first 340 pages were redundant in the space of the next 20. 

all the chapters were subheaded in an astrological way (which meant nothing to me) and alluded to the supernatural aspects of the story that were never really explained or tidied up. at the heart of the tale it would seem that the whore and rich man are halves of a whole: he takes a drug to become unconscious and she collapses, she gives up opium easily when he assumes a dependency, she shoots herself and he receives the bullet...) all of it nonsense, and the 12 players would be privy to these irrational details, so why would they go along with it? just to get the obviously criminal man? to be assured suspicions weren't cast upon them? 

The Coincidence Makers by Yoav Blum 

this is another philosophy come fiction book written by an non-author (think Hector and the Search for Happiness). it was so-so. the blurb on the back, telling us the world is run by these coincidence makers, struck me as an expansive 'Annoy Kaufman Inc' (a New Yorker humourous, short piece) but this was firmly in the romance genre, even as it deconstructs the idea of romance. and this is why it was simply so-so: you cannot have a book discount love as a chemical reaction as well have an actual romance; they cancel each other out. The Escape Artist by Brad Meltzer the organizer of the royal city readers, when I first met her, said she only read genre books and not literary fiction. I wasn't sure of the difference (and was informed - after hearing a list of my most recent reads - that I only read literary fiction) but now I can completely see the appeal of the genre when done well. this was a real page turner, an exciting story full of interesting characters. most chapters opened like a movie, right in the middle of a juicy plot. and there were some choice tidbits about the aftermath of 9-11 and the routine job of an army mortician that were fascinating. I haven't been this carried away by a frivolous mystery/thriller since The Davinci Code. 

The Stars are Fire by Anita Shreve 

otherwise know by it's other title: The Book is Crap. Lordy! it started off well, setting the scene for the large & famous fire thru Maine. the protagonist, Grace, is in a shaky marriage and the way in which she preps for the disaster (foolishly) and survives the flames (miraculously) were fascinating. even the aftermath was sufficiently serious, but then everything just clicks into place. no one she loves dies. the hubby is gone but she's happy about that. she mother shows up, has a place for them to stay, and then she finds her dead mother-in-law's mansion was untouched by flames and has a dreamy piano player squatting inside. she gets a job lickety-spilt (her mom to watch the kids), a car and a life and is somehow a modern 1990s woman (with the au-courant views on feminism, racism and lesbians) hubby/monster returns, craps over her new life and she leaves him with the convenient wealth found in the mother-in-law's house. ridiculous! the choice of language was modern (you want me to wipe your ass the rest of your life?) meanwhile it's set at the end of the 40s. wasted opportunity to explore this real event and how the devastation impacted the community at large, and this family specifically. 

The Book Thief by Markus Zuzac 

my second time reading it, and it was just as powerful as the first time.

truly, this author has a talent for clobering us - the reader - with emotions, and yet it never feels sentimental or over-wrought. and i'm just now realizing that it's probably his deft hand with language that allows this to happen - new words and word combinations that haven't been told/used over and over again and allow the pure thought/motion to escape before we can react with cynicism.

having grown up reading anne frank's diary of a young girl, and seeing WWII as a very unidirectional assault of one country on one people, this book widens the the scope to include the german people as victims of this war as well.

lastly, using 'death' as the omniscient narrator was a brilliant ploy: original in itself, it added an extra reminder of man's self-destruction (showing 'death' collecting soul from russia's deep cold) and allowed for a more current, modern commentary of the story being told.

North of Normal by Cea Sunrise Person 

memoir of a child growing up in the bush/Canadian forest with her hippie/naked/pot smoking grandparents, aunts and mother. lots of anecdotes but very little introspection. her later life was especially glossed-over and key changes never really addressed. lesson: don't write a memoir unless you actually want to tell people about your life 

An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green 

first off, it was hard to keep the author's life separate from the plot - Hank is the real life brother to the famous John Green, and rightfully an internet sensation (VlogBrothers, VidCon) on his own. so this meditation on fame and being 'viral' and turning a person into & maintaining a 'brand' (stuff in the novel) are all real things he has had to live thru and think about. the rest of the plot - an alien life coming to Earth and maybe going to destroy us all... well that stuff was just not as interesting to me. 

the details that were most *glaring* were the 'woke' details added to the characters without being integral to who they were: April's bisexual label, her black girlfriend, her gay assistant, the female US president - lots of lip service to an audience that might take offense that another straight, white male dares to write a book (why should we care what a cis white man has to say?) absolutely NONE of those details mattered, so why even add those adjectives? heck - show me, don't tell me. or better yet, write the story that describes people with no mention of gender or sexuality - just the content of their character. call them Pat or Terry or an ethnic name that doesn't come with assumptions. 

Not the End of the World by Kate Atkinson 

this was a collection of short stories that were occasionally linked thru characters, reminding me of Alice Munroe's short stories. at first I wasn't sure if it was dystopian/sci fi - the background of the stories could be SO weird (and dark) but realized it ws just her magical realism style just a little bit out of control. I usually love Kate Atkinson, but in these short pieces I finally noticed her predilection for item listing, and it sort of annoyed me, like she was cheating with the word count.