Valentines, feminists and fathers

You make me laugh, originally uploaded by The River Thief.

It's hard to believe it's been 20 years since my father died. This photo was taken when he was about the same age I am now, so I suppose it's an appropriate one to use for this post.

This version of the photo (which was, I believe, taken by cousin Douglas Ward), is cropped. In the photo my father is standing, looking down at my mother.

They had recently moved from Ottawa, my mother's home town, to Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, a village of about 3000 people 40 miles from Halifax.

My dad had been working for the federal government for quite some time, and despite a year-long French immersion course, it seemed unlikely he would ever be certified bilingual. Without that certification it was unlikely he'd ever get another promotion. I'm not so sure he really cared about that, but my mother certainly did. So when a unilingual English job came up in Halifax, he applied for and got it.

My parents rented an apartment in Dartmouth for the first year they were in Nova Scotia. It was the first time in a very long time they'd been tenants, and they couldn't seem to grasp the idea of paying rent or of sharing a building. They were on an emergency route, and were frequently awakened in the middle of the night by ambulances howling as they tore past the apartment building. Then there was the woman upstairs, who came home long after they'd gone to bed and would drop one of her shoes on the floor of her bedroom, waking them up. They'd wait in vain for her to drop the other shoe so they could go back to sleep.

After just over a year of this, they decided they'd had enough, and started looking for a place in the country, a little hobby farm from which they could commute. After looking at only three houses, they decided to buy an old, unrenovated Victorian full of antiques in Shubenacadie. It came with close to an acre of land, but in a long narrow strip that included a railroad right of way, and was next door to one of the remaining farms in the village.

I'll spare you the saga of the renovations and of the foolishness of the purchase, except to say that the house (while boasting some truly lovely Douglas fir woodwork, particularly a cathedral-ceilinged living/dining room and some primary coloured stained glass windows), had absolutely no insulation, was heated by an oil stove in the kitchen - and that the commute to Halifax took close to an hour. Oh, and that their purchase coincided with the OPEC oil crisis. All of a sudden the house didn't seem like quite the bargain they'd initially thought.

None of this matters, though. I'm musing about the irony of a tweet from Alain de Botton that I saw shortly after logging on to Twitter this morning, which is so singularly a propos I have to wonder if he's reading my mind.

'Perhaps the most unambiguous victory of feminism has been to ensure that fathers properly nurture their children.'

When I try to explain to people that my father was my primary caregiver, I'm often met with blank stares and certainly with a profound lack of understanding. It's not just that he - born in 1926 - pitched in on diaper changing (although one of his favourite stories to tell was how he'd changed my diaper on the glass counter of a Buffalo department store display case and how helpful the sales girl had been in this endeavour - hard to imagine this happening now, isn't it? 'We have washrooms for this purpose, SIR.')

My earliest memories are of my father singing me to sleep when I was still in my cot. I was diagnosed as hyperactive as a child, although it may just have been the result of a gluten intolerance I outgrew by the time I was seven. Certainly I had trouble getting to sleep and terrible insomnia until I was close to 30. My dad's repertoire consisted of Baptist hymns and the occasional popular song. 'Little White Church in the Vale' was one of his specialities, as were 'You Are My Sunshine" and 'Beautiful Beautiful Blue Eyes.' If you don't recognize the latter or are having trouble Googling it, look up 'Beautiful Beautiful Brown Eyes' instead - my father changed the title of the song and its lyrics since I was a very blue-eyed, blonde haired child at the time. One night he forgot to change the lyrics (he must have been tired) and I was inconsolable. He never made that mistake again.

Having taken a year's maternity leave when I was first born, my mother had returned to work. Initially we lived in an eccentric flat on the top floor of my grandmother's house, and she looked after me during the day. My father would often come home for lunch even then. After we bought our own house, there was no daycare, and my mother stayed home for a couple of years to look after me. I have almost no memories of this time at all (which I find a little odd, since I was almost five), except for one fierce argument in the kitchen of our new house in the Ottawa suburb of Alta Vista. My mother was determined that I wear my winter coat to school. I was determined that I would not. (It was January - in Ottawa - what was I thinking? Probably, 'you're not the boss of me!'). I believe my mother won that round.

According to her, I drove her back to work. Certainly if there were more arguments as ferocious as the one about the winter coat, I see her point. But in truth, she had always considered herself a feminist and a career woman. Domesticity wasn't her thing. Neither was motherhood, although she tried, in her own way.

My mother's return to work just as I started Grade Two posed numerous problems relating to child care. Day cares didn't exist at the time. We lived only two blocks from my elementary school. School didn't start till 9AM - but both my parents had to be at work by 8:30. That problem was easily enough solved - I'd just stay at home for half an hour or so after they both left for work. I got home from school by four o'clock. My cousin Marsha, in high school at the time, was hired to babysit me after school. Getting dinner started was also part of her job. There were a couple of times Marsha had something she had to do after school. In those instances, my Aunt Pearl swung into action and took us all - my cousin Sandy and her houseful of foster children - to the movies (I'm still not so sure Lawrence of Arabia or Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea were appropriate viewing for an eight year old, but never mind).

But because we lived so close to the school, they wouldn't let me take my lunch - I had to go home, and the school was adamant at the time - they were educators, not babysitters. So be it.

Eventually my parents came up with a solution. My father would come home to make me lunch every day. He'd already started making breakfast every day when my mother went back to work. He seemed to love the problem solving inherent in the timing of bacon, eggs, toast and coffee, and within a few weeks he had the whole thing sorted out. Lunch wasn't anywhere near as difficult a challenge - soup and sandwich doesn't require the same kind of precise timing as bacon and eggs.

When I got sick - and I had most of the usual childhood illnesses, perhaps more until I had my tonsils out the summer I was eight - my maternal grandmother was always there for us. 'Bring the baby over here, I'll look after her,' she'd say. When I got scarlet fever, her house had to be quarantined. I was isolated in the apartment upstairs, and everyone had to take penicillin. This was, I thought, suitably exciting and exotic.

I'm not sure why he first got involved with the bicycle safety workshops - whether that was preceded by his joining the Parent Teacher Association (PTA) or not. I know there'd been a child from my public school who'd been killed by a car because the Elmo the Safety Elephant flag was permanently lowered at my public school. But the bicycle safety workshops became an annual spring event, and my dad was always both the behind-the-scenes organizer and front and centre in delivering the workshops.

He initially got involved with the PTA because I was having trouble in school - not my grades, but with my grade two teacher. I'm not sure what the first warning sign was, but I do remember a fuss at the Christmas party over the teacher not believing something I'd said and demanding a letter from my parents to confirm I was telling the truth. When my father started digging into what was going on in the classroom, he was told by the principal that yes, they realized she was a bad teacher, but that she had so much seniority no one could touch her. Yes, I could be transferred to another class, but it would mean my leaving the accelerated program, which was the alternative to skipping a grade - we spent about seven months in each of grades one through four rather than 10, and sped through four years of school in three.

My father was enraged on my behalf. And he started digging into the issue. He joined the PTA. And he discovered at least half a dozen other children who were having trouble with our grade two teacher. Some of them had started bedwetting. Others had broken out in stress rashes. Some were having nightmares. A few were suddenly getting average or poor marks, even though they'd done significantly better in kindergarten and grade one.

Eventually grade two ended (although it was the beginning of grade three for me part-way through the year). My father stayed on the PTA. Eventually he became its president. Other than the bike safety workshops and reassuring other parents that their children weren't mentally ill, I'm not sure what he did there.

What I do know though is that the effort my father made during those five or six years was extraordinary. I don't know many men who'd be willing to step up to the plate to the extent he did. Between the breakfast and the lunch making (and supervision), the PTA meetings and driving my babysitter cousin home, he must have put in at least four hours a day devoted solely to my welfare and nurturing. Somehow he never made any of it seem like a chore. He never made me feel that he resented doing any of the things he did, that he'd rather be having lunch with a colleague or even just having a sandwich at his desk, just as he never made me feel he'd rather be watching TV, reading a book, or even enjoying adult companionship with my mother those nights he'd sing me to sleep. Most important, he never made my mother or me feel that what he was doing was 'women's work' or in any way unnatural - even though my mother was one of a grand total of only two 'working' mothers among my classmates.

After a series of cerebral hemorrhages in his early 60s, my father had severe anomia and became an expert at circumlocution. My mother and I would ask him what he'd had for lunch, and he'd say, 'A round thing on another one of those round things.' We were puzzled by this, but confident he'd eaten something. I decided to spend some time with him before he died, and moved back in with my parents when I was in my early thirties. It was difficult for all of us, but in some ways it was worth it. I'd taught myself how to cook after leaving home, and the brain damage my father had sustained had made him a lot less resistant to vegetarian cooking (his attitude when I'd cooked meatless meals before he got sick was, 'It's good, but there isn't any meat in it.'). I made him a curry once and he ate it with relish, saying, 'Oh, I like this - it has those little round animals we never used to eat before you came to stay with us.' I never open a can of chick peas to this day without thinking of their alternate name.

With only spotty occupational therapy, he wasn't comfortable using the phone after he got sick and never initiated calls. My mother would call me and put him on the phone. He'd forgotten the conventions of telephone conversation, and no longer knew he was supposed to say hello at the start of conversations and goodbye at the end. Instead he'd say, 'I love you.' I never minded.

There's something fitting about the fact that he died on Valentine's Day. If I'd ever needed an excuse to celebrate a made-up holiday that I find intensely hypocritical in an alternative way, his death gave me a permanent out. What I learned from my dad is that there's nothing passive or commercial about love. It's a noun, but it's also an active verb. It's something you show people 365 days a year, whether it's making the tea or shining someone's shoes for them or just being there for them, letting them know you're on their side and that they're not alone in the world. It's not about roses and diamonds and champagne.

Thank you for teaching me that, Dad.

Allan Frederick Seeley
May 21, 1926 to February 14, 1991

Canada Reads 2011 - Day Three, Final Round

As part of the Canada Reads format changes this year (again, more to come on the whole subject of Canada Reads itself and how it differed from previous years later), the debates were compressed into a three-day span, with a vote to eliminate the third book of the five happening early in the third show and then the final elimination vote happening towards the end of the hour.

Here's the recap:

After the surprising revelation that Debbie Travis had been unable to finish Terry Fallis' The Best Laid Plans on Tuesday's show, she came in for a lot of heat on Twitter. Frankly I felt sorry for her. If you dislike a book enough to not easily be able to finish it, you must really dislike it a lot. And if you've given 100 pages or more of it a try, even judging duties shouldn't mean you have to finish it. There were some really ugly tweets about Debbie. I found them rather sad. (Is now the time to mention that I'm still 13 pages from the end of Madame Bovary and have been since 1973? I tried to reread it recently because it was one of the books on the Kobo reader I'd bought and I just couldn't do it. I still hate that book, and I don't have to finish it to know why I hate it.) Anyway, like the conscientious new Canadian she is, Debbie got off Twitter fairly early yesterday afternoon, vowing to finish reading The Best Laid Plans (I could hear her thinking, 'even though it might kill me').

Ghomeshi introduced the final round of this year's Canada Reads as 'Canada's Annual Title Fight.' (There's a reason I'm emphasizing the way the show bills itself which won't become obvious till I do my 'What's Canada Reads All About?' post - which may not bear that exact title.) To save myself a little typing and italicization time, I'm going to use abbreviations this time around for both the panelists/host and the books themselves.

JG - Jian Ghomeshi
GL - Georges Laraque
DT - Debbie Travis
SQ - Sara Quin
AV - Ali Velshi
LC - Lorne Cardinal

TBLP - The Best Laid Plans by Terry Fallis
TBC - The Bone Cage by Angie Abdou
Unless is short enough to type and italicize
EC - Essex County by Jeff Lemire
TBH - The Birth House by Ami McKay


JG asked GL how he felt about the elimination of TBC on Tuesday's show. GL responded that he takes everything personally, plays to win and that he thought he'd finish third at the worst. He also said he'd a deal with Debbie (this apparently had been revealed on yesterday's show - somehow I missed that). That's ok though, said GL, 'I know her, I know where she works.'

DT said, 'It's not Survivor .... This is not about us. And this is not about the authors.... What we're looking for is the most gripping novel.'

GL pointed out that DT's having named Digger as her favourite character in a nominated book other than the one she was championing, her voting against it was surprising.

JG said GL's announcement Tuesday that he was going to throw his weight behind TBLP had never been done before on Canada Reads.

GL asked why it was so surprising/shocking that he'd support a book that might help with the electoral process. (Since he's the deputy leader of the Green Party, that does make sense.) And was it more shocking than the news Debbie hadn't finished the book?

DT said she wasn't an athlete, a politician, or a singer. She described herself as, 'An ordinary person who likes a good read. That's all I care about. It's not about us. These authors are fabulous. What's important about this competition is getting Canadians to read...and getting them talking about books.'

DT described the reaction to her confession about not having finished TBLP as 'furious.' JG implied she should have realized people would be furious with her, because 'people are invested in these books. The Q is: if you didn't finish TBLP, why did you vote against EC and TBC?'

DT said she'd finished TBLP last night. She obviously hadn't changed her mind about it, saying that she didn't feel '... connected to the characters, found it confusing.' She said TBH is very similar to TBLP – people are fed up with politics but it's a good book to get people interested in politics. TBH isn't about politics, it's about democracy, and that democracy starts at our kitchen tables and it starts with women.

JG then told SQ she'd gone from loser on day one to king maker on day two, as a result of her having to break a tie - her vote against TBC meant the book was eliminated. SQ said mom called her to fill her in on the Twitter response and that she'd asked her mom, 'Do I look mean on TV?' She said she 'has a hard time being completely honest about these books. It's tough.' (Which I found quite an odd statement, but I think it goes to the point I made previously about her not quite getting what strategy is, which means she can't come up with a good one.)

JG asked SG, 'Do you have a strategy going into this?' To which she replied that she was impressed by Debbie and Ali and just genuinely loves Unless.

JG then asked AV about the fact that GL had crossed the floor in political fashion after AV and TBLP had taken some beatings during Tuesday's show.

AV said TBLLP was a call to action, that he'd run into Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi in the CBC building and that there was an example of, 'It's pie in the sky, it's not going to happen.' thinking being wrong. "Naheed Nenshi is a brown Angus McClintock,' said AV. JG pointed out that Nenshi was a willing candidate, then described TBLP as a satirical take on Ottawa politics and asked AV, 'You're at one of your CNN dinner parties. Austin Cooper asks you about TBLP. What do you say?'

AV said he'd talk about the fact that it's a book whose subject is the fact that 'all people want is fairness in democracy ... people don't think they're heard by their elected officials. You have to vote and you have to be involved.'

JG asked LC what he thought about all the Canada Reads drama. LC replied, 'I think it's exciting' and said his girl set him up with Twitter two days ago so she's tweeting on his behalf. (I presume he meant his daughter, not his wife/girlfriend/significant other.) 'The authors are top notch all the way around.'

JG quoted the first sentence of Unless. 'It happens that I'm going through a period of great unhappiness and loss right now.' LC pointed out that Shields 'also writes with very dry humour and depth and complexity ... you're taken out of yourself ....' (Finally someone mentions the humour in Unless! Because those letters Reta wrote but didn't send to various members of parliament were some of the funniest things I've ever read.)

JG said there'd be two debates today – after the first there'd be a vote to eliminate one book. After the second debate another book would be eliminated, leaving us with the winner.

JG pointed out that panellists had barely mentioned TBH except for DT defending and asked, 'Why is that?'

LC replied, 'we should talk about it. It is just a regional novel and folklore just being retold. It's about a very specific group of people ... there's been a lot of talk about it being about the Halifax explosion but that's actually a very brief section of the book - we spend more time in Boston than in Halifax.'

JG asked, 'It's too east coast for you?'

LC replied that it's not a life he's ever lived – he's never had to fish for cod – 'it's hard for me, being a prairie boy, to identify with this, except for the isolation.'

GL said, 'It is a good story, but we're talking about the essential book ... this book empowers women .... (not, presumably, men). He also said if he hadn't had to read it, he would have stopped. JG asked if GL was saying TBH didn't speak to men. GL replied that TBH shows how men were 100 years ago – you know men were bad then – it's empowering to read that book (for women).

DT said, 'This is ridiculous – you're both completely wrong. It's not just about women – not all the men [in TBH} are pigs.' (Which is something GL had said in earlier debates - rapists and pigs.)

SQ pointed out that Hart Bigelow is good. (No one mentioned Dora's brother Charlie.)

DT said she'd spoken to Ami McKay and that as a result of reading TBH, women are going into the medical profession, becoming nurses and midwives because of it. 'It's a book about community and we learn from this book. It's about a 19-year-old woman who's inspirational.' Women will read it and say, 'Well she did it.' DT also said it's important, given the shortage of trained medical professionals we're currently experiencing, and SQ agreed with her.

JG then said to AV, 'You and I are men. I found this book very powerful.'

AV replied that he'd first enjoyed TBH because it was great storytelling and that he'd like to see it made into a movie. 'Dora Rare is everyman – this remarkable strong woman – not respected for her youth, her gender, or her profession ... but wins her race.'

JG then asked the panellists what didn't work for them.

SQ said she didn't feel invested, that she liked the story and that the book should be read by men and women, although she didn't feel as moved by it as by some of the other books.

JG said, 'We spoke about TBLP. When it comes to Unless – it was written in the early part of the decade - times have changed.' He asked if Unless wasn't a bit of a feminist polemic that no longer resonates.

LC replied that he didn't think times have changed for women, women still aren't included in our day to day lives or in Parliament, the voice of women is not being heard. 'This book contains that voice – she whispers in your ear.' (Have to say, I have a whole new appreciation of Lorne Cardinal as feminist male after listening to these debates - go Lorne!)

JG asked if Shields' voice wasn't too heavy handed?

LC disagreed.

SQ mentioned that all the remaining books could be considered feminist and said that no one had touched on the fact that TBLP has a very strong feminist storyline – Angus'd dead wife was a prominent feminist - and said, 'that's the most inspiring thing about what's left of the books.'

JG revealed the results of the online voting, which indicated TBLP should be eliminated, then TBC (which would have left Unless as the winner). Now it's time to point out one of the flaws of the online voting process - which LC said on Tuesday he didn't trust. Just for fun I thought I'd see how the online voting process worked. To my dismay, I was able to 'vote off' TBLP three times on Tuesday - for no particular reason. After three votes I figure I'd proved my point, that the online voting process was totally skewed and its only real value was its potential psych-out factor when the panellists were told of the results.

GL voted to eliminate Unless (now this was odd really, given what he'd said about TBH throughout the entire contest and about the way DT had voted to eliminate TBC the day before).

LC voted to eliminate TBH.

AV voted to eliminate Unless

SQ voted to eliminate TBH.

DT voted to eliminate TBLP (which she should perhaps have done yesterday?).

Since this produced a tie, JG turned to the Canada Reads rules, which states that the panellist who hasn't helped to create the tie has the deciding vote. At which point DT recast her vote to eliminate Unless rather than TBLP, thus leaving only TBLP and TBH in contention.

JG then talked about the publication history of TBLP. When Terry Fallis first wrote TBLP, the literary agents and publishers all ignored him – this book was initially self published. Fallis submitted it for the Stephen Leacock award and it won. A week later he had a publisher. This 'sets up a bit of a David and Goliath situation. TBH is the best known book that's on the table – it's already a bestseller – should it be taken into consideration that one of these books has become an indie publishing sensation?'

SQ said it was important to note, but how a book's sold in the past doesn't and shouldn't matter – we're not being told to pick a book that hasn't done well – we're picking something we think is essential.

JG reminded people that when Timothy Findley's Not Wanted on the Voyage was up against Paul Quarrington's King Leary, there was a feeling that the Findley had had its due while King Leary (which was out of print at the time it was in contention) had won partly because it was felt it was a book that hadn't been appreciated sufficiently when it was first published.

DT said TBH and TBLP 'should be the last two books in the running. It's the same story. An essential book has to grip you. Both of them are talking to Canadians about "we want change and how do we do change?”' She said TBH is a democratic book about grass roots' which once meant sitting around your backyard fence or the kitchen table and now means Twitter and blogging. 'Women talk – we're losing that – we're losing our communities. There's no difference in being around a kitchen on the East Coast than in downtown Toronto. If either book wins, it's great because it's created talk.' (Thus obliquely attacking LC's point about TBH being too regional a story, which sadly seemed to end up being the fatal blow.)

JG asked again, 'The self published story – does it mean something at this point?'

AV said, 'Only insofar as it relates to the story. Both books are about aspirations – about becoming empowered – both are essential. TBH is about the issues that women face ... but this book is about the current thing that affects us most in the world – the context is different but that context swings things in favour of TBLP.'

GL asked what would change if everyone read both books? If they read TBH, people would learn that things have changed. But in Canada people don't vote. If people read TBLP this will change Canada. 'That's my job, to encourage people to vote more. Not voting is a bigger problem.'

SQ said, 'That's very hopeful – to think these books would be read by young people today.' And admitted she made the graphic novel debate about youth vs age. And seemed to regret having done so. (Good move, since she gets her MOTHER to read Twitter reactions to her.)

AV said surveys show that of the young people who don't vote, their biggest issue is they don't know enough about the system. He said he was almost as interested in finding the Angus McClintocks in this country as in having TBLP win the Canada Reads contest - he'd like to find five people who say 'that's interesting.'

SQ said she liked TBLP, thought it was great.

AV asked her if she might run for office. SQ said no.

DT picked up on the 'find five people them' and suggested she'd be happy if her championing TBH lead to finding five people who'd go into nursing, midwifery or become doctors.

SQ agreed both books were inspiring – but not to high school students. (Another mysteriously irrelevant remark, I thought. Takes a while to get a book onto a high school syllabus and personally I'd prefer folks keep reading their Shakespeare, but that's just me.)

DT then asked AV, 'How's your book doing in the book clubs? TBH is one of the top books in the book clubs.'

GL replied, 'Yes but mostly it's women reading.'

AV mentioned that both TBLP's protagonists were surrounded by strong women. And that there was a third strong woman in the book

JG then mentioned that Valentine's Day was approaching and asked the panellists which of the two remaining books they'd recommend to someone they loved.

LC said he'd give TBLP to his brother who's running in the next federal election because its descriptions of political machinations were humourous and you need a sense of humour when you get into the House of Commons.

SQ said she'd give TBLP to her dad, who reads newspapers rather than books, but would probably like TBLP.

GL said he'd give TBLP as a Valentine's gift, because of Angus's letters to his dead wife.

AV and DT were then given a few moments to make the final pitches for the books they were championing.

AV said TBLP 'made people laugh, it made me laugh, it made people cry at the same time. It can inspire you. This can help you understand more about it [the political process]. People can effect change. People can change things for women, for immigrants, for themselves.'

DT said, 'I think change begins at home. [TBH is] about a young woman – our young people are very lost today – this is a book that says, you can make it, you can have a voice – TBH is a bestseller – this is a book you cannot put down, male, female and young people as well.'

JG announced the final vote 'to make a book a bestseller.'

AV: voted to eliminate TBH

DT: voted to eliminate TBLP

GL: voted to eliminate TBH

SQ: voted to eliminate TBH

TBLP wins Canada Reads 2011

LC: voted to eliminate TBH

JG said this was 'kind of a remarkable turnaround.'

AV said, 'I hope it moves the needle a little bit to get people involved in the democratic process. Everybody really got behind this – we really accomplished something this week.'

DT said, 'the idea of this is fantastic – everybody should go out and get both books – if a book can inspire us – if we get a new nurse out of TBH, if we get a new politician out of TBLP - we all win.'

SQ said both arguments were very strong – she went back and forth re both books and stopped thinking of the debate as in terms of what she herself would read – 'this turned almost into a job' - but that since the most essential book of the last decade criteria had been given, TBLP fit that criteria.

LC said Terry Fallis is a fantastic author, TBLP a fantastic book, that he has a penchant for humour (everyone laughed at this, although Corner Gas has never succeeded in making me laugh), that he thinks Canada has a penchant for humour as well – 'look at all the talent we've exported to the US!'

JG said he had Terry Fallis on the phone.

Fallis said, 'If I'm sounding a bit muffled it's because I'm curled on floor of my third-floor library in the fetal position breathing into a paper bag. I haven't touched down yet. I'm amazed and truly grateful.' Then he told AV he might just write his biography now, that he thought AV had done an amazing job defending TBLP, and was passionate but polite. He said AV had really presented the merits of the novel effectively, which was tough to do given it was up against such wonderful books.

AV said, 'you and the other authors did the heavy lifting. To you and the other authors – thank you for giving us such great stuff to work with.'

Terry Fallis will be interviewed by JG on Q tomorrow.

And that's it for Canada Reads 2011. Sort of. Except for the fact that it's provided all of us with a great deal of food for thought. Now excuse me, I'm just off to pick up my copy of TBLP before everyone else gets there ahead of me. Of course I'm middle aged and I do vote. But never mind - I want to read those love letters of Angus McClintock to his dead wife.

Canada Reads 2011 - Day Two, Round Two

After the reminder from Jian Ghomeshi that 'We're looking for the essential Canadian novel of the last decade,' he referred to Canada Reads as 'Canada's annual title fight.' I mention this because I think a lot of people are taking Canada Reads waaay too seriously (although more on this subject in subsequent posts, after the 2011 competition is over. But then I gather some folks watch those Idol shows too, as well as other televised abominations like So You Think You Can Dance? - you may think you can dance but it's quite obvious to me that you're deluded.).

Defenders of the four remaining nominated titles (The Best Laid Plans, The Birth House, The Bone Cage, and Unless) discussed the contest at the top of the show. 'This,' said Ali Velshi, is serious business.... I want to make the best case that I can, and the most relevant case that I can.'

Reflecting on the fact that Essex County was eliminated yesterday, Lorne Cardinal said, 'I was the heel, I just happened to be sitting in the number three [voting] spot.'

Ghomeshi mentioned again that Unless was trailing in the online poll on the first day of the contest. Lorne Cardinal said he was surprised, since Carol Shields is one of our premiere authors, and Unless is a literary gem. At this point Ghomeshi pointed out that Unless did not win the Pulitzer Prize, but that The Stone Diaries did. It was unclear from the conversation whether Lorne Cardinal had actually been confused about this or not, but it was nice to get it cleared up. 'She's still a Pulitzer-prize winning novelist though,' said Cardinal, which nicely covered his factual error – whether inadvertent or deliberate.

Georges Laraque appeared on the show wearing a T-shirt made by Angie Abdou with a photo of the two of them on it. He pointed out that she has the least funding support of all the books in the contest (presumably because The Bone Cage was published by NewWest Press, a small Western Canadian publisher, while the other books have the marketing muscle of Random House Canada, Harper Collins, and McClelland and Stewart behind them).

Today's show featured author descriptions of the novels, which was a pleasant change of pace, followed by 30-second defenses of the books. Terry Fallis said that The Best Laid Plans, which won the 2008 Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour, was 'the story of an accidental MP.' Ali Velshi declared the book is essential because we're all fed up with politics. 'This book is about making democracy work ... and it's as current today as it was when it was written.'

Ami McKay's clip described The Birth House as being about science at the turn of the 20th Century. 'Dora Rare...is destined to become the midwife for her community, but she's reluctant.' Debbie Travis went on to say, 'It's about a changing world ... it's about holding onto our traditions and embracing our future,' and about 'using our past for the benefits of today.'

Angie Abdou summed up The Bone Cage very succinctly by saying, 'The Olympics leaves its athletes' broken souls. The Bone Cage shows why.' Georges Laraque amplified this theme by saying it's a novel about 'what happens when a body fails' and that 'we all face failure.' He also reminded listeners that it's a 'story about love' (the love Sadie has for her grandmother).

A 2002 Carol Shields recording described Unless as 'The voice of a woman, a 44 year old mother with three daughters,' one of whom has become a derelict who lives on the street with a sign saying 'goodness' hung around her neck. 'This is the great loss that I'm speaking about.' Lorne Cardinal said Unless is a novel within a novel within a novel, written in the 'language of love, loss, laughter and hope,' full of 'transcending moments' and 'stellar' writing.

Ghomeshi's opening question for this round was, 'Which of these four remaining books is the best written?'

Velshi pointed out that, 'Well written can mean many different things to many different people' and said that to him, well written meant accessible. While Shields is the most accomplished writer, The Best Laid Plans is the most accessible of the four remaining novels in the competition. 'It's satire ...a little bit of humour and a little bit of sarcasm.... It's not a dark book, but it's about a very serious issue. It makes you laugh every two seconds.'

Debbie Travis pointed out that there's a big difference between an accessible book and an essential book. 'We're here for the essential book.' But she continued by saying The Birth House was the best written. 'A book is a fantasy, it's a world ... it's like watching a movie.... You're involved in this story, you look up from the book and say, 'oh, I'm not in 1917.''' She found Unless predictable. 'My book has a beginning, a middle and an end, and it draws you in.' (See below for more of Debbie Travis's thoughts on Unless – and for her confession re The Best Laid Plans.)

Georges Laraque came out swinging by stating, 'This contest is not about picking your favourite book.' 'Everybody has to relate to that story.' 'If you go with your personal choice, that's being very selfish.' 'Everybody knows people who are into sports.' He then said Shields' Larry's Party should have been the Canada Reads contender, not Unless. 'Unless was hard to get into ... the wording.' 'Our role is to get Canada to read more.' If Unless is selected ... 'they'll never read again.'

Sara Quin responded with, 'I totally disagree' and picked Unless as the best written of the four remaining books, describing the story as beautiful and moving. (Which of course has nothing to do with the way it's written, story being plot, not style, but never mind.) She also liked The Best Laid Plans for its entertainment value. 'You could pick up this book in an airport ... it's easy to read, it's a great story ... it's the quickest story ... it's the easiest read.' She then said, 'It's a bigger idea, a more universal issue,' a remark that didn't really become clear until later in the debate.

Lorne Cardinal of course stuck with Unless as the best written of the four novels, saying, 'Structure is key to understanding content.' He then immediately undercut the argument he may or may not have been trying to make re the structure of Unless by actually talking about how well the book is written: 'You can flip it open at any page and read it out of context, pick any page and read and it will jump out at you.'

Debbie Travis said Unless is 'beautifully written, but it's two books in one.' 'She writes about writing a book' and felt the 'story that's going on within the story is too introspective.' Which may have been a response to the red herring regarding structure introduced by Cardinal.

Cardinal responded by saying Unless is 'a novel that promotes thought and debate and that's the point of literature.'

Velshi then said Unless is 'not as easy a book to read' as The Best Laid Plans and if accessibility is what you're going for, it's not the most accessible but it 'does cause you to fire different synapses.'

Cardinal responded to Velshi's claim that Unless is not easy to read by saying, 'woman's voice is under-represented in our literature [sic] canon today,' that Shields was a victim of her own success and that her work is currently suffering from 'The Munro Principle' – she's already won a lot of awards. He then startled everyone by saying if Unless were taken off the table, he'd pick The Birth House (as best written? As most essential read? That wasn't quite clear).

Ghomeshi summarized this year's nominees as all being about loss: loss of a daughter (Unless), loss of career hope (Essex County), loss of mobility (The Bone Cage), 'The Birth House has all sorts of calamities, ' Angus in The Best Laid Plans loses his wife and writes to her after her death, then asked the panelists, 'Which book deals with loss most memorably?

Sara Quin said Unless, and talked about the scene where Reta drives around the block looking for her daughter, who's living on the streets, finally spots her and is happy because she sees her daughter's wearing gloves on a cold day.

Georges Laraque talked about Sadie losing her grandmother in The Bone Cage. 'She takes time to see her grandmother and it's killing her inside ... but she still needs to focus ... when she loses her mobility that totally kills you – it's heartbreaking – what is she going to do, how will it affect her spirit?' 'Nothing is guaranteed.'

Ghomeshi interjected, 'I found it an incredibly powerful meditation on loss when she loses her mobility.'

Sara Quin then talked about The Best Laid Plans' Angus writing letters to his wife after she was dead and how touching she found them. She then spoke about focus and drive and the parallel between being an athlete and being a musician. 'I hurt my finger and I can't even wash my hair properly,' she said, immediately followed by 'that was silly.' Since I'm already being accused in this blog of being anti Sara Quin, I'll just let that one go, shall I?

Cardinal spoke about Unless again. Shields, 'writes about loss, but she also writes about hope .... she writes about the fragility of our lives' and about '... a child discovering the world and their place in it.'

Debbie Travis pointed out loss was a theme in all five of the books. But, 'I don't think the writing of The Bone Cage and The Best Laid Plans can hold a candle to Unless.' And then, having answered the previous question about which book was the best written and having reluctantly named Unless this time, she said, 'What I hated about the book [Unless] ... was I was so not interested in her writing journey...' The real corker in today's debate came next, when Travis confessed she hadn't been able to get through The Best Laid Plans. She got angry with it – felt her time was worth more than this – didn't find it funny at all. In fact, she said, it was 'so unfunny I wanted to throw it away. I liked the Scottish guy. I'm not interested in Canadian politics.'

Velshi then pointed out that, 'Debbie is very very stuck on this idea, like many people, that they don't like politics.' His alternative interpretation is that The Best Laid Plans is a, 'a story about inspiration for change.' To which Debbie Travis replied that the inclusion of Angus' letters to his dead wife were an excuse for bad writing. 'You said be truthful.'

Ghomeshi returned to the conversation, saying that 'Unlike most CBC game shows – winning Canada Reads can actually be pretty lucrative' and claiming that it fuels book sales in the same way (although not to quite the same extent) as The Giller Prize. (Note: I'm working on another post on this subject for next week.) After winning Canada Reads, Lawrence Hill's The Book of Negroes sold half a million copies, said Ghomeshi.

The four remaining authors were asked what they'd do for their books' defenders if the book won the Canada Reads contest. Terry Fallis said he'd not only owe Ali Velshi big, he'd write him in as a character in his next novel. Ami McKay announced Debbie Travis would have to renovate her kitchen if she doesn't win. Angie Abdou vowed not only to do an Ironman contest, but to peel oranges for her defender. Anne Giardini, Carol Shields' daughter, said she'd buy Lorne Cardinal some Haida artist earrings.

'You can't talk about Canada any more without talking about how Canada has changed in the last few decades – it's incredibly diverse,' said Ghomeshi, then asked, 'Which of these books best speaks to Canadian society today?'

Cardinal said he wasn't sure, that each appeals to a cross section and some are very specific to certain audiences. The Bone Cage, he said, is about athletes – and then went on to describe the structure of the writing as 'a bit convenient.'

'If someone were to say, these are all "white books" what would you say?' Ghomeshi asked. To which Cardinal replied, 'Well, obviously they are.' He went on to talk about the appeal of Unless to women and the fact that it was written by a woman. 'It's ridiculous to think women haven't contributed to the literary form.' (I didn't quite follow this line of reasoning, as three of the five books nominated this year were written by women and focus on female protagonists, but never mind.)

Sara Quin agreed the novels weren't very diverse, but then explained her previous airport remark by saying there was 'a celebrity nature' to The Best Laid Plans and that there was something universal about it, as with all big best sellers – 'it's paced in a way that we've become used to expecting in books and films.'

Laraque defended The Bone Cage by saying, 'This is not just about sports. The Olympics aren't the point – it's the journey.' And then attacked Unless by saying it was hard to read. Velshi repeated that The Best Laid Plans is a call to action.

Ghomeshi updated listeners on the online polling and stated that while yesterday Unless was the book chosen for elimination, today it was The Bone Cage, with Unless following closely.

Debbie Travis said The Birth House is about community and 'the forever-changing roles of women and men.' It's 'so relevant today' and 'it's a novel you'll never forget.' (Presumably also one that doesn't inspire rage for its sheer unfunniness either.)

Cardinal said he didn't trust polls, that 'I can't apologize for excellent writing,' and that while The Best Laid Plans is 'great brain candy, it doesn't delve deeply.'

Laraque got the final word before voting began, saying, 'We have to talk about the book ... that inspires people to read.'

Voting results

Debbie Travis voted to eliminate The Bone Cage.
Georges Laraque voted to eliminate Unless.
Lorne Cardinal voted to eliminate The Bone Cage.
Ali Velshi voted to eliminate Unless.
Sarah Quin voted to eliminate The Bone Cage, breaking the tie.

Laraque's reaction was spontaneous but controlled: 'I'm so mad right now.' 'I'm speechless.' 'I'm in shock. That was not supposed to happen.' 'I don't understand it ... when I picked this book ... I picked a book that would make a difference.'

Ghomeshi described The Bone Cage as 'an outstanding, moving novel.'

Cardinal said, 'it's just about the writing' and that 'structurally Carol Shields is head and shoulders the best writer at this table.'

Travis said, 'I really looked at the writing of The Bone Cage ... this is an important book ... this is a book that should be read in schools ... but I don't think the writing is as good as Carol Shields'.'

Sara Quin said she 'thought it was the weakest of the books ... I felt like I needed to be consistent.'

It is interesting that The Best Laid Plans and The Birth House haven't had any votes against them to date. It's even more interesting to me that after confessing she found The Best Laid Plans too infuriating to finish, Debbie Travis voted to eliminate The Bone Cage. In the meantime, The Bone Cage defender Georges Laraque indicated he'd be supporting The Best Laid Plans until/unless it was eliminated.

Tomorrow: another book will be eliminated at the beginning of the show.

Canada Reads 2011 - Day One, Round One

I'm just going to assume, for the purposes of this post, that everyone reading it already knows about Canada Reads, that everyone knows it's the 10th anniversary of this annual Survivor crossed with American Idol contest, and that the format has changed slightly this year, with far more reader/general public involvement via social media, and that the task this year was to select the 'must-read novel of the first decade of the new millennium.'

This year's nominees are:

Terry Fallis' The Best Laid Plans, defended by Ali Velshi

Ami McKay's The Birth House, defended by Debbie Travis

Angie Abdou's The Bone Cage, defended by Georges Laraque

Jeff Lemire's Essex County, defended by Sara Quin

Carol Shields' Unless, defended by Lorne Cardinal

Here's my synopsis of what happened during the first round – when the defenders got to vote to eliminate one of the five books nominated.

Velshi mounted a spirited one-minute pitch for The Best Laid Plans, talking very quickly while mentioning the fact that it's a 'fast-moving political satire set in the Ottawa area' and as such, was an important book for all Canadians to read (since politics affects all of us, whether we vote or not). His pitch was serious but also humourous, and he got a big laugh when he said 'if you choose another book, it's like choosing the radish as a national vegetable.' Touching briefly on voter apathy (on the rise in inverse proportion to voters' ages), he described the novel as 'not only a call to action' but something that 'can actually work' to combat voter apathy.

Debbie Travis was no less eloquent in her advocacy of The Birth House, and she scored some real points for taking the novel out of its 'historical' context and placing it in a broader human and contemporary setting. 'It's about what really shapes society,' she said, set at a time when modern medicine, the emancipation of women, and the first of our two 'world' wars were all factors in Canadian society. Cleverly pre-empting potential attacks on The Birth House as a 'likely to appeal to women only' novel, she said it was about men's role in society and that it represents an examination of 'the best of tradition, the best of the future.' She nicely wrapped up her pitch by saying it's a particularly appropriate novel to read at a time when we're struggling to cope with the fact that any 'new technology changes us' as a society.

Georges Laraque came out swinging in the nicest possible way when he talked about The Bone Cage. It's a novel for 'kids, teens, adults, men and women' he said. (The only people left out were pre- and elementary schoolers and the multi-gendered.) Without alluding to the fact that Canada had recently hosted the winter Olympics, he focused on the book's universal themes and appeal. While it's a novel that does explain why Olympic athletes are so driven, he said, it's a really about the very human struggle to 'beat the odds.' 'Life is a battle – this is what this book is all about.'

Knowing that she was defending the contest's one graphic novel, Sara Quin made a fatal strategic error by choosing to tackle the subject of graphic novels head on, instead of talking about the book she was actually supposed to be promoting/defending. While she did mention that she'd chosen the book because of its 'haunting connection between characters' and said that the illustrations made you 'feel like you're in the book,' she also spent far too much of her initial one minute talking about how Essex County 'transcends the genre' of the graphic novel.

Last up was Lorne Cardinal, whose pitch for Carol Shields' Unless began with a mention of her Pulitzer Prize (which an earlier Shields' novel, The Stone Diaries, had won, but never mind). Cardinal focused on the universality of the book's theme – loss – and described it as 'a symphony for the eyes,' a novel that 'transcends words' through the multi-dimensionality of its characters. He implied the novel was a haunting work of fiction that lingers 'in our minds.'

At the end of this round, Jian Ghomeshi summed up the five novels' appeal, saying that going into day one of the Canada Reads live event, The Birth House and Unless had been categorized as novels primarily appealing to women, The Best Laid Plans as interesting to political junkies only, and Essex County to indie hipsters.

Laraque's response to this statement was to say, 'we want people to read more ... if we pick the wrong book, they'll never read again.' He then took a shot at The Birth House, saying most of the men in the book were 'pigs, rapists and warriors' (who wants to read about that?). Velshi attacked Essex County, saying it was like the iPad of books – to which Sara Quin hastily responded, 'we need young people to start reading books' and 'the iPad saved Apple.' Lorne Cardinal was more of an equal-opportunity attacker, saying that The Best Laid Plans 'could turn people off voting and reading' and describing Essex County as a book that represented 'the gateway to reading' rather than reading itself. Unless, he said, is a book that 'gets people thinking about things rather than things.' Oddly this actually made sense – what he was trying to say was that Unless gets people thinking about life and issues rather than material goods. Laraque returned to the attack on Essex County, asking whether it could be considered 'the essential novel' of the last decade. Quin said something, but Laraque trounced her soundly by saying, 'you say it's a novel, but Jeff calls it a cartoon.' Even though I'd already gathered from tweets that Essex County was going to be the first book eliminated, for me it was at this point in the program that I knew it was going down – and why. Poor offense on Quin's part and an even poorer defense? I knew Essex Country was history.

Ghomeshi then asked the panelists, 'Aside from the characters in your own book, which character resonated the most for you?'

For Velshi it was The Birth House's Dora, a character who embodied the contrast between 'modernity and tradition' and who had 'one foot in the old world, one foot in the new world.' Lorne Cardinal chose Jimmy LeBeuf from Essex County, a character whose 'best moment' – his one game in the NHL before a career-ending slam into the boards - had shaped and transformed the rest of his life. Oddly, at this point, Sara Quin piped up to deny there was a character named Jimmy in Essex County, and talked briefly about two other characters, Lou and Vince, before remembering Jimmy. Georges Laraque chose Angus from The Best Laid Plans, saying 'he has kind of my personality' – described by one reviewer as 'witty and charming.' Sara Quin picked Reta Winters from Unless, because she was a writer and a mother, and because she was moved to tears by the grief and longing in the book's passages that described Reta's missing her daughter. Debbie Travis chose Digger from The Bone Cage, saying 'it's a book about striving...and failure.' She said that as someone who wasn't a sports fan, she hadn't expected to like The Bone Cage, but that she was fascinated by Digger the wrestler. Knowing that failure 'is crippling in the end,' she was 'interested in the journey people take to be the best they can be.'

Ghomeshi then said that the least popular novel to date from the voting public was Unless, but that 'the nation awaits' the first panelist vote. And here are the results:

Georges Laraque
Voted to eliminate Essex County

Sara Quin
Voted to eliminate The Bone Cage

Debbie Travis
Voted to eliminate Essex County on the grounds that it did not meet the 'essential' reading criteria.

Lorne Cardinal
Voted to eliminate Essex County on the grounds that it isn't actually a novel, but is, rather, a collection of short stories.

Ali Velshi
Voted to eliminate Essex County.

At this point Sara Quin went on a bit of a subdued rant, saying the other panelists 'represent a demographic that isn't going to read this book' and that Essex County 'will capture a younger viewership' [sic] while the other novels represented choices that were 'more traditional and safe.' Which was a little odd and not terribly gracious.

Tomorrow: round two of Canada Reads.

For all the information you could want about Canada Reads, here's the official page. And if you don't mind hearing the news before you've had a chance to listen to the show yourself, follow the #CanadaReads hashtag on Twitter.

Update: See this review of Essex County if you want to get some sense of what the book's actually about - something that none of the Canada Reads panellists managed to convey during the three days of debates. Spelling of characters' names have been silently corrected in this post after reading the review. (February 9, 2011)

Here's the Canada Reads Day Two roundup. And here's the roundup for the third and final day.

Continual Christmas and all the best for 2011

Just came across this again (had found it via flickr a couple of years ago). Whether one celebrates Christmas or not, the sentiment expressed here is bang on.

Let
No Pleasure tempt thee,
No Profit allure thee,
No Ambition corrupt thee,
No Example sway thee,
No Persuasion move thee,
to do any thing which thou
knowest to be evil;
so shalt thou always live jollily;
for a good Conscience
is a continual Christmas.

Benjamin Franklin,Ben Franklin's Wit and Wisdom, Peter Pauper Press

The Last Summer (of You & Me): Hemingway on estrogen

If Hemingway had decided to write a Harlequin romance, The Last Summer (of You & Me) would probably have been the result. Not having read The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants or any of Ann Brashares' other work (and not having realized this was her first foray into supposedly adult rather than young adult fiction), I was curious about this novel, and recently picked it up in a secondhand bookstore.

While some reviewers find Brashares a 'beautiful writer' I'm afraid I'm going to have to beg to differ. It's bad enough that she treads on territory so well worn as to be dangerously slippery (both the coming of age novel and the most fundamental of plots: boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back). She creates characters who manage to be simultaneously 'thin' in the E.M. Forster sense and unlikeable (unless you really have a penchant for young men and women who prefer to passively brood rather than, you know, get the therapy they so obviously need).

Alice and Riley are sisters; Paul is Riley's best friend. They've evolved a Fire Island code as children who spend their summers living next door to each other, vowing that nothing will ever change between them. Inevitably, change does happen, and these characters are singularly ill-suited to coping with it. One thing that doesn't change, however, is their passion for Rice Krispies. I was tempted to calculate the number of bowls of cereal poured and consumed in the course of this novel, but it's the kind of detail no one really needs to know. Someone must have told Ms Brashares that in order to develop characters you must know what they eat for breakfast. Her creative writing instructor must have left out the second half of that idea, which is that while the writer must know this, it is not necessary to communicate it. In fact, it's rarely a good idea to do so. Since I'm hoping those of you reading this review won't be reading the novel, I'll fill you in: the second most popular breakfast food in which these characters indulge (you know, when the cereal box is empty or they're feeling extremely daring) is bacon and egg sandwiches from the local store. All righty then - you needed to know that, didn't you?

Now for some passages for The Last Summer (of You & Me) to give you some idea of the quality of the writing, which I consider mesmerizingly bad.

'She was only twenty-one. A virgin until two weeks ago, and he wanted to attach himself to her physically, mentally, emotionally every minute of every day, for now and ever. Of course it was too much. He was right to be suspicious of himself. He'd know that when he finally opened up to her, he would blast out like a fire hose, destroying everything in his path: every spark, every tender thing.'

Is it just me, or did you too burst out laughing when you got to the phrase 'blast out like a fire hose'? (I'm sparing you the sex scenes which precede this passage - you're welcome.)

'And though she rarely saw Paul wearing layers and walking in winter light, she began to suspect that the similarity between this man and Paul did not stop with his walk. She looked at the man's hand, the one that wasn't involved with the blond woman's arm, and she knew the hand. She knew the fingers. Her body, badly attached as it was, would have whimpered if she hadn't caught it in time. Her breath shuddered. Her heart mismanaged its work of beating.'

Hmmm. Women are blonde, men are blond. What was it to which her body was badly attached - I seem to have missed that. Oh yes - because it's not there. Body whimpering - there's an indelible image. Isn't there a TV series called The Ghost Whimperer?

'He wished he hadn't let himself have that thought. He knew it was a trick. He knew it at the time, but he'd done it anyway. He'd spent his life girding himself against that very trick, and he'd gone right ahead and fallen for it.... A part of him wanted her to call on the phone just so he could tell her off properly. He imagined she would try that emasculating strategy of wanting to be friends again. She'd already ripped him apart; he wasn't going to let her pick through the bits to see which ones she still wanted. He wouldn't give her the opportunity to assuage her guilt by being friends with him. But anyway, he didn't get to tell her off because she didn't call.'

Ahem. Fiction editor asleep at the wheel here? At this point I've completely forgotten what the tricky thought (outlined in the paragraph immediately preceding this one) was: oh yes, that rather than sell his Fire Island summer home, he should keep it for Alice. But wait, the house has only recently been signed over to Paul. And yet he's been thinking he should keep it for Alice his entire life? Now I'm confused.

'There was a familiar feeling he knew he could feel right now. It opened in front of him like a hallway, beckoning him to walk down it. He could resent her for her beauty. He could feel threatened by her again. He could be threatened by the fact that Alice had already won the adoration of two little girls who now lived in his house. His path in life was not exactly original. Who could live next to Alice and not fall in love with her? And she, being so easily loved, did she really need his, too? What could she want with it? What did he have to offer?'

His hot bod, obviously, as we learn a few pages later:

'He looked impatient for her return. He grabbed her up as soon as she'd tiptoed back into the room and with ardent determination, he finished the job of undressing her. He lay her on the couch and made love to her with a solemn face and a joyful body.'

I'm pretty sure he laid her on the couch and then got laid, but why quibble about grammar when you have phrases like 'ardent determination' and 'a solemn face and a joyful body' to savage?

Apparently Warner Bros. has bought the movie rights to this novel and it looks like it's scheduled for release sometime in 2011. I'm not surprised the script has already had to be rewritten twice. Making silk purses out of sow's ears isn't an easy task. Still, the movie might be worth watching just for the sake of the soundtrack. Personally I'm dying to hear the score that'll accompany those solemn face/joyful body sex scenes.

Words of wisdom from Eleanor Catton's The Rehearsal

What a fabulous first novel Eleanor Catton's The Rehearsal is - pushing the boundaries of fiction in a way few have done. I think The Guardian's review sums it up far more insightfully than I ever could, but this passage made my blood run cold.

The saxophone teacher, in whom many of the girls from the private school at which the 'sex scandal' takes place confide, must, of course, deal with the girls' parents as well as she decides which pupils to accept or reject. It's the least favourite part of her job. But this scathing and deadly assessment of the mothers' aspirations was one of the best passages in the novel:

'"I am never quite sure," the saxophone teacher says, "what is truly meant when the mothers ay, I want my daughter to experience what was denied to me.

'"In my experience the most forceful and aggressive mothers are always the least inspired, the most unmusical of souls, all of them profoundly unsuccessful women who wear their daughter's image on their breast like a medal, like a bright deflection from their own unshining selves. When these mothers say, I want her to fully experience everything that was denied to me, what they rightly mean is, I want her to fully appreciate everything that was denied to me. What they rightly mean is, The paucity of my life will only be thrown into relief if my daughter has everything. On its own, my life is ordinary and worthless and nothing. But if my daughter is rich in experience and rich in opportunity, then people will come to pity me: the smallness of my life and my options will not be incapacity; it will be sacrifice. I will be pitied more, and respected more, if I raise a daughter who is everything that I am not."

'The saxophone teacher runs her tongue over her teeth. She says, "The successful mothers--musical women, literate women, content and brimful women, women who were denied nothing, women whose parents paid for lessons when they were girls--the successful mothers are the least forceful, always. They do not need to oversee, or wield, or pick a fight on their daughter's behalf. They are complete in themselves. They are complete, and so they demand completeness in everyone else. They can stand back and see their daughters as something set apart, as something whole and therefore untouchable."'

The Rehearsal is published in Canada by McClelland & Stewart. Buy, beg, or borrow a copy - it's well worth the read. If Catton can produce this kind of work at age 25 (before she even graduates from the Iowa Writers' Workshop MFA program), what will she be doing at 30? 40? 50? Stand aside, Yann Martel - you ain't seen or produced nothin' yet that can hold a candle to this young woman.

Quotable women - Fay Weldon and Mary Gaitskill

No time for a full-length review of Fay Weldon's 2005 novel She May Not Leave (Atlantic Monthly Press). Pick up a copy of the remaindered hardcover for a song while you can. At first I thought it wasn't as delightfully acerbic as her previous work, but I changed my mind about that as got closer to the novel's climax and Weldon's trademark (at least I hope she's trademarked it) denouement, in which she gives a plot twist so definitive you're completely bowled over. I think one of the things I like best about Weldon's writing - in addition, of course, to the fact that she is the most pragmatic and realistic feminist I've ever encountered via the printed page - is that she really doesn't telegraph what's to come. She's sly. There are hints. But the story has sufficient propulsion that you note significant details without pondering them too much.

Anyway, two great passages/lines from She May Not Leave:

'"It's in the nature of women to report the bad behaviour of men to other women: he did this, then he said that, I can't stand it a minute longer. They don't expect to be taken seriously."

Serena agrees that it is certainly safer to report one's wrongs to other women than to men. She tells me how recently she was sounding off about Cranmer to a male friend and months later when she saw him again he said "thank God, you two are still together - I thought you were splitting up", and she couldn't even remember what the quarrel had been about, except that she had been very angry at the time. What woman ever can remember?'

And then there's the priceless (and oh so true) line: 'Anger is a great cure for fear.'

I started out well with Mary Gaitskill, reading (and loving) her first two books, Bad Behaviour and Two Girls, Fat and Thin. And then I don't know what happened - somehow I missed Because They Wanted To and Veronica. I'll have to catch up, because I believe she's one of the most important contemporary writers around. Don't Cry, her 2009 collection of short stories, leapt out at me from the library shelves though, and I snapped it up immediately. In some ways Gaitskill could be viewed as Fay Weldon's American granddaughter (I wonder what they'd both think of that notion?). 'Mirror Ball' is one of the more fanciful stories in this collection, but it deals with a subject that has long preoccupied Weldon: the soul-stealing effects of trying to be a heterosexual woman in a world that demands you be a feminist. 'The Agonized Face' tackles some of the issues of female solidarity, ground Weldon's trod many times, especially in her amazing story "Alopecia" (from Watching Me, Watching You).

The passage that really struck me from this collection was from another story though, 'Folk Song' - perhaps because I've got to know so many scientists recently on Twitter, and have watched the skeptic movement in the UK in particular adopt a very hostile and divisive stance - to homeopathy, to alternative medicine, and to those who still have faith - guaranteed to polarize opinion, couched in terms of ridicule I think is ultimately counter-productive. The scientists and skeptics for whom I have the most respect are those who admit that scientific research has an amoral aspect at its very heart - and this passage sums up that notion so very neatly:

'Yet with science, anything is possible. With science, rats have been tortured by electroshock each time they press a lever to get a food pellet. Rabbits have been injected with cancerous cells and then divided into control groups, one of which was petted and the other not, in order to investigate the role of affection in healing. Scientists do these experiments because they want to help. They want to alleviate physical suffering; they want to eradicate depression. To achieve their goal, they will take everything apart and put it back together a different way. They want heaven and they will go to hell to get there.'

Dangerously good: a review of Carole Enahoro's Doing Dangerously Well

The jacket blurb describes Carole Enahoro's debut novel, Doing Dangerously Well, beautifully: 'An irresistibly dark comedy about disaster capitalism, cutthroat office politics, vicious sibling rivalry, hapless do-gooderism and the corporatization of water...'

When the Kainji Dam in Nigeria – yet another miracle of engineering built in the 1960s – bursts, more than a million Nigerians are killed, hydroelectric supply is threatened, and the collateral damage is incalculable as water-borne disease and water shortages sweep across the country. (Interesting to note how very brief the Wikipedia entry on this dam is, and of course, to note that it's only ever operated at two thirds capacity, with only eight of 12 turbines installed. Ahem.) Even more interesting is this 1999 report on the condition of the Kainji Dam – including the priceless comment that rather than repair the dam to avoid catastrophe, Nigeria has chosen to build more dams instead.

With the failure of the dam providing the opportunity for disaster capitalism (surely as old a concept and as inevitable a practise as war, crop failure, flash floods and plagues of locusts themselves), the scene is set for Enahoro to introduce the other elements: office politics, sibling rivalry, do-gooderism and the debate re resource exploitation versus fundamental human rights.

She does so skillfully, setting up two parallel tracks of sibling rivalry that continue throughout the novel. The Glass sisters (no relation or homage to Salinger's Glass family), Barbara and Mary, couldn't be more different – although they're both brittle in their very different ways. Mary – the 'successful' daughter – is a member of middle management at TransAqua Corp., where she specializes in water rights acquisition. As Associate Director of Sales, she's buttoned down (to put it mildly), a wearer of 'air hostess' suits, verging on the anorexic, and eaten alive by the stress of trying to outdo – and replace - her boss. Barbara's a 'soft skills' facilitator eking out a living building solidarity among groups, making herself obnoxious by being disruptive in her yoga classes, and concocting ever more garish 'Third Worlder' outfits (you know the type: hat from Tibet, jacket from Guatemala, skirt from India, earrings from Nepal, necklace from Bolivia). 'Though a committed vegetarian whenever possible, Barbara had a soft spot for Rare Heritage, a well-meaning group who preserved breeds that farming giants had made almost extinct. As humane farmers, she supported them philosophically and therefore continued to slog along with them, despite their lack of solidarity.'

In her role as a facilitator, Barbara hopes to bring the group closer together by getting them to do a bold exercise: write down something shocking (not related to farming or animals) that no one knows about them. The results:

• I enjoy the switch of the lash on my bare buttocks.

• I had sex with a contortionist.

• I went to Mexico for a holiday – viva México!

• I once had sex with my brother for a dare.

• I suffer from paranoid schizophrenia and once tried to kill my teacher.

• I am a vegan.

Meanwhile, back in Nigeria, Ogbe Kolo, the Minister of Natural Resources, successfully manipulates the American ambassador to Nigeria via Mary Glass, the army and the media to ensure a successful coup: 'On the preferred date for coups in Nigeria, that is to say the first day of January, Ogbe Kolo acceded to the presidency. Citizens greeted each other with the customary salutation for the New Year: “Happy New Coup.”' Kolo isn't primarily interested in the power of the presidency – he just wants to ensure that as president he can sign away the water rights to and rename the Niger River so he can make a killing on the transaction. Kolo has a dark secret though: his sibling rivalry was so intense he pushed his (sweeter, smarter, better looking) fraternal twin brother into a swimming pool – and then calmly watched him drown.

Devastated by the loss of his entire family in the flooding, Femi Jegede, one of Nigeria's great orators and activists, possessing 'wit and style, backed by strong legal training' who could 'make pounded yam of the most logical argument' and with 'the one gift that makes even the listless adjust their clothing in anticipation ... a beautiful man, with skin as soft as Guinness beer and gentle, transcendent eyes...a very qualitative guy' makes a slow recovery. Eventually he mobilizes himself and the countryside to sabotage the repairs to the Kainji Dam, aided and abetted by Barbara Glass, who's decided she's had enough of having her parents throw her sister Mary's success in her face at every family gathering and has joined an Ottawa-based NGO called Drop of Life, stolen her sister's blueprints for the rebuilding of the Kainji Dam, and headed for Nigeria to foment opposition to the plan.

The scenes of Barbara Glass in Nigeria and the dialogue between Barbara and Femi are some of the most hilarious in the novel, with Barbara spouting Taoist syllogisms and mangling Nigerian pidgin while Femi must surely be contemplating sticking knitting needles in his ear so he no longer has to listen to her.

This is an immensely complicated novel in many ways, with a reasonably large cast of characters, not one of whom plays the straight man role. Its plot is both intricate and intriguing. If you think of Joseph Heller's Something Happened crossed with Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart and a dash of William Boyd's A Good Man in Africa you begin to get an inkling of its scope. But then you also have to think of films like The Gods Must be Crazy and the amazing documentary Pray the Devil Back to Hell and throw them into the mix to get some idea of what Enahoro has achieved with this novel.

It's a brilliant debut – the kind of first novel that leaves you waiting eagerly to discover what Enahoro's going to do next. Whatever it is, I think you're guaranteed it's going to be interesting.

For another (rather churlish and poorly informed, I thought) take on the novel, see this review in the Winnipeg Free Press (ignore the typos in the proper names of the dam and the activist).

And for more info on the Kainji Dam, here's a short documentary:

Disclaimer: I received a review copy of Doing Dangerously Well from Random House Canada.

Solar: Ian McEwan's new novel proves he's still one to watch

From the moment I was first introduced to Ian McEwan’s work back in the early 1980s by my friend Stephanie Ortenzi, I’ve considered him not only one to watch, but one to champion. As one of a handful of British writers whose work I always read and almost always buy (Graham Swift, Julian Barnes and William Boyd are the others on the list), a new Ian McEwan novel is always something to celebrate. So I've been waiting very impatiently for Solar's release for almost a year, since a Brazilian journalist doing a PhD in science communications first told me it was in the works. When I tweeted that I'd read it, my former boss was too impatient to wait for my review and demanded the 140-character version. He's probably already bought it and read it by now, though, since it's been at least three days.

It’s almost time to go back and re-read early McEwan, because he’s not the writer he used to be. That’s actually a neutral/positive statement, not a condemnation. Around the time The Child In Time was published (1987), I saw a televised interview with him in which he described his early work as being ‘dark and inaccessible’ and said that he wanted to change that. He certainly succeeded (that novel won the Whitbread Novel Award). Amsterdam won the Booker Prize, Atonement was shortlisted for the Booker in 2001, and its 2007 film adaptation was nominated for an Academy Award (although I think you’ll be hard pressed to find many who loved the book and also loved the film, again based on an admittedly small and highly subjective sampling).

Atonement was not, however, the first McEwan novel filmed; Andrew Birkin directed The Cement Garden from the 1978 McEwan work of the same name in 2003. If you read either the novel or the film’s descriptions in the links I’ve provided, you’ll notice how often the words ‘dark’ and ‘murky’ are used. Freud would have had a field day with McEwan’s early works, in which both sensuality and sexuality were simultaneously subterranean and omnipresent. They left you with a vague and disconcerting sense of unease, a feeling that you hadn’t quite understood what he meant but you didn’t really want to delve deeper because it might hurt you at a shockingly profound level of your being. Or at least that’s how I felt – it was mesmerizing but somehow dangerous. Reading early McEwan made me feel like a rather nastily atavistic voyeur, as if I’d been unable to resist reading a trusted friend’s diary, inadvertently ended up peeping through a keyhole, or unintentionally eavesdropped on a conversation with overtones so sinister as to negate all of the guilty pleasures of gossip.

His later work continues to provoke this sense of unease in some, although I’m not sure why. Either I’m acclimatized to it by now, no longer convinced voyeurism is as creepy as I once thought it was, or the nature of his work really has changed in a rather fundamental way.

Certainly in the novels from The Child in Time to On Chesil Beach, McEwan has steadfastly employed a single plot device that’s both valid and fascinating: a single chance but determining moment that alters the course of his characters’ existence irremediably. There’s nothing new about this kind of ‘right place, wrong time’ plot device – and in fact, in Atonement, the discovery of the note that fatally alters the course of two of the main characters’ lives (or does it? because there is an alternate ending) isn’t that dissimilar from the note Angel Clare doesn’t find in Tess of the d’Urbervilles. By On Chesil Beach, however, this plot device had been stretched beyond the breaking point, and that novel was so slight as to be almost negligible, because it was frankly implausible.

So it was obviously time for another change of course (since McEwan is not an Anita Brookner, and has never been content to rewrite the same the novel till he gets it right – and then continue to rewrite its ghostly imitations ever after – and I say that not to be mean to Brookner, whose Hotel du Lac is one of the most perfect short novels I have ever read, almost on par with The Great Gatsby).

Solar is a novel whose central character is a ‘fat, lying bastard of a physicist…a philandering, greedy, rather deceitful sort of man,’ as McEwan himself says in the Little Atoms podcast interview. This is a bit of an understatement – Michael Beard, who wins a Nobel Prize early in his scientific career for what becomes known as the Beard-Einstein Conflation, is a remarkably – an astonishingly – an intrinsically – almost a pathologically deceitful sort of man. It doesn’t really matter whether he’s stealing a colleague’s work, a fellow traveller’s potato chips, cheating on one or another of his five (serially married) wives, or hastily boning up on Milton to impress the first woman he marries, morally Michael Beard has no centre whatsoever – or rather his centre shifts constantly at the whims of his childishly greedy convenience.

And he’s greedy about everything: food, women, money, honours, his own creature comforts. He’s always late – for meetings, conferences, dinners, work. And yet somehow the world is being mean to him when, having overslept, he has to start his day without coffee. Or give a speech before he’s made serious inroads into the smoked salmon sandwiches.

The central paradox of this novel is that Michael Beard is a totally unappealing character by the time we meet him at age 50 – and frankly it’s hard to imagine that there ever was anything appealing about him at all. The beautiful mind in the physics/math sense he may once have possessed is never on display in the novel, and there’s a suggestion that he was a bit of a default, compromise Nobel winner, that his selection as the prize recipient was a highly political choice designed not to upset other candidates who could only be mollified if none of the top contenders for the prize that year won. There are one or two scientists in the novel who buoy him up from time to time and insist that the Beard-Einstein Conflation was – and remains – both a scientifically elegant and significant piece of work. But they’re few and far between. And yet – and yet – somehow he manages to attract not only five wives, but, during the course of his fifth marriage, an astonishing additional 11 lovers in less than five years, not all of which are one-night stands.

While Beard grows older (naturally), fatter (considerably), and balder (slightly) over the course of the novel's nine-year span, his emotional growth is pegged at one ahead, two back. When he's finally trapped into reproduction, he provides for his offspring financially but he still can't quite commit to being faithful to the mother of his child. Nor can he bring himself to abandon the flat of his own that, after several years of his occupation, is undoubtedly a health hazard not only to himself, but probably to all his neighbours as well.

In a pre-publication interview about his new novel, McEwan stated categorically that he hates ‘the comic novel’ and that he finds them strenuous, like being held down and tickled. (It's not clear whether he means he hates reading them or writing them.) The comic elements in Solar are necessary, he says, ‘because the subject matter is climate change. It's so colossal, it's so serious, it's so morally weighted that it could kill a novel, it could drown it, it could melt it - whichever climate change image you want,’ if there weren’t comic elements in the novel. He was only two-thirds of the way through writing the novel at that point, however, and while I’m not suggesting his stance on the comic novel has changed, I do think Solar is, in fact, a comic novel. You can’t write a novel in which the central character is, essentially, a buffoon, and also position him as a hero or his actions as heroic. Certainly Margaret Atwood's The Edible Woman is a comic novel - and yet it's a serious work of fiction. Don't go by the Wikipedia definition of comic novel either - or if you do, prepare to be astonished to see Evelyn Waugh listed as a 'comic novelist' - Wikipedia is aware that he also wrote Brideshead Revisited, yes?

The comic element of Solar with the greatest public appeal (from what I’ve seen to date in reviews and on the internet) is the frozen penis scene, in which Beard is whisked away to a near-Arctic expedition, the lone scientist locked up on an ice-bound ship for a week with a group of artists. Having overslept, Beard leaves the hotel without having had coffee, and somehow having failed to use the bathroom in his rush to catch up the rest of his party heading for the ice-bound ship. During the course of the jostling, several-hour-long snowmobile ride, he’s forced to stop to pee, gets his willy stuck to the zipper of his outdoor gear, and – well – it continues from there, with the angst of his need to pee during the first half of the trip being replaced by the fear throughout the second half that his penis is frozen solid. The culmination of this scene is an understated tube of lip gloss, if you can believe it. As a non-penis owner this segment of the book didn’t really work for me as either realism or comedy, I’m afraid. After all, if you're the kind of man whose wife's lover slaps you rather than punching you, how important can the literal manifestation of your masculinity really be?

An earlier scene in the novel, when Beard is still living with wife number five, knows she's having an affair and is trying to make her jealous, is far funnier than the frozen willy scene.

Far more effective than both, however, is the scene on the train, where Beard, several years later, is rushing to make a speech at a conference. His flight's been delayed, he hasn't eaten (or rather, he hasn't eaten what he wanted to eat), and having grabbed a bag of salt and vinegar chips/crisps at the airport, he becomes convinced his travelling companion on the train from the airport is stealing his treat. Some excerpts from that scene:

‘Right before him on the table, shimmering through his barely parted lashes, were the salt and vinegar crisps… He pulled himself up in his seat and leaned forward, elbows on the table, hands propping his chin for several reflective seconds, gaze fixed on the gaudy wrapper, silver, red and blue, with cartoon animals cavorting below a Union Jack. So childish of him, this infatuation, so weak, so harmful, a microcosm of all past errors and folly, of that impatient way he had of having to have what he wanted instantly. He took the bag in both hands and pulled its neck apart… He lifted clear a single crisp between forefinger and thumb, replaced the bag on the table, and sat back. He was a man to take his pleasures seriously. The trick was to set the fragment on the centre of the tongue and, after a moment’s spreading sensation, push the potato up hard to shatter against the roof of the mouth. His theory was that the rigid irregular surface caused tiny abrasions in the soft flesh into which salt and chemicals poured, creating a mild and distinctive pleasure-pain…. Inevitably the second crisp was less piquant, less surprising, less penetrating than the first, and it was precisely this shortfall, this sensual disappointment, that prompted the need, familiar to drug addicts, to increase the dose. He would eat two crisps at once.’

The scene continues to a broadly comic climax, and Beard realizes he’s made a fool of himself. Ill-prepared to speak at the conference, he decides to include the crisps anecdote at the end of his speech. And this – at almost precisely the midpoint of the novel – is where things get interesting. Earlier, when one of the artists on the ice-bound ship is talking and makes a basic scientific mistake, Beard has sprung up and corrected him at great length, thus earning the admiration of all the artists on board (he’s the only scientist, and has been engaging with them as little as possible). In contrast to that scene, after his speech on climate change and the artificial photosynthesis solution to energy generation Beard is promoting (and has patented), Mellon, a lecturer in urban studies and folklore, interested in ‘the forms of narrative that climate science has generated … an epic story … with a million authors’ approaches Beard. Mellon – who in Beard’s opinion has a ‘squiffy view of reality’ - asks him where came across the story of the crisps. Beard replies that it’s just happened to him on the train, to which Mellon replies, ‘Come now, Professor Beard. We’re all grown-ups here,’ and proceeds to tell him Beard’s story is a well known tale with many variations (although not yet one involving crisps), included in novels by Jeffrey Archer, Roald Dahl and Douglas Adams amongst others, called ‘The Urban Thief.’

This scene ends shortly after this, but it’s significant, not only because of the juxtaposition of the contrasting reactions of the artist:scientist and scientist:folklorist it sets up. It underscores earlier scenes on the ship when the group – all but Beard almost tragically impaired by their individual and collective guilt about how we’ve wrecked our planet and yet passionately committed not so much to creating a solution but at least to lamenting their grief at the impasse by means of their art – can neither keep the room in which their Arctic outdoor gear is stored organized nor resist the impulse to steal each other’s boots and mittens. In that situation, Beard is the lone voice in the wilderness, trying to tidy the room, observing the rules, carefully placing his own gear on the peg assigned to him.

This is yet another fascinating McEwan novel, a welcome and substantial meal after the insubstantiality (dare I say it? the bag of crisps) of On Chesil Beach, and yet another direction for his work. May he have many more – novels and directions.

For some other reviews of Solar, see The Guardian, The Vancouver Sun, and The Daily Mail. And for a delightful interview with McEwan by Adam Rutherford, download the Little Atoms podcast, in which members of the science community embrace an artist as if he were one of their own. You do, of course, have to let the artist have the last word, however. As McEwan says in that interview, 'I have no interest in science, I'm just intellectually curious....In five years' time I'll know a fraction of what I know now' about climate change science.

Nobody's muse: a review of Louise Erdrich's Shadow Tag

In 1985, Canada's Minister of Justice John Crosbie ignited a controversy in the House of Commons when he told Liberal MP Sheila Copps to 'quiten down, baby.' Her retort, that she was 'nobody's baby,' became so inextricably linked with her political persona that she used it as the title of her autobiography, which, sadly, seems to be out of print.

Irene America, the iconic protagonist of Louise Erdrich's latest novel, Shadow Tag, would have done well to borrow a little of Ms Copps' feistiness at an earlier age. By the time we encounter her, she's been married to Gil for a decade and a half and is only now picking up the pieces of her abandoned PhD thesis on 19thC 'painter of Native Americana George Catlin.' Gil himself has irritatingly been referred to as a 'Native Edward Hopper' and his work really has only one subject: Irene America 'in all of her incarnations--thin and virginal, a girl, then womanly, pregnant, naked, demurely posed or frankly pornographic.' He is that rarity in North America, an artist capable of supporting a family with his income from painting. As the novel opens, however, Gil is floundering artistically, 'His paintings were hiding from him because Irene was hiding something. He could see it in the opacity of her eyes, the insolence of her flesh, the impatient weariness of her body when she let down her guard. She'd ceased to love him. Her gaze was an airless void.'

The real pornography contained within this novel is not the way Gil paints Irene or the descriptions of the sexual, physical and alcohol abuse in which they both indulge but in his maniacal desire to possess her, to know her, to breathe her living essence as if she were oxygen and he was on life support. Erdrich does a superb job of creating an atmosphere so overwhelmingly smothering that it is absolutely intolerable. It's a good thing she does, because without it she would have written a novel in which both main characters are so hopelessly and disgustingly co-dependent that it might have been unreadable as opposed to just painfully believable. It's possible to muster a modicum of sympathy for and empathy with Irene America though, enough that one can initially forgive her for her treachery, because it's easy to understand how truly mind-bending life with a man like Gil can be.

So initially you're with Irene when, after discovering Gil has been reading her diary, she decides to use the diary as a weapon against him. She starts constructing entries solely for his consumption, paragraphs and pages designed to drive him over the edge - of sexual jealousy and insecurity, of sanity, of alcoholism - while resuming her real journal writing in another volume she stashes in a bank safety deposit box.

As the novel continues, however, and the collateral damage experienced primarily by Gil and Irene's three children becomes apparent (not to mention the increasing nausea one experiences at the damage the two of them inflict on each other), it becomes increasingly difficult to do anything but shake your head in horror. When Irene finally tells Gil she wants a divorce, after a short round of surrealistic marriage counselling (some of the best scenes in the novel), it's impossible to believe that even physical and emotional separation will do much to change the dynamics between this pair. They're opposite sides of the same coin - and this coin has spent most of its life on the railroad tracks being repeatedly run over by self-propelled freight trains.

Gil's initial response to Irene's request for a divorce is to throw a huge surprise party for her. But of course in Gil's ever-more-twisted emotional world, he can't just throw her a party, he has to arrange for Irene's half sister to not only keep her away from the house until the party's due to start, but also has to conscript the half sister to spy on Irene so he can confirm his suspicions that Irene is having an affair.

Of course you can't blame Gil for thinking this, since Irene makes a point of creating journal entries in which she manufactures other lovers and provides convincing details to back up her claim at their first marriage counselling session that Gil isn't, in fact, the father of any of 'their' three children.

This is unexpectedly bleak territory for Erdrich. There is little humour in this novel, and the little there is falls into the bitter, twisted, and black category. It's a departure for her as a novelist, and it's worth celebrating for that. Her portrait of the dissolution of not only a marriage but of both its partners as swiftly and surely as a Kleenex in a torrential downpour, is compelling and tragic, and this time it's not mitigated by the hyperbolic humour and magic realism of my favourite of her novels, The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse. In writing this review, I realize I've managed to miss Erdrich's previous novel, The Plague of Doves, which sounds almost as bleak as this one. The difference is that Erdrich's not writing a mythical or historical narrative in Shadow Tag - she's written a contemporary and realistic book that ventures into territory occupied by a long tradition of American prose writers stretching from Henry James and Edith Wharton to Richard Ford, via John Cheever, Raymond Carver, and Russell Banks. I couldn't be more delighted to see her stretching, growing and flexing her literary muscle. How many profoundly important books can one woman write? With any luck, we're nowhere near the answer to that question.