Free As a Bird

Free as a Bird  by Gina McMurchy-Barber is a book I impulse bought while in a cute rustic book cafe up in the small town of Rossland, B.C. after a two-hour hike up the side of a mountain.  I had already placed myself on a book-buying ban from buying 27 new books at a used book sale one week earlier, and 4 other new books at a college in Vancouver, which I had just visited a couple of days ago.  Nonetheless, this book caught my attention as I was browsing through the idyllic bookstore: first because this book was a finalist for the Govorner General's literary awards, second because that meant the book was written by a Canadian author, third because the book was small, and fourth because of the premise of the book as it was written on the back cover seemed really interesting.

 

 

This book tells the story of a life of a young girl with Down Syndrome in British Columbia at the time in history when people with such disabilities were sent to insane asylums where they were treated little better (and maybe even worse) than prisoners.  This story is told in the first person as Ruby-Jean Sharp recounts her life in Woodlands School - a once real-life institution that had been originally called the Provincial Asylum for the Insane.  With the voice of a young girl who can't quite understand everything going on around her, Ruby-Jean describes her surroundings and emotional reactions to those surroundings in ways that cannot help but provoke emotions in the reader. 

 

 

It is noteworthy to mention that although the characters in the novel are fictionous, the author did spend 6 months herself at Woodlands School as a caregiver and witnessed firsthand many of the abuses that could be given to the children there. Her own sister had been born with a disability but her parents decided to raise Jane instead of sending her to an institution like the doctor recommended.  The author, Gina, later left her job at the institution to work for the Community Living Society, an organization started by parents and caring staff to get residents out of Woodlands School and into group homes in the community. 

 

 

I have never cried so much while reading a book.  Out of the story's 160 pages, I probably only spent about 30 of them dry-eyed, if that.  It was an awkward encounter while camping when my friend stepped out of his cabin in the morning only to find me on the deck with tears streaming down my face and a pile of kleenex beside me.  The story is heart-rending - all the more so because it is based on true circumstances.  This sort of thing actually happened to people, and it broke my heart reading about it.  The story itself was told brilliantly, the emotions and descriptions are so vivid that they leave a very clear picture in the mind of the reader.  I would recommend this book, but only if you feel like you need something to cry about.

Cold Magic

After catching up on book 13 of the Wheel of Time series, I wasn't sure when I would get my next fantasy fix.  Thankfully, a friend gave me a book for my birthday that solved that conundrum.  Cold Magic by Kate Elliot is a fantasy novel set in an alternate Europe at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.  At this time there are two ideological poles that define the people in this world: those of the old tradition who have devoted themselves to magic, and those of the new trends of technology and progress that are rising with the dawn of the machine age.  These two sides are diametrically opposed to each other, as the magic users (particularly the cold magic users) desire to maintain their authority and exalted status above the plebians, who are getting frustrated with their lot in life and beginning to sound the horn for revolution.  In the background, adding a third pole to the tension is the spirit world, which maintains its own order over the universe, keeping a watch on the world of men so that they do not step out of their bounds.

The plot revolves around a heroine, nicknamed Cat, a young lady who is an orphan living with her aunt and uncle while she attends the local university.  One day her life is turned upside down when a cold mage shows up on their doorstep and demands her hand in marriage in response to a magically bonding contract her family had been forced to sign.  What happens though when the truth is revealed that the mage has been given the wrong bride, and in fact the life and identity that Cat had been living all along was a lie?

The setting of this book was a bit disorienting at times.  I'm not used to fantasy being set on an alternative historical Earth.  The author weaves together portions from our real history (like the founding of Carthage) into her fantasy world, both using familiar names from history and renaming those familiar names into something that becomes a lot more foreign to my ears (e.g. renaming the Phoenicians as Kena'ani, which is probably historically what they called themselves, but not what I know them as).  The mixture results in a truly original world, but for anyone who knows even a little of history the result can be disorienting because it becomes difficult to identify where real history turns off, and the fiction begins.

Despite all of this, the book was a charming read.  It is written in the first person and you become really drawn into the person who Cat is: a feisty, curious, proud and independent young lady who, well, is kind of like a cat.  One of the most random and charming things about the book were the occasional comments the narrator would put in pointing out her cat-like attributes.  A supporting character in the story is her cousin, Beatrice, nicknamed "Bee", and I just love the thought of two of the main characters going by "Cat" and "Bee."

Another thing I loved about this story was the sense of mystery that pervaded the entire thing.  As the narrative unfolds you are learning and puzzling about things alongside the main character, and at times find yourself being as shocked as she is with some of the revelations.  Nothing is really as it seems at first in this story, and the mystery only grows bigger as the plot goes on.  As this is the first book in a trilogy, of which the other two books have not been written yet, not all the questions have been answered by the end of the book.  And yet despite this, I found that the author really answered the most important questions, and I was able to leave the book feeling satisfied with the resolution, although of course wanting to read more.

the edible woman

margaret atwood's breakthrough novel and protofeminist treatise considers gender roles and societal expectations in the late 1960s through the metaphors of the hunt, consumption, and cannibalism.

i talked to idris about this book a little bit, and he compared its subject matter to jane austen's discussion of marriage as the realm within which women were ambitious in the early 19th century: it was a matter of survival and was approached almost as career decisions are now. in fact, connecting those dots - austen's elizabeth bennett to ibsen's nora helmer to atwood's marian to me - can induce vertigo! life has changed so much for western women in just two centuries. and - as a cause, effect, and effect of the same cause - for men, too.

in the final analysis, i struggled with this novel. unsurprisingly, the writing itself was lovely in its rhythmic oscillation from poetic description and metaphor to concrete colloquial prose. but when the protagonist, marian, loses it a little bit, her actions aren't nearly as inexplicable as the reactions of others to her. in fact, almost everyone but marian comes across as symbolic rather than real. this isn't a complaint, exactly - after all, most of us view the minor characters in our lives as largely representational rather than authentic. i also found myself wondering if even compensating with the requisite inflation that comes with metaphor, there might be some hyperbole going on. but this is common for me: i have to confess that i really can't fathom what these women went through, both inside and outside their heads. and this journey into one such woman's mind was disorienting and somewhat unsatisfying for me. i wasn't entirely happy with some of her decisions, and i didn't know how i felt about how it all ended. that sort of thing.

this is only the second atwood i've ever read - i finally read "alias grace" last year, and liked it quite a bit. i feel that she's telling important stories, stories that haven't been told before and are therefore mysterious - you really have no clue where it's all heading. it's not always the most enjoyable experience, but it's unfailingly interesting and thought-provoking. and a little humbling. after all, being reminded that there are so many stories unlike my own really puts things into perspective.

the sentimentalists

i received johanna skibsrud's giller prize winning novel, "the sentimentalists," for christmas from my surrogate grandfather. (it was only then that i realized he tends to shop giller alumni for me!) this is the fastest i've ever consumed a book he gave me.

the plot of the story - woman tries to understand her father's experiences in the vietnam war and the impact of those experiences on her parents' marriage and the family as a whole - doesn't do justice to skibsrud's lyricism and thoughtfulness. the novel is occasionally a little over-written for me, but that could just mean i've grown lazy.

one of the things i loved about the book is that a lot of it takes place in casablanca, ontario - a town that doesn't exist as far as i can tell. everyone there knows the script to that hilarious and heartbreaking film inside and out, and the characters quote the film in casual conversation. when someone asks the narrator's dad if it might rain, he puts on his ingrid bergman voice and says, "it's a crazy world, anything can happen!"

i don't know anyone who has suffered the horrors of war, either as a soldier or a civilian. but my family quotes movies, too. we quote "singin' in the rain" and "mary poppins" and "to sir with love." and it was so lovely to hear another family do that. they did math problems and crossword puzzles and quoted classic movies. they were like me and my people. we had a kinship, those characters and i, and that connection made the unfamiliar parts of their story hit home for me. it's kind of magical how that happens.

but maybe i'm just a rank sentimentalist.

The Wheel of Time

My arrays into fiction lately have been dominated by one single series: The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan. A friend gave me a used copy of book one, The Eye of the World, that he found last spring and made me promise to read it when I had the time. I finally found time in June to start the book, and consequently I found myself embarking on a journey that would lead me through one of the most complex plots and vividly designed universes that I have ever witnessed in a fantasy setting (which is significant, since it takes a good plot and vivid imagination to design any fantasy book). I slugged through this series for months, getting book after book out of the library, spending hours going through 1000 page books and 100 page prologues (the most ridiculously large prologues that I have ever seen!). As school started and I found myself getting to the later books of the series and tired of looking at words on a page, I resorted to taking out bookCDs from the library and listening through them (a practice which I have come to love), 26 hours or so per book spread over a number of weeks. Finally, on Monday Nov. 1st, I finished book 12 of the series, The Gathering Storm, officially catching up to a series that has been in print since the early 1990’s. In fact, the series has been in print so long that the author ended up dying after book 11 and they had to find someone else who could take the author’s notes and write the end of the series, Brandon Sanderson. There are only two books left in the series scheduled for release, and the release date for book 13, Towers of Midnight, as I checked online Nov. 1st, was Nov. 2nd. I couldn’t have planned the timing better for finishing book 12 if I had planned it. Nevertheless, although the book has been released in stores, it will still take a little while for library to acquire the new release, and again it will take a little while for people on the waiting list to listen through the bookCD’s before my turn comes up, so I figured in the time that I have between books I should actually try to blog about my experience of going through the Wheel of Time Series.

This series is not for everyone. In fact, I have some very strong criticisms against it. First of all, the story is horribly complex. It revolves around the idea that time is circular and that events that happened once are reincarnated later in time as the wheel continues on its cycle. One particular important part of this cycle involves in the incarnation of a person who is known as The Dragon Reborn. In the last cycle of the wheel of time the previous Dragon, Lews Therin, was responsible for the breaking of world when he used the male half of the One Power to seal away the Dark One’s prison. Stop. Some explanation is needed. First, the magic system in this series is incredibly unique, which is definitely unusual for a fantasy series (there are about 3 systems of magic that are generally standard) and to Jordan’s credit. The One Power, as the magic is called, comes from the Creator and has two halves: saidin, the male half of the power, which can only be wielded by men, and saidar, the female half of the power, which can only be wielded by women. It should be noted that this series borrows liberally from a broad array of religion, including Hinduism (reincarnation), Daoism (balance between the male and female halves of the power) and Christianity (the conflict between the Creator and the Dark one). Resume. When Lews Therin used saidin to seal the Dark One’s prison, the male half of the power was tainted and every man who wielded it gradually grew insane, which caused chaos and war throughout the entire world, effectively “breaking it.” The series begins at the dawn of a new cycle and follows a broad array of characters as they journey into the world and become key players in preparing for an upcoming battle with the Dark One who is getting loose from his prison and causing chaos to overtake the world once again.

   

The complexity of this series becomes apparent when one realizes that there are about 9 main characters and countless main supporting characters to this story. The narrative jumps liberally (a few chapters at a time) between perspectives between all of the characters who are in different places in the world performing different actions simultaneously. There are countless points of view. Sometimes in the impossibly long prologues the author will even venture into the point of view of a character you don’t see for the rest of the story. In one book (book 6, The Lord of Chaos), one of the main characters of the series didn’t even show up for the entire book! The array of characters is so huge that the reader might begin to forget some of the names of some supporting characters who don’t show up for a while (one supporting character that showed up in book 4 didn’t reappear until book 12!)

The complexity of this series is aided by the incredibly detailed world that Jordan created. Usually when fantasy authors create a world they will focus on one or two cultures and give them lots of detail and then give skeleton descriptions of all the other cultures. Not so for Jordan; he has created a detailed culture for a dozen or more nations! As you journey to the various countries with the characters, pages upon pages are used to describe the sights and sounds of every group of people that you meet. It got to the point that I got tired of reading what nationalities were inhabiting the common floor of whatever inn the characters entered. I never would have thought that one could include too much description and detail in a story, but Jordan certainly pushes the line on this one. In some ways, however, the overwhelming detail is to his credit; not everyone could have put in the amount of effort he did into creating such a well-developed universe. It is the kind of place where you could write a hundreds or thousands of stories and never run out of material – the world is that interactive.

   

Despite the amount of detail that went into differentiating cultures from one another, I was extremely disappointed by Jordan’s character designs. For some reason in his book almost every single character feels like it has been built off the same template, and that template involves stubbornness. In fact, Jordan’s treatment of women is particularly monotonous. Most of them are stubborn, obnoxious, arrogant (while accusing the men of arrogance), domineering and manipulative. I found myself wondering if this was Jordan’s experience with women; was this how he saw them being, or is this just how he made them be in this universe? The only variation on the theme that a lot of his characters exhibited at the start was simply the degree and manner of stubbornness that they expressed. I found myself coming to dislike many of the main characters, echoing the sentiments of one of my friends: “if that woman yanks her braid one more time in this book I’m going to pull it right off her head!” Character growth for some of the characters was also dubious at times, to the point that I cheered finally after 4 books when one the characters who was particularly stubborn finally showed fear. I didn’t care if it was growth in the wrong direction – at least finally her character was showing a little change! Despite my complaints, however, about the characterization of people in this story, there have been a few characters that I have grown attached to, and one of the characters that I disliked near the most for the first half of the series is now my favourite.

Another critique I have about the writing style of the author is the repetition he uses for a number of the character’s actions and words. As in the fore-mentioned example above, there is a female character who yanks her braid whenever she is feeling particularly frustrated or stubborn – and this happens often, to the annoyance of the reader. Also, I found myself wondering how many times women can smooth or straighten their skirts in a book when they are at a loss for words. Quite frankly, I got tired of a number of the character’s actions or words wish that the author could have directed some of his incredible imagination to providing some variety with the vocabulary.

The Wheel of Time series is one of the most popular fantasy series on the library shelves today. Once when I went through the Coles checkout to purchase book 6 the young male clerk on the other side of the counter lit up and proclaimed “best series ever!” It was all I could do just to nod and smile for him, in order not to break his illusions. It is not the best series ever that I’ve read, and it is certainly not the best piece of writing that I have ever seen. It has too many faults for that. I will say however, that it is one of the most detailed universes and one of the most complex plots that I have ever seen and that for the right person this will provide many hours of enjoyable entertainment (minus a few annoyances if you’re as picky and critical as I am).

 

One final note before I give up on this post on the writing of the substitute author, Brandon Sanderson. He did a really admirable job taking over the series. In some ways I almost find him preferable to Jordan in that he doesn’t get lost in the minutia of the detail like Jordan in (probably because the world is not as vivid in his mind as it was in Jordan’s, but it makes the descriptions a little bit easier on the reader). There are places in the story where his own writing style comes blazing out, sometimes to his credit and sometimes to his disadvantage. For example in a scene one evening as I was riding home in the car he nearly had me in stitched laughing over the character’s antics, something Jordan has never been able to make me do. In some places however, a comment is made or something is done that strikes me as weird, strange, and maybe somewhat inconsistent with what Jordan would have done. One part that I found particularly unsettling was a dramatic change of character mindset at the end of book 12 to one of the main characters in the story. After dealing with Jordan’s writing where the characters change so slowly and almost imperceptibly it was rather startling to have one of the characters to go through a startling revelation that changed his outlook on life. Nonetheless, the discrepancies throughout the story have been minor and I am looking forward to the next book in the series.

Into The Wild Nerd Yonder

Into the Wild Nerd Yonder: My Life on the Dork Side, by Julie Halpern.  As a self-professed geek (a euphamism for the synonymous "nerd" and "dork") I couldn't resist but place a hold on this book when I saw its title showing up with a dress and a pink background on on the cover after I typed in 'Dungeons & Dragons" onto the library's online search function.  It did not matter that the book was found in the young adults section, the book was obviously told from a female's point of view and it involved Dungeons & Dragons and  I was intrigued.  There are not many women who play the game and even fewer stories are written about women who play it.  What would this book hold?

It has been a long time since I have read such light reading.  Even the fiction that I have been reading these days has involved going through long and complex plots.  I had forgotten how enjoyable some good fluff could be, and this little geeky book was good fluff.  It takes place in a high school setting with a young girl who is trying to figure out where she fits on the clique scene.  In fact, I really like the summary on the book jacket so let me quote it here:

"It's Jessie's sophomore year of high school. A self-professed 'mathlete,' she isn't sure where she belongs.  Her two best friends have transformed themselves into punks, and one of them is going after her longtime crush.  Her beolved older brother will soon leave for college (and in the meantime, has shaved his mohawk and started dating... the homecoming queen!).  Things are changing fast.  Jessie needs new friends.  And her quest is a hilarious tour through high school slique-dom, wit a surprising stop along the way - the Dungeons and Dragons crowd, who out-nerd everyone! Will hanging out with them make her a nerd too? And could she really be crushing on a guy with too-short pants and too-white gym shoes?  If you go into the wild nerd yonder, can you ever come back?"

This book represents an excellent balance between humour, teen issues, moral lessons and fluff.  It's not about Dungeons & Dragons, although the game is certainly featured in it.  It is about trying to find acceptance and a sense of belonging within a group while still maintaining your own pride and identity.  I really enjoyed the book.

beatrice & virgil

i loved life of pi, so i was all but terrified to pick up yann martel's latest novel, beatrice & virgil. what if it was disappointing?

well, the good news is that it is very, very well written. i'm just not sure how i feel about the story itself. the narrative turns on the question of how and why the holocaust should be depicted in art, and how and why it can be used as a lens of analysis for other tragedies. throw in a talking mounted donkey named beatrice and a talking mounted monkey named virgil and we've got ourselves a story!

the animals appear in a play written by one of the central characters. this man, a taxidermist by trade, writes beckett-esque dialogues in which the donkey and monkey consider the essence of a pear, the uselessness of language, and the degree to which memory is vital.

the use of animals, the description of the pear, and countless phrases of martel's are simply breathtaking. when he describes a room as being "full of adjectives," i just want to hug the book to my chest and let the beauty soak into me by osmosis.

but... like, the ending is terribly odd. the reveal is inelegant and the main character's realizations don't feel natural or follow an organic trajectory. there's an episode of outright melodrama that seems entirely unnecessary.

this book hasn't yet helped me answer its central question, which is one i've wondered about before. i don't know what to think about it.

here's what martel has to say:



i may finally read dante now.

The Bishop's Man

Although The Bishop's Man isn't a genre I usually dally in, this book caught my attention and I decided to give it a try. It is written by a Candian author, Linden MacIntyre, and it is a recipient of the Governor General's Literary Choice Award.

The book itself is about a priest in the Roman Catholic Church who has, over his career, been given the responsibility of dealing with corruption in the priesthood. Known among his peers as "the exorcist", it is his duty to go to places where priest have been engaged in less than priestly behaviours (notably child molestation), and do the clean-up work before the media gets involved. At the point in time that this book begins, the media is getting a little too close for comfort on some of the church's dirty secrets, and so the priest is sent to a small town parish in Nova Scotia by his bishop to lie low and be the local priest. Now that the priest finds himself surrounded with silence and solitude, however, he begins to process and struggle with events that happened in the past. In the meantime, there are those within the little town who are not without their own problems.

If you like fast paced, action and adventure filled novels, this story is not for you. If you like happy stories, or stories that at least end on a happy note, then this isn't for you either. If you like linear stories that have a clear beginning and end and proceed linearly throughout the book, then this isn't for you either. In retrospect, I definitely wasn't the person who should have been reading this book. Very little actually happens in the entire story; rather it reads like an internal monologue and the priest processes the events of the past and what is happening around him. The story, since it follows his train of thought, does not hesitate to jump around in time frequently, and without warning. The protagonist will be out doing something and then suddenly a completely unrelated paragraph from events five years earlier will interject. These multiple layers of story are revealed parallel to each other, so the book in some ways reads like a mystery, with things being alluded to that are never actually explicitly spelled out. This means that the reader has to be constantly connecting the dots; if you don't you will get lost, real fast.

Writing style aside, I found the approach of the book to also be weird and adverse to my own way of thinking. Although this was a novel dealing primarily with religious characters, a religious background and religious concepts, the idea of God was almost absent from the entirety of the novel. In contrast, liquor appeared on almost every page. The author's approach to the church was a secular one from a completely institutional standpoint. If God was ever mentioned, it was in passing; and the church's purpose was not to serve God first, but rather to be an institution that was self-sanctioned to take care of the souls of people. The church was presented as very self-focused, and there was more concern on the part of the ecclesiastical officials in the book with preserving the reputation of the church than bringing truth, life and God to the people. I admit that this presentation, especially the latter part about the church being concerned with its reputation, is valid, for some church institutions. There are some Christians who approach religion like this. It disturbs me, however, that someone can write a 400 page book about the church and not have God enter the conversation at all. This is completely opposite from my own experience of religion and I felt like it was a distorted view of the Roman Catholic religion as well. In fact, the author all but agreed with this sentiment when the protagonist wondered to himself why every priest he had ever met was some wonderful example of perversion and corruption when there were so many priests out there who were actually good and holy people. It should also be noted that this book presented a very poignant and completely one sided argument against celibacy. Although I myself am not a fan of institutionalized celibacy, I felt the book failed to recognize the true depth of reasoning and tradition behind this lifestyle choice. It would be a hard thing to explain, however, without bringing God into the picture.

Despite all of my misgivings about this book, I cannot say that I regret reading it. It is good to know what people are reading. This is popular, secular literature: this is how people see the church. It is interesting to consider how this book will be the basis of understanding that many have for the church. To this book's credit however, the author did try to stress the point that priests are just human too, with problems like the rest of us. This at least is true of any person, regardless of whether God enters the picture or not.