Still Life With June

I have written about Still Life with June by Darren Greer in a previous post. As you may already know, I love this book and Darren Greer is my male author crush. He even posted a comment about that post! Definitely made me day.

This is what you would call a ‘gem’ of a book. It is a delicious find but is easily lost amongst the Dan Brown’s of the world — sadly — even if it was the winner of the 2004 ReLit Award, shortlisted for the 2003 Pearson Canada Readers’ Choice Book Award and was named one of the Top 10 books of 2003 by NOW Magazine. I only happened upon it because I wanted to prepare for an internship. And I am so glad I choose this one amongst the many others.

The main character is Cameron Dodds, a struggling/washed up writer working at a Salvation Army Treatment Centre where he basically steals the lives of patients for writing material. He becomes obsessed with one particular patient, Darrel Green (a shout out to the author, perhaps?) who hanged himself earlier that year. He immerses himself into Darrel’s past, and eventually visits his sister June, who has Downs Syndrome, and embarks on the first meaningful relationship of his life; a relationship that finally forces him to stop running from reality.

My own summary does not do this book justice, and is possibly a little too melodramatic. The problem in describing this book is that it isn’t necessarily the plot that grabs you — although it does add to its greatness — it’s the character’s voice, the writing. I have never read a character like this before, and I have never been grabbed by a character so quickly. Cameron Dodds is addicting. The book is comprised of several short chapters, each presenting short snippets of Cameron’s life written in a journal entry style. I love short chapters, it makes the book read faster.

This is actually the part that truly sold me:

VII

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Re: my cat. 

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Shortly after I got her, I found myself wishing what everyone who owns a pet and isn’t entirely happy with the world wishes occasionally: that I could be her. Just for a day — to lie around my apartment and glory in my sloth, without having to wonder who I am or what my life is about. I wouldn’t have to worry about God. Dogs may see their owners as gods of sorts, but don’t fool yourself about cats. They see us as nothing more than elaborate feeding mechanisms and mobile heat radiators. 

I have often wanted to be my pet.

The publisher recently made a book trailer for Still Life with June, and it is one of the few book trailers I actually like. I think they captured Cameron and the feel of the book really well.

My love of this book led me to read his first published novel Tyler’s Cape (review still to come). It was completely opposite to Still Life with June, which was both a little disappointing and a huge relief. Even in a completely different writing style, Darren Greer still amazed me therefore cementing his title as my male author crush.

A Study in Scarlet

I’ll admit it.  The main reason I read this novel – the first in the Sherlock Holmes series by Arthur Conan Doyle – was because of the movie released last year starring the dashing Robert Downey Jr. Although it had always been in the back of my mind, the film edged it to the front of my “to read list.”  I know, I am almost as bad as the pre-teens who flock to the nearest bookstore just twice a year to pick up the latest Nicholas Sparks book turned sappy movie.  Slightly better though because it was Sherlock Holmes, and not a book with Miley Cyrus on the cover (although I have also read this book, don’t judge me.  More about that catastrophe later).

A Study in Scarlet was quite entertaining.  I’m always slightly weary when I read any classic because sometimes the language and style of the book are so different than what I’m used to, I have trouble getting into it.  I want to read them, because I feel, as a lover of literature you must read the classics to truly appreciate it, but to be honest I don’t want to.  There’s just too much wonderfully delicious contemporary literature calling my name that the classics lay forgotten on my shelves.  I own them, they just remain unread.  I try to crack into a couple each year, I have found success with Jane Austen’s novels, and now apparently, in Doyle’s.

I actually enjoyed his very proper use of language – and having a British accent in my head for a couple hours a day – and, of course, I grew found of his complex characters, and I enjoyed the organization of his mystery novel.  It was very different than any other mystery I’ve read.  It was split into two stories.  The first part explored how Holmes and Watson met, how they came to live with each other, and eventually spark a friendship and working relationship.  At the same time Holmes solves a murder case, but, as the reader, you don’t know how, you just know he does.  At first, this upset me because it seemed completely unbelievable that Holme’s knew who the murderer was based on very minor details and the murderer just happened to visit his home that day.  At least in the movie, it gave you a glimpse of how Holme’s brain works but in the book, he completely leaves you in the dark.

But than you begin the second part of the novel, which back tracks to the beginning of the case, from when the murder actually occurred to when Holmes was hired.  This is where you get a glimpse into the brilliant mind of Sherlock Holmes.  I liked how the two parts complimented each other.  Since I knew the outcome of the murder case I wasn’t distracted by it and this left me free to truly enjoy the mind of Sherlock Holmes: his intelligence, his wit, his unique way of thinking.  This is how it differs from typical mystery novels, it allowed for character development, which is probably why I enjoyed it.

I’ve already bought the second one in the series and I’m looking forward to reading it.  Plus they look so good together; Penguin came out with these awesome vintage covers and I really want the complete set!  Here are four of eight of them.

Also, it didn’t hurt that the entire time I read it images of Robert Downey Jr. (who played Holmes) and Jude Law (who played Watson) were racing through my mind.

P.S. Any suggestions of must-read classics?

Help Me, Jacques Cousteau

It was the title that drew me to this book.  Help Me, Jacques Cousteau is the first novel by Canadian author, Gil Adamson – she has now become an award-winning author with her second novel The Outlander. Not much happened in this book, but I still enjoyed reading it.  Adamson has a good voice, kind of similar to Miriam Toews in her topic matter and character choices, but not quite up to her excellence – Toews being my female author crush.

This novel didn’t really have a plot, it was simply snapshots of Hazel’s life (the main character) randomly put together not really in any order, from crossing an ocean to move from Vancouver to Australia, to watching Bambi in the theatre with her father snoring beside her.  It read like linked short stories.  It was described as being a book about a family of “modern-day eccentrics” on the back, which is one of my favourite book topics (I love eccentric and quirky characters), but by the end they seemed like any normal family, the difference was that they weren’t afraid to keep their crazy relatives and eccentricities out in the open.  The main link between all of the snapshots is her relationship with her mother, and her mother in general.  Hazel lives through her parents divorce and her mothers eventual abandonment, and she seems to dwell on the events that led to this. Adamson does capture this family well, making it very believable – it’s easy to imagine this family as any family living on your street.

But while it was an enjoyable read, it wasn’t really memorable.  I did, however, still pick up her more famous novel The Outlander during my book buying binge where I spent over $130 on books in three days – I have a serious problem but its partly because I am abusing my discount at the bookstore while I still have it, I recently just quit because of other job opportunities, yay!  – because I enjoyed her writing style.  I easily become attached to authors if I enjoy their voice no matter their subject matter.  So maybe that book will be more memorable.

The Slap

While reading this book I felt like a very good person and a very bad person. The plot of The Slap, by Christos Tsiolkas, is centred around one act: A man slaps a child at a neighbourhood barbecue.  This book explores how this one act affected the people and the families who witnessed it: marriages were strained, reputations were questioned and some friendships ended while others emerged.  I thought this was a really interesting idea, to have one central plotline and tons of tagents jump off it – at some points the slap wasn’t even mentioned, it just became a constant underlying presence.  The story was actually told through eight different people who witnessed the slap, all of whom have different relationships with the people directly involved, aka: the slappee and the slapper.

I appreciate a format like this, with different character voices, because I have a tendency to become a little ADD when I’m reading a book, it’s hard for me to fully commit.  The first half is the honeymoon stage, I can’t wait to be with it, I think about it all the time, tell all my friends about it, and than the middle comes and the spark is gone.  It becomes more of a task, I’m only spending time with it because I have to, but, secretly, I’m dreaming of the next book I’m going to meet, and possibly already planning a sneak-peek rendezvous.  But reading a book with eight different character viewpoints, and almost eight different plotlines, that problem was solved.  I looked forward to meeting each character.

By the end of  this book though, I, too, wanted to slap the kid – he spit on and kicked an old man for no reason – this makes me a bad person.  But I’m a good person because I would never have actually hit him; my dislike of him would be purely emotional and only acted upon in a passive-aggressive way, a.k.a. talking about him behind his parent’s back.

I liked how this book sparked this duality.  It flirts with the line between discipline and child abuse – this kid was a spoiled brat, who was never disciplined, and if he hadn’t been slapped he most likely would have hit another child with a lacrosse bat, but is it ever right to hit a child?  No.  And as you delve deeper into the issue, where your sympathies lie constantly change.  With each character, something new is added to the plot as they reveal something different about the situation, whether its background information or just their own prejudices and biases.  Automatically, I was on the side of the slapped child and his parents, as it was a very traumatic event, but the more I got to know this kid, the more I understood why people were frustrated with him.  But there are faults on both sides, so throughout the entire novel you’re constantly questioning what is right vs. wrong.  And the characters themselves lead interesting lives on their own.

This was my first book I’ve read by an Australian author and I really enjoyed it, although the language used is far more blunt and abrupt than what I’m used to.  Overall though, it was definitely worth the commitment.

Reading Lolita in Tehran

It doesn’t happen often – I’m more of a fiction girl – but once in awhile I have an urge to read non-fiction.   Last summer, I finished Mr. Playboy, the biography of Hugh Hefner – he is one of my favourite pop cultural icons, see at the end of this post to find out why – and only now, did I find another non-fiction book that piqued my interest.

What sold me about Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi was its tagline: “a memoir in books.”  How could I resist?  It discusses the Iranian Islamic revolution and its effect on Iranian women from the viewpoint of Nafisi, once a professor of English at Tehran University, who now lives in the States.  Each chapter explores a different author or book, such as Lolita, that she read during monumental moments in the revolution.  She connects the novels to her reality, discussing how each reflect and contradict each other, while proving the power of words.  The simplest novel, such as The Great Gatsby, caused outrage amongst her students.  In North America people freak out because there’s swearing or magic in a novel, but its qualities like selfishness that make for unacceptable reading material in Iran – and God forbid there’s sex!

Nafisi eventually left the university because she refused to wear the veil and formed her own secret book club with some of her favoured female students.  In their first meeting, Nafisi asked them to start a journal, using the first entry to define themselves; none of them could complete the assignment.  They grew up in the revolutionized Iran where their identity was stripped from them; they became defined only by their men.  I was shocked by their inability to even understand the assignment, none of them knew where to begin. It was a complete culture shock for me.

What I found most interesting was when Nafisi discussed the role of the veil in the revolution.  She is very anti-veil and that made me a little skeptical at first.  In my last year of university I took a sociology class about colonialism.  A lot of the course focused on the veil, and how the “West” views/portrays it as female imprisonment, and uses it as a tool to further its role as the “good guys” over the East.  Since Nafisi now lives in the States and the book was published by an American publisher, I wondered if it was just furthering the Western stereotype of the veil.  But one of my favourite parts in the book came from a conversation between Nafisi and her grandmother.  Her grandmother always wore her veil until the revolution.  She said, as a young woman she chose to wear the veil as a sign of her faith in Islam and of her personal relationship with her God, but now it has become a political tool and lost all personal meaning.

Nafisi writes, “The Islamic Revolution, as it turned out, did more damage to Islam by using it as an instrument of oppression than any alien could have done,” (Pg. 109).

This part calmed my suspicions a bit because she addressed the many roles the veil has now, understanding why people both want and don’t want to wear it.

Nafisi always manages to discuss important sociological and political events like the veil, while always relating them back to literature.  It was basically an English class that I actually wanted to attend.  It was a good break from fiction and is definitely worthy of its top 10 of the decade distinction.

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So my slight fascination with Hugh Hefner: He created a porn magazine in his basement and managed to turn it into an international enterprise – I saw a playboy club in London, England!  He’s over 80 years old now – he’s practically half-dead – and yet, still manages to convince four 20-year-old women that it’s a good idea to be his girlfriends, all at the same time, while living holed up in his huge playboy mansion wearing only pyjamas everyday.  And people view him as a God.  Talk about right time, right place.  His climb to the top wasn’t all boobs and blondes though, he actually played a huge role in cultural development over the 60’s and 70’s being the starting point of many prolific writers, abetting many underground cultural movements – including feminism, in a kind of a twisted way though – and becoming one of the most hated and admired individuals of the 20^th/21st century.   It’s crazy.   Love him or hate him, he definitely leads an interesting life and the book was a very informative read.

The Flying Troutmans

My favourite author, Miriam Toews!  She’s my author crush.  She writes the novels I wish I could write.  The Flying Troutmans is her fifth novel, she has written one non-fiction book and three other fiction novels – one of which, A Complicated Kindness, won the Governor General’s award in 2004, won CBC’s Canada Reads competition and was shortlisted for the Giller Prize.

I just really connect with her writing style; it’s reality mixed with sarcasm and dark humour, what more could I ask for?  Her books are all character-driven, my favourite, and are written with such clarity and assurance that they develop into real people; I feel I know them.  Most of her characters have reached a low point in their lives: teen motherhood, depressed Mennonites, mayor of the smallest and most insignificant town in Canada, but always manage to find the humour in life, the humour in their own situations.  This particular book is not my favourite of hers, but it still maintained my interest and her position as my favourite author.   And Bonus: It’s also signed!  She came to a local bookstore and I actually spoke to her!  Probably one of my top 20 moments.

This novel is about Hattie, the main character, and her dysfunctional family/life.  She has recently returned to Canada from Paris after she receives an SOS call from her 12-year-old niece, Thebes.  Her sister has fallen into yet another bout of manic depression and neither Thebes nor her brother, Logan, can handle it on their own anymore.  She commits her sister into the hospital and becomes overwhelmed by the assumed guardianship of her niece and nephew.  She decides to embark on a road trip to find their missing father, jumping off the few clues she has of his location.

This becomes the typical road trip novel, where characters learn about themselves and each other, but, once again, her characters are unforgettable.  Thebes spends her time in the back of the van making large novelty cheques for people she meets along the way, Logan carves poetry into the dashboard and Hattie spends the drive trying to come to terms with the fact that her ex-boyfriend preferred to speak to her telepathically.   It’s little details like this that differentiate her novels and make them memorable.

The Flying Troutmans was a really easy and enjoyable read, as all of her novels have been.  However, my favourite novel by Toews is Summer of my Amazing Luck, her first novel.  See here for a description.

Also, all of her books have been designed to match, so not only are they excellent reads but they look beautiful together on my book shelf!  It’s like they were made for me.

The Monsters of Templeton

I judge books by their covers.  Who doesn’t?

If a cover manages to effectively use the colours red and black in a vine-like appearance, I will automatically pick it up.  I have no idea why, but I like these designs, and I like them a lot.

Exhibit A: Monsters of Templeton.

It meets all of the criteria, and to top it off it had an interesting story to tell.  It has been on my “to-read” list for a few years now – I got distracted by other books – but finally its time had come.  I am very particular when it comes to what book I read next, if it doesn’t fit my current state of mind than it won’t be a very good read; this is possibly what happened with my previous two reads.  And although it didn’t quite live up to the expectations its description gave me, it redeemed itself at the end.

The Monsters of Templeton is Lauren Groff’s first novel. It spends half the time in the present and half in the past, spanning 200 years, as the main character, Willie Upton, delves into her ancestry to discover who her father is.   Willie comes back to her hometown of Templeton pregnant, alone and going through a quarter-life crisis after a disastrous affair with her graduate professor, which ended with her trying to run over his wife.   Her previously “flower child” mother is now a recent convert to the Christian faith, dating a minister and trying to amend for her previous sins, including lying to Willie about her father.  Willie grew up believing her father was one of two men her mother slept with while living in a commune, the truth, however, is that her father lives in Templeton.  Like Willie, he is a distant relative of Marmaduke Temple, the founder of Templeton, so to escape her present, Willie turns to her past to find her father and discovers on the way the many skeletons her ancestors kept hidden in the closet.

Willie was not my favourite character in the world – she played into the damsel-in-distress stereotype far too much – but I enjoyed tagging along in her quest to find her father.  Through her research, a lot of interesting characters were introduced into the novel with every other chapter devoted to an entirely new family member told through their own voice.  A lot of them were legitimately crazy – such as believing they could start fires with their mind – which kept it interesting.  Groff tried to incorporate folk lore in her novel as a metaphor for Willie’s own self-discovery, which was played up a lot in the description of the book, but kind of fell flat in the actual novel.  A large sea monster washes up on shore just as Willie comes back home, and it haunts Willie throughout her entire search, but it just kind of made random appearances and didn’t help the novel, it became more of a fun fact than anything else.

But overall, i enjoyed this book.  The many different character voices made this novel unique and interesting to read.

Another classic example of my favourite book design: The Book of Lost Things.

Beautiful and one of my favourites!  See here for a description.

13 Reasons Why

My first book of 2010!  And not really the greatest book to start my year with.

Unfortunately, I rang in the New Year a little under the weather – most unfortunate as I was visiting my friend who had just come back from England for the holidays.  In the first five minutes of our visit, I had to ask her to pullover so I could –most gracefully, of course– throw up on the side of the road.  I spent three days recovering in bed and reading a book about suicide, not exactly the best cure.

13 Reasons Why is the debut novel of Jay Asher, a newcomer to young adult fiction who has spent most of his working life in bookstores – there is hope for me yet!

The book is cleverly written and designed, but lacks depth: it felt like nothing more than high school drama.  It chronicles a teenage girls choice to commit suicide.  Before her death, Hannah Baker made and mailed several tapes where she recorded the 13 reasons why she committed suicide.  Each chapter is one side of a tape and is dedicated to one person who negatively, or sometimes positively, affected her life.  In turn, each person named will receive the tapes and when finished with them, must mail it to the next person on the list or a copy of the tapes will become public, and everyone’s part in her death will be revealed.

The novel begins with the protagonist, Clay Jensen, emotionally and physically exhausted mailing the tapes to the next victim.  He had just spent the entire evening listening to the voice of his ex-crush chronicle the worse moments of her life, which starred his fellow classmates.  With the tapes he received a map outlining the location of these moments so he not only listened but saw what she saw as well.  On his journey he meets past and future recipients of the tapes and knows that nothing will ever be the same.

I’m not sure if it’s because my teen years are well behind me or if it is the novel itself, but I could not empathize or relate to the characters as much as I wanted to.  Clay was trying to hard to grieve and comprehend the death of his classmate, and his reactions to the tapes seemed contrived and melodramatic.   Hannah’s reasons were too shallow.  Some of them were horrifying, but most seemed almost run-of-the-mill high school experiences: bullies exist, rumours are abundant and guys can be jerks.   A bigger, better person would have been able to take these experiences and do the right thing, while Hannah just wallowed in self-pity.  I kept expecting a reason why she was wallowing but it never came, and after the thirteenth reason instead of sympathizing with Clay and Hannah, I was annoyed.   Perhaps, I just wasn’t in the mood to be sympathetic towards others.

Asher is a good writer and has a great voice in his novel, he just needs to develop more substance behind his characters and their plots.  Suicide is such a complex and deeply emotional topic that his novel paled in comparison.

If anyone has read this novel I would love to hear their opinions.  I want to know if I missed something.  I wanted to love this book because of its unique set-up – a chapter per tape, and a dust jacket with a detailed map on the inside, my favourite! – but I just couldn’t.