Monkey Droppings - The Players by Margaret Sweatman - "The wonderful violence of freedom."

Today, the Monkey takes a bold walk through Canada's past.

Boy, it is freakin' cold out. Luckily, the Monkey has a built-in coat of fur.

Look out! Trappers!

The Players
by Margaret Sweatman (2009)

I admit, while I may not read the genre as much as I should, I harbour a great admiration for the writers of historical fiction. To immerse oneself in the literature, to sift through the data to come up with new words, new modes of thought, new ways of seeing the world so that it will seem fresh to the reader even though couched in the past and only filtered through 21st-century sensibilities; it is a skill greatly to be envied. See, even writing about writing about historical fiction makes you adopt a tone of haughty historical privilege.

But research means nothing (less than nothing, really) without the skill as a writer to back it up; see (better yet, don't) James Patterson's The Murder of King Tut, an abysmal slice of hackery wherein the author brags continuously about the copious amounts of research he has done, yet the end result being so false and inauthentic it reads as if he cribbed his entire book from the Wikipedia entry on Egypt.

But Margaret Sweatman, thank the gods, has talent, and gallons of it. She has a poet's ear, a librarian's passion for research, and a storyteller's verve, which makes the Winnipeg author's fourth novel The Players a vastly entertaining read.

The Players is set in Restoration-era England, among the fops and finery of the court of King Charles II. It was a place of style and grace, where violence was commonplace but yet "even the convicted regicides died (hanged, drawn and quartered, burned, their ashes licked up by dogs) in a gentlemanly manner." But Sweatman takes pains to assure us that, despite all the outward frippery, there is an underbelly of rot that coats every action. The city of London is beset by the Plague, and all the silks and linens in the country cannot hide the rot that seeps through. The outward illusion of civility only masks the innate corruptibility of our bodies. In one vivid aside, she notes that amongst a group of men visiting the King, "two or three were so well dressed that they'd not been successful in relieving themselves, which added a certain damp caution to walking already made risky by ill-fitting shoes on a stone floor. That acid scent of pizzle."

In this age, a woman's place is chosen by men, and it is only the smartest or most cunning woman that gains any sense of independence for herself. Such a woman is Lilly Cole, 16-year old actress and mistress to the king, and woman that weaves a dark spell on most men who cross her path. Yet Lilly still lives "in a bubble made by men," convincing herself that she has freedom denied other women yet still always at the mercy of the gentlemen who surround her. These include King Charles II; Bartholomew, Second Earl of Buxborough, a drunken poet/playwright who was an adoptive son of the Court after his father "died of the stomach"; and the repulsive Sir George Rose, "an irritable old Royalist" who comes to view Lilly as a threat after she kills a vile gentleman in self-defence.

Coming into this seething den of affected politeness are Médard Des Groseilliers and Pierre Radisson, two French explorers seeking financing to discover the Northwest Passage to China. The duo are ill-equipped to deal with the less-direct methods of business of the English Court, which leads to some lovely examples of dark humour: "They were all navigating by instinct, filled with a sense of inadequacy for a loathsome task. The disease of conversation, foul business." They would appear at odds with the King and his cohorts, but as with the clothing, the money of the kingdom is an illusion as well; "The trade must bring us a great deal of money," Charles whispers to his cousin Rupert, "or we are thoroughly stewed."

It would not do to give away too many plot point, but suffice to say, the machinations of the plot result in the adventurers being provided ships, and Lilly and Bartholomew being smuggled aboard. Thus, the novel changes acts, and the gentility of England is summarily replaced with the bleakness of Canada. Lilly finds herself on an expedition headed by Magnus Brown, an eccentric genius: "Magnus Brown weighed more than seventeen stone. His head weighed more than a lamb. He wasn't fat, he was a living fact."

At its base, The Players is about a woman making her way through a universe ruled by men, doing whatever it takes to survive, which makes Lilly as much an explorer/adventurer as Des Groseilliers and Radisson. Lilly is the main 'player' in The Players, but in a way, all the characters are only acting their parts to achieve their true desires. The novel is also about the death of entire worlds, whole societies, replacing them with a new one, that of 'civilization.' As the explorers rue, "Civilization will seep into everything, it will mimic, steal, atom by atom, yes, like that, so that nothing evermore will be free of falsity." In The Players, the entire world is being slowly transformed, becoming an actor as well, disguising its feral nature underneath the trappings of enlightenment.

Sweatman brings a wonderful sense of flair to the proceedings, finessing new methods of viewing the world. Her eyes and ears tend toward the poetic, reminding one at times of Michael Ondaatje's texture-heavy texts, but Sweatman has a lighter touch. Sometimes, overly poetic language can become annoying, but when Sweatman writes of Lilly's body, "When she was lying down, her pelvis seemed like a basin of milk," all is forgiven. I love a sentence that gives me pause, savouring the imagery. When Magnus, tongue-tied, tries to work out his feelings toward Lilly, Sweatman magnificently captures both his turmoil and the universe he inhabits in a few choice phrases: "Silence poured down on him, but he ruined it with words, words pearled like the white fat on moose kidney." Lovely, that.

Sweatman also, as noted above, does her research, throwing in huge chunks of historical exposition that never feel superfluous. Much of The Players could serve as a primer for the mechanics of Restoration English society. The upper class walk the streets in urine-spotted pants because of the ridiculous methods of keeping them in place; Lilly, needing a contraceptive, at first uses a gummy mixture of manure, then upgrades to a "sea sponge wrapped in silk, an elegant pessary." Prince Rupert, wearing a constantly blood-soaked bandage about his head, reveals that he uses a technique of self-trepanning to relieve the pressure on his brain.

The Players is part bodice-ripper, part adventure, and part comedy of manners, and Sweatman is a bold conductor of the whole affair.

VERDICT: MONKEY LIKES A LOT

Freedom to Read Week! February 21-27! Can you smell the excitement?

Ah, Freedom to Read Week, where has the year gone? I completely forgot it was coming. I hope the shelf fairy brought me something nice this year.

For those caught unawares, a refresher: Freedom to Read Week is a seven-day period put aside to celebrate everything that someone else thinks you shouldn't be allowed access to. Subversive ideas. Blasphemies. Swear words. Political ideologies. Homosexual penguin lust. And no, that last one is not a joke.

Let's face it, you cannot please everyone. And nor should you try; pleasing everyone is boring. A little strife lets people know that 'their world' is not theirs alone.

So what should you do to celebrate? Reading a challenged book is always good (here's a helpful list to get started). But sometimes, we're kind of busy reading other things. So, what to do?

Take the book out anyway. Go to the nearest public library and check out a challenged book. The best way to keep books on the shelves for everyone to peruse is to make sure they're being used. Library books survive on statistics; if you want a book in your library, you'd best take it out. What's the point in stating that Catcher in the Rye is among the most challenged books of the 20th century if your library lacks a copy? And if they are missing the book? Donate it. Ask if they'd like to catalogue a copy, and then give them one. Get a tax receipt for your troubles.

The point is, books are usually challenged because of fear. Someone out there fears an idea, and that person then fears that you (little old you) are not smart enough to make up your own mind. You gonna take that? You gonna let someone else tell you what you can and cannot read?

So get out there and let the masses know that you are not afraid! You will read "profane language." You will peruse "sexual content." You will leaf through the pages of books that "undermine belief in God and organized religion and promote atheism." You will decide that one person's opinion that a novel is "a manual on how to become a male prostitute" is not enough to deter you. You will argue against the notion that a book "offended Christians and couldn’t possibly have any educational benefit." (All quotations courtesy of their aggrieved challengers) And if you don't want to read them? Fine. I'm not here to force my opinions on you. But the least you can do is acknowledge that others have the right to enjoy their contents regardless of your personal tastes.

And also, could you challenge me? Call a library and demand that I be taken off the shelves? Nothing sells a person on a book like a little controversy.

Monkey Laughs, episode three - "It wasn't that funny."

Wow, I am on a real Kids in the Hall kick lately. But can you blame me? Watch this and see.

I really relate to how insane this gets. I often blow things way out of proportion in my mind.

Monkey Droppings - Ordinary Thunderstorms by William Boyd

The Monkey travels to the depraved depths of modern London.

Which is pretty damned depraved, as it turns out.


Ordinary Thunderstorms
by William Boyd (2009)

Filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock coined the now-famous term ‘MacGuffin,’ referring to that event that triggers a plot to propel itself forward. For Hitchcock, it was not important whether the audience believed in the MacGuffin or not, what mattered was that the characters believed it.

In Ordinary Thunderstorms, British writer William Boyd takes that concept to heart. The Costa Award-winning author (for his 2006 novel Restless) has created a story apparently revolving around mysterious documents, but they function only as Boyd’s MacGuffin, as his true ambition lies in an incisive exploration into character.

Taking another Hitchcockian cue, Ordinary Thunderstorms begins with a classic narrative set-up, an innocent man on the run. In this instance, Adam Kindred, in London for a job interview, who within the first twenty pages finds himself inadvertently accused of the murder of a drug company scientist.

In his hand as he runs is a paper from the dead man’s files, “a simple list of names and ages…and beside each name…was some form or shorthand that looked like the record of some kind of dose.” What the list represents is unknown and is almost beside the point, as Boyd merely employs the trappings of a thriller to better follow the ensuing lives of several characters while presenting a dissection of the diverse veins of London life.

Boyd is skilled enough to craft characters and scenarios that grab the reader, but the story he wants to tell is oftentimes an ill fit with the structure of a suspense novel. Ordinary Thunderstorms is marketed as a straight-ahead mystery-thriller, but Boyd’s plot, while atmospheric and sometimes engrossing, is too leisurely paced to maintain any narrative thrust.

As a cat-and-mouse chase it lacks a sense of true urgency, and as an exploration into the evils of corporations, it falls far short of the penetrating insight of John le Carre’s The Constant Gardener. But Boyd is far more interested in people than plot, and what his tale lacks in tension it makes up for with insight into personalities.

For Boyd, people are only as powerful as someone else allows them to be. Jonjo Case, a mercenary who lets Adam slip through his fingers, is eager to right himself in the eyes of his mysterious superiors. Ingram Fryzer, president of the drug company Calenture-Deutz, wields enormous authority yet cannot control the machinations of a silent partner who is rushing an asthma medication to market.

Ironically, the person with the most power is Adam, surprisingly resourceful, forced to begin again by going underground in a city reputed to shelter over 600 missing persons a week. “Only London was big and heartless enough to contain these lost multitudes, the vanished population of the United Kingdom – only London could swallow them up without a qualm, without demur.”

There is a decent thriller in Ordinary Thunderstorms, but those looking for a breakneck murder mystery should seek simpler climes. Boyd may appear distracted by the tenets of the genre, resulting in sub-plots left dangling, but the end result, far from ordinary, is intriguing and often startling in its subtlety.

Originally published (expurgated version) in the Winnipeg Free Press, February 13, 2010.

Monkey Droppings - The Incident Report by Martha Baillie: "The unconjugated afternoon unfolded."

The Monkey discovers that libraries are far more romantic and mysterious places than he previously thought possible.



The Incident Report
by Martha Baillie (2009)

A beautiful young man, whose large dark eyes seemed to be watching a movie the rest of us could not see, walked slowly up the Reference Desk and sat down in the chair intended for patrons with questions.

To label Martha Baillie's beguiling novel The Incident Report as being 'a book about the daily goings-ons in a library' does it a grave disservice, but Baillie herself sets up the format, so superficially, it's fairly hard to argue otherwise. The story is presented as a series of library incident reports (similar in concept, if not execution, to Joey Comeau's Overqualified), professional accounts of unusual occurrences that occur within the confines of public libraries, so while much, much more may occur in Baillie's tale of of woe, wonderment, and public service, it's the public service aspect that gets all the initial attention.

And little wonder; the Canadian author, in addition to having written three previous novels, has been a part-time librarian in Toronto for over twenty years. And so there is no questioning the veracity of her librarian protagonist's observations, especially when she outlines (in a lengthy paragraph that should become the Hippocratic oath of the modern librarian) the parameters of her job:

We, the Public Libraries of Toronto, lend books to any person living, studying or working in the city of Toronto. We do not ask who you are or comment on your choice of reading materials. We require only that you return what you have borrowed in a reasonable condition and that you do so in a timely manner...Without statistics we would cease to exist. If we restricted ourselves to the lending of books we would cease to exist. DVDs, videos, CDs, internet access, magazines, comics, word-processing, story hours, literacy classes for adults, puppet shows, reading clubs: the list of our efforts is impressive. Silence eludes us. If you hope to find silence we recommend that you visit one of our branches early in the morning and lay claim to a chair in a far corner near a window, or drag a chair into the stacks. We discourage all our patrons from urinating indiscriminately, singing loudly, snoring, drying their socks on the heating vents, verbally or physically assaulting each other, cutting out the colourful pictures from our cookbooks, writing in library materials, licking or kissing the lingerie advertisements in the magazines we lend, stealing library property.

If the novel were simply a description of each day's strange encounter with a member of the public (many of them spot-on, if far more lyrical in interpretation than their real-life counterparts would be), The Incident Report would still be a terrifically fun read. Luckily, Baillie has crafted far more than a compendium of human foibles and quirks; in its sneaky way, The Incident Report is a quietly devastating account of damaged people.

The titular reports are written by Miriam Gordon, a "Public Service Assistant" in Toronto. Miriam is a strict follower of rules, often quoting the Rules and Regulations and breaking out the Manual of Conduct for Encounters with Difficult Patrons when dealing with unruly patrons such as Budgie Man, a customer who routinely challenges Miriam's sense of her place in the library:

Because he listens to recordings of song birds, because he rides a bicycle, because he expects to be served, because he is tall and waves his fist while complaining that Hitler did not do a good enough job cleaning up the world, because he disgusts and frightens me, because he breeds budgies, because I am a trained employee of the Public Libraries of Toronto, this morning when he called me over to where he sat, I went.

In addition to the patron encounters (sometimes mild, sometimes disturbing, sometimes downright icky), Miriam begins to discover handwritten notes about the library which, to her mind, cast her as the doomed Gilda from the opera Rigoletto. The notes add a surreal quality to Miriam's life, implying violence (or worse) in every public interaction.

Miriam intersperses her library encounters with observations on her past family life, as well as her burgeoning relationship with Janko Prijatelj, a Slovenian cab driver. Miriam and Janko form a cocoon about themselves that rejects their day-to-day existence apart, but when reality intrudes (as it so often must), Miriam finds herself adrift, clinging to "the necessity of the library."

It would not do to go into too much detail, as much of the joy of The Incident Report comes from placing the pieces together, getting a picture of Miriam's fragility and strength only through glimpses into her reactions. The rest of the novel's delight lies in Baillie's precise construction of sentences, her wordplay and imagery delicately balancing Miriam's wistful view of the world with its harsher realities. Phrases such as "I lowered my eyes to the computer screen and read, but the words had become hollow gourds, little seeds of shrivelled meaning rattling inside them," eloquently capture the fragility of Miriam as she clings to rules and certainty over the increasingly chaotic world about her.

The Incident Report may not be for everybody; Baillie's world is an oblique creation that only attains meaning through careful reading and total immersion, i.e. those who cannot live without linear narrative, stay away. But for those willing to make an effort, to immerse themselves in Miriam's universe; those readers are in for a rewarding experience.

VERDICT: MONKEY LOVES

Monkey Laughs - episode two - "If I don't get a pizza here in ten minutes, I'm letting the monkeys loose!"

Another excuse to laugh, courtesy (again) of the Kids in the Hall.

The Monkey is particularly pleased with this one. I think you'll understand why.

Monkey Droppings - Heaven is Small by Emily Schultz: "Moments after his death, an event he had failed to notice..."

The monkey contemplates death and what comes after.

The monkey is not pleased, and vows to avoid the event if possible.




Heaven is Small
by Emily Schultz (2009)

To start off this review, I do not want in any way to get into some sort of discussion on the merits of Heaven as being an actual place. No one knows what Heaven really is, or if it exists in any form, so if the depiction of the ethereal plane we are about to discuss offends you as being inappropriate to your own understanding of the place, well, my blog, my rules.

Personally, I have no problem with anyone imagining what the afterlife might consist of; I only care that the presentation be, oh I don't know, at least somewhat interesting. My first real introduction to what lies beyond the sheltering sky (outside of the interminable Sunday school classes I was forced to sit through, fidgeting, bored, and yearning for release) was, strangely, the Disney movie The Black Hole. At the end (spoiler alert!), the entire cast is consumed by the unimaginable gravity and chaos of the black hole, and then we are treated to possibly the most disturbing imagery of Hell ever placed within a kids-friendly movie about wise-cracking robots and movie stars past their prime. The mad doctor Reinhardt and his evil (but oh so cool!) robot Maximilian are somehow fused together and are placed on a mountaintop overlooking fields of flame and watching mindless drones march endlessly upward (click here for a clip - jump to the 2:06 mark). Freakin' disturbing stuff, especially to a ten-year-old. Meanwhile, the heroes zoom their spaceship to a dimension of glittering stained glass and winged beings. Boring!

Since then, I've learned that the afterlife is pretty much whatever the author (or art director) wants it to be. I don't remember what my first literary visit to the great beyond might have been (excepting the Bible and variations thereof, of course), but I remember that then, as now, I was often underwhelmed by the paucity of inventiveness on display. On the minus side, I've suffered through the distressingly mundane visions offered in releases such as M. Scott Peck's In Heaven as On Earth and Mitch Albom's The Five People You Meet in Heaven, books aimed at the undiscerning literal-minded mass-market consumers of Chicken Soup books, books that promise a Heaven that is angelic, nonthreatening, unimaginative, and ceaselessly dull. Books that make Hell seem at least interesting by comparison. These books offer homilies and comfort in place of actual theological thought. They're the snuggies of the book world. That came across a touch more snobbish than I anticipated, but these are bland, bland, unflavoured ice-milk bland books with not a single challenging idea in them. They are sympathy cards in book form.

On the plus side, many authors have put a little more thought into it. Keven Brockmeier's brilliant A Brief History of the Dead posits a world where the deceased live on until all who remembered them have passed on as well. In The Last Battle, C.S.Lewis posited that his land of Narnia was the afterlife, or at least one realm of its expanse. The sci-fi master Robert A. Heinlein, in books such as Job and The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, offered visions of the afterlife which were creations of the mind itself and thus alterable through will.

My point? It's the afterlife, people! Sheesh, have some fun with it! And thank you, Emily Schultz, who in Heaven is Small definitely had a ball with the theme.

Gordon Small is dead. We think. He's not sure, as he's too busy prepping for a mysterious job interview with the Heaven Book Company. Gordon is quickly hired to proofread cheap and plentiful romance novels; terrible books written in prose so purple the "ardour of the reading material left a taste in his mouth like old coffee." The specifics of his position are vague, but then, so is the entire enterprise; no one seems to actually go home at night (resulting in a very creepy scene in a parking garage), Gordon can't remember the last time he went to the washroom, and pizza deliverymen are always nearby yet cannot seem to find the entranceway into the building.

What is clear is that Gordon is unhappy, but then, he aways was. Gordon is (was?) a failed novelist, one of "the sad pathetic souls...who had every faculty available to them for careers in literature but who couldn't step far enough outside themselves to see that what they had set down on the page was little more than an undergrad diary written with the assistance of a thesaurus." Gordon's one published novel was an unsurprising underachiever, "printed on cheap paper and given the kind of marketing afford a new style of gyro at a Greek restaurant." Worse, his ex-wife is Chloe Gold, a bestselling novelist who is still very much alive, and writing about Gordon's passing, a hint he is not too clueless to pick up on.

Schultz (whose novel Joyland is a real treat, seek it out) definitely enjoys traipsing about her central conceit, portraying the afterlife as not much different than life on this plane, full of office drones, unrequited sexual urges, and monotony. It wouldn't be fair to reveal every surprise the Canadian author lays for Gordon, but his dismay at his new digs quickly leads to a smartly realized scheme whereby his otherwise clueless fellow employees of Heaven "would realize that they deserved lives beyond what occurred at their desks."

Schultz has a gift for metaphor and simile, especially vivid when it comes to character descriptions: Gordon's boss Lillian's face "bore the pearl translucency of an embryonic sac" and had "a stringy, muscular body that looked as if the day she had been poured from the genetic vat she'd hung onto a bar while the rest of her body dripped down, icicle-like, and hardened: hips and legs as narrow as a splinter;" a co-worker's "lewd mouth seemed to tear his entire face."

Schultz uses Gordon's dilemma to bring a bittersweet tone to the novel. Heaven is Small is, as most books about death tend to be, rather about life than death. Gordon's life pre-Heaven was a wasteland of mall shopping and nights alone; now, given the mysteries of the infinite to confront, he again finds himself underutilized and disenfranchised with the whole affair. To quote the immortal Shatner from Star Trek II (and in a brief self-congratulatory aside, how many reviews have you read that reference C.S. Lewis, Mitch Albom, and Star Trek in one go? Not many, I reckon), "How we deal with death is at least as important as how we deal with life." Death is a fearsome subject to contemplate, but to discover that it is an underwhelming experience must be devastating.

I'd rather not give away too many more glimpses into Schultz's heavenly imaginarium, as part of the joy of reading is the discovery of something fresh and new, even if it's couched in the familiar. Gordon's quest for more than death provides is at once bewitching, witty, and terrifyingly familiar, and packs a more interesting theological punch than a thousand treacly Albom sermons.

VERDICT: MONKEY LIKES A LOT AND THEN SOME

Monkey Laughs, episode one

As an object lesson in writers' block (yeah, this hits kind of close to the bone at the moment), I present for your entertainment a classic Kids in the Hall sketch sure to delight and amuse.

Enjoy, won't you?

Critical Monkey! Update the 7th!

Man, what a month! Two disqualified entries, new reviews from four contestents, a newbie with three(!) reviews in one month, and a whole lotta pain and misery.

Bring it on!

Acceptance (seven reviews)

Depression (six reviews)

Anger (five reviews)

Lori L
Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen
Roses of Glory by Mary Pershall
Spock's World by Diane Duane
A Texan's Honor by Leigh Greenwood
Star Wars: Rebel Dawn by A.C. Crispin
Twilight by Stephanie Meyer *ineligible for contention*

Corey Redekop
Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
The Justice Riders by Chuck Norris
Jake and the Kid by W.O. Mitchell
Left Behind by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins
The Stainless Steel Rat by Harry Harrison
The Murder of King Tut by James Patterson & Martin Dugard *ineligible for contention*

Steve Zipp
Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town by Stephen Leacock
A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking
The Whiteoaks of Jalna by Mazo de la Roche
The Palm-Wine Drinkard by Amos Tutuola

Guilt (four reviews)

Jeanne
Empire of Lies by Andrew Klaven
A Merry Heart by Wanda E. Brunsetter
A Washington, D.C. by Robert J. Hensler
It's Not that I'm Bitter by Gina Barreca

Bargaining (three reviews)

Scrat
Bright Shiny Morning by James Frey
Hold Tight by Harlan Coben
Double Cross by James Patterson

Denial (two reviews)

Betty
Generation Dead/Generation Dead: Kiss of Life by Daniel Waters
A Bend in the Road by Nicholas Sparks

gypsysmom
Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee
Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice

Shock (one review)

Alison
On the Road by Jack Kerouac

First off, welcomes go out to Scrat with three reviews in the space of a month. Way to raise the bar for the rest of us. Or lower, I'm not sure. Anyway, good job, and I share your pain on the James Patterson. And kudos to Steve Zipp (winner of last month's signed copy of Mark Rayner's The Amadeus Net) for keeping us relatively highbrow with another discerning entry. And good job for me, for keeping my sanity after The Murder of King Tut had me gnashing my teeth in despair. Big ups as well for Lori, who kept herself honest and removed her critique of Twilight from contention, even though it probably cost her a few years of her lifespan.

And now, the big draw of the month for all new reviews, an ARC copy of Jasper Fforde's Shades of Grey goes to: SCRAT! Big shock, she loaded the deck. Congrats, and I'll get that in the mail as soon as I get a mailing address from you.

Only five months to go! Who will survive? Who will fall by the wayside? Who writes this stuff?