The Order of Good Cheer by Bill Gaston - Book review

The Order of Good Cheer
by Bill Gaston
House of Anansi, 400 pages, $29.95

When all is despair, and hope is near lost, what is the one event that perks up man’s spirits so that he may carry in on the face of adversity? Apparently, a party.

At least, that’s what the two protagonists in Bill Gaston’s extraordinary new novel The Order of Good Cheer would have us believe. And as one of the two is legendary explorer Samuel de Champlain, allowing Gaston the benefit of a doubt would seem appropriate.

The Order of Good Cheer, aside from being co-opted by Gaston for his title, was a series of feast nights begun by Champlain in the settlement of Annapolis Royal in 1607. After a harsh experience with the perils of the Canadian wilderness, Champlain’s idea was to hold a meal to celebrate “our new home, and our own good company, and the good cheer that God provides.”

Such feasts became legendary, and may also have helped abate the scurvy that plagued the solders throughout their tenure in the north. Champlain’s Order was seen as a celebration of fellowship and, to Gaston’s mind, a vital component in keeping the men of the settlement, “eager to break from winter’s damning confines,” in high spirits and healthy mind.

Flash-forward 400 years, and Andy Winslow suffers from a similar dilemma. Where Champlain was confronted with “the blooming restlessness” of an untamed Canadian winter, Andy faces a challenging environment of man’s own design: “the seas were rising and throwing dead fish on the beach, the third world was kindling, everyone’s weather was wrong.”

As Andy undergoes the rigours of life in the economically strained township of Prince Rupert, he, too, faces loneliness and uncertainty, exacerbated by the impending arrival of his childhood sweetheart after twenty years apart. Inspired by his reading of Champlain, he decides to follow the example and host a party of unusual foods and circumstances, “[a] time to gather and toast each other with candle-light glinting in all eyes and off smiling teeth.”

By now, it is an accepted fact that Gaston is one of the most talented writers currently on the Canadian literary scene. His novels and short story collections have all been critically acclaimed, with his last effort Gargoyles a multiple award-winner as well as a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award.

With that in mind, it should come as no surprise that The Order of Good Cheer is a fine novel. But Gaston surpasses himself, intermingling two narratives with such aplomb and dissimilar cadence that one might suspect they were the product of two separate individuals.

Gaston also proves himself a maestro of physical atmosphere, conjuring up two distinct worlds that threaten collapse and possible apocalypse at any moment. Placed against such backdrops, his characters shine in all their flawed glory, choosing to celebrate the moment because that’s all that may be left to them.

The Order of Good Cheer is a feast of nuanced writing, blessed with one of those rare endings that are absolutely perfect. Gaston has crafted a bittersweet ode to friendship, loss, and near-hopelessness that lingers in the mind long after the story has come to a close, like the last few minutes of a get-together when the wine has finally settled in the stomach, the anecdotes are all told, and all that remains is comfortable silence.

Book review - Valley of Day-Glo by Nick DiChario

As loyal readers of this blog may be aware - and a quick shout out to all the regulars: Matt, Rod, Jeff, Colin, Koop, Rob, Tanya, Elizabeth, Big D, Shaggy, C-Doc, Smelly Joe, Big Tiny, Earl, Jedthro, Anonymous, Mom, Dad, Big Shirtless Murray, Squinty, CRAZY LADY WHO USES ALLCAPS TOO MUCH, and Teddy (way to fight fires, bro!) - I am a big fan of Nick DiChario’s first novel A Small and Remarkable Life. It remains one of the only modern novels I’ve come across to effortlessly evoke the works of sci-fi legend Theodore Sturgeon, which in itself is a rare and wonderful thing. Yes, comparisons to Frank Herbert, Orson Scott Card, or Arthur C. Clarke are all well and good, but who gets compared to Sturgeon? Very few, and with very good reason. Sturgeon was an innovator, fusing a depth of humanity with bizarre, outworldly concepts that resulted in works of astonishing complexity and clarity. A Small and Remarkable Life was Sturgeon reborn, and if you haven’t read it, or Sturgeon for that matter, then shame on you. Needless to point out, I awaited DiChario’s second novel, Valley of Day-Glo, with an eagerness that bordered on the pathological.

So, here it is, and what’s the consensus? DiChario is no Theodore Sturgeon, not anymore. And that’s a compliment. Valley of Day-Glo is as far away conceptually from A Small and Remarkable Life as Sturgeon’s To Marry Medusa is from, say, Kurt Vonnegut’s The Sirens of Titan. That is to say, pretty damn different. But it is equally compelling, equally weird, and equally accomplished. DiChario cannot be accused of repeating himself in anything but quality.

Valley of Day-Glo is ostensibly a post-apocalyptic epic, but by way of the absurdist fictions of Kurt Vonnegut and Will Self (whose novel The Book of Dave has slight echoes in DiChario’s narrative). Its protagonist is one of the last of the Iroquois, in a future where tribes of Natives are slowly reclaiming the earth, the white men (or Honio’o) having perished in the Great Reddening which decimated the planet. It all sounds deadly serious, and DiChario approaches the subject with utmost respect, but when you realize that the main character’s name is Broadway Danny Rose - the eunuch son of Father The Outlaw Josey Wales and Mother Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? - you get an inkling of DiChario’s warped and refreshing take on the apocalypse genre.

It is the intent of the tribe of Broadway Danny Rose to “actively integrate the words of wisdom, the objects and rituals that remain from the Pre-Reddening Honio’o into the cultural habits of the Indian tribes, so that the horrible deeds that provoked the great Indian spirits to destroy the yellow- and dark- and white-skinned people will never be duplicated in ignorance.” Unfortunately, there are only three members left, and when Father The Outlaw Josey Wales is strangled to death by Mother Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? after an argument concerning Major League Baseball, there aren’t many options left for keeping the tribe alive. Mother and son decide to take Father’s body to the Valley of Day-Glo, a fabled land “where all the colours of the pre-Reddening Earth can be found. Flowers are in constant bloom there. Trees reach up so far into the sky that it is impossible to know where the branches end and the flowers begin.” It is, in other words, Eden, where death becomes life. And although Broadway Danny Rose does not believe it exists, Father The Outlaw Josey Wales did, and burying him there seems the right thing to do.

In a recent interview, DiChario classifies Valley of Day-Glo as absurdist fiction, although he admits even he does not necessarily know how to define the term (He also states his love for Steven Sherrill’s The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break, which makes me like him even more). Much of what occurs in Valley is indeed absurd, as when the tribes each take a book as their personal bible; the tribe of Broadway Danny Rose, the Gushedon’dada tribe, worships The Microwave Cookbook. After a harrowing journey through the blasted landscape, Broadway Danny Rose meets up with an established township of tribes, and discovers that “[the] chiefs of the Independent Iroquois nations planned for the future by organizing the tribes into a coalition of argumentative nincompoops.” The ultimate answer to the existence of the Valley of Day-Glo is as strange and inspired a piece of weirdness as ever graced the pages of sci-fi. But DiChario never flinches, never winks, never suggests that he’s just goofing, which contributes to Valley’s lasting effect on the reader.

There is much of Vonnegut in DiChario’s narrative; the beset-upon and often impotent hero, the strange underhanded humour, the overarching anger at unending human stupidity. The book jacket makes a slightly misleading comparison between Valley and the works of Douglas Adams; both are science-fiction with a humourous bent, but Adams, God love him, was far more concerned with making people laugh than exploring the literary boundaries of his chosen genre. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but Adams was Monty Python and The Goon Show, whereas DiChario is Samuel Beckett and Joseph Heller. Both options are funny, but if you go in expecting similar levels of hilarity, you’re bound to be disappointed at best, and outright perplexed, befuddled, and flummoxed at worst.

What is clear is that DiChario is a unique talent, a writer of depth and originality (a mix far more rare than it should be). He’s not afraid to take risks. He’s warped. I await his third novel with all the breathless anticipation of a child newly introduced to chocolate, with the promise of more in the indeterminate future.

And as an aside, if for no other reason, I would love Valley of Day-Glo for its book club discussion guide alone, rife with such questions as:

2. Do you think humankind can survive a nuclear world war? If so, are you serious?
5. How important is it for you to be accepted by other people?
9. Why are you reading this guide when you could be out in the world discovering great books?

Now that’s ballsy, suggesting that people read something else.

We Are Now Beginning Our Descent, by James Meek - review

We Are Now Beginning Our Descent

James Meek

The events and effects of September 11 have proved endless fodder for non-fiction books and documentaries, but their impact on the world of fiction has taken longer to be felt. Lately a few movies such as Lions for Lambs and Rendition have dared to tentatively poke their heads out at the box office and comment on the state of the ‘war on terror’, but have by and large been greeted with apathy, and quickly forgotten.

Luckily, literature often gets a pass where cinema fears to tread, and opportunities to understand the war from alternative perspectives have begun to make themselves heard. Authors such as Jonathan Safran Foer, Jess Walter, and Don DeLillo have recently taken bold steps forward in using the events as a backdrop for intelligent examinations of the world as it now functions.

Latest to employ the aftermath of 9/11 as a literary device is British novelist James Meek, author of the critically-lauded The People’s Act of Love. Meek may be in a better position to comment on such issues than most; in addition to his sterling work as a novelist, he worked as a reporter in Afghanistan, and in 2004 was named Foreign Correspondent and Amnesty Journalist of the Year for his reporting on Iraq and Guantánamo Bay.

As such, the Afghanistan scenes in his new novel We Are Now Beginning Our Descent have the sting of authenticity. As his protagonist Kellas traverses through a war “scripted for an audience that knew as much about orcs and Sauron as it did about Iraqis and Saddam,” the moral quagmire of this new war has rarely felt more personal.

Far more than a blasted landscape travelogue, We Are Now Beginning Our Descent (a nicely ominous title) is a manic cry for truth in a world that has lost its moral bearings. And as Kellas undergoes a tragicomic mid-life crisis that takes him from Afghanistan to England to the U.S., it becomes readily apparent that truth is, and always has been, a nebulous and wholly subjective quality.

Kellas is a dispirited British war correspondent whose belief system has been sorely tested by the new warfare he is sent out to cover. Unlike the honourable reporting he once offered, Kellas was now forcibly compelled to take part in “a greater story, a baton-twirling lit-up marching parade of a story that belonged to a mighty nation of storytellers, mythmakers and newscryers, America, but which other, foreign storytellers might attach themselves to.”

Kellas himself is no saint, himself having written a superficial military thriller with the sole intent of making money, and is finding himself less and less capable of functioning without an ethical compass. And when a strange email arrives from Astrid, an American reporter he once knew, Kellas’ finds himself completely adrift, with Astrid the only lifeline he can see.

Through Kellas, Meek is interested in the search for the truth that underlies the fiction of our lives. We have become a society of surface, he implies, more content to watch and comment than actually participate.

“There was a cult of seeing without knowing and watching without touching,” Kellas notes about society’s understanding of the war, but this concept can be stretched over all aspects of modern life. The world has become enamoured with the superficial, the soundbite and the 30-second newspiece, preventing empathy and halting any hope of understanding one another, either in the arena of war or the domestic field of interpersonal relationships.

In an inspired scene of black comedic rage, Kellas rails at a dinner party hosted by liberal commentators who have never set foot outside their country, a scene as notable for its pointed observations as it is for the undercurrent of self-loathing that permeates Kellas’ every action. Meek’s novel is ostensibly about war, but as Kellas staggers from one set piece to another, Meek slowly unveils a quietly complicated love story, hinting that misunderstandings between countries are no more or less complicated than those of individuals.

Meek has a wonderfully sardonic way with words, exemplified in Kellas’ first reactions to the U.S.: “For foreigners arriving here, America was a marvel harder to believe, infinitely more wondrous: a real version of a notorious fake…[like] a long-lens paparazzi shot of Jesus on the beach, paler, flabbier, shorter, with less holy eyes than the icons had it, staggeringly real.”

However, as Meek throws Kellas about from one soul-shattering experience to another, it is hard to maintain a sense of believability about Descent as a whole. Kellas is a brilliant character, but his travails function better as separate stories than as a whole novel. There is a sense of incompleteness to Meek’s tale, which indeed may have been his ultimate point, that there is no ending to life’s miseries, but it causes subtle harm to the story.

We Are Now Beginning Our Descent may not be wholly successful, but it is always compelling, entertaining, and thought-provoking. Meek keeps a sure hand on the wheel, and while it may drift at times, the trip itself is worth taking.

Originally published in the Winnipeg Free Press (expurgated version), May 25, 2008;

A year later, and still getting reviewed!

The world of publishing is obviously far different than that of the movies, where reviews are up the first week or so, and that's likely it. But not for books; over a year after being published, Shelf Monkey is still getting reviewed, and it goes without saying, reviewed well. Like I'd promote a bad review.

This week, it's the independent (and fantastic) magazine Broken Pencil. I love the independents, they can get away with so much more...colourful language. I think every book review ought to be laden with obscenities.

From the review by Richard Rosenbaum in issue #39:

The dialogue is thoroughly witty, Thomas' desires and frustrations feel genuine, the style is quite original, and if you've got any sort of literary tastes or preferences at all, the discussions between the characters over which books are treasures and which ones are trash will have you laughing out loud in recognition. Let's put it this way: if you hate the [obscenity deleted for our more sensitive readers] Da Vinci Code, this book is totally for you!

Thanks, Richard! You and your review rock in every conceivable way!

Nothing to Be Frightened Of by Julian Barnes - review

Nothing to Be Frightened Of
by Julian Barnes

“Religions were the first great inventions of the fiction writers. A convincing representation and a plausible explanation of the world for understandably confused minds. A beautiful, shapely story containing hard, exact lies.”

Inflammatory words to some, but British novelist Julian Barnes is not out to intentionally ruffle feathers. When you consider his opening sentence, “I don’t believe in God, but I miss him,” it is clear that there is something far more interesting afoot.

Barnes, two-time nominee for the Man Booker Prize, is interested in death, or more specifically, in mankind’s reactions to inevitability. It is oblivion that is feared, he suggests, the nothing which awaits us all, which lends the title of his pseudo-memoir Nothing to Be Frightened Of a subtle double-meaning perfectly in keeping with an author often praised for his discriminating wit.

With characteristic meticulous prose, marked by bursts of glorious low humour, Barnes undertakes an examination of death, using his family as a lynchpin on which to hang a wide-reaching inquiry into the beliefs of the world’s great thinkers. “Most of them are dead, and quite a few of them are French,” he warns, with Jules Renard the main resource, and dozens more philosophers, novelists, and composers as backup.

Barnes takes as his starting point the death of his parents; a self-effacing atheistic father and a domineering agnostic mother. Oddly to Barnes, the death of his mother affected him the more, as “[his father’s] death was just his death; her death was their death.”

Under such parentage, Barnes “had no faith to lose, only a resistance, which felt more heroic than it was, to the mild regime of God-referring that an English education entailed.” Barnes and his brother (the philosopher Jonathan Barnes) grow up firmly atheist, understanding that religion, and Christianity in particular, had lasted so long “because it was a beautiful lie, because the characters, the plot, the various coups de théâtre, the overarching struggle between Good and Evil, made up a great novel.”

It is only in the second-half of his life that Barnes begins to firmly question this conviction, but not out of any switch in belief systems. “If I called myself an atheist at twenty, and an agnostic at fifty and sixty, it isn’t because I have acquired more knowledge in the meantime: just more awareness of ignorance.”

What fascinates Barnes is why we should be so worried about oblivion; as we never worry about our lack of existence before we were born, why do we believe what happens after we die would be any different?

Fear of death, he decides, comes from its implacability. Unlike the concept of God, which has evolved over the centuries “from Old to New, like the Testaments and the Labour Party,” death “can’t be talked down, or parlayed into anything; it simply declines to come to the negotiating table. It doesn’t have to pretend to be Vengeful or Merciful…It is impervious to insult, complaint, or condescension.”

It is the demise of personality which frightens Barnes the most, the reduction of whatever we are into intangible nothingness. “Remaining in character: this is what we hope for, this we cling to, as we look ahead to everything collapsing…I doubt that when my time comes I shall look for the theoretical comfort of an illusion farewelling an illusion…I shall want to remain in what I shall obstinately think of as my character.”

Despite Barnes prowess with words, it cannot be denied that, no matter how amiable and erudite the narrator, an obsession with death can become tiresome. While one could not ask for a better explorer to lead the way, Barnes’ constant jump-cutting from philosophical principles to religious iconography to personal confessions is exhausting at times, and a judicious trimming of Barnes’ ideas would have been most welcome.

Nevertheless, this is firmly a case of having too much of a good thing. When it comes to death, Nothing to Be Frightened Of has more personality, vitality, and depth in any one of its paragraphs than the entirety of the numerous collections of comforting platitudes and bland Chicken Soup homilies that tend to congregate whenever and wherever death rears its head.

There is comfort in the unknowable, Barnes suggests, and for those willing to embrace uncertainty – or, to misquote Emily Dickenson’s final words, the rising fog – Nothing to Be Frightened Of is something to be enamored of.

Originally published in the Winnipeg Free Press, April 20, 2008

His Illegal Self by Peter Carey - review

His Illegal Self
by Peter Carey

Peter Carey is no stranger to accolades. In addition to writing nine best-selling novels and winning the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, the Australian-born author has twice received the famed Man Booker Prize for his works Oscar and Lucinda and The True History of the Kelly Gang.

It may be premature at this point to suggest that Carey think about preparing more room on his trophy shelf. Whether it wins any awards or not, the fact remains that his newest novel, His Illegal Self – a brilliantly unsentimental fiction about trust, love, and dishonesty – is a spectacular return to form after the uneven duo of My Life as a Fake and Theft.

His Illegal Self primarily concerns itself with two characters, Che and Dial. Che is a privileged young boy in 1970s New York, raised by his grandmother in a repressive atmosphere of isolation, kept away from radios or televisions for reasons “as tangled as old nylon line, snagged with hooks and spinners and white oxidized lead weights.”

The rationale soon becomes apparent with the arrival of Dial (short for dialectic), a seemingly freewheeling spirit Che automatically assumes is his mother come back to claim him. This error only becomes one of many, as the pair soon discovers themselves on the run, victims of misunderstanding, misinformation, and plain bad luck.

Their convoluted path eventually leads them to Australia, specifically Queensland, “a police state run by men who never finished high school.” Taking up residence in a dilapidated area of farmland, Che and Dial come up against the triple terrors of punishing climate, anti-American attitudes, and each other’s convoluted feelings toward the other.

To give away more would be to destroy much of the pleasure of Carey’s tale, a wide-ranging chase story that nevertheless achieves a shivering intimacy. Che and Dial, two of the most intriguing literary characters in recent memory, are a pair firmly entrenched in Carey’s adoration of the misfits and outsiders in society, victims of circumstance

Che may be one the finest characters Carey has yet created, and one of the most fully realized representations of a child in modern literature. Innocent and bright, stubborn yet never precocious, nervy yet uncomprehending, Che firmly belongs in the pantheon of great fictional children alongside Roddy Doyle’s title character Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha and Wayne Johnston’s Draper Doyle in The Divine Ryans.

After the somewhat constrained Theft, Carey feels loose and invigorated, wielding his command of storytelling with elation and deftness. His deceptively muted language, “some words as plain as pebbles, many more that [hold] their secrets like the crunchy bodies of wasps or grasshoppers,” is a joy to read.

Yet despite this newfound release, His Illegal Self never loses control and become a showcase for Carey’s cleverness. He keeps an even hand on the more bizarre turns, and even as the narrative flows into disquieting tragedy and tears, the emotional knot of Che and Dial remains the novel’s touching core.

His Illegal Self is a wonderful novel, Carey’s best since The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith. If, as hinted throughout the pages, there is more to tell about Che’s life, Carey had best take his time on the sequel. His Illegal Self is too good to soil with a lesser follow-up.

Originally published in the Winnipeg Free Press.

Novels, superheroes, and Canuck sensibilities

I love superhero movies (I even willingly watched Ghost Rider), and eagerly await this summer's upcoming releases; Iron Man, The Dark Knight, and Hellboy II will undoubtedly kick all kinds of butt. Possibly also The Incredible Hulk, but I'm not getting that vibe from the less-than-incredible trailer. That, and I am of the opinion that Ang Lee's original Hulk is one of the finest (and unappreciated) examples of superhero movies ever, and substituting Lee with the director of Unleashed does not exactly fill me with hope. Kind of like when Brent Ratner was pegged to direct Red Dragon.

With that in mind, I've been perusing the landscape for some novels to help get me primed and ready. And since I'm nothing if not patriotic (is that derisive laughter I hear?), let's look at some Canadian literary examples of superhero mythology.

From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain
by Minister Faust

This is, on the surface, the most stereotypical entry, a slam-bang action-fest rife with physical improbabilities, invincible individuals, and dastardly evil goings-on. Like the recent American novel Soon I Will be Invincible by Austin Grossman (a terrific read, by the way), Faust both embraces the mythological stereotypes of the superhero genre, and playfully tweaks the reader's expectations through treating them as flawed human beings. The results are hysterical. De-mythologizing the superhero has been an accepted trend since Alan Moore revolutionized comic books and superhero teams with The Watchmen and Frank Miller pulled Batman back from the brink of self-parody with The Dark Knight Returns, and Faust's novel stands equal to such classics.

Dr. Brain is indeed from the notebooks of Dr. Eva Brain-Silverman, a psychoanalyst who specializes in the mysterious world of the specially-abled. She is the analyst of F*O*O*J* (Fantastic Order of Justice), a league of superheroes rendered dysfunctional and impotent after the legendary "Götterdämmerung" left most of the world's supervillains dead, and most of the world's superheroes out of a job. As she probes the minds of Omnipotent Man, The Flying Squirrel, Power Grrrl, Iron Lass, X-Man, and Superfly, it turns out that dysfunction does not target only the normal.

Like the best comic books and graphic novels, Dr. Brain can be read as a kick-ass actioneer or, if you prefer, as a sly satire of our world. Faust is not exactly subtle with the metaphors; racism, paranoia, and xenophobia are all staples of the superhero subculture, and Dr. Brain follows this path fairly closely. What Faust brings to the party is intricately funny word-play, ingenious plot developments, and true love for his subject matter. And fun. Man, is this fun.

Grade - A-

All My Friends are Superheroes
by Andrew Kaufman

All My Friends is as far away conceptually from Dr. Brain as any superhero novel could be. Instead of the spectacular antics of Omnipotent Man and Iron Lass, Kaufman offers up The Frog-Kisser ("blessed with the ability to transform geeks into winners") and The Sloth (my personal favourite, an individual armed with "an amazing ability to say 'Fu@# it' and really, truly mean it"). Clearly, we are in a different realm of powers here.

Tom does not have superpowers, but his wife The Perfectionist does. She can will order with her mind. Unfortunately, he is invisible to her due to the jealous shenanigans of jilted superhero Hypno, and nothing Tom does can make her see him.

I've had a few people comment on All My Friends since I blogged that I was reading it. It turns out to have quite a rabid following, and it's easy to see why. Deft, amusing, endlessly quotable and charming as hell, Kaufman has crafted a love letter to love itself. It's a slight novella, but no less compelling for its brevity. It's light on the heroics, but near-perfect in execution.

Grade - A

Flyboy Action Figure Comes With Gasmask
by Jim Munroe

In a review of Shelf Monkey, one astute blogger labeled it as being written in "the Canadian Indie Style. Some of you may not be familiar with it (although if you've read Flyboy Action Figure Comes With Gasmask, or really anything else by Jim Munroe, you've definitely encountered it)...It's self-consciously casual to the point of seeming forced. The authors tend to have large vocabularies, but rarely use them effectively. Technique is virtually irrelevant, with plot and overt character development being nearly the only concerns. The narrators are self-deprecating, misunderstood, inwardly aggressive but outwardly meek. The women who serve as love interests for these characters are uniformly aggressive, beautiful, artistic, sporting an unusual name, and often (though not always) bisexual. Quirky isn't the word." I'd like to protest, as I believe Douglas Coupland began the Canadian quirk trend, but as I hadn't ever read Coupland until after I had finished my first draft, I suppose I'm guilty as charged. And I like aggressive women. But it doesn't change the fact that Flyboy Action Figure is a heck of a good time.

Flyboy takes the road between Dr. Brain and All My Friends, presenting the possibility of possessing true superpowers in a realistic setting, a precursor to more muted (but no less entertaining) examinations of superpowers such as M. Night Shyamalan's remarkable film Unbreakable and Jonathan Lethem's spectacular novel The Fortress of Solitude. In modern-day Toronto, Ryan (who can turn himself into a fly) and Cassandra (a waitress who can make things disappear - not reappear, mind you) take it upon themselves to challenge the tabloid newspapers (think a paper which rhymes with Bational Boast), as well as other bastions of conservative propaganda.

Flyboy is not exactly deep, nor subtle, but Munroe brings rich characterizations and skewed wit to what is admittedly a very strange genre. If Coupland is the godfather of Canadian quirk, then Munroe is that fun-loving uncle you wish would visit more often.

Grade - B+

Alright, I'm primed and ready. Bring on the genetically-superior beings!

Too much of a good thing? Nah.

Sure, gas is getting priced out of purchasability, wheat stores are at a thirty year low, and polar bears should be extinct any day now. But there are more copies of Shelf Monkey coming! That should alleviate your crippling depression about the aforementioned catastophies, right?

Yes, Shelf Monkey is officially in its second printing, a rarity for a first-time author with a small publisher. Whoo! Raise the roof!

And Shelf Monkey is currently in contention for nomination in a number of prizes at the Manitoba Book Awards, so cross your fingers.

Quickie Reviews - The Gum Thief, Punch Line

Well, it's 6am, I've been awake three hours with no sleep in sight. Hey! Let's review some books!

The Gum Thief
by Douglas Coupland

Coupland, while never boring, is somewhat hit and miss with me. I've enjoyed everything I've read of his, but nothing has matched the genius of his first two novels Generation X and Microserfs. Hey Nostradamus! was terrific, but jPod was too much self-aware and a rehash of his former work, and Eleanor Rigby was an abundance of quirk with not enough substance. The Gum Thief, luckily, is one of his most enjoyable efforts.

Set in a STAPLES superstore, Gum concerns the lives of two of its denizens; Roger, a forty-something man burned out on life, and Bethany, a young goth chick who finds Roger deeply creepy. The story is told through diary entries, as Roger charts his day-to-day existence, and Bethany (after surreptitiously reading the diary) begins a sweet correspondence with him through the pages. Along the way, Coupland intersperses the dialogue with chapters from Roger's novel-in-progress Glove Pond, a hilariously bitter take on Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfe?.

What drives Gum is the absolute sincerity of the two leads. These are deeply flawed people, and while Coupland is no gifted stylist, he again captures the zeitgeist of people floating free in a society they do not feel themselves a part of. I've always believed that Generation X is that generation's The Sun Also Rises, a snapshot of the era, and Gum's characters are firmly of that mold. It's Coupland's depth of feeling for his characters that has always been his strongest talent, and even when the book feels a little too 'couplandy' (copyright pending on that term, by the way), Roger and Bethany make it eminently worthwhile.

Funny, touching, insightful, and weird, The Gum Thief is Coupland's best in quite a while.

Grade - A-

Punch Line
by Joey Slinger

Punch Line is what some might call a 'noble failure,' but a failure it is.

The plot concerns a ragtag group of senior citizens confined to what some might charitably call a group home, but is in fact Hell. The group has taken upon itself to serve as a form of vigilante justice, meting out death to those them deem not worthy of life.

The strongest aspect of Punch Line is Slinger's take on the 'tragedy' of growing old. His characters, particularly lead protagonist Ballantine, are consumed by their task because society has deemed them to old to have a function. Therefore, their lives are desperately dull, and the sting of Slinger's satire is felt most deeply when he concentrates on this predicament.

However, Slinger has no control of his plot, and spins outlandish tales that remind me of the works of Robert Coover (especially Gerald's Party), except that Coover makes it work. Coover's slides into surrealism are always under control, whereas the bizarre antics in Punch Line seem forced and unwieldly, and never gel cohesively with the rest of the plot. The book as a whole feels schizophrenic, and ends up frustrating more often than it entertains.

Grade - C-

At a Loss For Words by Diane Schoemperlen - review

At a Loss for Words
by Diane Schoemperlen

It may be trite to remark that romance, and all its iterations, is among the most employed themes in all of literature. Recent years’ examples have run the gamut in terms of quality, from the sublime intelligence of Stephen Marche’s Raymond and Hannah to the simpering idiocy of Paulo Coelho’s Eleven Minutes.

Diane Schoemperlen is no stranger to the passions and perils of the heart. The Canadian author has past mined this vein with great success with her novel In the Language of Love and her Governor General’s Award –winning short story collection Forms of Devotion.

Schoemperlen has proven herself both an excellent stylist and an expert navigator of human foibles. Unfortunately, her latest novel, At a Loss for Words, is supremely disappointing.

The unnamed narrator of Loss suffers from insomnia, has recently undergone a severe break-up, and is “a writer who cannot write.” Stumped for words and ideas, she turns to writers’ self-help books for inspiration, all of which spit out hackneyed advice along the lines of “Write on colored paper” and “Write about a time you were misunderstood.”

As she writes through her block, she begins to reveal facets of the relationship that has left her shattered. Walking through the steps of the romance from giddy first meeting to tear-soaked denouement, Schoemperlen shows an expert sense of pacing, portioning out the slow reveal with the sometimes-bizarre recommendations of the self-help books.

A reunion with a departed lover of thirty years previous, this new/old love at first leaves her in a state of unadorned bliss. “When you’re in love, every little thing furnished further evidence of the fact that the two of you are indeed fated to live together happily ever after.”

The lovers are immediately in a sugary worship of each other that leaves everything they utter or write dripping with syrup, capping each sentence with an exclamation point of idolization. “Look what love does to language,” Schoemperlen writes. “Either it sends you into breathless, shameless, hyperbolic logorrhea…or it leaves you wordless altogether.”

While it may have been Schoemperlen’s point to juxtapose this excessively purple prose with the reality of the ultimate betrayal, the dialogue is at first amusing, then irritating, and eventually exhausting. The narrator’s near-constant self-involvement may be realistic in terms of her pain, but as a narrative device it only serves to make her exceptionally unlikable, and distances the reader from any possible empathy with her plight.

As a result, At a Loss for Words, slight as it is, becomes a chore to finish. The final pages, complete with ‘you go, girl!’ conclusion, are tiresome and repetitive. A concluding twist near the end comes too late, as the reader is dulled into apathy.

There is personal truth and ache in what Schoemperlen writes about, and it leaks into the story in unexpected ways. “Sometimes I wish I could just put you back in the box where I used to keep you,” the narrator comments. “I guess I’m going to cut off your legs to fit you back in there.” Such barbs have the sting of authenticity, but they are too few and too far between to make any impact.

In Forms of Devotion, there is a wonderful story entitled “How to Write a Serious Novel About Love.” It is wise, witty, weird, and true, a spectacularly funny examination of the form while being itself a touching love story. It says more in fifteen pages than the whole of At a Loss for Words, and resonates far, far longer.

[Originally published in The Winnipeg Free Press, February 10, 2008]

9 months later, and the reviews keep coming in

Jeff Vandermeer, author extraordinaire, has provided a list of his favourite novels of 2007 to Locus Online, a respected science-fiction/fantasy publication.

And guess who's on the list?

Among many, many other notable titles (he acknowledges that it was a very good year for reading), Jeff cites Shelf Monkey under his 'First Novels' choices, noting :

Corey Redekop provided this year's gonzo fun with his Shelf Monkey, an utterly enjoyable novel about radical bookworms.

I love it.

Thanks, Jeff, and I'll be starting The City of Saints and Madmen any day now.

Quickie Book Reviews

I thought I’d do a few quick reviews, instead of my trademark long, rambling, and ultimately pointless ones.

Brown Girl in the Ring
by Nalo Hopkinson

This Canadian sci-f/fantasy novel (one of the 2007 Canada Reads selections) is a sterling example of peerless imagination. Hopkinson interweaves futuristic elements such as high-tech human organ transplants and the devolution of society with Caribbean mysticism and magic realism, resulting in a highly original product. Reminiscent of the work of late sci-fi master Octavia Butler (herself a fan of the novel), Brown Girl in the Ring is unique, personal, and provocative; everything good sci-fi/fantasy should be.

Rating: A-

Big Man Coming Down the Road
by Brad Smith

Smith’s past works such as All Hat have marked him as a talented practitioner of ‘country noir’, a genre pretty much dominated by Joe R. Lansdale. Certainly, his first few novels marked him as an Elmore Leonard-esque crime writer with a humourous bent. Yet Big Man jettisons the crime elements of past efforts, and concentrates on character. All well and good, and Smith’s characters are strong and memorable. But Big Man’s plot is too slight, too meaningless. The characters are good, but their tribulations are merely mildly entertaining. Without a stronger narrative drive, Smith seems to lose focus, and the by-the-numbers plot does his ear for dialogue a true disservice.

Rating: C+

Book Review - The Toothpick by Henry Petroski

The Toothpick: Technology and Culture
by Henry Petroski
Alfred A. Knopf, 443 pages, $35.95

“The close study of anything as both an object and as an idea is potentially intellectually rewarding and revealing about the technology and culture in which it is embedded.” So says Henry Petroski, and he knows whereof he speaks.

Petroski, a professor of history at Duke University and the Aleksander S. Vesic Professor of Civil Engineering, has made quite a side career for himself as a popularizer of what many would regard as ‘the mundane.’ In previous books outlining the history of the pencil, the bookshelf, and multiple other devices that most people never give a second thought to, Petroski has sought to reveal the “hidden and frequently overlooked relationships among the people and things of the world.”

Thus, for his fourteenth book, Petroski undertakes a meticulously researched assessment of one of the simplest manufactured artifacts in existence. The Toothpick: Technology and Culture places the examined object within the context of the evolution of civilization, with always-intriguing results.

The toothpick, as a device, has existed in one form or another since mankind’s first meal. A simple apparatus has long been sought as a tasteful alternative to our body’s natural pick; “whenever we proceed to drag the tongue across and thrust it between our teeth at a repast’s tenacious residue, we reveal our mission by the bulge moving around our lips and cheeks like a mole beneath the lawn.”

As Petroski notes, there is no one single starting point for such a tool. Examining the fossil record of our ancestors, grooves in skeletal teeth reveal that twigs, rocks, and grass are the historical antecedents to the now-ubiquitous smooth wooden utensil we are familiar with.

The modern pick, in its mass-produced form, is typically attributed to Charles Forster, an American businessman “who recognized the potential for ultimately large profits in small, trivial things such as toothpicks sold by and for the millions.” As Petroski digs deeper, we see that by following the progression of the toothpick, with its cultural nuances and technological advancements, we are following the development of civilization.

All this would be for naught if Petroski treated his subject with the dry reverence of a scholarly treatise. Luckily, like contemporaries such as Mark Kurlansky (Cod) and Simon Winchester (The Professor and the Madman), Petroski has the narrative skills to match his mania for research. While Petroski does not brandish the storytelling prowess of his peers, his passion and fascination more than make up for a unexceptional and slightly unwieldy framework.

Adding spice is the bizarre arcana that crops up surrounding “the oldest habit,” ranging from George Washington’s rules of civility, “the one hundredth maxim of which cautioned against using a knife or fork to remove stuck food,” to the ancient Chinese and Romans, who carried toothpicks as a vital part of their daily jewelry.

The famed Bowie knife is sometimes known, depending on the area, as the Arkansas, Louisiana, or Texas Toothpick. Poetry has been written as to its uses and flaws, and the number of people who have perished from toothpick-related mishaps (including, possibly, U.S. President Warren G. Harding) is surprisingly high.

“People are by nature adaptive, creative, and inventive, capable of taking anything far beyond its stated and intended purpose…Given a lever, they will move the earth. Given a toothpick, they will turn it into a universal tool.” Henry Petroski believes this, and The Toothpick is proof positive that not only can the toothpick be a tool with many uses, it can also be the source of a marvelous book.

Originally published in the Winnipeg Free Press, December 30, 2007.

The Culprits by Robert Hough - review

The Culprits
By Robert Hough
Random House of Canada, 320 pages, $35.00


First, a quick note; this may be the greatest description of the Canadian peoples ever put to paper. “The people work too hard, and are boring because of it. They live in nice homes, and watch hockey on television…The people do not like opera or ballet, and they have no famous writers. They are polite to one another, without ever being friendly. They keep their problems to themselves, and don’t know how to laugh properly.” Perfect.

I think Robert Hough must delight in confounding expectations.

His first novel, The Final Confession of Mabel Stark, with its quaint cover evoking a bygone era of big-game danger and circus escapades, looked to be a rousing send-up of adventure novels. Quite a surprise, then, to discover Hough leavening the ribaldry with deft psychological depth and witty meta-fiction asides.

Six years later, he does it again. First, the title: The Culprits. It puts one in mind of a crime thriller, along the lines of The Usual Suspects or Reservoir Dogs. Then there’s a cover image, a silhouette of a rabbit, blindfolded, with a target painted on it. I am immediately reminded of the bizarre Canadian movie Phil the Alien, wherein a secret operative with a shadowy U.S. agency is trained to ignore all emotions by killing puppies with a cheese grater. It’s funnier than it sounds.

What a non-surprise to discover that the culprits of the title are not villains bent on monetary gains, but something far more intangible. “How about fantasy? How about desire? How about the need to keep the mind nimble and the soul a little more lifelike, despite all the drudgery that is thrown by life at us?” The culprits, in Hough’s universe, are the emotions that fight to take chances, to seek joy, to be happy; these culprits keep us interested in living.

The next surprise comes through the plot, which sets itself up in a few broad strokes to be a comical satire of lovelorn individuals trapped in marriages of convenience. Again, however, Hough refuses to deliver the expected. Damn him. Damn him, I say, and damn his inestimable talent.

Hank Wallins is a lonely man. A night-time computer operator with an insurance company, he has no friends, no prospects, and a maddening case of tinnitus. As he notices one night, “[he] had fourteen cigarettes left, and enough change for five cups of coffee from the Quality Assurance vending machines. Other than that, there was nothing, not a thing, in the joke that was his life.”

A fortuitous push into the oncoming path of a subway train puts him into hospital, and into contact with a man who has recently benefited from the offerings of the website From Russia with Love. It is an online love market for lonely North American men and desperate Russian women, and Hank is a prime candidate for its services. As is Anna, a Russian woman badly treated by her lover, and in desperate need of a change. Hoping for anything, she begins a correspondence with Hank, who sees in her the image of his long-lost love.

This is the stuff of classic comedy, of Neil Simon witticisms and Hollywood fluff a la Green Card. And there is fine humour in Hough’s smooth delivery of Hank’s transparently bad idea, of his desperation in finding companionship through Internet scams. Anna’s obvious dislike of Hank, her disappointment in his ordinariness, is matched by her feelings toward Toronto; “There was something about the city’s orderliness that exacerbated her turmoil. There was something about its cool functionality that made her lose her composure. Even the air felt thin, the soul squeezed out of it.”

Yet after this initial set-up, Hough brings in a third character; Ruslan, a Dagestani living in Russia, the former lover of Anna who finds himself kidnapped in Putin’s Russia. Suddenly, all expectations go out the window, and Hough expertly manoeuvres through a plot that combines the mundane goings-on of Canada with terrorists, disgruntled Russian citizenry, and horrific brutality. All of this from the omnipresent POV of a narrator whose identity shall remain secret, but whose outlook on life is arguably amongst the most touching and unique in 21st century Canadian literature.

There is much more to Hough’s story, as he effectively contrasts the disparate personalities who propel the plot forward. But for all its modern pyrotechnics, there is something undeniably sweet and old-fashioned at the core of The Culprits, a yearning for more than life gives. As Hank pines, Anna whines, and Ruslan slowly erodes, Hough reveals a compassion for the simple needs of his characters, whether they be in straits commonplace or dire. “Humans, they cope,” the narrator advises, and it is this theme that brings about the major events of The Culprits. Whether it might be ill-advised acts of love or acts of terrorism, the humans, they do indeed cope. It’s all we can expect to do, Hough appears to say, and it is a testament to his storytelling verve that such a sentiment does not bog the story down in depression. Rather, like Hank falling to the tracks below, it hovers. It stays aloft, and floats, and astonishes. The Culprits is one of the best novels of 2007.

Houdini's Shadow by Leo Brent Robillard - Review

Houdini’s Shadow
By Leo Brent Robillard
Turnstone Press, 177 pages, $19.95

In his review of the under-rated modern noir Johnny Handsome, esteemed film critic Roger Ebert opined that stereotypes are not always a bad thing. Sometimes, he believed, a story is better when it acknowledges its roots.

I felt the same way after reading Leo Brent Robillard’s uneven yet entertaining novel Houdini’s Shadow; here is a novel of dark, pulpy, noirish themes, yet it would be a better story if it acknowledged itself as such.

Despite an opening chapter detailing one of Houdini’s famous escapes, Houdini’s Shadow does not concern itself with the magician. Rather, Robillard follows the path of Jake, a young boy who witnesses Houdini’s cheating of death, and becomes enamoured with the prospect of becoming an escapist. With a boxer father on the take, however, it isn’t long before Jake’s life departs from the glorious illusions of youth, and enters the gritty reality of a life of crime on the streets of Montreal.

Soon, after an aborted life as a professional thief, Jake takes up as a driver for Israel, a local mobster who isn’t as big as he’d like. Israel has taken up with a fetching young lass named Louise who, in classic femme fatale fashion, takes up with Jake on the side, says her name is really Lulu, and begins playing all the angles to suit her own mysterious needs. “[H]e understands in some oblique way that she is like a mirror. Only, rather than a likeness, she reflects a yearning. She is what you want her to be, and is therefore perfect.” If that isn’t a dangerous woman straight out of Chandler and Hammett, it ought to be.

Robillard displays a fine knack for crafting evocative moments that effortlessly capture the essence of mystery. At one point, Jake observes a man and woman sitting at the other end of a train car, when the train enters a tunnel; “when the light crashes through the windows on the other side of the tunnel, they are where he left them. Only something is different. A smudge of blush, perhaps. A loose lock of hair. And suddenly he understands something important about the dark.” Passages such as this tinge the plot with hints of indigo sadness, pushing the noir to its limits.

The problem with Houdini’s Shadow (other than a third act that unwisely abandons its third-person singular narration) is its unwillingness to fully embrace its pulp origins. Robillard rarely pushes hard enough, trying to find the artistic slant to his slim plot rather than delve into the darkness that his tale truly requires. It’s too much surface, all gloss and polish, when what is needed is a healthy dose of grit. Robillard needs to commit to the stereotypes of the genre; the somewhat-dim hero, the deadly dame, the aggrieved gangster. These are the tools of the trade, and while Robillard understands their uses, he is unable to build more than a façade that looks good, but has little depth.

For Houdini’s Shadow is fully in the vein of the recent Hard Case Crime publications, and would make a good fit with the classic reissues of Donald E. Westlake and Ed McBain. Robillard has the moves and the technique, but he needs more seasoning to fully bring Jake’s sordid world to life. Houdini’s Shadow is an enjoyable story, but it’s a b-movie among b-movies.

The Commons by Matthew Hughes - review

The Commons
By Matthew Hughes
Robert J. Sawyer Books, 317 pages, $26.95

It’s not often that one can use the phrases “rich study of archetypal characters throughout human history” and “boisterous sci-fantasy action yarn” to describe the same story. In the worlds of Mathew Hughes, however, it would appear that going as far astray from the normal as possible is the norm, so to speak.

Hughes is one of a number of should-be-better-known science-fiction authors being pushed forward by Canadian sci-fi icon Robert J. Sawyer. Through his imprint, deserving authors such as Nick DiChario and Terrence Green are gaining a wider audience for their visions of the fantastic.

Lucky Matthew Hughes. While he has published several novels to acclaim—many concerning his terrifically warped Archonate universe—The Commons may mark his introduction to a far more expansive readership; deservingly so, as an imagination as tremendously unbridled as Hughes should be experienced by as many as possible.

Using the Archonate themes of earlier novels Fools Errant and Black Brillion, The Commons is an exploration of Hughes self-styled “noösphere,” a spectacularly dense world underneath the world, “the distillation of all human experience, everything that had ever been important to humankind, individually or collectively, since the dawntime.” A universe that exists within the minds of humanity, the noösphere can only be visited by those specifically trained by the Institute of Historical Inquiry, an organization founded “scores, some said hundreds, of thousands of years ago, to explore and map the human collective unconscious.”

In this world of the Commons reside “the eternal archetypes of the species: the Fool and the Hero, the Mother and Father, the Wise Man and the Helpful Beast…[h]ere, too, were all the elemental Events, Situations, and Landscapes of the human story.” In other words, the noösphere is a world where all our myths and legends live on, cycling through their stories in perpetuity, never altering, and always dangerous to those “noönauts” brave enough to map its countries. Only by chanting a variety of “thrans” can the noönaut avoid being detected and absorbed into the psychological landscape.

Onto this crowded palette is thrust Guth Bandar, a trainee with the Institute who finds himself increasingly (and unwillingly) forced into interactions with humanity’s historical archetypes and event patterns. Soon, he comes to believe that the collective unconscious has achieved consciousness, and may be trying to use Bandar to some purpose he cannot comprehend.

As with most speculative fiction, the fun is in the details: how this new universe functions, what its rules are, etc. For most, this requires an exacting certitude in presentation, to ensure no anomalies are present. Hughes sidesteps this potential dilemma by creating a universe with no rules at all; the world of the noösphere is in the unconscious imagination, and therefore has no limits, and therefore can do whatever it pleases. This can lead to some bizarre and hysterical archetypal mashups, as when Bandar (no spoilers here, just hints) finds himself physically transformed in a subplot to a famous Greek myth, escapes, and becomes trapped in a children’s fairy tale. All of this is relayed in scientific/psychological jargon such as “The forest, when he entered it, was of the Sincere/Approximate classification…its iconic characteristics told Bandar that he was almost certainly in a Class Four Situation…the Situation’s cycle would involve only indispensable interactions between the idiomatic inhabitants.” Hughes never reveals his hand, letting the reader have the joy of slowly realizing the common archetypes in play. The only obvious parallel is Jasper Fforde’s Tuesday Next novels, wherein the heroine walks through a world populated by characters and themes from great literature. Where Fforde uses Austen and Dickens as templates, however, Hughes mines the psychological texts of Jung and the myth explorations of Joseph Campbell.

While Hughes imagination is exemplary, the novel falters in its overall execution. Originally a series of short stories Hughes wrote for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Hughes has performed a “fixup,” a reorganization of the stories as an overall novel, with inconsistencies smoothed out and overall theme emphasized. Sawyer, in his introduction, takes pains to establish this technique as a classic manoeuvre in literature, reminding us that Frank Herbert’s Dune and Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy began life in the same format. All this is well and good, but The Commons is too obviously a series of stories, and never fully congeals as a novel in its entirety; it is too episodic, too repetitive, and its lack of overall linear flow damages the novel. Bandar is a charming enough protagonist, but he is too much the cipher, and other characters never have enough opportunity to become more than pieces on a chessboard.

It’s a quibble, nevertheless, because The Commons is so rich and rewarding an experience that its shortcomings can easily be forgiven. With its unique employment of archetypes and psychological depth, The Commons is a great introduction to Hughes, and leaves the reader yearning to discover his other works, which may be the greatest compliment one could give.

Shelf Monkey - now taking over Florida (yes, Florida)

The talented, sweet, and oh-so-swell sci-fi author Jeff Vandermeer (located in Florida, in case the title of this post confused you) has a sideline as a reviewer for the Amazon.com Bookstore Blog. Why is this interesting? Because he has included Shelf Monkey as one of his "Books you might have missed."

Sez Jeff:

Sometimes biting, sometimes just silly in the best possible way, the novel celebrates books even as it has its demented way with them.

Read the rest of brief but thoughtful review here.

The Man Who Forgot How to Read by Howard Engel - review

The Man Who Forgot How to Read
by Howard Engel
HarperCollins, 176 pages, $24.95

“Like astigmatism on a drunken weekend.” “[A] film in which the soundtrack no longer matched the lip movements of the characters.” “Like being told that the right leg had to be amputated but that I could keep the shoe and sock.”

There are countless medical conditions that may befall a person, but it is unlikely there has been a more ironic misfortune than that which afflicts Canadian author Howard Engel.

Engel, creator of the successful Benny Cooperman mystery series, woke one day to discover that the front page of The Globe and Mail looked to written in a foreign language, “Cyrillic one moment and Korean the next…what looked like an a one moment looked like an e the next and a w after that.”

Engel had suffered a type of stroke called alexia sine agraphia, or “word-blindness,” a rare condition in which the afflicted can still write, but can no longer read. Recognizing the overwhelming irony of the condition as it applied to his livelihood, Engel writes, “I felt like a plumber told to stay clear of drains and lead pipes, or a banker told to avoid dealings with money.”

The Man Who Forgot How to Read – the title is a direct nod to The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, a work by famed neurologist Dr. Oliver Sacks – is Engel’s memoir of rehabilitation, a work notable for its complete absence of self-pity. Certainly, no one could ever blame Engel for spiraling into depression, but his refusal to give up what he loves is inspiring.

It is not the likelihood of never writing again which fuels Engel’s initial despair, but the possibility that he will never again enjoy the simple pleasure of reading a book. “Reading was hard-wired into me,” he pines, devastated that the main pleasure of his life has been cruelly snatched away. “I could no more stop reading than I could stop my heart.”

As he comes to grips with his new situation, attending therapy sessions to help him adapt to a world where apples and grapefruits appear strangely similar, Engel begins to try and write again, facing each letter as a hieroglyph to be memorized. This is far harder than he anticipated, vividly describing it as “trying to move a ton of raw liver uphill by hand.”

Like the Cooperman mysteries (that last of which, Memory Book, was written after his stroke), Engel writes with a disarming simplicity of voice that may keep his mysteries humming, but unfortunately robs the story at hand of any tension.

In his guise as mystery writer, Engel excels at keeping the reader guessing as to the outcome. Here, the ending is never in doubt, and while this should not dissuade a person from reading Engel’s remarkable story, the lightness of his voice never fully captures the anguish he says he feels.

As Dr. Sacks himself says in the afterword, Engel’s story “is not only as fascinating as one of his won detective novels but a testament to the resilience and creative adaptation of one man and his brain.” Engel’s spirit in the face of his affliction is indeed stunning, but his hand is far surer in the realm of fiction than memoir.

Originally published (heavily expurgated version) in The Winnipeg Free Press, September 23, 2007.

The Full LRC review

The full article on Shelf Monkey is now up, and can be read by clicking on the very large image to the right of these words I'm currently typing.

Literary Review of Canada...you know, my sales may have not allowed me to retire just yet, but getting in the LRC, that is just too cool.

The Solitude of Emperors by David Davidar - review

The Solitude of Emperors
by David Davidar
McClelland & Stewart, 288 pages, $32.99


“It was in December 1992 that Bombay lost its way.”

In 1992, Hindu nationalists destroyed a mosque in the town of Ahodhya, India. Muslim retaliation was to be expected, and the resulting sectarian violence led to one of the bloodiest and most shameful incidents in India’s long history.

David Davidar, president of Penguin Canada and author of The Solitude of Emperors, presents the riots with unflinching directness. As his protagonist Vijay watches people being torn apart in the street, “internal organs visible as if in a urology lab demonstration,” the nature of mob violence attains a gruesome intimacy.

It is not violence, however, that drives Davidar’s plot, but the lust for power in those who would feign religious righteousness as a masquerade for their dreams of glory. And in a world that sees the increasing reliance on fundamentalist dogma rather than logic to guide those in power, the themes of The Solitude of Emperors are all too familiar.

Vijay is an aspiring journalist with the Bombay-based newspaper The Indian Secularist. After a close brush with death during the riots, he is sent to the tea town of Meham to relax, but discovers instead that the religious tensions of the big cities are slowly making inroads into rural India as well.

While Solitude is ostensibly Vijay’s story, Davidar interweaves his tale with the words of an unpublished treatise on past leaders of India, written by Vijay’s mentor Mr Sorabjee. In this fashion, Davidar manages the not-inconsiderable feat of seamlessly couching a diatribe on India’s “compact with the Gods” within a personal drama of sizeable power.

Attempting to encapsulate the timeless lessons of Ashoka, Akbar, and Gandhi, while tying them to the state of the country in the 1990s, Mr Sorabjee hopes that his text will serve as a call to arms for young Indians.