Cancer's Rogue Season by Marlene Grand Maitre

Hello:

I was so happy to see Marlene's beautiful  book. I first met Marlene at our workplace just before her retirement, when she told me that her life from then on would be devoted to creating poetry. Over the past years, she has been published in many high-profile journals, constantly strengthening her insights, language and imagery, an inspiration that poets who persevere will find their way.

Her chapbook Cancer's Rogue Season was beautifully produced by Frog Hollow Press. A haunting black and white photograph showing a tree leaning over a cliff toward water graces the cover.The paper feels lovely, the whole book a divine sensual pleasure to look at and touch. The cover photo leads the reader into the jungle of cancer: its forests, savage-jawed predators, dark rivers. We are lost in Dante's midlife journey through the pathless realm of nature indifferent to our struggles.

The eleven poems on the theme of cancer's savagery are relatable for anyone who has a body that is subject to old age, illness and death. The poems are wild and emotional, using imagery from nature, as in her description of the process of chemotherapy, "a machete that cuts back serpentine vines as it travels rivers of blood."  There is humour as well, "A disease too indolent to kill quickly, its furtive cells loll in the lymphoid jungle, beasts lost in the guile of sloth." Well, it is a kind of humour, albeit tragic.

Okay, where is the comfort in this relentless landscape?  I would say it is in the outer landscape: "What quickens in me....to be elemental --buffeted, and held by   feldspar  gale  saltwater."

Through her powerful, evocative poems, Marlene provides both pleasure and inspiration as to what an artist can achieve while coping with an insidious life situation.

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Island Writer June 2020

Hello!

I am happy to announce the June 2020 issue of Island Writer that is filled with wonderful stories and poems by new and established writers such as Zoe Dickinson, Marlene Grand-Maitre and Judith Castle. Because the launch has been postponed until September, and the bookstores are not yet available for distribution, I am encouraging direct sales for $10 - just drop me a line at joyhuebert@yahoo.ca.  Copies can be picked up in downtown Victoria, or can be received via the mail for an extra $3 for one and $5 for extra copies.

This is the 18th year of Island Writer, which promotes creative work from writers in the Vancouver Island and Gulf Island regions. Our next deadline is August 1, and I hope to see your submissions!

I hope you appreciate the cover photo by Leah Fowler, which portrays the sun encircled by - yes!- a corona.

Good old stuff: Stuart Kaminsky

Hello!

Where are my holds?  the public library is still closed and I am STILL relying on borrowing from friends, little libraries and digital collections, all of which have limitations BUT ALSO some benefits.

Last week my friend Sharlene gave me  Black Knight in Red Square written in 1984 by Stuart Kaminsky, author of 50 books who died in 2009. The book is worn, frayed, with yellowing pages, but what a fabulous read.

Kaminsky's character Rostnikov works as a detective in the Soviet Union where he has to solve murders while dealing with a suffocating paranoid bureaucracy that has the power and inclination to send him to the Gulag or worse should he displease his masters. Add this to your work-related stress!

The murder itself is clever and interesting, but it's not the main charm of this read. Kaminsky adds humourous touches, such as when an experimental filmmaker from the west shows an incomprehensible movie at a Moscow film festival. Only the elderly mother of one of the detectives finds it "not too bad." The filmmaker, of course, attributes the audience's hostility to being Russian.

Kaminsky's Rosnikov series isn't that easy to find, so I was terribly pleased that Sharlene has found a stack of them to give me.

Onward!  today I may scavenge through more little libraries on my daily walk, the purpose of which is to improve my state of mind. I encourage all little library owners to please add some good books and recycle the junk.

Borrowing books from friends: A Trip to the Stars

Hello!

The public library is closed, you're tired of digital books, you've finished scavenging from the little libraries all around you, and you need something to read. If you rarely purchase from bookstores, it is time to ask your friends to loan you something from their shelves. If your friends read a lot, and do spend money in bookstores, this will be a good option.

Many years working in public libraries have made me aware that people have odd relationships to their books. The books may be worn out, of no interest, outdated, the pages yellow, and taking up space, not to mention very heavy if you need to move, yet they hang onto them. Therefore, your friends' shelves may contain old treasures that you haven't seen for years.

Fortunately, the latest book I borrowed was a great read. Published in 2000, A Trip to the Stars by Nicholas Christopher was a long complex novel with lots of imagery, yet plot-driven and full of fascinating details about stars, spiders, the lost City of Atlanta, and many other unusual topics.

The beginning of the book is terrific. A recently orphaned ten year old boy is taken to a planetarium by his young aunt, now his guardian. On the way out, he looks up to find himself with a completely different woman, who kidnaps him and catapults both him and his aunt into new lives.

The book is rich in characters as Alma and Loren become Mala and Enzo, embarking on separate adventures before they meet again  25 years later. A major theme of the novel is loss of both objects and people and the characters criss-cross the planet as they attempt to regain what is lost.

I recommend this title as an immersive and constantly interesting fictional world.

Collecting Silence by Ulrike Narwani

Hello:

Ulrike Narwani's beautifully designed book Collecting Silence, with its pale green-blue cover and  floating white flowers, leads us to experience a sensual and vivid poetic world. Her poem"Netsuke" defined as "Miniature sculptures....highly prized as exquisite art objects" can stand as an image for the precise and exquisite details of landscape and location that plunge the reader into a world of sight, sound and smell:

"Newcomers" such a clear picture of this place.

Sun pugnacious

Stray dogs, plastic bags,
faint smell of dahl and rice,
car exhaust, heat, honking.

"Anniversary" provides a close natural observation of a common animal that resonates with the pleasure of celebrating a 40 year anniversary. The stuff of the natural world integrates seamlessly with the joyful experience of a long relationship.

A squirrel
grey as a weathered fence
tail, flicks of butternut gold
grasps in its paws a dried corn cob
rushes off.


As well as her precise and concrete descriptions, Ulrike skillfully presents unusual word patterns and observations.

from "Frolic":  I pick up a stone and throw it as far as I can. It turns bird,
many birds with bright wings. I ride their song.

The reader can see a flock of birds arising from a tree in response to a thrown stone.

Her natural imagery leads to a dark undertone:

from "Curriculum Vitae"
I float my broken things down a river in a canoe
made of salted wounds.

We are in a beautiful natural world, that can present us with wonders or terrors.

I am thankful for....
the rising sun
for air
shared
as if that could save us.

from "Good Things."


Narwani offers  new ways of seeing familiar plants, animals and natural features like squirrels and trees; new ways of linking our relationships and experiences to the precisely observed concrete world and deeply felt considerations of the human situation that is at times both joyful and tragic; altogether a rich harvest of pleasure and insight.

Little libraries to the rescue: John Le Carre

Hello:

The public library is closed, and I have been scavenging from little libraries, easily found on my many walks around the city. Frequently filled with terrible junk that should be recycled, I have found some jewels among the trash. Recently, from Vic West,  I scored an old yellowed book written in 1965, which was John Le Carre's The Looking Glass War,  the second title in the author's series about George Smiley and the cold war.

I was really amazed. "Wow," I thought, "this guy can really write." Structured in three sections, Taylor's Run, Avery's Run and Leiser's Run, Le Carre presents a world of nearly complete incompetence, in which the departments in charge of security and spying, send hapless human beings on impossible errands, often to their deaths.

Le Carre's vivid descriptions present a world in which it is always raining, always cold, you always fall in the mud, you never feel good, your perceptions about impending disaster are always ignored by those in charge who try to wrap you in cocoons of illusion. You are always betrayed. 

The buildings around you are shabby, corrupt, old, inadequate, the beds are hard, the food is inedible, the liquor flows. Everyone is always drinking, to their detriment. Love doesn't help, the women are desperate or nasty, or helpless to intervene in a fool's errand.

All of this is very enjoyable to read about because Le Carre is a master storyteller, terribly good at creating a world filled with real people in appalling situations about to enter their undoing. I highly recommend the diversions of Le Carre's spy series.

Yes, you can enjoy War and Peace

Hello:

Although it has been three months since my last post, I have read many books during this time of seclusion. After enjoying Middlemarch, I decided to take on the challenge of reading Tolstoy's  1200+ page novel War and Peace.  There is so much to say about this book, that I don't know where to begin. It felt like one of the best reading experiences of my life, that I could spend the rest of my days studying.

Let me recap:  The novel was written in 1869 and (mostly) covers the period from 1804 to basically 1812. The book is a "war sandwich" with action taking place during the Napoleonic wars, between the Battle of Austerlitz and the Battle of Borodino.

What is it like to read War and Peace? First, it is a complete world with hundreds of characters. Social customs are fully portrayed and like George Eliot's social constructions, a lot of it is about wealth and poverty. 

The reader is flung from one intense romance to another, with the young, innocent Natasha first in love with Nikolai Bolkonsky, then nearly seduced by Anatole Kuragin, in a nailbiting section worthy of Game of Thrones, finally settling down with our hero Pierre Bezukhov. 

This is only one of many successful or ill-fated romantic conjunctions.

Tolstoy writes hundreds and hundreds of pages of war details, presenting it as tragic and incompetent, filled with drama, heroism and craziness, and during the course of the battles, dismantles the naive Nikolai Bolkonsky's illusions of glory. Tolstoy knows every detail of the Napoleonic wars, that he passes on to the reader.

One aspect of Tolstoy that we don't find in modern novels, is his lengthy philosophical commentary on historical events. Several hundred pages are spent on digressions about what he thinks about how war should be conducted, and just when you want to say, "Enough already," he moves on to another dramatic romance, or excruciating torment of his character Pierre.

The novel is full of beautiful ideas and lovely scenery, with characters often staring at the sky in rapture.  I would have wished it to be 200 pages shorter, but I guess it took the place of Netflix and the fans wanted more.  I think every serious reader should take in this book at least once, and now is the time.

Scythe by Neal Shusterman

Hello!

Yesterday I wrote about Wendy Donawa's soulful poetry and today I present something completely different:  a dystopic novel for teens in the "children killing each other" genre launched so successfully by Suzanne Collins in The Hunger Games. 

At first I was doubtful - do we really need another murder-based dark dystopia?  As the first in a trilogy, I thought I'd try it based on uber-librarian Tracy Kendrick's recommendation.  I'm a little squeamish about gore so didn't think it would be my thing.

Scythe is set in a world where there is no death, and life is ruled by a computer mastermind that keeps everything running smoothly with no crime or bad behaviour.  In order to control overpopulation, a society of privileged Scythes is formed, who go out killing people every day.  The heroes of the story are two youths who have been chosen as Scythe apprentices, Rowan and Citra.

In these kinds of books, success rests not on believability in the real world, but coherence in the fictional situation, and I have to say, Shusterman masterfully draws us into the tension and conflicts. Although it is a perfect world, naturally humanity f***s it up, leading to much drama, danger and excitement.

Frankly, I found it quite enjoyable and recommend the book for people who like dystopic teen novels.  I am not sure anyone in my audience fits that category except for Tracy, but Hey!  there it is.

Thin Air of the Knowable by Wendy Donawa

Hello!

I confess I've been postponing this post, because how can I do justice to Wendy Donawas magnificent collection Thin Air of the Kmowable?  Every day for a month I savoured three poems, a slow, careful read to miss none of the nuances of language, the powerful insights, the beautiful ideas. For me they had the feel of reading a suspense novel - what will she say next?  What language will she use?  What will  the poems teach me that I haven’t thought about before?

As a historian and curator who lived in Barbados for many years,  Wendy brings a long view of history and culture. She presents with compassion the bones of slave children, hunter-gatherers who see colonizer for the first time, the remains of history in our landscape.

Wendy also writes beautiful poems about daily life, and presents my favourite line in a poem when she urges us to send our archive of suffering to the shredder, very good advice.

I gasped in wonder at her description of shopping with an Eritrean woman who had a different response to the silliness of Halloween, that ripped the veil keeping her dead at safe distance.

Quotidian objects and experiences achieve depth as in an old trowel lost in a compost heap that Proust-

like,  activates happy  memories of shelling peas.

I could write an entire book about this collection and I highly recommend it for all readers.

Lanpedusa

 Lampedusa by local author Stephen Price is one of the six books nominated for the 2019 Giller Award. Based on real events, the story tells of Giuseppe Tomasi, the last Prince of Lampedusa who writes a novel called The Leopard while he is dying of emphysema. Price has written a slow, elegiac book with strong descriptive and emotional power.  I read the book twice and found it had the feel of a cello solo, a melancholy and musical experience of language.

I'm now a member of two book clubs!  We discussed this book in our Monday group, and everybody liked it, reflecting on which characters we most related to, and how much we enjoyed the language.  It is a very slow book with multiple alternating time periods, and many characters, which may be a challenge for some readers, but it is worth the effort.

Lynn Coady's thrill-ride

wowza!   Giller award-winning Canadian author Lynn Coady takes us on a roller-coaster ride to Hell in her latest book Watching You Without Me. When Karen returns home after her mother's death to take care of her disabled sister Kelli, she meets Trevor, an apparently helpful, although somewhat intrusive, paid caregiver.  Karen has moved far away to escape from the demands of looking after her sister, and grapples with guilt as she tries to decide whether to place Kelli in a facility so that Karen can resume her life in another city. As the difficulties mount, she relies more and more on Trevor, who is all too eager to help. Coady is a master stylist who takes us to the edge of the nightmare again and again as the realities of who Trevor actually is, are slowly revealed, inch-by-inch, to their true horror.  This is a book for people who like thrillers.

Dual Citizens by Alix Ohlin

Hello!  Happy Snow Day.

Dual Citizens was one of six books nominated for the Giller Prize this year.  I am curious how these books are chosen - why Dual Citizens and not Five Wives by Joan Thomas or Watching You Without me by Lynn Cody, both of which were of equal quality to Ohlin's book, at least in my mind.  It reminds me that these awards are very subjective, especially when you consider that the horrible book Reproduction won. (Sorry Ian Williams, but really!)

Dual Citizens is an easy-to-read, plot-drive, character-driven novel with many pleasures for people who like these kinds of novels that can be read as entertainment.  Sisters Lark and Robin (someone who is more thoughtful can explain the symbolism of these names) are fatherless girls, raised by an indifferent mother, Marianne. The older sister, Lark, becomes Robin's caregiver as they leave home to embark on careers.  Lark would like to be a filmmaker, and Robin is a gifted pianist.

I won't go into the plot in too much detail. Lark has a long relationship with an emotionally unavailable filmmaker, Wheelock.  I enjoyed how this character unfolded over the course of the novel. Eventually Lark leaves him and returns to her sister who is managing a wolf rescue habitat. The book has a reasonably happy ending.

Sometimes I become pretty superficial in my examination of a book.  In this case, I am sure the symbolism of film editing is worth considering, as well as other imagery such as pianos and wolves.
Maybe one of you could explain it all to me.  I have to say, I was more captivated by Deborah Levy's book The Man Who Saw Everything, a complex, fractured, imagistic novel with many intellectual payoffs.

I recommend Dual Citizens for people who are sick of  opaque and dreadful novels of the worst of the human situation, who want something literary but enjoyable.

Middlemarch the Great, Part 2

Hello!

Middlemarch presents an entire world in its depiction of a small community in the early 1800s.  However, among a myriad of subplots, the book centres on three main romances.  Unlike Jane Austen, two of the stories begin with marriage and disintegrate from there while the third presents a practical and somewhat unromantic version of what might be the best path in love.

Dorothea and Casaubon

Dorothea is young and naive and wants a wider world of the intellect.  She meets the much older scholar Casaubon and, wrapped in illusions,  imagines helping him in his studies.  He turns out to be a dry old stick, a failure who cannot love, and who leaves a poisonous stipulation in his will that nearly destroys her life when he (thankfully) dies.

Dr. Lydgate and Rosamond

Dr. Lydgate comes to Middlemarch as a new doctor full of hopes and plans to improve medicine for all mankind.  He misunderstands the community and Rosamond and makes a series of disastrous errors that eventually lead to his pitiful ruin.

Mary Garth and Fred Vincy

Mary is a plain girl with a practical outlook, while Fred is a feckless dilettante who expects, but does not receive, a large inheritance.  She loves him but refuses to consider marriage until he makes something of himself.


What do these stories have in common?  The contrast of acting from illusion based on naivete or cultural stereotypes with action based on greater understanding and awareness of reality, for me, forms the central moral dilemma.  The novel is filled with characters making disastrous decisions based on who they think another person is, or what they believe they deserve in life.  Bitter truth keeps impeding expected happiness, but versions of happiness are possible when characters truly understand themselves and others.

Much of the book centres around the disappointment of illusory hopes, and the apprehension of what is really happening.  Some characters recover and others don't.

Middlemarch is a long, complex book written in convoluted Victorian English.  It's a big commitment, so maybe wait until you have a free month to start reading. It's a cathedral of a book, like the photo below.

Middlemarch the Great, Part 1

Hello and welcome to 2020.

I read Middlemarch over Christmas and I've been postponing my blog post because it is such a vast and complex book - how can I do justice to it in one brief post?   Therefore, I've decided to write about the book in parts, this being Part 1.

George Eliot, pseudonym of Marian Evans, was born 200 years ago on November 22, 1819, hence the interest in her writing lately.  I strongly encourage you to listen to Eleanor Wachtel's fabulous interview with three writers who discuss Middlemarch.  You can find Writers & Company on podcasts.  

George Eliot wrote Middlemarch in 1871, setting it in 1829-1832.  She is considered a Victorian novelist.   Fascinating fact:  She lived common-law with a married man for 24 years, before briefly marrying another man before her early death.  By comparison, Jane Austen lived from 1775 - 1817, setting her books in the late 1700s.   I mention Jane Austen, because the two writers are both satirists of their age, and write about relationships and culture.   George Eliot's work in much darker and deeper, and the marriages don't end with the wedding, but continue to the often bitter end.

Middlemarch presents the whole world of a small English town, encompassing every kind of person and situation that can be found there.   This book has been considered one of the best novels ever written, and I can see why - the concerns and situations described in 1871 are relevant to our modern times, encompassing consistent human realities such as self delusion, disappointment, tragedy, comedy, politics, insanity and the nuances of good and bad relationships.  One big difference between then and now, of course, is the prose style.  Eliot's prose is lengthy, convoluted, digressive and often difficult to understand.  You can skip those parts. It is a very long book that requires quite a commitment of time.

I will end Part 1 now, and continue Part 2 tomorrow, when I will touch on the three romantic relationships of the novel, two of which fail completely.  Why is the third romance so successful?  Stay tuned!