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!