"You've fallen into a dream. Ashleigh, you idiot - you've fallen in the lap of a library." - Never Leaving the Library by S.M Beiko
Bonjour, allors, salut! Only 3 days til T-Day - Toronto! In the meantime, I've been thinking a lot about the many amazing books I've read in the last year or so, and I thought I'd share! Many are haunting, realist studies of people and events that I assure you will dwell inside your soul for years to come. I encourage you to pick at least one to read this summer, or to even drop by your local thrift shop and pick up something random from the shelf. A good book and a cup of black tea always make a sunny day sunnier. That the written word is such an important part of our culture is not an accident. They are our transports into the minds and hearts of elsewhere and elsewho. Sit and bask in the silence and light of a forgotten voice, and welcome the envelopment. Books! They are all so beautiful! And many of the picks you see here are Canadian!
Twelve Titles to Titillate Your Summer Library
I read this fabulous book in two days and couldn't put it down. Written by a Manitoban in the 20s, the passion in the domestic imprisonment of the Gare family will endure for years after I've read this. After school teacher Lind Archer finds herself the schoolmaster of the only school in Oeland, she is in love with the town's newest mystery Mark Jordan, and becomes caught up in the emotional intrigue and undercurrent of fury resting untamed in the Gare family. Secrets and familial betrayal abound in a landscape that chains its people and condemns them to a life of sacrifice and perpetual tragedy.
Written by the infamous author of Smoke Signals, Sherman Alexie's startling portrayal of Reservation life in the states chills and thrills, and is filled with the contrasting mythologies and never changing sadnesses associated with a stunted culture. A collection of related short stories, some are written in a loose and dreamlike voice, while others are odes unto runaway fathers and lost loves in a confused palamino sunset. Beautiful and raunchy, sad and strange, they will not disappoint.
Another incredible collection of selected short story works, this time written by the amazing Winnipeger Melissa Steele, who came and did a reading for my Short Fiction class for which the book was read. Very realistic and poignant short tales of human short comings and how we settle with what little we are given. Brutally funny and each a demonstration of what kind of bitterness hides beneath a polite veneer, my favourite story is the titular "Beautiful Girl Thumb", and reminds me a lot of many girls I went to school with.
This was just a beautiful book. A bit of a long read, and quite a brutal story, but it is worth the journey - which is what frames this epic tale of recovery and spiritual renewal. When Xavier Bird steps off the train morphine addicted, without a leg and a dark shadow of his former self straight from WWI, his aunt Niska has a tremendous task cut out for her. She must take him home to the bush where he grew up with his Cree brothers, and take a journey into the war-battered soul of a man who had no claim to the horrors he endured overseas. As Xavier travels through his waking nightmares, he must either face death or defeat it. Moving, impassioned, troubled and spectacular.
I first read Fifth Business in my senior year at St. Mary's. It was probably one of the first books that sparked my interest in Canadiana Literatia. Roberson Davies has a voice and a passion unlike many of his contemporaries, and the mystery and miracle that flames through his narration is to die for. Dunstan Ramsay will always be one of my favourite characters for all his misadventures and his reluctant tie to Magnus and Boy Staunton as he moves in and out of history. I recently found The Manticore at Salvation Army, which isn't a sequel but a retelling of the events of Fifth Business from the perspective of Boy Staunton's eldest son. Tragic and probably still one of my favourites to date
I randomly picked this book up from the U of M bookstore after finding Winnipegger Miriam Toews A Complicated Kindness in my house (no idea how it got there). I read through that and was dumbstruck and spellbound by how caught up I became in the affairs of a 16 year old Mennonite rebel stuck in a town where her own mother was excommunicated. I had to have more. I found The Flying Troutmans just sitting on a display shelf, begging and waving its bookjacket demanding my attention. I read it in a day. Following the exploits of Hattie and her incredibly intelligent niece and stoic silent type nephew on a cross continent road trip in search of their long lost father, The Flying Troutmans is just one of those stories you can relate to for the sheer zaniness, coupled with that overwhelming loyalty and love for family.
After reading this for my first ever University English course, I felt that the atmosphere resembled a sparsely candlelit mineshaft. There was a pervading darkness, and a life made it sustenance as it drifted through history. An account of the complex lives woven around the building of the Bloor Street Viaduct and the dangers untold, this is another finely crafted piece of Canadian art from the author who brought you The English Patient. In fact, this is the prequel to that stunning work which I have yet to read, but have watched multiple times. I'm currently reading this again, and the power of Ondaatje's imagery, the humanity and the shadows that hide in the hearts of men, In the Skin of a Lion skulks in the darkness of a mushroom factory, and somehow finds love.
How I cannot sing Margaret Laurence's praises enough. My throat becomes dry and can only be slaked by more of her award winning, notorious prose. The Diviners is one of her strongest pieces by far, and though a thorough read, it is a study into the mind of literature's strongest women - Morag Gunn. Like the rest of her Manawaka series, the female protagonist is constantly trying to escape the past she feels has marred her, and yet returns to it perpetually in her memory, searching ardently for an answer to her failing integrity and peace of mind. After reading this I immediately tore through The Fire Dwellers and half way through A Jest of God. I simply cannot get enough of the fictional Manitoba town and all of its intricate tragedy, its false starts, its failed good intentions, and its terrible traumas. Without Laurence, this province would not have the new found colour and light that I tout so readily to prairie non-believers
What would a well rounded study of literature be without one of the greats? Though I had read The Old Man and the Sea at a young age when I did not yet understand post modernist realist fiction, and thus hated every second of it, The Sun Also Rises changed my mind completely. What can only be called a rambling anecdote of the well intentioned, often drunk and meandering adventures of American ex-patriates in 1920s Paris/Spain, this book manages through the complexities of human relationships without going on and on with details. Instead it is a snapshot of a memory, allowing us temporary entry and ending without resolution - just as any realistic human story would. There is no end. There are only different journeys, different parties, and different bull fights to witness the goring of your heroes and hearts.
A tale as overcast as the book cover, told from the perspective of Ruth about her upbringing in Fingerbone, Idaho after the accidental death - but what is thought to be suicide - of her mother. There they live with their grandmother until her own death, and finally with her Aunt Sylvie, who had been a train-riding transient up to this point. Initially they become a close knit group, but as Lucille grows up she comes to dislike their eccentric lifestyle and she moves out. Then when Ruth's well-being is being questioned by the courts, Sylvie returns to living on the road and takes Ruth with her. Abandonment, domesticity and the definition of what a home is in the wake of loss abound, but I will never forget the image that starts out the story: the epic derailment of the passenger train that bore Ruth's grandfather into the haunting depths of Lake Fingerbone - a memory which seeps through the novel every so often like a nagging afterthought.
A verrrry long read, which I took to the sauna with me quite a bit and is now falling apart - but so, so worth it. I didn't know what I was getting into with this epic book, but by the end I wanted more. The focus of the plot lays with two wartime friends, Archie Jones and Samad Iqbal, and the subsequent dramas and complexities involved with their families. In a book that starts out with Archie's attempt at suicide, saved by the serendipitous interruption of a meat vendor, leads to his marriage to Jamaican, front toothless, former fear addled Jehovah's witness Clara in the wake of a New Year's Eve party. Their subsequent marriage produces Irie, the same age as Samad's twin children from his arranged and disgruntled marriage to Alsana. The two families remain close knit through the troubled and turbulent events that seem to consume all of them, as all of their intricate triumphs, fears and anguishes coalesce in a stunning finale. Warring racial groups, religion, love, self doubt and shame blend for what is a deservedly award winning spectacle that only 1975 London can play host to.
I think the reason I got so much substance out of Ms. Gordimer's fabulous short story collection was because of the perspective of my prof teaching it. As all of these tales are racial reflections of life and viewpoints of 1960s Apartheid Afrikaans, my prof helped enrich that idea through his own experiences. As he grew up in Africa while these travesties and questionable human behaviours took place, I could see through clearer eyes a world I had barely imagined from short lived history lessons or world issues. This is a must read for sure. The titular story is one of the most powerful. It is very unfortunate that this great work has been out of print for so long, but I was fortunate to get a photocopy of it as class reading material. If you can get your hands on a used copy, please do! Each story is a moving tale from varying perspectives: an upper class working woman who, despite her vanity, only seems to trust a black subordinate; two star cross'd lovers separated by race, a young boy as he is force-groomed to be a saviour to his people, and so many more whose sometimes true stories will both inspire, agitate and bring you to your psychological knees.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And what are you reading this summer? A timeless classic? A comfort collection of fairy tales? What kind of literature makes you feel beautiful inside?
Lumiere~
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