Category Archives: Writing

Book Ten: The Hatbox Letters

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Again, not really book ten, but whatever. I’ve blogged 1/10 of my experiment!

Another Canadian pick – The Hatbox Letters, by Beth Powning. This was a bit of an odd one for me, for various reasons. It’s a slow starter, and because I’ve been sitting around all medicated with a broken ankle, it may have taken me a bit longer to get into the right frame of mind. Once I did, I couldn’t stop reading.

Powning is a wonderfully descriptive writer. The main character, Kate, is in the process of grieving the death of her husband, Tom. She rambles about their empty house, thinking about what life was like when he was alive. Then someone gives her a bunch of hatboxes from her grandmother’s attic, and she starts to go through them.

This is where I was really drawn into the story. Kate dives into her family history, starting with the death certificate of her grandfather’s sister, who passed away suddenly at the age of eight. She sifts through bills and other artefacts that were tucked away in the attic for a century, forgotten by their original recipient. At the point the story-within-a-story begins, and we start to learn more about the family from 100 years ago. I’m not altogether sure if these vignettes are meant to be Kate’s imagination, running wild as she reads the letters and uncovers long-held secrets about her grandparents, or if we really are travelling back in time with the narrator, but it doesn’t matter, because the story is compelling and beautifully told. Back in the present, we follow Kate through the first year without Tom (what Joan Didion calls the year of magical thinking), as she comes to grips with his death and reconnects with someone from her past who’s also in the throes of grief.

It all sounds very depressing, but really, it isn’t. Kate’s story is told with some beautiful imagery – of winter storms, a big rambling house, the garden she and Tom worked on together (also a symbol of her grief and recovery). In the end you know she’s going to come out the other side. The story of her grandparents is one of resiliency, and Kate’s story is, too.

Book Nine: The Book of Negroes

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Okay, not really. It’s probably book 25, but I’ll have to fill in the list backwards.

I’d had my eye on this book for a long time. I bought a copy for my sister and mailed it off to England, and promised myself I’d buy my own copy soon, only I never got around to it.  Then my mom had a copy from the library at the seniors’ centre where she volunteers, and she lent it to me. So. Finally.

It’s obvious that Lawrence Hill has done a metric pantload of research in order to write this book, and as a result he creates a narrative that takes us back to the sights, sounds, and smells of the mid-1700s. Animata’s story is full of compelling, descriptive prose – the kind that lets your brain work overtime as you try to comprehend how awful things must have been.

For the most part, I couldn’t put the book down. Once I started the story, I was hooked. This is basically what you want in any novel, right? So three cheers for that. But every now and then I had to pause and think. You know when you read a book that’s truly epic, that spans a pivotal time in history when major changes are afoot and major people are involved, and every last thing of significance happens to one character before she turns 25? It’s a syndrome often seen in Oprah Book Club picks, and Animata had a nagging case of it. It didn’t make me like her less as a character, but now and then it pulled me out of the story a bit and I’d think, “Aha, so she’s a conduit for telling me about this Major Event. Well, okay. I guess this could all happen to one person.” And really, I’m sure much of it did. I’m sure there were many men and women who were stolen and traded as slaves who had lives that would make our jaws drop. So I’m not going to hold it against the character, not at all.

Besides, I was too busy having my mind blown by all the horrible things that happened to everyone, which was the point of the story. The Book of Negroes definitely made me think about a dark part of Canada’s history. Nicely done, Mr Hill.

Book Eight – East of Eden, by John Steinbeck

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I swear, I have read more than eight books this year. I’m discovering that it’s not so much the reading of the books that takes me so long as it is the writing about the reading of the books. If that makes any sense. I should really start making comprehensive notes, but that would mean being organized, and as if.

I’ve had East of Eden on my list for a long time. Back in high school, like almost every other kid, I had to read The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men. I enjoyed Mice but found the tale of the Joads lacking in some way (maybe, because as my grandfather put it, The Grapes of Wrath is “such a downer“).

Anyway. Here I am in my thirties with that essay about the dusty Depression and the Joads’ journey to California far behind me, and there is East of Eden sitting on my bookshelf. And I’m going to admit that I was hooked right from the first page.

I don’t really understand why we think The Hills provides us with plenty of drama when there’s something as well written as a Steinbeck novel to fill the necessary quota of lying, cheating, whoring and murder. I mean, seriously, this book has it all, plus some Biblical allegory (I’m not giving anything away when I say “Cain and Abel”).

The story begins with Adam and Charles Trask, two brothers from different mothers, who spend their growing-up years, respectively, trying to dodge and trying to attract their father’s attention. Of course some resentment simmers – really simmers – and eventually Adam leaves the farm to wander the countryside, join the army, do time in jail, and other things.

No sooner does he come back to mend fences than Cathy enters the picture, and tears the two brothers apart again. Cathy’s not the type of girl you really want to get involved with, for various reasons I won’t go into here, but that doesn’t stop Adam, who marries her and takes her out to California to start a new life. Also, to get away from Charles, who thinks the whole Cathy situation is bad news.

Turns out Charles is right, and Cathy is bad news. And in the end, Adam ends up raising his twin sons, Aaron (sorry, Aron) and Caleb (Cal) on his own, with the help of his Chinese, um, manservant, Lee. Of course Cal and Aron have a contentious relationship, too, so the whole Biblical situation repeats again, only without anyone swinging a hatchet at anyone’s head this time. And as they’re growing up, Adam makes a fortune and loses it, and the boys find out some pretty unsavoury things about their mother (though we learn all the really unsavoury things, and they just learn one or two of them).

So, see? Drama, cheating, lying, murdering. And in the midst of it all are some really fantastic characters, like the Trasks’ neighbour, Samuel, who likes philosophical discussions, and Samuel’s wife, Liza, who’s as practical as they come. And Lee, who hides his brilliant intellect and perfect English behind a stereotypical facade, speaking in pidgin English and wearing a queue. Suffice it to say that thanks to the plot and all these interesting people, I couldn’t put the book down. I devoured it. And if you pick it up, I promise you will, too.

A Book About Books

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I want to take a break from my 100 novels thing for a moment and tell you about this great book I just read. Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading, by Lizzie Skurnick.

Skurnick writes a column for Jezebel.com, and this book is a collection of some of her posts, as well as posts by several guests (including Jennifer Weiner). Basically, Shelf Discovery explores some of the popular young adult fiction from the 1970s and 1980s, and Skurnick’s impressions after having reread her favourites as an adult.

I dug this book for so many reasons, chief among them that whenever I turned to a new “installment,” I was catapulted back into my elementary-school library, where I’d pore over Beverly Cleary, Judy Blume, Paul Zindel, Norma Klein, and others, trying to extract the paperbacks (marked with a blue dot) from the shelves without getting a massive, mind-blowing shock should I accidentally touch the metal.

Lizzie Skurnick and I had the same reading habits, pretty much, but maybe that was par for the course for any voracious reader our age. The food porn in Farmer Boy? Remember it like yesterday. Davey’s angst in Tiger Eyes? Got it. The girl in the crystal globe in that creepy Jane-Emily? All over it. Sneaking a copy of Wifey home in grade eight? Come on. You know you did it, too.

A couple of my favourites are missing from this book – the S.E. Hinton, for one. But V.C. Andrews is there, rounding out the chapter on stuff we should never have been allowed to read. Paula Danziger gets a nod for The Cat Ate My Gymsuit, but my personal favourite was The Pistachio Prescription (especially because I had never eaten a pistachio when I read it!). Also missing, by Norma Klein: Mom, the Wolf Man & Me, and Sunshine, over which I bawled my eyes out repeatedly.

But then that’s the point of this book. The reading list belongs to Lizzie Skurnick, and even though it largely matches up with how I spent my reading hours between the age of, oh, eight and fourteen, the odds of it matching perfectly are pretty slim. It’s enough that throughout the book I laughed over how alike were our impressions of our favourites, how much I wanted to revisit the books that weren’t included and how much I regretted passing over some of the classics the first time around.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to see if the library has a free copy of A Wrinkle in Time.

Book Six – The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen

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Confession: for a long time I thought this book was going to be about jail.

Get it – corrections?

I don’t know why I thought that. I think I had it mixed up in my head with The Reader or something, which isn’t about jail but is fairly bleak, and so I had this sort of POW, Holocaust thing attached to it, rather than the satire it is. I finally found out it wasn’t about jail, and I really wanted to read it. And then I read that Franzen told Oprah to go take a flying leap when she wanted to add this book to her Book Club, and I really wanted to read it. Especially when she called him ‘elitist, so there.’ (I don’t know about the ‘so there.’ It’s implicit, if you ask me.)

So anyway. The Corrections is not about jail, The Corrections is about a dysfunctional modern family. “Is there any other kind?” you ask. Well, no, probably not. But a book about a perfectly functioning family would be a very short book. It would also be total, total fiction. And boring.

The story starts with Chip Lambert, a college professor who is toiling away at a screenplay that he at first believes is brilliant but rapidly realizes, after giving it to a high-powered movie exec, probably isn’t. It’s a stack of paper he desperately wants back in order to make the titular “corrections” that he believes will save the story and, for once, allow him some success. Chip has a few issues with the media and society in general, and spends most of his days trying to get his students to realize that pop culture is filled with Corporate Agendas and Hidden Messages. His students don’t appreciate Marshall McLuhan or Noam Chomsky as much as Chip does, though that doesn’t seem to stop Chip from starting an affair with one of them. Long story short, everything self-destructs, Chip loses his job and ends up working in Lithuania.

Meanwhile, his parents, Enid and Alfred, are facing their own issues. Alfred is struggling with the onset of Parkinson’s disease and dementia, and Enid is struggling with her embarrassment and inability to deal with a future that doesn’t match her vision of twilight years spent surrounded by a loving family.

But it doesn’t stop there. Chip’s siblings are also battling personal demons and lives filled with upheaval. His brother Gary is, despite appearing to have everything, hopelessly depressed. His sister Denise, who seems, on the surface, to have everything under control, has made some seriously questionable decisions (the kind you think only Chip could make) that have left her life in ruins.

What it all seems to boil down to for the Lamberts is a the modern family’s impossible search for happiness. Their relationships are often empty and unfulfilling, their lives filled with stuff. The book traces the family from the early days of Enid and Alfred’s courtship, through Chip, Gary, and Denise’s childhoods, to the “one last Christmas” Enid is dying for them to spend together. In the meantime, Franzen fills in the corners with disquieting accounts of big business, whose benevolent message, as usual, hides something deeper.

The “corrections” in the book refer to far more than the editing of Chip’s screenplay. Every Lambert is trying to “correct” something – unhappiness, loneliness, missed opportunities. Each other. In the end, we can realize it’s an impossible task, even if they can’t.

So totally not about jail.