Category: Book Reviews (Page 18 of 40)

In celebration of Canadian poetry, and to mark Brick Books’ 40th anniversary, they are featuring articles each week about different Canadian poets. This week my article about poet Dennis Cooley is up on the site!

Week 40 – Dennis Cooley presented by Monique Sherrett

I am a big fan of Cooley and, as I say in my intro, readers of Dennis Cooley know how difficult it is to talk about Dennis Cooley.

Quote: First off, one tends to talk of Cooley in Cooley’s voice. His sing-song cadence worms its way into your head and you can’t read his poems any other way, or at least I can’t. Second, one attempts to be more clever than one ought to be. Being clever is Cooley’s job.

His recent collection abecedarium is a perfect example of his musicality, linguistic wit and technical dexterity. Cooley’s take on language is joyful. He manipulates the sound of the words, and the words themselves, the way a master musician plays an instrument. Each poem is a play on words, or even a play upon a play upon words. How meta, as the kids say today. Back in the day when I was studying with Cooley, we would have said, how po-mo.

(Maybe I was the only nerd who said po-mo instead of postmodern.)

Please have a look at the great collection of praise and celebration of Canadian poetry that Brick Books is compiling. I love it. And, even if you’re not a poetry buff, check out Dennis Cooley’s abecedarium.

abecedarium by Dennis Cooley
Order from the publisher: http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/titles/178-9780888646453-abecedarium

Or Amazon.ca

Or find it at a fabulous independent bookseller like Winnipeg’s McNally Robinson who has an amazing section on Prairie authors.

Patrick deWitt, the bestselling author of The Sisters Brothers, delivers another knockout novel. Undermajordomo Minor is about Lucien (Lucy) Minor and his absurd employment at Castle Von Aux. The deranged castle master, Baron Von Aux, rambles around in the dark eating rats. The Baroness has disappeared. Nearby soldiers are at war over an unidentified idea. And the villagers Lucy meets are thick as thieves, figuratively and literally. Oh, and he falls in love.

Whereas The Sisters Brothers was a darkly comic, Western-inspired novel, Undermajordomo Minor is a darkly comic, orphan story/Gothic romance. Lucy leaves home shortly after his father’s death, and although he had two parents growing up, it seems they were lacking in parental affections. Lucy sets out on his own to make his fortune, or at least to turn his fortunes. He’s cheated death and been given the chance to do something interesting. It’s Oliver Twist meets Harry Potter (without the magic). Castle Von Aux and Lucy’s love interest Klara provide the Gothic romance elements. There’s a spooky castle with a general curse about the place, inclement weather and downtrodden villagers, a few marginally threatening mysteries (like what happened to Lucy’s predecessor Mr Broom), and Lucy himself as the fainting heroine.

One of my favourite scenes is between Lucy and his boss Mr Olderglough. They need to locate the Baron, tidy him up and make him suitably presentable to the Baroness and her guests. Mr Olderglough believes that trapping the Baron and knocking him on the head is the best solution. Lucy counters.

Quote:
“And what next, I wonder?”
“After he’s been knocked unconscious, then shall we bring him to his chambers and manacle him to his bed. Next we will force-feed him, and bathe him, and shave him, and cut his hair and strive to resurrect his interest in sophisticated society.” Mr Olderglough rubbed his hands together. “Now, what do you think of it?”
Lucy said, “I think it is somewhat far-fetched, sir.”
“Are you not up for it?”
“I’m not, actually, no. And to be frank, sir, I don’t believe you are, either.”
“What sort of attitude is that? Let us rally, boy.”
“Let us come up with another plan.”
“Let us look within ourselves and search out the dormant warrior.”
“Mine is dormant to the point of non-existence, sir. There is no part of me that wishes to lay nakedly abed and await that man’s arrival.”
“I tell you you will not be alone.”
“And yet I shall surely feel alone, sir.”
Mr Olderglough looked down the length of his nose. “May I admit to being disappointed in you, boy.”
“You may write a lengthy treatise on the subject, sir, and I will read it with interest. But I highly doubt there will be anything written within those pages which will alter my dissatisfaction with the scheme.”

I remember The Sisters Brothers being funny and engaging right from page 1 but it took me a bit longer to get into Undermajordomo MInor. That said, this novel is just as crazy as the last. It’s very hard to stop turning the pages once you’re into it. I hope it secures as many well-deserved awards and honours as his last novel. Watch for this title!

You’ll like Undermajordomo Minor by Patrick deWitt if you liked his previous titles Ablutions and The Sisters Brothers, or if you enjoy the humour of tv shows and movies like Father Ted and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. There’s something wonderful and absurd about it all.

Both the hardcover and digital edition are available from the publisher House of Anansi, Amazon.ca and independent booksellers like McNally Robinson.

A new literary thriller from the acclaimed author of Resistance. In I Saw a Man, journalist Caroline Marshall dies on assignment in Pakistan, leaving her husband, writer Michael Turner, widowed and grieving. To help his recovery, Michael moves house and befriends his neighbours Josh and Samantha Nelson and their two young daughters. But tragedy strikes Michael again. He must decide if the weight of his guilt and grief are going to anchor him to his present home or drive him away again.

The Vancouver Sun Book Club will be discussing the novel this fall but here’s a sneak peak on my reading of it.

Overall this is a fun, summer read. Great for fall, of course. The writing itself is fun in that it’s easy to read, a good page turner. The subject matter is darker. Michael is widowed and living next door to the Nelsons. He comes over to retrieve his screwdriver that he lent them the night before. The back door is open. This is odd because the wife Samantha is away and Josh and his two daughters don’t seem to be in the house. Michael enters the quiet family home and calls out but gets no reply. He hesitates then enters in search of his screwdriver. Readers don’t find out for a long time what’s happened to that screwdriver and Owen Sheers builds in a lot of good tension.

There’s also the background story of Michael and his wife Caroline Marshall. Caroline was a free-spirited female reporter who broke a few international stories and wasn’t adverse to dangerous assignments. Caroline had removed herself from field work and had settled down with Michael in a quaint cottage in Wales where she was doing some producer work until an assignment crossed her desk that she couldn’t refuse. Next thing Michael knows, she is off to Pakistan to report on the story of a Welsh boy who joined a terrorist group there.

Owen Sheers creates great tension in this background story. He brings Michael and Caroline together, almost like two moths to a flame. They are an unlikely couple who are pulled together by something unexplained and also both aware that something is going to pull them apart. How Caroline dies is also a secret that Owen Sheers keeps from his reader for much of the book.

The novel isn’t really plot driven in the way that thrillers are. Instead it’s intellectual and emotional. There’s emotional tension in each of the relationships. There are lies and betrayals that either create alliances or ruptures. And it’s the nature of love, loss and secrets that is at the heart of this book.

I Saw a Man by Owen Sheers is published in Canada by Bond Street Books
Fiction $29.95
Buy on Amazon: I Saw a Man: A Novel
See Reviews on Goodreads

Prep your bookshelf for this tale of polite theft, bitter heartbreak, domestic mystery, and cold-blooded murder. Patrick deWitt, award-winning author of The Sisters Brothers, has a new novel out this fall.

The Sisters Brothers was a fantastic read, one of my favourites that year, and it won the 2011 Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction and the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and was also nominated for that year’s Man Booker and Scotiabank Giller Prize. I’m really looking forward to this one and have an advance copy to enjoy! (Thanks House of Anansi)

Full review to come, but the basics are this: Lucien Minor (Lucy) is young, foolish and rather daring. He accepts employment as “undermajordomo” at the disquieting Castle Von Aux (think Transylvania) and becomes embroiled in a love triangle. The book is full of the dark secrets and peculiar characters, so peculiar that you will be forced to turn the pages to see what’s next.

Undermajordomo Minor by Patrick DeWitt will appear Sept. 5 simultaneously in Canada (House of Anansi Press), the U.K. (Granta Books), and the U.S. (Ecco/HarperCollins).

Available in hardcover and ebook.
Pre-order Undermajordomo Minor

Four distinct voices tell the tale of one family’s attempt to transcend the Kabbalah Tree of Life. Each seeks enlightenment. Each failure has a lesson. This is a debut novel about faith, family and finding meaning from an accomplished writer, editor and playwright.

The Mystics of Mile End is set in Montreal’s Mile End, a mashup of Hasidic Jew and hipster cultures. Brother and sister, Lev and Samara Meyer, are at a loss after the death of their mother. They seek refuge in their faith and retaliate against their father David’s denial of that faith. David, for his part, is uncertain about his own faith and seeks the meaning of life in self-destructive ways. He’s a professor of Jewish mysticism, yet not any more enlightened, and his research into the Kabbalah Tree of Life, discovered posthumously by Samara, might be the one thing that finally connects the family.

The Torah is the five books of Moses, so I thought that there would be five books in The Mystics of Mile End but there are only four: Lev, David, Samara and Mile End.

I guess Mile End really is a character in the book. But beyond a geographical place, it’s where Holocaust survivor Chaim Glassman lives (in silence) with his wife. It’s where Mr Katz is assembling lemons and wired-up tin cans in his giant oak tree, and where Lev’s star-gazing friend Alex falls in love with Samara and then learns his own lessons and break throughs.

The novel is about what happens when we search for signs instead of living, and when we are silent instead of talking. It’s a strong debut novel.

The Mystics of Mile End by Sigal Samuel
published by Freehand Books

As part of the Vancouver Sun’s book club, I’ve been discussing Boo, a new novel by Neil Smith. It’s about Oliver “Boo” Dalrymple, a 13-year-old boy who narrates the book from the afterlife. The jacket blurb’s proclamation that this is “Lord of the Flies without pig slaughter and privation.”
Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/book+club+year+protagonist+quest+meaning/11151629/story.html#ixzz3fr3fwphy

One of my favourite discussions was about the 1970s cultural references in the novel. Here’s what I said:

Quote: Until our conversation last week, I did not pick up on the fact that the book is set in the 1970s because there are so many hipster trends today that allude to that period. It’s obvious now, and so overt, that it’s embarrassing to admit that I glazed over this aspect of the novel. As I started compiling a list of the cultural references, I couldn’t stop so this is not an exhaustive list, just want sprang to mind.

First off, I loved the Napolean-Dynamite visual I got when reading about Boo or Johnny wearing the white and blue striped gym socks and sweat bands. That alone brought levity to the underlying story of two boys dead in a school shooting. The peace symbol and style of clothes really do set the story in the 70s for me but Town/Heaven is presented as Salvation Army so, again, I didn’t initially understand the setting to be the 1970s. My assumption then, since there are no computers or video games, is that Town’s culture is that of America in current day.

The clothes especially made me laugh and Boo’s criticism of the cashmere sweater and egotism of 13-year-old girls reminded me of that all-about-me phase. It’s funny, especially, if the 70s was the Me decade, to end up in town with generations of 13 year old Americans. You would not feel so unique, which is maybe why some townies identify as gommers, or portal seekers, or find other ways of segmenting themselves off.

The other prominent 70s references for me were the Hardy Boys references, especially the building named Frank and Joe, the music references, and I immediately thought of the do-good council as the Brady Bunch.

I wonder if there are no cars in Town because 13 year olds can’t drive, or if that’s a reference to the oil crisis? Likely the former. And I don’t know enough about the history of the periodic table but there’s obviously an interesting study of those elements and their function within the storytelling.

What I don’t recall are references to Star Wars. But Boo is certainly aware of the starscape and Zig only changes it on occasion. I wonder for people who saw the moon landing first hand, if it was underwhelming. It’s cool, but there’s nothing there. Was that a letdown and made people wonder about heaven? If you imagined the moon as this great place then saw its pocked surface, did you question what you’d imagined about heaven?

The mental health building, Johnny’s behaviour, and the sense of being in purgatory or sentenced to 50 years in town reminded me of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. There were several places in the novel when I wondered who the crazy actually was.

You can read the full discussion among all the book club members here: http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/books/book+club+References+1970s+abound+afterlife+novel/11132081/story.html

Boo was a fascinating novel and an interesting philosophical experiment on what the afterlife holds for us.

Boo by Neil Smith
published by Knopf Canada

I discovered this book in the Rathmines Public Library, displayed in a section for nominees of the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. It’s billed as a smart novel, and it unveils the aspirations, and vanity, of three unnamed authors competing for a prestigious, unnamed prize. I enjoyed the irony of that. For background, this is Italian Filippo Bologna’s second novel and the first was well regarded. Indeed he may be one, or all, of the characters in the book.

It’s important to note that the characters live in Rome and there’s a dark undertone to the competition and the vote rigging or schmoozing required by authors in order to win. And winning is important as it increases sales and can firmly establish an author. So how far is each willing to go?

The three men are The Beginner, The Writer and The Master. The Beginner is the hot, young thing. He’s good looking and loved by the critics. A win means instant fame. Neither the Master or Writer want to be beaten by the novice. Plus they both deem his novel unreadable. The Writer assumes he’s the sure win, but he is the most nervous of the lot. His last book wasn’t very good. He is onto The Second Wife already and needs to win to not be dumped by The Publisher as the lost could strip him of his fabricated identity and posh lifestyle. The Writer has everything to lose. For him the win is security.

As I mentioned, the dark satire throughout the novel is about how far each author is willing to go to win. The Master is the most disheartened. He’s stuck with a small press throughout his career and has never quite got the recognition he deserves. A win means money. Plus he now has prostate cancer. Will he lose his dignity and use his cancer diagnosis to get the sympathy vote or is he above it all? The other two have their own twists of fate but I don’t want to spoil the read for you.

The novel is black, in a sullen artisty way. There’s a thread of humour throughout. And overall it was an enjoyable read. Not a page turner but I did want to see it through to the end. You’ll like this novel if you’re also a fan of The Map and the Territory by Michel Houellebecq, caustic humour and insider look at fame in the art world, or The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman, a satirical look at an English-language newspaper in Rome.

Oh, and what’s with the title, The Parrots? Well there is a rather nasty parrot that taunts the Beginner. Also there is a parrot at the end with the Writer. It’s unclear whether this is the same parrot or not. But as soon as I read the title and the opening scene with the parrot and the Beginner, I thought we were dealing with Flaubert’s Parrot, and surely there’s a connection. Here’s a snippet from Wikipedia on Flaubert’s Parrot by Julian Barnes:

Quote: One of the central themes of the novel is subjectivism. The novel provides three sequential chronologies of Flaubert’s life: the first is optimistic (citing his successes, conquests, etc.), the second is negative (citing the deaths of his friends/lovers, his failures, illnesses etc.) and the third compiles quotations written by Flaubert in his journal at various points in his life. The attempts to find the real Flaubert mirror the attempt to find his parrot, i.e. apparent futility.

The Parrots by Filippo Bologna
Published by Pushkin Press
View it on Amazon

In December 2010 I read and reviewed Luka and the Fire of Life by Salman Rushdie. I haven’t read all of Rushdie’s works but I have loved the ones I have, including Luka and the Fire of Life, which is the sequel to Haroun and the Sea of Stories.

Quote: There was once, in the country of Alifbay, a sad city, the saddest of cities, a city so ruinously sad that it had forgotten its name…
And in the depths of the city, beyond an old zone of ruined buildings that looked like broken hearts, there lived a happy young fellow by the name of Haroun, the only child of the storyteller Rashid Khalifa, whose cheerfulness was famous throughout that unhappy metropolis, and whose never-ending stream of tall, short and winding tales had earned him not one but two nicknames. To his admirers he was Rashid the Ocean of Notions …
to his jealous rivals he was the Shah of Blah.

In Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Haroun is upset that his mother has run away with the weasly clerk from next door and his father, the famous storyteller, seems to have no more stories to tell. The latter being a result of the former. When Rashid, the most famous storyteller of the land, is called into service by a gangster politician, Haroun is beyond worried that his father’s dried up gift for gab is going to get them imprisoned.

A sleepless night in a peacock bed result in Haroun riding a mechanical bird right into a story war. He’s accompanied by a water genie, a floating gardener, some talking fish, the mechanical bird and a host of other magical creatures. Of course Haroun is the hero of this tale and is awarded a happy ending.

I bought this book in the ancient book market in Argeliers, France, while looking for a happy ending. The Shad of Blah certainly delivered a delightful holiday read. He knows how to spin a frown upside down.

If you liked Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, or any other quirky tale then give this one a go.

79-year-old Martha Andersson dreams of escaping her care home and robbing a bank.

Well I was worried about taking this book cover through customs but Martha Andersson’s luck was on my side. This old bird is a spring chicken when it comes to planning the perfect crime. Martha and her cronies are fed up with budget cuts in their retirement home that have led to reductions in the amount of coffee they can have per day and the elimination of biscuits with their tea. It’s simply outrageous and, what is even more insulting, the prisons in Sweden look like luxury accommodation in comparison. Something must be done.

When the old foggies can’t get improvements at home, they form the League of Pensioners and rob an art gallery. It’s the perfect crime. Even the police and newspapers make that claim. But what these seniors want is time in prison so they turn themselves in and figure out a way to keep the ransom money, return the paintings and be the Robin Hoods of their day.

If you liked The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden by Jonas Jonasson or The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy by Rachel Joyce then you’ll enjoy this funny heist.

Harlan runs away with the circus, becomes a barker (the guy who calls in the crowds) and eventually ends up in bed with the knife-throwers’ wife. You can imagine where it goes from there. Harlan is one of those guys who is always on the run. He runs away to the circus. He runs away from the circus. He runs away to the army. He runs and runs but he can’t run away from the voices in his head.

This depression-era saga follows our man Harlan from prairie homestead with an SOB dad to the traveling circus and into the army. He’s almost fodder in the Pacific theatre but the war dries up and he finds himself in real estate. “I coulda been a contender,” comes to mind. Funny enough Harlan finds his way in the most unusual way.

This is the last book by Wayne Tefs, award-winning author of nine novels, a collection of short stories and two memoirs. I have always enjoyed his writing and he is one of the prairies noteworthy authors. I felt very sad reading this book and also very pleased to have a personal connection to him.

Barker by Wayne Tefs (published by Turnstone)