Author Ernest Cunningham has reluctantly agreed to join his family at a remote ski resort for a family reunion. His brother, convicted of murder, will be newly released and in attendance. The challenge is that Ernest testified against him, and the family resents Ern for doing so.
Now when I say “author”, I mean that Ernest is the author of how-to crime books that rely on the 1929 Ten Commandments of Detective Fiction from Ronald Knox. He’s a crime aficionado and becomes the defacto sleuth when a dead body is discovered in the snow one morning. Seems nobody is missing a loved one, nobody is missing from the guest registry, and nobody recognizes the body. Odd.
Then a snowstorm forces everyone to shelter in place, and it’s one death after another. Which of Ernest’s dysfunctional family members is to blame? Or is it Juliette the cagey resort owner? Perhaps Gavin from the competing resort across the way? Or is Ernest an infallible narrator?
What’s fun about this novel is that Ernest talks directly to the reader. He tells us that he’s honest and, to prove it, he forewarns of the page numbers where there will be a murder.
If you’re just here for the gory details, deaths in this book either happen or are reported to have happened on page 14, page 46, page 65, a twofer on page 75, and a hat trick on page 81. Then there’s a bit of a stretch but it picks up again on page 174, page 208(ish), page 218 … I promise that’s the truth, unless the typesetter mucks with the pages. There is only one plot hold you could drive a truck through. I tend to spoil things. There are no sex scenes.
Gosh, I am totally smitten with this book. I listened to the audiobook, narrated by Atwood herself. It’s a total gem, covering Peggy’s childhood—growing up in the bush half of the year—through her teen and university years, the birth of Canadian publishing, and the successive peaks of her family life and career. I loved the intimate details, the inside stories, the quiet “guffaws” included in the recording as she laughs at parts of the story. I love the cover image and the various photoshoot images.
Book of Lives (rhymes with lies) is the finest example of a memoir that I’ve ever read. Snarky, blunt, and full of amusing anecdotes. It’s a love letter to her partner Graeme, a legacy for her daughter and step-kids, and a thank you to the array of people who influenced the formidable woman she is today.
My favourite Atwood works include The Penelopiad (Atwood’s retelling of The Odysseus from Penelope’s perspective) and Hag-Seed (her re-visiting of Shakespeare’s The Tempest). But I’m keen now to read Old Babes in the Wood, The Testaments, The Heart Goes Last, and Stone Mattress. Here are the brief descriptions on the author’s site.Book of Lives reminded me of the many, many Atwood works that I have not yet read.
Whoever convinced Atwood to write and publish her memoir, thank you. It’s full of travel, birding, entomology, canoeing, baking, knitting, gossip, land conservation, creative influences, and family tales. I loved it.
A Bookseller in Madrid is the story of the rise of Fascism in Spain the 1930s from the perspective of a German woman, Barbara Spiel, who dreams of opening a bookstore in Madrid.
On the one hand, this is obviously a well-researched book. The political and historical aspects of the story are based on well-documented tensions across Europe. On the other hand, the personal story is intriguing yet boring. The promise is there! Barbara meets a handsome young man in a Berlin bookstore during a raid. He stands up to the officers and later helps Barbara and the Jewish bookseller re-stack the shelves. The young man is a Socialist politician from Madrid, named Juan Delgado. Barbara moves to Madrid, hoping to escape Hilter’s influence in Germany, marries Juan, opens her bookstore, and discovers Spain is not immune. The Spanish Civil War breaks out, Barbara is asked to spy, she’s harassed by radicals from both sides of the political fence, is at risk daily, and, with war brewing across Europe, needs to escape her home yet again.
Sounds exciting right? But the writing is “this happened, then this happened, then this …” The story is framed with a first and last chapter set in present day. An editor in New York finds an aged and discarded manuscript in a dumpster and rushes to publish the ensuing work. This framing of the novel is unnecessary. There’s no mention of this setup throughout the story so it was a jolt at the end to read the last chapter, set in present day, and go “oh right, I forgot about that.”
The book is widely applauded for its historical accuracy and I’d echo those accolades. But this was not my favourite historical novel. I will give this author another try with The Librarian of Saint-Malo.
If you have parents, they are aging. Let’s Talk About Aging Parents is a cheeky yet practical guide to having tricky conversations about retirement homes, dementia, taking car keys away, and the physical and mental challenges most older adults have with aging in place.
The book offers 27 prompts and roadmaps for having clear conversations with your parents and the other caregivers in their lives. There are jokes and asides to help ease the painful realization that none of this is easy. Medical issues often come to mind, but what about toxic sibling relationships? Age-proofing a house seems clear but what if your parents refuse help?
Laura Tamblyn Watts has advice and “plan Bs” for every situation. She’s a voice of reason in the otherwise fraught land of advice books. I starred a lot of paragraphs and made notes in the margin. I also recommended the parents in my life have a copy of their own. If we are all on the same playbook, then they can point out the approaches they would prefer.
Black Cherokee by Antonio Michael Downing is a story about resilience. Set in the 1990s, Ophelia Blue Rivers is left to be raised by her Black grandmother, who is the widow of a Cherokee Chief and the descendant of the first freed Black woman in South Carolina. Grandma Blue is no nonsense and Ophelia has her head in the clouds. But the two manage just fine until Ophelia is old enough to go to school. Her Black-Cherokee mix makes her the target of bullies at the Cherokee school. She is moved to Stone River to live with an aunty through high school, but her Black-Cherokee mix makes her to target of bullies at the all Black high school. She manages a bit better in the gifted program at the primarily white high school, but finds herself falling in love with a white boy, much to the chagrin of her family.
At every turn, Ophelia is left to wonder what family means to her, and how she will create a sense of belonging.
Antonio Michael Downing is the host of CBC’s radio program The Next Chapter. This is his debut novel and I hope it’s not his last. The writing is fresh and spirited. Ophelia is complex, Grandma Blue–who’s short on words–is even more complex. The book has some Toni Morrison vibes. Morrison’s debut The Bluest Eye explored the psychological effects of internalized racism on a young Black girl in the 1940s. With Ophelia, we see the modern-day (1990s–yet very-present effects) of race and identity on one girl’s coming-of-age journey.
A Good Man is a solid Canadian western set in the late 1870s in the Canadian and American West, specifically around the border between present-day Montana and BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan. Not only is this an amazing western, but it’s also a political, historical novel about nationhood.
This period of time was full of crazy upheaval and the novel explores the political tensions as well as the personal dynamics between a few key characters.
Wesley Case, our main protagonist, is a former solider and the son of a Canadian lumber baron. Case leaves the North-West Mounted Police and, defying his father’s request to enter politics, settles in the American West as a cattle rancher. Case acts as a liaison between his former Canadian boss Major Walsh and the American counterpart Major Ilges. There are several unresolved conflicts between the Sioux and the Americans, the Fenians are still looking for independence from the British and making trouble in Canada, the American Civil War has technically ended in 1865 but there’s the general anxiety that the Americans now can turn their attention to Canada, plus there’s the commonplace violence between settlers staking claims and stealing claims. It’s a time of alliance building amidst mistrust.
Within the personal stories, we have similar tensions and alliances, especially love triangles, friendship triangles, and collegial triangles. The most satisfying being that between Mrs. Ada Tarr, Wesley Case and Joe McMullen. Case and McMullen met in the police and Case convinced McMullen to join him in starting the ranch. Case was the money man and McMullen had the needed skills and experience. They have the strong friendship of frontier men who sweat side by side during the day and get under each other’s skin at night. Mrs. Ada Tarr is the object of their affections, although it’s clear Case’s are romantic and McMullen’s are platonic. They are a dynamite trio.
Contrary to that is the triangle of Ada, Case and Michael Dunne. Dunne is a hired hitman, initially working for Ada’s husband, lawyer Randolph Tarr. (There’s another set of trios: Randolph, Ada, Dunne and Randolph, Dunne and Gobbler Johnson.) Tarr has failed to properly help Gobbler Johnson win a property claim and Gobbler has taken to giving Tarr death threats. Tarr hires Dunne to take care of it. In the duration of that contract, Dunne falls for Ada’s kindness, which he misinterprets as love interest on her part. So when Tarr dies, Dunne thinks Ada is now free to love him. It more than raises Dunne’s ire to learn that Case has swooped in on his beloved.
The plot is slow in unfolding, but it’s against the backdrop of the complex and slowly unfolding political tribulations Case, Walsh, and Ilges are observing between their governments and the various Indigenous communities being displaced from their traditional territories, starved, and shipped off to unfavourable reservations. The other triangle is Case, Walsh and Sitting Bull.
After defeating Colonel Custer at the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876, Sitting Bull and the Hunkpapa Lakota crossed into Canada to escape the US forces hunting them down. The Canadian government was in a tricky position of not wanting to disrespect their stronger neighbour to the south but wanting to appear neutral. Major Walsh, at least in the novel, is quite sympathetic to Sitting Bull’s plight and does his utmost to feed and provide ammunition to the Indigenous people seeking safe harbour within Canadian borders (and, uh, on their own damn land anyway). But Walsh is ultimately forced to bend to his own government’s pressure to push Sitting Bull and his people back across the border to the US.
Yes, the book is a slow read but, my goodness, the skilled writing is worth it. If you like Cormac McCarthy, Jack Keroauc, or Kazuo Ishiguro, then you’ll love the intense style, bleak themes, and poetic prose of A Good Man.
Also, from a modern-day perspective, I don’t think many Canadians understand their history. Here are a couple of lowlight moments.
The American Civil War was fought from 1861-1865. The British Empire, including Canada, had been officially neutral in the American Civil War, but many in government aligned with the South. A “United” States was a more powerful neighbour than many wanted. [Micheal Dunne enters the story here as an everyman for a powerful Canadian who’s on the side of the Confederates.]
So Canada was a neutral but active base for Confederate spies, plots against political figures, and supply operations. We were trying to play both sides, in an attempt to reinforce Canadian independence and nationhood. Remember Canadian Confederation only happened in 1867, as a measure of collective security. The US had several policies aimed at pressuring Canada into political union with the US (sound familiar?). [Case’s early days as a solider highlight these tensions well; and set up a nice piece of blackmail that makes its way into Dunne’s hands later in the novel.]
Following the Civil War, the US continued to have armed conflicts between Indigenous warriors trying to defend their homelands and US forces pushing them off to make way for farming and industrial progress, mining, and the general stripping of resources in the name of settlement. [Case moves from eastern Canada to the wild west and we pick up the political story from there.]
Canada was doing the same. The Northwest Mounted Police formed in 1873 and was created to assert sovereignty and bring “law” to the western territories. They were a military-style force, crucial in policing settlers and aiding (strong-arming) treaty negotiations. We starved Indigenous communities into submission then introduced the Indian Act of 1876 as way to relieve Indigenous people of their self governance. [Walsh is hard-nosed and driven by passion. His allegiance to the British crown is in conflict with his personal alliance with Sitting Bull and this makes for an interesting third-act of the novel, especially as Case tries to act as an advisor to Walsh.]
Territorial dominance was a big deal.
The British Empire was also the hated enemy of the Fenian Brotherhood, an Irish-nationalist society, based in the US, that aimed to achieve Ireland’s independence from Britain by capturing Canadian territory and using it as leverage. There were a series of Fenian scares, armed incursions or raids into British North American during the time of this novel. In today’s secular society, it’s easy to forget that, predominantly Catholic, Irish people in Canada faced a hostile reception from the ruling class of British Protestants. [The anti-Catholic sentiment is subtly noted in the novel with a nod to the Orange Order, but the prejudice against the working class, and low-paid labour force, is clear throughout.]
So alliances, strong-arm tactics, and spying is at the heart of both the political and personal stories in A Good Man. The grit and historical depth of the times are presented in the frontier/violent landscape of the novel, making it an unforgettable story and deeply deserving of its accolades.
A Good Man is the last book in what critics call the frontier trilogy: The Englishman’s Boy (1996, Winner of the Governor General’s Award), The Last Crossing (2002, a CanadaReads winner), A Good Man (2011, a Globe and Mail Best Book).
Now, if you were forced to read The Englishman’s Boy in school, then you may, like me, have avoided reading any more Vanderhaeghe. But this book is so much better. Again, it’s slow. But it’s masterful. I picked it up because of the opening:
Thoughts of Mother early this evening. She came back to me complete, the memory like a fist slammed to the heart. Father always called her “the dragon without scales” to diminish her, but he was like the wolf blowing on the brick house of the third little pig. She did not tumble or collapse under his scorn, not once.
The Mighty Red is set in the farming community of Tabor, located in the Red River Valley. I grew up in Winnipeg, which is further north, but also along the Red. The Red River is a low-energy, suspended-sediment, mud-dominated, meandering stream. And so is this novel.
There’s no high-energy plot line here—although Martin, the failed drama teacher and investor, is assumed to have run off with the church renovation funds and appears to be operating small bank heists. This aspect of the story is tertiary to the main plot, which is the love triangle of teens Kismet, Hugo and Gary.
Kismet and Hugo are readers. They bond over their misfit status. Both are eager to move away and make something of themselves. Kismet is afraid. Hugo gives it a go but then retreats back to Tabor. They are like suspended sediment.
Gary, in contrast, is the well-liked football hero and heir to a successful sugar-beet farmer. But Gary isn’t that smart (not overtly smart, he does redeem himself later in the novel). Gary runs wild, has close calls, and his reckless behaviour leaves two friends dead. Gary’s family is well connected in the community but the lost of his friends and ostracization puts a lot of strain on him. The haunting ghost of his friend doesn’t help, but this doesn’t seem like a community with mental health supports. It’s Kismet who Gary believes is his talisman and he courts her with vigour until she agrees to marry him.
Kismet is a reluctant bride but she allows herself to be swept along and no adults step in to prevent the wedding, even though many, including her mother, wish to do so. It’s muddy waters.
I can’t really pin down what this novel is about. Is it about a girl who doesn’t want to get married, yet can’t convince herself to rise above her situation? Or is it about a girl who quietly triumphs despite the odds? Maybe both. There are interesting tensions throughout the novel between the Monsanto promise vs. natural farming practices; rich vs. poor families; extravagance vs. frugality; land ownership vs. rightful ownership. And like the Red River, sometimes the story spills over its banks but otherwise it meanders across a flat plain. Do I recommend it? Ugh, yes. I think I do. The characters feel genuine and their indecisions are real. There are no heroes here but there is a sense of triumph at the end.
Absolutely delightful. Sera Swan is at the height of her magical powers when the one woman who has always protected her and made her feel loved drops dead in the garden. A talking fox coaches Sera on how to cast a forbidden resurrection spell. And of course, things go off the rails from there. Sera is able to resurrect her dear Great-Aunt Jasmine, but she unintentionally also brings back the long-buried pet chicken and saps all her magical powers. Sera has gone too far. She is outcast from the community of witches, she has the bare minimum magic left to keep her home and inn running, but she is tired and snarky all the time.
I listened to this audiobook and the narrator Samara MacLaren, who reminds me of Kiera Knightley, does a most-wonderful snarky and sarcastic voice.
Poor Sera has one, highly unlikely chance to get her magic back, but she is thwarted by her old rival and mentor at every turn. In the end she realizes that her life is more than just the magic, but it sure would be handy to get it back.
Carol Off is the former CBC Radio host of As It Happens and she was one of my favourite interviewers. Off had a way of talking to people and challenging them, while still being respectful. But over her decade and a half of interviews, Off noticed a change (and challenge) in how the right co-opted words like democracy, freedom, truth, woke, choice, and taxes. These six words form the basis for the chapters of the book. Off’s take is wide ranging, from history and politics to the meaningful ways that her childhood and parents informed her own world views.
I very much enjoyed listening to her interview on the On Rights podcast, presented by the Human Rights Museum in Winnipeg. Carol Off grew up in Winnipeg, as did I, so I have some bias there.
The premise for At a Loss for Words is that if we lose our shared vocabulary then we no longer have a shared understanding; we cannot express ourselves or converse with those opposed, nor can we in turn understand those who do not share our opinions. I was reminded of a lot of forgotten history nuggets, learned a few political lessons, and enjoyed a lot of fine writing. This book is a keeper. It kept me up at night, and I want to keep it around for reference.
The Paper Birds by Jeanette Lynes is historical fiction, from a Canadian perspective. Many readers of WWII history will know about Camp X, a spy training facility near Whitby, Ontario. But they might not know about the prisoner-of-war camps in Canada, nor about the Canadian women who worked under the Official Secrets Act in small facilities and converted private homes.
This is the story of Gemma Sullivan who works in an “office” job in the summer of 1943, with 4 other women, working to break codes. They meet daily at the “Cottage” and are given intercepts to break, but they have none of the machinery of Whitby or the prestige of Bletchley Park. It’s just their pencils and wits. The women have diverse talents in mathematics, logic, and literature. But they don’t share much in common, which leads Gemma to wander off during a lunch break for some alone time. During her walk, she is led by a stray cat to the edges of a prisoner-of-war camp where she strikes up a conversation with a prisoner. Fraternizing with the enemy has steep penalties and, given her intelligence work, it could be very bad news for Gemma. But she is drawn over and over to the handsome prisoner at the fence.
The Paper Birds is a quiet love story. There are no big dramas here, just the underlying tension Gemma feels about all the lies and lives she is upholding through her job.
I was not familiar with Jeanette Lynes before but she’s a Canadian author and has several books that have won or been nominated for awards in both fiction and non-fiction. So I’m keen to find more of her work.
