Winner of the 2011 Scotiabank Giller Prize

Half-Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan begins in Paris 1940 with Sid and Hieronymus restless after a late night of recording and in search of milk in a Paris cafe. Sid is an American bass player and Hiero is a brilliant trumpet player. So brilliant that Louis Armstrong has recognized his talent and asked him to cut a record with a band he’s formed. Hiero is 20 years old, German and black. He’s arrested in the cafe that day and not heard from again.

Sid was dealing with some irritable bowels when “the Boots” came in and he watches in fear from the stairwell as Hiero is arrested. It’s his guilt we wrestle with and try to understand throughout the novel. Did he want the kid arrested? Was he really frozen in fear and should have our sympathies?

Fifty years later, Sidney Griffiths and drummer Chip Jones come to Europe for the showing of a documentary about their legendary time in Paris with Hiero, “the kid.” But Chip’s planned another itinerary, which involves visiting Hiero. He’s discovered the kid is alive, blind and living in Poland.

The novel flips back and forth from the smoky bars of pre-war Berlin and the legends of Jazz in pre-war Paris to Sid and Chip’s geriatric return. Each episode draws the reader deeper into the relationships of the band members and the local colour of Berlin and Paris in the early haze of their WWII days.

The depictions of the band playing with Louis Armstrong and recording their own record are dynamite. It’s jazz from a musician’s point of view and it’s poetic.

Quote: It was the sound of the gods, all that brass. It was the old Armstrong and the new, that mature distilled essence of a master and the boy he used to be, the boy who could make his glissandi snap like marbles, the high Cs piercing. Hiero thrown out note after shimmering note, like sunshine sliding all over the surface of a lake, and Armstrong was that water, all depth and thought, not one wasted note. Hiero, he just reaching out, seeking the shore; Armstrong stood there calling across to him. Their horns sound so naked, so blunt, you felt almost guilty listening to it, like you eavesdropping. After some minutes Chip stopped singing, left just the two golden ropes of sound to intertwine.

See more of my thoughts as part of the Vancouver Sun Book Club.

Half-Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan
Published by Thomas Allen
Canadian author

Half-Blood Blues on Amazon.ca

The Bird Sisters made me incredibly sad. The book is great. My 1-line review would be “delicate and sturdy.”

The basic plot line follows two sisters, Milly and Twiss, and one summer when everything falls apart. Their father, who’s a golf pro, has an accident and loses his form. Their mother’s scorn becomes unbearable. And then their cousin from Deadwater arrives to spend the summer while her parents get divorced, which is the ultimate fly in the ointment.

The Bird Sisters is set in the 40s in Spring Green, Wisconsin. All the pettiness of a small town runs throughout the book, as well as all the treasures. There is a delicateness to each of the characters, almost like they are about to break, yet also a sturdiness to Milly and Twiss. I’m not sure which broke my heart but there is a scene in this book where “nice” is no longer nice.

A wonderful debut. And notably, the first book that I’ve read because of the internet. There are a ton of books that I hear about online but I’ve typically had them on my radar from word of mouth, publisher catalogues, or personal recommendations. The Bird Sisters, funny enough, or perhaps intentionally, came to me via twitter. I watched this title build momentum and really wanted to read it. I even remember checking if Ardea Books had it and having no idea what the book was about, only that it was a novel. I’m glad the twitter about The Bird Sisters was legit.

Visit thebirdsisters.com to read an excerpt

Wow.

This is another book that I waited on too long to read. Joseph Boyden deserves all the praise this book received.

Three Day Road is about two Cree boys who join the Canadian efforts in World War I. Their bush skills and hunting are easily transposed to the trenches and sniper shooting and both become renowned for their kills.

The novel shifts between present day , Xavier’s Aunt’s visions and efforts to save her nephew from the morphine that is silently killing him while also keeping him alive , and Xavier’s flashbacks of his war days with his boyhood friend Elijah.

Elijah is the talker, the charmer and ultimately the one who is a little too good at killing.

What struck me most was the idea that there are men who are very good at war and when (if) they return to civilian life are unsettling and unsettled. Those who are good at war have difficulty that maybe those who are just lucky don’t have.

One of the characters “Fats” is perhaps lucky whereas Xavier is good. My inference is that Fats’ dumbluck will haunt him differently than the visions of killing that Xavier must contend with in his post-war days.

But the story isn’t about Fats, it’s about Xavier. And that story is very, very good.

January

Jimmy and Linda come to Vancouver. We visit the aquarium and have a grand time all around.
(No photos available but fun was had by all.)

Retreat to Mount Baker with the Le Petit gang.

February

Monique is off to SFO to attend RSA.
(Excellent food was eaten. None available in photo form.)

April

We discover the UBC Choral Singers. Lovely.

Visit Winnipeg for Jan’s retirement, Linda’s birthday, and a visit with Pa.

Enjoy the Dan Mangan concert with Siobhan, Chris, Boris and Rachael. Discover Aidan Knight.

May

Monique trundles off to St. John’s, Nfld, to chat about ebooks to the Literary Press Group of Canada. The visit includes celebrating Tom Power’s birthday with John K Sampson, fiddles and a fog machine.

Jan visits. We go to the opera.

James and Monique get engaged. Wait, what? I know.

June

Monique and James zoom off to NYC and visit with Marshall and Kerry.

Siobhan celebrates the non-shower shower.

Judy’s shower.

Off to Osoyoos to visit Jimmy and Linda.

July

D & J’s wedding

Siobhan & Chris’ wedding

August

James and Monique spend August at Ainslie Point Cottage on Pender Island.

Boris & Rachael come for a visit.

Darren and Julie visit us on Pender.

James gets hired by Mobify.

Leah’s stagette is memorable.

September

Jay & Leah’s wedding

For James’ birthday we visit the Cascades and hunt for mushrooms.

October

Monique’s shower for ladies.

Monique’s night out with the girls.

Thanksgiving at Boris and Rachael’s.
(Ate so much even the photos disappeared.)

Get Hitched on Oct 16.

Celebrate Tamya’s birthday

Decorate the Halloween tree with Damian

November

Winnipeg Wedding Tour

Make sausage in Winnipeg with Scott and Ryan. Lots of it.

Celebrate Monique’s birthday at CRU and then attend Ballet BC’s 3 Fold.
(Awesome.)

Kitchen staff for Le Festival de la Poutine.

December

Christmas

Boxing Day on Bowen

Scott & Carrie’s wedding on NYE
(Loveliness still to behold.)

Happy 2011 and Best Wishes for 2012!

Although the paperback was published in 2005, Sweetness in the Belly never made it to my reading list until last week. Camilla Gibb has written a brilliant book. I know you know. It was on all sorts of lists and everyone raved about it, which is probably why it took me so long to get around to it. But really, one word review: awesome.

Sweetness in the Belly is set in Harar, Ethiopia and London, England. The story is told through flashbacks to Ethiopia in the 70s and England in the 80s and 90s. Lilly is our protagonist and she is a white Muslim growing up in the class hierarchy system of an Ethiopian town where devout women pray, raise children and fight for survival against contaminated water, the jinn and other evil spirits, and husbands or lovers who leave them with children to raise and limited means to do so.

Lilly’s British, hippy parents raise her (sort of) as they travelled around African. But their unhappy end left Lilly in the care of a great Muslim teacher. On her journey to a shrine in Harar, many things happen that part her from her male travel companion and leave her in the care of Nouria, who’s less than thrilled to have another mouth to feed.

Lilly, the orphaned foreigner who knows the Qu’ran, learns the culture of Hararis and so does the reader along with her. Eventually caught up in the war, poverty and famine, Lilly escapes to live in London. It’s an exile, not a homecoming as she has left loved ones and must watch horrible events unfold from afar. But it’s actually through her exile that readers learn more of Ethiopia and of what it may be like for refugees.

On Islam:
Quote: This is what happens in the West. Muslims from Pakistan pray alongside Muslims from Nigeria and Ethiopia and Malaysia and Iran, and because the only thing they share in common is the holy book, that becomes the sole basis of the new community: not culture, not tradition, not place. The book is the only thing that offers consensus, so traditions are discarded as if they are filthy third-world clothes. ‘We were ignorant before,’ people say, as if it is only in the West that they have learned the true way of Islam.

In traveling through Indonesia, Turkey, Jordan and Egypt, I’ve experienced firsthand the moderation and cultural interpretations in a way that mean these sections of the text to really resonate with me. In Indonesia, I had a friend who when explaining praying said, “it is good to pray, it is better to pray with others, it is best to pray in the mosque.”

Everything was shades of grey that made perfect sense to me.

Later in the text, Lilly says “My religion is full of colour and possibility and choice; it’s a moderate interpretation … one that allows you to use whatever means allow you to feel closer to God, be it saints, prayer beads, or qat, one that allows you to have the occasional drink, work alongside men, go without a veil when you choose, sit alone with an unrelated man in a room, even hold his hand …”

It’s an interpretation where jihad is one’s personal struggle to be a good Muslim, not a fight against those who are not Muslim.

Sweetness in the Belly is one of those books that although set in a particular time and place, is really quite timeless.

Sweetness in the Belly by Camilla Gibb
Published by Random House of Canada
Canadian author
Available in paperback and ebook

One of my favourite books ever is The British Museum is Falling Down by David Lodge. It is one of the few books that I have read and re-read without eventually abandoning. I find the novel immensely satisfying and there are parts I laugh at each time. I have tried repeatedly to recreate that reading experience with Lodge’s other titles unsuccessfully, though I certainly haven’t explored his full repertoire.

Lodge’s latest work, A Man of Parts is a hefty tome of 565 pages. I was undeterred and selected this novel as one of my birthday gifts, even though I had to haul it all the way back from McNally Robinson in Winnipeg.

A Man of Parts is an homage to the late HG Wells, the English author (most well known for The War of the Worlds), futurist, essayist, historian, socialist and womanizer.

The book opens with a definition from Collins English Dictionary.

Quote: Parts PLURAL NOUN 1. Personal abilities or talents: a man of many parts. 2. short for private parts.

In many ways this novel is all about Wells’ private parts, both in his endowment and private life.

HG Wells (1866-1946) was born to a maid and shopkeeper. His childhood was one of poverty, but at an early age he was an avid reader and through a series of fortunate events was able to pretty much avoid practical employment (in the drapery business) and instead enter a scholastic track, leading to teaching and writing.

He married his cousin Isabel Mary only to divorce her four years later to marry one of his students, Amy Catherine, who he renamed Jane. With Jane, he developed into the writer and man more familiar to us, and fathered George Philip (Gip) and Frank, along with a daughter Anna Jane (with writer and student Amber Reeves) and a son Anthony (with feminist and journalist Rebecca West). Jane was quite patient.

A Man of Parts is basically the X-Rated version of The Sound of Music.

Wells is a well-respected man and active socialist. He joins the Fabians in hopes of propelling a socialist agenda, only to be disappointed by their internal politics. These are Edwardian men. Father knows best men. Mother runs the house without any hardship to Father. His shirts are pressed and cleaned by invisible fairies. His breakfast is delivered at the perfect temperature with eggs done exactly as he likes them. Mother’s bed is available to him but they sleep in separate beds, less for chaste reasons than so as to not disturb each other. And the children all play nicely while Mother calmly and with great accommodation ignores (and even offers advice on) Father’s indiscretions.

Nearly everything that happens in A Man of Parts is based on factual sources. “Based on” being the novelistic need to infer and form a narrative arch. Or as Lodge says in the introduction, “I have imagined many circumstantial details which history omitted to record.” With this literary licence Lodge delivers HG Wells, a man of many abilities, and certainly one invested in the talents of satisfying his admirers.

Before reading the novel, I really only knew Wells as one of the fathers of science fiction, War of the Worlds being considered a masterpiece that inspired the genre. But I didn’t realize how much his novels at the time of publication foreshadowed the reality to come of robotics, World Wars, aviation and aerial bombings, chemical weapons, and nuclear power. Nor did I know anything about his socialist inclinations and his aspirations for the League of Nations.

What was really intriguing is Lodge’s underlying story of Wells as an ailing man looking back on his life and wondering if his early success as a famous writer, “the man who invented tomorrow”, has just left him as yesterday’s man, a failed man; an author deserted by readers, a man whose utopian dreams of a society without jealousy and open to free love are unrealized and unlikely.

Looking at Lodge’s list of fiction, literary criticism and essays, I wonder if, like Wells, there is a ting of autobiographical exploration of emotions here.

A Man of Parts by David Lodge
Published by Harvill Secker

See what the Guardian has to say…

The Vancouver Artsclub is playing Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad until November 20 at the Stanley theatre and I just happen to have finished reading the book.

The Play

The Book

Published in 2006 as part of the Myths series, Atwood provides a contemporary take on one of the most enduring stories of all time, Homer’s The Odyssey. In Homer’s tale, Penelope is the ever constant, faithful wife who dutifully tends to her husband’s empire without compromise to his finances or her fidelity despite hearing tale after tale from passing travellers recounting Odysseus’ great triumphs and tribulations in the war against Troy and his own yearnings for love in the arms of beautiful goddesses. I mean, really, did she just stand by for 20 years spinning a bit of yarn?

In Atwood’s version, Penelope is more than just the long-suffering wife of the hero. She is a very clever woman who makes 1 fatal mistake that costs her the lives of 12 obedient maids.

I love Atwood’s academic and philosophical answers to the elements of The Odyssey that went unquestioned in my literature classes. The Penelopiad begins with two questions: what led to the hanging of the maids, and what was Penelope really up to? I did wonder.

I also love the contemporary twist of the maids presenting evidence through song and dance, as if they were on Glee, the video trial, and Penelope checking out the contemporary world via spiritual mediums and commenting on the similarities or differences to her time.

Penelope may have been as clever as Helen was beautiful, but Margaret Atwood stands in a class of her own at the top of the clever charts.