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.

Ami McKay’s second novel is sure to be a bestseller just like the first.

Quote: I am Moth, a girl from the lowest part of Chrystie Street, born to a slum-house mystic and the man who broke her heart.

So begins The Virgin Cure, a story about a street girl named Moth who is lured by the street savvy Mae into Miss Everett’s brothel for girls. Set in the 1800s in New York, girls as young as 12 are preyed upon by those wishing to make a buck or to pay a large sum to be a girl’s first. Sadly there are many gentlemen willing to sleep with young girls and, more depressing, there are many who believe virgins will cure syphillus.

Moth is 12, and like many girls from poor families, is sold. Money changes hands and she goes first to Mrs. Wentworth as a ladies maid. But Mrs. Wentworth likes to beat pretty girls so Moth runs away only to find that her mother is no longer living in their apartment. With no where to go, she’s left to her own devices until she is “saved” by Miss Everett, who trains young girls in the art of seduction and then sells their first trick for a lovely sum to well-to-do gentlemen including the Chief of Dectectives, bankers, and politicians. Thankfully Mr. Dink (no pun apparently intended) and Dr. Sadie (a lady physician dedicated to serving the needs of women and children) provide Moth a means to live beyond the street or the whorehouse. The question is whether she’ll take these offers.

The Virgin Cure is a novel about friendship and betrayal, and it’s a ficitionalized account of McKay’s great, great- grandmother who was a lady physician in NYC during this time.

The Virgin Cure by Ami McKay
published by Knopf in hardcover and ebook
Canadian author

Visit Ami McKay’s website

Terroryaki! by Jennifer K. Chung is the perfect book for Halloween, or any time that you want a spooky food truck on your radar.

Quote: It’s three months to the wedding, and Daisy’s Taiwanese parents are still shunning her sister’s hopelessly white fiance. To escape the prenuptial drama, food-obsessed Daisy goes on the hunt for a mysterious take-out truck whose dishes are to die for. Literally.

Terroryaki! is a playfully appetizing first bite. This is Jennifer K. Chung’s first novel and it’s the winner of the 33rd Annual 3-Day Novel Contest, which runs every Labour Day Weekend. The writing is gritty and fast paced, exactly what you’d expect from a novel crafted in 3 days, but it’s also quite accomplished. The novel opens as follows:

Quote: Samantha was getting married, and Mom didn’t like it. She thought Sam’s fiance was a bad match for her and predicted that Sam would be divorced within a year. I kinda liked the guy, Patrick often joined me on weekly expeditions to new restaurants, but Mom didn’t care about my opinion. Patrick wasn’t Asian enough for her, probably because he wasn’t Asian at all. Besides, Mom and Sam have had a rocky relationship ever since Sam went away to college, and Mom was always bugging me about Sam, asking if I’d talked to her or if she’d posted on Facebook. I always shrugged and said, “I dunno.”

This is a funny, spicy and slightly creepy tale of food, family, love, Seattle, and the best, if slightly cursed, teriyaki food truck in Seattle. Daisy is a teriyaki connaisseur and blogger. Samantha is a lawyer and the bride to be. Patrick is the dumbfounded fiance. Mom and Dad are keen on their Taiwanese soap operas and overly dramatic. Plus there’s the curse, piratesque teriyaki food truck driver, and the Nordic, slightly insane, terrifying wedding planner. Poor Daisy needs to do more than just save the wedding day.

100% worth a read.

Order Terroryaki! from the 3-Day Novel Contest website.

The Night Circus is as magical as it sounds.

Quote: The circus arrives without warning.
No announcements precede it, no paper notices on downtown posts and billboards, no mentions or advertisements in local newspapers. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not.

I would dearly love to read the reactions, the observations of each and every person who walks through the gates of Le Cirque de Reves, to know what they see and hear and feel. To see how their experience overlaps with my own and how it differs. I have been fortunate enough to receive letters with such information, to have reveurs share with me writings from journals or thoughts scribbled on scraps of paper.
We add our own stories, each visitor, each visit, each night spent at the circus. I suppose there will never be a lack of things to say, of stories to be told and shared.

These two passages are miles apart in in the novel. The first is the opening lines and the second is from Friedrick Thiessen, the first of the reveurs.

Le Cirque de Reves is a magical, travelling circus that appears and disappears at the will of Celia Bowen, the Illusionist. Yes, a female illusionist. And what is even more captivating is that she is bound to another illusionist as part of a challenge instigated by her father. The challenge is a duel of sorts and her opponent happens to be a young man besotted with her. He too is an illusionist and together they create the magic of the circus. There are some mechanical items, such as Friedrick Thiessen’s master clock, and Mr. Barris’ carousel, but many of the mechanical aspects are altered magically, and many of the magical aspects are altered mechanically in order to mask their true nature. The entire circus is fashioned in black, white and shades of grey. To honour the circus, its super fans, reveurs, wear black, white or grey with a splash of red. They religiously follow the circus around the world, reporting to each other its location and writing articles for each other. (A bit like my Harry Potter fandom friends.)

Those who loved The Time Traveller’s Wife will be as thrilled with this novel. It has magic, romance, nasty parenting, loss, joy and everything you need to run a magical circus. (There is also a reference to Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab in the acknowledgements and an assortment of perfumery references, all very much of interest to me.)

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
Published by Doubleday Canada
National Post Review of The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern.