While recovering from my head cold on the weekend, I was looking for an escape novel. Something fun to read. I wasn’t convinced that this book was going to be fun considering it’s called The Solitude of Thomas Cave. Doesn’t promise a rollickin’ time, does it? But I was hoping it would be well written and worth the time investment. And it is.

The Solitude of Thomas Cave is a survival story. As I tried to make it to the 4-hour mark when I could have another dose of Tylenol sinus, my hero was trying to survive the elements on a remote island in the Arctic in 1616. Dear Thomas is left there by his whaling crew, and quite purposely. The whaling ship Heartsease ventures each year into the Arctic and returns home with their bounty of whale meat and blubber. On 1616 tour, Thomas calls out Mate Carnock as he mocks William Sherwyn’s tale of a sailor abandoned in the North who survives the year. What’s called into question is whether it’s possible for a man to survive. Thomas decided that he will take the wager that he can stay and survive a year until the crew’s return.

This is a literary castaway story about the lonely realities of living amongst humans and the vulnerabilities of living among nature. Left to fend against blizzards, avalanches, bears, and his own misery over the lost of his wife and baby son, Thomas reasons his way through the days, trying not to be taken in by the phantoms around him.

I was on cold medication, but I’m certain this was a beautifully told story of survival.

The Solitude of Thomas Cave
by Georgina Harding
Published by Bloomsbury
This seems to be the latest edition on Amazon.ca

I know Michael Chabon’s work only because of his Pulitzer-winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, but I recently borrowed a copy of The Final Solution: A Story of Detection from my friend Julie, who enjoyed the novel, as did I.

The Final Solution is a quirky little detective novel, sort of like a pop culture version of a Sherlock Holmes tale. Although, it is set during WWII so maybe not “pop culture” but more pop than Sherlock. Like Sherlock, Chabon’s detective spends his retired days tending to his bees. (In fact, perhaps Chabon’s 89-year-old detective is the great Sherlock Holmes.)

This caper involves a 9-year-old, mute, dyslexic Jewish refugee and his African grey parrot who is prone to singing and repeating numeric sequences. There’s a murder, the parrot goes missing and old man “Sherlock” goes to work on the case.

A pretty fun way to spend a Sunday.

The Final Solution on Amazon.ca

Have you heard of Madras Press? They are the publisher of Andrew Kaufman’s story The Tiny Wife but, most important, they publish small square books and donate the proceeds to charities nominated by their authors. Very cool.

Now, Kaufman is one of my favourite authors. His two previous books, All My Friends are Superheroes and The Waterproof Bible, are top reads on my list. I was really excited to get this book!

The Tiny Wife begins with a bank robbery.

Quote: The robbery was not without consequences, the consequences were the point of the robbery. It was never about money. The thief didn’t even ask for any. That it happened in a bank was incidental. It could have just as easily happened in a train station or a high school or the Musee d’Orsay …

‘While this is a robbery …’ the thief said. ‘I demand only one thing from each of you and it is this: the item currently in your possession which holds the most sentimental value.’

Now, what would you hand over?

For the narrator’s wife it was a calculator. I’ll leave you to read the story to understand why, but the consequences are that she starts to shrink. Although this is alarming, it’s not as alarming to me as the character whose lion tattoo comes to life to chase her around the city.

But I don’t want to give anything away so what you should do is go to Madras Press and pay the full $7 for this awesome work. The sales benefit SKETCH, a community arts initiative in Toronto.

UPDATE: Andrew Kaufman’s The Tiny Wife is available from Cormorant Books

Andrea Levy’s 4th novel, Small Island, which won her the Orange Prize, was one of my favourite books of all time. In that novel, the Jamaican heroine finds herself in post-war London speaking a version of the Queen’s English that is unfamiliar to her English neighbours. It’s a story of prejudice and isolation as well as love and acceptance.

In The Long Song, Levy brings us to the Jamaica of the 1830s, which is full of unrest and slavery. On the sugar plantation Amity, our heroine, named July, is a mulatto born to a slave named Kitty and a Scottish overseer, Tam Dewar, who has taken advantage of his position. July is a force to be reckoned with. She is pulled into the household as a lady’s maid and we follow the drama that comes with that position.

What I loved about this novel was the post-modern nature of the narrator chatting to the reader about the consequences of writing such a tale, and the interventions by her son, the editor of her tale.

Overall, it’s good. I liked it a lot.

Related links:
Globe and Mail review
Amazon with a video of Andrea Levy talking about the book

Pascal Mercier’s Night Train to Lisbon has sat on my bookshelf since January 2008. Then I almost gave up on it after 100 pages.

Raimund Gregorius teaches classical languages at a Swiss lycee and has an otherwise routine, and dull, existence. Until one day, walking to school, he encounters a Portuguese woman on a bridge who is so distraught that Gregorius believes she’s going to jump. Instead she tears up a letter, throws it over the edge, panics and writes a phone number of Gregorius’ forehead.

Sometimes the smallest things change us, sometimes the most bizarre.

The encounter rattles Gregorius out of his quotidian life and he ends up on a night train to Lisbon, where he proceeds to re-construct the life of Amadeu de Prado, a doctor conflicted by religion, love, friendship, dictatorship and betrayals of many kinds. Based only on a slim volume of Prado’s published work, Gregorius finds family members, neighbours, and friends who all contribute bits and pieces to his patchwork understanding of what made Amadeu de Prado tick. Thankfully Prado was an interesting a guy.

I can’t match up my feelings of the book with the blurbs.

“A book of astonishing richness … visionary … a deserved international smash.” , Le Canard encha√Æne

“One reads this book almost breathlessly, can hardly put it down … A handbook for the soul, intellect and heart.” , Die Welt

I don’t share the enthusiasm of the French and German reviewers of the time, but Mercier has certainly provided a philosophical tale of repression, resistance and the struggle of men to achieve something memorable. I made it all the way through the book because of Amadeu. Gregorius’ measured uncovering of this figure was rewarding. There are lots of passages that are still resonating with me, but overall this was a slow read.