On the surface, Intermezzo is about two grieving brothers who are both struggling with their relationships. Peter is a 30-ish human rights lawyer in Dublin who presents as a successful human with strong inter-personal skills but who privately is sleeping with a 20-ish Only Fans star and pining over his college girlfriend who broke up with him after she suffered a life-altering accident. Peter needs to move on but is full of himself. Ivan is a 22-year-old competitive chess player, who according to Peter is awkward and talks in robotic monosyllables. Ivan is the most likeable loner imaginable, so likeable that he romantically charms the 30-ish host of a weekend chess tournament. Ivan needs to grow up a little and understand how his reactions can affect others.
On a deeper level, Intermezzo is an existential view of the healing and breaking points of life. The book incorporates quotes from Ludwig Wittgenstien’s Philosophical Investigations, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, several poems including TS Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” Susan Sontag’s essay “Against Interpretation”, and James Joyce’s Ulysses, among others. The book is dark and moody, a bit academic, and awkwardly initiate, sometimes in a funny way. I thought it was a good read.
If you like Larry’s Party by Carol Shields or Less by Andrew Sean Greer then you’ll enjoy the struggles of Peter and Ivan. Intermezzo is a rumination on the human heart; it’s about retracing your steps, and looking for fulfillment.
Last House by Jessica Shattuck tells the story of one family over eighty years. It starts with Bet and Nick Taylor who fall in love just before he goes to the Pacific in WWII. Bet is working in intelligence and hopes to continue studying after the war. She is warned that marriage will curtail that plan, but she’s hopeful that is not the case. What Nick likes about her is that she is smart and keen on her work. Well, 1950s America has other plans for Bet.
Nick gets his law degree and is involved in the oil negotiations with Iran and the plans to reinstate the shah. His buddy Carter Weston is in the CIA and has roped Nick into the role. It’s America’s golden age and they are wheeling and dealing across the international stage. Bet is stuck at home folding napkins and editing the Mapleton ladies’ cookbook.
It’s not a rescue but Carter sells the Taylor family a house in rural Vermont. He has inherited a couple of houses in a valley and sells them to his closest friends and allies as part of the “End of the World Club”.
The middle part of the novel shifts to the Taylor kids. Katherine and Harry like the freedom of exploring the woods but by the 60s Katherine is living in New York and is caught up in the protests against the war and the race riots. She’s writing for a radical newspaper and struggling to reconcile her ideals with those of her parents. Nick still works for Big Oil. American youth are getting more and more restless in the face of unwavering government policies, the shooting of Martin Luther King, and the heavy fist of the government. There are groups that resort to violence and Katherine and Harry suffer the consequences of their own activism.
By the end, the novel sweeps along to the point where Katherine is in her eighties and Last House is still standing.
Having just finished The Women by Kristin Hannah, I am struck by the similarities of the political situation in the 1960s and today.
Both books portray the 1960s in the US as a turbulent decade marked by social upheaval and political shifts. The Women outlines how attitudes toward the Vietnam War shifted from initial support to widespread opposition, fuelled by rising casualties and the draft. Last House picks up from there with the racial tensions that led to major civil rights movements, but also to the violent race riots in cities like Detroit and Watts, and then Martin Luther King Jr’s assassination in 1968. Underlying the story of Last House is how Big Oil expanded as an economic force, with rising global influence.
I came away from these books thinking that the central lesson is that social and political progress is neither linear nor guaranteed. The issues of today—war, inequality, and cultural divides—are rooted in unresolved tensions from the past, demanding vigilance, activism, and a willingness to learn from history. We are probably going to get things wrong, but we won’t make them worse by standing up for each other.
If you enjoyed, Long Island (role of women in 1950-70s America) or The Briar Club (different angle on the McCarthy era), then you’ll like Last House.
Give it try. Available at Indigo.ca and fine local booksellers.
The Women by Kristin Hannah is about the women who went to Vietnam and returned to the US during a time of deep political division and contempt for the war. They were not seen as heroes and they were often not acknowledged as even being there. “Women weren’t in Vietnam.”
The shunning meant that these women were not given support for the trauma they saw as surgical nurses. They dealt with soldiers and villagers who had unsurvivable chest wounds, their limbs blown off, or gangrene. They lived in field hospitals or evacuation hospitals under bomb threats and had minimal downtime. Like the men who went to war, they suffered from nightmares and addiction. The only saving grace was the deep friendships formed in those intense tours of duty.
The story follows Frances McGrath who signs up shortly after her brother. Both are following in the footsteps of their forefathers who are honoured on the family “heroes wall” in their father’s study. Sadly, Frankie’s commitment to service is frowned upon whereas her brother is given a party.
Many new nurses were not accepted into the navy or airforce unless they had 2 years of service at home already. But the army was desperate for men and women. Often those going to Vietnam were so green they did not know the basics. They had to learn on the job. Frankie finds support from her bunkmates Ethel and Barb, who take her under their wing. She finds love, loses that man to the war, finds love again, and then loses that man to war. It’s a heartwrenching story that doesn’t end with the war.
When Frankie returns to her family home, she finds out that her father has told people at the club that she was in Florence. They deny the love and attention she needs. Ethel and Barb, despite being scattered across the US, reunite to support Frankie in her darkest days.
The latter half of the book hammers home how underappreciated these nurses with military training were. Upon their return to civilian life, if they sought medical jobs, they often started at the bottom of the hierarchy, being given light duties like emptying bedpans and fetching water. These women often stood in for doctors on the front when they were short of staff. They knew how to successfully carry out many medical procedures. None of that mattered. Even when they went to peace marches as veterans to support the end of the war, they were scolded by their male peers. “This is a march for veterans.” Given the number of men who were wounded or died in Vietnam, it’s hard to believe that soldiers missed the 10,000 military women who were there as nurses, medical personnel, air traffic control or military intelligence. But it seems like an angry time. The book ends on a happy-enough note but the story is a dire reminder of what war does to people.
Oh My God, What a Complete Aisling meets Groundhog Day. The Husbands is an absolutely hilarious novel about a woman who comes home from a hen party and finds a man in her London flat. Most alarming is that it turns out he is her husband. She has zero memories of him or getting married. As she panic scrolls through her phone, it becomes obvious that either he is an amazing spy who has infiltrated her digital life, as well as her flat, OR she is actually married. WTF.
My first thought was that poor Lauren has early onset dementia. But no. She has a magic attic. When one husband goes up, another comes down. Lauren filters through these men faster that you could swipe left or right on Tinder. There are a few keepers, but they only last a few days. The most promising one, Carter, inadvertently enters the attic and he’s lost to her forever. The least promising husband, Amos, appears a few times and he is as terrible as the Amos she broke up pre-magic attic.
Lauren has an infinite number of possible husbands but as she swaps one version of her life for another, the philosophical question arises: when will she stop looking for the best life and start living the one she has?
I thought this novel was really funny. The Husbands audiobook is a hoot. The narration is fabulous. The end of chapter 12 has a wonderful bit of back and forth between Lauren and two friends, one of whom is getting married. The dialogue is really cheeky and had me laughing out loud.
If you like Matt Haig’s The Life Impossible then you’ll enjoy this bit of romance meets magical realism. It’s a great debut from Holly Gramazio.
The Tenants by Pat Dobie is a delight. Gosh, I have had such a string of mediocre reads that I was worried. But this little novel is charming and gritty. The Tenants is the winner of the 45th annual 3-day novel contest. The writing is tight and evocative, just like the Vancouver housing situation. Ok, maybe that sounds dull. But no! The Tenants is about three Vancouverites. Dave and Scott are partners who live in a rental off Victoria drive. Maeve is a homeless woman who is tenting near the blackberry bushes in an unattended/undeveloped area nearby. Happenstance brings the three of them together. And I think what’s so delightful is that you learn just enough about each characters in the same way you might if you too randomly met a neighbour over a few intersecting errands.
Writing a novel in three days requires an economy of language, and that perfectly suits the character of overly frugal Scott. It also suits Maeve, whose survival is too limit how much she says to anybody. Dave is perhaps the most hospitable in that he interacts with Maeve, welcomes her into the secret garden he’s developing on city land, but he too is holding back. So the writing style, the time constraints of the contest, and the constraints of living in an overly expensive city make this weirdly funny story a page turner. Maybe you have to live here to get it, but the story struck a chord for me.
First published in 1998, Kiss of the Fur Queen opens like a Greek tragedy. We are introduced to the Okimasis family through the caribou-hunter father, Abraham Okimasis, who is striving to win a dog-sled race, which seals upon himself and his family the kiss of the crowned Fur Queen.
Abraham names his next-born child Champion. And early on, Champion is a gifted musician. The next boy, Ooneemeetoo, is a gift dancer. The two boys, born in northern Manitoba, move through their world, hunting caribou with their parents and making music and dances for their family. These are well-loved boys.
When Champion is taken to residential school, he is excited to fly in the small airplane, but sad to leave his little brother. At school his hair is shaved, he is forbidden to speak Cree, and he is renamed Jeremiah. Jeremiah’s only highlight is discovering a piano and convincing the head priest to allow a nun to teach him.
Two years later his little brother joins him at school and is renamed Gabriel. Gabriel is an angel. His face is described as being so lovely that your heart aches; and of course he becomes prey to the priest.
The first part of the novel has so many Greek elements, in particular the repeating and spinning of the tale of the Fur Queen. In Greek tragedy, Athena—the bright eyed goddess—is described as the goddess of wisdom, craft, and battle. The Fur Queen appears many times in the story in different guises—perhaps meant to be a Trickster—but I think the Fur Queen is more like Athena.
More clear is that Greek tragedy deals with big themes of love, loss, pride, the abuse of power and the fraught relationships between men and gods. Kiss of the Fur Queen goes deep with these themes too.
The love between the brothers, loss of connection to family and culture, pride of personal artistic achievements, the abuse of power by members of the Catholic Church, and the fraught relationship both brothers have with god/God.
Residential school takes the boys away from their community and inserts them into melting pot of Cree children taken from across the North, who are then given new names, language, and religion. The boys are abused by the priests and this emotionally distances them from their Catholic-convert parents. As they grow up and move to the city to pursue their artistic gifts, they are away from the priests but not from the hostilities and limiting beliefs of colonialism. The triumph is that Jeremiah and Gabriel break expectations. Jeremiah becomes a concert pianist and playwright. Gabriel becomes a professional ballet dancer.
Kiss of the Fur Queen is a beautifully written novel of heartbreak and truth, told at a high cost. The mix of Cree words and mythology creates a sense of musicality that weaves through the story and echoes the life of the author.
Tomson Highway, like Jeremiah, is a playwright and musician. His brother Rene was an accomplished dancer and choreographer, who died too young. Their father was a caribou hunter. I do not know if the novel is autobiographical, but it draws on certain elements of their lives and reflects many of the traumas Indigenous children experienced.
Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell was the YA novel for the 2024 holiday season. Every store was promoting it as “an instant classic.” I don’t know. I was willing to love it, but actually it was only ok. It did not capture me the way Harry Potter, Percy Jackson or even The Chronicles of Narnia did. But lots of people who read similar things that I like, did love it.
Impossible Creatures is magical adventure that sweeps young Christopher into a landscape of mythical creatures that he must help save with his new friend Mal. Along the way they meet useful adults, dragons, and other creatures who help them understand what is happening to the glimourie (the magical substance that supports life in this land) and how to save not just the magical world but also Christopher’s world.
The writing is functional. You are not struck with too much detail nor too little. But each character serves to advance the plot. It’s very linear, which is ok but definitely not the making of an instant classic. It’s no Philip Pullman. I’d recommend this for young readers (5-8) who are able to deal with older reader (8-12) storylines that involve a bit of suspense, death of a character and some violence but nothing close to Harry Potter or Percy Jackson. If you like the Dragon Masters series then this is a good next read.
Longlisted for the 2014 Man Book Prize, History of the Rain is one of those books that I meant to read at the time but forgot about, until recently.
If you liked Long Island by Colm Toibin then you’ll enjoy this even more poetic look at life in Faha, a small village in County Clare, on the banks of the river Shannon. Here we meet Ruthie Swain who is home from college and bedridden. Her illness is not clearly revealed but through lopping stories we discover all the tales of her family tree from the Reverend Swain all the way down to her twin brother.
The novel is not magic realism but there is some otherworldliness to it, men turning into salmon and the like, but there is also a steady stream of literary references from Virgil to Charles Dickens to William Blake to Robert Louis Stevenson. It’s a literary lover’s dream novel.
History of the Rain is sad and affecting, it’s full of longing and loss but also it’s a great love story.
I Hope This Finds You Well is a Canadian version of The Office. Jolene hates her job but she needs it. Her colleagues drive her mad and she does, what any reasonable employee does, she snarks about them privately. Well, maybe not privately enough. Jolene has taken to responding to emails with her actual thoughts typed below her professional response. She whites out the text so that it’s white on white and invisible to the recipient. Until one day, she forgets.
As expected, Jolene finds herself in a disciplinary hearing with her boss and the new HR guy Cliff. Cliff is tasked with putting monitoring software on her computer and running her through some mandatory training sessions. Thing is, Cliff makes a mistake and instead of dialling back what Jolene can do, she suddenly has access to everything. Everyone’s inbox, everyone’s chat, everyone’s shared drive is accessible from her computer. With the cheatcodes to office life, Jolene figures out how to win friends and influence people.
As Jolene is drawn into the drama of each of her colleague’s lives, she learns their secret fears and some of the motivations behind their actions. They say hurtful things about her, but she can’t resist reading everything and then adjusting accordingly.
You know as the reader that this is all going to bite her in the arse, but it is a hilarious adventure. Jolene has a ton of snark and her word sparring with Cliff in HR is top notch.
This is a sad book but also a laugh-out-loud book. I Hope This Finds You Well has a cast of characters found in any workplace and a list of puny chapter titles. It’s like getting the last donut at the office party and it’s your favourite flavour.
If you liked How to Pronounce Knife then this story reflects the same tender comedy about loneliness and love, and immigrant parents. If you like debut fiction or the eccentricities of second-generation Canadians or wacky coworkers then this work culture, semi-romcom set in Calgary is a satisfying read.
A deserted shipwreck off the Icelandic coast draws a group of explorers to her decks. Three of the four know each other and are travelling as a group, but the solo explorer Dominique arrives first and is put out by their presence but also reassured by them since she’s pretty sure she saw a ghost woman roaming the shores. The shipwreck is that of the Ormen, which originally was a whaling ship in the 1900s then in the 1970s became a research vessel. Dominique and the others are there to document the ship before the coast guard finally pulls it free from the shore and sinks it forever.
The story bounces between life in 1901 on board the Ormen, in which Nicky Duthie is being held against her will by the crew due to her father’s poor business choices and life in present-day 2023 where the urban explorers are doing parkour, TikToks, and other influencer activities to document their discoveries and build up an audience.
The story is really about trauma and revenge, and a little about forgiveness. The brutal Icelandic weather and the icy seas give the novel a gothic feel, while technology and the lifestyle of the explorers anchor the story in the present. Although nothing is really anchored here. Nicky Duthie was never found. And it turns out the research crew in the 1970s mysteriously disappeared as well.
The Haunting in the Arctic lays bare a ton of secrets, misgivings, and betrayals from 1901 to present day.
