The Virgin Cure - Ami McKay

This book took me a long time to get through, and an even longer time to get around to writing a review.  Not exactly a ringing endorsement now, is it?!

Everyone out there seems to have read Ami McKay's debut novel, The Birth House, but I somehow missed it.  I certainly have seen copies in the bookstore, but never got around to picking up a copy.  This was possibly due to it's release date (February 2006), right in the middle of my 3-year cultural gap when I was living overseas and out of touch with current books and movies and music.

Anyways, after all of the hype (good and bad) about The Birth House, I decided to give her second novel, The Virgin Cure a try.  I have to say that I was underwhelmed.

It is the story of Moth, a girl trying to get by after being abandoned by her mother in the seedier side of New York City in the late 1800s.  She eventually lands in a "house of ill repute", with a Madam who makes a small fortune by selling the virginity of young girls to the highest bidder.  The Madam is especially careful though to avoid customers looking for The Virgin Cure - a belief that having sex with a virgin would cure syphilis.

I wasn't particularly drawn to any of the characters.  For me to get into a book, I generally have to be rooting for at least one of the characters, and I didn't find anyone to cheer on in this book.  Probably the character that was the most sympathetic to me was Dr. Sadie, a Lady Doctor whose job included looking after the girls in the brothel.  However even she seemed a bit to pedantic - she was so sure that she knew the best way for everything.  Moth, the main character, was a bit to cold and calculating to be particularly endearing.  And all of the rest of the characters seemed to come and go without making a very big impression on this reader.

I was especially disappointed with the author's note at the end where she talks about the origins of this book and she spends quite some time talking about syphilis and the virgin cure.  But not once does she mention that the belief in a virgin cure is still alive today, but that the disease that it is supposed to cure is AIDS.  In my time in Tanzania, there were many girls (some very very young girls) admitted to the hospital after being raped (often by a relative) in an attempt to cure AIDS.  And yet the author talks about the virgin cure as if it is a thing of the past, not as a very real and present thing in the world today.  And so the final pages of the book left a bad taste in my mouth - possibly the reason why it has taken me almost a month to write this.

Anyways, I did not enjoy this book, and I probably won't pick up any of Ami McKay's other books in the future.  I apologize to her multitude of fans out there.

Indian Horse - Richard Wagamese

This is a book that I have wanted to read for quite some time.  I have heard the author interviewed on CBC radio at several points, and then this was one of the selections for the Canada Reads debates this year.  Though why it was the British Columbia book is beyond me - this book is set, heart and soul, in north-western Ontario.

And that is why I finally picked up a copy.  I am almost finished an 8-month stay in the beautiful town of Kenora, before moving back to Thunder Bay in mid-August.  Richard Wagamese is definitely considered a "local boy" around here, even though he currently lives out in BC.  He is Ojibwe, from Wabaseemoong First Nation (known in English as Whitedog First Nation), a beautiful hour-and-a-half drive north of Kenora.  Since I work in home care and the territory that I cover includes Kenora, west to the Manitoba border, north to Wabaseemoong and Grassy Narrows, and south to Whitefish Bay, I have become very familiar with the land where much of this book is set.  The main character, Saul Indian Horse is from Wabaseemoong (though it is never mentioned by name - it just talks about a community north of Minaki on the shores of the Winnipeg river), and there are frequent mentions of other communities in this area - Kenora, Minaki, Redditt - as well as communities further east - White River where Saul is sent to school, and Manitouwadge where he eventually settles.  As I said, a book firmly set in north-western Ontario!

I was hooked right from the opening paragraph.  As I was picking up this book to begin, I thought to myself that I didn't know anyone from Whitedog with the last name of Indian Horse - if I were writing a book with a character from Whitdog, I would have given him/her the last name of Muckle or Mandamin.  And there in the opening sentences, "My name is Saul Indian Horse.  I am the son of Mary Mandamin and John Indian horse."  I may have laughed out loud at this point, but I was hooked...

Anyways, on to the story.  The premise will be familiar to anyone who is aware of First Nations / settler history over the past few centuries.  Saul is born in the bush.  His family is divided by traditional beliefs and the Christianity imposed by the European settlers through the residential school system.  His grandmother tries her best to keep him from being taken away from his family and sent to residential school, but in the end, she is not successful.  The full extent of the abuse that Saul suffers at school aren't revealed until close to the very end of the book, and the way in which the abuse unfolds is disturbing.  One thing that did come from his residential school experience is a love and talent for ice hockey, and eventually he has a chance at making a career of it; but due to systemic racism (which is, unfortunately, still very much present today though perhaps less overtly), he ends up leaving hockey behind and deals with his demons in his own way.

This book felt very personal to me, possibly because the stories ring so true.  Through my work, I have been hearing stories from clients about residential schools - the good, the bad, and the ugly if I may borrow a cliche.  I have heard stories about life in Wabaseemoong before the road was built, before the hydroelectric dam flooded much of the land, and before 3 independent communities were forced to co-exist.  I have heard stories of abuse and alcoholism and racism.  And this book does not shy away from any of these stories.  (Just to clarify - I am a physiotherapist, but there is often a lot of conversation and story-telling that goes on during my physiotherapy sessions!)

Despite the decision of the Canada Reads panelists, I do think that this is a book that every Canadian should read.  It is fiction, but it is a fair representation of our Canadian history over the past century that has too-often been hidden away and denied.  And since so many of the issues continue to resonate today, the more that they can be brought out into the open, the better.  Thank you, Richard Wagamese, for sharing this story with the world.

The Great Emergence - Phyllis Tickle

For some reason, ever since February, Phyllis Tickle's name kept coming up in conversation, generally by people whose opinion I respect.  And so when I noticed this book among the 16 pages of electives to choose from for the Lay Worship Leader course I am taking, I had to pick it up!  (Incidentally, this will be the last book that I read for the course, as we are finished in a few weeks.  But for this last interval, we had to read 3 electives and I couldn't narrow it down to just 3, so I ordered 8 and still have 5 left on my bookshelf to read!)

Anyways, getting back to this book, anyone in Christian circles these days has surely heard about the "crisis in the church" - shrinking attendance, small or no Sunday Schools, amalgamations, church closures, financial burdens, increasing policies and procedures to follow, aging clergy... the list could go on for quite some time.  What this book does is it takes this so-called crisis and puts it into perspective - both a historical perspective and a cultural perspective.

From a historical perspective, every 500 years or so, the church goes through a ground-shaking earthquake.  Tickle calls this a giant rummage sale - put everything on the table, decide what is essential to keep, and get rid of the non-essential trappings.  500ish years ago was the Protestant Reformation followed by the Roman Catholic counter-reformation.  500ish years before that was the Great Schism with the Roman Catholic Church dividing from the Eastern Orthodox Church.  500ish years before that was the splitting off of Oriental Christianity (Coptic, Ethiopian, Armenian, Syrian) from Western Christianity, along with the founding of monastic orders.  500ish years before that, Christianity was a renegade off-shoot of main-stream Judaism.  The name given to the upheaval that we are in the middle of is The Great Emergence.

From a cultural perspective, each of these "church rummage sales" has accompanied a massive cultural upheaval.  2000 years ago, it accompanied the Roman Empire and all of the good and bad that went with that.  1500 years ago was the fall of the Roman Empire and the coming of the Dark Ages.  1000 years ago ushered in an age of broadening borders (Vikings and the Norman Conquest anyone?) as well as local fiefdoms.  500 years ago saw expanding scientific discoveries (Copernicus and Columbus) as well as the possibility for a middle class.  And the past century has included another seismic shift from Newtonian to Quantum mechanics, the harnessing of electricity, and internal combustion engines. Is it any wonder that the church has to shift as well?

And that is what I loved about this book.  If you just listen to the media and church board meetings, it may seem like we are seeing the end of Christianity.  But in each of the previous upheavals, the Christianity that has emerged has been more vital, less ossified, and has been able to spread to new geographic and demographic locations.  And so, rather than mourning the death of the church as we have known it (at least for the past 400-500 years), we should be celebrating the fact that we get to be a part of this shift.  I am rejoicing!

In the last section of the book, Tickle tries to predict how the church is going to move in the future, and the model that emerges is quite beautiful.  Flavours of Christianity from across the multi-dimensional spectrum converging around the centre, along with those that resist this convergence moving to the margins and re-defining and re-strengthening their beliefs, and various other points in-between.  It was fun to try and place my own beliefs, as well as those of my church into the model.

If I had one little quibble about this book, it is that it focused on Western Christianity rather than a more global perspective.  As someone who spent a few years involved in the church in another part of the globe (Tanzania), I couldn't quite see how the non-Western perspective would fit into this model.

But a great book overall.  I'm glad that I read it, and it left me filled with hope for the future.

Inceptio - Alison Morton

With this blog, I am occasionally contacted by authors and publishers asking to send me books to read and review.  I end up turning down more of these offers than I accept for two reasons:  1)  My to-be-read stack is overflowing and so I don't want to pile it even higher, even if the book is free, and 2)  I don't want to accept books that I don't think that I will like since, fun as it is to write negative reviews, I don't want to be in a position where I have to write a negative review on a book that was given to me for free!

Fortunately, I am not in that situation with this book!

When Alison Morton approached me last winter and offered to send me a copy of Inceptio when it was published, I was intrigued by the concept.  This book is considered to be "Alternative History".  What if the Roman Empire hadn't fallen?  What if a faction had left Rome and settled in a corner of Europe, and had created an independent country which had survived and thrived through to today?  I have to say that the Roman period of history has fascinated me since I was young and exposed to novels like Eagle of the Ninth.  In high school, I wanted to learn Latin (my school had the only Latin teacher left in the school board), but I was the only one in the school who wanted to learn Latin and so the class was cancelled.  And so I agreed to receive a copy of this book for review.

It did take me a bit to get into, but I blame this on the fact that I started reading it in the evenings while sleeping in a tent on a weekend filled with 12-hour days of meetings.  When I was able to start reading it for real this week, I was hooked.  I blame this book for too many nights this week spent up waaaay too late reading, since I couldn't put this book down.

The main character, Karen Brown / Carina Mitela has lived her whole life in the country of Eastern United States.  Both of her parents are dead, and she is very self-sufficient in New York City.  But then her world starts falling apart as she is fired due to corruption from the volunteer position that gives meaning to her life; and all of a sudden her life is being threatened.  She then discovers that she can renounce her EUS citizenship and become a citizen of Roma Nova as her mother was from Roma Nova, and she is her grandmother's heir.

I was fascinated with the Roma Nova society.  It is matriarchal - the women have the power, and the eldest female inherits from her mother.  There are elements from ancient Roman society that have carried over, including the gods and the festivals and the language (Latin isn't dead after all!); and yes, prisoners of the state are sentenced to hard labour in the silver mines.  It is a very hierarchical society, and Karen is lucky to have been born into the top layer; however the genders are treated equally, with maybe a slight preference towards females.

And speaking of females, let me say that Karen / Carina was an awesome heroine!  She takes charge of her own life and she does things her way rather than being a pawn - she is a kick-ass (literally, at times) character as she trains her body and her mind and rises to the top of the Roma Nova military (the Praetorian Guard Special Forces).

If I had one complaint about this book it would be that it is almost too action-packed.  It almost felt like 3 or 4 books crammed into one.  Some stretching out of the time in between the action or description of normal day-to-day life in Roma Nova would have been nice.

I was, however, excited to read at the end of the book that there is a second book in the series planned - Perfiditas.

Thank you, Alison Morton for writing this book and for sending me a copy!  It was a treat to read a book that was well written, imaginative, and gripping all in one.

Parables: The Arrows of God - Megan McKenna

I really feel as though I don't have much to say about this book.  It was a good book and all, but I still feel as though I am in the middle of a "book hangover" after finishing Quantum Theology which was a great book.  It doesn't feel fair to review the two of them so closely together, as this book will end up with the short end of the stick!

The Lay Worship Leader course that I have been taking is drawing to a close.  We have met for the weekend 5 times over the past year and a half, and our last weekend together will be in July.  Each interval, we have been given assignments which have included reading and reflecting upon 3 books.  Usually, there have been 2 required books and one elective (chosen from a 12-page-long list of books). This interval is slightly different in that all 3 books are electives.  However, as I perused the 12-page-long list, I couldn't decided on only 3 titles from the ones that remained, so I ended up ordering 7 books.  Of those 7, I picked Quantum Theology to read first (I had wanted to read it ever since I spotted the title on the list), and this book to read second.

The book takes a look at several of the parables told by Jesus, and sometimes flips the conventional interpretation completely on it's head.  For me, one of the most important distinctions made by this book is the difference between allegory (items and characters are representative of another item/person/idea), and parable (multiple layers of meaning, multiple interpretations).  This new way of looking at the parables could prove useful to me as I am writing sermons.

But other than that, I don't have much else to say about this book.  It was an easy read and didn't present any roadblocks.  With Quantum Theology, I found myself slowing down half-way through the book, mostly because I didn't want the book to end.  With this book, I read it straight through in a week.

And that is it.  I feel as though I haven't done this book justice by comparing it to the last book I read, but so be it.

The Harem - Safia Fazlul

I wanted to love this book; really I did!  When the publisher e-mailed me, asking to send me an e-copy for review, I was intrigued by the premise.  A young girl, raised in a strict household by parents from Bangladesh, within an Asian community located in a large Canadian city (never named as Toronto); asserts her independence by leaving her parents and eventually running an escort agency to try and buy her financial freedom.

A quick note on the format - this is the first time that I have reviewed an e-book on this blog.  I am opposed to e-books both on principle (an electronic copy seems so much less permanent than a physical book), as well as for the reading experience (I like being able to flip around and skim a book with ease).  That being said, I have both the Kobo and Kindle apps on my iPad, but I won't buy e-books.  I use the apps for reading at the gym - I can prop the iPad on the ledge of the machine and it won't fold shut the way a real book will; plus I can make the font size big which makes it easy to read while exercising!  Up until now, I have downloaded anything free from the Kobo and Kindle sites that looks like it will entertain me during my workouts; but most of what I have read in e-format isn't worth a review (with free books, you generally get what you pay for!).

Anyways, back to this book.  I didn't dislike it, but I didn't like it as much as I had hoped for.  Let me try to break it down a bit further...

Things I liked:

The premise.  Lots of the themes covered in this book are ones that I tend to be drawn to in literature.  It is a coming of age story; it deals with the immigrant experience; it points out the class inequality here in Canada.  And I have to say that I have never read a book that involves a group of young women essentially setting up a brothel (OK, a call service) and pimping out other young women.  The idea of the moral and ethical issues that this would present intrigued me.  And for the most part, these expectations were fulfilled.  Especially when the main character's best friend decides to work for them as a prostitute.

The atmosphere.  To me, this book reeked of darkness and rain, with a few bright spots of sunny daytime thrown in for contrast.  Most of the story seems to take place at night, or with the curtains drawn, or in the middle of a rainstorm; and the atmosphere was so well drawn that as I was reading it, I would occasionally look up from the book and out the window (remember that I'm reading this on the elliptical machine at the gym!) and be surprised at the blue sky and sparkling lake right in front of me.

Things I didn't like:

The writing.  I found much of the writing to be clumsy and the language over-wrought, and this did take away from my enjoyment of the book.  A sample picked at random from somewhere in the middle of the book:  "As my tired eyes hover over the stained bowl, I become aware of the mundane sounds of the world out there.  I never before paid attention to the chirping of birds; the tinkling melody of the ice cream truck; the idle prattle from the neighbours.  These sounds come from outside my window, so close.  But I'll never feel part of them again.  I have too many secrets."

The ending.  I felt that the story line and tension built up and built up and built up; and then all of a sudden, boom, story ended.  I found the ending to be particularly unsatisfying.  There were too many threads that tied up too quickly, and too many other threads that were left dangling.

So a mixed review overall.  I didn't love it, but I didn't hate it either.  This is Safia Fazlul's first novel, and there was enough about it that was good that I hope that she continues to write.  I feel as though she has a story that she wants to tell, a message that she wants to get out.  I will read any future books that she publishes.  Thank you to TSAR Publications for sending me a copy of this book.

Quantum Theology: Spiritual Implications of the New Physics - Diarmuid O'Murchu

In order for what I am about to say to make sense, you have to know that I have a very strong aversion to writing in books.  I feel as though books are to be treasured, and making any marks in them decreases their value.  (Yes, I am familiar with the argument that writing in books increases their value - and in neither case does value refer to monetary value!)  I have very few books with any marks in them.

However, when I started reading this book, I found myself reaching for a pen within a couple of pages.  I kept a pen with this book right up until the end.  There was just too much in there that resonated with me.  I found myself underlining phrases and sentences and paragraphs that lingered with me and that I wanted to remember.  My brain was kept busy making connections and references and expanding on thoughts that I kept scribbling phrases and ideas and questions in the margins.  I rarely went more than a page or two in this book without making some sort of mark.

And then a few pages after I started making my marks in this book, I started posting quotes from this book on my Facebook page.  This book was just too good to keep to myself!

When I was in university, I started in the Pre-Physiotherapy program which meant essentially a year of pure sciences (biology, chemistry, physics, and calculus) and as long as my grade point average stayed above a certain point, I would then transfer straight into the Physiotherapy program.  There were several points in that year where I thought that if the whole Physiotherapy thing didn't work out, I could quite happily study Physics or Chemistry.  There were points in those classes (once we moved beyond the boring Newtonian Mechanics) when we would be presented with concepts that I found that I couldn't think about directly.  I could think around them, and maybe glance at them sideways through the corner of my eye, and occasionally get a glimpse of something big, something beautiful, something awe-inspiring.  I wanted to dig deeper into those ideas, but then I did get the marks to move into the Physiotherapy program and that was the end of my Physics and Chemistry career!

I think what I'm trying to say is that I have understood for many years - for much longer than I have identified as a Christian - that the world is bigger and more complex and more beautiful and more organized and more random that our puny little human brains will ever understand.  The world is full of mystery, lying just below the surface of what we can perceive.  And yet it is only in the past year or so that I have been able to acknowledge that "mystic" is a large part of my Christian identity.  I find myself getting more and more in touch with the Holy Mystery that is God.

And I suppose that is the main reason why I have never been able to accept that there is any sort of contradiction between science and religion.  The mysterious, the incomprehensible, the awe is a part of both of them.  And after all, if I can accept that light is both a particle and a wave at the same time - a quantum of energy - why can't I accept that Jesus is fully God and fully human at the same time?  Interestingly enough, the April edition of The United Church Observer included an article addressing this very same question, with very similar conclusions - Will Science Eventually Explain Everything?

I apologize - this post is straying very far from the book!

The most concise description of this book that I gave to a friend of mine is that it is like a non-fiction version of Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time series.  There is another writer who saw absolutely no false dichotomy between science and religion!

This book is a seamless melding of the world of Quantum Physics and Theology.  It looks at how science has expanded and developed and evolved over the past century, and how parallels can be drawn with our understanding of God.  Some of the parallels drawn include looking at quarks as a model for the Trinity; a re-telling of the Genesis 1 creation story melded with the big bang creation story; dark matter is as necessary for matter, just as Calvary is necessary for the resurrection; photosynthesis as a cosmic parable; the fundamental importance of light in both the quantum world view and the theological world view.

And now for a few of those quotes I was sharing on Facebook:
"No longer do we understand the earth to exist primarily for the benefit of us humans.  The earth exists to manifest the beauty and grandeur of the creator; it is an "alive" planet with a capacity to grow and survive, endowed with a resilience that we humans cannot match." (p 19)
"Reality is bigger than our ability to perceive and since it grows forever in complexity it will probably always outstretch our imaginations and outwit our intelligence." (p32)
"With two-thirds of humanity struggling to meet basic survival needs and the other third largely preoccupied with accumulating and hoarding wealth, the human capacity for reflection, intuition, and the development of the imagination is at an all-time low." (p126)
"Often it is our fears that cripple us - fear of the new, of letting go of the old, of being challenged, of taking risks, of broadening our visions and horizons.  The call to conversion is an invitation to outgrow our fears and trust ourselves to the unfolding process of life and meaning.  Once we realize that the unfolding process itself is fundamentally benign and benevolent, then we begin to realize the profound meaning of the words:  "Perfect love casts out fear" (1John 4:18)."  (p217)

OK - sorry for the long and rambling post.  I am just so excited to share this book with anyone who will listen!  I am going to celebrate this book by adding a re-read of the A Wrinkle in Time books to my summer reading list.  And possibly by purchasing this t-shirt.