The Boys in the Trees - Mary Swan

This is the 3rd book in my Giller read-athon, but it left me feeling very disappointed.  The basic story is about a small Ontario town in the late 1880's, and how it reacts to one of its town member murdering his family, and then being hanged for it.  (No spoilers here - this is all revealed in the first couple of chapters.)

Initially, I found the book very hard to get into - nothing grabbed me in the first couple of chapters, and it took me a while to figure out what was going on.  Each chapter is told by a different townsperson, for the most part describing their own reaction to the murder and hanging.  So the first couple of pages of each chapter are spent trying to figure out who you are hearing from now.  But then each person's story is so compelling that it left me wanting to know more about that person, and what happened to them.  Almost like a series of linked short stories, but with each story lacking a real ending (with the exception of one).

So combine a depressing plot with unsatisfying stories, and you have, in my opinion, a disappointing book.

An endorsement from Alice Munro (an author that I really enjoy - in small doses) is printed on the cover:  "This is a mesmerizing novel - it can truly claim to be filled with a 'terrible beauty.'"  I disagree with both of the descriptions:  "mesmerizing"  as well as "beauty".

2 more nominees left to go - I hope that the next one is better than this one.

Top Reads of 2008

As it seems to be the time of year for Top 10 lists, I guess that I had better put one together.  So here are my Top 10 reads of 2008.

Just a few notes before I begin - these are my favourite books that I read last year, they are not necessarily books that were published last year.  To keep things fair, I have not included books that I re-read in 2008 (since I usually re-read all-time favourites).  I have mixed together fiction and non-fiction.  And since some of the books I read before keeping this record, many of the books on the list have not been reviewed on this blog.  However, 2 of the top picks just slipped in under the wire...

As always, please feel free to agree or disagree with my choices!

1.  Through Black Spruce - Joseph Boyden (Fic., CDN)

2.  The Book of Negroes - Lawrence Hill (Fic., CDN)

3.  An Imperfect Offering - James Orbinski (Non-Fic., CDN)

4.  Good to a Fault - Marina Endicott (Fic., CDN)

5.  The Flying Troutmans - Miriam Toews (Fic., CDN)

6.  Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass - Lewis Carroll (Fic.)

7.  Kiss of the Fur Queen - Tomson Highway (Fic., CDN)

8.  Three Cups of Tea - Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin (Non-Fic.)

9.  The View from Castle Rock - Alice Munro (Fic., CDN)

10.  Moral Disorder - Margaret Atwood (Fic., CDN)

And I have to give an honorary mention to the book that almost made the list, Say You're One of Them - Uwem Akpan (Fic.).  If only it were a top 11 list...  And yes, those are the original Alice in Wonderland books, and no, I had never read them before.

I'm seeing a couple of trends, neither of which is a surprise to me.  I prefer fiction to non-fiction for the most part.  And I love Can-Lit.

And now we start a whole new year, and a whole new year's worth of books to read!

Good to a Fault - Marina Endicott

This is the second book in my Giller Prize Shortlist marathon - another excellent book that drew me in completely, but because of the ending, overall I didn't like it as much as Through Black Spruce.

I think that it is really the characters in this book that make it, rather than the plot.  All of the characters seem like people I could know, and I could especially relate to Clara, the main character.  However unlike Annie in Through Black Spruce, I don't think that Clara could have been written by a male author, and even the male characters seem less real-to-life than the female characters.

The main story has to do with Clara, a middle-aged woman who leads a very solitary and isolated life, who, after a car accident, invites the family in the other car into her house and life.  Predictably, chaos ensues, and predictably, she learns to love the family as her own, and predictably she is upset when she is left alone.  Not much in terms of plot.  There is also a love story as a subplot, as well as the story of Lorraine, the mother in the other car, who is fighting cancer.

But because the characters were so well written, I couldn't put this book down as I was reading it (and stayed awake far too late last night to finish it).

My one disappointment with this book was the ending.  In that there wasn't one.  The book just sort of ended with no resolution of the various threads.  Quite a let-down to have invested the time to read a book, only to not find out what happened at the end!  Maybe she was leaving room to plan for a sequel (to give the author the benefit of the doubt) - I would love to see these characters back in another book.

So that's 2 Giller shortlisted books down, 3 left to go.  So far, the committee made the right decision...

Through Black Spruce - Joseph Boyden

This is the book that won this year's Giller Prize.  Since I usually enjoy the Giller winner, I was looking forward to reading this book, and it did not disappoint me.  In fact, I splurged and bought all of the Giller shortlisted books, so once I have finished reading them all, I will know if the committee made the right decision!

Through Black Spruce is one of the best, if not the best, book I have read this year.  It is based in and around Moosonee and Moose Factory in northeastern Ontario (interesting to note that both last year's and this year's Giller went to a "Northern" book), and stretches out to the James Bay "bush" as well as Toronto, Montreal and New York.  The style of the book is different, and it took me a couple of chapters to catch on - the story is told in the first person, and the chapters alternate between Will Bird who is lying in hospital in a coma telling the story of how he ended up there to his niece; and his niece Annie who is telling her uncle what she has been up to since she last saw him.

The contrast between the two stories is very marked - as Annie ends up more and more involved in the modeling world down south, her uncle is heading out in the bush with only what he can carry in his float plane.  Annie is one of my favourite literary characters - a strong and independent woman, very well drawn, and very perceptive of the author, particularly considering that the author is male!

I can't come up with enough superlatives to describe this book - I couldn't put it down, and was totally immersed in the story and the setting and the characters' lives.  This is apparently the second book in a trilogy, so I really must hunt down a copy of Three Day Road, the first book, and I look forward to his next book.

The Queen's Lady - Barbara Kyle

Back to fluff - this time set in Tudor England, an era that I have been fascinated with since I was young.  I still remember reading children's books about Queen Elizabeth, Lady Jane Gray, Mary, Queen of Scots...  The highlight of our family trip to England when I was 13 was a trip to the Tower of London, which I had read so much about!  (As an aside, it is interesting to note the recent interest in this period of history, with the books and movie of The Other Boleyn Girl - I liked the first couple of books, but then they seemed to fade away - as well as the television series The Tudors, which I can't stand).

The Queen's Lady of the title is Honor Larke, ward of Sir Thomas More, lady in waiting to Queen Catherine of Aragon (first wife of King Henry VIII) at a time when she has fallen out of favour with the King.  I thought that she was really well written, with lots of layers and complexities.

On the other hand, I did not like how Sir Thomas More was portrayed.  He is a person that I had always admired for staying true to his beliefs, but in this book, he is little more than a monster at times.  And an inconsistent, unpredictable character in this book.  He went from being gentle to brutal to loyal to insane.  He seemed like a different person each time he appeared.  I don't know if this is a true picture, but I didn't enjoy it.

One thing that I found fascinating were the religious arguments.  At various times, the case for Catholicism, Protestantism, and Atheism were given (Honor herself was raised a Catholic, then became involved in helping the "heretics" ie Protestants escape England across the Channel, then became an Atheist after some brutal experiences at the hands of the fanatical cult-like Anbaptists.  You could almost say that this is a story set in Tudor England, told through the story of the Reformation.

Overall, it was an easy read, perfect for this past week when I have been feeling unwell.  I think next up with have to be Utopia by Thomas More though, a book that figured greatly in this one.

Kiss of the Fur Queen - Tomson Highway

I can't believe that I missed this book when it was first published in 1998 - I know that by that point I was already very much in to CanLit and haunted bookstores on a regular basis.  Mind you, at that time I was still a student, so didn't have much spare cash to spend on books and had to purchase discriminatingly!

I ended up picking up this book recently, at an event put on locally by Tomson Highway to raise money for literacy - a cabaret show with Mr. Highway playing the piano (and singing a bit) and telling stories.  He is quite a performer, and had us all laughing until we cried!

A brief summary of the book.  It is the story of two Cree brothers from northern Manitoba who end up at a residential school in the late 1950's and 1960's where they are abused by the priest who runs the school.  After their experiences in the school, they no longer fit in with their family (who are struggling to adapt from their nomadic lifestyle to living on a reservation), and both end up living in Winnipeg then Toronto.  One brother becomes a musician and the other, a dancer.  The two brothers follow opposite trajectories.  The musician works hard at first, rises to a small amount of fame, then falls to alcohol abuse, and at the end experiences a form of redemption, assisted by his brother.  The dancer on the other hand struggles to understand his place in the world at first, as well as struggling with his homosexuality, before rising to fame as a dancer, and then succumbing to AIDS.

What makes this book even more poignant is that it is quite closely based on the real story of the Highway brothers - Tomson (the musician and writer) and Rene (a dancer who died of AIDS in 1990).

At the cabaret last month, Tomson Highway said that one theme that runs through all of his plays and books is the loss of the feminine side of the divine when traditional native spirituality is replaced by Christianity, and that is evident in this book.  The trickster ("Nanabush" in Ojibway, "Weesageechak" in Cree) takes on a distinctly female form (The Fur Queen) in the book; and strong female characters are influential on the lives of the protagonists, especially in the revival of their cultural awareness.

Also, living in this part of the world, the residential school experience is very relevant today.  I have many clients at work who attended these schools where many children were abused, and traditional culture was lost; and reading this book has given me a glimpse of some of what they have lived through.

I'm glad that I bought this book at the cabaret, and look forward to re-reading many times!

On Chesil Beach - Ian McEwan

This is a book that I have been planning to read since I heard Mr. McEwan interviewed last year on CBC radio about this book.  I really must go back and re-listen to that interview now that I have finally read it!

Mixed thoughts on this book.  In my last post, I mentioned that I like good character development, and that a plot that grabs me doesn't help.  This book has very well drawn characters, but really no plot.  In fact, I could probably sum up the plot in a single sentence.  "In July 1962, a newly married couple, Edward and Florence, spend their wedding night in a hotel near Chesil Beach and are so bound by societal constraints that they are unable to consummate their marriage."

What makes the book interesting though is how it tells the story leading up to this devastating night, going back and forth between Edward's and Florence's perspectives, and the inevitability of the conclusion.

Just a short little novella, but a very interesting read.