Poetics of Dissent: The Fourth Canvas by Rana Bose

While reading a thriller, I anticipate — and usually get — a twisty, testosterone-ridden plot. If I’m lucky, there’s a strong female character; really lucky, a good sex scene. What I don’t expect: a theory of socio-political hegemony centered around the idea of dissent. But Rana Bose’s The Fourth Canvas is a novel of ideas as much as a thriller, with enough red herrings to make Agatha Christie proud, and enough progressive ideas to satisfy the most ardent activist.

 Claude Chiragi, a doctoral student at McGill, has just received a birthday present from his girlfriend Clara. To his relief, the large flat package isn’t an Ikea piece in malevolent wait for assembly. Rather, Clara has come up with the goods — a painting by the political philosopher Guillermo Sanchez, who also happens to be the subject of Claude’s research. Sanchez, who died in 1974, was the author of a few articles, and a book on Mexican history — slim pickings for a thesis. The hitherto unknown painting will provide Claude material for his floundering PhD.

The canvas depicts a city landscape full of characters seemingly in fear of an impending calamity. Only one woman seems exempt from the malaise; her face is calm, even eager. Hidden in the painting are the words “Two periods of rise, followed by two periods of decline.”

Apparently, a theory of empire has been painted into the canvas, which seems but one in a series. And if further incentive to explore the canvas’s provenance was needed — the calm-faced woman in the painting seems to be moving. And so Claude and Clara set off on a quest to unearth all of Sanchez’s canvases. First stop: Cuba, where they’ll meet a friend of Sanchez.

In the manner of all good thrillers, the adventure is also a voyage of self-discovery. This being The Fourth Canvas rather than The Fourth Protocol, Claude and Clara don’t realize an unexpected affinity for grenade launchers or a talent for blending into foreign locales. While Claude plunges deep into Sanchez’s intellectual argument, Clara rediscovers her Argentinean roots — her father and brother disappeared during the country’s Dirty War, and Clara had hitherto suppressed these memories in favor of a cool citizen-of-the-world Montrealer persona. As Sanchez’s theory of the role of dissent in the collapse of empires becomes clearer, Claude and Clara are unable to lead their former passive lives. The canvases have changed not just their worldview, but their notions of their own roles in the fight for social justice.

The Fourth Canvas also features several secondary narratives, including that of one Diana McLaren, a professor of political philosophy in Montreal who is Claude’s father’s partner, and another featuring Sanchez’s sister Lydia. Bose gathers these seemingly random threads together by way of an abduction, a misty mountain hop through the Andes, and a case of mistaken identity, through to a satisfyingly dramatic (and devious) denouement.

Rana Bose is an engineer, a magazine editor and playwright, and The Fourth Canvas showcases each one of his métiers. In his acknowledgement, Bose states that his theatre background leads him to “launch torrents of ideas on the stage,” and indeed, The Fourth Canvas at times is all but submerged under expositions on every possible idea or event, from the film Ghost Dog to The Beastie Boys to cricket. Many of these riffs are at best tangentially related to the plot, and often take place on the flimsiest of pretexts; the only reason I forgive the author such self-indulgence is because everything he has to say is so damn interesting. Consider Bose’s description of the Père-Lachaise Cemetery in Paris:

“If a cemetery could, however, be accused of name-dropping in a display of turf arrogance, this would be the place…Chopin has a muse weeping, Oscar Wilde has a winged messenger calling him away…[There] lie the graves of Laura Marx, Karl’s daughter, and Paul Lefargue, who committed suicide together in 1911.”

If this doesn’t send you haring off to Wikipedia, nothing will.

But Bose the novelist is perhaps closest to Bose the editor of the alternative webzine Montreal Serai, a publication whose stated aim is to give a voice to people at the margins. As a character in The Fourth Canvas says “Legitimacy is hogged by the mainstream. [But] the people on the periphery are just as legitimate.” Bose’s novel not only reinforces the importance of dissent, but presents a vision for a new wave of popular resistance that co-opts people from the peripheries of every country on the planet. That he’s chosen to convey his ideas in such an accessible literary genre is altogether fitting. Even thrilling.

 

(This review appears in the current issue of rabble.ca.)

Then Again by Elyse Friedman

Seldom, I believe, has a writer been as poorly served by her book covers as Elyse Friedman. Waking Beauty, a darkly thoughtful exploration of the unfair advantage beauty bestows upon the (unworthy) recipient, had a pink-and-white and-blonde-and-sparkly cover, thus dooming chick-lit fans to chagrin even as readers of literary fiction averted their eyes. 

Then Again, with a smart, punchy title that can be interpreted in at least two different ways in the context of the  plot, written with a precision that would make a watchmaker glow, features a split image of a pallid, glowering girl on its cover. Everything about it–the girl’s faintly repellent gaze, the gimmicky shot , the shiny stiff paper of the cover– begs that the book be tossed aside. Which I would have undoubtedly done had I not LOVED Waking Beauty.

Tom Robbins once famously said, “It’s never to late to have a happy childhood”.  What if someone took that to heart–a someone with the wealth and connections of a successful Hollywood screenwriter–and decided to relive his childhood for an entire weekend, literally? The reluctant participants in the scheme include the screenwriter’s sisters Michelle (the novel’s narrator), and Marla.  The trio’s parents are dead (natch), but Joel the screenwriter has arranged for a faux mom and faux dad. The Toronto house the siblings grew up in twenty years ago is recreated down to the avocado green carpet and the struggling tree out front.

What a setup. And Friedman has the prose skills and the sheer balls to carry it off.  The narrator’s voice alternates between syrupy sentimentality and hard-edged observation, and this pairing works beautifully with the theme of revisited adolesence. The novel’s pacing is impeccable, skittering between past and present till the two fuse in an explosive climax. The delight of such a book lies as much in the big idea as in the tiny details; I was reminded on more than one occasion of the film Goodbye Lenin .

I leave you with this image from the novel. “…Canadian movies, publicly funded and carefully crafted–like chilled white pie crusts, pinched and perfect…”  I’m going to tear off the miserable front cover of Then Again  and replace it with a gilded portrait of Friedman.  

This review-ish piece is my contribution to John’s Read a Canadian Book Month challenge.

Yellowknife by Steve Zipp

Your hunt for the most boring Wikipedia entry ever ends now. Type “Yellowknife” in the search box; you’ll hear the gurgle as the spirit is sucked out of one of the most intriguing cities on the planet. 

I mention Wikipedia because most non-Canadian readers of Steve Zipp’s debut novel Yellowknife will in all likelihood want need to look up the city. I’m providing some facts about Yellowknife in this post before I begin my review.   

First, a map of Canada.  Yellowknife is just above the big black C.

 

 

(This map is available at http://atlas.nrcan.gc.ca/site/english/index.html)

 

Yellowknife is the capital of the NorthWest Territories. The NorthWest Territories are almost twice the size of France. The population of the NorthWest Territories is about 41,000 people. All together now: Looonely! 

 

 In the 1930s, Yellowknife was discovered to contain sizable gold deposits, leading to a mini gold rush. The rush waned towards the end of the century, but save your sympathy for the Yellowknifers; in the early nineties, the area turned up diamonds. The city now calls itself “The Diamond Capital of North America.” 

 

 And in what is possibly the most redundant sentence in Canadian prose, I add that Yellowknife is very cold.

 

Steve Zipp’s Yellowknife is set in the eponymous city in 1998. It’s a delirious read, one that incorporates the region’s history into a truly zany storyline. Endeavoring to describe the plot any further is akin to eating soup with a fork–you get some bits and pieces, but miss the main meal. Picking up my spork: The book features an entomologist who offers his arm for mosquito bait, a conceptual artist who wanders around garbage dumps, a drifter who learns to live off dog food, and about twenty other oddball characters who come together to do their thing in Yellowknife.  

And what a city it is, in a region “so remote it’s almost mythical.” A restaurant menu in Yellowknife might include fried ptarmigan, sweet and sour bearpaw, scrambled caribou brains on toast, and detoxified bear liver.  There’s an annual  Caribou Carnival, where activities include tea boiling and log sawing; people sip frosty drinks “in glasses made of ice.” The local newspaper is called the Yellowknife Blade. A posh restaurant accepts diamonds in lieu of cash; waiters carry loupes on their person. Zipp assumes the reader is familiar with the region (or has a huge vocabulary); I for one had to look up “pomarine jaeger” (a sea bird),  mukluks (a type of boot), horsetails (a plant)…you get the idea.  At least I knew   Zamboni, thanks to my years in Canada. 

The real joy in this novel, however, lies in the sharp, acerbic writing. Zipp quotes from Kafka, Jack London and Bulgakov, amongst others, and his prose is notable as much for its intelligence as its humor. You read it here first: Zipp is blood brother to Tom Robbins.  There are many interesting and erudite passages to showcase; it is purely a function of this reviewer’s base mind that the quoted section deals with sex (or its lack thereof).  

Danny the drifter finally has a chance to get it off with the most beautiful woman in our dimension. But then she asks if he has a condom.

The answer was plain on his face. She might as well have been asking for a condominium. “Christ” she muttered and reached for her clothes
“No, wait, I can find something. A plastic bag. A rubber glove.”

No luck. Danny then tries to salvage the situation.

“No problem…I’ll pick some up tomorrow….Do you have a favorite brand?…Any particular color or flavor?”

 

 

If I have one quibble, it is that Yellowknife sometimes feels like too much of a good thing. It’s as though Zipp had a hundred great ideas, and he shoehorned them all into this 286-page book. The resulting read is breathless though manageable, but it gets sticky when it comes to the characters. There are so many appealing dramatis personae vying for the role of protagonist that ultimately, I wasn’t truly invested in any character. Just as I got into Danny’s adventures, bam! a new character squealing “Forget Danny, look at me!” would cavort on the page. I suppose I could have treated the book like the aforementioned soup and just enjoyed whatever came along, but I kept getting distracted, wondering where that tempting piece of pineapple lurked, and if the spongy object I was chewing on was a mushroom or a pellet of Bounty…

It is a sad, sad thing that Zipp’s novel, published by the small press Res Telluris, should languish in obscurity. I do not know the author (apart from exchanging a brief email correspondence regarding the timing of this review) and I have no hesitation in flogging his work in every possible way. Here is the publisher’s website, and here is the author’s blog. Do buy the book. Or, if you must, download it for FREE  from the publisher’s site. And don’t forget to send Zipp a mash note asking him to write another novel real soon.

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At the Altar by L.M.Montgomery

I thought I’d read everything Lucy Maud Montgomery had ever written, but came across this one at the Ottawa Public Library book sale the other weekend. Apparently, several unpublished stories of Montgomery’s languished in her PEI house until Rea Wilmshurst stumbled upon them, grouped them by theme, and had M&S publish these collections. At the Altar, which deals with marriage, was published in 1994, and suffers a bit from the sameness of the stories. As assortments go, this one is sugary even by LMM’s standards; not an unhappy ending to be found in any of the eighteen stories. But like all sugary treats, this one too is addictive; I read the book in one sitting.

Upon reflection, I think the book suffers from the editor’s obvious devotion to LMM. The sole criterion for publication seems to be the authorship rather than literary merit, which leads to a wide variation in story quality. I looked for depth in ”Them Notorious Pigs” and in ” Miss Cordelia’s Accommodation” and came up disappointed. ”What Aunt Marcella Would Have Called It”, featuring a pining heroine and indifferent hero who is finally ensnared when the heroine pretties herself up, should have been buried in decent obscurity, IMO.  Of course the argument can be made that we are reading a record of the time, and ought not let our modern feminist sensibilities influence the process of selection in the interests of historical accuracy, but as far as I’m concerned, the weaker stories bring down the tenor of the whole book.  I wish some of these stories had been reserved for a scholarly compendium of LLM’s work aimed at academics or her die-hard fans. 

But when LMM works, she’s very good indeed, bringing to her stories a dry practicality that’s all the more appealing against the backdrop of rosy romance. “Aunt Philippa and the Men” was excellent, while “The Pursuit of the Ideal” and “An Unconventional Confidence” were rescued from their blatant predictability by LMM’s leavening touches of humor. The ghost of Anne of Green Gables runs through each of these tales, and if you loved Anne, you’ll warm to most of these stories. If, however, you liked Anne but can’t see what the fuss is all about, avoid this collection. Incidentally, Anne turned one hundred this April, and Margaret Atwood takes an affectionate, if mordant look at this red-haired orphan girl (and her hold upon Japanese tourists) in this article from The Guardian.  

And this one is my just-in-time April read for the Canadian Book Challenge.

The Assassin’s Song by M.G.Vassanji

M. G. Vassanji’s last novel was titled The In-between World of Vikram Lall; his new work The Assassin’s Song could just as well be titled The In-between World of Karsan Dargawalla. Vassanji’s domain is the third space — the territory that refuses to accept Manichean classifications of here or there — and the protagonist of his new novel is a man who fits no convenient, conventional box. Neither Muslim nor Hindu yet of both religions, Karsan Dargawalla is the heir to Pirbaag, a Shrine to a Sufi mystic worshipped by the followers of both religions. Karsan, as the elder son, is to be custodian at Pirbaag after his father; no other future can be imagined for the “Gaadi-varas” — successor and avatar of the keeper of the shrine.

But Karsan’s in-betweenness, while originating in his religious inheritance, underlies his entire life. On the one hand is the pull of tradition and faith, and his filial devotion, on the other the push of his own intellectual curiosity and adventurous spirit. An unexpected opportunity for escape from his destiny however arrives in an acceptance letter from Harvard, where Karsan gets a full scholarship.

At the start of the novel, Karsan has just returned from North America to visit his former home. It is the year 2002, and the Hindu-Muslim riots in Gujarat that killed over a thousand people have also destroyed Pirbaag. Karsan’s father is dead, the Dargawallas’ neutrality in religion having provided no escape when rioters stormed the shrine, and Karsan’s younger brother has consequently embraced a militant form of Islam and gone into hiding. As Karsan considers the implications of his repudiation of his birthright, he recalls his childhood in 1960s India, and the sequence of events that ultimately led him to value intellect over faith.

Vassanji has the uncanny ability to isolate the one or two telling details in a scene which capture the entire drama and weight of the story. He pares away the superfluous — not one word is unnecessary in this novel — to reveal the emotional core of his characters; his restrained style is thus intensely intimate and moving. I lay awake at night pondering Karsan’s struggle to choose between duty and knowledge, between worldliness and divinity, and the way things might have been different but for chance. This book achieves a melancholic, haunting loveliness all its own. I’ve read several novels in the recent past that are beautifully crafted, but The Assassin’s Song is a much rarer find — a thing of beauty, birthed from the union of compassion and wondrous artistry. This novel appeals as much to the mystic as the aesthete in us: Vassanji’s words are equally prayer and poetry.

This review was written for the Asian Review of Books. I’m also counting it as my third book of the Canadian Book Challenge.

Obasan by Joy Kogawa

My second book for the Canadian Book Challenge is Joy Kogawa’s Obasan. This novel deals with a subject I know very little about–the internment of Japanese Canadians by the Canadian government during WWII. I’ve read David Guterson’s Snow Falling on Cedars which deals with the same theme but in America; I had no idea this practice was part of Canada’s history as well.

I believe this book is one of the pillars of CanLit, and deservedly so–Obasan is a very disturbing and powerful read, asking some searching questions about a part of Canadian history I suppose many would be only too happy to forget. Naomi, a third-generation  Japanese Canadian girl, is separated from her parents after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and consequently lives with her uncle and aunt (Obasan). At age 5, Naomi moves from her comfortable home in Vancouver to work camps for Japanese Canadians, first to the ghost town of Slocan in BC, and then to a sugar-beet farm in Granton, Alberta. The story opens in 1972, when Naomi has seemingly put behind her past and is comfortably assimilated in her Canadian environment. 

But another aunt, Emily, is seeking justice for the treatment meted out to Japanese Canadians, and her struggle forces Naomi to confront her memories. While Naomi doesn’t really find  ’closure’ (and thank goodness for that, for it would devalue the sense of authenticity the text carries) she is granted a deeper understanding of how the events of the past have affected her.  

This novel has received several negative reviews on Amazon (mostly from high school students forced to read it for a class assignment) and I can see why an impatient reader might find the book somewhat tedious. Kogawa’s style, especially in the initial third of the book, features a lush abundance of imagery that often seems to flow at the expense of the narrative. I also found some of the writing in this section rather clunky and repetitive, and some of the metaphors, like one about her tightly-knit family subjected to a warm-water wash, seemed rather contrived. But I was loath to quit, and by the middle of the book, found myself moved to the marrow by Naomi’s account of her life in the camps. Kogawa’s dreamy, opaque prose is revealed to be the perfect medium to communicate events so large and cruel they are almost unfathomable to the human brain. I am so thankful I read this book in my thirties rather than in my teenage years, when I would no doubt have declared it a slow book and abandoned it without a thought for what I might have missed.  

Update: In 1986, Kogawa adapted her novel into a children’s  book, Naomi’s Road. Read an interview with Kogawa about this book at papertigers.org

No Great Mischief by Alistair MacLeod

My first read for The Canadian Book Challenge is No Great Mischief by Alistair MacLeod. This one  has sat unread on my Billy bookshelf for 3 years; the last time I checked, it muttered ”But you had time to watch Snakes on a Plane” before curling its covers away from me. Now that I’ve finished it, I realize I should have read this sooner. Actually, I should have stolen an ARC and read it before the book hit the stores–it’s that good.

The story opens on a rather dismal note, with the protagonist Alexander MacDonald driving down to Toronto to meet his alcoholic brother. I initially braced myself for a duty-read–one of those where the writing is awfully good, but the subject matter so wearying to the spirit I need an antidotal Captain Underpants if life is ever to seem rosy again. But I unbraced myself very soon. Although this novel is shot through with tragedy (even more wrenching for being so precisely and understatedly articulated) No Great Mischief is curiously life-affirming. I think it’s because the burdens Alexander bears flow from the same source as his joys, namely, his love for his clan. The MacDonalds lead ordinary, hard-scrabble lives that are rendered special by the primacy of their loyalty to each other, which outweighs all other considerations. The reader cannot view events in isolation, but sees them as wrought by the workings of blood ties just as much as fate; sorrows and triumphs are first and foremost part of the weave of MacDonald family history. MacLeod has brought this clan alive for me; when I next see golden arches, I shall no longer make a sign to avert the evil eye but think about this novel instead.

One of the reasons I joined this challenge was to learn more about Canada–I moved here three and a half years ago, and for various reasons, haven’t travelled much around the country. This novel is my introduction to Nova Scotia, specifically Cape Breton. If I ever visit here, I shall look for the woods and whales and the lighthouses described in this novel, and see them through Alexander’s eyes. That’s how strong the sense of place is in No Great Mischief.  

I am so glad I read this book.

The Canadian Book Challenge

I’ve joined John Mutford’s Canadian Book challenge. I’m 3 months late, which is actually pretty good by my track record…

The rules: to read 13 Canadian books before July 1, and blog about each one. The number 13 signifies Canada’s 13 provinces (Canada doesn’t have states, y’know).  I’m also copying John’s truly awesome list of suggested titles here. Readers who’d like to go beyond Atwood and Mistry in Canadian fiction: look no further!

(Titles in red: those I’ve read, in blue: authors I’ve read, just not that particular book. )

Newfoundland and Labrador-
Bernard Assiniwi- The Beothuk Saga
Ken Babstock- Airstream Land Yacht (Poetry)
Cassie Brown- Death On The Ice (Non-fiction)
Paul Butler- Easton
Joan Clark- An Audience of Chairs
Michael Crummey- River Thieves
Mary Dalton- Merrybegot (Poetry)
Bud Davidge and Ian Wallace (Illustrator)- The Mummer’s Song (Children’s Book)
Jim Defede- The Day The World Came To Town (Non-fiction)
Kenneth J. Harvey- The Town That Forgot How To Breathe
Harold Horwood- White Eskimo
Harold Horwood- Bartlett The Great Explorer (Non-fiction)
Percy Janes- House of Hate
Dale Jarvis- Haunted Shores: True Ghost Stories of Newfoundland and Labrador
Wayne Johnston- Colony of Unrequited Dreams
Kevin Major- Eh? To Zed (Children’s book)
Lisa Moore- Open (Short Stories)
Lisa Moore- Alligator
Bernice Morgan- Random Passage
Donna Morrissey- Kit’s Law
Claire Mowat- Outport People (Non-fiction)
Earl B. Pilgrim- The Ghost of Ellen Dower
Al Pittman- Down By Jim Long’s Stage (Children’s poems)
Al Pittman- West Moon (play)
E. J. Pratt- Complete Poems (Poetry)
E. Annie Proulx- The Shipping News
Edward Riche- Rare Birds
Ted Russell- The Holdin’ Ground (play)
Dillon Wallace- The Lure of The Labrador Wild
Michael Winter- The Big Why

Prince Edward Island-
Milton Acorn- I Shout Love and Other Poems (Poetry)
Anne Compton- Processional (Poetry)
Stompin’ Tom Connors and Brenda Jones (Illustrator)- The Hockey Song (Children’s Book)
David Helwig- Saltsea
Michael Hennessey- The Betrayer
Lucy Maud Montgomery- Anne of Green Gables
J. J. Steinfeld- Would You Hide Me? (Short Stories)

Nova Scotia-
Ernest Buckler- The Mountain and the Valley
George Elliott Clarke- Whylah Falls (Poetry)
Frank Parker Day- Rockbound
Brad Kessler- Birds In Fall
Thomas Chandler Haliburton- The Clockmaker
Ann-Marie MacDonald- Fall On Your Knees
Linden MacIntyre- Causeway (Non-fiction)
Hugh MacLennan- The Watch That Ends The Night
Alistair MacLeod- Island (Short Stories)
Alistair MacLeod- No Great Mischief
Ami McKay- The Birth House
Alden Nolan- The Best Of (Poetry)
Anne Simpson- Loop (Poetry)

New Brunswick-
Donna Allard- Minago Streets (Poetry)
Linda Hall- Black Ice
Elisabeth Harvor- Fortress Of Chairs
Antonine Maillet- Pelagie: The Return To Acadie
David Adams Richards- Mercy Among The Children
Charles G. D. Roberts- The Collected Poems (Poetry)
T. G. Roberts- The Red Feathers

Quebec-
Hubert Acquin- Next Episode
Peter Behrens- The Law of Dreams
Saul Bellow- Humboldt’s Gift
Frances Brooke- The History of Emily Montague
Nicole Brossard- Museum of Bone and Water
Willa Cather- Shadows On The Rock
Roch Carrier- The Hockey Sweater (Children’s Book)
Leonard Cohen- Beautiful Losers
Leonard Cohen- Let Us Compare Mythologies (Poetry)
Romeo Dallaire- Shake Hands With The Devil (Non-fiction)
Mavis Gallant- Home Truths (Short Stories)
Anne Hebert- Kamouraska
Naomi Klein- No Logo (Non-fiction)
Gordon Korman- Island: Shipwreck (Young Adult)
Irving Layton- Dance With Desire (Poems)
Markoosie- Harpoon of the Hunter
Yann Martel- Life of Pi
Colin McDougall- Execution
Stuart McLean- Stories From The Vinyl Café (Short Stories)
Heather O’Neill- Lullabies For Little Criminals
Jacques Poulin- Volkswagen Blues
Monique Proulx- The Heart Is An Involuntary Muscle
Mordecai Richler- Barney’s Version
Gabrielle Roy- The Tin Flute
Mairuth Sarsfield- No Crystal Stair
Gaetan Soucy- The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond Of Matches
Yves Theriault- Agaguk
Michel Tremblay- The Fat Woman Next Door Is Pregnant
Michel Tremblay- Forever Yours Marie-Lou (Play)

Ontario-
Margaret Atwood- Handmaid’s Tale
Joan Barfoot- Luck
David Bezmozgis- Natasha and Other Stories (Short Stories)
Christian Bok- Eunoia (poetry)
Joseph Boyden- Three Day Road
Morley Callaghan- More Joy In Heaven
Austin Clarke- The Polished Hoe
Matt Cohen- Elizabeth and After
Robertson Davies- Fifth Business
Gordon Downie- Coke Machine Glow (Poetry)
Marian Engel- Bear
Timothy Findley- The Wars
Phoebe Gilman- Something From Nothing (Children’s Book)
David Gilmour- A Perfect Night To Go To China
Douglas Glover- Elle
Barbara Gowdy- White Bone
Helen Humphries- Afterimage
Frances Itani- Deafening
M. T. Kelly- A Dream Like Mine
Thomas King- Green Grass, Running Water
Vincent Lam- Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures (Short stories)
Mary Lawson- Crow Lake
Stephen Leacock- Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town (Short Stories)
Dennis Lee- Alligator Pie (Children’s Poems)
Charles de Lint- Moonlight and Vines
Jon McCrae- In Flanders Fields (Poem)
Anne Michaels- Fugitive Pieces
Rohinton Mistry- A Fine Balance
Farley Mowat- Never Cry Wolf
Alice Munro- Who Do You Think You Are? (Short Stories)
Robert Munsch- The Paperbag Princess (Children’s Book)
Michael Ondaatje- In The Skin Of A Lion
Al Purdy- Beyond Remembering (Poetry)
Paul Quarrington- Whale Music
Barbara Reid- Two By Two (Children’s Book)
Nino Richie- Lives of The Saints
Leon Rooke- Shakespeare’s Dog
Diane Schoemperlen- Forms of Devotion
Jane Urquhart- The Stone Carvers
M. G. Vassanji- The In-Between World of Vikram Lall
Richard B. Wright- Clara Callan

Manitoba-
David Bergen- The Time In Between
David Godfrey- The New Ancestors
Tomson Highway- The Rez Sisters (Play)
Margaret Laurence- A Bird In The House (Short Stories)
Margaret Laurence- A Jest of God
Corey Redekop- Shelf Monkey
Bill Richardson- Bachelor Brothers’ Bed and Breakfast
Carol Shields- The Stone Diaries
Miriam Toews- A Complicated Kindness
Adele Wiseman- The Sacrifice

Saskatchewan-
Sharon Butala- Lilac Moon (Non-fiction)
Paul Hiebert- Sarah Binks
Guy Gavriel Kay- The Summer Tree
Tim Lilburn- Kill-Site (Poetry)
W. O. Mitchell- Who Has Seen The Wind
Sinclair Ross- As For Me and My House
Kate Sutherland- All In Together Girls
Guy Vanderhaeghe- The Last Crossing
Dianne Warren- Serpent In The Night Sky (play)
Rudy Wiebe- The Temptations of Big Bear

Alberta-
Anita Rau Badami- Can You Hear The Nightbird Call?
Earle Birney- One Muddy Hand (Poetry)
Will Ferguson- Why I Hate Canadians (Nonfiction)
Katherine Govier- Three Views of Crystal Water
Greg Holingshead- The Roaring Girl (Short stories)
W. P. Kinsella- Shoeless Joe
Robert Kroetsch- The Studhorse Man
Gloria Sawai- A Song For Nettie Johnson
Thomas Wharton- Salamander
Christopher Wiseman- In John Updike’s Room (Poetry)

British Columbia-
George Bowering- The Gangs of Kosmos
Kevin Chong- Baroque-a-Nova
Wayson Choy- The Jade Peony
Douglas Coupland- Generation X
Margaret Craven- I Heard The Owl Call My Name
John Gould- Kilter (Short stories)
Jack Hodgins- The Resurrection of Joseph Bourne
Anosh Irani- The Song of Kahunsha
Joy Kogawa- Obasan
Susan Musgrave- What The Small Day Cannot Hold (Poetry)
bp Nichol- The Martyrology (Poetry)
Kenneth Oppel- Silverwing (Young Adult)
P.K. Page- Planet Earth (Poetry)
Gayla Reid- To Be There With You (Short stories)
Eden Robinson- Monkey Beach
Timothy Taylor- Stanley Park
Audrey Thomas- Coming Down From Wa
Michael Turner- Hard Core Logo
Sheila Watson- The Double Hook

Yukon-
Pierre Berton- The National Dream (Non-fiction)
Ted Harrison- Children of the Yukon (Children’s Book)
Pj Johnson- Rhymes of the Raven Lady (Poetry)
Jack London- Call of the Wild
Dick North- The Mad Trapper of Rat River (Non-fiction)
Al Pope- Bad Latitudes
Robert Service- The Best Of (Poetry)

Northwest Territories-
Robert Alexie- Pale Indian
Richard Van Camp- Lesser Blessed
Rene Fumoleau- Here I Sit (Poetry)
Elizabeth Hay- Late Nights On Air
Mackay Jenkins- Bloody Falls of the Coppermine (nonfiction)
James Raffan- Emperor of The North (Non-fiction)
Steve Zipp- Yellowknife

Nunavut-
John Bennett and Susan Rowley (Editors and compilers) Uqalurait: An Oral History of Nunavut (Non-fiction)
Pierre Berton- The Arctic Grail (Nonfiction)
Jan Brett- Three Snow Bears (Children’s Book)
Kenn Harper- Give Me My Father’s Body (Non-fiction)
James Houston- The White Dawn
Michael Kusugak- Curse of the Shaman (Young Adult)
Michael Kusugak and Vladyana Krykorka(Illustrator)- Hide and Sneak (Children’s book)
Tom Lowenstein (translator)/ Knud Rasmussen (compiled by)- Eskimo Poems (Poetry)
Kevin Patterson- Consumption
Robert Ruby- Unknown Shore (Non-fiction)
Zachariah Wells- Unsettled
Eric Wilson- The Inuk Mountie Adventure (Young Adult)

My knowledge of Canadian fiction is admittedly skewed because I read a lot of South Asian Canadian authors (such as Shyam Selvadurai and Shani Mootoo), but I’m still rather aghast at how much of this list is black rather than red or blue. On with the challenge!

An evening with Yann Martel

We’ve been having an unseasonal bout of snow lately (heavy even by Ottawa standards), and I’ve been contemplating the prospect of 4 months more of the same with something approaching desperation; a slave to the radiator till spring! Friday night, however, saw me slipping along the icy streets towards St. Brigid’s Church, where Yann Martel was giving a talk. Here’s a picture:

(This picture was taken by John W Macdonald. More pictures at  http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnwmacdonald/2058854653/in/pool-20543830@N00)

At this stage I make the shallow and irrelevant observation that Martel looks more yuppie-ish than I’d imagined.

Martel spoke about the new illustrated edition of Life of Pi. Now I’ve never been keen on illustrations in a novel outside of children’s literature–all too often, they interrupt the flow of the story, and break the spell cast by the plot. But the illustrations in this book made me reconsider my stance, for they are illustrations in every sense of the word–going well beyond translating words into pictures to illuminating ideas. Objects hazily imagined become beautifully clear–we can see what Pi’s raft looked like, for instance, or where Richard Parker sat on the raft. The pictures themselves are gorgeous, with jewel-bright colors and astonishingly clever perspectives; all the scenes are depicted as though viewed through the eyes of Pi–a trick that pulls the viewer right into the picture.

Martel also spoke about the organic relationship between writer and illustrator, in this case an artist named Tomislav Torjanac, who, despite being located in a  small Croatian village, not only succeeded in getting his work chosen by Martel, but also managed to locate pictures of South Indian food for his paintings, all thanks to the internet. Fascinating.

The second half of the talk dealt with Martel’s attempt to inveigle Canada’s prime minister into reading. (I’ve blogged about this in an earlier post.) Martel’s chosen a wide variety of books–Maus, Oranges are not the only Fruit, the Bhagavad Gita—and hopefully, one of these will pique Harper’s interest.

The talk, however, faltered a bit for me when Martel began to link the importance of reading with the state of the Western World. He set up the West against the East, labelling the West as deeply unhappy inspite of its material wealth, and the East… you get the idea. Anyone who has seen anything of poverty knows this to be a gross oversimplification, and a dangerous romanticization of what is a very wretched condition.  But there’s no denying the passion and piquancy of Martel’s idea, and I hope he succeeds in getting Harper to put aside the Guinness Book of World Records (reputedly his favorite book) for a pint and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.

Review: “Waking Beauty” by Elyse Friedman

I’m a sucker for books featuring single women and happy endings, but all too often, chick-lit make me want to gouge my eyes out rather than read one more page. Top of my complaints is the genre’s view of beauty as somehow synonymous with worth. Chick-lit usually demands that all readers willfully ignore the Colossal Coincidence in the room–that the heroines are always as gorgeous as they are good (a few extra Bridget Jones-ish pounds notwithstanding). While some books do show a hero who’s attracted to the protagonist’s spunk or quick wit or intelligence or sterling moral character, let’s face it—the Mensa IQ and sunshine personality would mean little unless the heroine wasn’t such a hottie. Beauty may sometimes not be sufficient, but it’s always necessary for the protagonist to find happiness, much as writers try and make us forget the same, mostly by wrapping the heroine’s looks in a clamshell package of modesty and morality.

 “Waking Beauty” by Toronto writer Elyse Friedman not only acknowledges the beauty equals worthiness stereotype, but uses it as pivot point for this chick-lit-with-a-twist novel.  The premise is simple. Twenty-two-year-old Allison Penny, fat, ugly, stuck in a dead-end job, with few prospects for love, affection or lust, wakes up one morning to find she’s beautiful (by the standards of the Western world, that is). Overnight, she sheds “dead-mouse hair”, “golf ball skin”, “pellet eyes”, “potato nose” and about sixty extra pounds to emerge a five-nine, golden-skinned, blue-eyed, Nordic-blond-haired, long-legged goddess. Just Like That.

There’s no attempt to explain/justify this metamorphosis; Allison simply wakes up changed—something readers might find frustrating. But “Waking Beauty” isn’t about how Allison gets beautiful, but how beauty gets Allison places, and most readers will soon move from why? to what next? without getting caught up in the mechanics of the transformation.

Initially, Allison wonders what function her new-found beauty serves. “Why had this happened to me? What was the purpose? Was my transformation part of a larger scheme? Did I have some sort of beauty duty to perform? And if so, what would it be? Posing naked for a PETA billboard? Administering blowjobs to ugly outcasts?”

Allison, however, quickly learns that soul-searching isn’t necessary when she’s gorgeous. Life is suddenly easy; she can jettison her janitor’s job for the megabuck modeling career several agencies beg her to undertake. And her path is littered with rich, powerful men all too willing to help her find fame and fortune.

Friedman pulls no punches– the world is nice to Allison solely because she is beautiful. The old Allison’s generosity and intelligence were never appreciated (most people didn’t further their acquaintance long enough for her personality to come across), but pretty Allison is awash in favors. Service staff is polite; taxis materialize; people smile rather than disapprove when she eats ice-cream for breakfast. It’s not just straight men; Allison’s judgmental, mean-spirited mother, neighbors, and her nasty room-mate all turn mellow when faced with the new Allison. Beauty bestows power, and comes with few demands—at most, the anti-consumerist Allison now feels obligated to move from a regimen of Ivory soap and Nivea cream to a four-step skin maintenance system, wondering if “anatomy is destiny, was {she}destined to become a vapid shopaholic supermodel?”

Every page of the novel affirms that life is indeed unfair; those who chance to satisfy the beauty standards of their generation have it much easier than other humans. Depressing for us readers who forlornly believe– plastic surgery and Paris Hilton notwithstanding–that what’s inside is, y’know, more important than the outside. But beauty finally throws up a complication, in the shape of the Man, who, strangely enough, seems to prefer the old Allison to the new shiny version.

Friedman’s sly, quirky wit permeates to the very marrow of the book; no weaseling out into a moral ending for this fierce dark tale that demands the reader’s respect. Part fantasy, part social satire, a whole lot chick-lit, and all bleakly funny, this novel makes us laugh even as we squirm to consider our own biases; just how do we pander to the freak of nature that is beauty? I picked up this slim pink-and-white paperback assuming it’d make a quick trip from bedside table to library donation box. Seldom has a book of ideas sported such a misleading guise; damn you Friedman, for making me think!