Code White by Debra Anderson

When I was about seventeen, a lot of my friends were in the psych ward. I'm not sure if that is a reflection on me - did I drive people crazy? More likely I attracted a certain kind of friend; sensitive, creative, extremely smart types who didn't fit neatly into boxes in one way or another. Anyway, I can think of at least four friends of mine who spent time in the psych ward while I was in high school, and we used to go and visit them. Let me tell you something: it's not a super fun place.

I remember at first being a bit jealous because there was a pool table and a popsicle vending machine. But after spending some time there you could tell that it would be better to not be there at all. So it was with some familiarity that I read 'Code White', which takes place almost entirely on the psych ward of a hospital.

The story is told from Alex's point of view. She wakes up in the hospital with no memory of how she came to be there, and then proceeds to journal her days, weeks, and months on the ward. Alex has bipolar disorder, but most of the narration happens when she is depressed, with only vague references made to her manic periods. I found this to be an interesting choice on the author's part, and it imbued Alex's story with a vaguely unreliable slant.

Alex is gay, and the book is almost as much about lesbian culture as it is about life on the psych ward - and they are, in a way, mirrored in each other: the close-up lives, the everyone-knows-everything-about-you feelings, the performances of gender/sanity. It's very cleverly written and realistic. The writer (whose first novel this is, although she has written plays) is clearly extremely gifted and writes honestly.

Here's the thing though: nothing happens. It's kind of what you would expect from journalling the daily life of a hospital ward: not much goes on, just the same shit every day. I think the book is as interesting as it could be given the premise - after all, the characters are well-drawn, and the pacing is not bad - but it's so limited by the lack of action. Based on my experiences just visiting folks in this situation, it's certainly realistic, but that isn't always a good thing.

I didn't find this to be a great Toronto book, as not much Toronto scenery is included, for obvious reasons. But I am interested in Anderson as an emerging Toronto novelist, and while I wouldn't recommend this book, I am excited to read other stuff by her.

Two CN Towers out of five.

The Glenwood Treasure by Kim Moritsugu

I have found that sometimes authors set their stories in Toronto but use a fictional neighbourhood (as for example Phyllis Brett Young did in The Torontonians), which can work very well, especially when it is surrounded by real Toronto landmarks and particularly that real Toronto vibe.

Unfortunately this novel, The Glenwood Treasure, did not really achieve this effect. The story is set in the fictional neighbourhood of Rose Park, an upscale east-end suburb-type area most reminiscent of Rosedale. Aside from the occasional mention of running errands "downtown", the rest of Toronto is never mentioned, and thus the feel of the city is left to be reflected in the author's depiction of Rose Park. Now, I haven't spent a lot of time in Rosedale or any of the affluent mini-suburbs that surround the downtown, so perhaps her depiction was entirely accurate, but it did not leave me with a feeling that this story took place in Toronto. It could have been anywhere, and actually probably should have been set in a smaller city or town; characters are constantly running into each other in this universe.

That was probably my biggest beef with this book, but I had others; it was not my favourite by any stretch. The story follows Blithe Morrison, a Rose Park-raised woman who has moved to California, and at the start of the novel has just been divorced and is coming back home. She moves into her parents' coach house for the summer and has plans to just putter around, but then a neighbour enlists her to help with research on a book about Rose Park, and Blithe starts to find a renewed interest in the Glenwood treasure - a legendary treasure buried over a century ago in Rose Park.

Blithe is surrounded by people from her old life - apparently she's the only person who ever left Rose Park - including her fussy, upper-class parents; Patrick the baker and love interest; Hannah, her childhood best friend; and eventually Noel, her brother, who also left Rose Park but comes back to torment her. The story is really about Blithe's relationship with Noel, her struggle with his effortless life and casual cruelty.

This is a strange novel. In some parts it seems like it is trying to be young adult fiction, but then the themes and content just seem a bit too explicit, or alternately too boring, for young adults. However it is a quick and simple read, and it's about buried treasure. So it's hard to say.

I thought it was well written in general, and it held my interest. However, there were a couple issues I had with it. First, I didn't find the protagonist very sympathetic; I found the main romantic plot to be almost completely lacking in chemistry; I thought the precocious eleven-year-old, Alexandra, to be sadly underused, particularly during the Nancy Drew-style treasure hunting; and I have to say, it is hard to care if your protagonist finds a half million dollar treasure when she seems to be doing ok, money-wise. Like really, I just didn't care whether or not she found it. Luckily that was not the main theme of the novel, but it really would have been harder to put down if she actually needed the money.

That was mainly what I found about this book: it was a quick and interesting read, but there was nothing that really held me to it or compelled me to keep picking it up. I would try Moritsugu again but I wouldn't recommend this particular novel.

Two CN Towers out of five

Bitten by Kelley Armstrong

I will tell you right off the bat, I'm not that into werewolves and other fantasy creatures (vampires, ghosts, etc.). Even during my Wiccan years or my goth phase (yeah, it happened) this sort of stuff wasn't really my bag. I should tell you this up front because I didn't like this book, and not being that into werewolves probably had a lot to do with it.

This is the first of Kelley Armstrong's "women of the Otherworld" series. Regardless of how I feel about the actual book, it is awesome to see a woman writing popular Canlit fantasy about women (and female beasties etc.). If you are into fantasy/horror, I recommend you check it out! (If you are not, don't.)

Normally I wouldn't put so much stock into the genre when talking about a book, but it's a difference-maker for me. When I read fantasy, I want the story to be compelling, not leaning on its fantastical worlds. I read stuff like this and I think: would this still be a good story if it wasn't about (wizards/goblins/werewolves/vampires/etc.)? (Hint: for Harry Potter the answer is yes. For this book the answer - in my opinion - is no. For Twilight, the answer is that it wasn't compelling even with the beasties).

Bitten is about Elena, the only female werewolf (the explanation is complicated, I won't get into it here). She is trying to live a normal life in Toronto with a really nice guy and a job and an apartment (on Lakeshore!), while secretly changing into a wolf every week or so (apparently they kinda have to or it just happens on its own). Then her pack leader, Jeremy, calls her and asks her to come back to Stonehaven (no really, that's what it's called), the pack hideout in upstate New York, to solve an urgent problem.

The story deals with two threads: the problem, which is that non-pack werewolves (or "mutts") have been killing people on the pack territory, and Elena struggling to decide which world she wants to live in: the human world with her bland but loving boyfriend, or the werewolf world with this sexy guy named Clay, to whom she used to be engaged, but he betrayed her trust by turning her into a werewolf, but she still kinda likes him.

The main problem I had with the novel: Elena is not super likable. It is certainly a big deal that Clay turned her into a werewolf without asking her first, for sure. But she never listens to him when he tries to explain or apologize - and then continually leads him on by snuggling with him, running around with him (literally, they're werewolves) and fucking him. Elena, you are not really a feminist character, even though I wanted you to be!  Her story brings up lots of issues of consent and agency but then basically dismisses them at will. The vagina wants what it wants. Anyway, I just couldn't really sympathize with her most of the time because she was being so unreasonable, or cruel.

I also found some of the description bland and repetitive, especially the running, hunting and fighting parts (although those readers more interested in wolves might disagree). The writing in general is fine, although the sex scenes are a bit amateurish, but it must be hard to write sex and not make it seem cheesy. Also there wasn't a lot of Toronto - most of the action takes place in New York state. I would hesitate to put this on a list of fiction set in Toronto.

I guess in the end this book just didn't hold my interest. I wasn't that invested in the protagonist, I didn't care when characters I had barely met died, I wasn't that compelled by all the running and biting and so on. This book took me a lot longer than it should have to read, and that is mainly because I was reluctant to keep picking it back up.

I think probably fans of the genre will like this, especially if they are frustrated by a lack of three-dimensional female characters in general. But for me, when you take away the wolves, there is not really a lot going on here - certainly not enough to keep me reading more.

Two CN Towers out of five

A Case of You by Rick Blechta

As I've said before, I do enjoy a good mystery, and so I tend to be attracted to them when looking for Toronto books to read. I was especially excited about A Case of You because I also like Joni Mitchell, but aside from getting the song stuck in my head for a couple weeks, there wasn't really much of a connection.

A Case of You has a promising premise - a young, apparently homeless woman starts singing with a local jazz trio and is blowing the crowds away with her amazing voice. But then one day she disappears. Andy, the drummer, hires a private investigator to look into it, and starts to discover more and more strange stuff about Olivia's past - her wealthy upbringing in Manhattan, the mysterious murder of her brother, her possible escape from an upscale rehab centre - and I probably shouldn't give away any more than that.

The book follows a couple different threads. There's Andy, who mostly hangs out in Toronto, worrying. Then there's the PI, Shannon, who traces Olivia's roots to Manhattan; and Jackie, her newest recruit, who is infiltrating a rehab clinic in California. For some reason the author has chosen to write only Andy in first person POV, even though he has by far the least interesting storyline. It doesn't really hurt the story at all, but it is an odd choice.

The characters are fairly well-developed. It would have been nice to know a bit more about Olivia, besides that she was kind of strange and could sing well, but the rest of them were good. Jackie seems to have a complicated back story that I think could have either been better fleshed out or just not hinted at at all. Sometimes they used the kind of ridiculous PI talk that makes me cringe, even though a couple times the whole idea of PIs in movies and detective novels is lampshaded by various characters. It's like Blechta couldn't decide if he was being tongue-in-cheek or not.

The story is somewhat compelling, but has a disappointing - and increasingly fantastical - pay-off. Once the mystery is unraveled, the villain is predictable (it is the person everyone would immediately suspect upon hearing Olivia's back story), the scheme completely ridiculous, and the result is supposed to be kind of bittersweet, but turns out pretty cloying in the final scene between Shannon and Andy.

 I did appreciate the use of the internet in the sleuthing they do, and the mention of how much it has changed detective work, but even then it was a little archaic; would they really be printing out great piles of paper? But there were some smart touches. I liked the use of Toronto, as always - Olivia panhandling at Union station, the fictional jazz club at King and Bathurst, Andy's old home in Riverview. It was descriptive without being in your face.

Overall, however, I was disappointed with this book. I thought it had a pretty engaging premise, and good pacing, but it tried a little too hard to be exciting and forgot to be interesting. I prefer a mystery that moves more slowly and goes a little deeper - or at least has a twist or two.

Two towers out of five.

Fables of Brunswick Avenue by Katherine Govier

I was given this book as a gift from my soon-to-be mother-in-law when I moved to Toronto. It is a collection of short stories which, if not all set on Brunswick Ave., are certainly tied to it through the author's memory of a certain time.

The stories are brief, and I don't just mean short - they seem to be deliberately set up as fragments or snapshots of their character's lives. I found them all to be well-written and evocative, but unavoidably bleak. I don't think there was one story in the collection that was happy; not even a little bit. They have the distinctive flavour of an older and wiser author looking back at a time in her life that probably seemed sweet and exciting at the time, but through a different lens, it does come out as somewhat depressing.

The stories deal with the doubts, fears and neuroses of people in their twenties, and added to the clear Toronto backdrop, they should have been totally relateable for me. But perhaps I am a couple years too old - or twenty years too young - to understand the problems the characters were facing. Or maybe I'm just not fun enough, complicated enough. I did have a hard time sympathizing with people who seemed very self-involved. The whole time I was reading it I had the sense that the author is much nicer than the characters in whom she was seeing herself.

One thing I loved was the introduction, in which Govier talks about her own time living on Brunswick Avenue and the funny encounters she had. It is frank and hilarious and honestly gave me too high hopes for the rest of the book. I can't help wondering if a non-fiction collection - of stories of her time there - might not have been a better choice.

Reading a whole book of short stories at once is perhaps not recommended. I think that if you are in the mood for something that's a bit of a downer, a story from this book would be perfect; for all the thematic gloominess, they are beautifully written stories. And for a taste of Toronto in the 1970s it is excellent. However, having read the author's full-length fiction and knowing it to be vastly superior, I have a hard time recommending this book.

Two towers out of five