College Street by Olindo Romeo Chiocca

This book is so short - it's a novella, really, a series of brief vignettes in a life barely glimpsed. It seems unfair to review it as a novel, as my main complaints would certainly be resolved in a longer book. But, it is what it is.

The story follows a young man, Bruno, who lives with his family in Toronto's Little Italy neighbourhood (College St. west of Bathurst and the surrounding residential streets). He works at a local (real!) restaurant, Trattoria Giancarlo, where he has been tasked with planning the party for the head chef's upcoming birthday. At the same time, he is planning a trip to Italy. His father's family has recently sold the land they owned, so Bruno must come up with a way to basically smuggle the cash from the sale back into Canada.

Throughout all this there is a romantic subplot, as Bruno breaks up with his girlfriend and begins seeing someone from his childhood who he ran into at a family wedding. There is simply no room in these pages to squeeze any character development, so we don't really know much about this girl except that she's super hot.

On the plus side, the author has a gift for description in a cultural sense, and really gets to the heart of Little Italy so the neighbourhood practically jumps off the page. The atmosphere is definitely perfect. There are also some very funny scenes, like the two funerals (one Italian, one Portuguese) at adjacent churches letting out at the same time, leading to a confused traffic snarl, and eventually to a dramatically bereaved Portuguese woman throwing herself on the wrong coffin.

Unfortunately, the book lacks in character development - there is not a well-drawn character in the book. Bruno is constantly in action, so it is hard to know what he's actually like, and the supporting cast are reduced to one character trait each. In a longer book this would probably be a serious flaw, but here the whole thing is over so fast, it almost doesn't matter.

What I found most frustrating about the story is the lack of conflict. Bruno has two issues to deal with: the party, and the money. But after stating each of these problems, the story is basically him deciding how to solve them, and then doing so. There is no tension, and with no full characters to attach to, it is difficult to get emotionally involved at all.

The book was a quick read, but most likely a forgettable one. I would love to read more from this author, who has a great style, but needs to trust himself to get involved with the characters and write something longer, with a bigger vision.

Three CN Towers out of five.

The Toronto You Are Leaving by Gordon Stewart Anderson

This is a novel with moments of pure poetry, sprawling in its own way, about gay male culture in Toronto; covering the story of two young men and their friends during the breathtaking swing from the emerging freedom and carefree promiscuity of gay men in the 1970s to the absolute horror of the early days of the AIDS epidemic.

The novel follows David, a shy academic just discovering gay culture, and Tim, an attractive guy from an upper middle class, well-established Toronto family. They meet, tiptoe around their gayness for a bit, and then embark on decade-long relationship that is sometimes sexual/romantic, sometimes friendship, sometimes estranged. They are surrounded by some very well-drawn and realistic characters: Jack, the dramatic patriarch of their community; Paul, his lifelong...best friend? I guess?; Bobby, a younger man David takes under his wing; and various other lovers and friends.

Anderson, the author, was gay himself and died of AIDS-related causes. His understanding and immersion in the gay community is evident throughout. It's a really precise account of a time and a place and a culture. There is nothing of "straight" Toronto in this story; to read it is to be in that time and place, which is obviously totally fascinating. The characters are very real; the situations are very real. The best part is one of the final chapters, which is a letter written by one of the characters describing his friend dying of AIDS; it captures the terror and powerlessness of such a death remarkably well, but also the fear in the community and the utter betrayal by the rest of society. Let them die in the streets, say the straights.

Toronto is very vivid and alive in the book. It is a character, for sure. It will be of particular note to those interested in the recent history of the city, as there is a definite atmosphere of those times.

This was a difficult book to review; it took me a long time to get through it and I feel it could have been a lot shorter. There was a lot of unnecessary drama and theorizing that I could have done without. I liked it; I'm not sure I would recommend it. There are parts of it that are just beautiful though, really wonderfully written, and it makes you wish the author had been able to write more before he died. He was clearly a gifted writer who needed only to hone his skills a little more. A second or third Anderson would have been a gem of a novel.

Three CN Towers out of five.

The Incomparable Atuk by Mordecai Richler

This was my first experience with Mordecai Richler's work, and I'm still undecided on whether I will read him again. The book was funny, yes, and sharp in its satire. It also managed to poke fun at a lot of targets in a very short page count. However, I'm not really sure if this is my thing.

The Incomparable Atuk is the story of an Inuit (the book says Eskimo, but it's from the 1960s - I feel like Eskimo is not a thing we should still be saying...?) who is brought to Toronto as a poet/curiousity, and quickly adapts to the cutthroat world of the Toronto art scene so that soon he is playing the very folks who tried to play him. The narrative style is very blunt, with no extraneous description whatsoever, and moves rapidly through a large cast of characters, most of whom I'm sure are based on real people of that time (and place).

The novel pulls no punches, bordering on being a South Park-style "equal opportunity offender" in its skewering of both the unscrupulous capitalists intent on benefitting from Atuk's presumed naivete and exotic appeal, and the good-hearted liberals equally committed to "saving" Atuk from being exploited. It's refreshing to see a character from a traditionally marginalized group shown as fully capable of being as cold-hearted and manipulative as his white counterparts, because it forces the reader to examine our own assumptions about people from other cultures and specifically indigenous people, who we often subconsciously categorize as naive or less developed than ourselves (ourselves in this instance being white people).

I also really enjoyed the commentary on the pressure to constantly monetize and market one's skill set. This comes out well in the dinner party near the end of the book, in which Richler expertly captures the irony of being paid to talk about the over-commercialization of the arts.

This book is very Canadian and above all, very Toronto. It could not be set anywhere else. Even though it was set fifty years ago, the whole "scene" is captured very well - the dinner party in particular, and the final couple chapters, definitely highlight Canada's cultural ambiguity, the love-hate relationship with the US, the madness of nationalism, and in particular Toronto's place in it. Toronto kind of wants to be the New York of Canada, I think, and in terms of being a cultural hub and a centre for government, education and culture, it comes close. But the combination of insecurity and arrogance is too big for a place that is, let's face it, a lot smaller (in many ways) than NYC. Richler captures so perfectly the pettiness of Toronto, the utter douchebaggery that can sometimes characterize it.

There was a lot about the book that rubbed me the wrong way, though. The female characters are kind of appalling, and a throwaway gag about Atuk's relatives apparently gang-raping a woman is shocking in its nonchalance. And as much as it is a reasonable and unusually well-developed critique of racism, there are moments of unabashed racism in it. In fact, I'm not convinced that we are not supposed to come to the conclusion that the Inuit people are just savages - white folks are just worse. Which...is that racist? I don't know.

The style was also not my favourite thing. I like descriptive novels, and this was not that. In fact, I could see this working quite well as a play or a movie. I also like some heart, and this book has no heart. It does not love its characters, and it does not dwell on positive relationships. It was hard for me, as an incurably emotional person, to get through without having somewhere to invest my emotions.

So, while I recognize this was a good book, it is not really the book for me. I give it three CN Towers out of five.

The Unlikely Victims by Alvin Abram

You must know by now that I have a soft spot for mysteries. A classic whodunnit - most easily captured in a short story - is my very favourite, but I also enjoy a more methodical police procedural. In this book Abram puts a little bit of an odd couple/buddy cop flavour into the mix as well.

The Unlikely Victims is actually a series of mysteries, in chronological order, investigated by our narrator, Detective Gabe Garshowitz, and his partner Detective Iris Forester. It's not quite one cohesive story, but neither is it a series of short stories - it's sort of a novel divided into small vignettes. Gabe is an old cop, close to retirement, who has a lot of personal demons. He believes overwork and neglect on his part drove his wife to suicide, which in turn caused a big rift between him and his daughter. He is lonely, has bad knees, and gets into conflicts with some asshole he works with. Then he gets assigned to partner with/mentor Iris, who is a younger woman just getting started as a detective.

I liked Iris because she doesn't take any shit, and she has the kind of attitude I would imagine you would have to develop as a female cop. The two work well together as main characters and I liked their dynamic.

Each mystery leads to a little bit more development of the bond between them, and of self-discovery for Gabe, until the last one which effects him very personally and draws the book full circle.

Toronto is more of a vibe than a setting, and Jewish Toronto is well represented, which is a nice change of pace. The book is well written and well paced; I liked some of the choices Abram made, like starting each case with a partial description of events so that the reader knows a little more than the detectives, but not everything. There were a lot of typographical errors though, and some really baffling changes in viewpoint, sometimes mid-paragraph.

All in all I liked it. It was pretty good and kept me reading. I'm not sure if I would go back to this author as there is certainly better mystery fiction out there, but it was a good diversion and I do recommend it.

Three CN Towers out of five.

Up Up Up by Julie Booker

You will probably not see a lot of reviews for short stories on this blog, because I have not (yet) found many collections of short stories whose central theme (or at least link) is Toronto. Even this collection is not totally set in Toronto, but most of the protagonists seem to have some connection to the city.

This is not an uplifting group of stories - at least I didn't find it so - but it is not actively depressing, like Katherine Govier's Brunswick Avenue collection. I would say the central theme of Up Up Up seems to be disappointment. The opening story is about two fat women - friends or lovers I am not sure - who travel to Alaska for a camping/kayaking trip. The main character is underwhelmed, and scared, of the glaciers, wanting to steer clear of the falling pieces while her friend/partner longs to get closer and is delighted to see them fall away. Many of the stories deal with women's feelings of inadequacy, sometimes directly expressed through disordered eating/body image issues, and often through unhealthy or questionable friendships.

Each story seems as though it could be a chapter in a much bigger tale. Quite a few of them made me wish it was a book I was reading, and not a story, so that I wouldn't have to leave that character or that situation so soon. I hope Booker will make the leap into full length novels, because I believe she could do it.

I'm not sure if it is a good thing or not that I was so frustrated by these stories. I liked the themes and I found her characters compelling and realistic; this is a writer who knows people. But at the end of each story I just felt like...why not a book? Why do we have only this small window into this character's life?

I think I can recommend this collection though. The stories are great, the themes are not too subtle but do demand some reflection, and there is some humour and hopefulness to the stories sometimes. It was a quick read and I would definitely read this author again; I do hope she writes a novel because I would be all over it.

Three CN Towers out of five.

Cities of Refuge by Michael Helm

This novel was a new one for me in terms of this project, because of the way it used Toronto as a setting not by name-checking buildings or intersections, or tapping into the general vibe of the city, but by setting the story in Toronto by virtue of it being the home of so many refugees, undocumented people, and desperate outsiders. The main theme is taking refuge from one's past, claiming a safe space to avoid facing judgement and punishment for crimes of varying - and arguable - severity.

The title comes from the Bible, where the cities of refuge were places where killers could claim asylum. The novel's protagonist, Kim, volunteers at an organization called GROUND that helps refugees with more desperate cases who were refused by government agencies. Some of these people have violent backgrounds, complicated by the political situations of their countries of origin. Some of them are dangerous people, although Kim clearly believes passionately in the work and doesn't see it as a dangerous place for her to be.

The novel starts with a violent attack; Kim is followed, attacked, and nearly killed. She is understandably haunted by the incident, and takes refuge (!) from the world while the people around her struggle to deal with the implications of the attack. Her estranged father believes that it was one of her clients at GROUND, someone who they could not help and who decided to take revenge; or perhaps who was just a dangerous person who missed the taste of blood. Kim reads xenophobia and paranoia into her father's theory, but as it turns out, (somewhat spoiler alert!) this book is really about Harold (the father), and the crime in his past from which he is seeking asylum.

The thing about the cities of refuge is that their protection can only ever be temporary, and the attack serves as a trigger for Kim to begin to unravel her father's past, while he struggles desperately to find her attacker, I guess to redeem himself? Or possibly protect himself? It's...complicated.

First of all, the story here is great. I love this underused and gritty way of looking at Toronto. I really loved the characters, particularly Kim, Harold, and Kim's mother Marian - they are all complicated, flawed and introspective people and we spend a lot of time inside their heads. The plot is clever and uses all those wonderful literary conventions to great effect. But.

Holy shit is it flowery. The language is like poetry - it's lovely, but page after page with just abstract interpretations and nearly incomprehensible philosophical tangents really wears you down. I would have adored this book if it was just the story, written well. And Helm is a good writer. I just feel like - if you want to write poetry, write poetry. This is a novel. Not a poem.

I don't have an issue with poetic writing - see my review of the amazing Consolation - but there's a line that needs to be drawn, and reading this book made me feel exhausted. I just wanted to put it down and scream "Just say what you mean!!". I know some people will enjoy the writing style and to them I highly recommend it. But I don't think I can read another book of his, which for me is the deciding factor: would I look for this author's work again?

Unfortunately, I would not. This is another one of those "good book, not my thing" situations, so I'm going to give it three CN Towers out of five.

The Girl in the Box by Sheila Dalton

This novel was a first for me; the author, Sheila Dalton, contacted me directly to let me know she liked my blog, and offering to send me a copy of her book to review. Obviously I said yes, and I was excited that actual authors were reading!

The Girl in the Box is pretty heavy. It reads quickly and in a way it's kind of a whodunnit, but there are a lot of deep issues touched explored, and it's not a book that will leave you with a spring in your step.

The story - told in a mix of flashbacks and from a few different viewpoints - follows a psychotherapist named Jerry who is travelling in Guatemala and encounters a Mayan couple who beg him to help their child. Her name is Inez, and she is a non-verbal, possibly autistic and almost certainly traumatised teenager who is kept locked up in a small shed. Jerry takes Inez back to Canada with him, where he and his partner Caitlin and live-in nurse Margaret start to try to rehabilitate her.

Their efforts are pretty seriously complicated when Inez kills Jerry. The book is really about Caitlin coming to terms with what was going on, and trying to figure out what actually happened that would make the normally gentle Inez lash out. Inez is sent to a facility for folks found not guilt by reason of insanity, and Caitlin has to get through her own paranoia and suspicions in order to figure out how to help Inez.

It's complicated. The story is not like anything I've ever read, and it's certainly an interesting exploration of the challenges of dealing with violent death. There were issues that I wish were dealt with further, like the actual impact of taking a traumatized indigenous person out of their home and bringing them to Canada; the feminist implications of Inez's brutal rape(s?) at the hands of soldiers; really all the racial/cultural problems that would be front and centre if this really happened.

I liked it though. It's rare to read a book where four of the six main characters are women, and it's not "chick lit" or fluffy in any way. Sad but true. I found Caitlin especially to be very well-drawn and complex, and I was glad that Jerry was not portrayed as some kind of sexless saint. I felt that Inez could have had a little less of that "exotic/ethereal beauty" quality that is kind of insulting in this context to both people of colour and autistic people. But overall the characters were compelling and were really what kept me reading.

One major disappointment for me was the sideswipes the author took at the feminist movement through Caitlin. There is no exploration at all about the overt feminist implications of anything that happens, and then the author manages to slip in a couple really juvenile feminist stereotypes to insult. There is actually, literally a woman at Inez's trial with a lesbian haircut and a "fish needs a bicycle" t-shirt talking about how all men are rapists. I am a feminist and not averse to criticism - we all know the movement has some pretty big faults - but that shit is just sloppy. It took me right out of the story, and it's just stupid.

Besides that, it was a pretty good read and one I would probably recommend, although not to everyone, as it is heavy, like I said. Toronto is unfortunately not heavily featured at all - it really could be set in any Canadian city - but that's how it goes with books that are less about setting and more about feelings.

Three CN Towers out of five.

The Placebo Effect by David Rotenberg

You may remember I reviewed a book by this author's brother, Robert Rotenberg. I must say, if there's only going to be one writer in the family, I vote for Robert.

That's not to say that D. Rotenberg isn't any good; this is a great read for those who enjoy thrillers in the sub-genre of "books that should have been movies". You know what I mean? The book in itself isn't bad, it's just that while I read it I couldn't help thinking how much more suitable the story would be for film. It's hard to write a good thriller; pacing is so difficult, and the special attention a novelist wants to pay to characterization has to sometimes be sacrificed to keep things moving.

The Placebo Effect follows Decker Roberts, an acting teacher/coach and screenwriter who makes a little money on the side by exploiting a peculiar talent he has for being able to spot when someone is telling the truth. He is hired by shadowy figures working for large corporations and law firms, vetted through his friend Eddie, a technology whiz and fellow synaesthete (folks with...let's just say special talents). The NSA wants to use Decker for national security purposes, and the CEO of a pharmaceutical company wants to exploit the talents of another synaesthete, Mike, who can tell the perfect ratio of anything. Decker gets mixed up in a lot of stuff all at once, and spends most of the novel on the run while trying to figure out what the hell is going on.

It's complicated to describe, but it's not too hard to follow once you're reading it. Decker lives in the Junction, so that's the Toronto connection, but most of his time in the story is spent hopping around between Toronto, Cincinnati, and various other cities. There are some quality Toronto shout-outs though, notably to Squirly's and Swan Diner (both on Queen West), and a lot of in-depth exposition re: the history of the Junction. Apparently this is book one of the author's "Junction chronicles", although whether the following books will follow characters from this novel or simply start new stories in the Junction remains to be seen.

There were a few moments I hated about this book. Rotenberg seems hung up on references - literary and pop culture - and needlessly drops them willy-nilly throughout the story; not as subtle homages or even wink-y tributes, but just by straight up mentioning things. His female NSA agent character, Yslan Hicks, makes multiple references to her resemblance to Clarice Starling (from the Hannibal Lector novels). I mean, why call attention to it? And early on there is a mean-spirited swipe at Alec Baldwin that is so strangely spiteful it took me right out of the story. And the most annoying part (for me, because I am irrational at times) was that Decker at one point asks for a specific brand of bottled water - for no reason. Is this book sponsored by Evian? It was weird. Maybe it was supposed to say something about his character, but if so, it went right over my head.

This is another one of those books that it may be impossible for me to review fairly, as I simply do not care much for the genre in general. Honestly it's a book that I put in a category I like to think of as "Dad books"; anything that has federal agents chasing some dude around doesn't appeal to me, but I think it would be a good gift for somebody's dad. Perhaps it is fitting that it was recommended (and loaned) to me by my own future father-in-law. It is a book I would not hesitate to recommend to him if he hadn't already read it.

Yes I realize this review has been profoundly unhelpful.

If I were rating this book for that purpose (ie. as a recommendation to someone who enjoys the genre), I would probably give it four towers. For myself, I didn't enjoy it that much, and would probably give it two. So, three towers it is:

 

The Torontonians by Phyllis Brett Young

I did not get a conventional academic education in feminism/feminist theory, so I missed that stage of being immersed in second wave literature and theory. Despite this it took me a long time to get on board with intersectionality, privilege, etc. but regardless, the pop culture of/depicting that particular time of despair and ennui never really fascinated me.

You know what I'm talking about - the fifties/early sixties, white middle-class housewives living in the suburbs and yearning for something more. Think Revolutionary Road, Mad Men, etc. (and see how it still captivates us - or perhaps re-captivates us). This is what The Torontonians is about - a middle-class white housewife, Karen, who lives in the suburbs and begins to see her life as unimaginably dull, and begins to toy with the idea of suicide.

What kept me from being bored while reading The Torontonians was that it was not a tired re-tread of this pop culture trope; this book was first published in 1960, so it was pretty much written in real time. Young has captured perfectly the mood of her time, the fashion and feelings that costume designers and cinematographers are busting their butts now trying to replicate. I can't imagine that this book wasn't groundbreaking when it was published; I wonder how many women saw themselves in it, and how painful and liberating it must have been for them. At times I was bored and frustrated by it, but read in the context of the time it was written, it is earth-shattering.

The story takes place over a week of Karen's life, taking many detours into memories of her past. She lives in the fictional Toronto suburb of Rowanwood, and has just watched workmen lay the Chinese carpet she and her husband Rick have dreamed of owning for years. Suddenly, the end of the road has arrived - all of her dreams for herself have come true, and she realizes, slowly but surely, how petty and fragile those dreams really were. Now begins her "happily ever after", a prospect so dull and maddening, she considers suicide.

What struck me about the novel was that despite being rooted in a very particular time and place, it is in some ways a universal story about what it means to grow up, or to be a "grown up". All of Karen's friends live what we would think of as grown up lives, with houses, cars, children, responsibilities, etc. But they act like adolescents, with their obsessions with things, their sneaking around, their idiotic conduct. And Karen begins to realize how much she had romanticized things in her past, as well as the concept of having the house and living in Rowanwood. She is not an adult until she decides to live fully in reality.

I can't say too much about the story because it is one of those books that is about the journey; you need to follow everything through Karen's eyes and watch her grow. I loved how the author used Toronto as a blend of fact and fiction; Rowanwood is not real, nor are some of the street names mentioned, but some landmarks are - the Canada Life building, the art gallery, the university. As someone who is slightly familiar with the city, I found this led to the impression of a layer of fantasy covering the life of the inhabitants of Rowanwood - their slight separation from the reality of the life of the city. It was one of the most effective uses of Toronto as a setting that I've read so far.

There were times when I was a bit bored by the book, or I didn't want to pick it up because it was a bit depressing. But it was definitely, for me anyway, a worthwhile read and I would recommend it, for sure.

Three CN Towers out of five

The Ravine by Paul Quarrington

I have read one of Quarrington's books before and rather enjoyed it; sadly it was not set in Toronto (it was Home Game for those looking for a recommendation for a tragicomic novel about a baseball game between a strange religious cult and a group of circus freaks, as I so often am). While The Ravine had some of the same stylistic elements, it reminded more vividly of Ghosted; the meta writing-about-the-process-of-writing, the post-chapter ambiguous dialogues, the protagonist: in both novels, a male writer with substance abuse problems who is trying to come to terms with a past incident in which he seriously fucked up someone he cared about.

Quarrington does it better, but only slightly. The Ravine deals with a middle-aged TV writer, Phil, who decides to write a novel, which both is and isn't this one. He has pinpointed the moment when his life started to go down the tubes, and it is an incident from his childhood in which he, his brother and their childhood friend Norman went into a ravine and came out damaged. Phil has never really climbed out of the ravine in the intervening years.

(Incidentally, the Ravine and Phil's description of the Don Mills area, where he grew up, are the only indications that this book was set in Toronto - it really could have happened anywhere).

I liked a lot of things about this book. I thought it was refreshing to have a protagonist who knew he was a fuck-up, leaving it up to the reader to sympathize, or not. I liked the way it dealt with the effect of television on a certain generation, the ones who started getting it in their homes when they were already pre-pubescent, and what that did to our cultural environment. I couldn't relate directly of course, but Phil's memory of getting the television and the change it made it his life certainly brought me back to being that same age and getting the internet in our house. It makes a big difference, the time in which these changes come into your life. I also loved the theme of high art vs. low art, and whether the novel is a sacred thing that is damaged when a TV writer like Phil starts on one. 

That said, overall I didn't find the story super compelling; it's hard to I guess, when you're not sure if you even like the main character. The descriptions of the two main women in his life - Rainie and Ronnie, if you can believe it - left a lot to be desired. Milligan, the star of Phil's western-themed TV show, and Bellamy, the makeup girl Phil has an affair with, were both lazily created stereotype bundles that I didn't care about AT ALL. And the climactic conversation with Norman was a bit trite.

I think Quarrington gave himself a lot to work with here, but somehow fumbled on the payoff. I wanted to be more interested in the twists and hooks - for a character whose love of Rod Serling drives a lot of the plot, I feel like there should have been a more compelling surprise, and a better use of dramatic irony. This book wasn't everything it could have been.

Three towers out of five.

Ghosted by Shaugnessy Bishop-Stall

My mother can usually tell when she's reading an author's first novel, because "they try to put everything they know into it". When I got to the end of Ghosted, I knew it was a first novel without having to flip to the "About the Author" blurb. There is a lot going on in this book.

The story follows a guy named Mason, who has been dicking around for five years and getting in varying amounts of trouble. We meet him in his new apartment on Spadina, secured for him by his friend Chaz - a small time gangster and potentially the most likeable character in the book. Mason has a cocaine problem, a booze problem, and a gambling problem; he spends the first half of the book basically handing over money to Chaz, who is not only his landlord, but also his dealer and poker buddy.

Eventually, through his job selling hotdogs (something Chaz also, unsurprisingly, set him up with), Mason hits on a better scheme: ghostwriting suicide notes. Sounds like the set up for a whimsical, if slightly dark, tale of redemption, right?

Yeah, no. This book is definitely funny at times, but mostly it is depressing and scary. I can't say much else about the plot because there are quite a few surprises (well, I was surprised) but I will lay this out right now in case you are thinking of reading it, because I wish I had known in advance: there is a scene of child rape that is graphically written. You need to know it happens, but you can skip the actual paragraph without missing anything salient.

This is a story about empathy and redemption. There is a lot to take away from it. I think that a couple of the characters and situations were a bit superfluous and could have been saved for another book, and I think Mason dicks around for too long in the beginning. That said, Bishop-Stall is definitely a very gifted writer who has a keen understanding of some nitty-gritty shit that most people don't get to. I was never bored reading it. But for a book that drags you down so hard, there needed to be less of it.

There's definitely some cool Toronto scenery, especially around College and Spadina. Someone kills themselves on the subway tracks, and someone else gets hit by a streetcar. Fun stuff.

I will read Bishop-Stall's second novel and like it even more, I'm sure. This one gets three CN Towers out of five.

Holding Still For As Long As Possible by Zoe Whittall

When I got around to reading Catcher in the Rye, I was already 23-ish, and I kind of hated it. But really I had the sense that I was reading it too late in life; that you can get a lot more out of it if you read it as a teenager. All those feelings of rage and isolation are so much more relateable.

I say this because while I enjoyed Holding Still, I feel like I might have enjoyed it a lot more had I read it about five years ago; and I would be hesitant to recommend it to anyone who is not in their early twenties. It captures so perfectly the feelings of those years, at least for a specific set of twenty-somethings: the drama, the sexual exploration, the sometimes self-imposed poverty, the longing to connect to something bigger than oneself.

The characters in Whittall's novel live in the neighbourhoods my friends and I live in; the downtown Toronto neighbourhoods that consist of gorgeous old buildings divided into apartments, secret gems in areas that are rapidly turning into condo forests. Gentrification is an ever-present background character in this story.

The story itself is more like a bunch of stuff that happens in the lives of some people. It's interesting and engaging, but not totally traditionally story-shaped. People get together, break up, hang out, think about going to class or work or back home to visit their parents. All the characters seem to have a very fluid sexuality, which is really cool; gender identity does not appear to be a barrier to any of their relationships. They communicate through text messages and hang out at odd hours of the night. They probably don't think that they are hipsters. Every one of them seems like someone I know.

What I really liked was how Whittall dealt with her trans character; it came up at the beginning that he was trans, and then it was not mentioned again. He had a regular life like every other character. This is positive representation: when it's not such a big fucking deal. I liked it very, very much.

The city was used well as a backdrop to the story, and I always really like reading scenes set in places that I know. The Drake came up, and the Beaver Cafe (super cool since I know a guy who works there). One pivotal scene takes place at an intersection about two blocks from my place. One character who is a paramedic works out of Toronto Western Hospital. Very very cool.

I did like the book a lot; I just found it hard to get emotionally invested in characters with problems that I already probably spent too much time and energy on in my own life just a few years ago. I do highly recommend it for people in the 19-24 age range, especially those looking to read about non-hetero people who have regular person problems and aren't tokens or designated sidekicks.

I give it three out of five CN towers.