The City Man by Howard Akler

This is a book with a very distinct style, but unlike some other stories with a similar cadence, it is immensely readable. Set in 1934, The City Man is the story of a pickpocket named Mona who becomes an anonymous source on a series of Star articles about the pickpocketing racket (or "the whiz") in Toronto. She becomes romantically entangled with the reporter, Eli Morenz, which leads to lots of trouble for both of them.

At around 150 sparsely populated pages, this is a super quick and easy read, but somehow Akler manages to stuff it full of evocative description and emotional depth. It's not even worth trying to understand the slang, which whizzes by at a mile a minute. I picked up on the meaning of what they were saying most of the time. I love the jazzy underworld talk from that time - I am personally trying to bring "what's the rumpus?" back into play.

I liked how the novel was littered with Eli's newspaper articles, which are short and somewhat quaint. The action is set into motion by the city's centenary celebrations, where the police band and bystanders are hit by the pickpockets in force, leading to the formation of a special "whiz squad" on the police force to catch the "Centenary Mob". The descriptions of Toronto are sparse but excellent; lots of recognizable streets and landmarks are sprinkled through the text.

It was especially cool to read about the role of female pickpockets - Mona does not do the actual picking of the pocket, but she has a more difficult job: framing the mark. She basically uses her body to very gently, very subtly move the mark into position and cause a slight distraction by her touch so that her partner can grab the cash more easily. Pretty sneaky.

This is the sort of book that takes a "less is more" approach to feelings, but it works. Morenz's editor tells him a heartbreaking story about his first scoop, and you never read Morenz's reaction, and the story is never brought up again, but you can imagine how it affected Morenz and you certainly feel it affecting you. There are so many little snippets of things that the characters are never shown struggling with, but it opens up those ideas for you to reflect on after closing the book. It is very effective writing.

I really enjoyed this book - it's a quick read but a deep one, and it will stay with you.

Four CN Towers out of five.

Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood

I love Margaret Atwood, but I actually haven't read a lot of her work. Cat's Eye is not a book I hear people talk about much; however, I found it to be, of her books I've read, the one that most clearly illuminates a feminist lens, and deals with the problematic issues of femininity and female relationships.

The story is about Elaine Risley, a painter who returns to Toronto in middle age for a showing of her work. Her weekend is cut with remembrances of her childhood, moving to the city with her strange (to others) family after early years of basically living in the wild (her father is an entomologist). Elaine has a brother, but has had no relationships with or experience of girls.

Through her three new friends, Carol, Grace and Cordelia, Elaine learns the ropes of femininity and the expectations of her sex through play, as little girls do. They do things like cutting out pictures of women and household items from the Eaton's catalogue and arranging them into scrapbooks, and playing with paper dolls of movie stars. But they also enforce a strange and arbitrary girl code that will be familiar to most girls reading, regardless of age; Cordelia makes up rules and standards that only she can see, but that Carol and Grace blindly enforce, and Elaine, longing to be loved and accepted, has to follow. She develops neuroses and bizarre fears, and is treated with increasing cruelty by her friends, but continues to return to them.

I can't describe much more of the plot because I feel like I can never do it justice. Atwood creates a very, very real girl world long before Mean Girls but similar in scope; an insulated world where no matter how bad things get, the worst thing would be to be cast out. The way Risley's half-remembered childhood influences her construction of herself, and her art, is heartbreaking; Atwood creates strong images and symbols that slowly begin to weave themselves through every aspect of the painter's life. Supposedly this is Atwood's most autobiographical novel ever, and of course it is - this could be any woman's life. The only thing that sets most of us apart from Elaine is that we grow up into the girl world; we learn the rules a little sooner.

The setting of Toronto is seen with cynical eyes. Post-war there is nothing going on; characters are constantly remarking on the lack of interest they have in the place. In the present day (the late 1980s) story, Elaine wanders around downtown and retraces her old steps, but the city itself still seems dreary and stale. The main character's relationship to the city and the period of her life when she lived there is a strong element in the novel, but this book is not exactly a tourist brochure for Toronto.

This is a story about memory and the construction of self; about women and their relationships to each other; and about loss. It was incredibly moving, but mostly just real - I think that for me, that is Atwood's greatest strength: her books are real talk.

I give this one five CN Towers out of five: