The Lightning Field by Heather Jessup

All stories are about redemption. This is my new theory based on the books I've been reading for this project (the blog, that is). This novel has a blink-and-you'll-miss-it phoenix leitmotif, including a protagonist who is quite literally struck by lightning and rises harder and (arguably?) stronger from the ashes. It is masterfully crafted.

For the first part of the book I was worried that it would be another second-wave-style exploration of white housewives' boredom in the suburbs post-war, much like The Torontonians. I honestly don't think I can stomach another such story - not because it's not a valid thing to write about, just because it doesn't interest me personally and I feel so removed from that narrative. But two things made The Lightning Field different: the housewife, Lucy, is struck by lightning while pregnant with her youngest child; and her husband, Peter, works as an engineer/draftsman on the Avro Arrow, the groundbreaking and famously doomed Canadian aeronautics project, cancelled by Diefenbaker's Conservative government in 1959.

I didn't know much about the Arrow and the novel definitely paints a clear picture of the impact of the layoffs of over 14,000 people working on the project, including many top scientists and engineers who were quickly recruited by American companies - instant brain drain! The loss of his job changes Peter, just as the lightning strike changes Lucy, and the novel watches those changes ripple through the lives of their friends and children.

Guys, this book is gorgeous. It is SO beautifully written, the characters are well-drawn and very sympathetic - even Peter, who is kind of an asshole. It is a complex snapshot of a certain time in Toronto's history, and of coming of age in that time. Jessup creates a world that has many unseen but intriguing components; I would read a novel about what happens to Lucy's estranged best friend Claire in those missing years, or about the lives of any of Lucy's children. The author avoids one of the common pitfalls of first novels - putting everything you know into it - and manages to create curious little pockets of unseen action. She also creates sneaky metaphors that catch you by surprise; my breath literally caught in my throat reading the conversation between Lucy and her co-survivors of lightning strikes at a conference, as they explain to her that she is lucky to have scars because people will believe what happened to her. (It's about rape, right? Yeah, I got it). Or flight - Peter's work of course, and his first flight as his daughter is born, and how the boys' dreams for themselves are so closely tied to flight.

There are so many excellent themes touched on: death of course; redemption; love; fate; all the big ones. I loved the dinner scene near the end, with the children huddled under the table passing around a bottle of wine. I loved Lucy, with all her flaws and her strength and how completely she encompasses the feeling of being an adult and not knowing what the hell you're supposed to do. She is one of my favourite characters that I've read about for this project.

I cry at everything that's meant to make me cry, it's true; but it takes a gifted writer to make me cry about weird shit like the Avro Arrow getting cancelled. Heather Jessup is a gifted writer, and definitely someone I will read again.

Five CN Towers out of five.

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 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.

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:

 

Where We Have to Go by Lauren Kirshner

No critic or reviewer can be objective; it stands to reason that every story and experience affects us differently depending on a multitude of factors that encompass who we are and where we come from. But I find some books are harder than others to give a fair review, or at least a review that will help people who are not me decide if they want to read it.

This book is one of those, because I identified so strongly with the protagonist, Lucy Bloom. She is two years older than me, and the story is her growing up in the nineties, dealing with body image issues, longing to be popular, aching to understand the adult world (and then, the more she understands it, longing to be rid of it). The friend that she makes halfway through the book, Erin, is like a composite of the three or four friends I had in junior high and high school who saved me by being so smart and strange. A lot of what happens to Lucy didn't happen to me, but she is such a perfect encapsulation of being a girl of that age, in that time, that it's like reading my own diary.

So that's why I'm not sure how much this review will apply to those who don't fall in the category of "girl born in the early eighties and raised in middle-class (to lower-middle class) Western society", but I imagine you will still like the book. It is absolutely wonderfully written, and as remarkable for the stories left out than those included.

Lucy is eleven when we first meet her. Her parents' relationship is falling apart; her father is a travel agent who has never been anywhere, and is a little too friendly with a woman at his AA meetings, and her mother is a thrift-store shopping, just a little too embarrassingly foreign woman with the classic "Jewish mom" concerns of getting Lucy fed and fixing her up with a nice boy. Lucy takes refuge in watching Alf reruns (remember Alf?) and nurtures compulsions that, if her parents paid attention, are clear early warning signs of the eating disorder she later develops.

The book follows Lucy through about eight years of her life. I loved how major stories that could have taken up the whole book - her parents' divorce, her eating disorder, her relationship with her grandfather - are presented as important, but just one piece each of a whole life. This is not a story about eating disorders or family relationships or death. It is a story about growing up as a girl. It is in some ways painfully 90s, but in other ways perfectly timeless.

I read that Kirshner was mentored by Margaret Atwood, which makes sense to me - this book is like the spiritual successor to Cat's Eye. However, while Kirshner touches on many of Atwood's pet themes - particularly women and girls, and how they act towards and around each other - she has her own very distinct style. The tone is not as dark as in Atwood's work; throughout the story, I always had hope for Lucy, a hope I never have for Atwood's characters. Kirshner is masterful with light humour that doesn't intrude on the momentum of even the sad parts of the story. She is absolutely a gifted writer; I would read more of her work in a heartbeat.

Four CN Towers out of five.

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

Helpless by Barbara Gowdy

This novel is a very well-written and compelling story whose main theme is pedophilia. How does one review or recommend such a book? I know it was good, but...did I like it? I was upset by it, and anxious, and uncomfortable - it wasn't a pleasurable experience to read it, but in another way it was, because it was so technically well executed. It's like trying to review Hotel Rwanda.

The story follows the actions and thoughts of four main characters - Celia, a single mother working two jobs and struggling to make ends meet; Rachel, her beautiful mixed-race daughter who is happy and lovely and practical; Ron, a pedophile (but not a child molester) in denial, who runs a vacuum-repair shop; and Nancy, Ron's girlfriend, also working two jobs, struggling with addiction and a history of abusive relationships. Ron sees and starts to follow Rachel; he gets it in his head that she is being neglected by her mother and sexually abused by their landlord, Mika. Ron abducts Rachel for her "protection". Most of the book is about Ron and Nancy concealing and taking care of her, and Celia (and Mika) looking for her and freaking out, understandably. Interspersed throughout are flashbacks to the characters' pasts, lending a lot of intrigue and partial explanations without taking away from the story. 

The key to the story is Nancy, who is manipulated by Ron's belief that Rachel is being abused. She knows there is something wrong with what they're doing, but she also thinks they are protecting the girl. Her turmoil is the most compelling and excrutiating element of the story - I just wanted to grab her and tell her to call the police! Right now! Ahhhhhhhhhh!

The other fascinating element for me was Ron's point of view. He knows that he finds young girls beautiful, particularly a certain type. He often watches them. But he has himself convinced that this is not sexual, and he views child molesters as complete monsters. He not only convinces Nancy he is protecting Rachel, he convinces himself. He really believes that she is in danger (or is already being molested) and that she is safer with him. His desires are presented as complicated; there was a strong divide between his feelings and his actions. He doesn't want to hurt Rachel, but he keeps her underwear in his pocket. He fantasizes about her kissing him on the lips. He clearly wants to touch her but tells himself that it must be initiated by her - and yet he is still delusional enough to think that he does not have sexual feelings for her. It's strange, but believable. Which makes it all the more disturbing.

The city features prominently as the setting, particularly after Rachel has disappeared and a grid search is underway. It makes the story that much more terrifying to have it set in your own backyard, of course. My god I'm glad I don't have kids. One thing I found kind of interesting was an early mention of suicide by throwing oneself off the Bloor Viaduct. This is the second book I have read for this project that talks about committing suicide in that way. I just find it an interesting touch, because there is a collective subconscious in Toronto that associates that particular structure, at least partially, with suicide. You could always just say "I'm going to throw myself off a bridge", but this character says (mega paraphrase): "I'm going to throw myself off the Bloor Viaduct". It marks it as a Toronto story. Living in Toronto, I would say I'm going to throw myself off a bridge, but if I was back in Fredericton I would probably say I'm going to throw myself off the train bridge. Interesting markers of geographic specificity.

Anyway, to the task at hand. I don't know what to say about this book. I think that based on the skilled writing, the compelling plot and interesting characters, it was very very good. I can only recommend it tentatively though, and if you are at all triggered by themes of pedophilia/child sexual abuse, emotional abuse/coercion, child abduction, etc. then proceed with caution.

That said, I would definitely read Gowdy again because her writing really is terrific.

Four 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.

Consolation by Michael Redhill

I know that a lot of my reviews have been very positive so far, and you're probably starting to think I'm one of those critics who just likes everything. Well, that is not true - especially about books. Ask any of my friends who have ever heard me talk about the Celestine Prophecy, and you will know what I think of bad writing. I also find that some books are quite well written and very good, but they're just not my thing (see Fables of Brunswick Avenue). But I think I've just been lucky so far with the books I've picked for this blog.

I am saying all this because I want you to know that when I tell you Consolation is among the top three most beautifully written books I've ever read, you need to know that it actually means something. I do know good writing when I come across it, and this book is pure poetry. (For the curious, the other two books in my top three would be A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry and No Great Mischief by Alistair MacLeod - ha! All three are Canadian).

Consolation deals with two stories: the first is the story of Jem Hallam, a chemist living in Toronto in the 1850s, and the story wrapped around it is of John Lewis, a young man in present-day Toronto, struggling with the death - and legacy - of his father-in-law, who committed suicide while suffering from ALS and believing that the construction site of a new arena was sitting on historically groundbreaking photographs of early Toronto.

This book is primarily about loss, about the past and how we relate to it, and about family. John is a man without a family, preparing to marry into one with a lot of baggage. As someone who is about to get married - and has been navigating the relating-to-a-long-term-love-interest's-family waters for nine years now - I related so much to both John and his fiancee, Bridget, as they both struggled to figure out John's place. In fact, there was a lot going on in John's life that struck a chord with me: the low-paying, labour-of-love job he picks up and how it contrasts with Bridget's career as a lawyer; the feeling of wandering through his twenties with the vague suspicion that adulthood should be here by now; the longing for acceptance and validation (a universal theme, for sure).

Hallam's story mirrors John's in his almost unconscious search for a family, and his unwillingness to let go of what he has lost. His Toronto is an unfriendly place, in climate and society. It was fascinating to read about the early days of the city, the makeup of a place consisting of so many people who had left their families behind in England. A city of lonely souls.

The whole book is gorgeously written, but there are some particularly beautiful scenes that I adored. The scene between Marianne and David (John's future in-laws) in the shower is probably the most compelling and emotional sex scene I have ever read. I cried and cried (on the streetcar!). There are a few conversations between John and his future mother-in-law that broke my heart; Redhill is clearly a writer who knows what it means to lose someone. His writing is bold in dealing with the uglier feelings that come with death - the who-loved-him-more, who-knew-him-better competitions that lurk beneath each conversation. Suicide always adds an extra layer to grief; whoever feels they had the greater claim to the deceased's love is inevitably burdened with the guilt of not intervening. We know it's not our fault but that's how it goes.

Toronto plays an interesting role in the book; the Toronto of the past is impatient to grow and thinks itself too young to merit keeping anything for historical interest, while present-day Toronto is also a place of progress-worship with no time to look for the past. Streets are mentioned, and landmarks, but it is definitely more about the feel of the city. Through the character of David, the author pleads with us to consider the past, to think about what life was really like and the people who have gone before. "The past really happened," he says to his daughter. It has to have, because what else would we leave behind?

I can't recommend this book highly enough. I adored it. Please read it if you ever have the chance; if you live in Toronto, there are 275 copies at the library. You've got no excuse.

Five 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.