Category: Bookends

I hadn’t expected to enjoy this small memoire, published the year Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize (Literature).

But the book blew me away. Of course, the writing about his cross-country tour in a camper is very fine. Plus there’s my affinity for his companion poodle, Charley. I’m a long-standing fan of Standard Poodles.

But what really hit me is just how much of what Steinbeck observed about the US and Americans then could be written about the country and its people today. How prescient he was over 60 years ago.

Particularly, the wrenching description towards the end of the book when Steinbeck travels to New Orleans to see the sickening show put on by the ‘Cheerleaders’ taunting an African American child being escorted by police into the elementary school during desegregation. And how the public on site responded remains chilling.

Steinbeck could be describing the current leadership climate of playing to the audience. And the abyss that separates many Americans from each other, widening by the minute.

Even though some language and thinking are dated, this is still a book to be read in our times. 8/10

One of my book clubs read Constance Beresford-Howe’s A Serious Widow. And after I discovered The Book of Eve (1973), on loan to me, on a neglected shelf amidst yet to be read poetry collections, I read it in almost one sitting. Go to Bookends on this site to read about it or click on this direct link.

Not the only writer to tackle a wife/mother/slave to her time and place in the world who abandons her life (e.g., Anne Tyler, Ethel Wilson), this slim novel is a keeper. At times in some ways reminiscent of A Serious Widow, the writer captures the stages in this leave-taking unflinchingly—the discovery of self, the loss of self, degradation, second thoughts, and ultimately acceptance of self and embracing life choices made. Beresfor-Howe’s writing is honest, perceptive, touching, and true to her subject 100%. And all this in the context of Montreal’s East End and downtown, where the city so familiar to me becomes a character in the story in its own right.

This 2020 book by by Aimee Nezhukumatathil and illustrated by Fumi Nakamura, was on one of my book club’s list for last year, but we didn’t get to it. Part memoir, part selective, nature exposé focussing on creatures and flora of surprising and unusual variety, part poem, part collection of mini-essays, part Cri de Coeur regarding climate change. Illustrations lovely. Short. Digestible. Memorable.

I have given away the extra copy I received. And may give away the one I meant to keep. Or not.

A perfect antidote to everything pandemic, particularly for those honest enough to admit publicly how often they reread Jane Austen’s novels for sheer pleasure.

Jenner’s characters, settings and solid references to Austen’s body of work fully satisfied my cravings for escape into a world not of our time. The charm of this Canadian author’s novel offsets the somewhat predictable plot. Read this book and smile.
8.5/10

I cannot escape the aura of this granddaughter’s singular capture of the life of her elusive artist and poet grandmother, Suzanne Meloche, in a fictionalized series of short, diary-like accounts written in the 2nd person and based on facts uncovered in personal effects and through a private investigator’s research.
The portrait is complex. Suzanne, “the woman who flees”—a literal translation of the original French title—created poetry and abstract, violent art in the context of the Automatist movement in Duplessis-repressed Quebec. Utterly selfish and cruel, except when in the thrall of new love or pity, Suzanne abandons children, lovers, cities and rarely regrets not belonging anywhere.
Her photo shows a beautiful, catlike and feral face that becomes who she became.
This 2019 CBC Canada Reads selection: a must-read. 8/10

This novel, where an island in the Swedish archipelago in a dying sea is a main character, represents the embodiment of John Donne’s “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of a continent.”

The island sanctuary of the protagonist, a disgraced MD, prisoner of his avoidance personality and selfishness, is invaded by past misdeeds. The force of the interventions challenge him to open his compartmentalized self to the possibility of change, reject isolation and rejoin the continent of the living by accepting responsibility for his own actions and coming to care about others.

An ‘I-couldn’t-put-the-book-down’ kind of read, the book overplays situations with violent drama (SPOILER ALERT: near rape, cat/dog/maggots, suicide by sword, death throes) plus redemption comes at a price: heart failure. Never once did I ‘like’ the protagonist, whose name I can’t recall.                                                                                                                                         7.5/10

Suggested for reading list as a book with humour, this novel is distinctly unfunny, with the exception of pages 222-223. Perhaps the ‘mis-label’ turned me off from the start. Added to that: only one likeable character, Bee, resilient daughter of a dysfunctional union (distant genius father with also genius, now fallen, falling-apart but loving mother, Bernadette); plus a staccato, email structure as the construct to advance a plot relying on exaggerated and improbable characters and situations which strain credibility. I mean, who lives in a crumbling ex-school where vines are coming through the floor? Though I put the book down at the ‘intervention’ to commit Bernadette, her escape intrigued me. I admit I was rooting for her, for Bee, and for a happy ending. Incredible but happy it was.                                                  5/10

Laid low by flu, I took up this independently published 102-page novella, which almost stalled during “Adam,” the first and least engaging, most recitative section of three, interrelated but independent first person narratives. Even though Adam’s family relationships and connection to the land, its apple orchards and the seasons are well presented, I almost set the book aside.

I’m happy I persevered.

The second section’s staccato and compelling narrative, “David,” captures the unique voice of Adam’s younger brother who lives somewhere on the autism spectrum. Blendell’s poignant portrait makes David unforgettable. The final section belongs to Gail, Adam’s partner in life. Her way of drawing him into a conversation in the service of their relationship and future adds sweet wisdom to the spell cast by the book’s language, characters and setting.             7.5/10

Somewhat self-indulgent and narcissistic, this easy-read memoire, occasioned by Gill turning 30, offers humourous moments but isn’t really FUNNY because of the telling and touching insights she provides into growing up as an outsider in a ‘white’ culture felt and into the rigidity of her parents’ Sikh belief system.

The best part of the book? Gill sets a 5-part agenda to live experiences denied her as a child by her factory-worker parents: go to camp, own a pet, learn to swim and to dance, and visit Disney World. For this odyssey, she quits her job, lives in NYC (Brooklyn) for a couple of months and predictably returns home with the notion of a way forward to free her creative self, fuelled by endless childhood hours watching TV and junk food binges with her siblings.        6.5/10

Frankly, Plum Johnson’s pettiness intruded on my enjoyment of the book. Perhaps her mother’s letters will anchor another memoire, since “They Left Us Everything” offered only a teasing glimpse of the woman, whom Plum resented but came to appreciate through de-cluttering the family home and herself.

I also didn’t find the book humorous, one of the labels jurors for The Charles Taylor non-fiction prize gave to the 2015 winner.

That said, the memoire touched me because of how the narrative often echoed my own clearing-out experience after the death of my mother at 90. Even now, I’m reluctant to deal with boxes of her papers. Perhaps Plum’s approach to organizing and preserving such records will help me move forward, so I can leave to my children the task of deciding what to keep.                                                                                                                                                7/10