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My Fourth Anniversary

My kids making a gingerbread house
It's hard to believe, but today is the fourth anniversary of the Unexpected Twists and Turns.(The link is to my very first post: Ice Cleats Anyone?) Not only have I written over 400 posts, but I have exceeded my expectations in terms of pageviews. I have EL James and Fifty Shades of Grey to thank for that. I guess I used the right keywords, title and embedded links for my review to rank high in the search engine results, because I certainly got a lot of hits and comments.

You may have also noticed that I did not write as often this year and that I reviewed a lot more books, show, films, etc. As some of you already know, I began blogging when my son was but a babe, and my daughter was in kindergarten. Blogging was a great way to connect with people while staying home with my kids. Today, my son is in kindergarten, and my daughter is a pre-teen in fifth grade. Needless to say, I feel a little more comfortable leaving them with a babysitter for a night on the town. This year, I also started writing for a group of talented people at Rover Arts. They are the ones responsible for sending me some great books as well as tickets to review shows here in Montreal. If you'd like to subscribe to The List, Rover's weekly listing of things to do in Montreal, click here.

Yesterday, on a trudge to pick up my daughter's friend.
Over the next year, I will continue to blog at about the same frequency, as we now have homework, chores, piano lessons, and then there will be swimming lessons in the spring. Yep! We're busy. The themes may change slightly, but you can be sure that there will be more on books and films, plus a few posts on my neighbourhood.

I'd like to thank you all for your support, especially my email subscribers who have been reading my posts since the very beginning. Cheers!

Here's a list of my most popular posts this year:
Review: 50 Shades of Grey
Success: Don't Be That Guy
Montreal: 200,000 People Demonstrate
The Year of the E-book: Fifty Shades of Grey and Oprah
The Return by Dany Laferrière
 Ru by Kim Thuy


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Mister Roger and Me by Marie-Renée Lavoie

Mister Roger and Me
Marie-Renée Lavoie
House of Anansi Press

For children, cartoon characters not only offer entertainment, but also provide a vision, however skewed, of the outside world. And although many might refuse to admit it, cartoon heroes often serve as early role models. This is the case in the endearing story of Mister Roger and Me, the translation of Marie-Renée Lavoie’s award-winning debut novel.

Set in the early 1980s, the story follows the life of Hélène through those seemingly endless pre-teen years. The eight-year-old decides she wants to be called Joe because she assumes that life as a boy is better. It isn’t because she is the second eldest of four daughters, but because Hélène is enthralled with the cartoon heroine Lady Oscar, a military captain in Maria-Antoinette’s palace guard who conceals her female identity behind a heavy coat laden with medals and military insignia. For Hélène, Lady Oscar epitomizes courage, strength and adventure.

Although our young protagonist tries to emulate Lady Oscar, her neighbourhood offers little in the way of romantic windswept settings. Her working class neighbourhood is populated with psychiatric outpatients roaming the streets, welfare recipients and her obese neighbours, the Simards. However, to Hélène, her surroundings are merely humble, not grim, and inspired by Lady Oscar, she strikes out to find an adventure in her tiny world. But instead of fighting for justice during the French Revolution like her heroine, Hélène lies about her age and says that she’s 10 to get herself a paper route, and when that isn’t enough, she takes on a second. At the same time, a new boarder moves into the Simards’ basement, a man by the name of Mr. Roger.

The new neighbour whiles away his day drinking beer in a worn-out armchair, and much to the chagrin of Hélène’s mother, Mister Roger swears like a sailor. But beneath his rough exterior lurks a kind heart, and the ailing senior dispenses wise advice to Hélène, in addition to serving as the neighbourhood source for home remedies. The senior and father of three grown children is a godsend who watches over Hélène and saves her from a fate that would have left lasting scars even on Lady Oscar.
The Original French

Lavoie has beautifully captured those bright shiny pre-teen years before the sordid side of human nature makes its unfortunate appearance. The brilliant use of Lady Oscar as a narrative device successfully reels the reader back to those tender years when performing an honourable deed was worth every last joule of energy. Another wise choice was the use of the first person narrative, limiting the reader to the world as seen through the eyes of a young girl. However, while the author has made some great choices, there are a number of passages with long-winded, heavy sentences that warranted a second read, interrupting the flow of the story.


Originally published under the title La Petite et le vieux in French, Mister Roger and Me was a risky undertaking, as many will immediately shy away from a story about a relationship between an old man and a young girl. But the odd pairing of characters works in this book; Hélène and Mr. Roger complement each other. The outgoing innocent child needs Mr. Roger’s guidance, while Hélène’s optimism offers Mr. Roger some hope in the final years of his life. Both funny and touching, Mister Roger and Me will remind readers of a time not long ago when we were far more trusting of our neighbours.

This review was originally posted in the Fall 2012 edition of mRb.




Other Reviews
Song of Roland by Michel Rabagliati
Mid-Life by Joe Ollmann
5 Broken Cameras by Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi
Detropia by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady
Finding Dawn by Christine Welch
The Fruit Hunters by Yung Chang
Review of the Juliet Stories by Carrie Snyder
The Day of the Crows directed by Jean-Christophe Dessaint

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Review of The Song of Roland by Michel Rabagliati

The Song of Roland
Michel Rabagliati
Conundrum Press

We’ve waited three long years for the English translation of Michel Rabagliati’s internationally acclaimed Paul à Québec, his sixth album in this semi-autobiographical series. As in Rabagliati’s previous stories, the author addresses a milestone in Paul’s life.

Our protagonist is your average middle-class nice guy, a husband to Lucie, and a father to Rose. In short, Paul is someone readers can readily identify with. Paul, now almost 40, moves with his family from their urban apartment to a modest home, just as he is hitting his stride in his career as a graphic artist. In other words, life is good. But on a long holiday weekend with Lucie’s parents and extended family, Paul inadvertently discovers that his father-in-law Roland is sick.

While The Song of Roland is about Roland’s life and legacy, this intergenerational portrait is also about family, love, and coping. Of course, the story will bring many readers to tears, but Rabagliati expertly negotiates the theme of death by adding moving family memories and generous doses of humour to keep things light and the narrative moving.

The old-school federalist and quintessential self-made man, Roland is also a likeable character. Born into poverty, he came of age in the prosperous post-war era and achieved relative wealth through hard work and determination, back in the day when success did not require a higher degree. His political views differ from those of his offspring, who came of age at the height of Quebec nationalism. But for all his hard work in life, Roland’s new rank among the dying is unbearable for the former executive, and true to the Kübler-Ross model, Roland proves to be a stubborn, difficult patient for hospice staff at the beginning of his three-month stay.

Rabagliati’s treatment of time in The Song of Roland is nothing short of masterful. As anyone who has lost someone can attest, the final months and days are excruciatingly long, and time indeed moves very slowly. To illustrate this, the author decelerated time segments by increasing his number of frames. In his beautiful broad ink brushstrokes, Rabagliati shows us Paul’s final drive to bid farewell to his father-in-law in no less than 22 frames, adding highly realistic yet extremely banal detail, such as Paul fastening his seatbelt, turning right onto Sauvé East, taking the Louis-H.-Lafontaine tunnel, and even passing by IKEA. The author successfully draws out the sequence while maintaining the reader’s interest.
The Original French Cover

In terms of graphic elements, the most stunning is Lucie’s nightmare, foreshadowing her father’s death. Rabagliati contrasts a sequence of luminous open spaces in which an adolescent Lucie and her father are clowning around on a summer’s day with that of Lucie walking alone in a dark dense forest with short teeth-like branches. Amid the darkness, Lucie comes across a small structure awash in light with a tiny Virgin Mary statue on the forest floor and then comes face to face with the shadowy grim reaper wielding a shot gun. Another poignant visual is the floral pattern created by Roland’s final injection of morphine.

The Song of Roland has been hailed as Rabagliati’s mid-career masterpiece and with good reason. This is his best yet. But the dramatic change in title for the English version will certainly raise some eyebrows. Why the sudden shift in emphasis from Paul to Roland? Could it be the new publisher? Anyway, diehard Paul fans who have patiently waited for the translation will not be disappointed. Once again Rabagliati, the storyteller, gives us another highly realistic and riveting chapter in Paul`s life, while Rabagliati, the artist and craftsman, skilfully brings his readers close enough to the action to make them feel personally involved in the story.



This review was first published in the summer 2012 edition of the Montreal Review of Books.



Other Reviews
Mid-Life by Joe Ollmann
5 Broken Cameras by Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi
Detropia by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady
Finding Dawn by Christine Welch
The Fruit Hunters by Yung Chang
Review of the Juliet Stories by Carrie Snyder
The Day of the Crows directed by Jean-Christophe Dessaint


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5 Broken Cameras by Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi

Adeeb (centre) and other demonstrators
Winner of the People's Choice Award at the RIDM, 5 Broken Cameras is an intimate look at the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as seen through the lens of Emad Burnat, a Palestinian farmer and amateur videographer living in Bil'in, West Bank. In his attempt to create a visual record of the border conflict that unfolds over six years, he has a series of five cameras destroyed. This is just one narrative thread that runs through this autobiograpical film, brilliantly edited by Israeli video activist Guy Davidi.

In 2005, Burnat purchases his first camera to film the birth of his fourth son Gibreel. This event  coincides with the arrival of Israeli surveyors who are laying the groundwork for a barrier through the village's olive groves. The barrier, a combination of barbed wire fence, a concrete wall and watchtowers, is ostensibly to protect the expanding Israeli settlements from snipers and suicide bombers. But the barrier also appropriates the Palestinian olive groves, the villagers' means of subsistence. Local Palestinians begin peaceful weekly protests, often resulting in violent clashes with Israeli soldiers. As can be expected, the conflict intensifies, the army closes in and the resistance movement swells to include Israeli and foreign sympathizers, all of which Burnat doggedly captures on film.

But 5 Broken Cameras also chronicles many personal events that run parallel to the struggle, taking the edge off the escalating violence and giving this conflict a much-needed human element. Burnat's friends, Adeeb and Basseem, the de facto resistance leaders, are key figures in the story. In addition to risking bullets in their verbal confrontations with Israeli soldiers, Adeeb is shot in the leg, while Basseem, the gentle giant, eventually meets his fate with a gas grenade. Burnat also films multiple arrests. The most poignant was his brother being apprehended by police, while both his mother and father tried in vain to stop the police vehicle.

Another narrative thread involves Burnat's son Gibreel. He grows from a joyful toddler whose first words are "cartridge" and "army," to a child with hardened eyes learning about heroes. Burnat, himself, also undergoes a few changes in the course of the film. His hair greys, he gains weight, and at the end of the film, he is involved in a near tragic accident that is unrelated to the conflict. Ironically, his life is saved at an Israeli hospital, and the Palestinian Authority refuses to pay him any compensation.

There are a few scenes, however, that appear staged for the sake of creating a stronger family narrative. The first scene that comes to mind is Burnat's wife putting Gibreel to bed and singing him a lullaby, and the second involves Burnat's wife telling him that his filming is jeopardizing their lives. These scenes may well have happened, but they appear to have been filmed after the fact. In addition, not all the footage used was Burnat's, as it was explicitly stated in the credits. Footage was also taken from Davidi's work and that of another unnamed cameraman.

In spite of this, Davidi's editing is first-rate. In an interview with Box Office, we learn that he had to go through over 1,000 hours of footage, and then do the final edit with Véronique Lagoarde to create this 90-minute film. The challenge, he says, was "to create a balance between the violence and the nice moments, the delicate moments." And I must add that without these delicate moments, 5 Broken Cameras would have come across as just more horrifying coverage of the conflict in the Middle East, and I would have left after 10 minutes.

In the end, 5 Broken Cameras is a gripping tale that gives us a much more nuanced story of the intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Unsurprisingly, the film has won awards at both Sundance and the IDFA, the world's largest documentary film festival.

This review has been cross-posted at Rover Arts

Other reviews
Detropia by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady
Finding Dawn by Christine Welch
The Fruit Hunters by Yung Chang
Review of the Juliet Stories by Carrie Snyder
The Day of the Crows directed by Jean-Christophe Dessaint
M60: Faux Pas


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