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The Other Side of Youth by Kelli Deeth

This is one of four reviews that I wrote for the Globe and Mail this year. It was a big step up from being a book blogger, and more than once, I wondered if I was up to the challenge.

Some of you may also know that I am now the Books Editor at Montreal's Rover Arts, an online arts review. This is a volunteer position for a few hours a week to hone my editing skills. I also have a day job. I'm a language professional, which is both demanding and rewarding, yet my blog is still my first love. 

I'd like to thank you, my readers, for your support. I've just completed my fifth year of blogging.

Happy New Year!

The Other Side of Youth, by Kelli Deeth, Arsenal Pulp Press, appearing in the Globe and Mail on November 29.

More than a decade has passed since the release of Kelli Deeth’s critically acclaimed The Girl Without Anyone. Set in a middle-class Toronto suburb, the collectio n of connected stories followed Leah, a young teen of recently divorced parents who are too self-involved to notice their daughter’s need for attention. After dropping out of school, Leah engages in high-risk behaviour, seeking love in all the wrong places. This highly realistic collection showcased Deeth’s ability to write taut, compelling fiction about someone as familiar as the girl at the mall, or the girl next door.

Deeth’s latest collection of short stories, The Other Side of Youth, is far more ambitious and even more intense. Set entirely in and around Toronto, the stories focus on life-changing events, serving up highly plausible yet often unsettling outcomes–the other side of personal issues that often go unseen. The female protagonists in the 11 tales range in age from their early teens to their late thirties. Each struggles with the life-choices she has made and their inherent consequences.

Picking up a theme from The Girl Without Anyone, Deeth writes convincingly about the vagaries of adolescent longing. Using simple prose, the Toronto-based writer delivers powerful narratives that are both alarming and realistic. In “End of Summer,” 13-year-old Sandra, grieving the loss of her brother, is repeatedly drawn to a field where girls are rumoured to be assaulted. In “Correct Caller,” one of several exceptional tales in this collection, 16-year-old Michelle sets out to distance herself from her embittered mother and prove that she can take care of herself. Landing a job over the phone, the 16-year-old is unfortunately hired by exactly the type of man her mother has warned her about, inadvertently putting herself in harm’s way. In “A Boy’s Hand,” adolescent Tanya seeks affection from an unstable boy, even after he is openly hostile towards her.  In the end, he threatens her with his father’s hunting rifle. In the conclusion of this disquieting tale, Deeth brilliantly taps into the traumatized girl’s mind: “…because it was a gun and it was pointed at me, it had gotten inside. Things that were on the inside never got out. They found a place to live, and when you closed your eyes, they showed themselves.”

Many of the exceptional stories in this collection deal with difficult choices related to motherhood. In “The Things They Said,” Courtney is reaching the end of her child-bearing years, and although she and Michael have decided not to have children because of their own dysfunctional childhoods, Courtney still feels that something is not right, regardless of what they tell each other. In “Ari,” Jana is unable to carry a child to term, and her otherwise loving relationship with Peter begins to disintegrate. Peter longs for a daughter like his niece Ari. The centerpiece, however, is the very moving “Vera’s Room.” The narrator and her husband Andrew adopt seven-year-old Vera, a foster child. Despite the couple’s decision, the narrator’s mothering instinct does not kick in. Vera senses this and rebels against her new mother. For the narrator, Vera is not the child she thought they would have. To make matters worse, Andrew is a natural father who reminds his wife that “it’s not all about her.”

The Other Side of Youth
is a series of finely honed short stories, the kind that linger in the mind well after the book is finished. The extremely rich subject-matter and the author’s ability to write satisfying endings could well be the reasons for this. Deeth is a great writer of short fiction, and The Other Side of Youth is the best collection of short stories I have read in recent memory. It was well worth the 12-year wait.

My other reviews in the Globe and Mail.
The Last Runaway by Tracy Chevalier
Bone & Bread by Saleema Nawaz
Studio Saint-Ex by Ania Szado


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A Moment in Villeray

The beginning of December is a busy time, and one of the hardest things is to muster enough energy on these short days to get everything done. December is also the month when I, like everyone else, take stock of the year passing. My family and I went through a lot this year, but the tragic events were offset by many positive moments.

I fell and injured my knee last year, and it stopped me from doing a lot of blogging this year. I just can't sit for extended periods of time anymore without some degree of pain, and because I work seated for 7.5 hours a day, something had to give.

But as luck would have it, the injury pushed me to spend a lot more time walking year-round in Jarry Park. There is nothing more beautiful than the intense blue of a winter sky, something I can't remember enjoying since I was a kid. And I know that this will annoy the s**t out of some people, but winter can be enjoyed with the right clothing.

Because of my injury I also carved out some time to go to yoga and pilates, which have been beneficial in more ways than one. Not only am I doing something I enjoy, but it also gives me a chance to socialize with people in my neighbourhood. Social opportunities are sorrily missed for people who work from home. But while regular exercise has helped, it has not cured my knee problems or the pain from sitting for long periods of time.

On Friday, I started physiotherapy. I checked on the Internet to find a physiotherapist within walking distance. The address was curiously on Rue Gary Carter, formerly known as Faillon Ouest. Everyone who is at least 40 will remember Gary Carter, the Expos golden-boy catcher, back when we had three TV stations, and if the Expos were playing that's what you were watching, whether you liked it or not. When I saw the sign, it was a happy nostalgic moment.

The physiotherapy session was less cheery. Plenty of prodding later, I discovered that I will need more than a few sessions of physio to correct the muscle imbalance caused by my fall. The problem with uncorrected damage is that our bodies compensate in different ways, which can cause subsequent injuries, namely in the back, neck or ankle.

With my list of exercises in hand, I walked home through the park by the pond. I thought about all the writing I had wanted to do this year but wasn't able to. Nevertheless, the quality of my life definitely improved with regular exercise and fresh air. Below is part of the beautiful silver lining of my injury.

The Pond at Jarry Park in Early December



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The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton

At 6:00 pm this evening, the Governor General of Canada, David Johnston, will be presenting 14 winners with literary awards. Eleanor Catton will be among the recipients of Canada’s highest literary honour for her historical suspense novel The Luminaries. The 28-year-old author has been making headlines around the world, but not just for her GG win. Six weeks ago, Catton won the much-coveted Man Booker Prize. She was the youngest winner for the longest novel (832 pages) in its history.

Catton was born in London, Ontario, where she lived until she was six while her father completed his PhD at the University of Western Ontario, but she grew up in Christchurch, New Zealand. Writing fiction is a lifelong endeavour, and the world is anxious to know how Catton managed to become such an exemplary writer at such a young age. She has said on repeated occasions that she has been writing for as long as she can remember and credits her mother, a librarian, for always keeping her with a fresh supply of books. Four years ago, Catton penned her debut novel The Rehearsal, which was also her Master’s thesis. A sex scandal at a high school formed the basis of the story, which received a number of awards, including the Amazon.ca First Novel Award.

A departure from her previous novel, The Luminaries takes place in Hokitika, a gold-rush town on the west coast of New Zealand’s south island in the 1860s. On a dark and stormy January evening, Walter Moody steps off a shipwreck and walks into the first Hokitika hotel he finds. He has come, like other European prospectors and Chinese labourers, to start afresh and seek his fortune in the New Zealand goldfields. Moody has had a deeply unsettling experience aboard the barque Godspeed, and is still shaken when he enters the hotel. There, he finds himself in the midst of 12 men who are holding an informal meeting about a series of unexplained events that involve a drugged prostitute found unconscious in the street, a wealthy young man who has disappeared and a fortune in gold found in the home of a hermit who has died under suspicious circumstances.

The reader must comb through multiple layers of speculation, contradiction and fact to uncover the reasons for these three events and the connection between them. In the course of this highly complex novel, the reader meets 20 characters that include a whoremonger, a chaplain, a greenstone hunter (the sole Maori character), an opium addict, a fortune-teller, a jailer, a politician and a former convict. Every character is privy to a piece of information that no one else knows. Gold is concealed in the seams of gowns, identities are stolen and fortunes are lost. Then, there is the astrology-based structure with charts at the start of each of the book’s sections. Catton has assigned personality traits that are stereotypical of one zodiac to each of the 12 men, while 7 other characters are said to have planetary influences.

The Luminaries reads like a Victorian novel, reminiscent of Dickens or Collins. The writing is beautiful, compelling and detailed, with so much keen insight that it is hard to imagine that the author is under the age of 30. There are multiple narrative threads, but the story under Catton’s deft hand never becomes unwieldy. At times, however, the many details are hard to keep straight. Fortunately each chapter starts with an epigraph with the names of characters who are to appear, making it easier to go back and check details. This is not a book to read on your commute to work. Instead, it is best enjoyed when you can read for hours at a time.

The narrative threads may not always be tied up perfectly, but there are plenty of wonderfully written distractions to make you quickly forget. Towards the end of the book, the epigraphs may tell too much of the story, but the author nevertheless serves up a highly satisfying ending. The Luminaries is a booklover`s novel.

Eleanor Catton’s abilities as a writer are astounding. If this is what she produces at age 28 then I look forward to what she will write at 50, when most writers are just hitting their stride. She is a shooting star in the literary firmament and a more than worthy recipient of the Governor General’s Award for fiction.

Other reviews
Lily and Taylor by Elise Moser
World of Glass by Jocelyne Dubois
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

This has been cross-posted at Rover Arts.




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The Missing Picture by Rithy Panh

Rithy Panh has made many films about his native Cambodia, but none as personal as The Missing Picture, awarded the Grand Prix (Un Certain Regard) at the 2013 Cannes International Film Festival. Now almost age 50, Panh states in the film's opening that he often finds himself revisiting memories of his childhood, that he seeks his childhood like a missing picture.

But because all of his family's photos and keepsakes were destroyed by the Khmer Rouge after it evacuated Phnom Penh in 1975, Panh has reconstructed his childhood from clay, creating intricate sets and colourful figurines of himself and each of his family members in order to tell his story. Images of the clay figurines are combined with and superimposed on footage from the regime's meticulously kept archives. The figurines take the edge off the many atrocities detailed in The Missing Picture, adding a warm childlike touch to an otherwise dark and chilling story.

As we see in the film, the director's childhood was happy and peaceful before the bombs began to fall in Cambodia. After the evacuation in 1975, Panh and his family were transported in a cattle car to a labour camp, where they were forced into re-education. As part of the Year Zero policy of the Khmer Rouge, families were separated and assigned numbers in lieu of names. Their clothes were dyed black, and their possessions destroyed, all in an attempt to erase their identities. Panh miraculously survives years of hardship and later seeks refuge in Thailand.

The Missing Picture is an extremely moving film. Although the atrocities of Pol Pot's killing fields are now well documented, this film's significant force comes from the fact that it is a first-person account of life in a Khmer Rouge labour camp and that no detail is spared. The regime's grainy black and white footage will also remind many people of US war coverage seen on the nightly news in the late 1960s and early 70s. TV images of US soldiers and terrified children in Indochina are perhaps some of the most powerful images of my own childhood. The Missing Picture reminded me of all the questions I had about war and bombs but that no adult could ever answer. 

The Missing Picture is poignant and more than deserving of its accolades. Rithy Panh has not only reconstructed the missing picture of his childhood, but he has also created an enduring record of what transpired in Cambodia where 2.5 million people lost their lives.

The Missing Picture is playing tonight at Cinéma du Parc 1 as part of the Rencontre internationale du documentaire de Montréal (RIDM).


Other related posts:
Dogs at the Perimeter by Madeleine Thien
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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Zines, Zines, Zines

Montreal's small press, comic and zine fair, Expozine, is happening this weekend at the St-Enfant Jésus Church on St-Dominque Street in the Mile End. Expozine started in 2002 in order showcase the multitude of publications that fall outside the mainstream. Since then, it has become one of the centrepieces of alternative publishing in North America. It is also one of my favourite events.

As I walked up to the entrance of the long hallway leading to Little Burgundy Room, formerly known as the church basement, I couldn't help but notice all the people congregated outside on this uncharacteristically sunny November afternoon. Then I recalled how hot the basement was in previous years and quickly took off my coat.

This year there are more than 270 exhibitors, and at 4:00 yesterday, the room was jammed full of people. This is an over-the-top fun event that is best enjoyed earlier in the afternoon when there is plenty of infectious enthusiasm among the creative people anxious to show off their latest work. By late afternoon, the heat hampers some of that exuberance.

The collection of handmade zines, buttons and T-shirts was as deliciously eclectic as ever, but there's quite a bit more polish to the work now than in previous years. Word is evidently out that internationally renowned comic publishers scout new talent at this event. Last June, Drawn and Quarterly Associate Publisher Peggy Burns told CBC radio that Montreal's Expozine was one of three fairs in North America where the publisher looked for new artists with new mini comics. Yesterday,  Publisher Andy Brown of Conundrum Press told me that he, too, shopped for new talent at Expozine.

Every year, I track down a few artists I have been watching over the years, wondering if this will be the year of their big break. I spotted the dark yet hilarious Richard Suicide and the charming Hasemeister, but did not find Iris, a young comic artist originally from Gatineau who creates intriguing and highly believable female characters. Visitors will inevitably find some of their own favourites.

If you're looking for some artistic inspiration drop by the Expozine, Canada's largest zine fair. To really enjoy the event, you might want to wear a short-sleeved shirt. If not, they serve beer.

This has been cross-posted at Rover Arts.

My previous trips to Expozine:
Montreal's 8th Annual Small Press Expozine (2009)
Expozine's Broken Pencil (2010)
Expozine 2011 (2011)

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Review of Lily and Taylor by Elise Moser

When the Lily and Taylor meet at a local high school, they discover that they have something in common--both their mothers had been in car crashes. While Taylor's mother died, Lily's mother survived, but the head injuries she sustained often require Lily to act as the parent.

Taylor, too, has lived through more than just the death of her mother. After her mother's death, she goes to live with her older sister and her violent partner. Taylor witnesses the escalation in violence until one day her older sister is killed, forcing Taylor to live with her grandparents in a new town and be a surrogate mother to Mason, her sister's 5-year-old son.

Moving to a new town has an upside for Taylor. It means that she is far away from Devon, her intense and controlling boyfriend. Just as Taylor begins to flourish at her new high school, Devon shows up with a friend and insists on taking Taylor for a ride. Lily hops in at the last minute, and the four of them go for a drive that no one will soon forget.

Lily and Taylor is the raw account of two teenage girls negotiating a far from perfect world. In spite of their traumatic pasts and weighty adult responsibilities, the two strike up a fast and furious friendship--something to sustain them through their difficult moments and add some much needed light to their daily lives.

Author Moser takes plenty of risks with Lily and Taylor, never shying away from the realities and darkness of domestic violence. While this is fine fiction, it also provides an eerily accurate depiction of an abusive relationship as it ebbs and flows. This was an intense read, one that I could not put down. 

Lily and Taylor is considered a Young Adult (YA) book, but people of all ages will find some food for thought in this compelling Thelma and Louise-style adventure.

This review has been cross-posted at Rover Arts.


Other reviews
World of Glass by Jocelyne Dubois
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

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Chihuly...From Many Angles

My husband and I took our kids to see Dale Chihuly's "Utterly Breathtaking," an exhibit of hand-blown glass at the Montreal Museum of Fine Art (MMFA) on the very last day it was in the city. Chihuly's unique collection had attracted more than 275,000 visitors, along with rave reviews.

The Pacific Northwest native, often described as the new Tiffany, is more of a glass sculptor than an artist who creates strictly decorative pieces. His colourful, finely detailed creations are life-sized and imposing, creating a striking contrast between strength and fragility. The overarching theme in this exhibit was marine life, but there were also plenty of flowers, mushrooms and even a neon forest.

Although I would have liked to get much closer to the objects than the MMFA permitted, I shuddered at the thought of having to dust each piece in the collection.

After all, a large part of an object's "dazzle effect" was how it shone from multiple surfaces in the overhead light. Dust would be highly visible and interfere with the esthetics, disgusting more than a few visitors. For the general public's viewing pleasure, these objects had to be dusted...often.

But as I stood staring at the above underwater scene, I couldn't see any easy or safe way to approach these twisting, asymmetrical, pointy pieces of multi-coloured glass, strictly for the purposes of cleaning. The potential duster would have to be extremely thin and agile, possibly a former Cirque du Soleil performer, and of course, she or he would be subjected to incredibly close "white-gloved" scrutiny by MMFA staff and visitors. I could imagine what would happen if they didn't. The visitor comment cards would read, "Dusty!" in angry block letters or "Allergies to dust, am utterly breathless!"

The position of duster would indeed be a demanding, potentially dangerous job, but the duster-acrobat would have that much-coveted close-up view that so many of us craved. The dusting professional would also be actually able to "touch" les objets d'art, and for me, that would be compensation enough.

I'll admit it. I'm inclined to touch. If I had my way, I would touch a lot of art in museums, from the curves in bronze sculptures to the chunks of excess pigment in oil paintings. The tactile experience is unfortunately missing. And I'm not alone in my tactile proclivity. I've taken more than a few of my students to museums and witnessed that spark of interest in the eye and then the slowly rising hand towards the objet d'art. Sadly, sight alone gives us a limited experience or just part of the whole picture.

At the MMFA, I saw an older woman with the same telltale dazzled look. I watched as she reached out with her hand. But when another visitor gasped, she quickly pulled her hand back.

"It's hard not to touch," I said to my 11-year-old daughter, who was standing next to me. She had also noticed the outstretched hand.

She rolled her eyes and sighed, "Everyone knows you're not allowed to touch anything."

Whether she liked the exhibit or not is hard to tell. She's at an age where her actions often belie her opinions. She took a lot of pictures, but said that "it was all too much of the same thing."

When I questioned her further, she said that "it was a lot of shiny, colourful glass without a purpose."

"But was a purpose necessary?" I asked. She just sighed and walked away.

If there was another member in my family who liked to touch things, it would be my six-year-old son. He found many objects that he wanted to touch in the first room with a glass ceiling holding hundreds of tiny colourful blown-glass replicas of sea life. With his extended index finger, he showed me his favourite things--a starfish and two cherubs.

Unfortunately, the life-sized objects were too big for him to fully appreciate, and he got bored. In the final room with the many flowers and mushrooms, he told us most audibly that he wanted to do something "fun," something related to Hallowe'en. As I walked around to take my final pictures, he began hanging on my arm, which made for some blurry pictures.

In the end, the playful "Utterly Breathtaking" was much more inspiring to the parents than children. In fact, our kids were itching for some fresh air. But I did find myself breathless on the few occasions when I was able to take a close enough look.








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Memories and Stuff

A fountain w/ bricks from his father's home
This will go down as a momentous year for my family. Not only have my two children reached the ages where they are a lot more independent, but we have also had to deal with two deaths in our immediate families. In January of this year, my mother's husband died, and it was a relief. He was difficult and mean, and I had endured him for decades.

It was after his funeral that I was finally able to see my mother's belongings, four years after her death. Her husband had refused to even let me see them. I saw what my brother had managed to salvage, what my mother's husband hadn't given away or taken to the dump.

Memories are strange things. Unlike the narratives we read or see on the big screen, they are rarely all good or all bad; they tend to be bittersweet, and they change over time. But nothing brings back the full force of those long-forgotten moments than going through boxes of belongings of a loved one who has died. This rush of nostalgia and all its inherent emotions is coupled with another impressive occurrence. As each box is opened, the deceased's personality emerges, fleshing out the life of an entire person, someone who was much more than just your mother. For instance, on one of my mother's high school report card I read that Anna could be a careless speller at times. Yet, she was always the go-to person in our home for spelling and definitions, complete with context and alternate spellings. Who needed a dictionary.

At the end of January, I found myself having to go through a house full of her personal effects. The experience was so overwhelming that I had to remind myself to breathe. My mother had kept so many things: my blond hair clippings, report cards, hand-drawn mother's day cards, certificates and sports ribbons. As I opened a box of fabric remnants and old belts, I came across a yellowed Barbie wedding veil (apparently Ken and Barbie had tied the knot around 1971). When I opened the tattered and stained lace, I discovered four of  my baby teeth. I slammed the box shut; it was all too much. I took a carload of things without much reflection and left.

I've tried on two occasions since the winter to go through the boxes, which sit in a part of our basement I rarely visit, but I never get very far. I start out carefully examining things, and then begin to hastily purge. A few days ago, as I went through a box, a foreign language caught my eye on a piece of paper destined for the recycling bin, it was a birth certificate handwritten in Finnish. It was my great grandmother's.

A few weeks after my stepfather died, we learned that my partner's father was very ill. His father had lived alone for decades and was known to accumulate things that he thought were of value. He died at the end of May, leaving his Laval bungalow, the family home where my partner had spent most of his childhood, jammed full of furniture, newspapers, scrap metal, tools, appliances, empty pill bottles, memorabilia, bills since 1965, des trucs, cossins, machins...stuff.

But my partner and his two siblings didn't have the luxury of grieving. They had to act fast. The property and house had miraculously been sold just weeks before his death, leaving them three months to clean the place out. Entire rooms were jammed with furniture. The only uncluttered space was a tiny path that ran through the home, leading from one of the three bedrooms to the bathroom and kitchen.

Each time my partner arrived home, I asked him how things were going. Often all I got was the wave of a hand and no answer. Luckily, they had official documents to look for; otherwise, they wouldn't have known where to start. Masks had to be worn because of accumulated dust and mold. Within a few days, they were overwhelmed, exasperated and discouraged. But giving up wasn't an option.

They found plenty of construction machinery and tools, vintage sleds, bikes and assorted vehicles--all collector's items; that is, if they could find a collector. But that took time and a lot of patience. His father maybe hadn't considered that something was only of value if someone wanted it. Otherwise, it was just junk.

The scrap metal man came numerous times for pick-ups, and they filled an industrial-sized dumpster with wood. A fair bit was sold to passers by, and some larger items were sold over Kijiji. Five 50-gallon recycling bins were filled and emptied eight times over the summer.

My partner brought home very few things. There was just so much that many objects quickly lost their sentimental value and were tossed. Sentimentality was a luxury that no one could afford.

He saved an easy chair with some beautiful woodwork, a bike and some bricks from his father's house. But he told me that he still hadn't digested everything he'd come across, and it might be months before he had.

The hardest part of sorting through someone's belongings is just making a decision or decisions, and then having to live with them. There are just so many emotions that complicate things and lead to endless dithering.

Once the emotions are finally stripped away (I'm hoping this will happen over time), we are left with stuff and a lot of it.
 

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World of Glass by Jocelyne Dubois

Louise Bourgeois's Araignée
World of Glass
Jocelyne Dubois
Quattro Books

World of Glass has recently been nominated for the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Award for Fiction.

Leaving la Ville Reine behind and her partner who has moved on, 30-year-old Chloé returns to her Québécois roots, landing a job at a fashion magazine selling ad space to high-end Montreal boutiques. This is a fresh start. She finds new love and explores la métropole, a city of dizzying possibilities. But there are indeed stresses, a lot to get used to. There is temptation and plenty of heady stimuli competing for attention. The reader, too, will experience this adrenaline and inability to focus through Dubois’ brilliant use of adjectives, once considered a no-no in fiction writing.

When a love interest sours, just as the twin towers crumble, Chloé falls into a fragile, rudderless realm, and the reader experiences the highly unsettling world of mental illness. Chloé’s return is a stiff climb, but she refuses to let her illness rule her life. She lives as openly and honestly as she did before, rediscovering love and creativity, with a realistic misstep along the way.

Bipolar disorder, formerly known as manic depression, is used too freely as a synonym for mood swings these days. World of Glass serves up the real thing, while successfully side-stepping the pill-popping shut-in narrative we all imagine. This novella gives a much-needed look at bipolar disorder and offers an accurate depiction of Montreal. Love can indeed be found at Toi, Moi & Café.

At only 93 pages, World of Glass offers an intense few hours of reading. It's a little like going to a restaurant for dinner, but only ordering what you really want--dessert.

Other related posts
Summer Reads: Letting It Go by Miriam Katin
My Mother, the Nazi Midwife and Me by Gina Roitman
Stony River by Tricia Dower
Susceptible by Geneviève Castrée
Studio Saint-Ex by Ania Szado
Bombay Wali and other stories by Veena Gokhale
The Last Runaway by Tracy Chevalier
Gay Dwarves of America by Anne Fleming


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Neighbourhood Shut-In and/or Yuppie Shit

Spicy Lobster Tempura Salad at 426 Sushi in Villeray
As my high school friend, Avril, passed me her huge black "weekend" bag to go back to Toronto, I gasped. "Oh my God! We haven't left the neighbourhood in days," I said. She looked at me and smiled, "That's okay. It's been very relaxing." I walked away slightly embarrassed, trying to recall if we'd done anything even remotely fun for an adult.

This was the first time I'd realized it. I rarely leave my neighbourhood. I'd taken Avril to 426 Sushi, my favourite restaurant on Villeray for the spicy lobster tempura salad. We'd then strolled down to Slak to do some clothes shopping, one of her favourite places in Montreal. Then I'd taken her to Chez Vincenzo on the way back for some homemade gelato. She liked my suggestion, pistachio, but preferred the caramel with sea salt.
Pistachio and Caramel w/ sea salt gelato Chez Vincenzo

Ever since I started working from home, I rarely leave my neighbourhood. I gave up driving about 12 years ago when I moved to Montreal, and everything we need can be found within a few blocks of our house, including the grocery story, which delivers for a modest $4.00. We also have a small shop around the corner that sells inexpensive fruit and vegetables for those in-between times. However, they DON'T sell organic produce, as I indelibly learned. "So don't even ask!" replied the annoyed shopkeeper with his tight black pin curls swaying ever so slightly. The other shop patrons watched as he followed me around the store barking the merits of conventionally grown vegetables over their yuppie bullshit organic cousins. This rant included a reference to a study conducted in Texas and the fact that he had consumed conventionally grown vegetables his entire life, and "there was nothing wrong" with him. There were similar tremors in his pin curls on another occasion when I questioned my change from a crisp 50-dollar bill.

Shopping at Slak
My neighbourhood is livable, diverse and interesting. I just have to keep my goddamned yuppie questions to myself.

Yes, Villeray, my neighbourhood, is going through gentrification, and many long-time residents are not happy. Rents have gone sky-high, and condos are going in wherever property owners can find an administrative loop-hole. There are regular street demonstrations about this, where passersby will invariably see the "Villeray Désobéit" banner.

Although I don't think of myself as a yuppie, I have unfortunately been cast into this role, judging from more than a few reactions from local shopkeepers.

In my first week in the neighbourhood, I went to a very retro-looking bakery. I quickly discovered that it was retro because they had never changed anything, not for any trendy fashion reason.

I tried to take a picture of the store price list, which was much like the one you would see in the bakeries in France, but the shop owners, two plump middle-aged women, presumably sisters, protested bitterly. I immediately apologized to the pair in white baker's suits. I usually ask before I take pictures of things, but for some reason this time I'd forgotten. But their protests continued, even through the business transaction of buying a few croissants. "We don't go to your house and take pictures," said one. "Yeah, how would that make you feel?" asked the other. After my admonishment in tandem, I grimaced as I tried to swallow my croissant. It lurched down my gullet like a ball of concrete. But maybe I was a little upset. I've only gone in there once since, to get out of the rain, but the sisters hadn't forgotten me. They were polite, but still crossed their arms and scowled in my general direction.

On the other hand, my father visiting from Vancouver loved the bakery and the ladies. They even gave him a special deal on croissants. He went there every day and brought back a half-dozen, which hadn't become any lighter, or was it just the memory? The Villeray croissant had become the polar opposite of Proust's madeleine.

The kicker--the pastry ladies even let my dad take a picture of the place.

Other posts on Villeray
Neon Icon: Miss Villeray
Oriental Pastry Delights
Felines: Friend or Foe?
The Haitian Barber
Pots and Pans Protest in Villeray


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Heather O'Neill's Story Goes 3D at TIFF

The End of Pinky” to premiere at TIFF

On September 11, 2013, “The End of Pinky,” an NFB short by Claire Blanchet, based on the original short story by award-winning author Heather O’Neill, will have its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. The stereoscopic 3D-animated short is narrated by O’Neill herself and internationally renowned Quebec actor Marc-André Grondin. Last week, I had the chance to speak with Heather O’Neill about her short story, the making of Pinky and her future projects.

In 2008, Walrus Magazine ran a Dark Cities series and invited the Lullabies for Little Criminals author to write a grittier, sexier and darker tale than anything she had ever imagined about her hometown, Montreal. O’Neill drew on a story that she had first imagined as a teenager, the era of her romanticized gangster and Mickey Spillane obsession. A love of noir apparently runs in the family. “My father was a fan of gangster films,” said O’Neill, “and kids often take up the interests of their parents.”

Set in Montreal’s former red light district, “The End of Pinky” is the tale of a handsome young gangster named Johnny, his ghost-like girlfriend Mia and fellow criminal and former friend Pinky. The product of a traumatic childhood, Johnny is an unfeeling thug who seeks to even the score in a shadowy brothel. Mia intervenes, but Pinky’s insatiable graphomania in solitary confinement has irrevocably sealed his fate. O’Neill’s “The End of Pinky” appeared in the 2008 January-February edition of The Walrus. That same year, NFB filmmaker and 2007-Norman McLaren Award winner Claire Blanchet approached O’Neill about making an animated short of her story.

Many writers have misgivings about having their stories adapted into other narrative forms, in spite of the fact that it exposes their work to a much wider audience. “It’s always a leap of faith,” said O’Neill. But after Blanchet had showed the author a wonderful long-scrolled charcoal drawing of her magical yet realistic rendering of Saint Laurent Boulevard’s red light district, O’Neill knew that Blanchet had a similar vision of her story. The clincher was a tiny detail that Blanchet had included in her drawing. “Claire had put Jean-Luc Godard’s À bout de souffle on the movie theatre marquee,” said O’Neill. It was exactly what the author herself had imagined.

Having grown up in Montreal, O’Neill is a long-time fan of the NFB, and Blanchet’s animated film gave O’Neill the chance to try her hand at voice-over. “I’ve done radio and reading performances, but this was the first time that I had done voice-over,” said O’Neill. The author also said that she “was charmed” to learn that Marc-André Grondin would be doing the narration in the French version, in addition to the voice of Johnny in the English version.

The difference in narration styles obviously has an impact on the final product. I have had the opportunity to see both the French and English versions, and both narrators enhance the film in different ways, making it impossible to say one version is better than the other. But one thing is certain: to be fully appreciated “The End of Pinky” must be seen in 3D, preferably on a big screen. In my own experience, 3D films often have overpowering visuals, but in "The End of Pinky," the 3D aspect actually draws the viewer into the story and makes it easier to appreciate some exquisite lighting and texture. The uneven cement wall in Pinky’s jail cell, and the intricately designed snowflakes are just two details that immediately come to mind. The Café Cléopâtra also makes a fun cameo appearance.

Heather O’Neill has another project in the works with Claire Blanchet on the subject of wolves. In addition, the author’s second novel, The Girl Who Was Saturday Night, published by HarperCollins in Canada and Farrar, Straus and Giroux in the U.S., will be released in May 2014.









This has been cross-posted at Rover Arts.


Other related posts
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
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It's All Science Fiction

Science Fiction
Joe Ollmann
Conundrum Press

On the heels of Joe Ollmann’s widely acclaimed Mid-life comes Science Fiction, the story of Mark Sett, a high school biology teacher who experiences an unforeseen crisis that shatters his belief system and threatens his long-term relationship. But it isn’t his unexpected breakdown that alienates his live-in girlfriend Sue, an over-educated grocery store clerk; instead, it’s what triggers his revelation and his wild claims that she finds so bewildering.

Mark, “a pragmatic and rarely frivolous man,” is concerned strictly with the facts and evidenced-based truths, so when he selects Taken At Night, a movie on the straight-to-the-video express, his girlfriend is perplexed. Not only is it science fiction, something her partner has always loathed, but it’s over-the-top cheesy. As Sue and Mark watch the opening scenes of the film, Mark begins to weep and later confesses that the film triggered a long-repressed memory of being abducted, not by gangsters or masked men, but by aliens….

Sue’s understandable response to her partner’s bombshell disclosure is shock, which quickly turns to annoyance. After all, asking your partner to believe a claim that is so dramatically out of character is an excessive demand. A bout of depression or even a repressed memory of sexual assault would indeed have been easier to accept. While Sue’s reluctance to take such a leap in faith is understandable, most readers will find themselves looking for some way to believe Mark and not dismiss him as delusional.

Ollmann’s work is always replete with humour, and Science Fiction is no exception. While there could have been a more plausible cause for Mark’s crisis that was equally at odds with his scientific way of thinking, such as a sudden belief in God or creationism, it probably wouldn’t have been as funny. In spite of the outrageousness of Mark’s apparent abduction, the turmoil the couple experiences in the aftermath of his revelation is highly realistic, with Ollmann skillfully and accurately capturing the various stages of the couple’s demise.

Science Fiction is a page-turner in no small part because of the strong characters Ollmann has created and his mastery of the story’s pacing. In addition, the author has a great ear for dialogue, which is infused with a wonderful wry wit. His frames also show a wide range of emotion demonstrating his keen sense of observation, but for the sake of variety, he could have experimented a little more with the layout instead of repeatedly giving us the same nine-frame panel. In the end, Science Fiction was enjoyable, but it was not quite as entertaining as Mid-life, for the simple reason that it is easier to relate to a 40-year-old man revisiting fatherhood than a high school teacher who believes that he was once abducted by aliens.

But these are minor points. Ollmann is nevertheless a gifted storyteller.

This has been cross-posted at the mRb.


Other related posts:
Review of Mid-Life by Joe Ollmann
AYA by Abouet and Oubrerie
Paul Goes Fishing by Michel Rabagliati
Susceptible by Geneviève Castrée





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Travelogue: Highlights of SoCal

Sunset from the end of the Santa Monica Pier
We spent the next leg of our trip in San Diego County. Initially, I was disappointed that we could not find a place to stay in Carlsbad on the Pacific Coast. Instead, we found a wonderful hotel in San Marcos, 11 miles inland. In the end, it was the place I liked the most of our stay. There were spectacular sunsets, and there was less traffic and fewer parking problems. It was also very close to Escondido, California, and the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. The setting of the park was nothing short of spectacular, and we actually preferred the Safari Park to the world famous Zoo.

The last leg of our trip took us to Huntington Beach, California, or Surf City USA. We wanted to be close enough to LAX so that we would arrive on time for our flight. I'd read briefly about Newport and Huntington beaches, but what we discovered was disappointing. On our first day, we went for a nature walk at Bolsa Chica, a tiny bird conservation area just a few miles north of Huntington Beach
Central Garden at J. Paul Getty Center
on the Pacific Coast Highway. When we got there we noticed that the conservation area was surrounded by furiously pumping oil wells. Then we noticed a drilling platform just a few miles offshore.

The conservation area appeared to be little more than PR for an oil company. Needless to say this hampered our desire to go in for a swim. I asked around about the oil wells, and I was told that there were many from Newport Beach to Long Beach. Oil is apparently an important source of revenue for the city of Huntington Beach, where there is apparently even an oil pump in the city hall parking lot.

Since we'd visited Coronado, Torrey Pines (fantastic hiking) and La Jolla beaches, it was time to take my crew to LA, and I'm so glad that we did. The J. Paul Getty Center in Brentwood, California, is not to be missed. The view of LA and the San Gabriel Mountains was breathtaking. Richard Meier's stunning architecture, Robert Irwin's central garden and Laurie Olin's landscaping made for an inspiring day.

Sketching Room at Getty Center
Taking my kids, particularly my 6-year-old, to a museum can be a difficult undertaking, as we discovered on our visit to LACMA last year. But my children were completely engaged at the Getty. At every turn, there was an impressive vista or fountain to see. There was also a children's sketching room and an activity centre. The collection was awesome, but my favourite was the photography section, a retrospective of Ed Ruscha's work.

For anyone going to LA, the Getty is not to be missed. Oh yeah, admission is free, but there's a $15 parking fee--the best 15 bucks you've ever spent.

The Getty Center was so inspiring that we decided to spend our last day at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena. This was a mind-blowing collection, with masterpiece after masterpiece, and I felt quickly overwhelmed, as did our children. I never thought I'd say it, but thank God for Minecraft, my kids' favourite computer game. The Norton Simon has a fantastic collection of Asian art, but we couldn't spend more than a few minutes there
My kids at the Norton Simon Museum
because our children were itching to leave. This was more of a traditional museum where you're meant to go and look very closely at one or two things and then leave again. Fortunately, there was a lunch counter, which gave our kids something to look forward to, and a wonderful pond fashioned after Claude Monet's garden at Giverny.

This was a great adult museum and shouldn't be missed. An added plus--admission and parking are free.

We also visited Venice Beach and the Santa Monica Pier to see the sunset and visit the amusement park. Both were well worth the drive and traffic.

Overall, our trip to SoCal was great, and on our next trip, we hope to go further inland and see the desert. I'm dying to see the Joshua trees.

Related posts: LACMA: Mom Needs Fun Too!
LA's Million Dollar Theater
Disney Theatre W/ the Kids
Unexpected Beauty of Historic Los Angeles


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The Power of Disney

In all honesty, I did not want to go to Disneyland. I imagined long lines, huge crowds, unhealthy food, no recycling and my kids repeatedly asking me to buy over-priced souvenirs. But what a curmudgeonly mother I would be if I didn't go.

And of course, there were some long-term implications of choosing not to go. It would probably become a common dinner refrain: "Remember the time we went to Anaheim and mom wouldn't take us to Disneyland." I would also be cast into the role of the cheap communist, which admittedly I do sound like on occasion. I just don't agree with compulsive consumption or marketing aimed at children, among so many other things related to present-day Disney (Read: hypersexualized princesses). But in not going to see the mouse, I could inadvertently create two Disney-obsessed shopaholics.

It would be better to take them. Then, as I looked at the sheer size of Disneyland and the California Adventure Park, I realized that we would need to go for more than one day. There was also the age difference: my daughter is 10 and my son is 6. They wouldn't be interested in the same things, and this could lead to some hard feelings and inevitable arguments. The solution was to take them for three days.

FYI, you cannot get any deals on Disneyland tickets, but the price per day goes down considerably if you go for three days. After reading up on all the star attractions, I planned that we would do three high-profile rides by 11:00 in the morning before everyone arrived and the lines got long.

We flew through the gates on Monday morning when it opened at 8:00 am. (Weekends are the busiest, particularly in peak season from April to September.) The first surprise--there were recycling bins all around. We headed straight for Star Tours and Space Mountain only to discover that my 10-year-old daughter was too afraid to go on them.

I told her that I had been on Space Mountain before in Orlando and that it was a lot of fun. "No way," she said. After doing all the research, I was kind of looking forward to a few of the rides,  Space Mountain being just one of them, but my daughter gave a definitive "No" to the first two. This was the same child who used to beg us to take her La Ronde, Montreal's amusement park.

The day changed dramatically for all of us when we got to Fantasyland. This is the area of the park for small children with the original 1955 slow rides. The lines were short and the rides were fun. My kids' favourite was the Mad Hatter's Teacups, a ride we did four times. And as corny and embarrassing as it might sound, the Disney carousel was magical for me. But why would that be, especially when the carousels at Montmartre or in Santa Cruz are far more impressive? It took a day of pondering the reason before it came to me. I'd seen the Disney carousel hundreds of times in the opening sequence of the Wonderful World of Disney every Sunday at 6:00 pm as a kid, a period of optimism that predated my years of  Disney cynicism.

After the carousel, I let go and enjoyed our day. I found myself looking at all the details of the park. It had all been so well thought out. There was no chipped paint or faded colours, and the ride attendants were gentle with my children. The imagineers, the professionals who devise, install and maintain the attractions, had done a wonderful job. Another positive point, the park offered healthy food choices, and there were even fruit stands. The food and souvenirs were fairly expensive, but not outrageously priced.

Overall, our three days were highly enjoyable, especially the two days when we went early in the morning and avoided the crowds. My two-day nostalgia-filled high from the carousel was exhilarating and gave me plenty of food for thought about marketing to children.

In spite of my education and cynicism, Disney had still managed to trigger a very positive reaction in me, a product of relatively "harmless" Disney from TV in the 1970s. I cannot fathom the impact of Disney's very powerful presence today on the next generation of adults.

I'm relieved to know that the province of Quebec does not allow fast food chains or toy companies to advertise on television to our children, and I wonder if this regulation came to one of our lawmakers after a trip to Disneyland.

Here's the opening of sequence of the Wonderful World of Disney from the 1970s. Do you remember this?








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California Trippin' and Tippin'

Sacha Outside Food 4 Less in Anaheim
As luck would have it, my significant other had another conference in California. This year, we visited Southern California, or SoCal, as it's called. Our first stop and location of the conference was Anaheim, the city best known for Disneyland.

Although we usually associate vacations with taking a break from things like cooking, I find the whole idea of eating daily in restaurants stressful. Going out for every meal can be unhealthy because of all the calorie-rich fried foods and, of course, it's expensive. For our family of four, each meal costs on average about $50, plus a tip.

While I'm on the topic of tips, I spoke to a waitress at the very beginning of our holiday about gratuities. In California, servers have to report all tips with 10% of your bill being automatically  deducted from the server's minimum wage salary. As a result, if you don't leave a tip, they are paying for you to eat. A good tip is twice the state sales tax or 16%. It's best to ask someone at your hotel about tipping before you go out for dinner. In the U.S., minimum wage for servers varies from $2.13 to $7.75 an hour and how gratuities are factored into this wage also varies from state to state.  

After our first breakfast at an Anaheim IHOP, which cost $42, I made my way to a local grocery store to buy enough food to have breakfasts and lunches in our room equipped with a fridge and microwave. I bought the necessities, which included a paring knife, vegetable peeler, cutting board, two bowls, two plates, some plastic cutlery and a few plastic storage containers. These are all inexpensive items that I could leave behind at our last hotel when we left. I did this last summer and it cut down substantially on how much we spent at restaurants (not to mention the weight I could have gained), and it also meant that my kids got plenty of fresh California fruit and vegetables.

A helpful shopkeeper close to my hotel directed me to the cheapest grocery store chain. It was about a mile on foot off the beaten Disney path. The immaculately pruned palm trees lining the sidewalks quickly gave way to cracked pavement and strip malls with liquor stores, fast food restaurants and tattoo shops. There was also a new sight I wasn't expecting--homeless people, very young homeless people. It was strange because Anaheim and most of what we saw of Orange County looked like an affluent suburb, not a densely populated urban centre, but in bus shelters and at intersections, there always seemed to be tiny groups of mainly white homeless people.

My children were shocked by the first young man we encountered sleeping in a relatively clean red sleeping bag in the grass next to the sidewalk. My daughter asked me in French what he was doing there, and I told her to smile and that we'd discuss it later. I smiled at the man as we passed and said "Good morning," to which he returned my greeting and smiled back. I later told my daughter that people become homeless when they lose their jobs and can't pay their rent, but I emphasized that it doesn't mean that they aren't nice people.

This young man was one of many homeless people we would see on our holiday. Of course, I would see most of them on my trips to other grocery stores. I always walk, just for some much needed exercise. But a car is the means that most Californians still use to run errands like going to the grocery store. In spite of the commuter trains, bike paths and buses we saw, California is still overwhelmingly car-centric, and if you want to visit tourist destinations you have to leave early in the morning to find a parking space. We unfortunately discovered this one lazy Saturday morning when we arrived at noon at the beach only to drive endlessly unable to find parking.

Other posts about California:
LA's Million Dollar Theater
Disney Theatre W/ the Kids
Unexpected Beauty of Historic Los Angeles



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Summer Reads: Letting It Go by Miriam Katin

Letting It Go 
by Miriam Katin
Drawn and Quarterly
   

Changing a career path becomes more difficult with age. Now imagine a career change in your sixties, right when most people are thinking about the end of their professional aspirations. Artist Miriam Katin did just that. In her seventh decade, she became a graphic novelist, not a change you’d expect with the genre’s high concentration of authors under the age of 40.

In 2006, Katin penned her first critically acclaimed graphic memoir, We Are On Our Own. In this story, a very young Miriam and her mother are forced from their home in Budapest during World War II after the Nazi invasion. They change their names and go into hiding, managing to stay just steps ahead of German soldiers. This experience marked Katin for life, giving her an understandable reason to despise all things German. However, in the years following the publication of We Are On Our Own, some unexpected news forced Katin to come to terms with her haunting past. Letting It Go is the account of this painful but ultimately inspiring experience.

In this, her second graphic memoir, we meet Katin and her husband living peacefully in Brooklyn. Their son Ilan arrives with his girlfriend, a Swedish comic artist. Over a cup of coffee, the son tells his mother not only that he and his girlfriend are moving to Berlin, but also that he wants his mother to help him with the paperwork so that he can become a Hungarian citizen and obtain an EU passport. Katin’s immediate reaction is horror, and she refuses to help her son. But when she realizes that her actions could undermine their relationship, she seeks the advice of friends and loved ones, and eventually relents. On the surface, she puts on a brave face, but underneath she suffers in silence, and her inner turmoil has some very surprising physical manifestations. In the end, she and her husband travel to Berlin, not once but twice, and the trips are filled with some wonderful unforeseen surprises. But we also see that letting go of long-harboured grudges is a very difficult process.

Although this might sound like a serious book, there are many light moments that make it an easy read. Katin’s borderless panels have a beautiful flow to them, and many of her finely detailed establishing shots are stunning. My personal favourite was the crayon effect of the choppy river below the Brooklyn Bridge.

However, while this book is enjoyable and sends a powerful message, it has one significant shortcoming. Although we can see and hear Katin’s pain in Letting It Go, we don’t feel her trauma. This will be particularly true for anyone who has not read We Are On Our Own. Without having a clear idea of Katin’s past, this memoir loses considerable power. In spite of the book’s many references to the horrors suffered by Jews at the hands of the Germans in World War II, the references are too well known and impersonal to produce the desired effect. A flashback might have helped readers better identify with Katin’s experience.

Nevertheless, it is inspiring to read a memoir by a woman in her seventies who is not only willing to share her past, but who also shows us that it is never too late to face our demons. Katin has the courage to tell her story, warts and all, and do it unconventionally with a graphic novel.

This review has been cross-posted at the Montreal Review of Books.

Other related posts
My Mother, the Nazi Midwife and Me by Gina Roitman
Stony River by Tricia Dower
Susceptible by Geneviève Castrée
Studio Saint-Ex by Ania Szado
Bombay Wali and other stories by Veena Gokhale
The Last Runaway by Tracy Chevalier
Gay Dwarves of America by Anne Fleming

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Summer Reads: Stony River by Tricia Dower

Stony River
By Tricia Dower
Penguin Canada

Often portrayed as the era of innocence, the 1950s brought North Americans post-war prosperity, suburban life and the nuclear family, with its clearly defined gender roles. The medium of the day—television—served up squeaky clean characters like June Cleaver, the mother and wife on television’s Leave It To Beaver, a role model to legions of housewives. But as most viewers were aware, made-for-television families had little in common with those living in small towns like Stony River, the setting and title of Tricia Dower’s novel.

In the Author’s Note, Dower describes the 1950s as repressive “when secrets crouched behind closed doors.” In her novel, she shows what goes on behind those doors and unveils the dangers for all young women who came of age in the mid-twentieth century. Based on the actual
killing of a police officer while Dower was in high school and the murderer’s subsequent crimes, the story sheds light on not only the era’s glaring gender inequalities but also the town’s sordid underbelly that is worthy of a film noir.

I love this cover.
Teenaged neighbours Linda Wise and Tereza Dobra spend their time hanging out in the summer smoking “punks” or cattails on the polluted river’s shore. The blond, Linda Wise, comes from a middle-class family and spends her time with the darker-complexioned Tereza, whose household is violent and decidedly working-class. Nevertheless, it is Tereza who snubs Linda for her inexperience.

One hot June day, the two girls are shocked to see a pale teen girl accompanied by police officers
emerge from the home of Crazy Haggerty, the town oddball. Everyone had assumed that Haggerty lived alone. Crazy Haggerty’s relationship to the mysterious shut-in teen, Miranda, is discussed in hushed tones.

Linda, Tereza and Miranda cross paths several years later in connection with a series of heinous sex crimes. But this happens after freewheeling Tereza runs away and play-it-safe Linda slips up. Miranda, however, proves to be exceptionally bright and has special skills, in spite of never completely overcoming her years of isolation.

“Nothing was as it seemed back then,” writes Dower in the Author’s Note, and fleshing out what lurks beneath outward appearances is what Dower does best in Stony River. She’s also adept at creating full, plausible characters. My favourite is the deliciously foul-mouthed, sexually promiscuous Tereza Dobra. Fiction is in dire need of a few good bad girls with agency to shake up those preconceived notions of the 1950s.

There’s also a wonderful infusion of Celtic lore alongside some beautiful writing in Stony River. Dower writes, “James said that if words could be held and tasted and smelled they might be enough to live on.” There is, however, one shortcoming. There are two stories that don’t come together convincingly enough at the end. In fact, I could easily see two solid standalone novels—the Crazy Haggerty and Miranda story and that of Tereza and Linda. The author has taken a step back and incorporated both stories under the broader theme of the town—Stony River.

The theme of rape is central to this tale, and it’s interesting to see just how little we have advanced in 50 years. At trial, the rape victim in this story is made to feel that she isn’t telling the truth, and her credibility is further undermined because of the weight she put on in the aftermath of her assault. After all, no one would ostensibly rape an overweight woman…. Similarly, this week in the news it was reported that one in five Canadians between the ages of 18 and 34 believe that “women are responsible for sexual assault because of their actions or appearance,” according to Anu Dugal, Director of Violence Prevention at the Canadian Women’s Foundation.

If you’re interested in reading a well-written novel reminiscent in parts of a true crime story, Stony River is worth your while. You may even want to read it after perusing the highly realistic photos of the 1950s photo journalist Weegee (Arthur Fellig) or while listening to a little Patsy Cline.

This review has been cross-posted at Rover Arts.


Other reviews of books you might like:
Susceptible by Geneviève Castrée
Studio Saint-Ex by Ania Szado
Bombay Wali and other stories by Veena Gokhale
The Last Runaway by Tracy Chevalier
Gay Dwarves of America by Anne Fleming
One Good Hustle by Billie Livingston
The World is Moving Around Me by Dany Laferrière
The Return by Dany Laferrière
The Goodtime Girl by Tess Fragoulis

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