The Power of Disney

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'

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

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

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

Wild by Cheryl Strayed

The Goodtime Girl by Tess Fragoulis

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Cirque Éloize: Music-Hall de la Baronne

Cirque Éloize: Music-Hall de la Baronne

Le Music-Hall de la Baronne
Cirque Éloize
Montréal Complètement Cirque Festival

Last night was the opening show of the fourth annual Montréal Complètement Cirque Festival and the inaugural performance of the cabaret Le Music-Hall de la Baronne by Cirque Éloize, which is also celebrating its 20th anniversary. And what better venue than the Olympia theatre.

For those expecting mind-blowing circus acts, this was not the show. Instead, it was more of a sexy acrobatic cabaret hosted by Baroness Catherine Pinard, who had a wonderful diva stage presence in spite of taking too much of the spotlight.

Although there was a cabaret venue, the show felt more like vaudeville with some initial tinny piano music and a couple of performers trying too hard to please. In fact, the only thing missing was a hook to pull the tap dancer off the stage. It would appear that the early tunes and first few acts were meant to drive home the point that this was not circus, but cabaret, a genre that many of us are unfamiliar with. Once you get your head around this, the silly jokes and considerable theatrics have a wonderful retro feel to them.

The music and performance quality later improves immensely.

The show really got started with Garbo-esque Christine Gruber who performed a sensuous routine on the rings while smoking a cigarette. But the most stunning acrobatics were performed by couples on the trapeze and in the finale. Their movement was fluid, unpredictable and beautiful. There were also some very impressive solos to accompany the acts. A beautiful rendition of "Summertime" immediately comes to mind.

Overall, the attention to detail was lacking. The circular stage seemed too small to accommodate the performers. Frédéric Lemieux-Cormier's number on the German wheel moved dangerously close to the edge and had front-row spectators leaning back nervously in their seats.

There was also a puzzling lion tamer routine that poked fun at intergenerational differences between babyboomers and les carrés rouges. This did little to enhance the show, even though political satire was often part of cabaret acts.

For a red-carpet affair, Music-Hall de la Baronne felt not quite ready. However, this could change in the coming weeks when some of the kinks are ironed out, and some of the secondary acts, namely the Baroness and the tipsy waitress, are shortened.

Nevertheless, Music-Hall de la Baronne is an exciting undertaking and a wonderful opportunity to see the beginning of what could be a cabaret revival. Cirque Éloize will undoubtedly rise to the challenge.

This has been cross-posted at Rover Arts.

Other related posts
Séquence 8, les 7 doigts de la main
Must-see: Cirque Eloize`s iD


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E-Yoga

E-Yoga

I've been on holiday for about a week, and one of my summer projects is to return to yoga.

When I first moved to Montreal 12 years ago, I took classes at Sivananda Yoga on St-Laurent Boulevard, one of the oldest yoga centres in the city. I absolutely loved it. I felt relaxed after every class. I even visited the centre's Ashram in the Laurentians for an afternoon of yoga and meditation. Sivananda was always a very spiritual experience; it was never about chasing a fad.

When I changed neighbourhoods, I found another yoga class offered by the city of Westmount. The instructor was a ballet teacher and she taught Hatha yoga. This, too, was a wonderful experience. I found myself doing headstands in my living room and even the crow position (Ah, don't forget to raise your head!) in the evenings.

I moved back to the Mile End and after my daughter was born, I returned to Sivananda. However, yoga was suddenly hugely popular, and my relatively cheap class was now more expensive and packed with neophyte yoga enthusiasts. Let's just say that crowded yoga classes are not as relaxing.

Over the years, I tried pilates and one or two yoga classes at the YMCA, but I always felt stiff afterwards. As many of you know, if you breathe properly when exercising you shouldn't feel stiff at all. Finding a good yoga class is hard, and attending a yoga class regularly with young children is a challenge.

When we moved to Villeray two years ago, I noticed a small yoga studio a few streets away. In the spring, I took one class for a whopping $18 dollars. I arrived 10 minutes early and found a tight but comfortable spot. Of course, there were stragglers, and we were asked to move forwards not once but twice. As I struggled to keep up with the group, my arms kept colliding with other people's limbs, and in the plough position I actually touched flesh and possibly some hair (clearly someone else's) with my toes. This felt like capitalist yoga--zero spiritualism, lots of people, strictly for profit. I never returned.

Then a yoga studio opened around the corner from us in an old bank building with gloriously high ceilings. In my first class, there were only three other women in various stages of fitness, which was perfect. It meant that we would go fairly slowly. However, on this overcast Saturday morning, our teacher checked for messages as she taught, consulted her iPad and even turned pages in what appeared to be an instructor's manual. I resigned myself to the fact that e-yoga may well be what traditional yoga has morphed into in the last 10 years. The class was still pretty good, so I bought a one-month pass.

I haven't regretted my purchase at all. I have just accepted that some instructors are better than others, and some of the classes are more difficult than others. I also accept that there are some poses that will take me a few months to master, but I'm feeling relaxed, something I haven't felt in a very long time.

In my first week, I attended three yoga and two pilates classes. On Saturday, after my "beginner" Hatha class, I took my daughter to the library to embark on her summer reading challenge (of course, some bribery would take place). However, I seemed to notice every step over to the Park Extension Library. I even had to tell her to wait up at one point. There was a chance to sit at the library, but realizing that I may never be able to get up again, I stood and counted the steps home.

Yoga should never be underestimated. It involves intense exercise.

I promise more posts about my neighbourhood.

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Messin' With Male Stereotypes

Messin' With Male Stereotypes

Last week as part of the Residual Reading series, Wanda O'Connor introduced two visiting writers to read from their new releases at Drawn and Quarterly. Authors Marguerite Pigeon and Natalee Caple have penned stories with women leads in traditionally male-dominated genres. The first to read was Pigeon who has written a political thriller set in Central America, while Peterborough-based Caple gave an inspired reading from In Calamity's Wake, a fictionalization of the life of Calamity Jane.

Pigeon, a former journalist, has drawn on her past work in Central America to create Open Pit, a story of five Canadian human-rights activists who are taken hostage by a former revolutionary in El Salvador. This transpires just as NorthOre, a Canadian gold-mining company, has begun mining operations. The revolutionary is not interested in any kind of ransom. Instead, he wants NorthOre to cease operations so that his family's remains can be exhumed from the mining site. While the other four activists find the kidnapping traumatic, 50-year-old Danielle Byrd, the main character, finds the situation eerily familiar, as she worked as an embedded journalist during El Salvador's decade-long civil war.

After the reading, Pigeon said that publishers did not initially warm to Open Pit. The fact that it was a political thriller with a woman lead was not easy. "I had to up the political and thriller aspects to find a publisher," said Pigeon. For many of us who have worked in Latin America, women human rights activists are pretty common, as are Canadian mining companies operating in countries with questionable human rights records. It would appear that Open Pit has a highly realistic premise, an added plus for any political thriller.
So why the reluctance to have a woman main character? Was it because a woman in a non-traditional role is not a sure sell or is it because the public is not yet aware of the many spheres women successfully work in?

Natalee Caple might argue the latter. The author of In Calamity's Wake wrote her PhD dissertation on Calamity Jane, and in her research, discovered a lot of things she'd long suspected. "Women occupied a wide range of jobs in the West," said Caple. However, this fact is not reflected in pop culture. Instead, when we think of women in the wild west, the saloon hooker with a heart of gold and the long-suffering farmer's wife are the two stereotypes that immediately come to mind. This might also explain why a cowboy film or theme is not always a popular choice. The lack of diversity makes for a highly predictable story. However, according to the author, cowboys were not all white."The West was a lot more diverse than we are led to believe," said Caple. There were apparently people of colour in frontier towns, and in Deadwood, South Dakota, a town long-associated with Calamity Jane, there was even a Chinese quarter.

Trying to rectify long-held misconceptions is a gutsy undertaking, but not for Caple. In Calamity's Wake is the 37-year-old's seventh book. To move completely away from the male-dominated west scenario, Caple has made bad-girl Calamity Jane and her fictional daughter Miette the two main characters, with male characters playing only supporting roles.

What's next for this trailblazer? "I'm going to write a book about women pirates," said Caple. "There were a lot of those too." I guess they just never made their way into pop culture.


At any rate, a greater diversity of women characters is always welcome in fiction, especially the anti-hero.


Other book-related posts:
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

Wild by Cheryl Strayed

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My Mother, the Nazi Midwife and Me by Gina Roitman

My Mother, the Nazi Midwife and Me by Gina Roitman

Gina Roitman: Photo by Lynn Hatwin

We've all heard stories from our mothers, stories that made us feel uncomfortable or that we rolled our eyes at. As young girls, the tales were often too far removed from our own experiences to have any meaning.

It's usually much later in life when these stories carry much more significance for us. These stories tell us who we are and add a few more missing pieces to our own identity puzzle.

Writer Gina Roitman has just released a chilling documentary featuring some incredible personal discoveries. She has spent the last eight years filming her investigation into a tale that her mother began telling her when she was very young.

Gina Roitman grew up in Montreal, but was born in Germany in the years following the Second World War. Her parents were Holocaust survivors whose family members had all perished in concentration camps. Roitman's mother often told her young daughter stories of the atrocities of Nazi Germany. But young Gina was living in a different country at a different time, and as can be expected, she wasn't all that interested in her mother's stories. She also refused to believe that all Germans could be as horrible as her mother said, something that infuriated her mother.

Around the world, many people believe that after World War II ended, the Nazis suddenly disappeared. But as we see in the documentary, this was not the case.

Roitman's parents met at an overpopulated Displaced Persons camp outside Passau, Germany, in the US military zone. When Roitman's mother became pregnant, she insisted that her daughter be born at a birthing centre, and not in the camp. Too many Jewish babies were inexplicably dying there; a murderer was ostensibly afoot. The mother said that she had saved Gina's life.

For Roitman, this was just one of her mother's paranoid stories. Then, many years after her mother had died, Roitman discovered the work of Anna Rosmus, a German historian who had investigated the treatment of Jews in Passau in the 20th century. It was then that Roitman heard the story again of the mysterious deaths of Jewish babies at the Displaced Persons camp at Pocking-Waldstadt where her parents had lived.

In My Mother, the Nazi Midwife and Me, a one-hour documentary, Gina Roitman returns to Passau for the first time in her life to meet Anna Rosmus, investigate her mother's claims and ultimately discover some important parts of her own identity. This is a moving documentary that should not be missed. The footage and stories are haunting.

To see a trailer of the film click here.

My Mother, the Nazi Midwife and Me will be showing on Saturday, May 18 on the CBC Documentary Channel. 

Other documentaries:
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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Susceptible by Geneviève Castrée

Susceptible by Geneviève Castrée

Susceptible 
Geneviève Castrée
Drawn and Quarterly

Susceptible is Geneviève Castrée’s first full-length English-language graphic novel. The multi-disciplinary artist and Quebec native has crafted a moving tale about Goglu, a bright, dreamy little girl who has a less than ideal start in life. As the title implies, she is sensitive, but Vulnerable would have also been a fitting title.

The reader meets Goglu still in the womb asking about whether sadness can be inherited from one generation to the next. The little girl is born to a 19-year-old Quebec mother and her English-speaking logger boyfriend in 1981. Her father played a very minor parenting role before moving to British Columbia, “a mythical kingdom where dads go to disappear.”

Her mother like droves of other young people in the early eighties had gone out west to make some quick money during the Alberta oil boom and experience her first adult adventure. Her mother, Amère, which aptly reflects her bitterness, returns to Quebec alone to give birth, but family support is not forthcoming. The youngest of 16 children, Amère didn’t receive much herself in the way of parenting.

Goglu is a latch-key kid from the time she starts school. Her mother sets an alarm clock so that the six-year-old knows when it is time to get ready and catch the bus to school.

Amère is a struggling single mother who still parties like most 20-year-olds, but strictly on the weekends. She eventually meets her significant other, Amer, and they move in together, but Amer in no way assumes any fathering responsibilities, and he resents Goglu. The weekend parties continue, and too ashamed to invite friends over to her house, the girl finds herself alone, a lot. As a teen, Goglu is troubled by her mother’s increasing dependence on alcohol.

At her South Shore school, Goglu is an outcast, an odd duck among a bunch of suburban kids. But in high school, she makes friends through that great equalizer—drugs. She struggles to finish high school as she starts to use harder drugs, and then eerily finds herself in her mother’s previous predicament, the one that ruined “her bright future.”

Geneviève Castrée shows genuine talent as a graphic novelist and has created a compelling story. Particularly innovative is the circular panel she uses to illustrate an intense argument with her mother. We can all attest that arguments tend to be circular in nature, often returning to the original accusations.

Of all the books I’ve read in the last few years, I found Susceptible the most heart-wrenching. Goglu, like many unwanted children, internalizes her mother and stepfather’s resentment, which unsurprisingly results in her own anger, depression and self-imposed alienation.

Although it would be easy to point the finger at Amère for being a poor mother, she too was an unwanted child. As a single-parent with few resources, she chose to live with another wage-earner to make life and decision-making a little easier. In her desperation, she not only chose a man she didn’t love, but also one who had little patience for her daughter.

A lot of people will find this a harrowing read, but for many this will be validation for their own experiences growing up in cash-strapped homes with ill-equipped parents. Susceptible should be on the bookshelf of every teacher, guidance counsellor, social worker and planned parenthood advocate.

I applaud the publisher for taking this risk on a story that could potentially help a lot of people, both young and old.

This has been cross-posted at Rover Arts.

Other reviews
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

Wild by Cheryl Strayed

The Goodtime Girl by Tess Fragoulis

Read more »

Studio Saint-Ex by Ania Szado

Studio Saint-Ex by Ania Szado

The gift of a book can change the course of a child’s life,” writes Ania Szado in the acknowledgments of her recent historical novel Studio Saint-Ex. Szado is referring to The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, which she received as a gift at age 11. This is when the seed of Studio Saint-Ex ostensibly was planted.

Ania Szado has researched the life of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry while he was writing The Little Prince in 1943 and has created his character and that of his estranged wife, Consuelo, based on widely known historical facts.

The Saint-Exupérys are in essence insta-characters, torn from the pages of history. Studio Saint-Ex is a fictionalization of their lives when they were living in New York as expats during the Nazi occupation of France.

Into the storyline, Szado has inserted her own original character, 22-year-old Mignonne Lachapelle, an ambitious young fashion designer, who meets Antoine de Saint-Exupéry through the French community. As can be expected, the young woman falls in love with the legendary writer.

As history would have it, the couple had an open marriage, and this serves as Mignonne Lachapelle’s promising point of entry into their lives. At the same time, the ingenue is trying to forge a name for herself in the fashion industry, just as there is an upsurge in demand for high-fashion items in New York.

In her first job as a designer’s assistant, Mignonne is ordered to drum up business in the French community, where fashion trends are started. As the wife of an exalted figure among expats, Consuelo is considered influential and, consequently, a highly prized potential client. While Mignonne proposes items from her clothing line to Consuelo, she is also trying to seduce her husband. The wife is wise to this and plays along, continually turning the situation to her own advantage.

Although initially the story has great narrative force, it quickly loses momentum and becomes predictable. What saves the book is some particularly inspired writing by Ania Szado on the art of garment design.

As tempting as it may be to use historical figures as the basis of a novel, history still imposes some rather severe limitations, particularly on this storyline. Szado states in the book’s Afterword that some sources suggest that Saint-Exupéry’s extramarital relationships were “exclusively platonic.”

Consequently, the love triangle serves as little more than a tease to readers, reducing the focus of the novel to the aspirations of the young fashion designer. In the end, the story becomes completely implausible when Mignonne manages to co-opt Saint-Exupéry’s work and catapult her own career.

Studio Saint-Ex is a forced fit. Ultimately, Saint-Exupery’s name and The Little Prince, among the best-selling books of all time, are used to draw in readers, but the story is too farfetched and contrived to take seriously.

This has been cross-posted at the Globe and Mail.


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