Here, here, I’m still here.
I have been on a little hiatus from reviewing, but I’m back and will have new reviews forthcoming.
Do you have a book or zine you’d like me to review? Get in touch at tarynhubbard (at) gmail.com
Porcupines and China Dolls
Porcupines and China Dolls by Robert Arthur Alexie
Theytus Books
Released: Spring 2009
Page Count: 306 pp.
Robert Arthur Alexie explores the lives of the People, a First Nations group living on a reserve in the North West Territories, as they finally deal with the deep, painful scars that are left over from years of sexual abuse in the residential school system in his book Porcupines and China Dolls.
Through rich, multi-faceted characters, poised social comment, and simple, articulate writing, Alexie creates a raw portrait of a community trying to look to the future when all they can do is think about their secret pasts.
Alexie organizes his story into three parts. The first, Dream World, takes the reader into the residential school system. He gives us every angle. We see the parents mentally dying as they are forced to drop their kids off at the mission school, where they will not see them again until the holidays. We see the boys and girls get their hair cut off, forced to throw away their own clothing for uniforms of tennis shoes and black pants, and then put to bed in rows and rows where they sleep until the bell wakes them up in the morning. Sisters died; brothers were taken into the showers in the middle of the night. Alexis doesn’t spare his reader one image.
In the second part, The Awakening, the kids from the residential school are all grown up and spend hours in the local bar drinking and flirting into the late hours of the night. In the morning, they wake up from their one-night-stands and do it all over again. Alexis uses simple, repetitious details in the first few chapters of this section, which highlights the monotony of their lives.
The story focuses on James and Jake, two orphans from the residential school, who are unemployed, 40-something, drunks. They go to the bar every night and sleep with as many women as they can because that’s what real men do, right? When Jake reveals he was sexually abused in the residential school, however, the whole community changes. Others start coming forward and the town starts dealing with all those years that were lost at the hands of the mission school system.
Anger, resentment, hurt and fear seethed and stewed within the pages of Alexie’s story until it all finally came to a head for his characters during a healing workshop held in a local community building. This section of the book is filled with fantastic hyperbole as James, Jake and the Chief fight the demons that have haunted them since childhood in front of the entire town.
The characters in this book aren’t painted to be heroes. They aren’t perfect, and Alexie doesn’t try to make them out to be anything else but themselves. He writes in a plain, but never boring, fact-of-the-matter tone that really works to give his text authority.
Porcupines and China Dolls is a must read for anyone who is looking for a deep, dark look at the life-long affects of the residential school system. With powerful writing, Alexie exposes the demons that the People and probably many other First Nations people have lingering inside them from growing up in a residential school.
Reviewed by Taryn Hubbard
Valmiki’s Daughter
House of Anansi
Released: 2008
Page Count: 395 pp.
Valmiki’s Daughter by Shani Mootoo
Shani Mootoo takes her reader to Trinidad where the clash of social class and secret desires threatens to expose everything two prominent families have so carefully hidden in her third book Valmiki’s Daugher.
The story is mainly told from the perspective of Valmiki and his eldest daughter Viveka in a third person voice. The personal thoughts, desires and lies that challenge the Krishnu’s seemingly stable family unit are expressed in the sad stories of Valmiki and Viveka.
Valmiki is a successful doctor from a wealthy family. He is married to Devika, but his relationship with her is for appearances only. He womanizes and hunts in order to suffocate what he truly wants: a meaningful relationship with a man. Devika knows about her husband’s lover but she will not say anything about it. Their relationship is encased in a shroud of silence and resentment. She throws large, elaborate and expensive parties in order to let her peers know that the Krishnu family is fine, better than fine.
Their daughter, Viveka, is muscular and constantly criticized by her mother and younger sister for her “mannish” looks. She wants to play volleyball on a team with girls who aren’t all Indian and from their upper-middle class social standing. They feel it isn’t right for an Indian girl to do so. She finds a man from school who wants to be intimate with her, but Viveka only finds true passion with Anick, a white French woman who Nayan, a close family friend, married when he was studying overseas.
Both Valmiki and Viveka are forced oppress their desire to openingly be with a same-sex partner. When Viveka explores her sexuality with Anick, she comes alive and is at once comfortable in her own body. The status quo, however, is so hard for them to overcome.
Mootoo’s writing is vivid, and her descriptions of setting pull the reader onto the small island with details of scents, textures and landmarks. Throughout the book, Mootoo includes short chapters written in the second-person “you” voice where she guides you through the hot, sticky streets of the town.
Her description of the love affair between Viveka and Anick explodes from the pages with images of courtship, sex and pain.
I was first introduced to Mootoo in a Canadian literature course I took a few years ago. I hope this book takes its rightful place in the Can-lit curriculum. I want to analyze this book more, especially the ending. But I don’t want to ruin the story for you. All I can do is recommend that you buy this book.
Valmiki’s Daughter isn’t a quick read because the characters tend to stew, swell and get under your skin. So much so, that whenever you pass the book, you’ll want to drop everything just to check in on the Krishnus.
Reviewed by Taryn Hubbard
Posted in Uncategorized
Shuck
Arsenal Pulp Press
Released: 2008
Pages: 149 pp.
Shuck by Daniel Allen Cox
One time I found someone’s diary on the SkyTrain while I was making my trip home from Vancouver into the suburbs. I flipped it open and read a couple pages. I couldn’t help it. This was someone I didn’t know and all of a sudden I had her thoughts. I could do whatever I wanted with them. It was a girl’s diary, probably in her teens, and she wrote in a blue marker that was way too thick to be legible. I couldn’t remember a thing that girl confided in her diary after I left it on the seat and got off at my stop.
Jaeven Marshall’s diary in Daniel Allen Cox’s latest book Shuck, however, is a little different. In Jaeven’s diary the reader gets a window seat into the mind of a wannabe short story writer who is also a barely functioning meth addict, kind of homeless, and a street-level whore turned gay porn star and hustler. More than anything though, he’s a muse for artists and painters alike.
It’s 1999 in a gritty and dark New York City and Jaeven is living in an abandoned room in a designer shoe warehouse. He writes all day and turns tricks all night. He’s 22 and trying desperately to become a published writer. When a man invites him to live with him in his condo, Jaeven moves in and slowly moves up the food chain. Jaeven starts modelling for gay porn magazines and over night he is a major it boy. He still turns tricks and continues to take meth, but he finally has a little bit of money. What he really wants, though, is some recognition for his writing. However, no one wants to publish his work about an outcast reform school kid and the reject letters keep piling up.
Cox’s writing is tight and funny. He captures your attention with the very first few lines: “I bet that right now, you’re not listening to Duran Duran’s “Ordinary World” in your Walkman, which means you won’t understand a word I’ve written. You suck, but that’s besides the point.” Jaeven has ADD and Cox skilfully pushes his reader through the messed up head of a guy who takes meth in order to focus his mind. Cox is a very detailed writer, adding the most interesting nuances into his writing. When Jaeven stars in a porn movie, Cox gives us every gritty detail. There’s no glamour here.
Jaeven is an unreliable narrator. He lies and admits it, sometimes. Cox does a great job pulling together this book, but I would have liked to see some motivation as to why Jaeven wanted to get published so bad. From the summaries of the stories that Jaeven writes, it’s pretty clear that they are autobiographical stories from his adolescence. But, that’s the only glance we get about this character’s past. However, why does anyone want to get published? Maybe it’s something you just can’t put your finger on.
Shuck is a fantastic, quick-paced book that will have you laughing, cringing and hoping that something will happen for Jaeven.
Reviewed by Taryn Hubbard
Leaving Lovestiff Annie
Publisher: Now or Never Publishing
Page Count: 185 pp.
Released: 2009
Leaving Lovestiff Annie
by Chris F. Needham
The famous ocean strip in White Rock, B.C. will never look the same after reading Chris F. Needham’s third novel Leaving Lovestiff Annie. The pier, the huge white rock, the ocean and the restaurants that on the surface project glamour and a lifestyle of leisure are torn open in this book to reveal the gritty underbelly of a restaurant trying to get by and the messed up lives of those who run it.
The novel focuses on the challenges the lead character, Needham himself, has as he attempts to overcome the guilt he feels towards his wife who died a year earlier from cancer. But the way he tries to get peace isn’t going to be found on the pages of a grief counselling book. Chris sleeps with the waitresses he manages at his restaurant, gets into fights and steals from just about anyone who will let him. This is a reckless character who seeks refuge in all the wrong places.
Leaving Lovestiff Annie is a complex book about dealing with the emotional stress of losing a wife. Needham does a good job of weaving together a story that really only makes sense near the end. He is a thoughtful writer and one who is true to his characters. However, because the story is a bit disjointed, it is hard to get into it. The writing in the beginning is dense and sentences are full of unnecessary modifiers. If a reader can get over that initial wtf feeling when they read the first few pages than they are in for a compelling story.
Needham writes in a stream of consciousness style. The dialogue runs into the flash backs runs into the narration. This technique, again, makes it difficult to follow the flood of characters that we are introduced to right away. But, once the book gets going it really works well with the characterization of Chris. He has yet to sort out his feelings, so it is revealing that everything in his life is bumping heads and a little chaotic.
For readers thinking about picking up Leaving Lovestiff Annie, stick with it through the beginning few pages because the characters become so enticing and the story so intricate that you may just end up enjoying your experience.
The Kept Man
Publisher: Riverhead Books
Page Count: 292 pp.
Released: 2007 (paperback)
The Kept Man by Jami Attenberg
The streets of Williamsburg come alive in Jami Attenberg’s first novel, The Kept Man. Attenberg takes the reader through the streets of her protagonist’s New York City neighbourhood with descriptions that are so vivid we know what streets we turn left down and which we turn right. Attenberg pushes her writing to the next level in this book. In her short story collection, Instant Love, humour and wit flooded from the pages. While you do find humour in The Kept Man, the sad yet optimistic story focuses on love, loss, courage and waiting.
Jarvis Miller is a half-widow. Her husband, a famous painter, is not quite dead, but he is definitely not alive. Martin has been in a coma for six long years ever since he hit his head in his studio one day when he was mixing purple paint. Jarvis visits him every Wednesday. After this visit, she needs a day to recover. She, a former party-girl, is lonely and out of touch with everyone. She has no friends. That’s until her washing machine breaks and she is forced to visit the laundromat. When she spots three guys all talking and laughing and living, she gets the courage to talk to them. These men are married to rich women and call themselves The Kept Men Club. Jarvis, who has lived off Martin’s success as an artist, fits right into this group. From there, she starts to take claim over her own life.
Attenberg does a great job of seamlessly weaving in scenes from Jarvis’ life with Martin before the accident with Jarvis’ life now. While she gives us glimpses into the beautiful love story that Jarvis and Martin had, Jarvis eventually discovers that everything wasn’t as perfect as she thought. However, once Jarvis begins re-integrating herself into society again, the Williamsburg landscape changes and becomes nuanced and clear, reflecting her new life.
The Kept Man is a beautifully written and honest book with a story that is touching, emotional and heartbreaking. Attenberg makes her characters so real that they stick with you long after you’ve finished the book. This is a great read and quite a page-turner.
Reviewed by Taryn Hubbard
Fidelity Doesn’t Make the News
Publisher: McArthur & Company
Page Count: 223 pp.
Released: English translation 2008
Fidelity Doesn’t Make the News
by Nadine Bismuth (translated by Susan Ouriou)
Nadine Bismuth takes her readers through the lives of middle-aged women, 10-year-old boys, maid of honors and princess rich girls in her collection of short stories, Fidelity Doesn’t Make the News. In each story, Bismuth conveys an emotion—whether it be insecurity, sadness, lust or anger—with understated ease and control. These are not stories that ride off the coat tails of lofty metaphors or drawn out descriptions of setting. Bismuth cuts the fat in her stories, leaving the reader fully immersed in the world she creates for us. Most of her characters chain smoke, just like the reader chain smokes through her intoxicating characters.
Her characters are fallible and often missing some piece of the big picture. In “Chinese Fondue,” married couple Murielle and Jean come over to share dinner at Normand and Lise’s house. Lise is a woman who has seemingly stopped the signs of aging by lathering her body with expensive lotions each night. But she has no idea that her husband is cheating on her with Murielle. When she finds out all she can do is sleep with Jean.
While some of her stories are snappy and cheeky, the title story “Fidelity Doesn’t Make the News” tells the story of a lonely woman with grown children thinking back on how happy she was. She makes pies, cabbage rolls and jars and jars of homemade ketchup so her children can take it all home when they come visit her. Unfortunately her children, a lawyer and a journalist, never visit her, despite her many pleas. Her homemade food only collects ice in her deep freeze.
Bismuth’s writing is fresh, spunky and articulate. She brings to life the rooms, restaurants, hotels and basements of Quebec. Her stories are ones that will not be easily forgotten.
Reviewed by Taryn Hubbard
First book review on its way
The very first book review to be posted on this website will be about Nadine Bismuth’s Fidelity Doesn’t Make the News. It’s a Canadian collection of short stories that was translated from French.
Stay tuned….
Posted in Uncategorized
