I'm ready for my dinner now

Kerry-Lynn's pick: Knut Hamsun, Hunger (1890: Penguin, 1998)

16 September 2009 @ Stella's (Commercial Drive, Vancouver)

Kerry-Lynn went out on a limb with this one - Hunger is not the kind of book that you burn through, unable to turn the pages fast enough because you are so thrilled by the action. The back of the Penguin edition calls it a "searing excursion into the realm of the irrational." Sounds like the latest Nora Roberts, no? Hamsun - I think of him affectionately as Knut - presents a few days in the life of a man in late-Victorian Kristiania (Oslo), as he scrambles to forestall starvation until his body and moral rectitude can replenish themselves. Our only version of events is filtered through his half-crazed mind.

Our individual reactions to Hunger, more than anything else we've read for book club, were shaped by our personal interests and backgrounds. (I should say that Jennifer couldn't come to the meeting, and I don't know if she read the book, but those who know her best were confident that she wouldn't have liked it anyway.) For Kerry-Lynn, who spent years toughing it out in the rarefied world of ballet, Hunger was a tale of the struggling artist, whose suffering is at least partly self-induced - the result of an imprudent and even prideful commitment to his "craft."

For Nicole and I (she with a background in English literature and I with a background in English history), Hunger was a tale of alienation in the modern city, and Knut an early modernist because he privileged man's inner psychology over his outward actions - thought over plot. And Leanne, well, she didn't get past the first twenty-five or thirty pages. From what I could gather, the protagonist's disfigured thought processes and mercurial disposition repulsed her.

I won't speculate on the psychoanalytical impulses behind Leanne's violent reaction to the book (!), but I can see where she's coming from. You know the enraged homeless guy who stands in the middle of the street screaming at someone invisible? That's this guy. Fascinating, but disconcerting and frustrating too. His impaired judgment causes him to ignore and squander the few chances that do cross his path.

We all - even Leanne, perhaps - came away with a real... appreciation for Hamsun's achievement. But that is precisely what bothers me about my own assessment. I wanted to escape from myself when I was reading Hunger. It occurred to me at one point, "I should teach this for my European survey class," and from then on I was just gathering historical cues to flesh out the modernism lecture spontaneously writing itself in my head. That kind of systematic evaluation does a disservice to the story's most beautiful, brutally human moments.

Post-script: if you ever make it to Stella's, get the "Orleans" mussels, with fries.

Quirks that work

Reif Larsen, The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet (Penguin, 2009).

The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet is the kind of book that teeters on the edge of being irksome. It is, like so much postmodern pop culture, self-consciously idiosyncratic, bubbling with quick, knowing references to everything from railroad signals to Dolly Parton. The literary mechanism that enables such detail is a twelve-year-old cartographer - a child prodigy. His obsessive-compulsive mind spills out onto every page, and frequently into the margins. Footnotes, drawings, and maps are integral to the story; they are "illustrations" in the truest sense.

And although Larsen never makes this explicit, while the protagonist is twelve-year-old T.S., the speaker seems to be adult T.S., with emotional insights that could come only with life experience. These adult reflections also fill the pages, and the result could easily turn pretentious.

But Larsen errs on the side of charming. All the minutiae are offset by the powerful simplicity of T.S.'s "emotional journey" - he has lost a brother and is trying to understand, not only his role in the death, but his role in his transformed family. He uses his scientific work to grapple with his very unscientific dilemma. Not only does T.S. surreptitiously insert his brother's name into every one of his maps, but his personal issues determine the kinds of maps he draws. Faced with a surfeit of new sights and sounds on his first trip to Chicago, for instance, he ultimately chooses to chart the terrain of loneliness: he counts the number of people walking alone, and then the percentage who deflect their loneliness with cell phones or iPods. One of my favourite "maps" in the book uses arrows to illustrate the changing flow of conversation at his family's dinner table, both before and after his brother's death.

So all the bits and bobs have a role to play, and while some might find the end result cloying, I do not count myself in their number. The quirks worked for me. (For quirks that do not quite work, see the film 500 Days of Summer, playing now in your local theatre.)

Restoring the integrity of my blog

Jennifer's pick: Rose Tremain, Restoration (Viking Press, 1990)

17 August 2009 @ The Nook (Denman Street, Vancouver, BC)

I'm beginning to have a problem with the five-star system that my book club uses. There is no nuance. I can read three books, and give them each a rating of four out of five stars, but that indicates a sameness about them that is misleading. It also makes the reviewer (my friends and I) appear passionless. Maybe it's time to scrap the system; until then you can see our critical insights and opinions reduced to a number below. (I lost the ratings - it must be a sign. I hereby retire the star rating system.)

Everyone liked Restoration. It's difficult to see how someone could not like it. Tremain's story is a sensitive rendering of the seventeenth-century world of an English courtier, but it is also surprisingly funny and touching. The speaker, our hero Robert Merivel, is absolutely lovable, even when his character sinks to the depths of depravity. He is so pathetic, but so open and child-like that you forgive him his trangressions - which include a heaping helping of the seven deadly sins, gluttony and lust in particular. (I used the film adaptation cover here, with Robert Downey Jr. in Louis XIV's wig. Excellent!) Reading about Merivel's turbulent fortunes is a pleasure. I wish I could give more specific information on my fellow members' individual perspectives, but we all seemed to be in loose agreement, and to be honest we didn't spend hours discussing it. My sister, who joined us that evening, remarked later, "I don't know if that qualifies as a 'meeting'."

I do, however, want to emphasize what a lovely example this is of an historical novel. Tremain doesn't fetishize the period details or showboat her knowledge of seventeenth-century politics. But she captures the zeitgeist, especially the significance and role of the king in courtly society. Merivel's adoration of James II might seem overblown, but a good absolutist monarch had that effect on his followers in the seventeenth century. James was not as charismatic or effective as Louis XIV, but to his courtiers he would have been the centre of the universe. Meanwhile, Merivel's life in "exile" shows just how much the rest of English society was moving onward and upward, regardless of the shenanigans of the royal court.

Not even good enough to be called trash

Linda Lael Miller, Shotgun Bride (Pocket Star, 2003).

The only reason this is on my blog is because I'm committed to reporting on every (non-work-associated) book that I read. This book, apparently second in the hallowed "McKettrick Cowboys" trilogy, was one of a handful of romance novels on the bookshelf at the N.S. cottage that my family and I rented this August. I had brought the current book club choice - Rose Tremain's Restoration - along to read, but it made sense to read a vacation paperback instead. Judging from the back-cover synopsis, Shotgun Bride seemed the raciest and most amusing of the bunch:

Kade McKettrick's got five mail-order brides-to-be camped out at the local hotel, all more than eager to provide him with the heir that will win him the Triple M ranch. But Kade, the newly appointed marshal, has his hands full with a troublesome outlaw gang. Why, then, is he so easily distracted by pretty "Sister Mandy" -- who most assuredly is not the nun she claims to be?

So, inspired by the cheese of Twilight, I dug in. But this book sucked. I didn't even finish it, a rarity for a completist like me. The story was plodding. The dialogue wasn't witty or sparkling. But I woud have dealt with this in exchange for good romantic tension and bodice-ripping love scenes. But no. When the cowboy and his lover finally get to it, after two-hundred-and-something pages, Miller likens their derobing to "an ancient ritual of sacred magic" or some such nonsense. It made my skin crawl.

Like a man

Sam Keith from the journals of Richard Proenneke,

One Man's Wilderness: An Alaskan Odyssey

(1973: Alaska Northwest Books, 1999).

This is one of my very occasional forays into non-fiction. Dick Proenneke moved to Twin Lakes Alaska, in 1968, when he was in his early fifties. His goal was to build a cabin and spend an entire year in this secluded spot, living off the land and braving the brutal winter, when the temperature could get as low as -45ºF. In the end, Proenneke stayed for about twenty-eight years. His cabin is now a provincial landmark, and his journals and film footage are valuable records of Alaska's native landscape, flora, and fauna.

While Proenneke's experience may not be the most extreme ever recorded - his loyal friend Babe regularly flew in with a few supplies from civilization, and he did not hang out with grizzly bears - it might be the most meticulous. With the exception of nails, tar paper and polyethylene for his cabin roof, and a few simple metal tools, Proenneke built his cabin, above-ground cache, john, furniture, and other odds and ends (like a sled and snowshoes) from logs that he harvested, transported, seasoned, and hewed himself. He used old gas cans to make hinges, containers, and pots and pans. He fashioned a dutch door with wooden hinges and even a wooden locking mechanism. Everything he made looked so clean and operated so smoothly that, from the photographs, it is hard to believe they are handmade. His cabin logs tuck together seamlessly. He gathered stones from the lake beach and built himself a beautiful, neat, fireplace. He fired one shot at a ram early in the hunting season, and the meat lasted him the entire winter. Proenneke described in detail many of his projects and travels up and down the lakes, and most fascinating of all, filmed his activities as well. (Some of this footage has been collected in the one-hour program Alone in the Wilderness, which you can periodically catch on PBS.)

I was drawn to the book by the televised program, but was happily surprised to find that, on the page, Proenneke has a flair for rustic turns of phrase. He could write as well as be manly. On getting a bite on his fishing line: "It happened with the suddenness of a broken shoelace." On the view: "Rags of fog are strewn about the high peaks." On encountering a weasel: "There he was, sitting upright like a fence picket." Evocative and authentic. And my favourite, on the sudden changes in the lake: "Like a woman. All smiles one minute, and dancing a temper tantrum the next." (Proenneke's bachelor philosophy and attiudes toward women were charmingly old-fashioned. When Babe promised to bring some "mission girls" out to the cabin for a visit, poor Dick set about scrubbing down his quarters with the zeal of my Aunt Donna before a family reunion. The girls never materialized.)

This book deserves your attention for three reasons: because Proenneke's feats as an outdoorsman were outstanding; because it reads with sweetness, passion, and honesty; and because it will make even the most committed urbanite sigh at the prospect of solitude in the mountains.

I must confess

Stephenie Meyer, Eclipse (Little, Brown and Company, 2007) and Breaking Dawn (Little, Brown and Company, 2008)

(Okay, although I can count on the fingers of one hand the people who have read this blog , I feel obliged to include a spoiler alert here. I give everything away.)

I just read Nicole's rational response to my thoughts on the first two instalments of the Twilight saga. It was like my alter ego speaking. Everything she said seems correct, in particular her criticisms of Meyer's writing and her qualms about our young couple's enforced chastity. Thinking back over the last two books, which I also read with alacrity, I cringe at so many things, not least Edward's one point three million schmoopy remarks towards his lady love. The character development is shallow and the story as a whole lacks complexity. When I went to a local bookstore to purchase #3, the lady behind the counter said, "Let me guess - you were up all night reading the last one and you couldn't wait to see what happens." I wasn't up all night, thank you very much... but I might have been if I didn't have a husband who insisted on an 11 o'clock bedtime. It seemed appropriate that the cashier gave it to me in a brown paper bag. I am that ashamed of myself.

But whereas Nicole could hardly bear to finish Twilight, I ate it up. Same goes for the rest of the series. When Bella kissed Jacob, I thought, "No! No!" When at long last she consummated her relationship with Edward, I thought, "Yes! Yes!" Just like pressing a button. Why is this? Has it been too long since my last trashy novel? Perhaps. Did I see the Twilight movie and get swayed by Robert Pattinson's good looks? Possibly. But the bottom line: I am lowbrow. Not in a cool idiosyncratic way, just straight-up mass-market. My ability to suspend my disbelief outstrips my critical faculties. I also enjoy romantic comedies.

Acknowledging this will not deter me from arguing the merits of these books. I was especially impressed by the patched-together behemoth Breaking Dawn. I didn't think Meyer would make Bella a vampire, and she did. It was a gutsy move because it is not right, not PC, that our protagonist should have to alter herself so fundamentally in order to become "complete." It's creepy. And there is more fascinating creepiness: Bella loses her virginity only to wake up covered in bruises; then she endures a staggering birth/vampirization ordeal. Bloody, sick, riveting. I knew that Jacob would be provided for romantically, but I did not anticipate the object of his imprinting. His connection to Bella's offspring nicely tidies up that strand of the story line.

In the end, it's all cheap thrills... give me more.

Holding out for that teenage feeling

Stephenie Meyer, Twilight (Little, Brown and Company, 2005) and

New Moon (Little, Brown and Company, 2006)

After finishing the first two instalments of Stephenie Meyer's fabulously popular Twilight series, I have decided to give them a good review. It would be all too easy to pan them both, for the sometimes clunky prose and the repetitive melodrama

of the relationship between Bella Swan and Edward Cullen (living and undead, respectively). But that would be unfair; and if I was really concerned with such things I wouldn't have touched the series.

In fact, I devoured both books over the course of just a few days, and was, I'm ashamed to admit, just as enthralled with the teen romance as your typical pubescent girl. Bella and Edward are best compared to Romeo and Juliet in the immediacy and hyperbolic intensity of their mutual regard. While Bella spends much of her time wallowing in insecurity and comparing herself unfavourably to her chaste lover, Edward remains as faithful as a labrador retriever. Perhaps the series' biggest strength is Edward himself - even I got a crush on him. He contains within himself the recipe for a teenage girl's dream boyfriend: beautiful and devoted in equally impossible measure, thus assuaging any lingering insecurities; lusty yet gentlemanly. These amiable qualities outshine his disturbing traits: overprotectiveness, a penchant for stalking, melancholia, and unpredictable mood swings. (And I'm not counting the vampire-y things.)

What most fascinated me about the story was how well-suited it was to Meyer's vampire trope. Other than Bram Stoker's Dracula I have never read anything in the ever-popular vampire genre, and I couldn't really see the attraction. But it certainly works in Twilight, a romance novel with no sex (so far). Meyer is a Mormon, so she may have a vested interest in striking a delicate balance between keeping things clean and creating a convincing romance for her hormonal readers. Edward's vampire status allows her to do this. Bella and Edward are perpetually hot and bothered; not only does Edward also crave the taste of her blood, but as a vampire he is designed to attract Bella as well. Unfortunately, Edward cannot allow himself to "lose control" sexually because - and I realize how ridiculous this sounds - he might kill her. (Ah, sex and death.) All these intricacies can, of course, stand in for everyday adolescent shenanigans in the real world: hot-blooded girls and boys furiously making out but struggling to restrain themselves because they're afraid of pregnancy, disease, ridicule, shame, regret, and on and on. This must have been Meyer's intention. She makes it clear that Edward's unusual makeup (and advanced age) does not hamper his desire. (One of his funniest remarks goes something like, "I may be a vampire, Bella, but I'm still a man." Yes!)

So, if we're going to get any satisfaction from these two, either Bella has to become a vampire or Edward has to become human. And then they have to get married. Good thing real life isn't so complicated.