What I have read lately
Radiance by Shaena Lambert. The review for this will probably be coming out in the newspaper next weekend. I think it is going to be this year's The Birth House (by Ami MacKay) which was a surprise hit, first novel last year. This is a first novel as well and I suspect it may have the same impact as The Birth House - at least, I really enjoyed it. The story is about Keiko, an 18-year old girl who survived the bombing of Hiroshima but lost her Mother and Grandfather. She goes to New York in 1952 for reconstructive surgery sponsored by a ban-the-bomb group. The main story - and a lot of the tension - is between Keiko and Daisy, the home-stay woman who looks after Keiko while she is recovering. That is a super simplified summation of the narrative - really, you should just go to the library right now and put the book on hold - I believe it comes out on the 17th. At first (while I was reading it) I wasn’t sure that anything was really happening but, at least a month after I finished reading it I am still thinking about it.
The Shadow Side of Grace by Michelle Butler Hallett: I think this is one of my favourite short story collections out of all the ones I reviewed last year. Butler Hallett is a Newfoundlander but these aren’t typical Newfie stories. She is coming out with a novel in the fall and I am eagerly awaiting it.
Butler Hallett, a student of Elizabethan drama, twentieth-century Russian history and the development of radio draws from all of her influences to create a genre that is truly her own. Her stories are grim and often like macabre fairytales. Butler Hallett writes of Russian cousins dealing with the bones of Stalin’s dead, a victim of a brutal rape who descends into a quiet madness as a way to deal with the resulting child and a 19th-century solider who must live with both his past and a visiting demon and how his history affects those around him and their descendants for centuries to come.
My Wedding Dress: a collection of short stories for a review, it was actually a lot better than I thought it would be, a lot of interesting untraditional weddings going on which make for interesting stories instead of just: It didn't drag on the ground, it looked like I could wear it again and it wasn't too expensive which is basically my wedding dres story
A Season in the Life of Emmanuel and Mad Shadows both by Marie-Claire Blais and both re-reads because I like depressing and bizarre Canadian fiction.
Governor of the Northern Province by Randy Boyagoda. An interesting look at Canadian politics through the eyes of an escaped, murderous, African warlord wannabe. I didn’t love it but I keep thinking about it too. I did love the opening line: “He laughed at what passed for tragedy in his new country.”
Storytelling by Kate Wilhelm: about the Clarion writers’ workshops (for sci-fi and fantasy writers but not exclusively). A very interesting read - even though I thought it was something else entirely when I took it out of the library.
I'm reading The End of Food right now and am torn between Never. Eating. Again! And ripping out the lawn in the front of my apartment building and starting a victory garden - because this is obviously war! A war against food!