The Book of Stanley by Todd Babiak is one of the funniest books I’ve read all year.
There’s something about books about God that really tickle me. I suppose it’s repressed anxiety from attending the Catholic Church as a kid.
Stanley Moss is an average man. He’s a retired florist, diagnosed with cancer. He’s a putterer and his wife’s the same. They live in Edmonton, across the way from a car dealership, and sometimes in the clear, summer afternoons they can hear the receptionist announcing calls over the PA. It’s the prairies.
So what happens to Stanley Moss? How does he become my hero and favourite character of 2007?
Like this.
Stanley is stricken by ... well, we’re not sure, but afterwards things are different. He’s different.
Stanley can hear what people are thinking. He can convince them of things. He can lift heavy objects. He can throw himself from a cliff.
He’s God.
But he’s also human in a way to which we can relate. Stanley’s nervous about his new self. He’s unsure of what to do. He wants to use his power for good, but he’s surrounded by bad. He makes decision by committee. He gets confused. He starts losing himself.
I think we have these worries whenever we take on new challenges and that’s what is great about Stanley. Stanley’s not a leader. The Book of Stan. Come on. But they do, people come in droves to hear what he has to say, to try to silence him, to try to follow his teachings. It’s a behemoth mess as far as his wife is concerned.
You have to love her for that.
The Book of Stanley is Canadian satire. It’s not British and definitely not American. It’s perfectly Canadian.
I’ve been telling people that The Book of Stanley is “Gabriel Garcia Marquez meets Michael Winter.”
Read the book and let me know if you agree.
Todd also has a smart ass blog at ToddBabiak.com, last I checked he was trying to replace Rabinovitch as president and CEO of CBC. He’s definitely an author to watch out for, I mean, watch.
The English Patient, The Cinnamon Peeler’s Wife and Handwriting are the only Ondaatje books I’ve ever read. I enjoyed them. I like the lyrical nature of Ondaatje’s writing.
Divisadero fits the bill perfectly. Ondaatje is telling two stories, a modern-day love story and a forgotten love story--I suppose both are forgotten in some ways.
The first story is Anna’s. In the 1970s in northern California, Anna lives with her sister and father on a farm. The hired hand, Cooper, is also part of the family. All three children, Anna, her sister and Coop, have lost their mothers. It’s a strange world. The mothering nature is missing. There are unspoken rules. The girls are competitive for affection. It unwinds when Coop and Anna begin a tryst that is discovered by her father. Anna runs away and keeps running from love for the rest of the story.
The second story is Lucien Segura’s. In a much earlier time in south central France, Lucien lives with his mother, and next door lives Marie-Neige. She moves there with her husband, a much older husband. Lucien and Marie-Neige grow close as they grow up. It’s the turn of the century and times are different than in 1970, yet the complications of loving someone forbidden to you are much the same.
Lucien’s story is much stronger than Anna’s. Although I enjoyed the writing of both, Lucien’s story is almost mystical. It’s more suck in my imagination than Anna’s story.
I wonder if all of Ondaatje’s love stories are ones of lost, discord and memory.
Find out more about Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje.
UPDATE: Don mentions in the comments that Random House has a podcast featuring Michael Ondaatje and his M&S editor talking about Divisadero.
Thanks Don.
Fans of historical fiction must seek out this book.
The Meaning of Night by Michael Cox (McClelland & Stewart, 2006)
Michael Cox is a first-time author from Northamptonshire, UK. and he’s written the confession of Edward Glyver. Fictional? Of course ... or is it?
Indeed it is.
Cox, however, has used a literary technique that I quite like. He adds another layer to the story by introducing J. J. Antrobus as the editor of the work. This fictional character borders that fine line between fiction and nonfiction. Allowing readers to be momentarily disoriented--is this a novel or historical work?
The device also allows Cox’s “editor” to add footnotes to the text, informing the reader, in a non-intrusive way, of tidbits of information--some of it fictional and some of it historical. I won’t tell you the end of the novel, but this device does increase the reader’s understanding of the story, in particular the knowledge that this “confession” has been found and the “true” story revealed to future generations.
The writing reminds me of Dickens, or a Victorian-England writer of your choice. The book starts out at quite a clip, has a little lull early on, and then you pretty much roar through the 600 page tome.
“After killing the red-haired man, I took myself off to Quinn’s for an oyster supper ...”
See, speedy intro.
You might wonder how the reader is to sympathize with a main character who kills an innocent man, just to make sure he’ll be able to do it when face to face with his enemy, but this is a story of deceit, murder and revenge. Edward Glyver is definitely one of the most likeable of the leading ladies and lads.
More about the book
Edward Glyver, book lover, scholar and murderer. He discovers upon the death of his mother that he is not who he’s been raised to believe he is. In a twist of circumstances, the boy who had him expelled from school is the man set to inherit Glyver’s intended fortune.
There’s drama, passion, strong writing, a captivating story, interesting characters, and all sorts of goodies.
The Meaning of Night website has a number features about the book and the author.
You can download Part One in PDF.
Having read the book already, I’m less interested in that aspect, however, I did enjoy Michael’s message to readers:
Thanks for visiting The Meaning of Night website.
I hope readers of the novel will enjoy browsing the images and other material gathered together on the site, and that they’ll provide some entertaining insights into the world of the novel’s narrator, Edward Glyver.
What I’ve tried to do in The Meaning of Night is to create an imagined world that’s solid and circumstantial, but which exists somewhere apart from the mundane and the everyday, a world in which extraordinary things happen, but which still remains plausible and somehow real.
The novel is also a homage to the primal power of story, and to the great storytellers I admire � people like Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson and Rafael Sabatini. These are the writers I return to again and again, and who have inspired The Meaning of Night. If I’ve succeeded in creating a story that grips the reader from the first line to the last, then I’ll feel I’ve done my job.
So if you’ve already read the novel � thank you. If you haven’t, I hope you will soon.
Best wishes,
Michael Cox
I’ve just finished reading Daniel Isn’t Talking by Marti Leimbach. There are lots of funny moments, educational moments, which I also enjoyed, and some craziness. I was initially quite skeptical about this book. The title is great, the cover is great (different cover on Amazon.ca--the version here, which I prefer, is the advance copy so we’ll have to wait to see the final one). I was skeptical because I seem to have encountered a lot of autism books lately. Each was fantastically well written and interesting.
Not Even Wrong by Paul Collins. A engaging portrait of his autistic son.
Animals in Translation by Temple Grandin. Temple is autistic and (I think) has a PhD in animal science. The book is how to use autism to understand animal behaviour.
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon. A very funny novel about an autistic boy trying to solve the mystery of a murdered dog.
I was skeptical because I did not think Daniel Isn’t Talking was going to stand up to these titles. It does and doesn’t. Daniel Isn’t Talking is well written and by the midway point I did appreciate the characters, but at the beginning I just thought why am I reading about this crazy mother. And she stayed crazy through the book.
I didn’t like Melanie Marsh, Daniel’s mother. She is insecure, over protective of her children, in need of more than a little therapy, and she is driven to further madness when her son is diagnosed with autism. It is at the point of diagnosis where my sentiments about Melanie shifted slightly. She struggles and fights for her son, and I appreciated her tenacity and strength. She doesn’t take the “this is how things are going to be” diagnosis. She looks for alternative ways to help Daniel along. I still found her annoyingly insecure. I like strong willed characters. Her daughter Emily was my favourite character, as were Daniel and Andy (the Irish fellow Melanie eventually hires to help Daniel).
Overall, here’s my plug for the book:
Daniel Isn’t Talking is a comic, yet serious novel. It is as funny as Three Men and a Baby, but as serious as a self-help workbook. Melanie Marsh finds herself as an American in London with a stuck up, absent husband, a genius daughter and a recently diagnosed autistic son. Daniel Isn’t Talking is about stray nappies, misguided families, and the British stiff upper lip. It is also about a boy clearing his own path through life, and his mother’s struggle to show him the way.
Daniel Isn’t Talking should be in stores in April. As part of the McClelland and Stewart 100 Readers Club, I got to read the advance copy.
