Half-Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan begins in Paris 1940 with Sid and Hieronymus restless after a late night of recording and in search of milk in a Paris cafe. Sid is an American bass player and Hiero is a brilliant trumpet player. So brilliant that Louis Armstrong has recognized his talent and asked him to cut a record with a band he’s formed. Hiero is 20 years old, German and black. He’s arrested in the cafe that day and not heard from again.
Sid was dealing with some irritable bowels when “the Boots” came in and he watches in fear from the stairwell as Hiero is arrested. It’s his guilt we wrestle with and try to understand throughout the novel. Did he want the kid arrested? Was he really frozen in fear and should have our sympathies?
Fifty years later, Sidney Griffiths and drummer Chip Jones come to Europe for the showing of a documentary about their legendary time in Paris with Hiero, “the kid.” But Chip’s planned another itinerary, which involves visiting Hiero. He’s discovered the kid is alive, blind and living in Poland.
The novel flips back and forth from the smoky bars of pre-war Berlin and the legends of Jazz in pre-war Paris to Sid and Chip’s geriatric return. Each episode draws the reader deeper into the relationships of the band members and the local colour of Berlin and Paris in the early haze of their WWII days.
The depictions of the band playing with Louis Armstrong and recording their own record are dynamite. It’s jazz from a musician’s point of view and it’s poetic.
It was the sound of the gods, all that brass. It was the old Armstrong and the new, that mature distilled essence of a master and the boy he used to be, the boy who could make his glissandi snap like marbles, the high Cs piercing. Hiero thrown out note after shimmering note, like sunshine sliding all over the surface of a lake, and Armstrong was that water, all depth and thought, not one wasted note. Hiero, he just reaching out, seeking the shore; Armstrong stood there calling across to him. Their horns sound so naked, so blunt, you felt almost guilty listening to it, like you eavesdropping. After some minutes Chip stopped singing, left just the two golden ropes of sound to intertwine.
The Bird Sisters made me incredibly sad. The book is great. My 1-line review would be “delicate and sturdy.”
The basic plot line follows two sisters, Milly and Twiss, and one summer when everything falls apart. Their father, who’s a golf pro, has an accident and loses his form. Their mother’s scorn becomes unbearable. And then their cousin from Deadwater arrives to spend the summer while her parents get divorced, which is the ultimate fly in the ointment.
The Bird Sisters is set in the 40s in Spring Green, Wisconsin. All the pettiness of a small town runs throughout the book, as well as all the treasures. There is a delicateness to each of the characters, almost like they are about to break, yet also a sturdiness to Milly and Twiss. I’m not sure which broke my heart but there is a scene in this book where “nice” is no longer nice.
A wonderful debut. And notably, the first book that I’ve read because of the internet. There are a ton of books that I hear about online but I’ve typically had them on my radar from word of mouth, publisher catalogues, or personal recommendations. The Bird Sisters, funny enough—or perhaps intentionally—came to me via twitter. I watched this title build momentum and really wanted to read it. I even remember checking if Ardea Books had it and having no idea what the book was about, only that it was a novel. I’m glad the twitter about The Bird Sisters was legit.
This is another book that I waited on too long to read. Joseph Boyden deserves all the praise this book received.
Three Day Road is about two Cree boys who join the Canadian efforts in World War I. Their bush skills and hunting are easily transposed to the trenches and sniper shooting and both become renowned for their kills.
The novel shifts between present day — Xavier’s Aunt’s visions and efforts to save her nephew from the morphine that is silently killing him while also keeping him alive — and Xavier’s flashbacks of his war days with his boyhood friend Elijah.
Elijah is the talker, the charmer and ultimately the one who is a little too good at killing.
What struck me most was the idea that there are men who are very good at war and when (if) they return to civilian life are unsettling and unsettled. Those who are good at war have difficulty that maybe those who are just lucky don’t have.
One of the characters “Fats” is perhaps lucky whereas Xavier is good. My inference is that Fats’ dumbluck will haunt him differently than the visions of killing that Xavier must contend with in his post-war days.
But the story isn’t about Fats, it’s about Xavier. And that story is very, very good.
Although the paperback was published in 2005, Sweetness in the Belly never made it to my reading list until last week. Camilla Gibb has written a brilliant book. I know you know. It was on all sorts of lists and everyone raved about it, which is probably why it took me so long to get around to it. But really, one word review: awesome.
Sweetness in the Belly is set in Harar, Ethiopia and London, England. The story is told through flashbacks to Ethiopia in the 70s and England in the 80s and 90s. Lilly is our protagonist and she is a white Muslim growing up in the class hierarchy system of an Ethiopian town where devout women pray, raise children and fight for survival against contaminated water, the jinn and other evil spirits, and husbands or lovers who leave them with children to raise and limited means to do so.
Lilly’s British, hippy parents raise her (sort of) as they travelled around African. But their unhappy end left Lilly in the care of a great Muslim teacher. On her journey to a shrine in Harar, many things happen that part her from her male travel companion and leave her in the care of Nouria, who’s less than thrilled to have another mouth to feed.
Lilly, the orphaned foreigner who knows the Qu’ran, learns the culture of Hararis and so does the reader along with her. Eventually caught up in the war, poverty and famine, Lilly escapes to live in London. It’s an exile, not a homecoming as she has left loved ones and must watch horrible events unfold from afar. But it’s actually through her exile that readers learn more of Ethiopia and of what it may be like for refugees.
On Islam:
This is what happens in the West. Muslims from Pakistan pray alongside Muslims from Nigeria and Ethiopia and Malaysia and Iran, and because the only thing they share in common is the holy book, that becomes the sole basis of the new community: not culture, not tradition, not place. The book is the only thing that offers consensus, so traditions are discarded as if they are filthy third-world clothes. ‘We were ignorant before,’ people say, as if it is only in the West that they have learned the true way of Islam.
In traveling through Indonesia, Turkey, Jordan and Egypt, I’ve experienced firsthand the moderation and cultural interpretations in a way that mean these sections of the text to really resonate with me. In Indonesia, I had a friend who when explaining praying said, “it is good to pray, it is better to pray with others, it is best to pray in the mosque.”
Everything was shades of grey that made perfect sense to me.
Later in the text, Lilly says “My religion is full of colour and possibility and choice; it’s a moderate interpretation ... one that allows you to use whatever means allow you to feel closer to God, be it saints, prayer beads, or qat, one that allows you to have the occasional drink, work alongside men, go without a veil when you choose, sit alone with an unrelated man in a room, even hold his hand ...”
It’s an interpretation where jihad is one’s personal struggle to be a good Muslim, not a fight against those who are not Muslim.
Sweetness in the Belly is one of those books that although set in a particular time and place, is really quite timeless.
One of my favourite books ever is The British Museum is Falling Down by David Lodge. It is one of the few books that I have read and re-read without eventually abandoning. I find the novel immensely satisfying and there are parts I laugh at each time. I have tried repeatedly to recreate that reading experience with Lodge’s other titles unsuccessfully—though I certainly haven’t explored his full repertoire.
Lodge’s latest work, A Man of Parts is a hefty tome of 565 pages. I was undeterred and selected this novel as one of my birthday gifts, even though I had to haul it all the way back from McNally Robinson in Winnipeg.
A Man of Parts is an homage to the late HG Wells, the English author (most well known for The War of the Worlds), futurist, essayist, historian, socialist and womanizer.
The book opens with a definition from Collins English Dictionary.
Parts PLURAL NOUN 1. Personal abilities or talents: a man of many parts. 2. short for private parts.
In many ways this novel is all about Wells’ private parts, both in his endowment and private life.
HG Wells (1866-1946) was born to a maid and shopkeeper. His childhood was one of poverty, but at an early age he was an avid reader and through a series of fortunate events was able to pretty much avoid practical employment (in the drapery business) and instead enter a scholastic track, leading to teaching and writing.
He married his cousin Isabel Mary only to divorce her four years later to marry one of his students, Amy Catherine, who he renamed Jane. With Jane, he developed into the writer and man more familiar to us, and fathered George Philip (Gip) and Frank, along with a daughter Anna Jane (with writer and student Amber Reeves) and a son Anthony (with feminist and journalist Rebecca West). Jane was quite patient.
A Man of Parts is basically the X-Rated version of The Sound of Music.
Wells is a well-respected man and active socialist. He joins the Fabians in hopes of propelling a socialist agenda, only to be disappointed by their internal politics. These are Edwardian men. Father knows best men. Mother runs the house without any hardship to Father. His shirts are pressed and cleaned by invisible fairies. His breakfast is delivered at the perfect temperature with eggs done exactly as he likes them. Mother’s bed is available to him but they sleep in separate beds, less for chaste reasons than so as to not disturb each other. And the children all play nicely while Mother calmly and with great accommodation ignores (and even offers advice on) Father’s indiscretions.
Nearly everything that happens in A Man of Parts is based on factual sources. “Based on” being the novelistic need to infer and form a narrative arch. Or as Lodge says in the introduction, “I have imagined many circumstantial details which history omitted to record.” With this literary licence Lodge delivers HG Wells, a man of many abilities, and certainly one invested in the talents of satisfying his admirers.
Before reading the novel, I really only knew Wells as one of the fathers of science fiction, War of the Worlds being considered a masterpiece that inspired the genre. But I didn’t realize how much his novels at the time of publication foreshadowed the reality to come of robotics, World Wars, aviation and aerial bombings, chemical weapons, and nuclear power. Nor did I know anything about his socialist inclinations and his aspirations for the League of Nations.
What was really intriguing is Lodge’s underlying story of Wells as an ailing man looking back on his life and wondering if his early success as a famous writer, “the man who invented tomorrow”, has just left him as yesterday’s man, a failed man; an author deserted by readers, a man whose utopian dreams of a society without jealousy and open to free love are unrealized and unlikely.
Looking at Lodge’s list of fiction, literary criticism and essays, I wonder if, like Wells, there is a ting of autobiographical exploration of emotions here.
Published in 2006 as part of the Myths series, Atwood provides a contemporary take on one of the most enduring stories of all time, Homer’s The Odyssey. In Homer’s tale, Penelope is the ever constant, faithful wife who dutifully tends to her husband’s empire without compromise to his finances or her fidelity despite hearing tale after tale from passing travellers recounting Odysseus’ great triumphs and tribulations in the war against Troy and his own yearnings for love in the arms of beautiful goddesses. I mean, really, did she just stand by for 20 years spinning a bit of yarn?
In Atwood’s version, Penelope is more than just the long-suffering wife of the hero. She is a very clever woman who makes 1 fatal mistake that costs her the lives of 12 obedient maids.
I love Atwood’s academic and philosophical answers to the elements of The Odyssey that went unquestioned in my literature classes. The Penelopiad begins with two questions: what led to the hanging of the maids, and what was Penelope really up to? I did wonder.
I also love the contemporary twist of the maids presenting evidence through song and dance, as if they were on Glee, the video trial, and Penelope checking out the contemporary world via spiritual mediums and commenting on the similarities or differences to her time.
Penelope may have been as clever as Helen was beautiful, but Margaret Atwood stands in a class of her own at the top of the clever charts.
Ami McKay’s second novel is sure to be a bestseller just like the first.
I am Moth, a girl from the lowest part of Chrystie Street, born to a slum-house mystic and the man who broke her heart.
So begins The Virgin Cure, a story about a street girl named Moth who is lured by the street savvy Mae into Miss Everett’s brothel for girls. Set in the 1800s in New York, girls as young as 12 are preyed upon by those wishing to make a buck or to pay a large sum to be a girl’s first. Sadly there are many gentlemen willing to sleep with young girls and, more depressing, there are many who believe virgins will cure syphillus.
Moth is 12, and like many girls from poor families, is sold. Money changes hands and she goes first to Mrs. Wentworth as a ladies maid. But Mrs. Wentworth likes to beat pretty girls so Moth runs away only to find that her mother is no longer living in their apartment. With no where to go, she’s left to her own devices until she is “saved” by Miss Everett, who trains young girls in the art of seduction and then sells their first trick for a lovely sum to well-to-do gentlemen including the Chief of Dectectives, bankers, and politicians. Thankfully Mr. Dink (no pun apparently intended) and Dr. Sadie (a lady physician dedicated to serving the needs of women and children) provide Moth a means to live beyond the street or the whorehouse. The question is whether she’ll take these offers.
The Virgin Cure is a novel about friendship and betrayal, and it’s a ficitionalized account of McKay’s great, great- grandmother who was a lady physician in NYC during this time.
Terroryaki! by Jennifer K. Chung is the perfect book for Halloween, or any time that you want a spooky food truck on your radar.
It’s three months to the wedding, and Daisy’s Taiwanese parents are still shunning her sister’s hopelessly white fiancé. To escape the prenuptial drama, food-obsessed Daisy goes on the hunt for a mysterious take-out truck whose dishes are to die for. Literally.
Terroryaki! is a playfully appetizing first bite. This is Jennifer K. Chung’s first novel and it’s the winner of the 33rd Annual 3-Day Novel Contest, which runs every Labour Day Weekend. The writing is gritty and fast paced, exactly what you’d expect from a novel crafted in 3 days, but it’s also quite accomplished. The novel opens as follows:
Samantha was getting married, and Mom didn’t like it. She thought Sam’s fiancé was a bad match for her and predicted that Sam would be divorced within a year. I kinda liked the guy—Patrick often joined me on weekly expeditions to new restaurants—but Mom didn’t care about my opinion. Patrick wasn’t Asian enough for her, probably because he wasn’t Asian at all. Besides, Mom and Sam have had a rocky relationship ever since Sam went away to college, and Mom was always bugging me about Sam, asking if I’d talked to her or if she’d posted on Facebook. I always shrugged and said, “I dunno.”
This is a funny, spicy and slightly creepy tale of food, family, love, Seattle, and the best—if slightly cursed—teriyaki food truck in Seattle. Daisy is a teriyaki connaisseur and blogger. Samantha is a lawyer and the bride to be. Patrick is the dumbfounded fiancé. Mom and Dad are keen on their Taiwanese soap operas and overly dramatic. Plus there’s the curse, piratesque teriyaki food truck driver, and the Nordic, slightly insane, terrifying wedding planner. Poor Daisy needs to do more than just save the wedding day.
The circus arrives without warning.
No announcements precede it, no paper notices on downtown posts and billboards, no mentions or advertisements in local newspapers. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not.
I would dearly love to read the reactions, the observations of each and every person who walks through the gates of Le Cirque de Rêves, to know what they see and hear and feel. To see how their experience overlaps with my own and how it differs. I have been fortunate enough to receive letters with such information, to have rêveurs share with me writings from journals or thoughts scribbled on scraps of paper.
We add our own stories, each visitor, each visit, each night spent at the circus. I suppose there will never be a lack of things to say, of stories to be told and shared.
These two passages are miles apart in in the novel. The first is the opening lines and the second is from Friedrick Thiessen, the first of the rêveurs.
Le Cirque de Rêves is a magical, travelling circus that appears and disappears at the will of Celia Bowen, the Illusionist. Yes, a female illusionist. And what is even more captivating is that she is bound to another illusionist as part of a challenge instigated by her father. The challenge is a duel of sorts and her opponent happens to be a young man besotted with her. He too is an illusionist and together they create the magic of the circus. There are some mechanical items, such as Friedrick Thiessen’s master clock, and Mr. Barris’ carousel, but many of the mechanical aspects are altered magically, and many of the magical aspects are altered mechanically in order to mask their true nature. The entire circus is fashioned in black, white and shades of grey. To honour the circus, its super fans, rêveurs, wear black, white or grey with a splash of red. They religiously follow the circus around the world, reporting to each other its location and writing articles for each other. (A bit like my Harry Potter fandom friends.)
Those who loved The Time Traveller’s Wife will be as thrilled with this novel. It has magic, romance, nasty parenting, loss, joy and everything you need to run a magical circus. (There is also a reference to Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab in the acknowledgements and an assortment of perfumery references—all very much of interest to me.)
The Paris Wife is a fictionalized account of the marriage between Hadley Richardson and Ernest Hemingway. It was a rocky marriage that lasted only 7 years, but it started with a great romance in Chicago and ended in an affair in Paris. Hadley was the first wife, and although Ernest married several more times, his account of his marriage to Hadley is beautifully treated in his work A Moveable Feast. Perhaps because he was such a louse when he was married to her?
Hadley is often referred to as the Paris Wife as the Hemingway couple spent most of their time together in Paris in the early days of Hemingway’s career. Hadley raised their son, practiced piano and patiently waited upon and tended to Ernest, who in turn ran amok with the European and American literati that included the likes of Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, Ezra Pound and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Although a fictional account, I enjoyed Paula McLain’s rendition of those crazy years in Paris post-WWII when everyone was running about and artists and writers were trying to make a name for themselves.
Hadley was Ernest’s sounding board and credited with making the space available for Hemingway to focus on making it big. The novel portrays this time as volatile. Post war, everyone was finding their place, including women. While many of the Hemingways’ female friends were working on their own careers, Hadley appeared keen to stay in the background in a supporting role to her husband, happily raising their baby boy. But although she is the doting wife, she’s sound of mind and body and a charmer in her own right. McLain certainly doesn’t portray all the females in the novel as so likeable.
Overall, a charming rendition of a heartbreaking relationship.
This Canadian author is certainly making the rounds on bestseller lists across North America:
#4 - New York Times bestseller list
#5 - Publishers Weekly
#5 - Chicago Tribune
#6 - Washington Post
#9 - National Independent Bookstores
#7 - Toronto Globe and Mail
#2 - Canadian Bookseller’s Association
#3 - Vancouver sun
#10- Maclean’s
#5 - Entertainment Weekly
Go Louise Penny!
Such success deserves some more attention and I am lucky enough to share an audio clip of A Trick of Light. The audiobook is available from Macmillan Audio and they’ve kindly given me permission to share the clip with you. Have a listen to this audio clip of A Trick of Light.
The English Patient was one of my favourite novels by Ondaatje. It helped that I studied it in English Lit because the movie adaption is really only one part of the many stories interwoven in that tale. It’s a masterpiece. But I suspect that it’s one of those books that people bought but never read. In the case of The Cat’s Table, we have a novel that is a much more accessible to read and definitely worth picking up.
In the early 1950s, 11-year-old Mynah (or Michael) boards a ship in Colombo bound for England. The Cat’s Table is his adventure on board, the characters who he meets, and later his adult understanding of that childhood time. Ondaatje has crafted a wonderful tale.
As I got into the car, it was explained to me that after I’d crossed the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea and the Red Sea, and gone through the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean, I would arrive one morning on a small pier in England and my mother would meet me there. It was to the magic or the scale of the journey that was of concern to me, but that detail of how my mother could know when exactly I would arrive in that other country.
And if she would be there.
What he doesn’t know is that he’ll befriend the heart-troubled Ramadhin or the exuberant Cassius. Nor does he know upon boarding about the shackled prisoner, the deaf girl or the circus.
It was not even eight o’clock when we crossed the border from First Class back to Tourist Class. We pretended to stagger with the roll of the ship. I had by now come to love the slow waltz of our vessel from side to side. And the fact that I was on my own, save for the distant Flavia Prins and Emily, was itself an adventure. I had no family responsibilities. I could go anywhere, do anything. And Ramadhin, Cassius, and I had already established one rule. Each day we had to do at least one thing that was forbidden. The day had barely begun, and we still had hours ahead of us to perform this task.
Whether it’s sneaking down to the boiler rooms, slipping into the life rafts, nabbing treats, or brazenly standing out in a storm, these three boys wreck havoc in the way only boys can. But this story is not just about discovering what they can get into, it’s about discovering who they are and what they mean to each other.
In many ways, it’s a story we all know. It’s one of going to camp for the summer and making friends, meeting people on a trip with whom you promise to stay in touch, or missing classmates who’ve come and gone. It’s about friendships made in a confined space or time. It’s about growing up and moving from childhood to adulthood. That’s what I mean by accessible. We share Mynah’s memories, even if they are not of the exact same space and time.
Watch for Michael Ondaatje at the Writers Festivals happening this fall. He’s worth seeing and the book is worth reading.
The Cat’s Table by Michael Ondaatje Published by M&S
Available in hardcover, unabridged audio CD, unabridged audiobook download and eBook.
Canadian author
I recommend all sorts of books to my mom. Most she likes and some that I think she’ll really like, she ends up hating. I was a bit worried recommending A Trick of Light by Louise Penny because I really enjoyed it and I wasn’t sure if it would make the cut for my mom.
Well, I can report that she has since purchased all of Louise Penny’s books and is a huge fan of Inspector Gamache.
Author Louise Penny lives outside of a small village south of Montreal, but she hasn’t always been a Quebecer. Penny was born in Toronto and became a journalist and radio host for CBC. She moved to Thunder Bay and Winnipeg, eventually settling in Quebec.
Within weeks I’d called Quebecers ‘good pumpkins’, ordered flaming mice in a restaurant, for dessert naturally, and asked a taxi driver to ‘take me to the war, please.’ He turned around and asked ‘Which war exactly, Madame?’ Fortunately elegant and venerable Quebec City has a very tolerant and gentle nature and simply smiled at me. (...more)
Full of courtesy and dignity is our main character, the Inspector. No wonder my mom has a bit of a heart throb for him. Even investigating the murder of Lillian Dyson, he is charming yet firm, worldly yet not pretentious.
Now don’t go worrying about dear Lillian, because she wasn’t much of a dear. Lillian, more times than not, played the stream roller, taking down the careers of many artists and presumed friends in the art world. She was a harsh and caustic critic, in particular of Clara Morrow, in whose garden she found herself murdered.
Now why was she in Clara’s garden the night of Clara’s first solo show at the famed Musée in Montreal? Lillian certainly wasn’t invited to the after-party in the garden. And what was she planning to do in that shocking, red cocktail dress?
A modern-day Agatha Christie, Louise Penny can hold her readers attention. Even the secondary characters have fully realized personas and backstories, which certainly makes it harder to guess the conclusion of this who-dunnit.
If you have never heard of Louise Penny, A Trick of Light is worth the read.
The Rebel Sell: Why The Culture Can’t Be Jammed takes aim at Michael Moore, Adbusters magazine, Naomi Klein, the women’s movement, leftists/rightists/centerists, hippies and basically any group that could be considered radical.
The book is an intellectual fistfight and I’m not sure who comes out the winner. Some readers will certainly feel beaten up.
The book is worth reading, but with special caution paid to rhetorical glissades and spin.
In short, Rebel Sell is a long missive advocating peace, order and good government.
Here are my top take-aways:
The anti-capitalists are still capitalists, they just don’t know it.
Corporate bullying (lobbying and tax exemptions) could be better dealt with by removing certain write-offs or decreasing the exemption percentages.
Two wrongs don’t make a right. As in Adbusters’ “Buy Nothing Day” and the sales of Adbusters’ running shoes do not make us a better society.
A capitalist society is not about conformity, and advertising is about knowing what’s available to buy.
Hipsters and elitests are simply struggling for status, which is no different than teens wanting the new, cool thing.
Feminists lost women power in some aspects of life.
Free love wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
And peace, love and happiness have been, and always will be, distritributed unevenly.
Selling out is just realizing that you’re part of capitalism, and it’s not all bad.
My problem with the authors’ worldview is that it is presented from a single perspective that manufactures support for their argument.
Again, it is worth reading, but make sure your thinking cap is tightly secured.
The Rebel Sell: Why The Culture Can’t Be Jammed
By Joseph Heath, Andrew Potter (Canadian authors)
Published by HarperCollins
Available in hardcover, paper, ebook
The Woefield Poultry Collective was highly recommended to me by a bookseller at the now defunct Ardea Books. The thing I miss most about having a local bookstore is the staff recommendations. There is something less novel about email newsletters and websites than the in-store chit-chat and recommendations.
The woman, whose name I now forget, was a constant source of good reading material. She recommended YA novels that were brilliant, nonfiction that was stimulating and fiction that I could not pass up. I miss her.
Her last recommendation was The Woefield Poultry Collective. She said, “this novel is terrificly funny. I couldn’t put it down. It is about a woman from New York who inherits a farm and tries to make a go of it.”
The farm name is Woefield, and it is full of woe-betide characters and lousy soil. The only really farming seems to be rock farming. But the new proprietor, named Prudence, is not so prudent.
She, upon a brief introduction, invites the pale-face, homebody from next door to move in. Seth runs a couple of internet sites and doesn’t really leave the house. He does a lot of drinking and fretting about “the thing with the drama teacher.” In fact, he’s on Prudence’s doorstep because his mom just kicked him out.
Where others see a loser, Prudence sees an opportunity.
The novel is told in first person and alternatives between Prudence, the new farm owner, Seth the geek and lay-about, Earl the farm hand, and little Sara, who like Seth is a bit lost in the world.
Unlike Seth, Sara is a go getter. She’s landed at the farm because her family has moved into a subdivision and she can no longer keep her poultry in the yard. Prudence has offered to house the birds.
The book is laugh-out loud funny. Funny in ways that had me reading chapters aloud to James, especially the chapters from Sara or Earl’s perspective. The straight-man nature of these two in comparison to flaky Prudence and Chubnuts (Earl’s pet name for Seth) is hilarious.
SARA
When my parents told me that I had to move my birds, I didn’t say anything. In Jr. Poultry Fancier’s Club they tell us that leaders are Even Tempered, which means they don’t get mad even when everyone would understand if they were. The other thing leaders do is Take Action. I’m beginning to think I have some leadership qualities because even though I might feel mad, I try not to show it ...
When my parents told me I had to move my birds because some neighbors complained, I just got up and went to my room. I didn’t tell them this was what we got for moving to Shady Woods Estates, where the house are all packed together and there are rules about everything. I didn’t tell them that my chickens are the nicest part of Shady Woods, which they are. I didn’t mention that the word Shady is extremely ironic, which I learned about in English last semester, since there is no shade anywhere on our streets. You have to have trees to have shade and there are no trees left here. It’s also kind of ironic that I’m only eleven and a half and even I know this.”
The building of Sara’s chicken coop is as fraught with tension as Sara’s family life, but is also good for a laugh.
EARL
I’d be the first one to tell you I don’t know a whole hell of a lot about kids. Never had any. Barely even knew any. When you grow up in a musical family, ‘specially a musical country family, there’s a lot of working and playing music. Not too much being a kid. So for all I know, maybe all kids is bossy as hell. But I don’t think any of them could come anywhere near that little Sara Sprout. Good goddamn name for her ...
She was not afraid to dictate an order or two. I learned that after she looked at the chicken house ...
She told me it looked wrong, and I was about to tell her to go to hell when Prudence comes rushing over and sticks her nose in, trying to smooth things out.
Prudence told the kid I been working on it all day and asked what the problem was. So the kid started to tell her ... she pointed to the tar paper poking out here and there and said there were no vents and how chickens need excellent ventilation.
God help me, she had a point there. But I didn’t let on that I agreed. Truth is, I was getting a helluva kick out of her ...
Prudence told the kid I’d be happy to fix it and the kid said how at her junior poultry club they are taught that standards are important.
Standards. Can you beat that?
She told us that without standards you have nothing.
She had a point there. That kid’s not much for smiling, but she sure as hell makes up for it on the giving directions side.
Sweet. Delightful. Witty. I don’t think these adjectives do justice to Susan Juby’s novel. Sure it’s these things, but it’s also a good bit of farm humour. Anyone who has some farm experience knows these characters, and knows the style of farm-funny I’m talking about.
Bob Collins’ Outstanding in Their Field is a collection of crazy funny farm stories. Self-published and worth the read. Prudence wouldn’t own a copy of this book, but her life could be a farm-yarn in this collection.
Prudence’s big plan is to rake in the dough selling her wares at the farmers market. To that end, I recommend the Foodtree website and app.
Foodtree.com is a way to chart the provenance of your fruits and veg. Snap photos of your purchases at the farmers market, upload to Foodtree and tag with the market, farmer and product. It’s a delicious way to share what’s on your plate. (Available in Vancouver, Toronto, Calgary, Edmonton and Boulder CO.) I’m sure Prudence would be all over this app, although I doubt anyone would be clamoring to snap pics of her spindly radishes—unless it was to make fun.
Check it out.
The Woefield Poultry Collective by Susan Juby (Canadian author)
Available in hardcover, paperback and ebook from Harper Collins
Plain Words, Uncommon Sense A blog on books, writing, tap dancing, technology, and the other amusements of Monique Sherrett (or Monique Trottier in unmarried form).
Monique Sherrett lives in Vancouver, BC, Canada and is a litblogger, among other things. Find out more ...
"So misguided." A comment often uttered in my eclectic salon.
Contact
Send me book galleys, ARCs or review copies. Contact me at monique at somisguided dot com Contact me at Boxcar Marketing
