Andrew Kaufman is one of my favourite writers, even though he’s only written one book, All My Friends Are Superheroes. But that changes this month with the publication of his second book, a novel called The Waterproof Bible—and I’m meaning that what’s changed in the number of books published, not my fandom.
The Waterproof Bible backcover has one of those descriptions that either impresses you or frightens you.
A magical story of love and the isolation that defines the modern condition - Andrew Kaufman pulls off the near impossible and creates a wholly original allegorical tale that is both emotionally resonant and outlandishly fun.
Rebecca Reynolds is a young woman with a most unusual and inconvenient problem: no matter how hard she tries, she can’t stop her emotions from escaping her body and entering the world around her. Luckily she’s developed a nifty way to trap and store her powerful emotions in personal objects - but how many shoeboxes can a girl fill before she feels crushed by her past?
Three events force Rebecca to change her ways: the unannounced departure of her husband, Stewart; the sudden death of Lisa, her musician sister; and, while on her way to Lisa’s funeral, a near-crash with what appears to be a giant frogwoman recklessly speeding in a Honda Civic.
Meanwhile, Lisa’s inconsolable husband skips the funeral and flies to Winnipeg where he begins a bizarre journey that strips him of everything before he can begin to see a way through his grief… all with the help of a woman who calls herself God.
What the hell, right?
This is a book about what we think about before we die: who has a score to settle, who needs to say farewell, who needs forgiveness, who needs forgetfulness. In the case of The Waterproof Bible the characters are all tied in some way to the death of Lisa.
Lisa’s husband Lewis needs to deal with his grief through flight. Flight in a twofold way in that he chooses flight vs. fight and flight as in he jumps on an airplane to get far away. Far away from himself, I believe.
Lisa’s sister Rebecca has so much emotion that she doesn’t know what to do with it. She’s a woman with a lot of baggage. As she physically and metaphorically lets go, she’s able to come to terms with herself.
Lisa’s brother-in-law Stewart is estranged from Rebecca and is living somewhere in the middle of the Prairies, where he’s building a boat. Landlocked and oh so misguided, or so it seems.
Margaret and Aby are two Aquatics whose lives intersect with the other three. Aquatics are those who are meant to live underwater, according to the laws of the Aquatic Bible. But Margaret has chosen another path, much to the chagrin of her daughter Aby who, in making her way to her mother’s home on the Prairies, has a run-in (in the literal sense) with Rebecca and Lewis. Oh and Margaret runs the hotel where Stewart works and is building the boat.
I know it’s all bizarre, but truly, this is my favourite book of 2010.
Kaufman writes literary fantasy the way that Gabriel Garcia Marquez writes magical realism. Where indeed is the line? The Waterproof Bible is a crazy, magical story of love—the beginning, middle and end—and life—the beginning, middle and end. I loved it.
Andrew Kaufman’s writing is completely sensible, even with the greenskined Aquatics floating around on the Prairies. Andrew, thank you so very much for giving us a second book that rivals the first. It’s lovely and brilliant.
I hardly even re-read books, but this one is back in the nightstand pile.
The Waterproof Bible by Andrew Kaufman
Published by Random House in ebook and hardcover on Feb 23, 2010.
Thank you for the advance copy!
I had a sneak peak at some new books from Random House of Canada Ltd. and these are my favourites:
See the list on Amazon’s Listmania
1. Ossuaries by Dionne Brand (poetry)
“Dionne Brand’s mesmerizing new collection of poems is about human zoos; bones, culture, the fabric of our times.”
Brand is awesome, I’m sure to love this one.
2. Book of Mercy by Leonard Cohen (poetry)
“Leonard Cohen’s classic book of contemporary psalms is repackaged. As lovely as the first publication 25 years ago.”
It’s a beautiful package.
3. Tea Time for the Traditionally Built: Book 10 by Alexander Mccall Smith
“The 10th Precious Ramotswe novel is as adorable as the first.”
Precious is precious. I love this series.
4. The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters
“Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, this bestselling tale of a family haunted by the past - and perhaps more - has received ecstatic reviews around the world: Waters is exceptional!”
I really, really liked Fingersmith and have been meaning to read more Sarah Waters. This is it!
5. Slow Death by Rubber Duck: How the Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Life Affects Our Health by Rick Smith
“How the toxic soup of our lives is killing us.”
Do I need a book to tell me this? No, but it would be interesting to know how to better navigate the world.
6. Grow Great Grub: Organic Food from Small Spaces by Gayla Trail
“Good food grown in small spaces.”
I have herbs on the balcony and am ready for more.
7. Ordinary Thunderstorms by William Boyd
“A heart-in-mouth conspiracy novel about the fragility of social identity, the corruption at the heart of big busunderbelly of the everyday city.”
A dark, twisted book with quirks that are sure to be my style.
8. The Waterproof Bible by Andrew Kaufman
“Kaufman can’t be missed.”
All My Friends Are Superheroes is a brilliant book. I must read this one.
9. Angelology by Danielle Trussoni
“Angels are big this year. A book to watch.”
Monique’s prediction: angels, oil an religion. We’ll be as fascinated by these things in 2010 as we were by vampires in 2009.
10. The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag: A novel by Alan Bradley
“Flavia is back.”
For Sweetness at the bottom of the pie, this young detective is by to thrill me with her fascination of poisons.
11. Dahanu Road: A novel by Anosh Irani
“Anosh is dark humored but one of my favs.”
Gawd, I love him.
12. Beatrice and Virgil by Yann Martel
“Taxidermy!”
Life of Pi guy gets every stranger with taxidermy in this novel. Yes, please.
13. Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Chip Heath
“Nobody likes change but a wet baby—and even then.”
From Made to Stick comes Switch. I won’t switch. I’ll stick.
14. I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced by Nujood Ali
“The internationally bestselling true story of the remarkable ten-year-old Yemeni girl who dared to defy her country’s most archaic traditions byfighting for a divorce.”
This story just seems unbelievable!
15. Boom! by Mark Haddon (young adult)
“I’ll have whatever Mark’s having. Love his work.”
Positioned for young adults, I think this will be a killer hit with adults too.
The winner of this year’s Scotiabank Giller Prize, the most coveted Canadian fiction award, was announced last night in Toronto. And the winner is ... Linden MacIntyre.
The Bishop’s Man by Linden MacIntyre is a story of crimes and cover-up in a Cape Breton Catholic church.
Scotiabank Giller Prize news announcement
Of the winning book, the jury remarked:
“The Bishop’s Man centres on a sensitive topic - the sexual abuses perpetrated by Catholic priests on the innocent children in their care. Father Duncan, the first person narrator, has been his bishop’s dutiful enforcer, employed to check the excesses of priests and, crucially, to suppress the evidence. But as events veer out of control, he is forced into painful self-knowledge as family, community and friendship are torn apart under the strain of suspicion, obsession and guilt. A brave novel, conceived and written with impressive delicacy and understanding.”
See Amazon’s Giller Prize page where the books are available for purchase.
I like reading first novels because for the most part book publishers are wary of publishing first-time authors. They feel that no one will buy a book by someone they’ve never heard of. The upside to this misguided logic is that first novels are a highly filter commodity—only the best get through—which means that first novels can sometimes be the best novels you read in a given year.
Such is the case with The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley.
Our heroine is 11-year-old Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist who knows the ins and outs of various poisons and their affect on the human body. The novel’s opening scene is of Flavia locked in a closet. Her contemptuous older sisters have bound and gagged her. A cunning lass, Flavia frees herself and sets out to poison her oldest sister via the beauty queen’s lipstick.
Set in the 1950s, Flavia’s Bucksaw home (a decaying English mansion with a chem lab in the attic) is the site of a murder. Flavia discovers the dead man in the cucumber patch. He happens to be the man her father argued with hours before. There’s a dead crow, a crazy cook, a gardener with post-traumatic stress, an affable detective, a couple of side stories of deception, and a lot of investigative work by 11-year-old Miss Flavia.
Chapter 12
Feely and Daffy were sitting on a flowered divan in the drawing room, wrapped in one another’s arms and wailing like air-raid sirens. I had taken a few steps into the room to join in with them before Ophelia spotted me.
‘Where have you been, you little beast?’ she hissed, springing up and coming at me like a wildcat, her eyes swollen and red as cycle reflectors. ‘Everyone’s been searching for you. We thought you’d drowned. Oh! How I prayed you had!’
Welcome home, Flave, I thought.
‘Father’s been arrested,’ Daffy said matter-of-factly. ‘They’ve taken him away.’
‘Where?’ I asked.
‘How should we know?’ Ophelia spat contemptuously. ‘Wherever they take people who have been arrested, I expect. Where have you been?’
‘Bishop’s Lacey or Hinley?’
‘What do you mean? Talk sense, you little fool.’
‘Bishop’s Lacey or Hinley,’ I repeated. ‘There’s only a one-room police station at Bishop’s Lacey, so I don’t expect he’s been taken there. The County Constabulary is at Hinley. So they’ve likely taken him to Hinley.’
‘They’ll charge him with murder,’ Ophelia said, ‘and then he’ll be hanged!’ She burst into tears again and turned away.
For a moment I almost felt sorry for her.
You can just hear the villain muttering, ’ I would have gotten away with it too if it wasn’t for you meddling kids!’
If you like Scooby-Doo, Miss Marple, The Number One Ladies’ Detective Agency and quirky fiction, this is for you.
Full marks Alan Bradley on your first novel!
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie on Amazon
Published by Doubleday Canada
New Think for Old Publishers panel at SXSW drew a lot of frustration from the crowd of book lovers and supporters.
The official description of the session was:
This is not a discussion of whether ebooks are killing treebooks, or whether it’s possible to get cozy with an Amazon Kindle. It’s about how participatory culture and the online world interact with good olde book publishing.Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody, Deborah Schultz, and fellow panelists will share with the audience a variety of perspectives on what’s going right and what’s going wrong in publishing, assess success of recent forays into marketing digitally, digital publishing, and what books and blogs have to gain from one another. Penguin Group (USA), which houses some 40 plus imprints and publishes an extremely broad variety of physical and digital products everything from William Gibson’s first ebook in the 90’s to Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food to Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse novels (the source for HBO’s True Blood) is deeply involved in exploring ways that old and new media might better collaborate. Audience members are invited to speak up about what they think book publishers could/should be doing to better provide relevant information and content to blogs, websites, and online communities. Come tell old media what you want and how you want it.
Clay Shirky ITP
John Fagan Mktg Dir, Penguin Group (USA)
Deborah Schultz Founder/Chief Catalyst, deborahschultz.com
Peter Miller Dir of Publicity, Bloomsbury USA
Ivan Held Pres GP Putnam’s Sons, Penguin Group (USA)
They certainly told publishers what they think. The summation was “you suck at this is the biggest way possible.”
I think it’s unfair to attack the folks on that panel but as representatives of the industry they do have to go back to their houses and understand that they need to convey, not that bloggers are an unruly bunch, but that publishers need to get off their asses and get involved with social media. Enough is enough.
BookSquare says
If you’re going to hold a session called “New Think for Old Publishers”, you gotta come with some new thinking. Either that or tell the audience that it’s a research session…and the audience is supposed to bring the new thinking. Good idea, needed better execution. Nobody read the panel description to mean “we want the audience to tell us what we’re doing wrong and how we can fix it”.
...
The publishing people on stage said, essentially, tell us what we’re doing wrong and how we can fix it. You have 300 people who give up an hour of their lives to hear the cool things the traditional publishing business is doing…and you can ask them to consult on your business?
Watch a video of the panel here.
Other links to conversation about this panel:
Medialoper has a fairly neutral assessment of what unfolded.
Twitter stream of comments on this panel #sxswbp
Monique’s summary
What went wrong is this:
* Publishers have not listened to the crowd for a long time.
* The crowd is restless.
* Publishers wring their hands about the web.
* The crowd offers options publishers don’t like.
* Publishers weep into their hands.
* The crowd wants to help and offers other suggestions.
* Publishers act like deer in headlights.
* The crowd plows down publishers and reinvents the industry without them.
What this panel really came down to is that the wisdom of the crowds is not being tapped. The crowd is now sick and tired of trying to help people who won’t help themselves.
Hold me to this: I’m going to organize a panel in Vancouver. We’re going to create a model for publishing and marketing books. We’re going to move forward as an industry. Leaders will be identified. Roles will be assigned. If you’re not open to totally change everything you’re doing, then you are not ready for this revolution. Don’t come.
Who’s in?
UPDATES
Peter Miller Glibness. “Do As I Say, Not As I Do: Tips from a panelist who barely survived” in Publishers Weekly.
Read the article.
Michael Tamblyn of BookNet Canada on 6 Things That Revolutionize Publishing
Listen to me reading an excerpt from The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway.
During the siege of Sarajevo, which lasted 3 years, a shell struck a group of 22 people who were waiting in line for bread. For the next 22 days, Vedran Smailovic, a renowned local cellist, played Albinoni’s Adagio in G Minor at the site in honour of the dead. His actions inspired Steven Galloway to write this novel.
The part I read is from page 75..
The woman is Arrow, a sniper. Nermin is her boss. He has brought her to this spot to hear the cellist for her first time. She is to ensure that the cellist is not killed by enemy snipers.
Jane Jacobs is perhaps best known for The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), which is where her arguments and observations on economies first came to light for the masses. The Nature of Economies is an extension of Jacobs’ assertion that economies mimic natural systems in the way they grow, and, if we are clever human beings, we’ll understand that in order to understand economies, we need to understand ecology. Ecology being the basic premise of the book, basically that human beings exist wholly within nature as part of natural order in every respect.
Early on in the text, Jacobs sets up this relationship by illustrating that economy is derived from two Greek roots: oiko meaning “house” and nomy meaning “management.” House management. Ecology comes from the same root for “house,” plus the root logy for “logic” or “knowledge.” Ecology then literally means “house knowledge.” Ecology then is the economy of nature. (p. 10)
So what have we learned from nature? What does nature tell us about economies?
In the foreword, Jacobs establishes the above literary tradition of didactic dialogue. Her approach is to use imaginary characters and didactic dialogue so readers understand complex arguments as they develop between the characters. In this way, we, the readers, are part of the process, perhaps even part of the ecology of the text.
The characters are inconsequential but their arguments are worth noting.
Differentiation Emerging from Generality (p. 16)
The nature of development, either in nature or economies, is that differentiations emerge from generalities. For example, the solar system at one time emerged as a cloud of matter, a generality. Differentiations emerged, including the sun, planets and their moons. Once Earth emerged as a differentiation, it became a new generality from which further differentiations could emerge. Cars emerged and then sedans and hatchbacks and so on.
Differentiations Become Generalities from which Further Differentiations Emerge (p. 17)
“Development is an open-ended process, which creates complexity and diversity, because multiplied generalities are sources of multiplied differentiations—some occurring simultaneously in parallel, others in successions.” In other words, repetition creates diversity. For example, “various kinds of mammalian feet were differentiated from unspecialized feet of early mammals, which had five generalized toes with claws, apparently much like the unspecialized feet of modern rats.” Differentiations emerged such as hooves, wings, flippers, paws, and hands.
This all seems elementary unless you consider that as recent as Aristotle, we believed that a human embryo began as a tiny infant rather than as a combination of cells. Or that there are those among us to vehemently believe that the world and its creatures began as stated in Genesis.
In truth, there are many economists who believe in economies of scale but Jacobs contends that economic advantage is based on much more than scale.
Development Depends on Co-Development (p. 19)
Development is a web of interdependent co-developments. Planets need the sun to hold their orbits, a delta needs both water and silt, and economies need trading and self-refueling. Trade is differentiated from sharing and seizing. Trade furthers economic differentiations in transportation, communication, finance, and markets. How? Because trade relies on telephones, printing, transportation—these are co-developments. Nothing develops in isolation.
For examples, we look to Detroit (p. 79).
“Detroit’s economy had actually been excellent at generating exports and replacing wide ranges and many chains of imports until its most successful export work—automobile manufacturing—came to dominate the city’s economy. By the mid-1920s, the city’s versatility had gone in reverse.”
Independent local suppliers to the car industry disappeared as car manufacturers started filling their own supply needs internally. This meant that independent suppliers, who were also developing nonautomotive sidelines disappeared. The economy of Detroit has no way to refuel itself. It’s the snake eating its tail.
The once-admired industrial integration and efficiency of the auto industry is now reeling in economic stagnation. The co-developments for growth are missing. But instead of a bifurcation the auto industry is looking for subsidies.
Bifurcation means fork, like a fork in the road. When we recognize the system’s instabilities are so serious that continuing to operate on this path is foolish, we make a radical change, we take a fork in the road, we bifurcate. For example, we build subways when surface streets can no longer accommodate traffic, we build elevators when buildings reach a certain height, and a long time ago we domesticated animals and stopped moving around so much. But bifurcations have complex consequences that are usually not known at the time of their adoption. We chose cars over horses, which got rid of feces in the streets but created carbon dioxide in the air.
On the one hand, we don’t know the consequences of bifurcations, on the other, we know that in order for bifurcations to be successful, they have to come at the right time. The alternatives needs to be waiting in the wings otherwise it’s too late for the system to correct itself with the bifurcation. It will fail. For example let’s support wind energy, solar energy, and geothermal energy so that when fossil fuels are done, or too expensive or too great a load on the system, the alternatives are healthy, thriving industries ready to increase capacity.
So how do we know when we need change and development? Through the effective response to feedback, “information regarding a system that the system both reports and responds to” (p. 95). Still we must report and respond to the right data. Canadians overfished the Grand Banks by allowing fish stocks to decrease and fishing trawlers and net sizes to increase, and by subsidizing that practice. It was an illogical response to economic demands in the 1960s. But we continue these vicious circles by twinning the Port Mann Bridge, for example. During rush hours the roads become congested. The information, or feedback, we report and respond to comes in the form of traffic jams and longer travel times. Is the logical response to widen streets and build more roads? Or is it that we depend too heavily on cars and trucks and instead should look to alternative means for moving people and goods? Or should we be rethinking of our cities, which currently separate everyday conveniences from home and home from work? (p. 100)
What economic concept do we still learn in first year? It has to do with supply and demand and the question of whether supply generates demand or demand generates supply. Jacobs suggests we look at how systems self-refuel, at the patterns of development and co-development, at positive feedback loops that allow us to choose bifurcations at the right time to correct instabilities in the system.
Is there hope? Of course.
Jacobs expounds the traits that have managed to prevent us from destroying the world to date. For one, we should celebrate our capacity for aesthetic appreciation. Our admiration for nature is documented as far back as human history is recorded—cave paintings of sun, animals, plants, and oceans. Let’s tap into that. Two, fear of retribution for transgressions is healthy: whether you’re praying to the rain god or following Stephan Dion’s carbon plan, fear and awe of powers beyond our control help us understand the significance of our habitat on our daily lives. And three, relish language for it is our ability to warn and persuade as elegantly and forcibly as Jacobs does that could save us all.
As one of the characters notes, ‘‘Working along with natural principles of development, expansion, sustainability and correction, people can create economies that are more reliably prosperous than those we have now and that are also more harmonious with the rest of nature.’’
The Nature of Economies by Jane Jacob is published by Random House Canada.
And here’s a much more critical review of the book and a sample of the first chapter from NYTimes.
“All morning I struggled with the sensation of stray wisps of one world seeping through the cracks of another. Do you know the feeling when you start reading a new book before the membrane of the last one has had time to close behind you? You leave the previous book with ideas and themes—characters even—caught on the fibres of your clothes, and when you open the new book they are still with you. Well, it was like that. All day I had been put to distractions. Thoughts, memories, feelings, irrelevant fragments of my own life, playing havoc with my concentration.”
The Thirteenth Tale is one of those wildly popular books that I failed to read when it was first published. I wanted to but I also wanted to wait until I had only the vaguest recollections of what reviewers said. And what I recall is only that the book was considered a success in North America but not so in Britain. It was too British for the British, or some such rubbish.
It is a fine novel. Margaret Lea, book shop clerk and amateur biographer, is commissioned by Vida Winter, famous British novelist, to write her biography. Why? It’s all unclear until the end so I won’t spoil it for you.
I was pulled into the plot twists of the biography Winter was detailing for Lea, who insisted on only writing the truth. The truth is always fascinating, especially when given in autobiography.
The setting is Angelfield, a small town where twins are born to Isabelle, who’s not quite right. It’s a story of abandonment: the abandonment of children by parents who are unable to care for them, it is the abandonment of children by carefree parents who don’t understand children, and it’s the separation and reunification of the twins and their caregivers.
Lots of interesting loops and very much like a fairy tale.
As Vida Winter says, “my gripe is not with lovers of the truth but with truth herself. What succour, what consolation is there in truth, compared to a story? What good is truth, at midnight, in the dark, when the wind is roaring like a bear in the chimney? What you need are the plump comforts of a story. The soothing, rocking safety of a lie.”
Petite Anglaise is the pseudonym of Catherine Sanderson, English blogger living in Paris and the author of a new book Petite Anglaise (published by Random House).
Catherine/Petite has an engaging and hilarious writing style, which appears perfectly fine-tuned in her book. You can appreciate my fandom here when I say that publishers often make the mistake of publishing bloggers and thinking that what’s compelling in a couple of paragraphs can be morphed into a full-length book. Such trepidation is not required when reading Petite Anglaise (book or blog). From blog to book really works for Petite Anglaise—a blog that sits on that fine line between reality and embellishment that is often prevalent in autobiography.
Here’s a quote from a recent blog post titled “Fraud”
I fully intended for this post to be a witty open letter to the person who stole my identity and used my bank card for an extravagant online shopping spree (total cost: €3.285,17). Or perhaps a song, in the style of Brassens, who in Stances à un Cambrioleur so eloquently thanked the burglar who had the good taste to pay his house a visit.
It would have described my joy at receiving a letter from the Caisse d’Epargne, heavy with menace, which informed me, in typically verbose (but not particularly comprehensible) French, that having noticed repeated dysfonctionnements consécutifs à l’utilisation de ma carte bleue, I was invited to “regularise” the resulting overdraft. If not my card would be cancelled, my bank account immobilised, the Banque de France notified, and helicopters would be dispatched to hover outside my apartment window so that men in uniforms could shout at me over their loud hailers and/or airbourne snipers could get me in their sights.
The book chronicles the birth of the blog Petite Anglaise and the subsequent consequences. Catherine, a young Englishwoman in Paris, in love with all things French, is feeling a little less than loved by Mr. Frog (her husband) and less than in love with her job. The discontent and the discovery of blogging results in an anonymous blog Petite Anglaise. Catherine shares the intimate details of her life in what she hopes will be read by Mr. Frog but instead captures the attention of many bloggers and blog readers. Apparently 100,000 visitors per month.
And like all anonymous and wildly popular bloggers, Catherine eventually reveals herself at a blogger meetup. She develops some very well-formed relationships with her readers, one of which is a little too well formed and it rattles her family substantially and tempts her to abandon the real life she’s created. But I’m not going to tell you what happens to Mr. Frog and Tadpole (her daughter).
Petite Anglaise (on Amazon.ca) by Catherine Sanderson.
Petite Anglaise (the blog)
The Magician is the second book in the series “The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel” and I like it a lot.
The first book The Alchemyst introduces readers to the legend of Nicholas Flamel.
Flamel was born in Paris on September 28, 1330. He is acknowledged as the greatest alchemyst of his day and it is said that he discovered the secret of eternal life.
My Harry Potter friends will know about him and the Philosopher’s Stone.
The records show that he died in 1418 but his tomb is empty.
The legend is that he lives on by making the elixir of life and that the secret of eternal life is hidden within a book that he protects called the Book of Abraham the Mage.
Michael Scott’s series is based on this part of the legend—that the book, in the wrong hands, will destroy the world.
The Magician, Dr. John Dee, plans to steal the book and bring about its prophecy. The Alchemyst, Nicholas Flamel, must protect the book and the good side of the prophecy, which is that twins—Sophie and Josh Newman (regular kids) are the only hope.
The Twins have powers that can be awakened and if they stay on the right side of the battle, they can save the world from the Dark Elders.
I know in writing it seems flaky, but it’s a great, page-turning adventure. I like these fantasy books that are based in reality but have a side of reality that we just don’t see or understand. We ignore magic because it’s just not sensible.
6 books in the series. Books 1 & 2 are in stores.
The Magician by Michael Scott is published by Delacorte Press (part of Random House)
Over at MyNameIsKate.ca I read about a book meme to write about the book you’re reading now and to quote page 123.
The End of the Alphabet by CS Richardson is the book I’m reading right now. It’s one of my favourite books this year. I know I should have read this as a hardcover so that I could enjoy the full visual appeal of the book. Although as a paperback, it’s pretty damn good. The cover is like a chocolate brown Moleskine with a belly band (which is a paper banner that wraps around the belly of the book). In this case it’s part of the cover image. Really the design details are wonderful, which is no surprise because CS Richardson is a well-regarded book designer.
The quality doesn’t stop at the design, the writing is worthy of such a great package.
The End of the Alphabet is one of my favourites because it has that level of quirkiness that borders on magical realism but is certainly realism. In this case Ambrose Zephyr is diagnosed with an incurable and untreatable disease. He has 30 days, give or take a day, to put his affairs in order. He makes a list A-Z of places and things he’d like to do before he kicks off.
On page 123, his wife Zipper Ashkenazi is waiting for her husband to have his shirts fitted at the tailoring shop of Mr. Umtata.
A fresh shirt was unwrapped. Ambrose strained out a smile as he dressed.
A miracle, Umtata. As always.
As you say sir.
A bit loose across the shoulders though.
Indeed sire. Shall we check the fit?
With that Mr Umtata took Ambrose Zephyr in his arms. Allow me the lead sir, he whispered.
The men dipped. Deeply, expertly.
Zipper Ashkenazi laughed out loud. For the first time in days.
The End of the Alphabet by CS Richardson (Random House Canada)
Charles Bock and the fine folks at Random House are giving away a free PDF of Charles Bock’s novel Beautiful Children. It’s available until midnight this Friday (February 29).
I think it is a cool idea.
Galley Cat is reporting the following:
Bock’s reasoning for approving this giveaway is simple: “I want people to read the book. If that means giving it away for free on-line, great.” UPDATE: Not that he’s letting this “free” stuff go to his head; as an anonymous tipster pointed out, in tiny, faint lettering at the bottom of the website, there’s a little note that says “© Copyright 2008. Charles Bock. This is our intellectual property, so kindly don’t fucking steal it.”
Download the free eBook until Feb 29.
(Source: Dan Wagstaff, thanks Dan!)
I was looking for a Dan Brown-esque novel to read while in Malta—you know, a light read on goddess worship—and I found this in a bookstore in Valletta, The Maltese Goddess by Lyn Hamilton.
I was looking for a goddess worship book so that I could remind myself of some minor historical points that were alluding me, and so that I could think more about goddess worship on Malta, which seems to have been a big deal. Malta is home to the oldest freestanding structures in the world. The temples of Malta are over 5,000 years old, much older than the pyramids and Stonehenge. And the big find has been thousands of female statues.
The Maltese Goddess was an ok read. It’s labeled an archaeological mystery but really it’s a mystery set on an archaeological site—at one of the temples. The book is set initially in Toronto, where the heroine has an antique shop. Martin Galea comes in, “Mr. I’m So Wealthy I Can Fly You to My Home in Malta to Decorate.” That’s all cool and dandy until Mr. Galea turns up in Malta dead as dead is and stuffed into a dresser.
As I say, it’s light on the goddess worship but was a fun find nonetheless.
Australian author Danielle Wood has created a series of interconnected anecdotes about the lives of women: naughty ones and nice ones. Rosie Little is our connecting character, sometimes a character in the story, sometimes just a narrator.
Wood certainly has an eye for detail and an ear for dialogue. The moments portrayed are pitch perfect. There is a story about a bride in full wedding dress, stuck in an airport during the wee hours of the morning when nothing is open, which cracked me up. There is a story about a nurse for chronic-care patients who is secretly buying baby clothes and storing them in a suitcase under her bed, which made me very sad. Each story struck a chord. And the opening story about fellacio is damn funny.
The packaging of the book is definitely worth mentioning. This is a sturdy little hardcover book. It is super attractive.
Rosie Little’s Cautionary Tales for Girls on Random.ca
Jumping the Queue is Mary Wesley’s celebrated first novel.
While in McNally Robinson Booksellers in Winnipeg, I came across a display of Mary Wesley books, all of which have been re-issued with new cover designs.
Wesley started writing at the age of 70 and published a number of books, Jumping the Queue being the first and The Camomile Lawn being her big commercial success. What the Beeb says about Mary.
The opening scene of Jumping the Queue is Matilda writing instructions for her friends and family on how to dispose of her belongings and of the house. She has reached the end of her rope with life and is happily ready to shuffle off with a mortal dose of pills and a nice swim into a strong tide that will pull her out to sea. All is very well with this plan, except the pet gander keeps pecking at her, and when she finally gets to her beach spot there are a bunch of rowdy kids there. No problem. She goes immediately with Plan B and finds a bridge to jump from. Just her luck, there’s a wanted murderer also trying to jump.
Never one to pass by adventure, Matilda invite him home, reprimands him for his behaviour and sets him up in the spare room. The reprimand is for being in her jumping spot, not for murdering his mother, which she is sure her children have thoughts of many times.
Wesley is a fine writer and Matilda is a fine character. I enjoyed this book and am looking forward to reading more of her work.
Like Matilda, Mary was a bit of a wild one (she died in 2002). She married early for money and societal pressures. She had a unsatisfying relationship with her mother, which definitely comes out in her work. But with wit and style she managed to free herself from those constraints and find love with a second husband and satisfaction writing. There is a biography available called Wild Mary, but none of these books seem to be promoted widely in North America.
Wild Mary is available from McNally Robinson. I love the store. The website could use some work. More on that later.
