Category: Fiction

My Reading Wish List

                                           

Usually at this time of year I recommend book picks for the readers on your holiday gift giving list. This year, instead of trying to guess the tastes of your lucky recipients, I thought I’d tell you what I’d love to find wrapped and under my tree. Below are some fiction picks I’d be thrilled to receive.

A Way to Be Happy by Caroline Adderson.  A Globe 100 Best Book of 2024 and longlisted for the 2024 Giller Prize, Adderson’s short story collection features disparate but vividly drawn characters who, in the face of inevitable challenges, must come to some sort of acceptance as they consider what it means to be happy. Short story collections are easy to dip into when time or attention spans are short, but the short story, as a literary form, is complex and surprisingly hard to write, and this latest offering from BC author Adderson is billed as touching, funny and thought-provoking.

The Leap Year Gene of Kit McKinley by Shelley Wood, another BC author. This novel, which is getting lots of buzz, traces the life of Kit McKinley who is born on leap year during WW1 and grows one year older every four years. Unnaturally slow to age, Kit and her family must keep moving to protect her secret from insatiable newshounds, Nazi scientists, doctors, and pharmaceutical companies. Billed as a race through the past century’s burgeoning understanding of genetics, eugenics, and what constitutes ‘normal,’ the novel also explores the tensions, love and sense of duty that can bind families together or split them apart.

The Women by Kristin Hannah. While this novel deals with war, a subject I go out of my way to avoid, I loved Hannah’s novel The Nightingale (set during World War 11) so much, that I’m willing to try another war novel of hers. This time, Hannah takes us back to the mid-sixties, shortly after JFK was shot in Texas, when men are being sent to Vietnam. The story focuses on nurse Frances “Frankie” McGrath, who longs for a place on her father’s “Hero’s Wall” and volunteers for service in Vietnam.  Hannah says she was inspired to write the novel because of the number of female veterans who told her that their service and sacrifice had been ignored because ‘there were no women in ‘Nam.’  Her research proved the latter was absolutely not true.

Death at the Sign of the Rook by Kate Atkinson. I love a good mystery (it takes me back to those days reading Nancy Drew) and the latest Kate Atkinson (book six in the Jackson Brodie series) has all the elements: a diverse group of people come together for a lavish murder mystery weekend at Rook Hall, one of England’s finest stately homes. Throw in a snowstorm, a corpse and an art theft to solve, and you have the makings of another great Atkinson tale.

By Any Other Name by Jodi Picoult is a dual timeline novel. In one timeline, set in 1581, Picoult tells the story of Emilia Bassano who is the true author of Willliam’s Shakespeare’s plays, while the modern day second timeline features playwright Melina Green, who is an ancestor of Emilia and is having trouble getting her plays produced . . . until she submits one under a different name. Meticulously researched with detailed endnotes to support her theme, Picoult apparently provides compelling evidence and thought-provoking ideas on Shakespeare’s true authorship, while also exploring how two women who lived five centuries apart are forced to write under male pseudonyms in order to be taken seriously and make their voices heard. It may not be a light read but it sounds like a worthwhile one.

The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern by Lynda Cohen Loigman.  About to turn eighty, newly retired (and not by choice!) pharmacist Augusta Stern is adrift. When she relocates to an active senior community in Florida, she unexpectedly bumps into Irving Rivkin, the delivery boy from her father’s pharmacy, and the man who broke her heart sixty years earlier.  Also a dual timeline novel, this story switches between 1920s Brooklyn – the Prohibition era, the gangs, the importance of pharmacists and the role of a traditional pharmacy, and the challenges young Augusta faces in choosing her career – and 1987 Florida where Augusta faces a challenge of a different kind: avoiding Irving Rivkin at all costs. This ode to second chances has been touted by multiple readers as being sweet, funny and uplifting . . . and I think we can all use a bit of uplift these days.

I’ll be back next week with some non-fiction picks I’d love to receive this holiday season. Stop by and tell me what’s on your reading wish list.

What We Conceal

                                                           

After a few months of being happily distracted and out of my routine, I’m back at my desk enjoying the pleasures of writing, reading, and tending to simple tasks.  It’s the old Zen proverb in action: ‘Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.’

Cue enlightenment. Last weekend I took a writing workshop from Becca Puglisi (for any writers reading this, do yourself a favor and google books by Becca Puglisi and her writing partner, Angela Ackerman; one of my favorites is The Emotional Wound Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Psychological Trauma).

Last weekend’s workshop was on hidden emotions and subtext. Puglisi showed us how to convey, through dialogue, what our characters are hiding and not saying. We all hide our emotions at times, Puglisi maintained. And we all lie at times too, she added.

Frankly, this didn’t sit well with me. Wouldn’t life be easier if we shared honestly and openly, but with respect? It might not shape tension in a novel, but when it comes to life, I value transparency. I connect it with integrity, something that’s also important to me.

I thought about our recent month in Japan. Instead of showing their real feelings, Japanese people usually use tatemae in public. Tatemae (建前) literally means ‘built in front.’ It refers to the facade people put in front of others to please them or avoid confrontation, and it often contradicts their true feelings. We were warned about this very thing from someone who had lived in Japan for several years. “Be careful asking for directions,” they said, “because even if someone doesn’t have an answer, they may use tatemae and point you in the wrong direction.”   And that’s exactly what happened multiple times. We would carefully follow the directions we were given only to become hopelessly lost and taken further afield from our destination. It would have been much easier for us if people had simply said ‘I don’t know.’  However, it wouldn’t have been easier for them because there’s a high cultural value on saving face in Japan.

Still, that’s Japan I told myself. It’s different in North America.

Or is it?

Puglisi, who lives in Florida, used the example of a single mother who holds differing political views from her coworkers and refrains from sharing them for fear of repercussions like losing her job and being unable to feed her kids. Or a man who lies outright to his sister about his political affiliations because if he shared honestly, he wouldn’t be allowed at his dying mother’s bedside.

Those are extreme cases. That’s not the norm, I told myself. Yet the same political divide is happening in Canada. The same issues are cropping up here.

“We all lie at times,” Puglisi repeated. “We all hide our emotions, mask judgements, water down opinions, hold back information, redirect and control conversations. Those are all forms of lying.”

Framed that way, I was better able to relate to the point Puglisi was making.

For instance, my daughter recently took my five-year-old grandson for his shot. She knew it would hurt; she expected him to scream (and scream he did) but she masked her emotions because her getting upset would only add to his distress. In another instance, when pressed by one family member about the romantic inclinations of another family member, I was anything but transparent. I deliberately withheld information that wasn’t mine to give, redirecting the conversation to something more mundane.

A lack of transparency, concealing things, is not only an option at times, sometimes it is the best option. Unless, of course, you’re lost in the middle of Tokyo and desperately need help finding your way. Then I’m all for transparency. Or calling a cab.

Listening . . .

                                                            

It’s funny how the universe sends us messages . . . if we’re open to hearing them. Ironically, the messages I’ve been getting lately are about the importance of listening.

The first nudge came from our neighbor. He’s a sound producer by profession so his world is, as you’d expect, all about sound. Knowing we’re planning a trip to Japan, he told us about a bar in Tokyo where patrons are not only encouraged to listen, but they are basically barred from talking. In fact, talking at Bar Martha will get you turfed out. Music is king. Patrons cannot chat, surf on their phone, interact with staff in any way other than to point at their menu selection. The idea is to sit in the dimly lit space, watch the DJ pull vinyl from ceiling-high shelves containing over 6000 albums, and listen reverently to Nina Simone, Eric Clapton or whoever else is currently playing. To put this in perspective, Tokyo is home to nearly 14 million people. By all accounts, it is a city with a frenetic pace . . . one where technology rules supreme and stimulus – noise – is everywhere. Except, it seems, at Bar Martha where music replaces discordant chatter and our only job is to settle in and listen.

Listening also came to the fore the other day during a conversation with a writer friend. She’s struggling with her novel. Her first draft is finished but she has issues with the middle. There’s so much going on in the narrative, she told me, that the through line of the story is cloudy and the ending doesn’t have enough punch. So, she sought out feedback. Members of her critique group came up with a few suggestions, and beta readers offered different takes too. One reader suggested thread A be dropped . . . another loved thread A but argued that thread B needed to go. Several others ignored those threads entirely and suggested taking the story in a completely different direction. My friend was confused. What, she asked, did I think?

I was familiar with her story because we’d brainstormed elements of it at various times. That’s what writers do. And given a little thoughtful discussion, I could have offered an opinion. But in the end the decision would be up to her.  It was her story. There wasn’t a right way or a wrong way. There was only her way.

“What is true north telling you?” I asked her instead.

“I don’t know,” she replied.

True north is the wisdom of our heart. It’s our internal compass, one that guides us through life at our deepest level and keeps us on track. It helps us with big things, little things, and everything in the middle, including our creativity. The trouble is noise and chatter from well-meaning people can drown out our true north. And in my friend’s case, it had.   

I suggested she find her own version of Bar Martha and get quiet. I suspected if she tuned out the world and tuned into her story there was a good chance it would tell her exactly how it wanted to be told.

Because in the end, listening isn’t just good for hearing music. It’s also good for hearing the truth.

My May Reads

The consistently warm weather isn’t here quite yet, but my overwintered gerberas and geraniums are slowly migrating out of the greenhouse to take up their positions on the patio. Taking their place are flats of tomato, pepper, eggplant and melon seedlings. They got a late start because we were away for a week in April (primary seeding time) so I’m hoping they catch up. Speaking of catch up, that seems to be the theme in the garden lately, partly because of the weather but also because my back is dictating a slower pace. I’m okay with that; it means more time for a good book. And here’s what I’m reading this month.

The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah

Homecoming by Kate Morton

Ikaria by Diane Kochilas

Books read to date in 2024: 28

When Too Much . . .

. . . is . . . well . . . too much.

In writing, there’s such a thing as going too far, or overwriting. In her book Steering the Craft, esteemed author Ursula K. Le Guin says it’s important to “slow down and leave enough white space around the words and silence around the voice.” What you leave out in those pauses, she believes, is infinitely more important than what you leave in.  And yet, there’s a balance. Leave out too much and your reader won’t understand what’s going on. Cram in too many details, particularly in action scenes, and the pace falters. The rhythm, the speed, will be off.

Visual artists know this well. White space, whether that’s literal white space around an image or the grout that fills the gaps in a mosaic, is a key principle in design and applied arts. White space separates and highlights other elements. It allows the mind to rest and reflect, to absorb the message or the image. On the other hand, there are times when words or an artistic medium like paint are overused precisely because that’s the effect the creator is going for (the recent official portrait of King Charles 111 and his big red controversy comes to mind).

Overdoing has been on my mind a lot lately. The first draft of my current WIP is overwritten (as is my tendency in a first draft), the herb bed in the garden is overplanted (I love too many plants; what can I say?) and now my poor back is suffering because I’ve overdone it on a number of levels. My back warned me, but I kept pushing through and didn’t listen. I went too far.

Now, though, too much has been . . . too much.  I’ve been forced to slow down, to pay attention to my body . . . to rest and reflect and to relearn the lesson that life, just like art, also requires some balance. I think Ursula K. Le Guin would approve.

My April Reads

A change is as good as a rest, or at least that’s how the saying goes. I hope there’s some truth to it! We’re on the mainland babysitting our four-year-old grandson and rest is hard to come by. He’s not one for sleeping, and his inquisitive nature is in gear before dawn. That first morning, when he nudged me awake at 5:30 am and I replied that it was ‘too early,’ he snuggled in beside me and tried to engage. “What does too early even mean?” That led to a discussion (one sided) about how I squish my eyes tight in the morning “even like Mama.” So, there’s very little rest to be had, but there’s lots time for laughs and cuddles, crazy bath time routines and books. And here’s what I’m reading this month.

Giraffes Can’t Dance by Giles Andreae & Guy Parker-Rees

The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller

Abroad in Japan by Chris Broad

The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris

Books read to date in 2024: 22

My March Reads

Today is the spring equinox, that point in time when day and night are the same length all around the world. As we in the north tilt more towards the sun, our days get longer and our nights get shorter. Warmer weather is coming and so is spring. Speaking of spring, our clocks ‘sprang’ forward an hour last weekend, marking a return to daylight saving time. Regardless of whether you think that’s a good or bad thing, this time of year definitely calls on us to get out of the house and be more active. For me, that means more time in the garden and the occasional bike ride after dinner. For now, though, the evenings are still cool, so I’m quite happy to curl up with a book after dinner. Here’s what I’m reading this month.

The Happy Life of Isadora Bentley by Courtney Walsh

Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life by Hector Garcia & Francesc Miralles

Three Souls by Janie Chang

Books read to date in 2024: 16

Small Things

                                                             

I met a writer friend for coffee last week. She had a pacing issue with her manuscript and wanted to talk. She’d lifted out a key scene to use as a prologue and she didn’t know how to deal with the narrative gap she’d created. I hadn’t read her novel (and she wasn’t asking me to), but she felt somewhat overwhelmed with, as she described it, her conundrum. I listened, I asked a few questions and after a few minutes, I made one small suggestion. And by small, I mean small. Yet that seemingly small suggestion prompted an idea in her mind that led to the workings of a solution.

Small things can have big consequences, life-changing ones. Just ask someone who missed a plane on 9-11. . . or someone whose loved one didn’t.

We don’t always know the consequences of the decisions we make either. I’ll never forget the two women I overheard one morning in a coffee shop dissecting the previous night’s date. Apparently, she had a terrific time; the guy in question was intelligent, charming and attractive. But as she told her friend, “I just can’t get over the size of his nostrils.”  Small things, nostrils, though apparently not so in this case.

Small things can spin our lives in directions we don’t expect (I wonder what would have happened if that woman had gone on a second date?) and small things can take our art in new directions too.

It’s the big markers we usually think about when it comes to our art – getting a book published or going on an author tour; selling a painting or having a show. Those things are important milestones and definitely worth celebrating. Even finishing a book or a painting or sculpture is a big deal. No question.

Yet it’s the small, seemingly insignificant steps that get us to those big finish lines. Motivational author Julia Cameron believes that work begets work and that “large changes occur in tiny increments.”

All the more reason to celebrate the small things. And perhaps even embrace them. Especially when it comes to nostrils.

The Unnecessary Freezing of Water

I agree with Carl Reiner who once said he found snow to be an unnecessary freezing of water. Nevertheless, when last week’s storm dumped a foot and a half of snow on our lawn, I tried to embrace it. And embrace it I did, for about two days. Just long enough to wrap up a deadline, read a book, clean the house and surf warm vacation spots. Then I was ready to get outside and walk. To get outside, period. But, alas, the snow kept falling.

So, I did what any writer worth her sand and salt would do in my position – I googled snow references in literature. It helped. For one thing, it kept me from looking outside and shivering. For another, it reminded me that some people do find snow beautiful.

In case you’re in the midst of a hellsnowscape, here are some lovely passages to help you see the beauty.

“I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says, “Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.” Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass

“The snow did not even whisper its way to earth, but seemed to salt the night with silence.”  Dean Koontz, Brother Odd: An Odd Thomas Novel

“The old curly birches of the gardens, all their twigs laden with snow, looked as though freshly decked in sacred vestments.” Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“It snowed all week. Wheels and footsteps moved soundlessly on the street, as if the business of living continued secretly behind a pale but impenetrable curtain. In the falling quiet there was no sky or earth, only snow lifting in the wind, frosting the window glass, chilling the rooms, deadening and hushing the city.” Truman Capote, American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from the 1940’s Until Now

“It snowed last year too: I made a snowman and my brother knocked it down and I knocked my brother down and then we had tea.” Dylan Thomas, A Child’s Christmas in Wales

“I remember that winter because it had brought the heaviest snows I had ever seen. Snow had fallen steadily all night long and in the morning I woke in a room filled with light and silence, the world seemed to be held in a dream-like stillness. It was a magical day. And it was on that day I made the snowman.” Raymond Briggs, The Snowman

“Snow flurries began to fall and they swirled around people’s legs like house cats. It was magical, this snow globe world.”  Sarah Addison Allen, The Sugar Queen

“A snowball in the face is surely the perfect beginning to a lasting friendship.”
 Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.” James Joyce, The Dead

“There’s just something beautiful about walking on snow that nobody else has walked on. It makes you believe you’re special, even though you know you’re not.” Carol Ritka Brunt, Tell the Wolves I’m Home

And finally, to end on a hopeful note, here’s my (current) favorite passage about snow: “The sight of snow made her think how beautiful and short life is and how, in spite of all their enmities, people have so very much in common; measured against eternity and the greatness of creation, the world in which they lived was narrow. That’s why snow drew people together. It was as if snow cast a veil over hatreds, greed, and wrath and made everyone feel close to one another.” Orhan Pamuk, Snow

There’s Something About November . . .

When I began planning my November blogs, I did a quick search, as I always do, to check literary events and birthdays for the month. I was struck by the number of literary types who were born in November.

In fact, a number of well-known authors were born today, November 8th. Bram Stoker, best known as the author of Dracula was born. So was Julian of Norwich whose Revelations of Divine Love became the first book written in English by a woman; Margaret Mitchell who wrote Gone With the Wind; and Kazo Ishiguro who wrote The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go.

Writers born on other days in November include Neil Gaiman, Robert Louis Stevenson, George Eliot, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Voltaire, C.S. Lewis, Mark Twain, Isaac Singer, Carl Sagan, Kurt Vonnegut, Lucy Maud Montgomery and Margaret Atwood. Whew, that’s quite the list.

November feels like a bookish kind of month. It has, as someone once said, a poetic soul. The days are often foggy and moody, we’re surrounded by brilliant color from the changing leaves,  the crisp air is scented with cedar and pine, and there are many book-related events and activities happening this month too (it’s Picture Book Month and National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo to name just two).

Here’s to all the writers born in the month of November, and to the longer nights that give us more time to read the wonderful books they’ve written.