For this year’s advent calendar, I am recommending Canadian authors/books found on Schatje’s Shelves. Again, to make things more interesting/challenging, I will use the alphabet, skipping “X” and “Z”. In total, I propose to focus on 50 Canadian writers, an early nod to Canada's 150th birthday next year.
This Indian-Canadian novelist is certainly a writer to check out.
Novels (which I recommend):
The Song of Kahunsha
The Parcel
(nominated for 2016 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and finalist for 2016
Governor-General’s Award) See my review at http://schatjesshelves.blogspot.ca/2016/09/review-of-parcel-by-anosh-irani.html.
***********
“I” is for John
Irving
Irving probably needs no introduction to most readers of
literary fiction. His A Prayer for Own
Meany is one of my all-time favourites.
Novels (which I recommend) :
The World According to
Garp
The Hotel New
Hampshire
The Cider House Rules
A Prayer for Owen
Meany
A Son of the Circus
A Widow for One Year
The Fourth Hand
Until I Find You
Last Night in Twisted
River
In One Person
Avenue of Mysteries See
my review at http://schatjesshelves.blogspot.ca/2015/11/review-of-avenue-of-mysteries-by-john.html.
Review of In One
Person (3 Stars)
The narrator is Bill Abbott, a bisexual novelist. In
retrospect he describes his life from adolescence to old age. Half the book
focuses on his teenage years at a private boys school in Vermont where he has
his first "crushes on the wrong people," including his stepfather,
the local librarian, the mother of his best friend, and Jacques Kittredge, the
school's star wrestler and bully. The rest of the novel outlines his later
years and those of his family members, friends, and lovers.
Bill is described as the writer of "sexually explicit
novels - those pleas for tolerance of sexual differences" (314). This is a
perfect description of Irving's novel. To emphasize his theme, Irving has his
narrator repeat the words of his one true love: "'please don't put a label
on me - don't make me a category before you get to know me'" (425). He
also has Bill quote Shylock's speech in which "Jew" could be replaced
by "bisexual": "Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands,
organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? . . . If you prick us, do we
not bleed? . . . If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not
die" (310 - 311)? There is no doubt that Irving is well-meaning and feels
passionately about the need for tolerance and acceptance; the problem is that
sometimes he comes across more as a didactic essayist than a novelist.
Shakespearean allusions are not the only ones to be found;
there are references to several of Ibsen's plays and Dickens' novels,
Flaubert's "Madame Bovary," and James Baldwin's "Giovanni's
Room." Besides literary allusions, the novel has many other of the typical
Irving elements: wrestling, bears, a missing father, a prep school setting,
gender-bending, a trip to Vienna.
There are a few problems with characterization. For example,
Bill is not very astute, a trait that would hinder a writer who should have
keen observational skills. Several times the reader will reach conclusions
about a character's sexual identity long before Bill does. Too many of the
female characters seem sexually repressed or damaged. Also, the number of
people with sexual identity issues that Billy encounters in his youth seems
large. Bill has a transvestite, a lesbian and a gay family member. Furthermore,
half the people in his prep school turn out to be gay, transvestites or
transgendered, especially those who were wrestlers in their adolescent years.
There are many touches of humour, especially in the
performances of the First Sister Players, the amateur theatrical group in
Bill's hometown. There are also scenes of unrelenting horror, particularly in
the section detailing the devastating effects of the AIDS epidemic. The
statistics are harrowing - "By '95 - in New York, alone - more Americans
had died of AIDS than were killed in Vietnam"(321) - as are the
descriptions of the deaths of friends and lovers Bill witnesses.
This novel is a clarion call for tolerance for people of all
sexual persuasions. I doubt it will rank as one of Irving's great novels, but
it is nonetheless an entertaining read.
************
“I” is for Frances
Itani
I’d recommend
Deafening and its sequel Tell;
the third book in the trilogy will be released in 2017.
Novels (which I recommend):
Deafening (shortlisted
for 2005 International IMPAC Dublin Award and winner of the 2003 Commonwealth
Writers Prize)
Remembering the Bones (shortlisted
for Commonwealth Writers Prize)
Requiem
Tell (shortlisted
for the 2014 Scotiabank Giller Prize) See my review at http://schatjesshelves.blogspot.ca/2016/10/review-of-tell-by-frances-itani.html.
Review of Requiem (4 Stars)
This novel examines the injustice of the internment of
thousands of Japanese-Canadians during the Second World War and the scars that
remain for the survivors and their families.
The narrator is Bin Okuma; chapters alternate between his
boyhood at an internment camp in interior British Columbia and his westward
journey from Ottawa to the camp 50 years later, after the sudden death of his
wife Lena. Lena recognized that Bin is full of suppressed anger about his past
and wished him to reconcile with his past, especially with the man whom Bin
holds responsible for fracturing his family.
As a child Bin was told his fate based on his birth in the
Year of the Tiger: "'A tiger may be stubborn, but can chase away ghosts
and protect. . . . But . . . you are destined to be melancholy, and you will
weep over nonsensical things.'" The reader soon realizes that this
description fits Bin perfectly. His stubbornness is evident in his refusal to
even visit B.C. for decades. He definitely has periods of deep melancholy
which, like Lena suggests, will continue until he makes peace with his ghosts.
It is clear that Bin wants, more than anything, to protect Lena and their son
Greg from life's vicissitudes, just as it becomes obvious that some of his
harsh judgments are ill-conceived. The problem is that this description of Bin,
given in the opening pages, too clearly foreshadows the development of Bin's
life story.
Throughout the book, rivers are a metaphor for life. Bin is
trying to complete a series of river paintings in time for an exhibition, but
he feels there is some essential element missing. To express the essence of
rivers through his art has been his lifelong pre-occupation. Obviously, this
quest is a metaphor for his trying to come to terms with his life. Towards the
end of the novel, he admits that "there could be a soft or hard look to
water, that there could be many ways of depicting rivers, that this was a
matter of technique and choice" and perhaps some of his attitudes were the
result of his choosing a harsh interpretation. In the end he finally chooses a
title for his exhibition, a title that reflects his changed attitude to the
past.
This book possesses similarities with Joy Kogawa's Obasan in its examination of a dark
episode in Canada's history; nonetheless, it offers additional insight both in
terms of history and human nature
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