Review of STEPPING STONES by Jan M. and John E. Milnes

1 Star

My book club decided to read a book by a local author so this one, written by a couple residing in the area, was chosen.  Their novel purports to be “based on the stories of immigrant children to Canada, including the British Home Children.”  Unfortunately, it often reads more like a history book than a novel. 

The book tells the story of three boys:  Skip, Benjy and John Buchan, the latter character based on a real person who settled in the part of Ontario where I live.  Skip is orphaned and Benjy is forced to leave his home; the two end up living on the streets of London.  John leaves Scotland looking for work but is unsuccessful and decides to immigrate to Canada.  On the ship, John becomes friends with Skip and Benjy who also decided to emigrate.  The book follows their lives in Canada for several years as they look for the jobs and family they did not have in England.

The book is 400+ pages but could be much shorter if all the extraneous details were deleted.  For instance, the following paragraph is totally unnecessary:  “The British Isles, made up of four distinct countries, England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, was controlled from England where the largest population resided.  This island state, sitting close to the European continent, was bound to the north by the North Sea and, to the west, by the Atlantic Ocean” (2).  What’s with the geography lesson?  At different points, the reader is given detailed information about terraced houses (9), a history of Leicester and Lady Jane Gray (65 – 70), a description of the pasturing habits of Herdwick sheep (91) and specifics about the Laurentian Mountains (297).  Did you know that William Wordsworth’s mother lived in Penrith (89)?  This type of irrelevant information crops up again and again and again.

What is also problematic is that the information isn’t always even correct.  The boys are told that, “’It’s the eggs of the Beluga whale. . . that provide the Russian people with black caviar . . . the huge water mammals swam from Canada all the way across the Atlantic Ocean to the waters of Russia’” (132).  The Belugas found in the St. Lawrence do not swim across the Atlantic, and it’s not a mammal but a fish, the Beluga sturgeon, which provides the roe for caviar!  Did you know that “’Although the Rocky Mountains extend all the way into Mexico, the finest part is the Canadian section because this is mainly a natural mountain range.  Our neighbours to the south see their section of the mountains as being largely converted into parks’” (282).  The authors seem to have confused Mexico and New Mexico!  And including mountains in parks causes the mountains to be transformed?  And anyone who believes that Renfrew, Ontario, is in northern Ontario (379) has never looked at a map of the province!

Then there’s the repetition!  We are told “the rich factory owners lived off the backs of the poor and would readily sacrifice anyone if they could profit from their actions” (4) and “Not content with the huge profits gained on the backs of hard working families the rich factory owners were now turning to the use of semi-automatic machines” (88) and “a few getting rich on the backs of the  many who were desperately poor” (91) and “History has shown the rich will, all too often, walk over everyone as they climb to the top of the heap” (109) and “the rich got richer on the backs of the poor” (110) and “There would always be a class of people who would readily clamber over the backs of the less able to gain riches they hardly deserved” (138).  The value of oxen to farmers is discussed on pages 148 – 149 and then repeated on page 186 and again on page 222.  The need for farmers to have hay for winter feed for their animals is mentioned on pages 179, 180, and 186 while the multiple uses for wheat are discussed on pages 249, 251 and 254.  This repetition even extends to words:  “the ship’s owners saw a profit existed in having a human cargo as ballast” and the youngsters “as ballast . . . provided a profit for the lumber carrier” and “Below decks cabins were being squeezed into tight quarters to accommodate this different type of cargo, the human ballast.  This ballast was, for the owners, the best kind because it gave them more earning benefit.  It mattered not to the ship owners the ballast was in the form of many unhappy youngsters.”  The same word is repeated 5 times within 4 paragraphs (108 – 109).  In six consecutive paragraphs, the word “louts” appears 7 times (49-50). 

Characterization is a problem.  All three immigrants are exceptional people who can do no wrong.  All are intelligent and talented and recognized as leaders.  Skip immediately becomes the leader of a group of street children (26, 32, 33, 46) and John is the leader to a group of immigrant children (114, 122, 125, 138).  Skip is so talented that though he is given a job “beyond most budding engineers” his finished product is of “superb quality” (158) and he even notices an error a design engineer missed (195-196).  Benjy becomes a hero for saving the lives of two children and John’s honesty is such that it is mentioned on his tombstone. 

Some events in the plot make no sense.  Skip and Benjy are taken in by a couple who give them work on their farm and treat them very kindly.  The boys think of the farm as a “corner of heaven” (58) especially because “Never before had either boy had such plentiful meals of excellent quality” (60).  They could have the family they both want.  But they leave?!  John decides early on that “his real ambition was to walk the path of a farmer” (87) but “John’s first ambition was not to possess or own a farm” (296).  Why, though he is able to always get a job in farming because of his reputation, does he decide “to earn a living in a maple sugar bush” (297)?  Then we are told that while “laboring on the farms of others, his eyes were ever open for the opportunity to buy his own farm” because of “his enthusiasm to be a self-sufficient farmer” (346)?  The boys need to work for 5 years (79, 166) when they first arrive in Canada, yet just after Benjy has experienced his first snowfall (and built a snowplow!), his employer “knew he would not have this creative young man for much longer” (277)?

The writing style is weak.  Clichés abound:  all the street children are “tarred with the same brush” (47); people are born with “a silver spoon in their mouths” (50-51); the boys think about “hitting the road” (54); John has “his heart on his sleeve” (101); and cows provide “the bread and butter of the farm’s livelihood” (211).  Plurals become singular so that shoes have one pointed toe (39), two boys have one huge appetite (71), and, on the same page, all the immigrants have both one new life and new lives (133).  Some sections make no sense:  Benjy thinks “everything in the world was just perfect” but four sentences later he “dreamed of better to-morrows” (229).  A morning is described as “mist marred” and having a “somewhat dreary appearance” (115) but two paragraphs later it is “a beautiful morning” (116).  How is a face “coloured with the flavour of ancestors” (241)?  Choice of diction is strange:  waves on a beach are described as a “turbulent aquatic invasion” (16) and street children live in a ‘homeless urban community’ – a phrase always enclosed in single quotation marks.  What is “false humidity” (120)?  To describe a lack of heat, why would an image of a “hot knife through butter” (36) be used?  Considering the length of the book, dialogue is sparse.  What is included is often stilted and unrealistic.  An uneducated child would ask, “’Do you think he could have picked up some morsel containing rat poison when we went around the restaurant bins’” (52)?   

Then there are the spelling and grammar problems.  Lightning is misspelled three times as “lightening” (253, 356, 407).  There seems to have been an aversion to the use of the comma.  Sentences with long introductory phrases and clauses do not have commas:  “While having Scamp by his side as a constant companion was comfort to him the dog was also seen as the protector of the group” (33) and “Hardly bigger than some of the children he was trying to help the tough Scottish lad had been readily accepted by the group as their leader” (125) and “Striding over to the first cow to be milked he saw that Elijah had already washed down the udders so he was able to start his milking right away” (303). When commas are used, they are used incorrectly so comma splices result:  “’I remember hearing about him, we were told he was the most famous king’” (68).  Of course sometimes there are run-on sentences:  “It was not just bossy it was defensive and could even be aggressive” (183). 

This self-published book was probably written with the best of intentions, but it requires major revision and editing.  It is not an understatement to say it is a monotonous read with few of the elements of literary fiction. 

Article about Miriam Toews in The New Yorker

For readers who like Miriam Toews, The New Yorker has a great profile in its latest issue:  https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/03/25/a-beloved-canadian-novelist-reckons-with-her-mennonite-past.

Here are the links for my reviews of her books:

Women Talking:   https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2018/08/review-of-women-talking-by-miriam-toews.html
 
All My Puny Sorrows:  https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2015/07/review-of-all-my-puny-sorrows-by-miriam.html

The Flying Troutmans:   https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2018/12/review-of-flying-troutmans-by-miriam.html

Review of THE PERFECT GIRLFRIEND by Karen Hamilton (New Release)

2 Stars

Elizabeth aka Lily aka Juliette is obsessed with Nate Goldsmith.  They were in a relationship but he was not ready for the type of commitment she wanted.  Determined to convince him that they are destined to be together, she makes a plan of action.  One step is to become a flight attendant for the same airline for which Nate is a pilot.  It soon becomes clear that she will go to extremes to reunite with him.

I found the book very derivative.  How many books have been written recently about a jilted girlfriend who becomes an obsessive stalker?  There are some twists to Juliette’s stalking but on the whole the book is not especially original or clever.  Juliette’s plotting just becomes tedious.  I kept reading not because the book was suspenseful and interesting but because I just wanted to finish it.  I probably would have stopped reading had I not felt obligated to finish it since I received a galley from the publisher.

The book requires too much suspension of disbelief.  Juliette has access to everyone’s work schedule at the airline?  She is allowed to fly international flights immediately after training and gets a promotion on the basis of one incident where she performs well?   She makes copies of everyone’s keys?  No one has security on their social media accounts?  Nate knows his ex-girlfriend so little that he is constantly being duped by her?  Considering their history and how Nate treated her, why would Juliette want to have anything to do with him?

Juliette is not a likeable character.  It is difficult to relate to her because she is so disconnected from reality.  It seems that the reader is supposed to have some sympathy for her because of a traumatic event when she was ten years old and her social difficulties as a teenager, but her extreme behaviour negates that sympathy.  The message of the novel seems to be that “without love and acceptance, all that’s left is something dark and hateful.”  Unfortunately, she becomes totally dark and hateful.  Again, how often do we have to read about a schoolgirl not being accepted by a snobbish clique?  What’s with her pre-occupation with secretly staying in people’s apartments when they are away?  In addition, as time passed and Juliette continued her machinations, I found her less and less threatening and more and more annoying. 

An unlikeable protagonist is not necessarily an issue; the problem is that there are no characters that are worth an emotional investment.  They are all so flawed and unsympathetic that I didn’t care what happened to them so there was little suspense.  

This book was just not for me.  It relies on the overused crazy stalker protagonist and adds nothing original.  The events become more and more implausible, veering into the ridiculous.  Then, after being offered nothing but a formulaic plot, the reader is subjected to an ending that can only be considered a cop-out.

Note:  I received a digital galley of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.

Review of AN ORCHESTRA OF MINORITIES by Chigozie Obioma

3.5 Stars

This book is narrated by the protagonist’s chi, an Igbo guardian spirit.  He addresses Chukwa, the Igbo chief deity, pleading for leniency for his host, Chinonso Solomon Olisa, who may have killed someone.  The chi recounts Chinonso’s story:  he, a poultry farmer, falls in love with Ndali, a pharmacy student.  She is the daughter of a wealthy, prominent, and well-respected family that objects to her marrying someone they consider beneath her.  Wanting to improve his chances of being accepted by Ndali’s family, he embraces an offer of a university education in Cyprus.  He sells his ancestral property and virtually all of his possessions to raise the necessary funds, but when he arrives in Cyprus, he learns he has been conned and finds himself penniless in a foreign country.  Then his trials and tribulations really begin.

The epigraph includes an Igbo proverb:  “If the prey do not produce their version of the tale, the predators will always be the heroes in the stories of the hunt.”  The book gives voice to one who would be considered the prey.  Unfortunately, as the title suggests, there is little that Chinonso can do against his fate.  The title refers to the crying of birds that can do nothing about their cruel fate.  Several times Chinonso is described as being “deplumed” and, not surprisingly, he comes to identify with “All who have been chained and beaten, whose lands have been plundered, whose civilizations have been destroyed, who have been silenced, raped, shamed and killed.  With all these people, he’d come to share a common fate.  They were the minorities of the world whose only recourse was to join this universal orchestra in which all there was to do was cry and wail.” 

There is a daunting amount of information about Igbo cosmology and culture.  There are long passages which meant little to me:  “Indeed, Alandiichie is a carnival, a living world away from the earth.  It is like the great Ariaria market of Aba, or the Ore-orji in Nkpa the time before the coming of the White Man. . .  . The eminent fathers were there. . . . There was, for example, Chukwumeruije, and his brother, Mmereole, the great Onye-nka, sculptor of the face of the ancestral spirits.  His sculptures and masks of the deities; the faces of many arunsi, ikengas and agwus . . . The great mothers dwell here, too. . . .Most notable, for instance, was Oyadinma Oyiridiya, the great dancer, . . . Among many others, there were Uloaku and Obianuju, the head of one of the greatest umuadas in history, one whom Ala herself, the supreme deity, had pomaded with her honey-coated lotion and who poisoned the waters of the Ngwa clan many centuries ago.” 

It is not just this type of exposition that is challenging.  There are instances of language which is not translated:

                -Nde bi na’ Alandiichie, ekene’m unu.

                ‘Ibia wo!’

                -Nde na eche ezi na’ulo Okeoha na Omenkara, ekene mu unu.

                ‘Ibia wo!’

Some of the conversations are in Nigerian Pidgin which is not always easy to decipher:  “’Oh boy, you no sabi wetin you dey talk’” and “’These Turka people sef, dem no sabi anything oh.  Tell am say na so the hair be jare.’” 

Having a chi as the narrator is interesting.  He is 700 years old and has been reincarnated many times so he is wise and able to place Chinonso’s tragedies into a broader context.  His oft-repeated phrase (44 times) is “I have seen it many times.”  He repeats this phrase after making observations like “loneliness is the violent dog that barks interminably through the long night of grief” and “things do not always happen in accordance with the expectation of man” and “A man in need will hang on to whatever he can get to survive” and “Love is a thing that cannot be lightly destroyed in a heart in which it has found habitation” and “A man seeking justice with his own hands must dispense it as quickly as possible, or he risks being destroyed by his own dark desire.”  Of course, the one difficulty with this narrator is that the reader is always given information second-hand; this perspective causes some distancing from the protagonist.

Nonetheless, the reader cannot but have compassion for this humble man who risks everything to better his life and be worthy of the woman he loves.  He is a simple man who doesn’t understand and cannot defend himself against the forces lined up against him.  The humiliations he endures as Ndali’s family tries to force him to end his relationship will bring a sensitive reader to tears.  When Chinonso writes an account of his time in Cyprus, he entitles it “How I Went to Hell in Cypros”.  Not only does he discover that he has lost everything, but he also encounters racism:  people demand to feel his hair and mock him by calling him an arap, a slave.  Because he is a black Nigerian, his suffering at the hands of the Turks is made even worse. 

The book has some weaknesses.  Ndali is not sufficiently developed so it is not clear why she is so attracted to this man whose life and experiences are so different.  Is it as simple as what she says (“From the first day, I knew you were genuine”)?  Some events are left unexplained.  For instance, Chinonso has a relationship with a woman named Motu but she just stops coming to see him.  Why?  Why is this relationship described in considerable detail? 

The book’s length (450+ pages) indicates its density.  It is not recommended to anyone looking for a light read because this is a serious book through which sadness permeates.  As the chi points out, there are parallels between the Chinonso/Ndali story and the Odysseus/Penelope myth, but there is frequent foreshadowing that the tales may not end the same way. 

This novel is a worthwhile read for those who are ready for a challenge.

Review of WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING by Delia Owens

3.5 Stars

This book is a coming-of-age story, a survival tale, a romance, and a murder mystery so it is not surprising that a film adaptation has been announced.

Kya Clark, by the time she is 10 years old, has been abandoned by her entire family so she grows up alone in the marshes of coastal North Carolina.  She learns to be self-sufficient and spends her time observing flora and fauna around her; seagulls are her closest companions:  Nature “nurtured, tutored, and protected her when no one else would.”  She avoids the nearby town of Barkley Cove where she is ridiculed; most people know her only as the Swamp Girl.    Once left by her family, she has regular contact with only three people:  she is helped by Jumpin’ and his wife Mabel from Colored Town and by Tate Walker, a young man who befriends her and teaches her to read. 

The story of Kya’s youth and young adulthood (1952 – 1969) is interspersed with a 1969 murder investigation started when the body of a man is discovered.   Kya soon becomes a suspect.

One cannot help but feel sympathy for Kya.  She describes her life as being “defined by rejections.”  Her mother, her siblings, and eventually her hard-drinking, abusive father leave her.  She witnesses girls her age having fun together, knowing that she will never be invited to join them.  When she does manage to later have relationships with others, they also eventually abandon her.  She realizes that “the gulls, the heron, the shack.  The marsh is all the family I got.’” 

Readers looking for a strong female protagonist can certainly find her here.  Kya is intelligent, resilient, courageous, and determined.  Considering her lack of formal education, her accomplishments might seem rather implausible, but then I remembered Tara Westover’s memoir Educated which shows how someone from an impoverished background can have extraordinary success.  There are in fact a number of similarities between Tara and Kya:  both live in remote areas under harsh conditions with absent or unreliable parents. 

Characterization is not the strongest element because characters tend to be either good or bad.  For instance, there’s the kind teenage boy who goes of his way to help Kya contrasted with the selfish teenage boy who takes advantage of Kya.  The nurturing black couple and the lawyer who comes out of retirement to defend Kya are almost too good to be believable. 

There are aspects of the novel that reminded me of To Kill a Mockingbird.  The attitude of most of the townspeople towards the blacks in Colored Town is an obvious similarity.  The trial also addresses prejudice, though in this novel, it is more class rather than racial prejudice.  Kya is considered guilty by many just because she is “swamp trash”; even Kya’s lawyer says that, “’Most [of the jurors] have probably already decided – and not in Kya’s favor’” before deliberation begins.

Many reviewers have commented on the surprise ending, but I didn’t find it was a surprise in the least.  Kya lives where the crawdads sing, “far in the bush where critters are wild, still behaving like critters” and we are told at the very beginning that marsh dwellers have their own laws, “Ancient and natural, like those hatched from hawks and doves.  When cornered, desperate, or isolated, man reverts to those instincts that aim straight at survival.  Quick and just. . . . It is not a morality, but simple math.”

I enjoyed this book.  It is not great literature but there’s an interesting plot with considerable suspense and doubt surrounding the murder investigation.  It examines social and racial divides and the effects of isolation on a person who yearns to connect with others and to be loved.  I plan to watch the film version when it is released.

Review of EVERYTHING UNDER by Daisy Johnson

3 Stars

This book came to my attention because it appeared on the Man Booker Prize shortlist and because it is a re-imagining of the Oedipus myth.  It has also received rave reviews.  Unfortunately, mine will not be one of those.

For the first 13 years of her life, Gretel Whiting lived on a canal boat with her mother Sarah.  Then they lived above a stable.  When Gretel was 16, Sarah disappeared.  Now 16 years later, they are reunited but Sarah is experiencing the early stages of dementia, so Gretel’s attempts to reconnect with her mother and learn her life story meet with limited success.  Gretel is especially interested in learning more about Marcus, a young man who lived with them for a month when she was 13, and what happened to him.

Reading this book is like floating down a turbid river in a disabled boat with flotsam snagging the boat and demanding your attention before it breaks free and moves on to be replaced by more debris.  The reader has no control over where the boat goes or what emerges from the water.  Then because the current is fast, nothing remains long enough for the reader to fully grasp it.  All one has is vague impressions.  Gretel speaks of the story as “some lies, some fabrications . . . hearsay, guesswork.”  I understand that the lack of clarity is intentional and central to the theme, but the constant ambiguity is just too much for my liking.

The Bonak is a perfect example of the novel’s ambiguity.  It is an ever-present menace though Gretel understands that “it’s not even a real word.  It doesn’t even exist” and is just an embodiment of “what we are afraid of.”  Then, however, Sarah captures the scaly creature:  “Its legs were short and strong, clawed; its mouth was long and toothy, its tail vanished into the murky water, its body was thick and rough until the belly, which was pale as churned cream.”  It even serves as food:  “The meat was gamey, a little like the fish we used to eat from the water.”  So is it real of just a manifestation? 

A major theme is that everything is fluid.  For example, gender and memory are fluid.  There are two transgender characters in the novel.  Gretel becomes Margot becomes Marcus, and there is more than one Gretel! The unreliability of memories is not a new idea because “everything we remember is passed down, thought over, is never the way that it was in reality.”  Gretel admits, “I couldn’t tell what I’d made up and what had really happened” and for Sarah, “memories flash like broken wine glasses in the dark and then are gone.”  Time is also shown as fluid; the novel moves back and forth through time and Gretel emphasizes that “the past did not die just because we wanted it to. . . . The past was not a thread trailing behind us but an anchor.”   

The novel also examines destiny and free will.  Some characters speak of having a lack of choice, a determinism.  And Gretel wants to scream at Sarah:  “I want to shout that you chose to leave me, no one made you do it, you cannot lie down behind your badly made decisions and call them fate or determinism or god.”  But then Gretel thinks that maybe “all of our choices are remnants of all the choices we made before.  As if decisions were shards from the bombs of our previous actions.”  And perhaps our personalities are determined by our environment:  “we are determined by our landscape, that our lives are decided by the hills and the rivers and the trees.”

All the rave reviews I’ve read inevitably refer to the lyrical style of the book as one of its outstanding elements.  The style is indeed lyrical with much reliance on imagery.  I did enjoy the playfulness with language.  Sarah and Gretel invented a language of their own:  “sheesh time meant . . . some time alone.  A harpiedoodle was a small annoyance . . . Something comfortable or enjoyable, often soft or warm, was duvduv . . . effie meant the current was faster as in the water was effing along or effying along the banks; that sills was the noise the river made at night and grear the taste of it in the morning.”  My issue is that lyrical writing is not in itself sufficient; more is needed to sustain the narrative.

I enjoy re-tellings of myths but I didn’t find this one worked.  I found it difficult to believe that a teenager living at the end of the 20th century would unquestioningly believe a neighbour who tells her that she will kill her father and have sex with her mother.  Then there’s the problem of the author’s being selective about what parts of the myth to incorporate.  In addition, elements of the Hansel and Gretel fairy tale are added to muddy the waters. 

This is obviously not the book for me.  The constant ambiguity was by design but was just too much for me.  To continue my river analogy, at times I felt as if I’d been thrown into the murky water and was drowning.  Someone with more of a Type B personality might enjoy the novel, but it was a struggle for me.

Review of CAL by Bernard MacLaverty

4 Stars

I recently read Milkman by Anna Burns which is about an 18-year-old girl growing up in Northern Ireland.  This novella from 1983 is about a young man also living in Northern Ireland during The Troubles.

Cal McCluskey and his father Shamie are the only Catholics living in a Protestant area of Ulster.  Cal falls in love with Marcella, a young widow whose husband, a Protestant reserve policeman, was assassinated.  He hopes for a relationship with the local librarian but he has secrets because of his unwilling involvement with the IRA.  The book jacket offers a perfect summary:  “Springing out of the fear and violence of Ulster, Cal is a haunting love story in a land where tenderness and innocence can only flicker briefly in the dark.”

Cal’s father works in an abattoir where Cal could also have a job but he “hadn’t a strong enough stomach” (18).  It is quite obvious that the slaughterhouse is a metaphor for Ireland:  “People were dying every day, men and women were being crippled and turned into vegetables in the name of Ireland . . . [People were] caught between the jaws of two opposing ideals trying to grind each other out of existence” (83).  Cal has been coerced into being a driver during some militant actions but he doesn’t want to be involved:  “’I just don’t like what’s happening. . . . I have no stomach for it’” (23). 

The book depicts what life is like in a conflict zone.  Because of his neighbourhood, Cal faces almost daily intimidation, and he and his father receive a threat from the Ulster Volunteer Force:  “Get out you Fenian scum or we’ll burn you out.  This is your 2^nd warning, there will be no other” (27).  Cal is a sensitive and thoughtful person who does not want to get involved but is pressured into being an accomplice for the IRA.  Then when he indicates that he wants out, he is threatened by those very people:  “’That creates a big problem, Cahal.  It would be out of my hands.  I wouldn’t like to see you hurt’” (40).  The effects on Shamie are equally devastating.

The characterization of Cal is outstanding.  He is a decent person who wants nothing to do with violence.  Yet he cannot live the peaceful life he wants or be with the woman he wants because of the sectarian violence.  He feels a great deal of shame and guilt for the activities in which he’s participated:  “Then he went to his bedroom to eat again the ashes of what he had done” (15).   

An atmosphere of sadness permeates the book.  The relationship between Cal and Marcella is doomed because of the circumstances.  This is a harrowing story told with compassion but without sentimentality.  It is a short narrative (154 pages) but its emotional effect lingers.