Review of THE GOOD FATHER by Wayne Grady (New Release)

4 Stars 

Having read and enjoyed Wayne Grady’s previous novels (Emancipation Day and Up From Freedom), I certainly wanted to read his latest.  It did not disappoint.

The book focuses on a father-daughter relationship.  Harry Bowes moves to Toronto from the small town of White Falls (“on the Madawaska River, between Ottawa and Peterborough”) to take a teaching job; he leaves behind his wife and ten-year-old daughter Daphne.  He never lives in White Falls again because his marriage ends in divorce and he eventually remarries.  He remains in contact with Daphne, visiting her and having her visit him, but their connection is eroded.

Daphne feels abandoned by her father, and the loving young girl is replaced by a hostile young woman who seems determined to totally destroy her relationship with Harry; she physically distances herself from him and limits contact with him.  Then she abandons her studies and begins self-medicating with drugs and alcohol.  A crisis brings them together physically, but will they be able to bridge the emotional distance?

I found myself frustrated with Harry.  He is supposed to be the adult, but he does not behave as one.  He doesn’t give much thought to how his move from home will affect his daughter.  He doesn’t even tell her that he’s leaving; he just assumes she will be alright:  “The relationship and trust and companionship he had built up with her over the years would ripen.”  Later, when it’s obvious that Daphne is not doing well, he has to be pushed to make more than a cursory effort to contact her.  Rather than reach out to find out exactly what Daphne is doing, he imagines best-case scenarios, “picturing her in a bright, cheerful apartment, with hardwood floors and tall windows that let in plenty of sunlight. . . . Food in the refrigerator, healthful food, smoked salmon, Boston lettuce, and a jar of real capers . . . and a small wine rack with bottles of a clear Okanagan sauvignon blanc.”  Harry is so right when he comments on his passivity:  “’I think I may just have been doing what was easiest for me.’” 

I sometimes found myself equally frustrated with Daphne.  Her behaviour as a child is understandable; she feels abandoned by her father with whom she had a close bond.  She looks for affection and attention elsewhere.  As a young adult, however, she makes choices that seem to be intended to punish her father because she cannot forgive him, even when those same choices destroy her own life.  She is so focused on what she sees as her father’s betrayal that she continues to blame him and wallow in self-pity when, in fact, she bears responsibility for her actions.  It takes a long time for her to admit that maybe her father’s leaving was “more a mistake than a premeditated desertion.”

The novel provides a dual perspective; the reader sees both Harry and Daphne’s points of view.  It is so realistic to read Harry saying, “’Daphne isn’t always there.  She’s always somewhere else’” and later, when he argues, “’I was always there for you’” have Daphne counter with “’Always there, never here.’”  In Daphne’s chapters, when she is facing a personal crisis and resorts to drugs again and again, she refers to herself in the second person.  This approach is somewhat disorienting but very effectively shows the chaos in her life. 

There are two aspects which I particularly enjoyed.  As a former English teacher, I loved the many literary allusions.  Shakespeare is quoted often, but W. B. Yeats and Walter Raleigh and Matt Cohen and Robertson Davies and Edna O’Brien and Siri Hustvedt and others are referenced.  Though White Falls is fictional, I grew up in the Madawaska Valley so references to “the Madawaska Valley accent” and “Madawaska Grunge” made me smile, as did mentions of Pembroke and Foymount.

The father-daughter relationship is portrayed so realistically that readers who are fathers or daughters will be inspired to examine their own relationships.  The novel reminds us that love requires “So much forgiveness . . . so much overlooking of hurt, so much emphasis on intentionality” and that love has many shapes.  Such a though-provoking book should be read.

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

Review of LUSTER by Raven Leilani

 3 Stars

I picked up this novel because it has appeared on so many lists of the best novels of 2020.  It is even on the longlist for the Women’s Prize for Fiction.  Unfortunately, it didn’t work for me.  Perhaps I’m just too old to get the nuances of the story.

Edie is a 23-year-old Black woman.  She wants to be an artist, but is working in the publishing industry.  Actually, she is more focused on sexual adventures.  She describes herself as the “office slut” who has sexual encounters, “ingenious anatomical feats,” with “coworkers with elaborate, transgressive fantasies that I was dead enough inside to fulfill.”  She becomes involved with Eric, a fortysomething white man in an open marriage.  Rebecca, Eric’s wife, ends up inviting Edie to move in with them because she hopes Edie might help Akila, their adopted Black daughter who is lonely and isolated in their white suburb. 

The reader is supposed to have sympathy for Edie.  Having been raised by a mentally unstable addicted mother who committed suicide and a philandering father, Edie has little self-esteem.  She is trying to find herself in a world rife with racism.  But she constantly engages in self-destructive behaviour.  What makes it difficult to like her is that she recognizes that what she is doing is wrong but does nothing to correct her choices.  She repeats this pattern over and over again, though in the end she does state that she was a “silly, half-formed” woman who wasn’t aware that “being a woman of twenty-three years, after the ovarian torsion and student loans and newfangled Nazis in button-downs . . . is the more remarkable feat” than being a middle-aged man with a “middling command of the wine list.”

Everyone that she encounters is unlikeable and behaves in baffling, unrealistic ways.  Eric has little to commend him, yet he is married to an intelligent, successful woman and has a mistress whom he often treats with indifference if she does not behave as he needs?    Why does Rebecca accept Eric’s behaviour? 

The style has been called unique.  Whether a reader enjoys the book may, to some extent, depend on his/her tolerance for run-on sentences with odd metaphors.  Here are some interesting sentences:  “While my father took women into his study, [my mother and I] descend upon the living room in Lycra for Zumba, eight-minute abs, or whatever lo-fi glute blasting was available via early aughts on-demand, alternating between tearful, formerly fat barre gurus, white capitalist body-posi rah-rahs with creepy yonic overtones, and the more classic motivational speakers who slap you over the face with a box of Ho Hos and compel you to squat.”  Here’s an interesting simile Edie uses to describe her embarrassment after being caught snooping by Akila:  “To see her there, the embarrassment open on her small face, feels like seeing an Olive Garden commercial after having already plowed through two bowls of fettuccini.”

This is one 406-word sentence:  “Slowly, he eases me down onto his grand, slightly left-leaning cock, and for a moment I do rethink my atheism, for a moment I consider the possibility of God as a chaotic, amorphous evil who made autoimmune disease but gave us miraculous genitals to cope, and so I fuck him desperately with the force of this epiphany and Eric is talkative and filthy but there is some derangement about his face, this pink contortion that introduces the whites of his eyes in a way that makes me afraid he might say something we cannot recover from just yet, so I cover his mouth and say shut up, shut the fuck up, which is more aggressive than I would normally be at this point but it gets the job done and in general if you need a pick-me-up I welcome you to make a white man your bitch though I feel panicked all of a sudden to not have used a condom and I’m looking around the room and there is a bathroom attached, and in the bathroom are what look to be extra towels and that makes me so emotional that he pauses and in one instant a concerned host rises out of his violent sexual mania, slowing the proceedings into the dangerous territory of eye contact and lips and tongue where mistakes get made and you forget that everything eventually dies, so it is not my fault that during this juncture I call him daddy and it is definitely not my fault that this gets him off so swiftly that he says he loves me and we are collapsing back in satiation and horror, not speaking until he gets me a car home and says take care of yourself like, please go, and as the car is pulling away he is standing there on the porch in a floral silk robe that is clearly his wife’s, looking like he has not so much had an orgasm as experienced an arduous exorcism, and a cat is sitting at his feet, utterly bemused by the white clapboard and verdant lawn, which makes me hate this cat as the city rises around me in a bouquet of dust, industrial soot, and overripe squash, insisting upon its own enormity like some big-dick postmodernist fiction and still beautiful despite its knowledge of itself, even as the last merciless days of July leave large swaths of the city wilted and blank.”  As stream-of-consciousness, it doesn’t work for me.

There is humour in some of Edie’s descriptions.  She in her behaviour is not as bad as “factory farming and Christian rock and the three-dimensional animation of Mr. Clean.”  She has received gifts from men, “gifts that were bought in haste at duty-free, that were fattening or detrimental to vaginal pH, that overestimated my interest in Lyndon B. Johnson and the New York Mets.”  As she gets on an amusement ride, she contemplates her death and “all my unfinished business – the quart of pistachio gelato in my freezer, the 1.5 wanks left in my half-dead vibrator, my Mister Rogers box set.”  But the humour is not enough to mitigate the negatives. 

I think this is a novel that readers will either love or hate.  For me, the book just fell flat.  As a senior, I am probably not the intended audience.  I can be impressed by the writer’s ability to construct breathless sentences, but that’s not enough to construct a lustrous book.

Review of MARGREETE'S HARBOR by Eleanor Morse (New Release)

 3 Stars

This family drama is set in Maine between 1955 and 1968.  Margreete’s daughter and her family move in with her once it becomes obvious that, because of her dementia, she cannot live alone.  Liddie and her husband Harry and their children Bernie and Eva leave Michigan and move to the small town of Burnt Harbor.  The novel focuses on their lives for the next 13 years as they face personal challenges. 

Liddie is a professional cellist for whom music is a comfort from a confining marriage and family obligations, especially after the arrival of a third child.  Harry is unhappy in his stagnant marriage and in his job as a history teacher.  Bernie and Eva contend with sexual issues and must make decisions about their futures.  And of course, Margreete struggles with the challenges of memory loss.

Though the book is about a family, there is not much of a feeling of family.  The focus is on individual struggles which are most often not communicated to anyone else in the family.  Liddie and Harry do not talk about the issues in their marriage, and Bernie and Eva do not discuss the events that have such an impact on their lives.  If they simply talked, so much drama and trauma could have been avoided.  And though they upend their lives to move in with Margreete, she becomes just a peripheral figure in their lives.  They do come together to some extent towards the end, but for much of the novel, I felt as if I were reading separate stories and wondered about the book’s purpose.  The overarching message seems to be that “life is messy, because humans are messy.  Life isn’t simple, no matter where you are.” 

There are moments of self-realization and personal growth.  Eva and Bernie do determine what is important to them and make choices about their futures.  Liddie realizes, “When she was hurt, what came out of her was anger – a hard carapace of bitchiness safeguarding a soft underbelly.”  Both husband and wife acknowledge the need to work on their relationship.  Unfortunately, because there are so many dynamic characters, their epiphanies seem contrived.  Again, I would have appreciated a more in-depth development of one or two characters. 

At times, a character appears and the reader is led to believe that he will play a significant role, but then he disappears.  Terry Leroux is one such person.  Then there are Peter and Willard, Liddie’s siblings.  Why are they not more a part of the narrative?  Did the author not want to add more characters to an already crowded cast?  If so, why not have Liddie as an only child?

People who lived through the time period will appreciate the memories invoked by the references to historical events and pop culture.  The Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War feature prominently.  I had never heard of the Minnesota Starvation Study, and it was interesting getting the viewpoint of a conscientious objector.

I must admit to struggling at times because I just wasn’t engaged.  Perhaps it was the sadness throughout that was just too much.  The novel touches on so many serious subjects – loss, death, betrayal, sexual assault, depression, unrequited love, and dementia being only some of them.  Even animals suffer.  I wanted fewer characters and more joy.

Note:  I received an eARC from the publisher via NetGalley.

Review of THE SPOON STEALER by Lesley Crewe

 3.5 Stars

Though Lesley Crewe has written 11 novels, this is the first I’ve read by this Canadian writer.  I recommend it to anyone looking for a cozy, heartwarming read.

The novel begins in 1968 with the introduction of 74-year-old Emmeline Darling who lives in a small English town.  Though she has a companion dog named Vera with whom she converses, she decides to expand her social circle by joining a memoir-writing course in the library.  Here she makes several friends to whom she reads her memoir.  To her surprise, she inherits the family farm in Nova Scotia and so decides to take a trip.  She was largely estranged from her family, but her parents and siblings are now dead so she wants to connect with nieces and nephews and their families, most of whom she has never met.  It’s a visit that changes many lives.

Emmeline is a very likeable character.  She is an independent spirit with a great sense of humour.  An acquaintance describes her well:  “’You are without airs, completely without guile, but not unsophisticated.  You are smart, and well-spoken, and I can tell that common sense is your biggest asset. . . . And what is even more impressive is your capacity for love.’”  Her philosophy is that all people need a spoonful of kindness, and she dispenses more than one spoonful.

She has not had an easy life and is not perfect.  The memoir she shares with her friends reveals that she has had her share of heartbreak.  She describes herself as a “big girl” who never felt she fit in, even with her family.  Though she means well, she makes mistakes when she arrives back in Canada and tries to take charge of everyone’s lives. 

There are several minor characters, Emmeline’s friends and family members, and all emerge as distinct individuals.  I loved Mrs. Tucker who has no difficulty telling someone she’s a “’tight-arse.’”  Louise, a great-niece, represents the type of life Emmeline might have had if circumstances had been different.  And then there’s Vera with whom Emmeline has extensive conversations.  Because they function as interior monologues, these chats reveal a great deal about Emmeline’s personality. 

There is considerable humour.  Conversations between Emmeline and her friends are often hilarious:  Uma says, “’Ooh.  I hates the doctor.  Always wantin’ to look at your Mary-Ellen. . . . Your lady bits . . . Always up there lookin’ around, like they’ve lost their car keys.’”  Emmeline replies, “’Well, they wouldn’t find anything up my Mary-Ellen but dust and cobwebs.’”  Emmeline’s encounters with Agatha and Joyce are usually comic in some respect. 

Though often light-hearted, the book does raise serious issues which were often not openly discussed in the time frame of the novel.  One woman obviously has mental health issues for which she receives no help.  The stigmas attached to unwed mothers and their children are broached.  It is especially significant that Emmeline doesn’t reveal a secret about her life to most of her family and friends:  “’I’ve given away so many secrets, but only certain secrets to certain people.  I have to trust my own instincts.’”

One of Emmeline’s best friends tells her, “’Ordinary lives are just as glorious as great lives lived by great men and women.’”  In many ways, that is the message of the novel.  Emmeline is an ordinary woman but she leaves a great legacy by trying to understand and be kind to people.  That doesn’t mean Emmeline is a Pollyanna; her comments about Joyce, Agatha, and Mr. Henderson suggest that redemption is not possible for everyone.

Though the ending is a bit sentimental, I’d recommend the book to anyone looking for a charming, feel-good read – something we all need at some times. 

Review of MY DARK VANESSA by Kate Elizabeth Russell

 4 Stars

I listened to this book on morning walks for the last couple of weeks.  Its subject matter didn’t make it the pleasantest of companions, but I could not but be impressed by its realistic exploration of the aftermath of abuse. 

The narrator is Vanessa Wye.  When she was 15 she had a sexual relationship with her 42-year-old English teacher, Jacob Strane, at a private boarding school in Maine.  The novel begins when she is 32 and Strane is accused of sexual abuse by another former student who wants Vanessa to come forward and speak openly about what happened to her.  Vanessa is adamant that she was not abused and that her relationship with Strane was a romance.

The novel moves back and forth between 2017 and when Vanessa was in boarding school and in university.  Despite her unwillingness to accept that she is a victim, it is clear that she has been harmed.  Her academic promise has been unfulfilled as she works as a hotel concierge.  She relies on alcohol and drugs to help her through her days.  She is still fixated on Strane; when she doesn’t see him, she has casual encounters with older men. 

Strane is a textbook predator.  He recognizes a lonely girl craving attention and takes advantage of her vulnerability.  He flatters her with compliments so she feels special and treasured.  Slowly he grooms her.  He convinces her that she is beguiling so she feels powerful.  He also manipulates her to see herself as dark and bad and so willing to engage in a dark relationship which society would label as bad.  Strane even uses Vanessa’s love of books; he leads her to interpret Lolita as a story of forbidden love.  He is so adept at manipulation that, though Vanessa feels more physical repulsion than attraction, she finds his attentions irresistible.

Vanessa is not always a likeable character, but the reader has to remind him/herself that, though she refuses to see herself as one, she is a classic victim.  She continues to protect her abuser, defending and justifying his treatment of her.   There is no sudden epiphany for Vanessa but that just emphasizes the extent of the psychological manipulation to which she has been subjected.  She needs to see herself as fully complicit or she will have to admit she was not unique and powerful as Strane led her to believe.  She has written a fiction to explain her life to herself and if she rejects that fiction, she will be totally lost.

This is an uncomfortable, unsettling book with some very disturbing scenes.  Nonetheless, it is worth reading because it illustrates the impact of abuse and why women often refuse to view themselves as victims of abuse. 

Review of THE DITCH by Herman Koch

 4 Stars

The Dinner, Summer House with Swimming Pool, and Dear Mr. M. are the first three of Herman Koch’s novels to be translated into English.  I’ve given 4 stars to each of them, so I was excited to discover that a fourth, The Ditch, was translated last year. 

Robert is the mayor of Amsterdam.  At a party, he sees his wife Sylvia chatting and laughing with an alderman and instantly becomes suspicious and assumes they are having an affair.  Thereafter, he becomes obsessed with trying to find out if Sylvia is cheating.  At the same time, besides having to contend with political issues, he is faced with the imminent death of his aging parents and the life-altering news of his best friend. 

I could not but think of Othello while reading this novel, but the difference is that there is no Iago.  Robert needs no one feeding his pathological jealousy.  When he sees “no visible signs of an affair,” he concludes that “it was precisely the absence of any visible sign or signal that should confirm my worst suspicions.”  His other difference is that, unlike Othello, Robert does not act:  “Dutchmen get ideas, too . . . But in the end, they don’t actually do anything.”  This is a perfect description of the protagonist.  He obsesses, but he doesn’t act; he never talks to Sylvia about his suspicions. 

Sylvia is not the only one with whom he doesn’t talk.  Robert’s father tells him about the suicide pact he and his wife have, but Robert never directly brings up the topic with his mother.  Even when he is urged to call his mother, he doesn’t.  When he should have a difficult conversation with his father, he just doesn’t contact him.  It seems impossible for him to ask a direct question.  Perhaps Robert can best be described as evasive:  he is concerned with avoiding reality whenever it becomes uncomfortable.  At times it seems as if his jealousy is a way for him to distract himself from other concerns.

Though Robert tries to portray himself as an open-minded person, it is obvious that he is not.  Sylvia is foreign-born, but he doesn’t reveal her home country because he says he doesn’t want people to have any preconceived notions because of her nationality, yet again and again he mentions her foreignness.  Methinks, he doth protest too much.  His description of a server is telling:  “She was an extremely Dutch Dutch girl, pretty in the way to which our country holds the patent rights, in a way that ought to make the Dutch nation feel proud.  So white, so blonde:  creamy white.”  He launches into an extensive tirade about the monarchy, the gist of which is that “You’ll rarely find a personality among [kings and queens].  They never have to do their best. . . . they don’t have to brainstorm around the country, trying to win votes.  They get it all handed to them on a silver platter.” 

Robert is a very passive person.  He prefers others to make decisions for him.  Though he enjoys meeting important world leaders like Clinton, Obama and Hollande, he doesn’t seem to really love being mayor.  Rather than be decisive about not running for a third term, he hopes a controversial interview with a reporter might bring his political career to an end.  He never takes any action against the alderman whom he suspects of having an affair with his wife.  He complains about Amsterdam’s deplorable garbage collection and its ugly city hall, but he doesn’t try to improve either. 

What also comes across clearly is that Robert is very insecure.  He boasts about appearing on Time magazine’s list of “the one hundred most influential people in the world” and about being “the obvious pivot in almost every group,” but his bragging masks a deep insecurity.  He always seems to be comparing himself to his better-looking best friend Bernhard, believing that Sylvia might have chosen Bernhard if she had met him first.

There is considerable humour, much of it at the expense of the Dutch.  I loved Robert’s description of the alderman:  “Dutcher than a head of endive brought in after a first night’s frost, Dutcher than a pair of clogs with windmills painted on the insteps, Dutcher than cheese and milk, bread for breakfast and lunch, Dutcher than a hole in the ice, than that one single cookie to go with your tea before the lid goes back on the tin.”  Having made more than one attempt at learning Dutch, I chuckled at his description of “that harsh gargling and bleak hawking we call the Dutch language.”

Anyone considering reading this novel should be warned that there are several unanswered questions, many of which stem from the fact that Robert is the sole narrator, and an unreliable one at that.  Robert’s aversion to confrontation and his evasiveness mean that much is left unexplained.  What was his father’s intention with the suicide pact?  Is Sylvia guilty of adultery?  Were van Hoogstraten’s injuries the result of an accident or an assault?  I have my theory about what happened, but I’ll keep it to myself so as not to give any spoilers - though I’m willing to discuss the ending with perplexed readers.

I would not say that this is Koch’s best novel, but it is worth reading nonetheless; a Koch novel is always a thought-provoking read.

Review of THREE WOMEN AND A BOAT by Anne Youngson

 3.5 Stars

This quiet, charming book was a welcome reprieve from the heavy reading I’ve been doing.

Eve has just been fired from her long-time job with an engineering firm.  Sally has just walked away from her marriage.  The two meet each other and another woman, Anastasia, who makes her home on a canal boat.  Anastasia needs to receive some medical care in Uxbridge so Eve and Sally agree to take the boat to Chester for maintenance.  As they navigate the canals (and locks and tunnels), Eve and Sally embark on a journey of self-discovery. 

The inciting incident requires some suspension of disbelief.  The meeting of the three women is certainly a chance event.  Two women who don’t know each other agree to travel together for weeks and navigate a canal boat for not a short distance?  Anastasia entrusts her beloved boat to two strangers with no experience of boats?  I remember being taught that the inciting incident is the one event that can rely on chance or coincidence if it brings together people to develop theme.  That’s definitely the case in this book.

The book brings together Eve and Sally who are opposites in many ways.  Eve has always been the one in control, whereas Sally feels she has not really had any control over her life.  The canal trip forces them to slow down and gives them time to reflect on their lives.  They face new challenges and come to realize they have abilities they didn’t know they had.  They take up new interests and a friendship develops between them. 

Anastasia is an unforgettable character.  Fierce and fiercely independent, she has to learn to accept help from others.  Her bluntness is off-putting, but the reader gradually sees new depths to her character.  The other characters the women encounter (especially Trompette, Arthur, and Owen) are all distinct.  Each has an interesting backstory.  Even Noah, Anastasia’s dog, provides humour and suspense. 

The novel is about the power of friendship and about second chances.  The women are middle-aged but they learn and grow.  The challenges they face in an unfamiliar situation bring them together, despite their opposite personalities.  They also realize they are capable people who can create new lives, hopefully lives that will bring them more contentment. 

Reading this book is like taking a leisurely canal journey.  It has its challenges, some funny and some more serious, but overall is enjoyable.  Though not action-packed, the novel is thoughtful.  And its overarching message is that we are all extraordinary in ordinary ways.  I listened to this as an audiobook on my morning walks and it was a perfect way to begin each day.