Review of LIVING IS A PROBLEM by Doug Johnstone (New Release)

 4 stars

This is the sixth in the Skelfs series about the three Skelf women, funeral service directors/private investigators and “magnets for trouble, for grief and trauma and stress and violence.”

As in the previous books, chapters alternate among the three women. Dorothy, the matriarch, is asked to find Yana, a Ukrainian refugee, widow, and member of the choir that sings with Dorothy’s band. She has gone missing, leaving behind her two children. When Jenny, Dorothy’s daughter, oversees a funeral which is attacked by a drone, she fears the beginning of a gangland vendetta but discovers the target may be the Skelfs themselves. Hannah, Jenny’s daughter, is asked by Brodie, the newest member of the Skelf team, to investigate who has been disturbing his son’s grave.

And of course there are the personal lives of the protagonists. Dorothy’s friend Thomas is now retired from the police force but is suffering from PTSD after the violent trauma in The Opposite of Lonely. Jenny’s relationship with Archie, a stabilizing force in her life, seems to be evolving into something more intimate. Hannah becomes interested in panpsychism, the theory that consciousness is “a measurable, physical entity” which is “inherent in everything.”

A visit with Dorothy, Jenny, and Hannah is always enjoyable. Over the series, it has been interesting to see the evolution of their personalities. In particular, it is great to see Jenny move away from being, as she acknowledges, “a self-centred and self-destructive bitch.” She now tries to be more like her mother, to help others and be more empathetic, though she still describes herself as “a sarcastic and confused middle-aged cow”: “Be more Dorothy, Jenny thought for the millionth time.”

Again the importance of connection is emphasized: “every tiny interaction of your life mattered” and people should try “connecting to each other as if your lives depended on it.” The advice offered is that “No one knows what you were carrying, what you had inside you. No one can every really know someone else, that’s the truth. So how can we judge anyone?” Hannah speculates further, emphasizing the connection between the living and the dead: “What of this dead person’s consciousness, where did it go? If consciousness was in everything, in every atom, quark and electron, eventually this person would be scattered across the universe. Would those atoms retain a memory of what it was like to be them? Did that mean that everyone on the planet was one big brain?” And Dorothy agrees: “What disrespected the dead was living in a way that denied the connection between people and the planet, the living and the dead.”

Johnstone’s books are not just entertaining but also informative. The Skelfs decide that they will no longer embalm the dead. They encourage the use of coffins made of “biodegradable stuff like willow, cardboard, bamboo and wool” and “resomations, natural burials, mushroom suits, human composting, planting trees.” I had heard of water cremation but not about mushrooms suits. Though I’m not so certain about human composting: “Jenny looked at the food on the table, imagined that all this had been grown and fertilised by the remains of loved ones. What better way to celebrate the deceased than by consuming them, making them a part of you.”

My one quibble is overuse of the trope of police incompetence. More than once the police are slow to react or to believe. Would an emergency operator not take someone’s call seriously? There’s a hit and run but “police officers showed eventually” and “said there would be CCTV, but didn’t seem in a hurry to check it”? And I find it difficult to believe that Don Webster is still working in the police department given the charges he faces. There’s even a suggestion of police corruption: “a cop arresting a cop at a cop’s funeral, good luck with that.”

As one would expect, there is considerable suspense because, more than once, the women find themselves in a dangerous situation. But the book also has a multi-layered plot, endearing characters, wonderfully detailed descriptions of Edinburgh, and thematic depth. I definitely recommend it and look forward to the next installment in the Skelfs series.

Review of REAL ONES by Katherena Vermette (New Release)

 4 Stars

This book, which focuses on two Métis sisters, June and Lyn, examines what happens when their estranged white mother Renee is called out as a pretendian. An artist, going by the name Raven Bearclaw, she has enjoyed considerable success copying the Indigenous Woodland Art style. When the story is made public, the sisters read enraged online commentary. As they consider what effects Renee’s false representation will have on them and what to do about her lies, painful memories of their relationships with their mother resurface.

The two siblings have reacted differently to their childhood experiences involving their mother. Lyn, a potter and single mother, has anger that has never gone away and has abandonment issues because of Renee’s actions in the past. June is a respected Métis Studies professor who fears her reputation will suffer because of her mother’s falsehoods.

What the novel emphasizes is that it is Indigenous people, who already carry the weight of identity issues, who are re-traumatized when people falsely claim Indigenous identity; it is people like Lyn and June who have to prove that they are actually Métis. June discusses “the problems with Redface or the taking on of any face. How when those with a power take from those who do not, it is not just taking up space, it’s actually violence.” The book also emphasizes that self-identification is insufficient: “’Racial identity isn’t only about you, it’s about community . . . Who you claim but also who claims you.’”

It is obvious that the author is very proud of her Métis heritage: “’Métis actually means a whole people with a history, language, culture and years and years of struggle. These fakers don’t get to have all that.’” And she emphasizes that others should take pride in their heritage as well. Renee, for instance, is part Mennonite and June says, “It’s a rich, colourful, surprising, exceptional culture in its own right. By taking our stories she is effectively discrediting her own, and those of her actual ancestors. That’s sad to me. That’s a missed opportunity.’”

I loved the portrayal of the relationship between the two sisters. It’s obvious that the two love each other, though there are inevitable tensions. And as I know from personal experience, siblings experience childhood events differently and will remember them differently.

Renee is a character who did not arouse much empathy in me. Not only does she take advantage of grants intended for Indigenous artists and accept awards as if she qualified for them, she even uses her ex-husband’s story of growing up Métis as her own. I agree with June that this last is a “particularly sharp violation.” However, her ex-husband, the girls’ father, explains Renee’s anger by saying that “’some people get like that when they’re hurting, always mad at someone.’” He also suggests that she may have a border personality disorder: “’it means you can’t control what you do or your emotions or something. Extreme, that’s it. Those people are extreme in how they deal with things.’” Clearly, we are not to see her as totally evil.

The subject of forgiveness is discussed. When the sisters discuss how to forgive their mother, “’someone who doesn’t think they did anything wrong,” it is suggested that “’You don’t forgive people for them, you forgive them for you . . . so you can stop harping on it. Stop letting it all affect you.’”

This novel is very timely because there have been a number of instances of pretendianism in the news recently, including the controversy surrounding Buffy Sainte-Marie’s dubious claims of Indigeneity. I recommend this look at the dehumanizing effects of pretendianism.

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

Review of TELL ME EVERYTHING by Elizabeth Strout (New Release)

 4 Stars

I feel like I’ve just attended the most wonderful reunion in Crosby, Maine, with Elizabeth Strout’s family of characters (Bob Burgess, Lucy Barton, and Olive Kitteridge).

Bob is at the centre of this novel. He meets regularly with Lucy with whom he shares a deep friendship; in their conversations they share their fears, regrets, and hopes. He introduces Lucy to 90-year-old Olive and the two meet regularly, exchanging stories about ordinary people’s “unrecorded lives.” Then when a woman is found murdered, Bob, though he is semi-retired from his career as a lawyer, agrees to defend Matt Beach, the lonely and isolated man suspected of killing his mother. And of course Bob has to contend with the complications in the lives of his family members: his wife Margaret, his brother Jim and his family, and his ex-wife Pam.

The characters in Strout’s novels are so authentic: flawed and complicated and sometimes contradictory. Olive for instance, continues to be abrasive and judgmental though we also see that she can be caring and compassionate. Lucy can be patient and accepting but also dismissive of people and fears she may be arrogant. And Bob . . . well, it’s impossible not to like Bob. He’s sensitive, humble, generous, and compassionate. Lucy calls him a sin-eater: “’you absorb things, Bob. . . . I see you around town and everyone who has a problem seems to come to you.’” He listens to everyone and never abandons anyone, though he admits to being emotionally exhausted. He is not perfect, however, becoming irritated with and angry at people.

The book is a reflection on the complexity of relationships. For instance, we see Bob’s relationships with Margaret, Jim, Pam, and Matt; Lucy’s relationships with her husband William, Bob, Olive, and her daughters; Matt’s relationship with his mother; Jim’s relationship with his son Larry; and Olive’s relationship with her friend Isabelle. None of these connections is perfect but everyone tries to make and maintain meaningful connections that help sustain them. Lucy and Olive tell each other stories about other people, ordinary people whose stories are not recorded, “’stories of loneliness and love . . . And the small connections we make in this world if we are lucky.’” The overriding message is that all lives matter and “’Love comes in so many different forms, but it is always love. If it is love, then it is love.’”

Another theme, like in other of Strout’s novels, is our inability to really know anyone. Lucy says, “’My point is that every person on this earth is so complicated. Bob, we’re all so complicated, and we match up for a moment – or maybe a lifetime – with somebody because we feel that we are connected to them. And we are. But we’re not in a certain way, because nobody can go into the crevices of another’s mind, even the person can’t go into the crevices of their own mind, and we live – all of us – as though we can.’”

The book even reflects on the meaning of life. In a conversation with Bob, Lucy comments, “’I keep thinking these days about all these people, and people we don’t even know, and their lives are unrecorded. But what does anyone’s life mean?’” Is the point of life “the maturity of the soul”? Olive speculates about the point of the stories she and Lucy exchange, and Lucy replies, “’People and the lives they lead. That’s the point.’” Later, when Bob asks Olive about the point of a story, Olive replies, “’That was about the same thing that every story Lucy and I have shared is about. People suffer. They live, they have hope, they even have love, and they still suffer. Everyone does.’” Bob must agree because when commenting on the complications of a marital relationship, he repeats, “’It’s life, Mrs. Hasselbeck, it’s just called life. . . . It’s just life, Mrs. Hasselbeck, that’s all it is. Life.’”

I love Strout’s writing style. The dialogue is realistic, the descriptions are vivid, and there are wonderful touches of humour. The prose is deceptively simple because it carries profound messages about the human condition.

It is not necessary to have read Strout’s earlier novels featuring these characters, but there is no doubt that this book will be more meaningful to those who have already encountered Bob, Olive, and Lucy. The novel is not action-packed but it is compelling nonetheless. It is so thought-provoking that one cannot but feel enriched at the end.

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

Review of SONGS FOR THE BROKENHEARTED by Ayelet Tsabari (New Release)

 4 Stars

This rich novel, with its dual timeline, is both entertaining and informative.

In 1950, Saida, one of the many Yemeni Jews who immigrated to Israel after the establishment of the country, is in an immigrant camp where she meets a shy young man named Yaqub. They fall in love, but it’s a forbidden relationship because Saida is married and has a young son.

In 1995, Zohara, a newly divorced grad student in New York City, receives a call from her older sister Lizzie telling her that their mother Saida has died. Zohara decides to return to Israel. While cleaning out her mother’s house, she learns that there is so much she didn’t know about her mother’s life. She uncovers Saida’s secrets and learns more about her heritage, as she also tries to determine her future.

The political unrest that is so much part of the history of Israel and Palestine is central in the second timeline. The Oslo Accords giving Palestinians more self-autonomy have been signed. Yoni, Zohara’s nephew who is grieving because of Saida’s death, becomes involved in protests against Prime Minister Rabin and his government’s agreement with the PLO.

I learned so much from this book. I learned about the migration of Yemeni Jews to Israel after 1948. They thought they were going to the Promised Land but conditions when they first arrived were abysmal. They lived in tents in an overcrowded camp which smelled of “sewage and sweat and mildew and rotten garbage.” Children were placed in nurseries and separated from their mothers. And it is during this time that Yemeni children went missing: a mother might go to see her child, only to be told he/she died overnight. Since bodies were not shown and death certificates not provided, people believed the children had been taken away to be adopted by Ashkenazi Jews: “It happened in Australia to children of Aboriginal descent. It happened in Canada with the Sixties Scoop, where they forcibly removed Indigenous children from their communities and placed them for adoption. ‘It’s a method of the dominant group to reeducate a community they believe is backward and primitive.’”

I was unaware of the prejudices amongst the Jewish communities. Mizrahi Jews from North Africa and the Middle East were targets of discrimination and mistreatment from those already established in Israel who were predominantly Ashkenazi. Yemeni Jews, “as Jews from Arab lands . . . had more in common with the local Arabs than with the Ashkenazi, who thought their culture was inferior, who saw the ‘Arabness’ as a problem to be solved.” One man described the Yemeni Jews as “’a people whose primitiveness is at its peak. Their level of education borderlines complete ignorance, and worse is their inability to absorb anything intellectual. . . . What will be the face of Israel with such populations?’” Certainly the Arab Jews seem to be treated as second-class citizens.

And then of course there’s the Nakba, the violent displacement and dispossession of Palestinians. Zohara mentions that her school textbooks spoke of the founding of Israel “as this magical coming together of Jews” with “little mention of the Palestinian tragedy.” Israel provided a home for “Holocaust survivors who had nowhere to go” but one of Yaqub’s friends asks, “’can we live here in peace knowing so many of the Arabs were displaced?’” Zohara thinks of Israel as “A country erected on the ruins of others, the oppression of others.”

I appreciated that the author depicts different political viewpoints. There are those in favour of the Oslo Accords and those opposed. Some see ceding any land to Palestinians as a betrayal of their “biblical birthright”; they’re the ones shouting, “’We have a total and absolute right to this place!’” Then there are others who feel the Accords don’t go far enough: “’There is no commitment by Israel to freeze settlements. They’re still building them. . . . And how come no one is talking about the Palestinian Right of Return? . . . acknowledging the tragedy would be a start . . . at the very least, we can speak about compensation.’”

As a young girl and woman, Zohara rejected her mother and her Yemeni culture. She was embarrassed by her mother, especially after she started attending an elite boarding school for gifted children in Jerusalem: “It was there that I became embarrassed by her accent . . . her Arabic name . . . her faith, her superstitions. The unfashionable flowery headscarf . . . the tang of spicy fenugreek emanating from her skin, the stains of turmeric that lingered on her hands.” One of Zohara’s friends points out that schools “’made us believe that to be Israeli, you had to reject your heritage, especially Mizrahi’” and adopt the “’idealized Ashkenazi culture.’”

After her return to Israel, Zohara comes to see her mother in a new light; she comes to understand how much she had to give up to come to a new country. Zohara thinks of the loss of Saida’s son but Saida also lost her youngest daughter in many ways. And Zohara realizes “like all Jews from Arab lands, she could never return to where she came from. With their Israeli passports, they were not even permitted to visit.”

Zohara also reconnects with her Mizrahi identity. She learns about how Yemeni women used songs to express themselves in a culture where women were illiterate and expected to be quiet. I’m so happy I discovered Ofra Haza and Gila Beshari.

In fact, I recommend listening to the Yemeni songs of these two women while reading this novel. Given current events in Israel and Gaza, this is a timely book which sheds light on the complex history of Israel. There is much to admire in this book: it’s well-written and interesting and very thought-provoking.

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

Review of IN WINTER I GET UP AT NIGHT by Jane Urquhart (New Release)

 4 Stars

It’s been almost a decade since Jane Urquhart’s last novel, so I was excited that she has a new release.

In the 1950s, Emer McConnell is a middle-aged itinerant music/art teacher in rural Saskatchewan. She thinks back on her life beginning with her family’s move from Ontario to the prairies. When she was eleven, she was badly injured in a tornado and spent a year in a hospital. There she became acquainted with a child performer in a travelling theatre company, a Jewish boy from a farm collective, and a girl from a Doukhobor community. Emer also reflects on her mother’s relationship with Master Stillwell, a teacher who followed them from Ontario to Saskatchewan, her brother Danny’s spirituality, and her long-term love affair with an enigmatic man she calls Harp, a brilliant scientist whose medical discovery changed the lives of millions.

One element that bothered me is that Harp is modelled on a real person whose identity is confirmed in the author’s bibliography. The revelation did not come as a surprise because I had strong suspicions throughout. His is not an entirely positive portrayal; he is introduced as someone who “never loved me” and “broke my heart often.” Reading about this man and his treatment of Emer left me feeling as I did when I learned about the sexual abuse in Alice Munro’s family: an icon has been tarnished. I may want to read the biography of this man to determine how much poetic license Urquhart took.

The novel examines a number of topics, one of them being colonial expansion in Canada. Emer describes her father as descending “from a long line of land-grabbers” who suffered from “property hunger” and “gobbled up land” in Ontario and the prairies “without giving more than a passing thought to those who had for millennia inhabited the geography my family coveted. One tribe, forced out of its homeland by imperial dominance, war, and scarcity, migrates across the sea and forces another tribe out of its homeland.” Once land was acquired, the settlers set about changing the landscape forever: “’the wildflowers and wild grasses . . . they are quickly disappearing and will not come again.’” And with their arrival , they rename places: “I thought about those earlier Indian names, and wondered whether they were lost for good or if they would ever come back.” For the people they displaced, “pushed off this land by the clutter of avarice and insatiability,” they built “residential schools in which dwelt stolen and grief-stricken indigenous children.”

There is more of Canada’s dark history revealed in the attitude of some immigrants towards other immigrants who spoke a different language, dressed differently, or worshiped differently. Emer observes, “How strange we all are! Most of us come from Irish and Scottish tribes cast out by the mother country. But we are still reading her poems and singing her songs. How odd that we define foreignness as those whose speech hold the trace of another language, and then we ignore altogether our own foreignness on land that was never our own.” Ukrainians, Jews, and Doukhobors were victims of discrimination and even violence. Emer reads a letter her mother received that illustrates the xenophobic attitudes of some: “But when foreign fish come to these streams, the very water itself becomes unwholesome. The lakes and rivers and lesser tributaries fill with parasites and disease, until we turn away from our own murky waters in disgust.” Master Stillwell focuses his educational research on “those with the foreign tongues . . . those who wore ridiculous clothing and head coverings. Those who would need to be changed. . . . ‘We take the ignorant and cleanse them and dress them in fresh garments. We give them the gift of the English language. We make them into a reasonable facsimile of ourselves. Because who . . . has a cleaner, more reliable life-version than we ourselves.’”

The role of women is also discussed. Emer compares her mother’s situation with that of Master Stillwell who earned a PhD: “My mother, the supplemental teacher, had neither the opportunity nor the privilege of being pauperized by graduate studies. Except for the daily round of necessary domestic chores, her roles in the world were never deemed to be essential.” Emer thinks of the “thinness of my mother’s life” because “few of her generation walked away from the fields . . . and almost none who did so were women.”

Love is another topic that receives attention. Emer believes that love “is imposed upon us” and is “inconceivable, unkillable, and beyond . . . control.” She muses that “Love is uninterested in a crack in the character of the beloved. And even at its most conventional, it is the enemy of rational decisions.” Love for both Emer and her mother is often accompanied by pain but her mother says, “’I have been in love . . . And that is life. That is being alive.’” Pain “situates us and makes us present in our lives” and so reminds us that we are alive: “Perhaps that is joy – the reminder that always there is pain, the reminder that we are living beings.”

Emer also suggests that her love for Harp and her mother’s love for Master Stillwell were yearnings for what was not possible for themselves: “The presence of a man who had known cities, speakers’ halls, and crowning glories would have enlarged and brightened the thinness of my mother’s life. To be the subject of such a man’s attention would have suggested that all along the potential for such things had lain dormant inside her, and were it not for circumstance, she might have stood by his side. She was drugged by a kind of worship that circled back to the self. And in some respects, so was I.” Men can seduce a woman and then dismiss or hide it, but for a woman, “seduction is a soft thing. It fills your rooms with golden light, sings your praises, makes you feel elected. Sainted.” Certainly their relationships feel like fantasies; “Our love, you see, was like those castle hotels: full of private hidden spaces and beautiful velvet furniture, and no responsibility for tidying up afterwards.”

This novel is both entertaining and thought-provoking. As a child Emer does not always understand the significance of what she sees and I found myself anxious to learn if my suspicions were correct. I also found I could relate with Emer in many ways. At the end of the book, the author mentions that the book was almost a decade in the making; after reading the book I can only say it was so worth the wait.

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