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Channel: Tina Siegal – Sudbury Living

REVIEW: THE UNDERGROUND GIRLS OF KABUL BY JENNY NORDBERG

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What a fascinating read!

Jenny Nordberg is a Swedish journalist who goes to Afghanistan in search of one story, and finds something completely different. What she uncovers, bit by bit, is an ancient custom that bends all the rules of this highly stratified society and allows its most oppressed, suppressed, abused members a few years of freedom.

The book follows several Afghani women who’ve lived part of their lives – usually young childhood – as boys. The reasons are varied and complex. Sometimes, it’s like a good luck charm meant to ensure that the next child will be a boy. Sometimes, it’s a mother’s attempt to give a daughter self-confidence. Sometimes, the family needs money for food and there’s nobody else who can work.

It’s a sad book, made absolutely tragic when we meet one woman’s father and see how difficult his choices were, too.

I love how, in typically Nordic fashion, Nordberg states hard truth bluntly. She gives no quarter or concession. Nothing is sugar-coated. Naturally, some of the hardest are about Afghanistan, and deservedly so. Equally deserved are the hard truths she also tells about Europe and North America. It’s jarring, in a refreshing, wake-you-up kinda way, to be reminded that the comfortable line we draw between ‘them’ and ‘us’ isn’t as well-defined as we might think.

Nordberg blunts that edge a bit with individual stories to help us connect. She wastes no effort on the fiction of journalistic objectivity, choosing instead to immerse herself and us in a totally compelling phenomenon.

Don’t get me wrong: Nordberg journalistic rigour shines through in every question she asks, every fact she checks, every lead she chases down. Somehow, she balances the two – the personal and the professional – with exquisite precision.

I didn’t have high hopes for The Underground Girls of Kabul, based on descriptions. But I loved it. Absolutely worth a read.


REVIEW: CHRISTMAS AT THE VINYL CAFE BY STUART MCLEAN

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This is not going to be a very objective review.

I loved McLean’s CBC radio show The Vinyl Cafe – listened to it every week, read every book. Followed Dave and Morley and Stephanie and Sam for years, and cried when Arthur the dog died.

You’ve all had something like that, right? A book, a TV show, a movie? So you can imagine how sad I was when McLean succumb to cancer last year. And how happy I was when I found out all his Christmas stories were going to be released in a new book.

This is that book, and I don’t have the heart to criticize it. Not yet.

Is it saccharine in places? Sure. Is it predictable? Sometimes. Does it romanticize the world we live in? Absolutely.

It’s also warm and funny and utterly delightful.

We get to spend time with all our favourite Vinyl Cafe folks – my personal favourite is the tight-assed, prissy, good-hearted Mary Turlington, though I couldn’t tell you why. And revisiting classic stories – Dave and the turkey, for example – has become an annual tradition for thousands across Canada.

These stories may not be perfectly structured, or perfectly written. But they’re gentle and loving, and they understand the importance of appreciating small victories and daily blessings. I wouldn’t recommend it as a staple of your literary diet – it’d rot the teeth out of your head – but we can treat ourselves once in a while, right?

RIP Stuart.

In Glass Houses, we find Gamache at professional crossroads

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I’m always happy to spend time with Gamache eat al. Particularly Ruth. I adore Ruth. I want to be her when I’m old. So I’ve been looking forward to this book for quite some time.

From the beginning, Penny has done a remarkable job of creating Three Pines – the sights and smells and tastes. Particularly the tastes. She spends a remarkable amount of time detailing the food her characters eat. Like it’s a little obtrusive. Charming, but obtrusive.

In ‘Glass Houses,’ we find Gamache at a professional crossroads. He’s now the head of the Surete, and he’s gambled his reputation – his entire career – on a dicey plan to take down the most powerful criminals he’s ever encountered. Jean-Guy and Isabelle are, as always, at his side, but there are others who wonder whether Gamache is corrupt or inept or both.

At the same time, a strange presence descends on Three Pines, setting everyone – including four regular, long-time visitors – on edge.

Turns out nobody knows those visitors as well as they thought they did. Turns out those visitors and Gamache’s grand plan are not unconnected.

I was shocked, I tell you. Shocked.

The problem with having a successful 13 book series is that it’s hard to keep things fresh. You inevitably become a little too well known to your readers. A little predictable. And that’s what’s happening here.

There’s no way any faithful Penny reader didn’t predict the outcome, or at least most of it. It was like a freight train speeding through a tunnel right towards you. But I’ll say this for her: there was at least one genuine surprise. Perhaps one and a half (you’ll know the half when you read it). And, after thirteen books, that’s not bad.

Plot aside, I’m beginning to find Penny a bit too self-consciously poetic. Over-sophisticated, with no humour to cut through. Except, of course, for Ruth, the hatchet-mouthed old poet who rescues this entire literary universe from drowning in it’s own tasteful restraint.

Have I mentioned that I love Ruth? More than Armand or Jean-Guy or Clara or Olivier, or anyone else. Ruth is the one bright, fresh note in Three Pines. Among such nice, calm, thoughtful people, she’s like salt to caramel. Entirely necessary. If it weren’t for Ruth, I don’t think I’d have made it this far in the series.

But she is there. And so I can’t wait to visit her again.

Carol Off’s book is highly recommended

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I’m picky about the non-fiction I read. Not much of it tempts me, I enjoy few of the ones that do, and I rave about even fewer than that.

This is worthy of a rave.

All We Leave Behind tells the harrowing, heart-stopping, gut-wrenching tale of one man and one family’s fight to live with integrity in an increasingly chaotic, corrupt world. It begins with Carol Off’s work as a foreign correspondent in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where she interviews a progressive and thoughtful man named Asad Aryubwal.

Aryubwal has lived through some of the most turbulent times in modern Afghanistan. He loves his country and, at first, the American efforts after 9/11 give him hope. But he soon sees a familiar pattern emerge, old mistakes being repeated, and he tries to warn the West by speaking with foreign journalists like Off. Specifically, he acts as the main subject of a documentary Off is making about Afghanistan.

Unfortunately this draws the attention of a very powerful, very dangerous warlord, putting the entire Aryubwal family in danger. When Off finds out, she plunges in to the murky world of the Canadian refugee system and the United Nations High Commission on Refugees.

In the beginning, both the family and Off assume that – given all the evidence and documentation they have to support the Aryubwals’ claim of asylum – the family will have no problem getting to Canada. The reality is very different. It takes a few dozen people working together in three countries, countless roadblocks, miscommunications, and delays, a few close calls, and many, many years before the story finally ends.

As I read this over again, I realize it doesn’t sound terribly exciting. But Off, as a journalist, has a knack for putting things into context, and this context is just fascinating. She also does an excellent job of summarizing the political, social, and religious forces at play for and against the Aryubwals in a way that highlights the personal, human price being paid.

Woven through the whole book is the question of journalistic responsibility: as in, what responsibility does a journalist have to the subjects of her story once it’s finished? And does how does the answer to that question impact her ability to do her job?

There were times when this book made me proud to be Canadian, and times when it made me ashamed, but I was always engaged.

Highly recommended. Very highly.

Book by Daily Show host ‘absorbing’

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Review: Born a Crime by Trevor Noah

In the spirit of full disclosure, a confession: I’ve met Trevor Noah.

Well, met might be a bit strong. I enjoyed a 30-second encounter with him while he signed my copy of his recently-released memoir, Born a Crime.

I’d already finished the book, though, so my opinion was not coloured by his charming demeanour. Or his dimples.

The short version is that I loved it. The book is funny and sad and harrowing and touching. Not a surprise, given that Noah is articulate and savvy, and grew up as a mixed child under apartheid in South Africa. It would be hard to have a boring childhood, under those circumstances, or write a boring memoir about it.

The story itself is absorbing and moving. Noah’s mother features prominently as a strong, stubborn, loving woman who takes no shit from anyone, including her son. As a black woman under apartheid, there are many things she’s told she can’t do, but she proceeds to do them all (while, I suspect, giving the regime a long, loud middle finger).

Noah seems to have inherited his mother’s indomitable spirit. This made him hell on wheels as a child which, like everything else, becomes a fraught racial and political issue. His grandmother can’t discipline him because – as she puts it – his skin changes colour when she spanks him, and it makes her nervous. His cousins’ skin doesn’t do that – it stays black. That, his grandmother understands. Him, she doesn’t.

This is presented as a funny anecdote, which it is. But it’s also a theme that runs through the book. Noah exists between worlds, languages, identities, and people rarely know what to make of him. He manages by finding common ground with all of them, partly through language. Noah speaks English, Xhosa, Zulu, Sotho, Tswana, Tsonga, Afrikaans, and some German. This, he argues, is how he survived – speak with someone in their own language, and you are no longer the other.

If you watch The Daily Show, you have a sense of Noah – the vocabulary he uses, the way he structures his thoughts, his favourite turns of phrase. He’s smart, and funny, and self-aware, and that voice is all over Born a Crime – no ghost-writer here. Outside the structure of late-night tv, though, Noah lets loose with introspection and idiosyncrasies that he generally reigns in. And I’m glad he does.

I devoured this book, and I was actually sad when it ended. It isn’t just for fans of Noah, either – anyone who’s at all interested in South Africa, apartheid, or race relations will love Born a Crime. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

A second chance at life

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REVIEW: THE POST-BIRTHDAY WORLD BY LIONEL SHRIVER

I dated someone several years ago. A musician. It didn’t work out, and there’s this one moment that I still think about sometimes because I’d like to go back and do it over. Do it better. See what was waiting down the road I didn’t take.

Truthfully, I doubt it would change anything much. But I want to know.

We all have those moments, right?

In Lionel Shriver’s The Post-Birthday World, Irina McGovern gets just such a do-over. The first few chapters follow her and her long-time partner Lawrence through a warm, well-worn relationship. At a crucial moment, Irina makes a decision which alters the course of her life. We see the consequences, and how Irina deals with them.

Then, when the chapter ends, we go back.

Shriver returns to that fateful choice, and allows Irina to try again. The next chapter shows us what happens when Irina chooses door number two. The chapter after that returns us to door number one.

And that’s how the rest of the book unfolds – each chapter alternating between the first reality and the second, and Irina’s place in them. Both are happy and sad, in their own ways, and there’s no way to tell which was the better choice – it’s like comparing apples to oranges, if you’ll forgive the laboured simile.

It isn’t spoiling much – but if you’re a purist about these things, skip the next two paragraphs – to say that Irina’s decision revolves around two men. In the beginning, I was certain I knew which one I’d choose (hint: it’s the sexy, raffish one).

I dated someone several years ago. A musician. It didn’t work out, and there’s this one moment that I still think about sometimes because I’d like to go back and do it over. Do it better. See what was waiting down the road I didn’t take.

Truthfully, I doubt it would change anything much. But I want to know.

We all have those moments, right?

In Lionel Shriver’s The Post-Birthday World, Irina McGovern gets just such a do-over. The first few chapters follow her and her long-time partner Lawrence through a warm, well-worn relationship. At a crucial moment, Irina makes a decision which alters the course of her life. We see the consequences, and how Irina deals with them.

Then, when the chapter ends, we go back.

Shriver returns to that fateful choice, and allows Irina to try again. The next chapter shows us what happens when Irina chooses door number two. The chapter after that returns us to door number one.

And that’s how the rest of the book unfolds – each chapter alternating between the first reality and the second, and Irina’s place in them. Both are happy and sad, in their own ways, and there’s no way to tell which was the better choice – it’s like comparing apples to oranges, if you’ll forgive the laboured simile.

It isn’t spoiling much – but if you’re a purist about these things, skip the next two paragraphs – to say that Irina’s decision revolves around two men. In the beginning, I was certain I knew which one I’d choose (hint: it’s the sexy, raffish one).

REVIEW: UNREASONABLE DOUBT BY VICKY DELANY

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So I’ve read this entire series, and I’ve been lukewarm on it since the beginning. Still am, although a little less luke and a little more warm, after this instalment.

I’m a sucker for crime fiction. Unreasonable Doubt brings us back to Trafalgar along with a former resident who spent decades in prison for a horrific crime. New evidence has exonerated him while revealing corruption in the Trafalgar police department. Molly Smith ends up in the middle of a very heated local response, and is forced to question her personal and professional ethics.Meanwhile, the police are also investigating a series of violent attacks on women. 

The most appealing thing about Delany’s books, as always, is the setting. She does a wonderful job of making Trafalgar real, both the landscape and the atmosphere. It’s cozy and slightly pretentious, close-knit and creepy. Perfect for a murder mystery. 

The least appealing thing, again as always, is the lack of nuance. Characters are either good or bad; likeable or hateful. There’s no in-between, and it’s just not realistic. You’re always aware that you’re Reading A Book, which flattens out the narrative and distances the reader.

There’s also a motivation problem, here. Molly makes a very serious decision regarding her perennial nemesis, Dave Evans, and she provides a very specific reason for making it. Then, towards the end of the book, she offers a totally different reason for making the same decision. A small thing, I suppose, but it’s sloppy and it irritated me. 

Still, Unreasonable Doubt is an entertaining read, so long as you’re not looking for anything remarkable.

Tom Wilson memoir is rough and ready prose

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Turns out I do like memoirs. Particularly ones by slightly wild man-boys who were bad news in their 20s. 

‘Beautiful Scars’ is Tom Wilson’s straightforward account of a raw, memorable childhood with a mother he lovingly describes as a she-warrior and a father who flew in the Second World War and came home damaged but determined to provide for his family. 

He grew up in Hamilton, and after reading the book, I understand why they call it Steeltown. Wilson describes a rough post-war town where the kids kicked your ass, the neighbours judged you, and people took care of their own. 

Wilson always felt like he didn’t belong, that there was something about himself that he didn’t know, which set him on a decades-long path of self-destruction and self-indulgence. Sex. Alcohol. Drugs. A music industry that accommodated his worst instincts – that encouraged them, in fact – made matters worse. Wilson did it all, and it nearly killed him. 

Once he tamed his demons – which was, of course, much more difficult than I’m making it sound here – he went looking for the truth that his parents would never tell him. I won’t spoil anything (though there are plenty of clues in the book), but it leads to a Mohawk reserve in Quebec and a re-thinking of an infamous incident in Canadian history. 

There’s lots in the book about Wilson’s addictions and rehab, what it did to his family, how he nearly lost everything, how he got it back. It’s a well-known story, iconic, even, and that’s satisfying. Fans of Wilson’s music will appreciate it as a window into the experiences that shaped him and his work; Canadian music fans will appreciate it as a piece of our collective artistic history.

What makes ‘Beautiful Scars’ special, though, is Wilson’s rough-and-ready poetic prose. It’s a combination of Hamilton street kid and Hemingway – like nothing I’ve ever read before. I just love it.


REVIEW: THE WITCH ELM BY TANA FRENCH

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I’m still digesting this book. It was completely unexpected, which was fantastic because the series (much as I love it) has become predictable. What saves it as a whole is the drastic shifts in perspective.

The Witch Elm shows us the law enforcement through civilian lives – the narrator is Toby, a young, handsome, successful thirty-something with two best friends, a loving family, a job he enjoys, and a girlfriend too good to be true. He takes all this for granted, always has, so when his safe and comfortable world is shattered, so is he. 

Toby has a warm and strong support system but, just as he seems to be on the mend, another devastating discovery is made that blows it all up again. Everything he thought he knew about himself, his family, his past is suddenly suspect. Toby can’t trust himself or anyone else. 

I’m being deliberately vague, here, because the plot is so intricate that there are a hundred ways to spoil it. So I’ll say this: it’s a very satisfying double-barrelled mystery that ends so tragically it might as well be an opera. 

In a good way.

What the book is really about, though, is memory, the way we perceive ourselves and others, and how those things intersect. Sometimes disastrously. 

The Witch Elm felt entirely different from anything else French has written, in part because none of the main characters are police officers or detectives. It’s also much more introspective and philosophical than the others.

My one criticism is that it’s too long. There are a series of twists at the end that feel tacked on for the hell of it, and that annoyed me.

Other than that, I loved it. Highly recommended.

 

I have a love-hate relationship with post-apocalyptic fiction

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I have a love-hate relationship with post-apocalyptic fiction. I love the combination of high-stakes melodrama and practical, earthy problems; I hate how possible it all feels.

So I hesitated before picking up Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice. (He is the host of the CBC Radio afternoon show out of Sudbury.)

I read his first book, skimmed a few summaries of this one, and made two abortive attempts before finally screwing up my courage enough to get past the first five pages (which, incidentally, feature a hunting scene that isn’t graphic but bad enough for an animal lover with a weak stomach).

The book is set in an Anishinaabe community where people fall into two general categories: those who know the old ways, and those who don’t. Evan, his wife Nicole, and their friends belong to the first category, so when the power suddenly goes, they aren’t concerned. In a remote community, the grid is often unreliable, and their cell tower is only two years old. They can live without TV and the internet for a while, or longer.

But hours turn into days, and days turn into weeks, and it becomes clear that something has gone seriously wrong. It’s just that nobody knows what. With no communication devices, they can’t send or receive information. Eventually, two young men make it home from down south and confirm everyone’s worst fears: chaos and anarchy. The lights aren’t coming back on.

For those who know how to hunt and trap and build shelters, it’s not so bad. They can provide for their families, the young, the elderly. And band council has provisions for those who can’t. As the winter wears on, though, and people start dying, tempers flare into desperation. Things get ugly. The community rallies as best it can, and some bonds do hold. Others fall apart.

Rice strikes an impressive balance between extolling the virtues of Indigenous traditions, and facing the sad consequences of cultural genocide. He also trusts his readers to be familiar with Indigenous history – he alludes to residential schools, for instance, acknowledges the horror and the trauma, but doesn’t talk down to us – which is satisfying. And smart. The suggestion, with everything it implies, is more than powerful enough.

The prose is clean and straightforward, which I always love. There are moments of terror and levity and togetherness that create a wonderfully textured story. I did feel like the point of view wasn’t always entirely consistent, and I’m not a big fan of the third person omniscient – I prefer a more distinct, character-focused point of view. But none of that stopped me from finishing the book, and loving it.

Moon of the Crusted Snow was a surprisingly quick, easy read, which is not to say it was light. Waubgeshig Rice has created a very specific, very thorough, very believable end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it scenario in which traditional Indigenous teachings might save the human race. If you’re looking for a true apocalypse, you may be disappointed – this is more a gradual and complete breakdown (and, to me, all the more horrifying for it). But for fans of speculative fiction crossed with small-town drama and Indigenous Canadian literature, I recommend it highly.

 





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