A wishlist grows . . .

The Granta Book of the African Short Story edited by Helon Habila

In the introduction to this extremely welcome collection, Helon Habila mentions that it’s often, far too often, supposed that African Literature begins and ends with Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart.

 -- From The Skinny via Book Riot

Where the Streets Had a Name by Randa Abdel-Fattah

Thirteen-year-old Hayaat is on a mission. She believes a handful of soil from her grandmother's ancestral home in Jerusalem will save her beloved Sitti Zeynab's life. The only problem is the impenetrable wall that divides the West Bank, as well as the check points, the curfews, the permit system . . .  

-- From the official Randa Abdel-Fattah site

I am pretty sure that my husband reads my blog. So, dearest, where words fail, consider this post to be the equivalent of your wife jumping up and down while frantically waving her arms in the air to get your attention: "These! Over here!" I'm shouting. "I want these!"

The Mesozoic Era, the Middle East, and Hogwarts

July 22, 2011 - the pop-up dinosaur book

"Here, Mummy! Mummy, here! The Mesozoic Era!" she calls to me as she throws the book on my bed and begins the climb up.

Molly is fascinated by dinosaurs and frequently asks me to read books with her on the subject. Last month, I bought some miniature figures to add to her collection. I thought that we could compare our figures to images in the book for the purposes of identification. She loves that idea.

In June -- I think it was June -- we read Mary Pope Osborne's first in the Magic Tree House series: Dinosaurs Before Dark.

It's intended for children aged 6 to 9 years but the information it contains is pretty scant.  Frankly, I can't imagine a nine-year-old being satisfied with it. I know my four-year-old wasn't; thankfully, however, she's still of an age where meaning is found in amazing, unexpected places, and the mechanism of time travel was more important to her. It didn't matter where anyone landed, just that someone left now and went to then.

I enjoyed reading it with Molly. We call it our first chapter book. I'm not sure that it is our first but it definitely was a good time. I ended up having to teach her, and therefore teach myself, about the Mesozoic Era and the different kinds of prehistoric animals. 

We have a book called My First Book of Dinosaurs which she loves -- we get to look at what modern-day animals may have looked like about 65 million years or so ago.

At the local library, we've spent a lot of time mostly playing and reporting the girls' reading for the book club. Most recently, Molly devoured 35 books as I begged for the opportunity to redirect her. I even told her that it was quite a funny position for a mother to be in at a library: Telling a child to go play--i.e.,instead of reading--isn't something you imagine that you'd hear yourself saying.

-- I want to read 500 books and win the contest!

-- You do? That's a lot of books.

-- Is there a contest, Mummy?

-- No.

-- Oh. How many have we read?

-- Thirty-five. But, if there were a contest, we would have won it.

-- Yay!

I think, however, that anyone listening would have taken my side: My throat was hurting and we were far enough from her goal of 500 books, anyway, that pausing wouldn't have affected our progress.

Among those books was at least one title of the How Do Dinosaurs . . . series by Jann Yolen and Mark Teague. So, really, a day without dinosaurs hasn't gone by this summer.

Then, on August 1, as most of my summer nights have unfolded, I lay back and read another few chapters of Almost Dead by Assaf Gavron -- and finished it! Set in modern Israel, involving two men, one Jewish and one Palestinian, it is a mixture of satire and fact that really has my head spinning. It's clever, far more so than I think that I am able to appreciate at this point in my life, and it's so much funnier than I'd anticipated. 

I suspect that once I start to write about this book, it will go on for years: It's that important to me. Yes, but that's it; I won't say anything more about this book until I have sat down to write about it more meaningfully. 

Meanwhile, at Hogwarts . . .

Devyn and Keith are now reading Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince (6th book). I believe I stopped after Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (5th book), so I have no idea what's going on in the series at that point.

Because I'm not part of the Harry Potter book club at home, I asked Keith about his impressions of the reading time that he and Devyn spend together. First, he says, she's "absolutely enthralled" and he is amazed that, at her age (8), she can follow a story so well through six books. She knows the characters very well and understands the significance of plot events.

Each night, before reading, Keith asks her key questions about the prior sitting and asks her to make predictions; he says that she always gives intelligent answers.

What I find most touching is his report that she likes to follow his reading on the page. (Her reading, incidentally, has improved by leaps and by bounds over the past few months.)

Both us of were aware at the outset that the subject matter of the books would be, at times, frightening and mature; Keith says she handles it very well.

She knows the characters and greatly empathizes with Harry.

Though she and I have our books that we plan to read together, I know that Devyn really wants to be at Hogwarts right now with her Dad, so I don't press the issue. Our time to read together again will come, most likely, in a few months.

---

Many changes are taking place here, on this blog, and some of them are not quite finished .

I plan to re-establish links between book images and the relevant blog posts as well as to create more pages . . .

So, don't mind the dust.

The Three Little Pigs: In, Down, Over

We have a number of versions of The Three Little Pigs and, with each version that I read to her, poor Molly becomes frustrated beyond belief.

Why? Because the wolf blows the house in and not down or over. 

Little pig, little pig, let me come in. 

'No, no, by the hair on my chiny chin chin.' 

Then I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll blow your house in.*

Surely, she has asked me, there is a version that has the correct word? In fact, she can recall that I've read it to her in the past but I have no such memory. I have explained, while stifling a laugh, that the word is used because it rhymes with "chinny chin chin" but it's to no avail. She anticipates, at each sitting, the first huffing-and-puffing episode with hope and, looking up at the ceiling, expresses her disappointment and frustration when the wolf threatens to blow the house in.

Why is she hung up on a preposition? I've wondered. Well, in her world, as I've come to understand it, perfection is something you should expect and which you should want to expect. I'm not exaggerating. Despite all my efforts to explain that perfection is not attainable, that striving towards it leads to strife, that everyone has to accept degrees of imperfection and accommodation, the child will not believe me. YOU may settle for imperfection, but she will not.

That many things come easily to her only reinforces her drive. As such, we had the following conversation on May 6:

– Why do you like everything to be perfect? 

– Because everything is boring if it isn't perfect.  

– What does being perfect mean?  

          – Getting things perfect.

– How can you make mistakes if everything has to be perfect?    

– I won't. 

– I make mistakes and I'm not perfect. Is that OK? 

          – I'm perfect.

It not only extends to conversations but to interactions in general. She exacts perfection from the world. Honestly, I didn't quite know what to say the other day when, as a friend of hers expected a gaming device to be charged immediately after plugging it in, Molly, in a world-weary kind of way, snapped: "Just let it suck up some electricity first!"

She also has an adorable, if perplexing, habit of telling you to say something:

– Is this a good idea, Mum? Say, 'That's a good idea'.   

– That's a good idea.

In this way, she constructs the world as she likes it. Lately, we've taken to imitating her in a very affectionate way:

– Is this a good idea, Mummy? Say, 'That's a good idea.' 

– That's a good idea, Daddy.

But, as you might expect, she doesn't like this at all as, we've discovered, she has a proprietary attachment to this manner of speech:

– Hey! You can't say that, Daddy! 

– Why not? 

– That's MY expression.

Of course, we find her adorable as everyone finds their children adorable. Devyn, however, has another approach which is completely understandable:

– Devyn, why didn't you repeat what she said to say?   (I asked, out of curiosity, one day.) 

– Oh. I never say what she commands me to say.

And, that, I've concluded, is how the rest of the world is going to react to our little perfectionist; so we don't correct Devyn's behaviour and, surprisingly, Molly doesn't ever press the issue with her.

This disposition of hers may be advantageous in the area of computer games. Unfortunately, she gets upset when a computer game doesn't behave in a way that she would like it to: If she thinks a snowman should be able to be increased to 2x its size but the game only allows 1.5x, then Molly gets emotional. She used to throw tantrums at two and three years old and each session invariably ended with me telling her that, if she was going to play a game, she would have to follow its rules and not get upset; otherwise, she'd have to turn to another activity.

Keith explained it to her this way: "The only way that you will ever get a game to do exactly what you want is to program one yourself." She seemed to understand this but it was little consolation.

Thankfully, she is obsessed with The Magic School Bus cartoon and books and the teacher, Ms. Frizzle, in the cartoon always says, "Get out there and make some mistakes" or some such thing, which emphasizes my own words that sum up the we-learn-by-making-mistakes approach to life. She takes it all in--over and over and over again--but she doesn't agree.

So, when I correct her behaviour, she quickly points out, "This is MY way of doing something." Frankly, this is fine if she's drawing or creating but not if she's doing something dangerous or unacceptable.

Molly will ask me—or her father—to please use the word "down" if we're going to read the story of The Three Little Pigs to her. I don't see anything wrong with doing so and she doesn't care about losing the rhyme scheme.

Perhaps she'll create computer games one day. Last year, she wanted to be a "brain doctor" or a "muffin maker"—it was all so unclear to her. She tells me these days that she will, in fact, be a doctor; but, no matter how capable she becomes of creating things or of fixing people, the wolf will always blow the house in, and not down or over, as long as she's reading somebody else's work. Life's just like that. Of course, she could decide to write her own version of The Three Little Pigs. . .
__


Attributions:
 Illustration by Leonard Leslie Brooke. 1904 adaptation. (source: Wikipedia)
*Jacobs, Joseph (1890). English Fairy Tales. Oxford University. pp. 68–72. (source: Wikipedia

Sic vita est

Time flies. With three children in the house and two courses on the go, my reading has lapsed. This isn't to say that I haven't read; in fact, considering everything, I've probably done pretty well. Mostly, I've picked up titles that I could read in a very short time and postponed longer titles for the not-too-distant future.

In spite of myself, I did read Adrian Mole: The Prostrate Years. Sue Townsend could leave the series here and not feel guilty about it. He's grown; hell, he's old (40ish, like me) and we've seen him mature and/or resign to his lot in life. It is a rather bleak tale without as much of the humour as I've come to expect from the series. At any rate, I think he and I will part ways here. Really, it's over. I'm not going back. And, truthfully, I think it's him, not me.

Graphic novels are a great sanctuary for me -- especially those in the memoir or journalistic vein -- and I surprised myself this week by reading Nylon Road by Parsua Bashi. Why surprised? Because it -- the graphic novelization as much as the subject itself -- is not exactly a new idea: a journey from girlhood to womanhood during Iran's revolution. But it was fresh and original and, of course, inevitably linked in my mind to Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis series from frame to frame.

Three days ago, I read 9/11 Emergency Relief, a graphic novel anthology compiled in aid of the American Red Cross. I'd picked it up used for about five dollars at my favourite comic/graphic novel store last summer because I thought it would be an interesting read. It ended up being a surprising array of talent and an excellent opportunity to sample the graphic wares of dozens of artists/writers. (I've burrowed through quite a few graphic novels over the years and I'm always impressed by the originality of the inking, colouring, and lettering styles of each artist.)

The day before yesterday, it was Rutu Modan's Exit Wounds. I think I understand why it was received with such critical acclaim. The story -- both mystery and romance, set in Tel Aviv -- is very moving and it flows seamlessly. I loved the plot twists. This g-novel won the 2008 Eisner Award.  (I really enjoyed her graphic blogging, Mixed Emotions, on The New York Times website in 2007).  The next stop for me where this author is concerned is Jamilti -- I almost finished it, several times.  It's not that I'm not interested; I just keep putting it aside right next to Asterios Polyp by David Mazzucchelli.

Last night, I sped through Clubbing (Andi Watson/Josh Howard) -- 176 pages -- a graphic novel for the Young Adult audience.  There isn't much to say about it: breezy, brief, and enjoyable.

And I have no idea where I'm headed next.

1-800-Where-Was-I

I try to take advantage of spare moments to read which usually means that I have my chin on my chest and my eyes glued to my Palm Treo when I'm in the car. (Uh, when I'm the passenger).

As such, I have travel books and the most recent is the first in Meg Cabot's 1-800-Where-R-You series: When Lightning Strikes. It's grittier than I would have predicted, even in a YA context, and it reads smoothly so far.

Today, as I became more engrossed in the novel while on the way to St. Jacob's, Devyn interrupted:

"Mummy?"

"Yes?"

"Did you know that rhinoceroses are killed for their horns? Just for their horns?"

"No, I didn't know . . . How do you feel about that?" (OK, I did know but I wanted to see where she would take this conversation).

"It makes me sad."

I tried to return to my book but I didn't get much more reading done, reflecting as I was on Devyn's emerging sensitivity. A little while ago, she announced that she didn't want to "eat dead animals" -- we allow her to be a part-time vegetarian -- and she continues to process information that leads to the development of her own conscience. So, I imagine that this will be a very interesting year as she gets closer to her sixth birthday and further and further away from babyhood.

Opportunities

I get to read while I wait in my doctor's office for appointments. My husband has the children (it's a small waiting room) and I am gloriously free for, at times, an hour to an-hour-and-a-half.

When they apologize for keeping me waiting, I always tell the staff not to worry:

"Are you kidding? This is the only rest I've had all day!"

The other day, I took along my latest issue of Quill & Quire: It's a magazine that, frankly, enables my odd habit of reading "just enough" of a blurb or a review of a book so as to note that I want to read it while seemingly avoiding spoilers that could pop up unexpectedly. Then, I mark a line in the top-right corner of the page to indicate that it's a page I want to remember.

I made note of a few titles that belong to the two subsets of literature comprise my reading list: that of the South Asian diaspora and that of the African diaspora (well, my reading also list includes authors still resident in their country-of-origin):

Vishnu Dreams by Ven Begamudre

I haven't read Ven Begamudre's first novel so I haven't the slightest sense of the author's style.

According to Emily Donaldson, Begamudre's second novel deals with "the conflicts that develop within an Indian family in the wake of their emigration to North American in the late 1960s . . . The story follows their attempts to integrate into a culture still mired in racism and ignorance."

There were also some titles for the young that really caught my eye:

The Bite of the Mango by Mariatu Kamara with Susan McClelland (Young Adult)

This account of young Mariatu Kamara's trauma in Sierra Leone -- which garnered international attention -- was released in September 2008.

Laurie McNeill writes:

"Because the text bears witness to a conflict most young Canadians will know little about, it deserves thoughtful reading, though its necessarily graphic nature makes it best suited to mature readers."

I think I'll have to work up to this and, admittedly, there are so many books awaiting my attention that it could be many months before I get to this one. Heavy.

Child of Dandelions by Shenaaz Nanji.

This novel is set in the era of Uganda's Idi Amin.

Librarian By Day writes:

"Child of Dandelions offers a positive look at a difficult period in the life of a girl, a family, and a country. This is an intriguing novel, one that could be paired with other culture-clash or immigration novels, to offer an example from the recent past." (Italics mine).

Usually, reading Uwem Akpan or Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (my favourite authors) requires a strong, emotional commitment due to the serious and descriptive content that captures individual strife in the midst of national turmoil. I suspect, this novel will require the same kind of relationship. Am I ready?

The Octonauts & The Frown Fish by
Meomi

(Honestly, being so out-of-touch with, well, everything, meant that I needed to Google Meomi to find out who/what it was. It is a self-described studio.)

Wonderous Strange by Lesley Livingston

I want to write more but can't because a toddler pulls me away from my compuer to read to her.

The White Tiger

At 6:00 tonight, I quickly checked my email and discovered that the Man Booker Prize winner had been announced. Aravind Adiga won for The White Tiger which has been on my reading list but which hasn't really moved up at all.

It's part of my South Asian-Caribbean-Nigerian reading path, I just haven't gotten there yet.

Anyway, since I was on my way to the gym at 6:30, I swung by my local book store and picked up a copy whose cover announced that the title had been shortlisted for the prize that is roughly about $100,000 CDN.

When I told the clerk that Aravind Adiga had, in fact, won, I felt like a town crier because the news was so recent!

Good candidate for Best First Sentence

"The night I moved in with Aunt Ethel, she shot a bat in the kitchen."

Josh, narrator

The Ghost's Grave

Peg Kehret
Puffin/Penguin Young Readers Group
ISBN -10: 0142408190
ISBN -13: 9780142408193
Ages 8-12
224 pages

Serendipity and A Reading Milestone!

Last Saturday, while Keith took Devyn to ballet and music classes, I took Molly to the library. While browsing the shelves for titles that might interest Devyn, I found Arthur and the Race to Read (Marc Brown) nestled among the picture books. A chapter book? I hadn't considered that Devyn was ready to begin this phase.

The Arthur Good Sports series (of which The Race is the first title) is recommended for children aged 8 and up but that didn't matter. Why not try? I put the book with the others I intended to borrow.

I ignore the age-appropriateness recommendations attached to children's titles (including picture books) because I think I usually have a good sense of what my children can or cannot appreciate.

I'm also drawing from personal experience. I loved The Best Christmas Pageant Ever (Barbara Robinson). I think it was my first chapter book and I was about six years old when I sat for a reading of it.

Also, as a rule, I do not like to make books off-limits. (Trust me, this is a tough one. I cringe inwardly when Devyn brings home a Powerpuffs book from school because I find them too violent. I tell her why I find them violent, even if "only bad guys are getting hurt", but that she's welcome to read -- or, in her case -- look through them.)

It was simply Devyn's ability to sit still long enough or to delay gratification long enough to hear the whole story that I questioned. But Devyn, newly five years old, is changing so quickly. I was wrong. She loved it. She and Keith had started reading it a few days ago and this evening Devyn announced, before bedtime, that they'd read the last two chapters.

Moo, Baa, La La La!

When Molly was very young, about two months old, I found that reading Moo, Baa, La La La! by Sandra Boynton would calm her down if fussiness was near at hand. Eventually, of course, having the book in my hand was not necessary.

It was so successful a tactic that, after a short while, I only had to begin to recite the poem (because that's what it is, really) and she would immediately smile. She is almost a year-and-a-half (16 months) and the approach still works as well as it did the first time!

Now, she tries to mouth the words as I intentionally slow my speech and enunciate each word. So far, I've only heard "la".

Admittedly, reciting this in a crowded doctor's office when the baby starts screaming is a little embarrassing. But, I've asked myself, after giving birth, can anything really embarrass me anymore?



At any rate, I have enjoyed a rare opportunity of having had my first baby while already raising my first child and this places me in another odd category: I'm the mother of an older child and yet I have spent the better part of a year discovering how a baby relates to books and pictures.

At first, when she grasped a book, her interest was in turning pages. Then, after a short while, I noticed that she would go back through a book and look for a specific page, examine it and then continue through.

Molly now thumbs through books with a purpose: she's looking for something, usually food (she calls it 'na-na' ) or balls (known as 'bah') and will point to it when she sees it. Initially, I couldn't decide if she was asking me for food or just showing me that she knew what an object was.

(Last week or so, she was trying to tell me she was hungry. She was already in bed, so, having unsuccessfully proffered a bottle, I assumed she was extending the meaning of the word 'na-na'. In a fit of absolute frustration, she held up a soft block and pointed to a very unrealistic depiction of a slice of a citrus fruit and yelled, "Na-na". When the lightbulb appeared above my head, I raced downstairs to get her some yogurt and she was happy.)

So, you see, it isn't entirely improbable that she could be asking for food or for a ball when she points to the picture and utters the word. But, usually, she's just showing me a picture.

Also, I've noticed three behaviours: she will point to any circular thing -- usually, an image -- and call it a 'bah' and it happens at home or in public; she will lately try to grab an object from a book (so it seems) which creates a noise similar to nails on chalkboard; and, she likes to use her finger to outline an image in a book.

Finally, a decision!

Again, I decided on a book of some controversy; at least, it was banned in the author's country of origin (Saudi Arabia): Wolves of the Crescent Moon by Yousef Al-Mohaimeed (translated). Though I've read only the first few chapters, it is already emotionally difficult.

When reading books of Saudi origin, I am always thirsty for a sense of the geophysical landscape (having never visited the kingdom before); but, this is generally the case for books. I positively crave ethnographic and geographic detail. As for books of Caribbean origin, I am drawn by a sense of the familiar, too. At the moment, I'm just exploring and absorbing and being filled with wonder.

Of course, I'm reading Wolves on my Treo; otherwise, I'd never have the opportunity to sit down with a book and read.

At the moment, I'm trying to decide what to do with the children and I think I've decided on the library.

Reading: A pill for intellectual development?

An article in the Telegraph.co.uk by Michael Morpurgo today about instilling the love of reading in children is followed by the Telegraph's guide to the 100 books that every child should read (per three age groups).

Mr. Morpurgo says that Britain (though it sounds pretty widespread to me) is in a muddle about literacy. Treating the ability to read as a tool for success rather than focussing on the appreciation of storytelling and the story have created the commodification of reading. He partly blames education:

Ironically, it may be responsible both for the great blossoming of our literature, and at the same time for leaving so many with the impression that literature is not for them, but the preserve of a certain educated elite. As a consequence, much of our society has become separated from its own stories.

When I reflect on my early reading experiences, those that come immediately to mind involve teachers/librarians/authors reading to the class. I guess that I already had a love of story.

At any rate, there are some surprising choices for the Top 100s (because I haven't seen them very often on other lists of the sort) and I'm glad that I have copies of many of the titles. I've not read all of what I own.

There's a story by Jacqueline Wilson -- one of my favourites -- that I haven't read and now intend to do so: The Story of Tracy Beaker.

Some of my childhood favourites, read over and over again, made the lists: Pippi Longstocking, Winnie The Pooh, Tom's Midnight Garden, The Outsiders.

Books I've avoided appear: Watership Down. (I've avoided it because I've heard that it's powerful emotionally and it has taken me years to grow comfortable with The Velveteen Rabbit. I don't want to go through that again.) Charlotte's Web. As a child, the story saddened me.

Book(s) I didn't like appeared, as well: The Story of Babar. Anything Babar, really, I just don't like.

Some books that I've even recently considered reading: I Capture The Castle by Dodie Smith and Coraline by Neil Gaiman (both started years back but remain unfinished).

Some books that I'd like to buy made the lists: The Worst Witch Collection, by Jill Murphy.

A longer version of the article in the Royal Society of Literature Review: http://www.rslit.org/

Here are the lists:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/01/19/bokidsbooks219.xml

Note to self: Er, stop avoiding the books that require intense, emotional engagement. This is a comfort-zone alert!

The Cutting Room: Louise Welsh

In Louise Welsh’s debut novel, The Cutting Room, Rilke, an auctioneer, is an unlikely detective as he combs the streets of the underworld in which the dirty, the dark and the unseen are the norm.

While the narrator’s proclivities keep him hovering both above and below the lines of the law, his ethos is strong. We – both the audience and Rilke – discover his boundaries when he finds evidence of a gruesome crime that propels him through the underground in search of its origins.

We trudge along the streets of Glasgow, into alleys and through velvet curtains to backrooms filled with stacks of pornography. We find that the world of antiques and dealers offers a portal to another, hidden sphere in which objects of sexual fantasy throughout history have secretly collected.

Some backstories develop through Rilke’s conversations, and, for the most part, this is satisfying; however, the main character’s own history is missing. We have the impression – and, indeed, another character implies – that Rilke’s need to solve this mystery is personally motivated but the details are absent. The pace of the novel lags as these backstories develop but this seems insignificant in the overall impact of the work itself.

Secondary characters consistently reflect an awareness of the city’s dual nature and, unsurprisingly, each bears some connection to the world of crime. Imagery and actions of the underground come to the fore in vivid detail. We are chillingly reminded that crime in the world of the criminal often meets swift, brutal justice and that people are reduced to expendable resources.

Most prominently, the dialogue is comfortable: it is that of the redeemer, the gossip and the secular sinner; it illustrates the carnivalesque and the profound, the ugly and the beautiful, the criminal and the lawful, in equal measure. It lulls us into each conversation with an immediate sense of intimacy. To great effect, Welsh uses references to popular culture, poetry and stunning figurative language as she pulls us into the world of pubs, auction houses, hospitals and dimly-lit, side-street stores.

We stare unflinchingly at the unsavoury details conjured through language that is both clear and poetic, but it is a novel of immense compassion. In fact, its spiritual tone is captured in Rilke’s own words: “… there are some bad individuals, but most people do their best to be good and everybody slips up sometimes.”

In our narrator we find a credible male voice and his thoughts, appetites and character strike us with force and precision. Through him, we smell garbage and litter in alleyways and we see blood and corpses under dark, grey skies but we also hear fear in the voices of those compelled to dwell here and sense the tragedy of those who, now immobile, would rather be elsewhere.

In the end, The Cutting Room is not merely a work of crime fiction; it is also a poignant essay concerning decisions and events that push us beyond our own expectations and the power of self-acceptance.

HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
First Canadian Edition
Trade Paper, 294 pp

Published September 10, 2006
www.bookfetish.org

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close: Jonathan Safran Foer

In Jonathan Safran Foer’s second novel, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, we find a very credible and intelligent narrator in nine-year-old Oskar Schell. We discover him—inquisitive and resourceful-- in his family’s home in New York City.

Though we are not privy to the details of the tragedy that he has suffered during September 11, 2001, we begin to see the immediate post-cataclysmic world from Oskar’s perspective. It’s a reality filled with dangerous gaping spaces left by generations, politics, histories and personal mysteries.

We learn of unspeakable realities and the need to talk about them, of trauma and coping mechanisms and the parodoxical. The author captures the discomfort felt by many who desperately needed to be around family and yet who unexpectedly embraced strangers instead. If tragedy visits questions upon us, then the answers force us to separate, at least temporarily, in order to discover how our common pain is accommodated by our individual plight.

In this light, then, we expect a novel of this emotional density to be sparse in levity but Foer manages quite a feat: he injects intense, laugh-out-loud humour right from the start and it seems to promise a smooth story.

Though its highs are high and its lows low, it isn’t, unfortunately, a rolling narrative terrain. The flow is interrupted unpredictably by other narrators who develop backstories. As impressively as the novel pivots on single events from perspective to perspective, it also jags because the narrative shifts are choppy. They hinder pace and render the unfolding of the main story altogether too sluggish.

The backstories illustrate another historical tragedy. By unflinching juxtaposition, the writer presents the horror of two particular events in vivid detail and we are spared no information that would make us uncomfortable. We are reminded that tragedy freezes us in time, creating tableaux that are released only when we have the information that we need to be able to move. Life becomes a matter of standing still, coping, and opportunities a matter of avoidance. The shadows cast by other lives dart around us, voices become invasive notes that threaten to remove hope and breathing is measured equally with tears and trepidation.

Nevertheless, reading fiction should not be labour-intensive. Questions about whether or not they belong in a novel targeted to a mature readership aside, the presence of photographs forces a continual disengagement of the reader from the text. When an author reminds us that we’re reading, he immediately places us at a distance from the imagined world, making the suspension of disbelief a matter of strife.

It is difficult to understand how a literary novel’s graphics could enhance an understanding of the work’s substance. If Mr. Foer’s illustration of the novel creates within us a sense of the alienation felt by someone who did not directly experience loss as a result of the attacks, then he succeeds. The chasm between those experiencing 9/11 and those watching the events unfold on television is unbridgeable. In the novel, we are still watching and painfully aware of this fact.

If the use of photographs, moreover, demonstrates the real-life understanding that even in our common experiences, we are separated by personal knowledge of individual circumstance, then the author, again, succeeds.

If, however, the decision represents Mr. Foer’s concern that we remember that the events of 9/11 were not imagined, it isn’t necessary and the illustrations render the flow choppy. Besides, through the use of traditional devices—the language of tragedy and a seemingly innate grasp of the machinations of a child’s mind—he keeps the horrors of that day to the fore.

In the end, it is a novel complicated by a sense that the ineffable needs to be recorded and this, too, is Jonathan Safran Foer’s success.

Trade Paper
356 pages
Mariner Books (2006)
ISBN: 0-618-71165-1

Published July 15, 2006
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Camilla Gibb's Sweetness In the Belly

Camilla Gibb’s most recent novel, Sweetness In The Belly, tells the story of Lilly. We discover her in London, England, but we quickly learn that her sense of self develops in Africa.

It is on this continent that she absorbs the culture and the religion of those around her in earnest—at first because she must and then because it becomes her own—and the reader falls headlong into her powerful tale.

The story develops on two continents. As it gently rocks back and forth between Ethiopia and London, we revisit eras marked by the consequences of corruption and the different faces of human pain. In the midst of poverty and alienation in Ethiopia, Lilly discovers beauty. In the midst of political tumult and upheaval in general, she discovers personal passion. We eventually learn the circumstances and details of her relationships.

It is a moving tale of romance. It is also a probing and profound exploration of the concept of personal identity. Whether derived from religious instruction, the product of a formal education or a matter of cultural identity (trying to gain acceptance or trying to escape), there are any number of ways through which we may—actively or passively--define ourselves.

The story isn’t dry. In the tiniest details, we glimpse the sound and the animation and the decay of living and, in this way, the author’s prose captures life: the sounds of sewing machines in the market, the light of a new day in a Muezzin’s call to prayer and the isolation of a sleeping city in the sounds of prowling hyenas. She even manages to convincingly trace an instance of human frailty to its ultimate cause in a long deterministic chain of events.

The author does something difficult with seeming ease: from the political, she extracts the personal; from culture-specific events, she extracts the general in human experience and we are forced to accept this one thing: movement in the world of government and organizations is not isolated to some dry, political arena. Rather, it stirs the individual. The effectiveness with which she conveys this point renders her appropriation of Lilly’s voice—a character with which the author seems to share little in common—beyond question.

Finally, she accomplishes all of this with an enviable sense of pace, language and the breathtaking realization that life can change in a single instant.

Published June 1, 2006
www.bookfetish.org