#20 Crow Lake by Mary Lawson

# 20 Crow Lake by Mary Lawson

My dear reader,

Because it is the month of Canada’s 150^th birthday, I give to you another book by a Canadian author who is a distant relative of L. M. Montgomery, author of Anne of Green Gables. 

I was given Crow Lake by an English teacher friend some years ago and sadly, never read it. I’m not sure why. Perhaps at the time I wasn’t in the right frame of mind, maybe I was too busy or just not keen on the subject matter.  Lord only knows why I didn’t read it and quite frankly, it doesn’t matter.  What matters is that this book somehow missed my give-away box and I can now highly recommend it to you!

This book takes place in the harsh environment of the Canadian Shield and follows the Morrison family through a devastating loss.  We meet the family through the voice of Kate, the third of four children born and raised in a small community 400 miles north of Toronto, truly in the middle of nowhere.  Raised by loving parents, the children’s paths are forever altered when the parents are killed and the eldest son decides to raise his siblings himself.  When told through the innocent eyes of a child, the story is touching and tender but as Kate matures and her world view is altered, her notions of family, life and love become skewed and she abandons her siblings and the place she once called home.  When she returns home for a family celebration with her boyfriend, her memories and lost years begin to haunt her and she is forced to deal with the estrangement that has grown between her and her siblings, especially her brother Matt whom she idolized as a child and whose relationship has withered since she left home for the big city many years before.

I enjoyed this book not only for the view it gave into a different time but also the view of a place in our country that is so harsh and unforgiving that the challenges people living in that environment would have to deal with seem completely foreign in our modern times.  The author’s use of language is descriptive yet compelling and she supplies the characters’ with lives and emotions that are entirely believable. 

If you are searching for a distinctly Canadian novel, I would highly recommend Mary Lawson’s Crow Lake.  Until next time…have you read a Canadian book today?

Julie

#19 Come Barbarians by Todd Babiak

#19 Come Barbarians by Todd Babiak  

For your information, dear reader, I chose Come Barbarians largely because of the author.  Todd Babiak is a local boy, local in that he worked for the Edmonton Journal for 10 years and currently calls Edmonton home.  He has written other novels, two of which I’ve read and thoroughly enjoyed; Toby: A Man and The Garneau Block with its obvious reference to the community in central Edmonton.  I hadn’t read a review of Come Barbarians and hadn’t a clue what it was about but thought I’d enjoy it simply because I have enjoyed books by this author in the past. We tend to do that as readers, don’t we? We choose books by a particular author only because we’ve enjoyed their literary offerings and make assumptions about their future output then cross our fingers hoping that we’ll enjoy the novel and the money we’ve spent will have not been wasted.  Fortunately for me, this book was a winner and I’m so glad I had it on radar.

As I began reading the first few chapters, I became somewhat shocked by the unfolding of the plot. Not that the premise of the book is all that shocking: Christopher Kruse moves to France to become a better man and a better husband as well as to escape his past that has caused his marriage to break down and his wife to feel alienated.  After a horrific accident followed by the disappearance of his wife, he is drawn into a political web that forces him to draw on the skills from his past (those of the protective services kind) in order to stay a step ahead of the French police and the Corsican mob. No heart palpitations in the outline, dear reader? Whew! My shock stemmed from the fact that I simply hadn’t been expecting a gangster book. It is a fast-paced novel featuring a life that I’ve only seen in mob movies.   Filled with its share of conspiracy theories and the darkest impulses of man, it describes human violence rather graphically which is what I hadn’t been expecting. Despite my initial shock, I continued reading and found myself eager to discover the outcome of Christopher’s game of le chat et souris (cat and mouse).

Had this been a movie (and it really should be), I likely would have turned it off or at least averted my gaze rather than watch the brutal acts against man.  Knowing Hollywood producers today, there would have been too much gore for my delicate eyes. But despite writing about truly awful things, the author manages to temper this inhumanity with the softness of a father’s poignant recollections and uses these memories as a means of rooting his character to humanity, instead of allowing him to succumb to his savage instincts. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys thrillers. Until next time… have you read a Canadian book today?

Julie

#18 The Underpainter by Jane Urquhart

# 18 The Underpainter by Jane Urquhart

I’ve learned, dear reader, during the time I’ve been reading and writing for this blog, that I generally gravitate towards books based on the cover art.  Simply put, if the cover has a pretty picture, I’ll have a look. Not long ago I was in a second hand bookstore and my eye was drawn to the painting on the cover of this novel; a still life of tulips painted in a way that reminded me of the old masters, layered with detail, warm light and muted colors and I wondered how this painting hinted at the story within.

The Underpainter explores the lengths people go to get what they want; travelling alongside self-denial as a means to an end ultimately leads the main character to discover his life has been built on failures. It sounds heavy, I know, but Ms. Urquhart writes with such beauty and grace that her story becomes light and enthralling. 

The story is about Austin Fraser, an American painter whose father strikes it rich in Canadian mining and drags his son north for the summer of 1920. After much coaxing on his father’s part, young Austin reluctantly becomes involved in the town of Davenport where he becomes friends with George who runs the China Hall and whose passion is painting on china. Austin doesn’t see George’s passion as ‘real’ art and arrogantly tries to enlighten his friend by sharing the philosophies of his own mentors whose viewpoints vastly contradict each other.  Despite the tenuous start, Austin travels to Davenport to spend a few days with George almost every summer afterwards before travelling further north to Silver Islet Landing on Lake Superior to paint Sara, his muse and his lover but never someone he shares himself with, returning to New York in the fall to complete his unfinished work while eliminating all thought of Sara and their time together. 

When an elderly Austin receives news of Sara’s death and that he has inherited her cabin, he embarks on a journey through his memories; his childhood after his mother died, his father’s rise to wealth, the disparate views of his mentors and how their influence caused him to lead a life of emptiness, compartmentalizing his relationships and living without sentimentality; George’s war experience and that of Augusta, a nurse from the same area who took care of him while in hospital at the front. Austin comes to realize his weakness is never having opened himself up to life or the people who inhabit lives that surround him and this weakness is reflected in his art and his relationships. His character sums it up nicely when studying art in New York as a young man - Austin describes himself as a tourist in his life; watching and observing as opposed to participating in life and having experiences. As he matures, his self-absorption blinds him from truly seeing his art, his subject, George and even himself for what they really are. What he thought was a life of passion was really carelessness towards himself and others.

The imagery in this novel is powerful and vivid and the author’s use of language to capture a landscape, a sense of place or feeling is intricate and skillful. And a novel about a painter wouldn’t be complete without wonderful descriptions on painting techniques (Austin’s rendering of scenes and landscapes - the underpainting - covered by the shadowed veiling of the overpainting or what the painting is about could be a metaphor for his life).

While this was a sad and haunting book it showcases not only our northern landscapes but is a fine example of an exemplary Canadian author. Until next time…have you read a Canadian book lately?

Julie

#17 The Rosie Effect by Graeme Simsion

#17 The Rosie Effect by Graeme Simsion

The Rosie Effect is the follow-up novel to the wildly successful The Rosie Project in which we meet the main character, Don Tillman searching for the perfect woman. Don quickly discovers that he has to adjust his way of thinking if he’s going to find true love when he meets Rosie and begins helping her with a project of her own. If you haven’t read the first book, dear reader, I do recommend giving it a go first as Don is such an interesting character and his behaviors in TRE only really make sense if you have a sense of him from The Rosie Project. 

TRE opens with the happy couple living in New York.  Don works as a visiting professor at Columbia while Rosie works on her PhD thesis. After marrying Rosie, Don is forced to adjust again, modifying his many routines to accommodate his new wife, their life in America and their pending parenthood. Despite Don’s academic brilliance, his worldly innocence and social ineptitude get him into trouble again. What follows are hilarious continuations of Don’s odd behaviors which inevitably lead to confusion and misunderstandings as well as the possible loss of his life with Rosie. 

This is an entertaining read and would be great to add to your summer reading list. Until next time…have you read a book today?

Julie

#16 BIG Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert

#16 BIG Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert

From the author of Eat, Pray, Love comes yet another New York Times Best-seller. While EPL was a novel that took the world by storm when it morphed into a movie starring Julia Roberts, BIG Magic is a book of another sort; yet equally as powerful in affecting your life. While reading, there were many moments where I had to stop and re-read portions. I needed to take notes on it; to savor an idea, let it sink in and percolate so I could make meaning of it for myself. 

BIG Magic is a guide to help us live more creative lives. According to the author, we all have the capacity for creativity partly because there are limitless forms creativity can take: baking, woodworking, music, writing, sewing, gardening, learning a new sport, decorating; anything that speaks to you and brings you joy.  The only limits are those we put on ourselves and our creativity. And let’s be clear about what it means to live a creative life: Ms. Gilbert is not talking about performing on Broadway or winning an Oscar. Which is good, because I get stage fright!

Through her own revelations and personal stories, Ms. Gilbert leads us on a journey towards our own creativity, passing through six areas of thought: courage, enchantment, permission, persistence, trust and divinity.  What she means is that we need to live our lives driven more by curiosity than fear. As I embarked on this journey with Liz, I was forced to think about some of my most basic fears; of being laughed at because I may actually have no creativity or talent to speak of. I’m often afraid that people will see me or my writing as ridiculous because it is something new that I’ve put into the world and it’s not something they associate with me or expect that I might even be any good at and secretly, I’m afraid that they might be right.  

I must confess, dear reader, that I’ve held these fearful ideas all of my life and that’s a sad thought. But I must also say that I haven’t let them control me either, at least not entirely. And that’s where courage comes in. We need courage to actually do the creative thing that speaks to us because life has a tendency to get in our way if we let it. And Lord knows my courage over the years has come and gone, sometimes daily it seems. 

Once we choose to be live more creatively, we need to allow inspiration to captivate us. Many years ago I had the thought that ideas are floating around us all the time and that all we have to do is reach out and grab one. If we don’t, the ideas keep floating around us until they find someone who is willing to catch it.  That’s inspiration and what Liz calls BIG Magic. She recounts moments, when she’s working on a project, how she’ll write as though possessed.  These are the moments inspiration has found her and also the moments when she’s been open to receiving it. 

I remember having similar experiences during the course of my own writing. Before I ever thought I could write a book, my character Kate just showed up one day and introduced herself to me by revealing snippets of her life.  Once I began paying closer attention, more ideas came; some details were presented on their own like a gift, allowing me to open it slowly, turning it over in every direction and really see it for what it was. Other ideas were almost stumbling over each other to make their presence known.  It was all I could do to keep up with them; scribbling them down so quickly some became difficult to decipher, so messy was my handwriting; margins over-flowing, arrows pointing in every direction barely connecting one idea to another.

I recall thinking that it was like being possessed but I didn’t dare stop. I didn’t stop to ask what was happening nor did I question what I needed to do. I just took notes from Kate as she dictated them to me completely unaware that what I was scribbling would eventually become a book.  After I had a basic outline and started writing I still didn’t question what I was going to do if or when I finished it, whatever it was. I simply wrote.  If I was stuck on a section, I’d leave it alone and move on to something else like vacuuming or gardening. You’d be surprised at how diverting your attention can refocus your thinking! 

Often I’d be writing and lose track of time.  When I first began my book I was teaching elementary music at the time, working most days from 10:30 to 2 at a school three blocks from my house.  I’d get ready for work in the morning, take my kids to school (oh how they loved having their Mom teach them Music) then come home and write for two hours while drinking copious amounts of coffee. There were many days where I was rolling into the parking lot as the recess bell was going, signalling the kids to return to class.  More days than I could count, they would arrive at my classroom while I was sneaking in through the side door.  Knowing how submerged I could become in the writing process, I got very good at making sure all my materials were ready the day before so that I could stroll in, take off my coat and begin class. 

Sometimes the missing piece presented itself to me during the day in which case I’d find time to scribble down the basic thought so that I could flesh it out later. Another technique that worked for me was to let the problem all but consume my thinking in the hours before bed. More often than not, the answer I was searching for came to me in my dreams and with any luck I’d wake in the middle of the night and quickly write it down on a pad I kept by my bed for that very purpose. Looking back, I did whatever it took to enable my creativity to be realized: I organized my mornings, skipped meals and lost sleep all in the pursuit of my work never knowing if it would be anything more than scribbles in a notebook and not caring if it ever saw the light of day.   This was my very own BIG Magic although I didn’t know what to call it at the time.

Liz (I feel like she and I are friends and she'd be fine with me calling her by her first name) goes on to say that once you are inspired, you need to begin creating the thing that will bring you joy. But here’s where we often get stuck. We ask for permission. What for? And who are we asking permission from?  Personally, I think it’s because I was brought up this way. Maybe it’s because I’m Canadian and I’m worried about being rude and that if I don’t ask for permission, I’ll get into trouble. Liz reminds me that I don’t have to ask anyone for permission. To say it loud and say it proud “I am a ______”. For me, my blank is “a writer”. For almost two years after my novel was published I had trouble admitting this. I was so worried about what people would say when they found out I wrote a book or heaven forbid they read it and had an opinion about it, positive or negative.  Repeat after me, replacing your creative action for mine: “I do not need anyone’s blessing to (write) nor do I need them to understand why I (write) or even understand the content.”  And remember, once it’s in other people’s hands, it’s out of your control. If they like it, great! If not, that’s fine too. But I’m going to do what Liz suggests: If they insult me or my work, I plan on smiling sweetly and tell them to go make their own f**king art!

Now that I realize I don’t need permission to be creative, I need to be persistent in my practice. This will improve the quality of my craft and keeps inspiration flowing.  Perfection is not the goal. If we wait until it’s perfect we’d either never start or never be finished which is a very defeating way to live. The big take-away here is be curious. Follow where your curiosity leads, track every clue and you may arrive at your passion and who knows where that will lead? My novel is proof of that!

And finally, trust the inspiration. I look back and think: How ballsy was it for me to not only think that I could write a novel but to actually write it? It took even bigger balls to get it published! Ok, so it’s not on the best-seller list…yet! (It should be, because it’s a really good story. As good or better as some of the books I’ve read. Check out “Erosion: A Novel by Julie M. Sorry for the shameless plug!) But being an international best-selling author is not the point.  The point is to trust my creativity as it comes and to be authentic with my voice, in whatever form that should take.  Maybe this year its writing but perhaps in the future, I might take up painting or gourmet cooking or even return to my first passion, music. I’ve always imagined myself singing in a coffee shop or little wine bar!  The point is, it doesn’t matter what it is. I just need to put my heart into it then share whatever it is that I’ve made without apologies, regardless of whether people say positive or negative things about it.  Just because it’s FUN! And who doesn’t need more fun in their lives?

I’m sure by now dear reader; you’ve deduced that for me, this was a powerful book.  It gave credence to some ideas that I’d had years ago and reminded me to listen less to the noises around me and listen more to the inner musings of my creative nature.  It also reminded me that I didn’t write my novel with the intent of becoming a world famous novelist. I wrote because of the sheer desire to write and in doing so, brought forth a brand new passion and gave to the world something entirely new and unique. 

Writing is my hidden treasure. Do you have the courage to find yours? Until next time, dear reader…have you read a book today?

Julie

#15 Yes Please by Amy Poehler

#15 Yes Please by Amy Poehler

I love SNL! Who doesn’t? But I must confess…I haven’t watched it regularly in years so I’ve only seen Amy in the odd sketch and in her movies. Still, I knew this would be an enjoyable book and a nice change from what I usually read. While I expected a memoir that included her childhood and the influence of her parents as well as her early attempts at comedy and how she landed on SNL, I wasn’t expecting to be immersed in rules for life according to Amy. 

Through a series of essays, haikus and quotes that could become mantras for living, the book is filled with advice that is often gutsy and raw yet always sensible and hilarious as only Amy could be. Her voice is authentic and her stories funny.  Her thoughts seem to spill onto the page as they form in her mind; chaotic at times when they form one long run-on sentence that exudes frenetic urgency or at other times, clear and concise anecdotes filled with lucid insights on what she’s learned on her journey toward a life as a stand-up comedian. 

Yes Please would be a delightful book to read on the beach this summer. Until next time...have you read a book today? 

Julie