The Passionate Reader

There is probably no one reading this who does not recognize the author’s name and image. But the software engineer philanthropist continues to amaze me with his common touch, brilliance, and generosity as adequately demonstrated in this very readable, and optimistic book of advice. Global in scope and conveying tons of data, his clear thinking about global issues including climate change, public health, poverty remediation and politics is conveyed in clear prose accompanied by charts and graphs, with conviction, a profound humanism and humility. Skeptics may dismiss his arguments as hopelessly optimistic, but there can be no doubt about his logical clear thinking and sincerity. And the alternatives to acting on at least some or most of his recommendations are likely to be disastrous.

The extensive use of the concept of the Green Premium to clarify the costs of different actions to mitigate global warming makes comparisons easier and the alternatives easier to understand. There are revelations here that run counter to conventional wisdom including the fact that planting trees is snowy climates may actually worsen global warming, somewhat neutralizing the message in Michael Powers’ novel, The Overstory. And the concern that setting goals for climate change mitigation for 2030 may be harmful in the longer term is similarly counterintuitive. This is a more scholarly, more universal compliment to the message delivered from a strictly Canadian perspective in Seth Klein’s A Good War. And I trend to trust anyone who quotes the late great Hans Rosling’s Factfulness.

Unlike most of his fellow billionaires who contribute nothing meaningful to the betterment of others, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is dedicated to improving the lot of everyone on earth, regardless of race, nationality, creed or background. While Jeff Bezos strives to ruthlessly acquire more wealth, while ignoring the consequences of global warming, Peter Theil deals with it by planning to move to a huge temperate New Zealand estate, and Elon Musk hopes to escape it to Mars, Bill Gates visits subsistence African farmers to figure out how to improve their lot in life. The contrasts could not be starker. Mark Zuckerberg at least is committed to giving, even the charity of he and his wife is not as well known as that of the Gates’.

After reading this documentary, I wanted to nominate Gates as Secretary of Energy. But his talents and perspectives are too extensive and valuable to be confined to any one nation. He should be in the United Nations with real powers to deal with both global warming and poverty.

I am humbled by the realization that I knew nothing of the work of this late poet, memorialist, novelist, and Black activist’s until recently. A few weeks ago I watched a taped interview with her and immediately knew I had to read this, her most famous work which is variously described as an autobiography or as autobiographical fiction. From the interview where she discussed her rape at age nine, and her experiences in segregated 1930s and 40s small town Arkansas, it is clear that this is mostly autobiography, though perhaps a bit embellished.

Her divorced California parents sent her at age three and her brother aged four to be raised by their grandmother in Jim Crow Arkansas in the depression. Later she visited with her mother in St. Lois and even later with both parents in California. Her writing is fittingly poetic and her intelligence shows through in spite of her underprivileged life, her lack of formal education and her many hardships. The lives of blacks in the 1930s and 40s Deep South is vividly described. The entrenched racism is realistically described but she refuses to succumb to bitterness and hate. There is abundant humour, particularly as she describes the hilarious antics and hypocrisy of the black charismatic “holy roller” churchgoers. It is not clear how much of her religious education she abandoned in later life, but one great quote gives a hint. “I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest existence, is attributed to God’s will, but as human beings become more affluent, as their living standard and style becomes to ascend the material scale, God descends the scale of responsibility at a commensurate speed.”

Her lack of even rudimentary sex education led to great confusion and consternation and an unwanted pregnancy in her late teens. But she learns to love and treasure her newborn son as the book ends.

This is a wonderful biography of a fascinating, beautiful perceptive woman. Highly recommended.

As soon as I arrived home with this novel from my granddaughter’s front yard lending library, my wife predicted that I would not like it, but I was not familiar with the author’s style and took a chance on it.

Boy meets girl or man meets woman, both seeking nirvana. Various obstacles prevent that happening until they are all resolved and then they live happily ever after. Such stories fill the shelves of the romance sections in bookstores. What makes this tale work, by the prolific modern author is not the trite formula, but the obstacles to that happy ending.

Set in small town North Carolina, the two would-be lovers are a wealthy war-damaged orthopaedic surgeon with PTSD and a deputy town sheriff with secrets of her own. The impediments include the man’s quest to take up a new career as a psychiatrist and a need to solve the mystery of his ninety year old reclusive grandfather’s strange out-of-state trip and his death there, as well as his former relationship to the surly mysterious teenage girl who has shown up in town.

The medical mystery of what ails the secretive lone teenager is well described apart from the assertion that her pupils dilate in response to light. The details of the lives of bees and beekeeping are very vividly described and reminded me of my childhood experiences living next door to my beekeeper uncle.

The pathos of the deeply emotional, tentative, timid interactions of the would-be lovers is unrealistic and overdone, reminiscent of old Victorian romances, but there are no graphic descriptions of intimacies.

The happy-ever after ending, although predicable, is arrived at late, only after complex unpredictable plot twists.

This is best read as a mystery rather than a romance, and taken as such is a quite enjoyable read. I suspect it will be enjoyed more by women readers than by men. Small doses of this genre are quite enough for me.

The U.S. Attorney General for the southern district of New York from 2009 until he was fired by Donald Trump in 2017 discusses the workings of the U.S. criminal Justice system from a uniquely insider’s perspective. He details many cases of wrongdoing from insider trading and political corruption to gangland murders and child kidnapping. The writing is easy to understand even if the issues and processes are not at times.

The author is an unusually reflective and principled man who agonizes over the decisions that confront prosecutors on a daily basis; he questions his own decisions frequently and capably conveys the vagaries of a flawed system. He discusses the ethics of plea bargaining with co-conspirators and the futility and dangers of torture as a technique to extract information, the lottery of jury and judge assignments, and the wide discretion allowed for both prosecutors and judges. The egotistical antics of the would-be famous judges who seek fame rather than the truth, a la Judge Judy, is illustrated in the description of the trial of Paul Manafort. Prosecutors are commonly caricatured as ruthless law-and-order advocates, not the very human conflicted moral philosophers wresting with the gut-wrenching decisions about what to recommend as a sentence for a child kidnapper when there are no right answers and all involved will be permanently impacted in some way. But, as depicted here, that is an unfair characterization and a Hollywood generalization. Before reading this I would never have used the words prosecuting attorney and moral philosophy in the same sentence except to disparage the former for the lack of the latter.

Of the limitations of the criminal Justice system, he notes: “The law is merely an instrument, and without the involvement of human hands, it is as lifeless and uninspiring as a violin kept in its case.”

A deep abiding faith in the Justice system is probably necessary to function as a prosecuting attorney and he certainly displays that; whether or not it is realistic is a different matter. By the author’s account the prosecuting attorneys are a uniformly selfless, altruistic lot, dedicated to the public good, which hardly seems likely. His claim that none of them can ever be intimidated even when their families receive death threats, is an unlikely assertion as they are flawed human beings like the rest of us.

I admire anyone in a complex professional field who can explain those complexities in language the general public can easily understand, and this book is a great example of that talent. A good read.

I found this thin reproduction of their original recordings on my bookshelf and have no idea how it got there. It is a light three or four hour read with loads of their rather silly slapstick comedy quips, much of it mocking their stereotypical Jewishness. Nothing profound, and not as entertaining as the original recordings, with their distinctive voices.

This modern novel by an Irish writer and actress about three generations of English and Irish stars and would-be stars of the stage and screen includes a few real stars and productions. But it’s main strength is the very lyrical description of the lives of people in the peripatetic insecure world of theatre artists all over the world. Set between the 1930s and the1980s, with some reminiscing on the part of the narrator/author from very recently, the yearning for fame, the flexible sexual mores, the superficial nurturing of public images and endorsements, the prevalent, rampant addictions, the recurring episodes of poverty, and the disruption of family and any sense of permanence in the world are described in realistic melodious sentences. The extreme emotional lability, self-doubts, and professional jealousies typical of performing artists are reflected in the flowing prose. The narrator herself illustrates the need for a vivid imagination to work in this field. She imagines long scripts for plays and creates many different images of her unknown father described in magnificent detail.

The life of the Dublin Irish in this era with most conversations conducted in pubs and a population of mostly eccentrics may be stereotyping but makes what little plot there is interesting for the non-Irish reader. The decline of the very eccentric fictional central character who is a vain star of the stage into madness creates a love-hate relationship with the narrator, her bastard daughter. The accommodating local priest, Father Des Folan is colourful. ”He was of course, also a priest, so he was the only shrink in town with absolution on the menu and the clients were queuing out the door.”.

Opposing perspectives of the Bloody Sunday and The Troubles divide the few characters, but are not central to the plot. This is another novel where the plot is overshadowed by the detailed character development. The author addresses a lot of questions directly to the reader or to her fictitious husband as she describes those tumultuous times in Irish history and the ambiguity of many in Dublin as they do or do not take sides.

A good read that will be greatly appreciated by anyone who has ever worked in the field of performing arts. I look forward to the discussion of it in our book club.

A peripatetic, global explorer’s autobiographical musings, this gem is filled with his rambling thoughts about the meaning of the life he has lived and the sometimes imagined history of the remote outposts he visits and studies. I am in awe of his encyclopedic knowledge ranging from anthropology, history, archaeology, geology, folklore, classical literature, philosophy, botany and even ornithology. He combines this with rare wisdom seldom found in the erudite world of such highly educated prolific writers. His long digressions are delivered from remote locations in poetic flowing prose loaded with metaphors and allegories.

In a long chapter describing his stay In the high Arctic at Skeaeling Island with archaeologists, he muses about the dreaming and the lives of the nomadic Thule and Dorset peoples who subsisted in that harsh environment many centuries earlier. His introspection and respect for those people lead to what seem like almost schizophrenic connections between listening to classical music and making connections with a long-lost culture.

Perhaps the best chapter relates his embedded experiences in Australia where he joins aboriginals in the northwest whose way of life is totally disrupted by extractive industries and the prevalent search for a positive bottom line. But it is also hard to skip over his description of trips as a National Science Foundation researcher to Antarctica, with his awesome descriptions of its unique beauty.

With sensitivity to and reverent admiration for all of nature, his philosophical disquisitions about the history and possible future of Homo sapiens as he searches with a Richard Leakey party for fossil remnants in the Kenyan Rift Valley are also inspiring.

The character of the author deserves some comment. Although never mentioned, he must have some unique ability to connect with virtually anyone else on the planet, to get invited to present at academic conferences and to join researchers in their quest for early fossil hominids in Kenya and meteorites in the ice of Antarctica. Based in Oregon, it is hard to believe, with his description of multiple extended trips to remote areas around the globe, that he actually spends much time with his family there. But whether flying a kite at the South Pole or risking malaria in Kenya, he seems to relish risky undertakings in a admirable quest to understand the role of Homo sapiens in the universe.

A couple of many memorable quotes. “The world outside the self is indifferent to the fate of the self.” “Reactionary resentment around issues of race and culture has no future but warfare.”

This is a remarkable literary masterpiece with great observations, keen insights, profound wisdom – a pleasure to read.

I recently reread this, the best of several books by the late Jewish agnostic Yale surgeon and bioethicist whom I met a few times there. He describes…

How We Die. Sherwin Nuland. 1993. 273 pages.

One of dozens of books about the history and basic nature of war, this newest one by the Toronto-based emeritus professor of history garnered a rave review in The Globe And Mail. In ten dry chapters that flit erratically over several millennia and around the globe, dozens of wars and hundreds of battles, most of which I had never heard of, are analyzed from different perspectives.

Steven Pinker’s contention in The Better Angels of our Nature that we have never had it so good is challenged, the evolution of the nature of war, and the changing definition is discussed, with the blurring of the distinction between combatants and civilians, and the remarkable contributions of modern technology. I was neither impressed nor will I long remember the data enumerating hundreds of casualty numbers at different times, and endless descriptions of battles I never heard or cared about. And I hardly needed to be reminded about the obvious critical importance of mobilizing the public support and of maintaining the supplies of food and resources for the combatants.

The chapter on the role of civilians, including the blurring of distinctions between civilians and combatants in a total war where most civilian workers are contributors to the effort, and the morality of targeting civilians is informative, particularly in detailing the critical fast-changing role of women.

In discussing the ephemeral efforts to develop and enforce international rules for war “Like ants with their nests, we laboriously build up a more or less agreed structure, only to see it kicked apart by the heavy foot of war.” This is the only quote I could find that is in an even vaguely imaginative writing style.

This may be the definitive history of war for military leaders and academic historians to study for years to come, but for ordinary civilians, the eight pages Conclusion is the only part I can recommend.

The Vancouver-based professional social agitator and author uses the analogy of what rapidly changed in our political, cultural and industrial landscape during WWII to argue for what needs to change as we face the climate crisis. And he goes about it in a very persuasive, knowledgeable, and scholarly way. By way of background he is a 1960s U.S. draft-dodger, an adjunct professor at Simon Fraser University, a leading member of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and the brother of the equally well-known agitator- author Naomi Klein. (Having been one, I can assure readers that the title of adjunct professor is almost meaningless with no salary and minimal teaching obligations in exchange for the title.)

The Introduction reads like the enthusiastic sermon of an evangelical preacher building up to a climatic altar call. But it is a call we all need to take seriously, and he leaves no room for counterarguments as he methodically builds the case for massive changes in every aspect of our lives to combat what he calls the climate crisis or emergency, not the less alarming term “climate change.”

Appeasing the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers powerful lobbyists and untrustworthy liars is likened to Anthony Eden’s appeasement of Hitler in1939 with the claim of achieving “peace in our time.” Ads for cars running on fossil fuels are likened to past ads for tobacco products and he reasonably asks why they are not curtailed or even banned in favour of ads for electric vehicles. The results of many public opinion polls, some commissioned by the author, show that the public is far more willing to adopt massive changes to combat this crisis than are our current politicians to institute them. We may be close to a Malcom Gladwell tipping point when the public will demand the changes needed. Objections to the major upheavals necessary based on job security, inequality and social justice issues are answered persuasively.

The establishment of many Crown Corporations, the requisitioning of assets and the social cohesion that developed rapidly to gear up to the challenges of WWII are used as examples of what is needed and likely to happen if we can unite to face this challenge. Besides guaranteeing good jobs for oil patch workers as honouring the rights of aboriginals, his many recommendations would certainly guarantee full employment for all lawyers.

The basic message: “if something that needs to happen isn’t happening through the market, at the scale and speed the emergency requires- then through our governments- we can and should damn we’ll do it ourselves.”

I was surprised that nuclear power as a source of clean energy is barely mentioned, that the major threat posed by melting of Arctic tundra and glacial ice is totally neglected and that the problem of farm ruminants farting huge quantities of methane into the atmosphere is glossed over. (I read somewhere that this latter problem can be almost totally eliminated by incorporating a very small amount of some seaweed component into their diets!)

An epilogue goes some way into demonstrating how the Covid pandemic has massively and quickly shifted attitudes, norms and practices, uniting us in a vital fight in ways analogous to what we also need to deal with the climate crisis.

Minor quibbles. The human spellchecker failed to correct the cyber spellchecker in talking about “Second Would War.” On the same page, the U.S. is said to have variously entered the war in December 1940 and in December, 1941.

A sober message that needs to be taken seriously. Not a fun read but an important one for politicians, economists, social scientists, and academics. And anyone concerned about the future of their grandchildren.

Thanks to a reviewer in The Globe and Mail.

The well-known prolific Scottish author of The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series, in discussion with a newsman bemoaned the demise of the novel serialized in a newspaper, then accepted the challenge to resurrect it. The result is this story chopped into 110 short chapters. Readers might anticipate contradictions and inconsistencies since he claimed that he made up the details not far in advance, but this flows beautifully. I have yet to read any of the 14 newer books in this series and I am not sure if any of them were serialized in newsprint. Everyone except me seemed to be well acquainted with this author. This one was selected for an upcoming book club discussion.

The story, set in Edinburgh in modern times, features a diverse cast of hilarious characters, all vividly described. Comical mishaps and personality clashes reminded me of the dry humour of Terry Phallus especially in his The Best Laid Plans, but is more exaggerated and lacking the thick Scottish brogue. The preternatural five year old Ashbergeresque saxophone player and his overbearing, pushy, opinionated mother are barely realistic, but nevertheless very funny. Some of the characterizations border on caricatures. The subtle but witty lampooning of Freudian psychoanalysis and the world of snobbish wine connoisseurs makes for delightful reading.

One quote will relay the flavour of the writing. On a first date that is obviously not going well: “After a small amount of rather stiff conversation, Chris looked at his watch and remembered another commitment, just seconds before Pat had been planning to recover from a similar lapse in memory.”

It is easy to keep track of the characters which include an indecisive art store owner with what seems to be attention deficit disorder, a narcissistic playboy, a beer swilling winking collie owned by an eccentric portrait artist, a lost young woman flitting between jobs, and a philosophical older widow quoting Proust, Descartes and Kant and musing about the problem of free will. There is nothing here that should not be read by a ten year old.

This is just the perfect light story for anyone becoming bored and depressed during Covid-19 lockdown.

Thanks, Barb.

I listened to Shelagh Rogers interviewing the Laotian author of these 14 short stories on CBC’s The Next Chapter, and decided to borrow it from the library. Several of the stories were published previously, and this collection garnered the author, now living in Toronto, the 2020 Scotiabank Giller prize for fiction.

The stories are narrated in limpid prose by various young offspring of Laotian immigrants to an unspecified North American city at an unspecified time. There are valiant attempts at character development, but the stories are generally too short for me to be able to develop an emotional bond with or a picture of the characters. The extensive unnecessary use of very foul language and obsession with crude sexual encounters totally devoid of emotion did not thrill this old curmudgeon.

The description of the very limited opportunities for the immigrant family members and the cultural and language barriers they face is probably a very realistic reflection of real difficulties of most immigrants.

The best feature of this book is its brevity. (I got confused about the pagination in the CloudLibrary ebook edition, but it can easily be read in six hours or less.) It may have been prudent and politically correct for the judges choosing the Giller to pick a book by a female disadvantaged immigrant, but if they are trying to encourage Canadians to read important or entertaining Canadian literature, this was a poor choice. I simply cannot recommend it.

A young French-German journalist offers a thought-provoking analysis of the problems of dealing with war crimes and crimes against humanity- of individuals, groups, and entire nations. Born long after WWII, she delves into her family history only to discover Nazis, Nazi collaborators and fellow travellers, then expands from this perspective to explore how various individuals and nations have come to terms with their dark past. This book thus joins a host of others analyzing the factors leading to the Nazi atrocities, and the consequences, but from a rather unique angle.

The historical facts laid out in this context are far more detailed and interesting than anything taught in my youth, and Schwarz emphasizes the importance of accuracy and honesty in history teaching in the process of healing of nations. The more than half-century of Germany’s collective retrospective self-examination stumbled many times but lead to a modern democratic state, though now threatened again by neo-Nazism and extremists.

A friend once commented to me that Germany has satisfactorily acknowledged and atoned for its dark past of war crimes and crimes against humanity, whereas Japan has not. But that reflects a slanted view (and teaching) of 20th century history. Swartz points out that almost no nation that engaged in war in that century is free of justified accusations of atrocities and war crimes. Britain selectively bombed civilian areas of German cities; the United States dropped atomic bombs on innocent Japanese; Austria, Italy, Vichy France, Poland and Czechoslovakia all cooperated with Nazis to round up Jews for the gas chambers; Stalin sent millions to their deaths in Siberia. After WWII, almost every Eastern European state engaged in some form of ethnic cleansing. International norms of decency were flaunted by Britain in India and Egypt, by France in Algeria, and by Japan in Korea, and all have thrived in cultures of denial.

I smugly noted that Canada is barely mentioned-until I reflected on our criminal treatment of aboriginals in an earlier era, and the more recent but less lethal shameful treatment of natives in residential schools. Those troubling aspects of Canadian history were nowhere to be found in my high school history texts.

The writing is straightforward humourless prose as befits the subject matter, with many quotes from the author’s interviews. She paraphrases Norbert Frei to remind readers that “if we cannot know what we would have done, it does not mean that we do not know how we should have behaved. And should behave if it ever happens again.” I read the 2020 translation that must have been updated from the original 2017 German edition as there is discussion of a 2019 U.N. vote.

This is at once a more personal and more global assessment of the psychology of justifying evil actions than is Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem. I rather appreciated its fresh account of many aspects of history that are often still totally ignored.

A former McKinsey consultant and New York Times journalist provides this damming exposure of the duplicity and hypocrisy of his fellow elite American thought leaders and multimillionaires as they claim that their philanthropic generosity is a needed altruistic effort to improve the the lot of those people they shamelessly exploit.

Giridharadas reserves his most withering scorn for the Sackler family, the Carnegie Foundation, tobacco executives, New York bankers and the denizens of Silicon Valley whose mantra is that they can do well by doing good.But none of the attendees at gala conference sites and corporate boardrooms, including the Clinton Global Initiative, escape unscathed. He notes that those CEOs attending meetings at posh resorts including Davos and Aspen, and in Wall Street corporate boardrooms to address the world’s problems never include representatives of the class of people whose problems they are pretending to fix. Poverty is a proper topic to address, but inequality is carefully avoided. Some have taken to “Pinkering” pointing to Steven Pinker’s book, The Better Angels Of Our Nature documenting that we have never had it better, as an excuse to do nothing for the less fortunate.

“It can be disturbing that the most influential power centre ( SiliconValley) of our age is in the habit of denying its power and of promoting a vision of change that changes nothing meaningful while enriching itself.”

Entrusting the solution of the world’s myriad problems to the capitalist free-marketers who have created many of the problems through their greed, rather than to democratically elected governments is like putting the criminal suspects in charge of the court system. “The only thing better than being a fox is being a fox asked to watch over hens.”

Sanford Weill of Citigroup is singled out for his hypocrisy in bemoaning the fact that the U.S. government did not have the money to ensure social change, leaving that to the private sector; this after Citigroup received a $45 billion government bailout , having contributed to the problem in the first place by their reckless lending in the subprime mortgage market.

I was surprised that the significant philanthropic contributions of religious organizations is never mentioned. It is not clear to me that private and corporate philanthropy, even if self-serving, should relinquish responsibility for social change to tax-based government action. Many philanthropists and volunteers want to believe that they are making a difference in the world even if it is based largely on self-deception. My wife and I have established a charitable foundation, convincing ourselves that our favourite charity, Doctors Without Borders, is likely to use our money to benefit more people than are our feds.

There is little in the way of concrete suggestions for alternatives to private sector philanthropy here, other than a plea for higher taxes on the rich and more government restrictions to rein in the excesses of the unfettered free market economy. The age-old debate about the proper roles of government and private enterprise in a democratic society is far from resolved here.

This is a well-written carefully researched, enlightening book that will be of most interest to economists and politicians, but should be widely discussed. I enjoyed reading it.

I read a rave review of this documentary of Columbia’s Magdalena River in The Economist and decided it was worth a peek. I rarely start in on a book without reading to the end, but I was sorely tempted to abandon this one. Yet, unwilling to admit to any snobbish sense of cultural superiority, I persisted to the end.

This book provides more than most English bibliophiles would ever want or need to know about the bloody history, culture and geography of Columbia. There are parts that are fascinating and memorable. Early on the British Columbia-based author discusses the drug culture and the role of the U.S. in stoking the market for cocaine, carefully distinguishing the latter from the mild stimulant coca leaf from which it is derived. The account of the mysterious megaliths of St. Agustin, rivalling those of Easter Island, the history of the rise and fall of Simon Bolivar, and the devastation and cruelty wrought by Pablo Escobar’s and other drug cartels are all interesting. The devastation of the 1984 eruption of the Nevado de Ruis volcano burying the town of Amero should not be forgotten.

The river itself is described as a sentient intelligent being desperate to tell it’s story. Davis appears to accept the prevalent beliefs in an afterlife and the myths propagated by the Catholic Church and praises the local profiteers of magic who fish thousand of bodies and body parts from the river and give them the last rites. They then adopt the unknown bodies to speed their souls out of purgatory to heaven. The references to religion throughout document an amalgam of many native and African nature- worshipping systems and a very flexible accommodating Catholicism. Anything to do with the natural world, whether animal, vegetable or mineral is a mystical object of worship. The magic realism of Gabriel Garcia Marquis, who also set some of his stories along the Magdelena, most notably Love In The Age Of Cholera, begins to almost make sense in light of this prevalent belief in magic among his compatriots.

The author freely admits to loving almost everything Colombian. As he travels along the course of it’s famous river, the geography is described in detail, and the history and culture is related in part by the natives he encounters and befriends and in part by the author himself in long scholarly diversions.

The writing flows like the river. On the dramatic rebuilding of Medellin after the peace accord with the FARC warriors: “On a mission to save their city, they embraced and remained loyal to three articles of faith: Pessimism is an indulgence, orthodoxy the enemy of invention, despair an insult to the imagination.” But most of it is also dry and humourless. There are far too many sweeping effusive generalizations and superlatives. Cartagena is described as ‘the most coveted jewel in the Spanish Indies.’ Alexander von Humbolt is described as ‘the greatest mind of the age.’ (What happened to his contemporary, Charles Darwin?) The music of Carlos Vives ‘electrified the world.’ The imported Brahman Zebus are described as ‘the finest cattle in the world.’ Long lists of names of people, places, and organizations, all in Spanish, will be promptly forgotten by most readers. Davis names twenty-eight African tribal names where slaves were bought, all in one paragraph. I was totally lost in the distinctions made in various forms of semi-sacred popular Colombian music. Extensive use of the word ‘literally’ will irk some linguistic purists.

I was very disappointed in this book. Maybe my Latin American friends would appreciate it more than I did. Perhaps my disappointment is in part because of the vast cultural gap between my experience and outlook and that of the author and his subjects. But I don’t think that explains all of it.

It may be a bit of a stretch to call this novel accurate historical fiction, but there Is a lot of dark Quebec history from the 1950s to 2001, including the October Crisis of 1970 and the sad plight of the “Duplessis orphans.”

The plot is complex, with deeply flawed characters and interesting geographic and cultural details of the Montreal area of the era. The surprisingly sudden eruption of violent confrontations between separatists and federalists is realistic at least as it was presented in the English Canada media that I followed at the time. Irrational religious fervour combined with historical grudges has, throughout history, led to atrocities.

The writing is fluid and engaging with dynamic dialogue. There are, however, weak points. To make the story work, there are a few very unlikely chance meetings, and portrayal of unrealistic guilt and self-incrimination over what-if situations that never happened. I found the time line of Elodie’s troubled life a bit difficult to follow, having not read the earlier Home For Unwanted Girls, that my wife says features her in detail. The length of time the politically opposite young lovers stayed together seems to be a stretch, based, as it seems to be, entirely on animalistic lust.

The Catholic church’s cruel unapologetic grip on every aspect of Quebec society of that era as presented here may be realistic but will not endear the book to devout Catholics. The physicians and politicians who were complicit in condemning the Duplessis orphans to a cruel childhood in mental institutions do not get off much better. Carlton University is described as “a utopian pit stop on the road to the real world” an apt description for all universities.

To be nit-picky, I found one obvious error-“..Bernard’s neck vein pulsing.” Why can novelists seemingly never understand the difference between veins and arteries?

Goodman portrays all of the separatist zealots as poorly educated, chain-smoking, angry, drunk or high on pot and willing to break
laws by smuggling tobacco, booze and drugs across the border.They express strong opinions about subjects they know nothing about. (My late separatist brother-in-law would mostly fit in with them, although not a criminal.) Many of their federalist opponents are not much better, but they are generally a more law-abiding lot. Her bias as an anglophone Quebecker who escaped to Toronto thus seems obvious.

One great quote among many memorable lines: “Love doesn’t use or discriminate against conflicting opinions or ambitions; it does not divide or bully.” This should have been the last sentence in the book, but there are only two more pages.

This is a powerful portrait of a dark aspect of Quebec and Canadian history in fictional form. We need to be reminded of it lest it be repeated.

Thanks, Vera

The late Kamloops Native novelist and poet tells a grim story of a Native teen orphan as he attempts to learn about and come to grips with the tragedies of his family’s past, first in bits and pieces from the old farmer who became his surrogate father and later as he reconnects with his dying alcoholic itinerant biological father.

The description of the hard lives of manual labourers in mines, mills and lumber camps and hardscrabble farmers are vivid, and the legendary native skills acquired by living off the land, hunting and fishing, are described in great details that will be hard for urbanites to believe (even though the details of fly casting are a bit off). The ravages of prevalent alcoholism in the mining and logging camps and the pulp-and-paper town’s boarding houses are described in realistic and horrid detail, as are the horrors of the front line action in the Korean War. The extensive dialogue and repartee in the clipped street slang of the illiterate is delightful.

As the youth takes his dying father out into the mountainous B.C.wilderness with the express purpose of reestablishing a father-son relationship before burying him there, the details of the father’s tragic past gradually come out. Nostalgic sentimentality becomes cloying and a vague but nonspecific typically Native spirituality pervades the whole story. The reader is asked to believe that a man who is rapidly deteriorating and intermittently comatose is nevertheless able to recall and relate his past history in hours-long narrative But the author got the details of dying of cirrhosis largely right with intermittent confusion, extreme anorexia and wasting, jaundice, vomiting of blood, and a pervasive disgusting odour (fetor hepaticus), even though it is usually less predictable in timing than as portrayed here. It is not clear how much of the tragic details in this story are based on the author’s first-hand experience, but in the Acknowledgements, he writes of an “ inward journey”, “braving darkness and shadows”, and “long nights of soul searching.”

The end is largely predictable far in advance, and the characters are mostly likeable realistic rogues, but the morbid details become a bit depressing. Enough of sentimental self-examination and guilt- I am looking for something lighter and uplifting as we enter the start of the second year of living with Covid-19.

Thanks, Michèle

This short novel about a Trinidadian boy growing up in Scarborough with his mentally ill, hard working mother and older brother paints a vivid picture of the poverty and squalor of the area around Lawrence Avenue and the Rouge River valley, in Toronto in the 1980s. It was populated largely by first generation immigrants, gangs of street youth, and broken families trying to eke out a living, largely ignored and despised by their more more affluent neighbours.

The writing is a bit disjointed, as the story is told by the younger brother, in part before and in part after the older brother is shot and killed by the police, with time shifts that can be confusing.There is nothing very profound here although the plight of thousands of underprivileged children growing up in profound poverty in our midst is a stark reminder that we live in a very unequal and unjust world.

A light easy read.

Thanks, Rhynda.

The setting for this strange story is the town of Van, Turkey, and later Istanbul. A young girl born in 1947 to the teenaged second wife of an alcoholic Muslim flees from a sexual predator as a teen, working in the street of legal Istanbul brothels next to a mosque, a church and a synagogue. The silly premise of the title is her recollections of her life as her brain dies in the ten minutes and thirty-eight seconds after her heart stops when she is murdered and thrown into a dumpster. But her recollections take up the bulk of the book, requiring several hours to read.

The schizophrenic surrealism of Istanbul, with its multiple contradictions is well represented as the prostitute is befriended by a transsexual woman, a gay man, a devout female Muslim dwarf, and a female nightclub singer/dancer. The blending of different religious beliefs and superstitions entwines all the characters with no sense of any contradiction.

After the protagonist’s death and burial in the real Cemetery of the Companionless outside of the city, the ragtag group of friends attempt to retrieve her body to give her a proper burial, in what turns out to be hair-brained hilarious plot that does not go exactly as planned. This is the best part of the whole tale.

As an introduction to the culture of the city that can’t decide if it is Asian or European, Christian or Muslim, cosmopolitan or parochial, this is a good read.

Thanks, Rhynda.

This old classic is on the list for our book club discussion next week, my wife having already discussed it in her book club. It seems everyone except me was intimately familiar with it. It is set largely in western England in the 1920s or 30s and narrated entirely in the first person singular by the insecure, young, shy, second wife of Maxim, who becomes the matron in the rigid hierarchal British aristocrat’s mansion, Manderlay. The detailed character development of the diverse aristocrats and the servants, including the very bossy stern hateful Mrs. Danvers and the no-filter embarrassing sister Beatrice is bound to remind readers of someone they know. The overriding memories of the drowned too-good-to-be-true first wife, Rebecca, pervade every aspect of the daily routine of the mansion. The strict class distinctions, the proscribed gender roles, and the superficiality of the British aristocracy that the author belonged to is subtly mocked in the first half of the story. The narrator who feels like someone with the latter-described imposter syndrome coming from a lower class, struggles to adjust to the expectations, with many challenges from those loyal to and zealously protecting memory of the first wife. There are small hints that the past was not as idyllic as presented and by the halfway mark, the story quite suddenly twists into a mystery with reality intruding into the presentation of what had seemed like a tragic drowning in an otherwise idyllic existence in the Garden of Eden. Suddenly, nothing is as it seemed to be on the surface. I will not give away more of the plot that becomes a complex who-dun-it mystery.

The writing is very British with no explicit description of sexual activities and very Victorian sensibilities, but the sensuality of the characters is a pervading undercurrent. There is little overt humour, but the depiction of the conversation with a demented old lady in the person of Maxim’s grandmother is so timelessly accurate that anyone who has tired to converse with an elderly demented relative will be able to relate to it.

As the second half develops, the plot thickens appreciably and nothing presented in the first half survives unscathed. The tensions between the truth and the fiction are heightened and the interpersonal relations deteriorate as the powers that be come close to disclosing the true story of Rebecca’s death and her continuing influence on the lives of the living.

This is a gem of a story with a vivid depiction of the era in the lives of British aristocrats and a timeless reminder that nothing is as it seems to be on first glance. Although it seemed to drag in places, I enjoyed it immensely.

Thanks, Beth and Vera.