Hard Light (Michael Crummey)

Twenty-One Cardinals (Jocelyne Saucier)

Late Nights on Air (Elizabeth Hay)

The Best Laid Plans (Terry Fallis)

Tragedy in the Commons (Alison Loat & Michael MacMillan)

Strength of Conviction (Tom Mulcair)

Sweetland (Michael Crummey)

Klee Wyck (Emily Carr)

Galore (Michael Crummey)

Top 5 Favourite Canadian Novels

Etta and Otto and Russell and James (Emma Hooper)

In My Mailbox Today

In My Mailbox Today: May 21st 2015

Leaven of Malice (Robertson Davies)

Leaven of Malice is the second book in Robertson Davies' Salterton Trilogy. It was first published in 1954, and it won the Leacock Award for Humour. Although I enjoyed it, I didn't enjoy it quite as much as Tempest Tost, the first novel in the trilogy.

The events of this novel are spurred by the appearance of a false engagement notice in the local paper, the Evening Bellman. Pearl Veronica Vambrace and Solomon Bridgetower, two minor characters we meet in Tempest Tost  are according to the notice, engaged to be married on November 31st, a date that does not even exist.

Pearl's father threatens legal action against the newspaper and the newspaper tries to find the culprit who placed the false ad. Pearl and Solomon--who barely know each other--try to decide what they will do.

This book had me smiling from start to finish, and I LOVED the ending. Although it's part of a trilogy, it can easily stand alone.

Bone & Bread (Saleema Nawaz)

Tempest Tost (Robertson Davies)

Two Solitudes (Hugh MacLennan)

I reread my favourite novel this week. 

Each Man's Son (Hugh MacLennan)

When I closed the back cover of Each Man's Son I felt a little sad. I have now read all of Hugh MacLennan's novels. I will never again open a new one and discover his prose for the first time. There are, of course, essay collections that I can read, but essays are not novels. Now I can only re-explore the ground that I have already tread upon. 

Each Man's Son was originally published in 1951 and is MacLennan's fourth novel. Set primarily in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, the story focuses on Mollie MacNeil and her son Alan. At the opening of the novel Mollie has been waiting four years for her husband Archie, a prize fighter who has abandoned her and gone to the United States, to return. 

Mollie's loyalty to her absent husband is complicated by the attention of Louis Camire, a Frenchman who chose to stay on the island after a ship-wreak, and by the attention that the local Doctor, Daniel Ainslie shows to her son Alan. 

Archie's eventual return to Nova Scotia results in a violent confrontation, which drastically and permanently alters the lives of those closet to Mollie MacNeil. 

Although Each Man's Son is by no means MacLennan's best novel, it is not bad. I gave it three stars of goodreads. I liked it. In comparison, I've given all six of MacLennan's other novels five stars. This one didn't blow me away. 

When I read Two Solitudes and The Precipice I frequently found myself stopping to read passages aloud to myself, to underline, or to just take in the beauty and significance of MacLennan's prose. With Each Man's Son there wasn't a single moment when I did this. It was a good story. I enjoyed it, but it wasn't amazing. 

Mad Shadows (Marie-Claire Blais)

Mad Shadows is the 78th volume in McClelland and Stewart's New Canadian Library series. It's also the 1959 debut novel of French-Canadian author and playwright Marie-Claire Blais. Blais is the author of more than thirty works, as well as the winner of the 1996 Governor General's Literary Award. Mad Shadows was published under the French title La Belle Bête.

Mad Shadows focuses on the lives of Louise and her two children, Isabelle-Marie an ugly but hardworking girl, and Patrice a "beautiful idiot." Isabelle-Marie is jealous of her brother's beauty and attempts, more than once, to disfigure and ruin his beauty. Patrice is ignorant of his own empty mind. He longs only to see his own reflection in the lake and in the mirror, and for the love and affection of his mother. Louise believes that Patrice is a genius deep in thought; she is entranced by his beauty and babies him for her own benefit.

Isabelle-Marie and her family live in a somewhat surreal countryside. The setting reminds me, in many ways, of magical realism. Patrice and Isabelle-Marie hardly encounter the outside world. For Isabelle-Marie venturing to a neighbourhood party is a massive and intimidating step. Apart from her step-father, her husband and family she directly interacts with no one else throughout the entire novel. 

Although the novel, as a whole, is amateurish, it's significance must be noted. The novel rejects certain conventions and norms. Sincere love is completely absent and beauty does not equal goodness. Blais plays with the binary of the beautiful and the ugly, portraying both as capable of behaving in ugly ways and becoming ugly. In fact, in the end, the boundary between the beautiful and ugly merges. 

Also of significance in this novel is Isabelle-Marie's intentional burning of the grain fields near the end of the novel. When she does this she severs her ties to the land and to the way of life she once lived. This is, perhaps, a nod from Blais to the Quiet Revolution which was occurring in Quebec at the time of Mad Shadows publication. 

There's so much symbolism and so many themes to dig into in Mad Shadows. Although I wouldn't recommend it as an introductory novel for readers looking to get into mid-twentieth century Can. Lit. as there are, I believe, far better examples of writing from this period, but it's definitely worth the read for any student or curious lover and explorer of Can. Lit. 

 

A Jest of God (Margaret Laurence)

"I do not know how many bones need be broken before I can walk. And I do not know, either, how many need not have been broken at all."

I've had A Jest of God on my bookshelf for almost three years, but until today I had never read it. It's a relatively short novel of about two-hundred pages, but its emotional depth is profound. Rachel Cameron is an elementary school teacher in her mid thirties who is single and still living with her ailing mother in the apartment (above a funeral home) that she grew up in. 

Rachel suffers from anxiety, insecurity and what can only be described as low self-esteem. She constantly apologizes to others and to herself for everything she says and for every action. Even as she has sex for the first time, she's saying "I'm sorry."  She is afraid of people--of doing the wrong things when she interacts with people. 

Early on in the novel, Rachel speaks with the principal at her school, and I was struck by these lines: "I know I must not stand up now, not until he's gone. I am exceptionally tall for a woman and Willard is shorter than I." 

Her insecurity over her height immediately drew me to her and allowed me to like her. I empathized with Rachel through every awkward moment she experienced talking to her co-workers, feeling trapped and claustrophobic in a crowded church, and her inability to relax while making love to the first man that had entered her life in years. 

A Jest of God is, in many ways, a painful novel to read, but the ending was rewarding. As G.D Killam writes in the introduction to my New Canadian Library Edition, "Margaret Laurence's fiction is about . . . the individual coming to terms with his own past and himself, accepting his limitations and going on from there, however terrified he may be." Rachel is able to, in the end,  face her own past and limitations, and begin to overcome them and move on with her life.

I look forward to reading more of Margaret Laurence's work.