Mothers Who Leave....Nancy Richler at Blue Met 2013

Nancy Richler's book, The Imposter Bride, got some great buzz going when it was nominated for the Giller Prize back in the fall. In all honesty, I had the book sitting on my bookshelf for months and didn't pick it up until well after her nomination and I have to say that I enjoyed it. I passed it around to some friends who all read it and raved about it. It's been a long time since a book by a Montreal was so well-received by boots-on-the-ground Montreal readers.

Here is a brief article I wrote on the book back in the fall.

Nancy Richler has two events at the Festival: one is a staged reading of her book produced by the Montreal Review of Books. This event is on Saturday, April 27 at 9pm. It'll be a great opportunity to meet Nancy and see a scene from her book performed by actors. $10

The other event is an event that is likely going to sell out. It's on Saturday afternoon at 1pm  and is called Mothers Who Leave, a round table with Shelley Pomerance (the host), Colm Toibin, Nancy, and Arnon Grunberg. $10

Richler and Valenzuela: two very different writers

First there's Nancy Richler, whose Giller-nominated novel, The Imposter Bride, from earlier this year I've been reading this week. It's an engaging story about surviving trauma and learning to forgive the past. When a young woman arrives in Montreal just after the war, it's clear to everyone around her that she has come out of something horrific. What struck me about these passages is how much the characters keep to themselves. I think today we have more impulse to share what we are feeling and thinking in order to help those around understand why we do (or don't do) the things we do.

But this mid-20th century family still guards their thoughts and feelings preciously and, as a result, the novel's plot moves forward. It veers towards the overly poetic at times (the sending of stones to Ruth every year on her birthday seems like a highly novelistic flourish) but it's a story which reminds us of the individual horrors that WWII brought to so many lives. Mothers who leave, secret traumas from the past, starting a new life and a new identity and the things we can't leave behind: all these themes are explored by the writer but in the end, we are left with a story that is hard to put down, hard to forget. Certain images have stayed with me for days and the shifting points of view created an important effect in that we never sense that feeling of claustrophobia we might have if we were only in Lily's head.

Though the book was nominated for the Giller, it didn't get as much buzz as it might have which is surprising since it's such a powerful story. She's a new writer to me but I am excited about having the chance to read her earlier work.

The other writer I've been thinking about is Argentine Luisa Valenzuela. She's getting on now in years but I find her work so unique and thoughtful. Though she might be called a "difficult" writer (see yesterday's post) her almost stream-of-consciousness narration is highly disciplined and very tightly woven into the fabric of history, particularly the recent history of Argentina.

She breathes in huge gulps of her city's air, the verb a lie at the time, because the air had become unbreathable. With vandal-like delight she is disemboweling her library. Some books will have to disappear - the word alone produces goosebumps - others are simply dismantled in order to preserve this story or that essay or those three chapters that she knows she'll need for her course, or that she wants to keep with her in spite of the weight limit on planes. Get rid of everything to be able to leave as lightly as possible. She knows that if she stays in her own country, she won't write anymore. She can't show her latest work to anyone. She's afraid of putting those readers in danger (from "Getting Ready to Jump," in the collection Dark Desires and the Others).

What strikes me about this passage is how openly she references the politics in one way but how cloaked her allusions are in another way. Valenzuela has said that she avoids writing about "the message" of politics and this to me seems like a fair way to approach this topic. (It also reminds me of a Slate article over the weekend on the work of Barbara Kingsolver. Is the writer - either Kingsolver herself or Michelle Dean the Slate writer - confusing the issue with the message?) Otherwise, writing (or any art) becomes dated very quickly.

Valenzuela's work is fascinating and a writer I'd love to see in person sometime.

A great interview with Luisa Valenzuela here from the Paris Review Writers Series.

Random Sunday Thoughts

*It's snowing. I guess winter really is going to happen again this year. Every year, I hope that winter just forgets to show up. It'll be fine once it starts but the transition is a challenge.

*There is little distinction between "work" and "life" in some professions. I notice this, for example, when I am reading a book for work on a Saturday afternoon or blogging for work on a Sunday morning. But more than this, I have many events to attend for work which almost always figure into my weekend at some point: readings, launches, performances, openings, cocktails. Not complaining, but a good reason why I need so much time off during the summer.

*Reading Nancy Richler's The Imposter Bride. Only just 30-40 pages into it but it's highly readable at this point (beyond that initial confusion when one has to sort out all the different characters' names). Nominated for the Giller, it's a book that landed on my desk almost a year ago (before it was published) but, as is often the case, it got a bit lost in the sea of books. When I read about the nomination, I recalled having it and rounded it up.

*It's odd how few novels there are about elections when we are all so gripped by them a regular intervals. I know about a few, of course: The Manchurian Candidate (which I read a long time ago, great movie, too, though I mean the old one with Frank Sinatra and Angela Lansbury), Primary Colors (which I've never read), and a few others. When I search for "novels about elections" a list pops up of 10 or so. I've almost no interest in reading any of them, particularly at this time of year when I am so sick of election noise. I've absolutely given up watching the US news at this point but it's even a big part of the Canadian news cycle now.

*Still working my way through Jason Lutes' Berlin, on the second book, City of Smoke. Reading it slowly because I try hard to only read one chapter every few days so I can revel in it. That's the problem with most good graphic novels: I race through them in 45 minutes, but I'm trying to train my brain to enjoy this one slowly, pay close attention to the illustrations and, more importantly, the interaction between the illustrations and the text. Book three has not been anthologized yet (the author is still writing the series) so now the question is do I wait or do I start buying single issues/chapters once I am done with Book 2?

* The last few days I have been doing lots of research: on German novelists, on Chinese poets, on Italian journalists, on African cartoonists. This is one part of my job that I like a lot.

*My first day of winter tradition (which means the first day it feels like winter): make a big pot of chilli and watch an old movie on DVD.