The Disappeared

by Kim Echlin ~ Hamish Hamilton

  ~ Review: Halifax Herald June 2009

Serey is a young Cambodian sent to Montreal to study.  He meets Anne and they fall in love, prowling the jazz clubs of Montreal.  But the rise of the Khymer Rouge closes Cambodia’s borders, and years pass before Serey is able to return home to look for his family.  He vanishes without word.  Eleven years later, Anne sees a blurred likeness on a TV news clip and flies to Phnom Penh to search for him.  

The backdrop of the Khymer Rouge’s regime of terror in the 1970's, which leaves an entire population traumatized and was responsible for the deaths of almost 2 million people, is not an easy counterpoint for a love story.  The challenge for Echlin ‘was to find a language that could tell the stories’, not just Anne’s story but of the people who suffered around her. 

Echlin writes with poetic intensity, moving through place and time with ease. The desperate poignancy of the stories Anne hears as she searches for her lover, and the sensual language of the love she feels is a mix that seems incompatible.  There are times when the magnitude of loss and grief seems beyond words.”  But Echlin’s ability to pare language to its essence is near perfect.

When an old woman tells Anne that she “lost my whole family during Pol Pot”, Anne is unsure how to respond, but there is nothing to say.  “I only want you to know,” she the woman.  It is for  Anne to bear witness. “And once we know, what do we do?”

In the final chapters Anne’s now middle-aged heart grieves for her lost lover, for those long lost and her story ends with a lament that has resounded through centuries.  “People everywhere look for their missing . . .Can no one find me even a bone to bury?” 

Kim Echlin is an author who completed her doctoral thesis on Ojibway storytelling.  She has travelled the world in search of stories and spent time in Cambodia researching The Disappeared.  She lives in Toronto.

The Beauty of Humanity Movement

by Camilla Gibb ~ Doubleday Canada

  ~ Review: Halifax Herald, January 2011

           

Maggie Ly realizes early in her life that a career in art does not need to be defined by her lack of talent.  She becomes a curator and seizes an opportunity to return to Vietnam to catalogue a collection of art which somehow survived the war in a bomb shelter.  She has her own agenda - to look for her father, a dissident artist who vanished after the fall of Saigon. 

Her search leads her to Hung, an elderly itinerant cook whose pho is legendary, and it is Hung’s story that is the heart of Camilla Gibb’s new novel.  Hung has made pho at his street cart for decades, moving from place to place, creating a daily challenge for his dedicated customers who continue seek him out, chopsticks and bowl in hand.

Through years of poverty, war and hardship, Hung has endured, changing little as the city changed around him.  In the years since the war, Hanoi has become modern, bustling tourist city brimming with energy and youth.

The importance of family and community flows through Gibbs’s novel, with the elderly Hung holding the threads which gently bind the characters to each other.  They embrace Maggie, sympathizing with her need to find the truth, to understand her beginnings so she can finally feel that she belongs.  “She had always felt herself [to be] an alien to some degree ...you have no attachment to the history or geography of a place ... your roots are buried in some faraway earth.” 

Camilla Gibb is a winner of the Trillium Book Award, the City of Toronto Book Award, and the CBC Canadian Literary Award for short fiction.  The jury of the Orange Prize listed her as one of 21 writers to watch in the new century.  She lives in Toronto.

The Paper Garden: Mrs Delany Begins Her Life’s Work at 72

by Molly Peacock ~ McClelland & Stewart

~ Review: Halifax Herald, February 2011

Mary Granville Pendarves Delany was born into a minor branch of an important British family at the turn of the eighteenth century.  At the tender age of 17, this vivacious young woman was married off to a boorish drunkard old enough to be her grandfather, to improve the family fortunes.  She was widowed after seven difficult years.  She married again twenty years later, a union which afforded her much contentment and happiness, but it wasn’t until after the death of her second husband that Mrs Delany picked up scissors and paints and invented a medium now known as mixed-media collage.  She was 72.

Over the next ten years, Mrs Delany worked tirelessly at her art, creating botanically correct cut-paper flowers, precisely accurate in both detail and colour. These exquisite reproductions are often hard to recognize as paper and paint. In all, she produced 985 flowers, and it was her failing eyesight that finally stopped her.  The collection, known as Flora Delanica, is housed in the British Museum.

In The Paper Garden, Molly Peacock focuses on eleven of these extraordinary pieces of art, weaving through the narrative snippets of her own life as it parallels that of Mrs Delany’s. Her language is both visual and poetic, with an attention to detail that takes her readers into the heart of court life in eighteenth century England.

In the continuing debate about the future of print publications, McClelland & Stewart have triumphed. An electronic version of The Paper Garden would be a mere shadow, only hinting at the pleasure readers will get from this miniature art book.  The silken pages, the writing, the careful stitching, the wonderful reproductions, the subtle perfume of new ink, the size (it tucks perfectly in the corner of a bag) – these all combine to a whole that is a pleasure to hold and to read.  M & S and Molly Peacock have done Mrs Delany proud, and she would surely have been delighted.

Molly Peacock is a poet, essayist and author.  She was one of the creators of New York's Poetry in Motion program and is the Series Editor of The Best Canadian Poetry in English.  A transplanted New Yorker, she lives in Toronto.

I Am a Japanese Writer

by Dany Laferrière ~ Douglas & McIntyre

  ~ Review: Haliax Herald, January 2011

I Am a Japanese Writer is a book about a writer who pitches a title to his publisher, takes the publisher’s advance and immediately develops writer’s block as he contemplates actually writing the book. While he waits for it to pass, he decides he must understand a little of Japanese culture.

Trolling the city for insights, he finds the self-obsessed Midori and her hangers-on, who are immersed in the decadent, ‘uber-cool’ subcultures of fashion and drugs. They amuse him. He reads haiku master Basho on the subway. He is transported. He begins to believe his artifice.  “... when I became a writer and people asked me, ‘Are you a Haitian writer, a Caribbean writer or a French-language writer?’ I answered without hesitation: I take on my reader’s nationality.  Which means that when a Japanese person reads me, I immediately become a Japanese writer.” 

When the writer announces this in a mall, the results are astounding.  The book becomes a cult phenomenon and he is suddenly an international celebrity.  He is now famous for a book not yet written. Without reality, it exists because the writer is celebrated for it and therefore it no longer matters whether or not it exists, because it has taken off and, in the words of Tom Waites, he’s “Big in Japan”, which clearly raises the question of who makes art!

Translated from French by David Homel.

Dany Laferrière was born in Haiti and immigrated to Canada in 1978.  He is the author of twenty novels, and has won several awards, including the Prix Medicis for his semi-autobiographical novel, L'Enigme du retour (The Enigma of the Return).  His first children’s book, Je suis fou de Vava, won the Governor General’s award in 2006.  He lives in Montreal.

Our Tragic Universe

by Scarlett Thomas ~ Thomas Allen & Son

  ~ Review: Halifax Herald, January 2011

           

Meg is a writer, just managing to get by writing book reviews and ghost writing genre fiction for adolescents, which nets her just enough cash to buy groceries and keep her damp basement apartment slightly above freezing.

Her moody, jealous boyfriend seems oblivious to the ever rising damp and Meg’s efforts to jolly him out of his funks are met with indifference at best.  It is hard to understand what Meg sees in this sad-sack boyfriend, and when she finally makes a break for freedom from both him and the damp-infested apartment, Thomas’s reader will be thankful and slightly puzzled as to what took her so long.

A book mysteriously arrives in the mail, The Science of Living Forever, a pseudo-scientific book

about the end of time.  The very idea stops Meg in her tracks. Instead of dismissing the content as pop-psyche at best, Meg is pulled into the book’s premise.  Her‘proper’ novel morphs into a ‘storyless’ story, untidy and plot-less.

Our Tragic Universe is brimming with existential energy and philosophical debates as Meg struggles to extricate herself from her marginal existence.  Once again, Thomas explores relationships and the human condition, but these explorations are tempered by the application of the ‘storyless’ story, which does mean that the plot (or non-plot) takes place primarily in the debates of the characters.  Our Tragic Universe meanders, as was Thomas’s intention.  However, the wit and nuance of her writing hold it together, making Meg’s story sympathetic and compelling.

Scarlett Thomas is a teacher, award-winning novelist and book reviewer. In 2002, she was listed as one of the twenty best young British writers.  She teaches at the University of Kent in the UK where she specializes in the contemporary novel and narrative theory and practice.

Ape House

by Sara Gruen ~ Random House

  ~ Review: Halifax Herald, December 2010

The Great Ape Trust in Des Moines, Iowa, studies “language acquisition and cognition in great apes.”  Much of their work is with bonobos, a little known, highly intelligent and peaceful cousin to the chimpanzee.  During her research for Ape House, Sara Gruen managed to wangle an invitation to visit the Trust.  She was introduced to the bonobos  and she was hooked.  Her author’s note tells us that “most of the conversations between the bonobos and humans in (Ape House) are based on actual conversations with great apes”.

Ape House explores the implications of communications between humans and a species we recognize as highly intelligent but continue to keep imprisoned. 

The story follows Isabel Duncan, a scientist whom the bonobos at the Great Ape Language Lab in Kansas City consider family, and John Thigpen, a journalist who is sent to Kansas to find a story. But  Isabel is badly hurt when terrorists bomb the lab and kidnap the bonobos, and they become front page news overnight.  Even after they are recovered, the university moves quickly to stay away from controversy and sell the bonobos. An under-the -table deal is struck and the bonobos vanish.  Isabel is frantic to find them.

Ape House is a fascinating look at the culture of bonobos, and at their astonishing ability to communicate.  But it goes much further, looking at the boundaries of ethical research and the treatment of imprisoned animals as well as the implications of imprisoning animals who can learn to communicate with humans.

Sara Gruen was born in Vancouver.  She is the author of Water for Elephants which became an international best seller.  Ape House is her fourth novel.

Noah’s Turn

by Ken Finkleman ~ Harper Collins

 ~ Review: Halifax Herald, November 2010

Noah is a screenwriter, or was one, until he was laid off.  He wasn’t surprised.  He was less than passionate about the show and felt being a screenwriter was beneath his talents. But when his money pressures escalate, he takes to visiting his wealthy (and dying) aunt in the hopes of weaseling his way into her will.  But “he knew the rich didn’t get rich by giving it away ... and deep in his heart, he anticipated the worst.”  It came!

Enter Patrick McEwen, arrogant, condescending and successful, a published writer who teaches at U of T.  For Noah, their friendship is a love/hate relationship.  His envy of McEwen is of the green monster variety.  When McEwen is gloating about the launch of his latest novel, something inside Noah snaps.  He grabs a machete from the wall of McEwen’s office and kills him (a fact which is on the back cover of the book). The inexplicable murder makes huge headlines, and contrary to Noah’s run of luck, he doesn’t get caught.

The second half of Noah’s Turn tracks Noah as he takes all precautions to avoid detection. He realizes there is a good chance he’ll get away with it if he keeps on going ‘as normal’ but finds he cannot. He spirals downward into booze and drugs and debt.

There are problems with Noah’s ‘post-murder’ persona.  Until his nasty crime, Noah’s demeanor has been cynical and witty, creating a grudging sympathy for the state of his life.  But understanding a jealous and cynical mind is perhaps easier than understanding a murderer’s

rationalizing, and as Noah descends into addiction, his character lacks the edginess that entertained in the first half of the novel. In spite of this, Noah manages to continue to extract a certain sympathy from the reader, right to the ending you probably won’t see coming.  Finkleman has written a compelling debut novel.

Ken Finkleman is a writer, producer and actor for both television and movies.  He is created, produced and wrote the popular CBC Television series, The Newsroom.  Noah’s Turn is his first novel.

The Forty Rules of Love

by Elif Shafak ~ Viking

  ~ Review: Halifax Herald, November 2010

Ella Rubenstein leads a middle class life in middle class America.  Her days are defined by the needs and demands of her unfaithful husband, their three children and even by her dog.  Looking for greater fulfillment, she becomes a reader for a publishing company and her first assignment is to assess a manuscript by the mysterious Aziz Zahara.

Elif Shafak’s latest book, The Forty Rules of Love, draws her readers into the lives of Shams of Tabriz, a wandering Sufi Dervish, and Mawlana Jalal ad-Din, also known as Rumi. Shams is sent by his order to Konya in Turkey to be a companion to the young Rumi, who is already a revered leader and scholar but dissatisfied with his spiritual progress.

The Forty Rules of Love moves back and forth in time, shifting from the gently unfolding affection between Ella and Aziz to the 13^th century Persia of Zahara’s manuscript.  Shafak weaves her forty rules through these modern and ancient narratives, via emails, tales, parables and through the conversations and stories of the book’s many narrators.

These varied stories chronicle the deepening spiritual connection between Shams and Rumi.

It is a complicated literary structure, but Shafak holds her threads expertly as she lays out the inclusive and tolerant principles of Sufism as they relate to the popular culture of the times, in both the 13^th and 21^st centuries. The Forty Rules of Love speaks directly to the heart.

Elif Shafak is an award-winning novelist and one of the most widely read writers in Turkey.  She writes her books in both Turkish and English, and they have been translated into more than 40 languages.  She lives in Istanbul.

Great Multicultural North

by Ernesto (Ernie) Raj Peshkov-Chow

Red Publishing/Fernwood Publishing

  ~ Review: Halifax Herald, November 2010

This is a book,” says the opening lines of Great Multicultural North, “for anyone who has ever pondered what it means to be Canadian.”  Read on.  It is clear that Ernesto (Ernie) Raj Peshkov-Chow (who will henceforth be referred to as ‘Ernie’) has pondered this question long and hard.

Ernie doesn’t beat about the bush. “What is a Canadian?” he asks in Chapter 1, which has a good news/bad news answer.  Apparently the definition of Canadian continues to evolve and we haven’t yet chiseled out the final wording. The good news is that because no one really knows, we all sort of slide in under the radar and can call ourselves Canadian with impunity.

Great Multicultural North is a small, readable, informative primer about “how the Canadian circle can accommodate all those who choose to live within it.” It tackles serious questions about immigrants and immigration policy with humour and wit. It is funny and hugely entertaining, packed with interesting facts and statistics, probably drawn from the long census form!  Did you know that Canada produces more comedians that any other country?  Or that almost 20% of all Canadians were born outside the country, second only to Australia? 

Ultimately, Great Multicultural North is hopeful about the evolution of Canadians and multiculturalism.  Living together in harmony and peace is our ultimate goal, says Ernie. We all “belong to overlapping concentric circles of communities.” What we still lack is “a sense of community as a common humanity, or as a living thing, or as a part of the planet, or as an integral part of the universe. We need to expand our circle ... Canada could be the first place to make it happen.”

Ernesto (Ernie) Raj Peshkov-Chow is a multi-generational Canadian, whose favourite pets are peeves, who believes the Maple Leafs are holding back on greatness and who firmly believes in a new order of Canadian nationalism. He is also an author and a journalist.

I Love Your Laugh: Finding the Light in my Screwball Life

by Jessica Holmes

McClelland & Stewart

  ~ Review in Halifax Herald, October 2010

Jessica Holmes has a ‘Laughter’ button on her website.  Who could ignore that?  After all, everyone needs a good laugh. But a click brought a surprise. Holmes did some research a while ago on the “importance of laughter, and its benefits on our health, mood, longevity, etc.”  Apparently we don’t laugh enough.  Who knew!!! We don’t even talk together enough and Holmes thinks we can do better, that “we could all benefit from a big group belly laugh.”  It’s hard to disagree with that, and following that trajectory, Holmes’s new book, I Love Your Laugh, must surely be beneficial to our health.

Holmes’s memoir recounts her life so far.  She was raised in a less than traditional household and the vastly differing beliefs of her parents - fundamentalist vs. feminist - meant there was some confusion to be sorted. Holmes regales her readers with stories and anecdotes that do more than entertain.  They cause lots of smiles and laughter. 

Holmes was the family comic from the beginning, translating events into the comedic, working hard for the funny side of things. But even a comedienne has downtime and Holmes is not afraid to write about the not so funny parts of her life experiences.  Being relentlessly funny is not easy apparently, and occasionally Holmes had to work hard to extract humor from situations.  “I couldn’t remember the last time I’d really laughed. My optimism had disappeared somewhere along the way, and I was living protectively, hanging on to anything I could, afraid of what life would take from me next.” 

But she does keep laughing and making fun of what life throws at her because this is how she views the world and according to her Laughter theory, we’re all healthier for it!

Jessica Holmes is a member of Air Farce Live (aka The Royal Canadian Air Farce) and star of The Holmes Show.  She is also a screenwriter and a mom.  This is her first book.

Bride’s Farewell

by Meg Rosoff

Random House

  ~ Review in Halifax Herald, October 2010

The day before her wedding, Pell suddenly sees the life of drudgery and dreariness that will be her future.  Poverty in 18^th century working class England is not kind to women and Pell sees the broken spirit of her mother clearly.  Her own spirit rebels and she flees in the night, taking Jack, her horse, and at the last minute her little brother who refuses to be left behind.  Her only plan is to head for the Salisbury Horse Fair, where she is sure she can make some money.

Pell has an unusual talent - an intuitive understanding of horses, akin to a ‘whisperer’.  It is this talent that catches the eye of a horse buyer.  They strike a deal, but the buyer swindles Pell of the promised money. Her brother and Jack become lost in the chaos after the fair and Pell is left with nothing. Her travels take a more desperate turn as she embarks on a search to recover those things most precious to her, and her money.

The Bride’s Farewell is a romantic adventure. Pell is a feisty heroine who would have held her own beside Nellie McClung or Emily Stowe, had time and circumstance allowed.  Rosoff’s writing is wonderfully visual, conjuring the reality of poor houses and the lives of the working class poor.  “... by the time Pell turned ten she and Lou had an expertise in stretching ends past straining point in an every-hopeful and ever-futile attempt to make them meet.” 

At the same time, Rosoff infuses her novel with love and laughter, in spite of the bleakness of everyday life.  From beginning to end is a flow of horses, as they are bought and sold, worked, ridden and loved.  Horses were an integral and essential part of eighteenth century life and Rosoff perfectly captures the magnificence of these creatures she so obviously loves.  And it is Rosoff’s beautiful imagery that leave her readers holding their breath, hoping the movie will come soon. 

Meg Rosoff has written three previous novels and is the winner of the Carnegie Medal for her novel Just in Case.  She lives in London, England.

Waiting for Joe

by Sandra Birdsell

Random House

  ~ Review in Halifax Herald, October 2010

Joe owns what has been a successful motor home business.  He sells RV’s and generally makes a good living for himself and his wife, Laurie.

Laurie, on the other hand, spends money faster than Joe can make it. Their lines of communication are stretched tautly as credit cards get rejected and bank accounts depleted.

The day finally comes when it’s all gone. Their house, their possessions and their self worth are sold, at a yard sale, to the bank. Joe and Laurie find themselves living in a stolen RV in a Walmart parking lot.

One morning, Joe leaves for the day and Laurie’s “premonition she had in Clara’s boutique was real.  Joe was gone.” Laurie finds herself alone, without money and very much without the continued support of the Walmart staff, whose initial kindness is stretched as they realize the RV squatters could become less than temporary.

Joe and Laurie both reach a pivotal moment in their separate lives, about the same time as the novel itself. Waiting for Joe takes time to ease into the story. It follows the parallel lives of Laurie, Joe and Alfred, Joe’s father who lives in a Winnipeg nursing home remembering the past and clinging to his elusive present.  Waiting for Joe is as much about Joe’s crisis of confidence as it is about Laurie struggling to find the strength within herself to go on alone.  Her successes are small, but cheer-worthy as she takes baby steps on a new path, finding strength and assistance in unlikely places.  “The goodwill embodied in a prayer goes somewhere, and like a moth, finds a source of light.”

Sandra Birdsell grew up in a large family in Winnipeg.  Her short stories and novels have garnered several awards, including the prestigious  Marion Engel Award.  She now gardens and writes in Saskatchewan.

Burmese Lessons: A Love Story

by Karen Connelly

Vintage Canada

  ~ Review in Halifax Herald, September 2010

“Nostalgia is a Greek word.  A pain for the sweetness of home” and for Karen Connelly, home is where the heart is. She is a traveler, and when she went to Burma in the mid-nineties as a young journalist, her intention was to observe, to watch and wait, and to gather information. She was idealistic, obsessed with a desire to absorb the culture and language.

She soon moved into circles which brought her in contact with members of the resistance. And among them she found Maung, a young, charismatic leader of the resistance - or rather, he found her.  His magnetism was irresistible.  She fell deeply in love - with Maung, with Burma and with the Burmese people.  But this is an occupied country and these are not frivolous times.  “San Aung wants me to learn serious words ... death and freedom.  Democracy, cruel, trust, don’t trust … I lament the loss of my innocence.”

Burmese Lessons is part memoir, a sometimes travelogue and an extraordinary love story.

Connelly’s writing is sensual and dramatic, and the tastes and flavours of a country teetering on the edge of disaster juxtaposed against the gentle Buddhist culture linger long after her words are read and the book is closed. Her deep compassion for the Burmese people as they endure hardship beyond comprehension infuses her words, but it is her developing love for the charismatic Maung which finally causes her to confront the hard questions about herself, her future and the role she is plays in Burma. In every sense of the word, Burmese Lessons is a love story. 

Karen Connelly writes fiction, nonfiction and poetry.  Her first novel, The Lizard Cage, won Britain’s Orange Broadband Prize for New Fiction in 2005 and her non-fiction book Touch the Dragon, won the Governor General's Award in l994.  She divides her time between  Greece and Toronto.

The High Road

by Terry Fallis

McClelland & Stewart

  ~ Review in Halifax Herald, September 2010

There are those among us who are not particularly fond of politics, and who certainly don’t find the antics on the Hill amusing.  But even if you are counted among this group of Canadians and you really don’t love politics, or even like them, The High Road will entertain.  It might be against your better judgment, it might be in spite of great resistance, but you will succumb.  The High Road will surely make you laugh.

And if you do love politics, you’re in for a treat.  There will be snickers, occasional snorting and hooting, and almost certainly rip-roaring belly laughs.  Terry Fallis has understood how things work up there on the Hill (fictionally of course), or if that’s not really how things are done (dare we hope not), he is very convincing.

His new novel continues the shenanigans of characters from his first book, The Best Laid Plans.  The economy is failing, the three political parties are fighting, the minority government is shaky and things are looking grim.  But the Liberal’s have a secret weapon. They have Angus McLintock, the curmudgeonly and peevish Scot who manages to topple the teetering parliament with his deciding vote. His hapless aide, Daniel Addison, fiercely (and unsuccessfully) resists the call to be deeply involved in yet another election and together they trudge the well worn campaign trail one more time.  When Daniel finds out that his candidate has been arrested 23 (that’s twenty-three!) times, all “perfectly legitimate arrests”, he becomes a very fast peddling spin doctor as well.

The campaign trail proves to be a journey of mayhem, barely averted disasters and some very nasty campaign strategies. “Brainwashed by the writings of his ultra-feminist wife, Angus McLintock has a secret extremist feminist agenda ready to rip apart Canada’s social fabric.  He actually wants housewives to be paid for baking cookies and vacuuming… (and) you ain’t seen nothing yet.” But it’s all in good fun – and fiction!

What has made Terry Fallis so unusual in the publishing world is his marketing strategy.  Unable to find a publisher for his first book, The Best Laid Plans, he published it as a podcast, one chapter at a time, in order to ‘test the waters’ of public reaction.  People liked it!  He then gave up on the publishing world and did it himself.  It won the 2008 Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour and was promptly picked up by McClelland & Stewart.  This strategy was so successful that M&S was persuaded to repeat it, and for the first time, they have released a book in serialized podcast format.  Times are definitely changing.

Terry Fallis was drawn to politics at an early age, and has worked for Cabinet Ministers both at Queen’s Park and in Ottawa. He lives in Toronto.

Mandela’s Way: Fifteen Lessons on Life, Love, and Courage

by Richard Stengel

Crown Publishers

  ~ Review in Halifax Herald, August 2010

When Richard Stengel collaborated on Nelson Mandela’s autobiography, The Long Walk to Freedom, he spent three years traveling with Nelson Mandela, gathering and distilling information from countless hours of interviews and conversations.  He was present at some astonishing moments as the new South Africa began to shake off the years of apartheid.  But in his new book, Mandela’s Way, Stengel gives us Nelson Mandela himself, the man who has appeared to the world as larger than life.

These fifteen lessons are Mandela’s wisdom, the thinking and philosophies of an extraordinary man who, when faced with tremendous hardship, refused to let his humanity and spirit be co-opted.  He was a strategic man, a gardener, someone who thought carefully before deciding on a course of action. “Most of the mistakes he made in his life came from acting too hastily rather than too slowly. Don’t hurry, he would say; think, analyze, then act.”

At his trial where Mandela faced a possible death penalty, he ended his testimony by saying “. . . I have cherished the idea of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunity. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”

The back cover of this book categorizes Mandela’s Way as a “Self Help - Personal Growth” book - a puzzling and somewhat glib label to apply to a book which outlines the personal philosophy of a great statesman, a man who calls the world’s inhabitants family. Mandela’s Way is part history, part philosophy, part storytelling and always inspiring. Nelson Mandela has much to teach us and some of us have much to learn. However, Mandela’s Way doesn’t preach, or advocate that we change to suit a model. That is not his way.  This book simply tells us of how an ordinary man became extraordinary, a lover of people and of life, and it does so in simple direct language which contains the lessons if we want them.

In Richard Stengel’s words: “Many times, I had to ask myself ‘What would Nelson Mandela do?’  …  It always made me, at least in those moments, a better person - calmer, more rational, more generous.”

Richard Stengel is the editor of Time magazine, author and documentary film maker. He collaborated with Nelson Mandela on Mandela’s autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom.

Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother

by Xinran

Random House

  ~ Review in Halifax Herald, August 2010

Between 1966 and 1979, China’s population almost doubled in size to a staggering 1.2 billion people.  Feeding this exploding population was an enormous challenge and, in an attempt to curb the escalating numbers, the “one family, one child” policy was instituted.  The consequences of this legislation have been cataclysmic for girl babies within a culture where male babies were already valued more highly, and for their mothers, especially those born into poorer, village families. Tradition dictated that “ ... the first surviving child had to be a boy or their lives would be blighted and they would not go to heaven.”

Xinran’s new book, Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother: Stories of Loss and Love,

documents the harshness of obedience and the heartache of mothers forced to give up their baby daughters, to orphanages if they were lucky or to death if they were not.

This collection of ten firsthand stories is hard to read and even harder to understand within the cultural context of a country struggling out of feudalism and catapulting into the 21^st century. 

Villagers were “... torn between the enlightened standards of modern civilization and the cruelty of ancient traditions, where human feelings could lose their way.”

Xinran began her career on a radio show in China, giving a voice to women.  Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother focuses on the mothers who have lost their daughters. These babies may be lost from their mothers forever, adopted in the West, abandoned or even killed, but they are never forgotten.  “Chinese women lived on the bottom rung of society, unquestioning obedience was expected of them and they had no means of building lives of their own.”  But within the hearts of the mothers who bore them, these daughters are remembered and loved.  These are the stories of the Chinese mothers who saved their girls when they could and the message they send to their lost children is clear - perhaps we could not keep you, but you are mourned and always loved.

Xinran is a journalist and author. In 1997, she emigrated from China to England with her son.  She founded The Mothers’ Bridge of Love, a charity established to help disadvantaged Chinese children.  This is her sixth book.

Dahanu Road

by Anosh Irani

Doubleday Canada

  ~ Review in Halifax Herald, August 2010

Over the last centuries, Zoroastrians have fled religious persecution in Iran, many of them to India.  The essence of the Zoroastrian religion is that one must actively participate in life, maintaining good thoughts, good words, and good deeds in order to be happy.

Anosh Irani’s latest book, Dahanu Road, focuses on the Irani clan who leave Iran and settle in Dahanu near Bombay. They have prospered in their new land, becoming landowners which gives them wealth and status. Their lives are intrinsically linked with the Warlis, a tribal underclass who work the land without expectation.

Shapur Irani prospers in India, but as a young man he swindles land from Ganpat, a member of the Warlis tribal group.  He creates a flourishing plantation of chickoo trees which he badly wants to pass to his grandson.  But the past does not go away.

Kusum, Ganpat’s daughter, is married to a drunk who beats her.  Zairos, Sanpur’s grandson, becomes obsessed with her, and as their forbidden affair deepens, lives begin to unravel. But all is not as it seems.  Zairos’s father and grandfather harbour regrets which keep their souls in torment.

When Ganpat hangs himself, he sets in motion a series of events and remembrances which echo through the generations. Secrets long hidden begin to surface and, regardless of intention, good deeds are coupled heavily with bad.

Anosh Irani moves back and forth through the generations skillfully. His writing is visual and intense, and he creates his flawed characters with humor and compassion as they struggle with changing times and cultural mores, while trying to survive the ghosts of the past. Irani gives us a fascinating and exotic story which takes place within a little known historical context of Iran/Indian history.

Anosh Irani moved to Canada in 1998 and lives in Vancouver.  His play, Bombay Black, was a Dora Award winner for Outstanding New Play in 2006. This is his third novel. 

This Cake is for the Party

by Sarah Selecky

Thomas Allen

  ~ Review in Halifax Herald, July 2010

Sarah Selecky was in Halifax recently, reading from her new book, This Cake is for the Party, in a small, intimate café on Charles Street. She read a story called How Healthy Are You? Or rather she read part of it. Halfway through, she smiled and closed the book. Enough! The audience sighed audibl.. Book sales were brisk!

Selecky’s stories follow a wonderful collection of characters in the midst of personal dilemmas, crises and tragedies. We watch as defining moments collide with constructed truths.  Lives are altered, never to be the same again.

In Watching Atlas, Greg is resentful as his wife’s friend dumps her 4 year old son on them once again. His wife doesn’t mind, she likes the boy. But Greg becomes more and more uneasy as he attempts to deny his own problematic relationship by focusing on the glaring dysfunction of the boy’s mother. He takes action.

`

One Thousand Wax Buddhas builds in intensity as it moves toward what we begin to understand will not be a story book ending. Robin is odd. She sees things others don’t. She “runs so close to the line. She’s more brilliant than most people, and so it’s a challenge for her...Robin sees things differently. It’s her gift.” Selecky’s timing is perfect as she gently pushes her people toward impending disaster.

Short stories are not an easy genre to write. They float in and out of style. In spite of this, we are frequently introduced to new writers through their short collections. We are fortunate indeed that Selecky chose the short story to showcase her talent to the world. Her writing is strong, often understated, witty and always compassionate. This Cake is for the Party is more than dessert - it is a veritable feast!

Sarah Selecky graduated with an MFA in creative writing from UBC. Her stories have been published in several journals, including The Walrus, Geist and the Journey Prize Anthology. She lives in Toronto.

Therefore Choose

by Keith Oatley

Goose Lane

  ~ Review: Halifax Herald, July 2010

Set against the backdrop of the Hitler’s escalating threat to peace in Europe, Keith Oatley’s latest book, Therefore Choose, follows George and Werner, undergraduates at Trinity College. George is a thwarted writer, studying medicine “because I don’t have the courage to cast off and write.” Werner is German, a philosopher. They become friends and that summer they travel together to Germany. In Berlin, George meets Anna, the editor of a left leaning literary magazine. But it is 1936 and the threat of war is ever present. Anna wants George to stay, to study in Germany. George is clear that this would be a difficult and perhaps dangerous thing for him to do. He returns to England.

It is Anna who sees clearly the consequences of George’s choice to leave. In a letter to him, she writes “One does not make decisions and wait to see what will happen, or whether the decision would be better than some other decision one might make. It is the other way around. One makes a choice to live one’s life in a certain way, and throws oneself into it. One becomes the person who has acted and chosen in that way.”

Oatley’s ponderings on choices as ever unfolding, organic systems which profoundly impact our lives and the lives of those around us create a thoughtfulness which lingers long after the book is closed. But this is a work of fiction, and the hearts and motivations of his characters remain a mystery, walled off from his readers in spite of the drama of their unfolding stories and the conflicts created by the timeline they inhabit.

Keith Oatley is a professor emeritus of cognitive psychology at the University of Toronto. His first novel, The Case of Emily V., won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book. This is his third novel.

Secret Daughter

by Shilpi Somaya Gowda

William Morrow

  ~ Review: Halifax Herald, July 2010

Kavita lives in a small, impoverished village in rural India. Tradition dictates that she must bear her husband a boy. But when a girl is born, her husband takes the child and leaves the house. He returns without her. Her second child is also a girl, but this time Kavita fights back. She gives the  baby a name - Usha - and within hours of the birth, she and her sister walk the long journey to Bombay. There she leaves the child at an orphanage with a silver bangle, a name and a chance at life. Those are her gifts.

Somer and Krishnan are successful physicians in California. Unable to have children, they decide to adopt. They travel to Krishnan’s native country and at an orphanage in Bombay, they are enchanted by the baby with the unusual eyes, whose name has been muddled to Asha. They return to California and settle down to live the American dream. India is far away, geographically, culturally and emotionally. Or so it seems.

Secret Daughter is a family saga and Gowda moves back and forth between continents and cultures effortlessly. This is a story of the endurance of hearts, of marriages, of women, and of our heart’s need to find the place we belong. Gowda’s descriptive prose creates rich visuals of the crowded streets and steaming heat of Bombay. She contrasts this with the sterility of the nuclear family life of Krishnan and Somer. When Asha goes to Bombay with a journalist project to work with children of the slums, she is embraced by her sprawling extended family who are grateful and delighted to finally welcome this Indian/American child.

Kavita never stops yearning and hoping for her daughter. Gowda gives a face to the anguish of women who give birth to unwanted girl children who are taken away, perhaps even killed, but they are never forgotten by the mothers who bear them. These women carry grief through their lives for the daughters they were unable to protect.

Gowda tells a rich, interconnected story of families and of ties that never break, no matter how thinly they are stretched or how far the distance of time or geography.

Shilpi Gowda is a native of Canada, growing up in Toronto before moving to the USA. She currently lives in Texas with her husband and children. This is her first novel.

Pulse

by Lydia Kwa

Key Porter Books

  ~ Review in Halifax Herald, June 2010

Natalie was raised in Singapore.  Her parents immigrate to Toronto when she is a teenager and she becomes an acupuncturist, incorporating east and west influences easily into her practice.  But her heart is closed and her life feels not quite complete. 

           

Natalie is a complicated character.  She is a dutiful daughter who walks the line between two cultures.  She takes care of her aging parents, while using online chat rooms to play out a sexuality that is offbeat and compelling.  She can defend herself using acupuncture pressure points.  She seems contained, even aloof, but when Selim, the son of her first lover with whom she has developed a surprising connection, commits suicide in Singapore, she is knocked off balance. 

She returns to Singapore and emotions surge back to the surface along with old demons not yet vanquished, as she is forced to confront her carefully repressed childhood.

Kwa’s writing is like a visual flow, pulling her readers in.  The tactile world of Singapore from Natalie’s childhood flows on the pages, vibrant and mysterious.  Kwa’s careful plotting ekes out enough information to keep us turning the pages while never crossing the line into predictability.

Lydia Kwa was born in Singapore and immigrated to Canada in 1980, where she practices psychology. She has published one book of poetry and three novels.  She lives and works in Vancouver, BC.  

This Time Together

by Carol Burnett

Harmony Books

  ~ Review in Halifax Herald, June 2010

It’s been a surprising thirty-two years since Carol Burnett tugged her ear for the last time, ending the enormously successful show that endeared her to millions.  Ms Burnett’s new book, This Time Together – Laughter and Reflection tells us what her audiences already knew.  Making that show was the best time ever! For the cast and crew, rehearsals and shooting days were full of belly laughs and friendship. “We’re just going to go out there, and get in the sandbox, and we’re going to play and have fun,” writes Ms Burnett.  They did just that.

Her big break came when she was cast as Princess Winifred the Woebegone in Once Upon A Mattress. The Broadway show was supposed to run six weeks and ran for fifty-two.  Then came The Carol Burnett Show and the rest, as they say, is history.

            This Time Together is a series of autobiographical sketches where people such as Cary Grant, Lucille Ball, Julie Andrews and Peggy Lee wander through the pages.  Ms Burnett is generous with her praise for the talents of those who worked with her through her career, the writers, producers, directors and a supporting cast of thousands.  The anecdotes do not often stray into her personal life, although she does share her devastation at the loss of her beloved daughter, Carrie, to cancer.

Her co-stars on The Carol Burnett Show, the late Harvey Korman, Tim Conway and Vicki Lawrence, feature prominently in her book.  She talks about the fun, the laughter and the tears.  “Unfortunately, our show has been accused of showing actors cracking up at times, breaking character. . . I dare anyone to be on camera and keep it together when Conway gets on a roll.”  Surely this was the best part! Utube is littered with sketches from the show - the legendary Dentist skit, the award winning Went With the Wind, Stinky, they’re all there, as funny as ever.

Ms Burnett closes her book with thanks and her list of ‘Gratefuls’ for what life continues to offer. Her family, her children and grandchildren, her career, her health.  We are left smiling, reminded of the laughter she brought into our lives.  For this, we too are grateful.

Carol Burnett has been an actor on Broadway, television and in the movies. She starred in the long running The Carol Burnett Show, which won twenty-five Emmy Awards.  This is her second book.

Loose Pearls & Other Stories

by D.C. Troicuk

Cape Breton University Press

  ~ Review in Halifax Herald, June 2010

This first collection of stories from D. C. Troicuk are quietly understated as life flows gently below the surface of daily life. Family cold wars are buried deep, and sometimes the glue holding things together, no matter what, is tainted by dislikes and resentments, bound inextricably by duty. The boiling point is not an explosion but rather an understanding that takes hold, a clarity of vision which builds until somehow, mostly, characters see the reality of their truths.

Wendy brings home strays, young men who remind her of Billy, her brother who vanished many years ago.  We never know why, but we know that Wendy never stops searching.  An underlying sense of responsibility causes her to forgive transgressions and overlook the obvious, maintaining a code of silence, even when it is clear that she must become complicit in a crime.

In Katia Suffers, Katia’s life has become bound to the service of others.  She cooks and cleans for her husband and cares for her hypochondriac sister with a “…high tolerance for the list of maladies Vera collects from women’s magazines…”  But she lies awake at night, “casting wishes like nets."

A young girl finds out she is pregnant.  A pervert’s victim cowers indoors. “I am the proud owner of a newly renovated deck where I cannot sit, a lawn I cannot mow, a garden that that has become a bug buffet.”  Her pivotal moment is when she realizes she is not powerless.

Troicuk is an excellent teller of tales.  She writes with a clarity of vision that brings focus to her stories, and the setting and her characters speak to the rich flavour of Cape Breton Island, without drifting toward folksy.  These stories are simply Cape Breton.

Troicuk’s first book, Loose Pearls, is triumphant, and surely an indication of things to come. The good news is that her next book, a novel, is already in progress.

D.C. Troicuk lives and works in Cape Breton. Her work has appeared in several journals, including the Antigonish Review, the Pottersfield Portfolio and Canadian Living.  This is her first book.  

The Promise of Rain

 by Donna Milner

McArthur & Company

  ~ Review in Halifax Herald, May 2010

Howard Coulter is farm boy from Manitoba in 1941.  He signs up to defend his Queen and country and is at the front lines when the Japanese advance on Hong Kong.  After bitter fighting, Hong Kong falls and he becomes a prisoner of war, imprisoned is a PoW camp by a nation who refused to recognize the Geneva Convention.  The conditions in the camp are ghastly, disease and hunger shrink the ranks of survivors and the cruelty of the guards create conditions where survival is a feat of monumental courage and hope.

The experience alters Howard’s life profoundly.  Back in Canada after the war, he dissociates and drinks, as he and his family struggle to cope.  When his wife dies in somewhat mysterious circumstances, he loses all hope and his family founders.

Surprisingly, The Promise of Rain is a gentle book, following two story lines. The first takes an observer position as we watch Howard’s desperate struggle for survival in the PoW camp. The second narrator is eleven year old Ethie, Howard’s daughter. Ethie is a keen observer. Her clear voice is strong and observant, carrying the story as it slides between the PoW camp in Hong Kong and her falling apart world.  Tension builds quietly but inexorably.

The Promise of Rain explores the unbreakable bonds of family, and the devastating impact of war on the psyches of those who are sent to fight.

Donna Milner grew up in Vancouver and started writing after 25 years in Real Estate.  Her first novel, After River, has been translated into six languages in twelve countries.  She lives off the grid, north of Williams Lake in British Columbia.