You Better Watch Out

by Greg Malone ~ Knopf Canada

  Review: Halifax Herald March 2009

                       

‘Our memories are the bread crumbs that lead us home.

Without them, we stand bereft and alone.’

Greg Malone is a former member of CODCO. He is also a screenwriter, actor, director, activist and a one-time wannabe politician. Now he has added author to his impressive list of credits. ‘I love performing,’ he says as we drink mint tea in a busy Halifax coffee shop. ‘But there’s something very satisfying about [writing], to write something that’s just how I see things. I’ve always wanted to write.’ So he did. He wrote a book about growing up in Newfoundland. He began over ten years ago, writing down the more traumatic stories ‘for my sanity. I enjoyed it and people laughed, so I kept going.’

You Better Watch Out is a series of vignettes, snapshots of a childhood where friendships with Andy Jones, Cathy Jones and Danny Williams (who went on to become the Premier of Newfoundland) are cemented. The clarity of remembrance is striking and I asked Malone if he had embellished them at all. ‘No,’ he says. ‘They’re childhood memories. I don’t have these memories as an adult. I was a child, totally dependent and nowhere to go, which feels like life and death to an 8 year old, life and death in terms of your heart. This fascinates me, these dramas where the heart changes. It’s Jane Austen stuff, the little stuff that means so much to your whole life. And when you are 8 years old, it’s everything.’

It is the young Greg who tells these stories. He begins school but he ‘could not warm to Miss Snow. She carried a bright red stick, which she rapped our fingers with.’ There is a simplicity in the beginning stories as Malone sets the stage on St. John’s hilly, cramped streets. They are factual and descriptive. But as the young Greg settles into his narration and moves through grade school, the stories mature with him. He is able to see glimmerings of understanding in the incomprehensibility of the adults around him.

Malone does this well. He holds fast to the young boy, letting him tell it like it was, warts and all. Never does it seem to be imposed from an adult perspective and it is always infused with humour and insight, even those moments of terror that was part of growing up Catholic in Newfoundland.

Malone maintains his childhood perspective throughout, along with a fantastic sense of the absurd – even in Brother Clancey’s class. Br. Clancey is ‘six feet tall, (and) this overwrought celibate was not at his best in grade two.’ Br. Clancey has serious anger issues, and he has a profound and negative effect on Malone’s life.

But Greg was very young and the contradictions of religion and cruelty in the name of god and love are not to be challenged. He is traumatized. His understanding of the powerlessness of his situation develops, and by the time he is 9, his narrator’s voice has matured into the sophistication of a child who realizes that survival was not going to be on his terms.

An occasional PG warning would be in order for the more sensitive souls among us. Disasters. ‘Don’t worry, he’ll be fine,’ was the comment from the dentist ‘as (Gregg) went out holding his raw, bloody mouth.’ Betrayals. The Strap and Who is God horrify, taking the glory from school days when being strapped and terrorized was considered discipline. But even the harshest stories are softened by the humour of a bright and tender child who is determined to make sense of it all.

Malone’s love of St. John’s infuse these pages. His connection to Newfoundland is deep and clear and he has remained friends with many of the kids in the book, kids from early grade school. ‘It’s so rich,’ he says. ‘I’m so lucky. People from the Grade 4 class came to the launch (in St. John’s), kids from my street that I hadn’t seen in years. One of the [teaching] brothers came, friends came. It was a great laugh.’

           

When he can, in between acting and writing, Malone reads. ‘Sometimes I have to stop my life and read. Jane Austen is so fun, the way she plays with language. Dostoevsky, Margaret Lawrence. Doris Lessing sends chills down my spine. The Edwardian writers, Thackerary, they have so much passion.’

                                   

Will there be a sequel? We must hope! But now it’s time for something completely different! Malone is already writing another book, this time about Newfoundland joining Confederation. ‘I’m a history buff,’ he says enthusiastically, ‘and there was so much politicking and intrigue surrounding that period. It’s my type of history!’

‘What’s it like to win a Gemini?’ I ask as we finish our tea. Malone laughs out loud. ‘It’s a bit of fun!’ he says.

Greg Malone is a Newfoundland actor, AIDS activist and writer. He lives in St. John’s.

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.

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.

Corvus: A Life with Birds

by Esther Woolfson

House of Anansi Press 

  ~ Review in Halifax Herald, March 2010

Corvids, crows in particular, have had a bad rap over the centuries.  Their carrion role during the Black Plague gave them a distinctly ghoulish reputation, and Alfred Hitchcock, in his acclaimed movie, The Birds, didn’t help matters any.  And yet, “as with us all, human or bird, history has formed what corvids are.”

Esther Woolfson’s new book, Corvus: A Life with Birds details her lifelong love affair with birds in general and corvids in particular.  It all began when her daughter rescued Chicken, a fledging rook, who moved into the house and took over.  She did, however, allow Woolfson to continue to use a corner of her study by the window. 

Woolfson’s house becomes a sort of aviary.  Spike the magpie, Ziki the crow, Bardie, Marley the parrot, budgies, and cockatiels roam the rooms.  Her tales of their comic and oh! so human behaviour is written with love and affection, and her view on birds’ rights conveniently rationalizes her complete failure to even marginally house-train just one of her avian companions.

“Nothing, we discovered, is as gracious as a corvid. ... rituals worthy of Japanese life, On meeting in the hall of a morning, we bow.  She caws and I greet her.  We bow again.  She caws.  I bow.  She bows.  I ask after her health.  She caws.  Eventually, we reach the kitchen.”

Studies by Dr Louis Lefebvre (McGill University) show corvids to be the cleverest of birds, followed by falcons, hawks and woodpeckers.  This merely underscores what Woolfson already knows.  They respond to humour, fear, love and music.  Chicken has a distinct dislike for the works of Benjamin Britten, Olivier Messaien and, to a lesser degree, the Pogues.  She does, however, like Bach.”

“Was Chicken “once a dinosaur?  A small dinosaur, a maniraptor, but a dinosaur none the less?”  The disagreement about the lineage of birds continues, and Woolfson leaps into the fray. She has a keen eye for detail, and her writing carries a magical humour, whether relating the anecdotal or carefully teaching the evolution of birds and the mechanics of flight.  It is in her ability to blend this science, the natural history and the household stories that makes Corvus very very hard to put down.

Esther Woolfson was brought up in Glasgow and studied Chinese at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Edinburgh University.  She has won prizes for her nature writing, and her short stories have appeared in many anthologies.  She lives in Scotland.

Not Yet, A Memoir of Living and Almost Dying

by Wayson Choy

Doubleday Canada

  ~ Unpublished Review

What is remarkable about this book is how the author, ever a writer, shares his spirit at a time when all is failing and the easiest and most compelling action would be to let go. After finishing All the Matters, the much awaited followup to The Jade Peony, Wayson Choy suffers an asthma attack so severe that he is put into a drug-induced coma to prevent brain damage.  “Multiple cardiac events” cause complications that leave him incapacitated for some months, and his slow path back to health means re-learning to walk and even write.  He vows to turn a new leaf, but “brisk daily walks - boring! were the first to go!” Four years later, he has another heart attack and a quadruple bi-pass.

What struck down the author was urgent, all consuming and cataclysmic. As future infinity tugs him, it is voices from the present, soft and insistent, that call him back.  “Can you hear me, Mr Choy?”  And he returns, sometimes unwillingly, often crankily, fogged and exhausted, to feel the touch of his god-daughter’s hand, the prick of a needle, the cool of a damp cloth.  These tactile, gentle moments hold him to the present.

Not Yet, A Memoir of Living and Almost Dying is a journal of a battle fought on many fronts, not the least by Choy’s extended family of friends who quickly gather around him, holding him strongly with their caring and love. Even as he lies in bed, unable to move, he examines the meaning of family, and the bonds that bind us to cultures and to those we hold dear. His humour is ever present.  “Rule 3 of Dying: Avoid pain at all costs.”  He is able to hold his readers’ rapt attention while lying prone in a hospital bed in a coma!  The pages flow effortlessly.

Choy’s memoir is an intelligent, humourous and self-deprecating look at a life as he pulls himself back from the edge of collapse. He lauds the human spirit and the unbreakable bonds of family as he responds to the ministrations of professionals, to the thousand small kindnesses of hundreds of staff whose job it is to bring us back, to not let us go before our time. “I had been saved by invisible networks of compassion, by people who had borne untold difficulties and survived famines and wars and revolutions, to salvage the likes of me.”

Wayson Choy is the author of The Jade Peony, which shared The Trillium Prize with Margaret Atwood and All That Matters, which was shortlisted for the Giller Prize in 2004.  He lives in Toronto.