By Charles Scheideman
ISBN No. 978-1-55017-550-9
www.harbourpublishing.com
It sure didn’t sound promising: a former RCMP Sergeant corners you and proceeds to tell you all about his “adventures” in tiny town B.C. But given the RCMP’s recent headlines (taser deaths, unnecessary roughness, shoplifting; yes, shoplifting!), hearing about the time he helped a big moose get across a quiet street constitutes first-degree boredom. But darned if – metaphor alert! - TOJM doesn’t pull you over and arrest you with tales that sound more “Twin Peaks” than “Northern Exposure.” The book is divided into 30+ chapters, each one detailing a specific case investigated by the author. It should sound dry and clinical – and it does (the book’s few black-and-white pictures are of valley vistas; how “crime-scene”). But then you slowly realize you’re being invited into solving a mystery too and what you thought was the author’s direct approach is actually something you haven’t seen enough of in literature lately: being talked to as if you’re a thinking human being. No werewolves. No vampires. No pyrotechnic prose. Here, story is all – and it’s a wonder to behold. The writing is so elegant, ominous and measured – with nary a trace of pretension - that an open-and-shut case about the on-the-job deaths of two lumberjacks (years apart but under oddly similar circumstances) becomes the most involving mystery ever. As the tales pile up there’s something cumulatively, eerily, satisfyingly “epic” about this book. Herman Melville said “Moby-Dick” was about man’s inability to govern nature. James Dickey said “Deliverance” was about man raping the environment. And in the hard, rustic climates and locations, the cases recounted in “Tragedy on Jackass Mountain” are a compelling catalogue of nature exacting some awful revenge on the men and industries that dare to clear cut the woods – and the men hired to keep some semblance of law in them.
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Monday, April 11, 2011
“Today, Maybe”
By Dominique Demers and Gabrielle Grimard
ISBN No. 978-1-55469-400-6
www.orcabook.com
The introspective, reflective medium of print has always had a problem when it comes to younger readers. Inside a child’s head is a dangerous place to be. First impressions solidify into lifelong perceptions and emerging emotions permanently merge with dramatic storylines. The best example of this is the unexpected (?) demonizing of foreigners when a writer gives her story’s evil characters with unusual names. But with mainstream non-fiction addressing loneliness as a lifelong condition “Today, Maybe” – about a girl whose “only treasure was her one hundred favorite books” choosing imaginary friendships with literary characters over real people – is both the hot button book of the moment and a hopeful sign that kid lit is evolving as fast as the internet. This is a lovely little book – with bite. Yes, it’s “just” a children’s book full of famous friendly/frightening heroes (wicked witches, princes, wolves) that entertain bored children, but it’s also a book of epic perspective. It evokes everything from the plot of “Where the Wild Things Are” (a child’s solitary daydream), Sartre’s comment that “hell is other people” and a line from “Looking for Mr. Goodbar”: “I’m alone, not lonely.” Of course, that’s a fat interpretation of a very slim picture book – but it’s also a big recommendation. Ideal for children and perfect for parents who actually like to connect with their kids, “Today, Maybe” is as much about a lifelong love of literature as it is about the importance of a rich imagination.
ISBN No. 978-1-55469-400-6
www.orcabook.com
The introspective, reflective medium of print has always had a problem when it comes to younger readers. Inside a child’s head is a dangerous place to be. First impressions solidify into lifelong perceptions and emerging emotions permanently merge with dramatic storylines. The best example of this is the unexpected (?) demonizing of foreigners when a writer gives her story’s evil characters with unusual names. But with mainstream non-fiction addressing loneliness as a lifelong condition “Today, Maybe” – about a girl whose “only treasure was her one hundred favorite books” choosing imaginary friendships with literary characters over real people – is both the hot button book of the moment and a hopeful sign that kid lit is evolving as fast as the internet. This is a lovely little book – with bite. Yes, it’s “just” a children’s book full of famous friendly/frightening heroes (wicked witches, princes, wolves) that entertain bored children, but it’s also a book of epic perspective. It evokes everything from the plot of “Where the Wild Things Are” (a child’s solitary daydream), Sartre’s comment that “hell is other people” and a line from “Looking for Mr. Goodbar”: “I’m alone, not lonely.” Of course, that’s a fat interpretation of a very slim picture book – but it’s also a big recommendation. Ideal for children and perfect for parents who actually like to connect with their kids, “Today, Maybe” is as much about a lifelong love of literature as it is about the importance of a rich imagination.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
“She Said/She Saw”
By Norah McClintock
ISBN No. 978-1-55469-335-1
www.orcabook.com
By the time you get to the line “…if you want to get the whole story…you need to pull the pieces together,” that comes maybe two pages into this book about the faulty memory of a witness to a gangland-style slaying, you realize you’re in the grip of a serious storyteller. When the narrator finishes her introduction with: “Here are the pieces,” we’re hooked. The “She Saw” part of this book is Tegan, the witness/survivor of a shooting that claimed two of her friends. The “She Said” part of this book is Tegan’s shaky recollection about the shooting. She says she doesn’t know why her friends were targeted, why she was spared or even who did the shooting. She also worries that the killer might come back to finish her off. No one believes her, of course. Even her sister, Kelly, is suspicious. She details and catalogues the facts in an effort to learn the truth – even if it incriminates Tegan. Because Kelly sees life “like a movie or a TV drama, or, sometimes, a comedy” parts of the story are told in the form of a screenplay. No spoiler alert here! All I’m going to say is that “She Said/She Saw” a triple good read of a suspenseful thriller – for kids (the book’s audience is aged 12+) and adults. Its topic is timely, its characters flawed but smart, and the screenplay format a great introduction to the discipline.
ISBN No. 978-1-55469-335-1
www.orcabook.com
By the time you get to the line “…if you want to get the whole story…you need to pull the pieces together,” that comes maybe two pages into this book about the faulty memory of a witness to a gangland-style slaying, you realize you’re in the grip of a serious storyteller. When the narrator finishes her introduction with: “Here are the pieces,” we’re hooked. The “She Saw” part of this book is Tegan, the witness/survivor of a shooting that claimed two of her friends. The “She Said” part of this book is Tegan’s shaky recollection about the shooting. She says she doesn’t know why her friends were targeted, why she was spared or even who did the shooting. She also worries that the killer might come back to finish her off. No one believes her, of course. Even her sister, Kelly, is suspicious. She details and catalogues the facts in an effort to learn the truth – even if it incriminates Tegan. Because Kelly sees life “like a movie or a TV drama, or, sometimes, a comedy” parts of the story are told in the form of a screenplay. No spoiler alert here! All I’m going to say is that “She Said/She Saw” a triple good read of a suspenseful thriller – for kids (the book’s audience is aged 12+) and adults. Its topic is timely, its characters flawed but smart, and the screenplay format a great introduction to the discipline.
Friday, February 18, 2011
“My Korean Deli”
By Ben Ryder Howe
ISBN No. 978-0-385-66412-7
www.randomhouse.ca
Now this – THIS – is a memoir! Forget all those whinefests about escaping the Nazis and recovering from a meth addiction, “My Korean Deli” is “The Godfather” of corner stores. The premise is right out of a TV sitcom: It all starts when Howe’s wife (the daughter of Korean immigrants) buys her Mom a convenience store. When Mom can’t keep the business going, it falls to Howe and his own Mrs. to run it. What follows is the American class struggle squared: In bleakly hilarious and yet thoughtful prose, Howe explains how he edited The Paris Review by day (alongside George Plimpton) and then sold lottery tickets and bologna by night. What makes “My Korean Deli” such a good read is that it seemingly covers all genres of entertainment. There’s the fish-out-of-water premise: At first, Howe writes, “It seems unreal to be on the other side of the checkout counter.” Then there’s the cost of doing business in a mercilessly political correct marketplace (the coffee has to be from “ecologically responsible land tenure systems in countries that provide universal pre-K-through-3 education and have no military.”). And finally, there’s the suspenseful power struggle: the threat of two new convenience stores in the same neighbourhood. It should all read like a really long magazine article but Howe turns his tiny, intimate story into an engrossing epic about the changing face of American culture.
ISBN No. 978-0-385-66412-7
www.randomhouse.ca
Now this – THIS – is a memoir! Forget all those whinefests about escaping the Nazis and recovering from a meth addiction, “My Korean Deli” is “The Godfather” of corner stores. The premise is right out of a TV sitcom: It all starts when Howe’s wife (the daughter of Korean immigrants) buys her Mom a convenience store. When Mom can’t keep the business going, it falls to Howe and his own Mrs. to run it. What follows is the American class struggle squared: In bleakly hilarious and yet thoughtful prose, Howe explains how he edited The Paris Review by day (alongside George Plimpton) and then sold lottery tickets and bologna by night. What makes “My Korean Deli” such a good read is that it seemingly covers all genres of entertainment. There’s the fish-out-of-water premise: At first, Howe writes, “It seems unreal to be on the other side of the checkout counter.” Then there’s the cost of doing business in a mercilessly political correct marketplace (the coffee has to be from “ecologically responsible land tenure systems in countries that provide universal pre-K-through-3 education and have no military.”). And finally, there’s the suspenseful power struggle: the threat of two new convenience stores in the same neighbourhood. It should all read like a really long magazine article but Howe turns his tiny, intimate story into an engrossing epic about the changing face of American culture.
“When Apples Grew Noses and White Horses Flew”
By Jan Andrews
ISBN No. 978-0-88899-952-8
www.groundwoodbooks.com
“When Apples Grew Noses…” follows the everyday yet fantastical adventures of a foreign fairy tale everyman named Ti-Jean (the introduction wisely explains that Ti-Jean is like “Jack” in the fairy tales most of us remember: a projection of our myriad selves, and whose past changes to accompany whatever story he’s in). In the three tales here Ti-Jean outwits “a greedy princess”, “a pint-sized scoundrel” and a young woman “too clever for her own good.” In short, he’s a karmic Better Business Bureau, evening up the score in places referred to as the “New World” while being faithful to the Old Country style of oral history storytelling. And unlike a lot of oral history, the stories here seem to have actually improved with each airing: plots make sense, characters are smart, and the moral lesson isn’t always obvious. And when it is – as in the case of a fiddle that’s both inspirational and magical – it evokes touches of the Pied Piper that’ll be appreciated long after the stories are finished.
ISBN No. 978-0-88899-952-8
www.groundwoodbooks.com
“When Apples Grew Noses…” follows the everyday yet fantastical adventures of a foreign fairy tale everyman named Ti-Jean (the introduction wisely explains that Ti-Jean is like “Jack” in the fairy tales most of us remember: a projection of our myriad selves, and whose past changes to accompany whatever story he’s in). In the three tales here Ti-Jean outwits “a greedy princess”, “a pint-sized scoundrel” and a young woman “too clever for her own good.” In short, he’s a karmic Better Business Bureau, evening up the score in places referred to as the “New World” while being faithful to the Old Country style of oral history storytelling. And unlike a lot of oral history, the stories here seem to have actually improved with each airing: plots make sense, characters are smart, and the moral lesson isn’t always obvious. And when it is – as in the case of a fiddle that’s both inspirational and magical – it evokes touches of the Pied Piper that’ll be appreciated long after the stories are finished.
Friday, January 21, 2011
“Benedict”
By Teresa Duran; Illustrations by Elena Val
ISBN No. 978-1-55498-098-7
“Migrant”
By Maxine Trottier; Illustrations by Isabelle Arsenault
ISBN No. 978-0-88899-975-7
Both available at www.groundwoodbooks.com
The first lines of “Benedict” are very disturbing. They tell us that the little boy of the book’s title “lives in a very hot place. It is red, red, red.” And in case you didn’t get the point of all that red, Elena Val draws you a picture: battling snakes, pitchforks, and the gaping maws of hell itself. Your mouth will be gaping too when you consider that “Benedict” is about a kid living in H E double hockey sticks – but only until you realize that “Benny” is actually tired of seeing all that red. So with one springy coil of his tail (just picture the slingshot on the iPhone app “Angry Birds”) he vaults himself from a red place to a white one (the North Pole). Here everything is cold and snowy. Another “sproing!” and Benny is in the desert where everything is yellow. And so on and so on, until he’s visited earth’s whole colour scheme. “Benedict” is a cute book – and a conversation piece. I would have enjoyed it more had Teresa Duran set the whole story in various imaginary places (religious zealots, no e-mails please) and the book’s font more rousing than rudimentary.
“Migrant” is even more to the point. It’s the story of a Mennonite/Mexican child named Anna who travels north with her family each Spring to work on farms harvesting fruits and vegetables. Speaking patchy “Low German” or “Plautdietsch”, Anna doesn’t make new friends; she just tries to acclimatize herself to the new culture. At the supermarket she “listens to all the voices – to the woman with pink hair at the cash register, to the tattooed men who put cans on the shelves. But she only understands some of their words. Dollars. Peas. Meatballs.” With a child’s-eye view the book compares her life with that of a bird or rabbit migrating north each Spring and then south in the Fall. There’s Anna’s observation of her mother making “a home of yet another empty farmhouse, the rooms filled with the ghosts of last year’s workers.” Her sisters sleep in one bed, her brothers in another. In a year when immigration is a hot-button election topic, “Migrant” should be a hot-button book – and it is. It’s just so culturally sensitive and beautifully told that it’s hard to take exception with its closing message that migrants “be treated with the same respect that is extended to citizens and visitors alike.”
By Teresa Duran; Illustrations by Elena Val
ISBN No. 978-1-55498-098-7
“Migrant”
By Maxine Trottier; Illustrations by Isabelle Arsenault
ISBN No. 978-0-88899-975-7
Both available at www.groundwoodbooks.com
The first lines of “Benedict” are very disturbing. They tell us that the little boy of the book’s title “lives in a very hot place. It is red, red, red.” And in case you didn’t get the point of all that red, Elena Val draws you a picture: battling snakes, pitchforks, and the gaping maws of hell itself. Your mouth will be gaping too when you consider that “Benedict” is about a kid living in H E double hockey sticks – but only until you realize that “Benny” is actually tired of seeing all that red. So with one springy coil of his tail (just picture the slingshot on the iPhone app “Angry Birds”) he vaults himself from a red place to a white one (the North Pole). Here everything is cold and snowy. Another “sproing!” and Benny is in the desert where everything is yellow. And so on and so on, until he’s visited earth’s whole colour scheme. “Benedict” is a cute book – and a conversation piece. I would have enjoyed it more had Teresa Duran set the whole story in various imaginary places (religious zealots, no e-mails please) and the book’s font more rousing than rudimentary.
“Migrant” is even more to the point. It’s the story of a Mennonite/Mexican child named Anna who travels north with her family each Spring to work on farms harvesting fruits and vegetables. Speaking patchy “Low German” or “Plautdietsch”, Anna doesn’t make new friends; she just tries to acclimatize herself to the new culture. At the supermarket she “listens to all the voices – to the woman with pink hair at the cash register, to the tattooed men who put cans on the shelves. But she only understands some of their words. Dollars. Peas. Meatballs.” With a child’s-eye view the book compares her life with that of a bird or rabbit migrating north each Spring and then south in the Fall. There’s Anna’s observation of her mother making “a home of yet another empty farmhouse, the rooms filled with the ghosts of last year’s workers.” Her sisters sleep in one bed, her brothers in another. In a year when immigration is a hot-button election topic, “Migrant” should be a hot-button book – and it is. It’s just so culturally sensitive and beautifully told that it’s hard to take exception with its closing message that migrants “be treated with the same respect that is extended to citizens and visitors alike.”
Sunday, January 9, 2011
"The Guardians"
By Andrew Pyper
ISBN No. 978-0-385-66371-7
www.randomhouse.ca
Trivia quiz: Remember “Sleepers”? The 1996 best seller about four men who conspire to kill a guard who molested them when they were juvenile delinquents? It was made into a movie starring Brad Pitt. Remember the 2003 best seller “Mystic River”? It was about the abduction of a boy, his return, and a murder and made into a movie starring Sean Penn. And what about “The Secret History”? Do you remember that book? It was about cookie-cutter college kids who try to commit the perfect murder and hasn’t been made into a movie yet. No problem if you missed them. This year’s version of “Sleepers”, “Mystic River” and “The Secret History” is called “The Guardians” and I’m thinking Russell Crowe would make a great lead as a Parkinsons patient returning to the scene of a crime he and three boyhood friends committed decades ago. Unfortunately, given the depressing state of movies today the part will likely go to one of the “Gossip Girl” guys.
This time the scene of the crime is a grisly town aptly named Grimshaw. The guys are reunited when one of them commits suicide and the remaining three realize that three people really can keep a secret – if two of them are dead. “I know now that you can do terrible things without an idea,” one of them writes in his Memory Diary. “You can do them without feeling it’s really you doing them.” And in that one sentence Pyper sums up the thoughtless crimes of youth; his book becomes a “Crime and Punishment” x 4. But “The Guardians” is also a character study about WHY kids do awful things and then say they don’t know why they did what they did. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about just watch a few episodes of “Judge Judy” when she grills a stupid teen about his/her DUI.) Giving his lead character Parkinsons is a nice touch (literally; doorknobs feel like a “ball of ice”) even if it reminds you of the pulpy vulnerabilities Stephen King favours for his own characters (it seems like someone in every King novel has asthma). Pyper is a better writer, though (no nasty e-mails, please). There’s something epic about “The Guardians” – and not in a populist, corny way. The ground it covers should feel well-tread and obvious and yet it instead feels fresh, inventive and engaging. For instance, a Grimshaw restaurant is underlit not for ambience “but to hide whatever crunches underfoot on the carpet.” “The Guardians” is a psychological thriller with actual idiosyncratic smarts.
ISBN No. 978-0-385-66371-7
www.randomhouse.ca
Trivia quiz: Remember “Sleepers”? The 1996 best seller about four men who conspire to kill a guard who molested them when they were juvenile delinquents? It was made into a movie starring Brad Pitt. Remember the 2003 best seller “Mystic River”? It was about the abduction of a boy, his return, and a murder and made into a movie starring Sean Penn. And what about “The Secret History”? Do you remember that book? It was about cookie-cutter college kids who try to commit the perfect murder and hasn’t been made into a movie yet. No problem if you missed them. This year’s version of “Sleepers”, “Mystic River” and “The Secret History” is called “The Guardians” and I’m thinking Russell Crowe would make a great lead as a Parkinsons patient returning to the scene of a crime he and three boyhood friends committed decades ago. Unfortunately, given the depressing state of movies today the part will likely go to one of the “Gossip Girl” guys.
This time the scene of the crime is a grisly town aptly named Grimshaw. The guys are reunited when one of them commits suicide and the remaining three realize that three people really can keep a secret – if two of them are dead. “I know now that you can do terrible things without an idea,” one of them writes in his Memory Diary. “You can do them without feeling it’s really you doing them.” And in that one sentence Pyper sums up the thoughtless crimes of youth; his book becomes a “Crime and Punishment” x 4. But “The Guardians” is also a character study about WHY kids do awful things and then say they don’t know why they did what they did. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about just watch a few episodes of “Judge Judy” when she grills a stupid teen about his/her DUI.) Giving his lead character Parkinsons is a nice touch (literally; doorknobs feel like a “ball of ice”) even if it reminds you of the pulpy vulnerabilities Stephen King favours for his own characters (it seems like someone in every King novel has asthma). Pyper is a better writer, though (no nasty e-mails, please). There’s something epic about “The Guardians” – and not in a populist, corny way. The ground it covers should feel well-tread and obvious and yet it instead feels fresh, inventive and engaging. For instance, a Grimshaw restaurant is underlit not for ambience “but to hide whatever crunches underfoot on the carpet.” “The Guardians” is a psychological thriller with actual idiosyncratic smarts.
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