Saturday June 07, 2008
This Old West is a family affair
SUN GOING DOWNBy Jack ToddViking Canada, 467 pages, $34Sun Going Down is Montreal journalist Jack Todd's first novel. Or to be more accurate, his first two novels.
Love and joy, pain and misery, drugs and hugs
BEAUTIFUL BOYA Father's Journey ThroughHis Son's AddictionBy David SheffThomas Allen, 320 pages, $26.95Just a few chapters into his book, Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction, U.S. journalist David Sheff explains: ''Drug stories are sinister. Like some war stories, they focus on adventure and escape. In the tradition of a long line of famous and infamous carousers and their chroniclers, even hangovers and near-death experiences and visits to the emergency room can be made to seem glamorous. But often the storytellers omit the slow, degenerative psychic trauma, and finally, casualties.''
The Congo is her beat
THE REBELS' HOURBy Lieve JorisTranslated by Liz WatersGrove Press, 299 pages, $26.50Meet Assani. He is a Banyamulenge - a member of a herding people in the high plains of Eastern Congo descended from Rwandan Tutsis - who becomes a rebel soldier and, ultimately, a high-ranking official in the Congolese Army.
Bad girl, bad girl, watcha gonna do?
I often entertain fantasies about bringing down the current government. Except, instead of putting forward a non-confidence motion, I'd be at the centre of a pillow-talk scandal that would oust the stodgy Tories.
PAPERBACKS
OUT OF ORBITThe Incredible Adventure of Three Astronauts Who Were Hundreds of Miles Above Earth When They Lost Their Ride HomeBy Chris Jones, Anansi, 284 pages, $14.95
CRIME BOOKS
THE LAST TRAIN TO KAZANBy Stephen Miller, Penguin, 420 pages, $24If you missed Vancouver actor Stephen Miller's first Pyotr Ryzhkov novel, Field of Mars, you should pick it up when you buy this book. You'll want it because it introduces his investigator, Ryszhkov, in the last days of the czars, and it's really good. But Last Train to Kazan is even better. Miller really knows how to build characters, construct the setting for a grand historical novel and make it fast, fun and exciting.
He put the 'British' in British Columbia
MADNESS, BETRAYALAND THE LASHThe Epic Voyage of Captain George VancouverBy Stephen R. BownDouglas and McIntyre,254 pages, $34.95The sad tale of Captain George Vancouver reminds me of the old story of the first mate who wrote in the ship's log: ''The captain was sober tonight'' - an accurate statement, but a nasty innuendo. Vancouver discovered Vancouver Island, put the British in British Columbia, drew one of the most important maps in history and brought almost all of his crew safely home after a voyage of more than four years and 65,000 miles. But in Britain, he was portrayed as an embarrassing footnote to a glorious age, and slandered and ridiculed by influential shipmates who shaped his public image.
Netizens of the world, unite
THE FUTURE OF THE INTERNET AND HOW TO STOP ITBy Jonathan ZittrainYale University Press,342 pages, $30AGAINST THE MACHINEBeing Human in the Ageof the Electronic Mob
Home (not so) sweet home
THE HOUSE ON FORTUNE STREETBy Margot LiveseyHarperCollins, 312 pages, $26.95The advance copy for Margot Livesey's new novel, The House on Fortune Street, arrived with a form letter that struck an odd note. Purporting to be a personal communication, the letter begins with Livesey recalling the 10 years she lived in Toronto (she now lives in Boston and Britain) before asking readers to treat the novel as relevant to ''home.''
Time never wasted
T.S. Eliot reversed William Carlos Williams's maxim, ''No ideas but in things.'' For Eliot, there were no things but in ideas. To the slightly older Williams, an American who stayed home, Eliot's metaphysical concerns and dense allusiveness were anathema. However, Eliot came by them honestly. Before he settled in London, he'd been a student of philosophy, had attended Harvard, the Sorbonne and Oxford, and was heir to the Transcendentalism of his New England youth.
It's enough to make you cry
EX-COTTAGERS IN LOVEBy J. M. KearnsKey Porter, 384 pages, $19.95For the ex-cottagers of Ex-Cottagers in Love, it's one damn thing after another. At various points, they're forced to contend with crises in faith and compromised careers, with a rebellious teenager and an ailing parent, with anxious wives and adulterous ones, with abortion and arson and folk songs. As if that weren't angst enough, Virginia Woolf pops her moody head in, too. J. M. Kearns has thrown everything he has at his debut novel; some of it sticks and some of it doesn't, but the plot ambles along benignly enough until it is jarred by the melodramatic conclusion.
E-VOX POPULI: OUR READERS WRITE
Philip Repko from Gilbertsville, Pa., writes: Personally, I think the list must include Joseph Heller's Catch-22. The satire, irreverence and general tomfoolery have been imitated, but never replicated, and have influenced writers for the the past 50 years.
When aversion meets desire
THE CULT OF QUICK REPAIRBy Dede CraneCoteau, 208 pages, $18.95While grocery shopping, a hung-over father notices that his young son is being watched by a scruffy old man in a beige raincoat and red tuque. ''The drunk's still gawking. ''Sure hope he looks like his mother,' he says and shakes his head in a kind of figure eight.
All dressed up ... and in disguise
THE CLOTHES ON THEIR BACKS By Linda GrantLittle, Brown, 293 pages, $36In 2000, Linda Grant won the Orange Prize for Fiction for her novel When I Lived in Modern Times. Set in the last years of the British Mandate in Tel Aviv, it was a book of subtle power, a book of ideas, a quiet book that sneaked up at the end and slapped you across the face.
An African idyll
TWENTY CHICKENSFOR A SADDLEThe Story of an African ChildhoodBy Robyn ScottPenguin Canada, 464 pages, $24Robyn Scott is smart and charming and, at the age of 27, surely precocious to be coming out with a memoir weighing in at 464 pages. And yet, in this woman's hands, the length is justified. It's a fabulous read, rollicking, good-humoured and intensely sane in spite of selling itself, in part, on the shenanigans of her adventure-seeking ''deeply eccentric'' parents. (Please, by southern African standards, these people are refreshingly, almost unbelievably, normal.)
BESTSELLERS
FictionTHIS WEEK/LAST WEEK/WEEKS ON LIST/TITLE/AUTHOR/PUBLISHER/PRICE 1 24The Host, by Stephenie Meyers (Little, Brown, $28.99). 2 13Love The One You're With, by Emily Giffin (St. Martin's, $27.95). 3 -1Devil May Care, by Sebastian Faulks (Doubleday Canada, $29.95). 4 -1Chasing Harry Winston, by Lauren Weisberger (Simon and Schuster, $29.99). 5 513Remember Me?, by Sophie Kinsella (Dial, $30). 6 44Careless In Red, by Elizabeth George (HarperCollins, $29.95). 7 -1Blood Noir, by Laurell Hamilton (Berkley, $28.50). 8 102Bright Shiny Morning, by James Frey (HarperCollins, $28.95). 9 32Odd Hours, by Dean Koontz (Bantam, $32). 10 77Belong To Me, by Marisa De Los Santos (Morrow, $18.95).
It's a dog's life
A WEEK OF THISBy Nathan WhitlockECW, 271 pages, $26.95We get a sense of Nathan Whitlock's view of humankind in the first paragraphs of this debut. On a frigid, almost-winter morning, a woman walks a dog in a bland town somewhere between Toronto and cottage country. Heading to the nearby park, she refuses to enter it or release her aging German shepherd. ''Just go, sweetie. ... It's freezing, mummy's cold.''
Who will save our cities? And how?
URBAN NATIONWhy We Need to Give Power Back to the Cities to Make Canada StrongBy Alan BroadbentHarperCollins, 245 pages, $29.95 To anyone who's been involved in Toronto's frustrating struggles to control its destiny, Alan Broadbent is almost a household name. Serious and unassuming, Broadbent is the sort of engaged citizen every city needs: a business person who used his wealth to enable important discussions about a rapidly changing urban region.
Why the heart of darkness darkened
THE BETRAYAL OF AFRICABy Gerald CaplanGroundwood, 144 pages,$18.95 (hc), $11 (pb)WHEN THINGS FALL APARTState Failure in Late-Century AfricaBy Robert H. BatesCambridge University Press,
