REVIEW: THE WAIT

How long would you wait to speak up about abuse? How long would you wait to reach out for treatment if you were ill? How long would you wait if the treatments available were very scarce and possibly inappropriate? Kellie JOYce’s book The Wait conveys the inexorable frustration of waiting for opportunities to speak out about abuse, to reach out for mental health care and to be treated effectively for mental illness.

There are many books about brave people who rise above the circumstances of their birth -- poverty, addictions, abuse – but few convey the intense sense that JOYce describes of the innate stubborn refusal to give up hope. Science teaches us our genes and circumstances shape us, so how is it that in the face of overwhelming odds someone emerges with the strength to go beyond circumstances and flourish? JOYce’s impish refusal to submerge is celebratory and we cannot help but smile at her tales of survival despite the horror that underpins them. Reminded of Miriam Toews' All My Puny Sorrows, The Wait reads like dirty water circling a drain, inevitably sucking downwards. Like Elf, who despite her concert pianist brilliance is depressed beyond recognition, JOYce’s husband, Les, struggles to cope with his wife’s PTSD and his own deep depression. While JOYce is speaking from a place of her own sorrow and torture, the book remains defiant and hopeful.

It would be so easy to close the book, refuse to read the doleful facts and ignore the need. JOYce writes an estimated 75% of those suffering from a mental illness will never receive treatment, but she must not be a Cassandra; her own bravery shows us the way. True victory lies in action. I hope the book will spur you to pressure for better and more mental health care resources and help you to look in your own life at how you could reach out a hand of friendship or support to those who are forced to live apart through stigma and shame. We should laud the JOYce’s of the world who name the family violence that gives rise to such circumstances and turn the prurient poking of government agencies into creative and inspiring programming for recovery and health. As the administrative sponsor of the Bereaved By Suicide program at Hospice that helped JOYce, I know prevention is our strongest weapon. Ensuring the wounded are not left to wither away unheard and uncared for is also a challenge we can all rise to.

- Rosslyn Bentley

TONIGHT: The Bookshelf will be at Rickson Ridge PS for their Twilight Shopping Night

Rickson Ridge Public School is having their inaugural Twilight Shopping Night this evening from 5:30-8:00. Making the trip south and bringing our favourite books of the year has gotten us really excited!

Our booth will feature our favourite cookbooks, the latest non-fiction, and the hottest biographies. Of course you will also find 2014 award-winners, including Thomas King, Sean Michaels, and Malala Yousafzai, to name a few.


For the younger set, there will be an excellent selection of picture books, junior fiction, and young adult novels. We also have great books for Minecrafters and LEGO Master Builders!!

20% of The Bookshelf's sales will be donated to the Rickson Ridge Parent Council. Come out and support some excellent local businesses while checking off some names on your Christmas list. We hope to see you there!

REVIEW: THE EXTRAORDINARY JOURNEY...

The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir Who Got Trapped in an Ikea Wardrobe strives, as the title suggests, to be moderately epic in scope. In the space of 300 tightly written pages, it does just that. The book takes us on a romp that begins in a village in India, passes through an Ikea store on the outskirts of Paris, and then launches us on a journey that is alternatingly spectacular, improbable, delightful, edifying and more than a little bit slapstick.

The protagonist of the story is Aatashatru Ogash Ragod, an Indian fakir on a pilgrimage to buy a new bed of nails at Ikea, armed with a borrowed suit, a fake 100-euro note (printed on one side only) and a round-trip plane ticket financed by the village that has adopted him as their resident faker. Relying on his mastery of the arts of deception and diversion, his intent is simply to complete his purchase and return home. He gets more than a little waylaid along the way.

The story begins with Ajatashatru finding love in the most unlikely of places (the line for Swedish meatballs in the Ikea store). Committed to his mission, he lets love leave through the front door, before unexpectedly finding himself leaving through the loading dock, trapped in the eponymous wardrobe.

In writing The Extraordinary Journey…, Romain Puertolas has combined a penchant for vaudevillian slapstick worthy of a Pink Panther movie with a biting sense of social injustice. Softened by humour, Puertolas nonetheless offers an insightful commentary on the injustices and ineptitude exercised by countries fending their borders from unwanted immigration, and the corruption and callousness of many of those stationed at sentry boxes to guard against such incursions. The book highlights the dangers faced by those seeking a better life in the 'good countries'; often at the mercy of indifferent traffickers, subjected to inhumane conditions and travelling in perilous transports. While Puertolas acknowledges the cruelty that can exist in the world, he also reminds us of the good in humankind: of the importance and value to be found in the kindness of strangers, the rewards of helping others and the redemptive power of love.

I enjoyed The Extraordinary Journey… a great deal. While it is an easy read, it is also a delightful one. Puertolas' writing style is highly visual, and I am sure that even now the book is being optioned into a movie. Suspend your disbelief and embrace the improbability that life so often offers, and this is a book that you will find rewardingly worth the time. The Extraordinary Journey… is a delightful reminder of the importance of finding love, meaning, friendship and fulfillment.

Mark Mullaly is an avid reader, sometimes writer, enthusiastic motorcyclist and lover of wine (and endeavours to engage in only one of these pursuits at any given time).

REVIEW: THE LOVE SONG OF MISS QUEENIE HENNESSY

Prim and proper. Those were the first words that came to mind when Queenie Hennessy appeared in Rachel’s Joyce’s bestselling novel, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. Dressed in a loosely-fitting brown wool suit and smiling demurely, the brewery’s first female accountant behaved impeccably in the workplace and whenever Harold drove her to business appointments.

But there was more to the “colleague” relationship between Queenie and Harold. Why else would a dying Queenie send a scrawled note to a man she had not seen in over two decades? And why would Harold walk 627 miles to help keep Queenie alive?

In The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy, Ms. Joyce provides the answers.

For starters, Queenie was not an accountant. She was a Cambridge classics scholar who persuaded the belligerent owner to hire her by promising to save the brewery five hundred pounds. Afterward, she began a program of self-education, spending days at the library reading about bookkeeping and finances.

Queenie also had a checkered past.

In addition to holding positions more suited to her education—tutor, researcher, tour guide—Queenie spent several years living with a troupe of female artists, and she had an affair with a retired high court judge. Alone and pregnant, she arrived in Kingsbridge hoping for a fresh start. She hadn’t planned on becoming embroiled personally and professionally with another married man.

Encouraged by one of the hospice volunteers, Queenie decides to write an extended deathbed letter to Harold, revealing the details of her past and her encounters with his hostile wife and wayward son. While reading, I could easily envision her trembling hands as she penned her story, all the while, determined to release decades of painful secrets. But Queenie’s inner voice is calm and sure: “My life has been small, it has been nothing to speak of. But the past is still inside me, Harold. I have never let it go.”

The novel alternates between these touching vignettes and humor-infused descriptions of hospice life. The patients are well-drawn, with their own quirks and set opinions on almost every topic. Surrounded by death’s ever-present shadow, they still manage to find renewed hope in everyday events.

When one of the more outspoken patients asks if anyone else is waiting for Harold Fry, the response is overwhelming: “One by one, and in silence, the patients raised their hands. Sunken faces. Skeletal wrists. Bandages and tubes. Sunlight poured through the windows, and the air shone with dust motes, billowing like silvered snow. The friends and families of the patients began to raise their hands too, and so did the volunteers and the nuns. At last every one in the dayroom had a hand in the air. Tall, small, young, old, fat ones, thin ones, healthy, dying. They looked from one person to the next with a dawning sense of wonder. Something new was happening. It was palpable.”

I recommend reading The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry before picking up this book. While the events do occur concurrently, it is much easier to fill in the gaps of Harold’s story rather than starting with the intimate details of Queenie’s inner life.

After retiring from a 31-year teaching career, Joanne Guidoccio launched a second act as a writer. Her articles, book reviews and short stories have appeared in newspapers, magazines and online. In September 2013, Soul Mate Publishing released her debut novel, Between Land and Sea. You can visit her website at www.joanneguidoccio.com

REVIEW: MELTDOWN IN TIBET

The difficult relationship between Tibet and China extends across thousands of years. The countries were often at war, and in the 8th century Tibetan forces attacked and captured the fabled city of Changan in China. Generally, this historical fact does not appear in Chinese histories of the Tang dynasty, (618-908), one of China’s greatest cultural periods.

Much of China’s cruelty toward the people of Tibet since China invaded is a matter of public record. However, the environmental devastation carried out by China in Tibet is not as well known. Canadian journalist Michael Buckley presents China’s environmental devastation of Tibet in his clear and sometimes heart felt writing. He has visited Tibet many times over the years, and wrote the first Lonely Planet guidebook to Tibet. His deep concern for the fate of Tibet and its people fills every page of Meltdown in Tibet.

China and India together are building four coal-fired power plants a week. At that rate, all of the global warming mitigation in the world will not matter. The rest of the world can’t mitigate the effects of burning that much coal. The effect of coal burning is worst for Tibet. The dark particulates in the air from coal burning settle on the snow and ice. Sunshine falling on the coal dust heats it and is causing one of the world’s three great cooling systems to melt rapidly. This accelerating melt is worsened by other Chinese environmental devastation in Tibet—the building of massive dams.

You may recall that when the Chinese government built the Three Gorges Dam, they forcibly removed Chinese families from homes that would be flooded by the new dam. The displaced people tried to return to their homes. The government destroyed the homes—devastation captured by Edward Burtynsky’s photographs of the communities just before they disappeared under water. When this largest dam in the world was filled with water, the weight of the water altered the rotation of the earth.

Now the Chinese government is building a much larger dam in Tibet. Along with other new dams in Tibet, all to provide hydroelectric power to China. Ordinarily, before a dam is built, such as the dam at Guelph Lake, extensive studies are carried out, and permission to build must be received from a number of government agencies, to ensure that building such a dam will not cause environmental damage. However, the dams being built by China in Tibet are being built with no permissions, and will change river flows in large rivers that flow from Tibet through numerous countries in southeast Asia. No one knows how extensive the damage will be in these countries

Is there hope for Tibet? The Simla Accord of 1914 recognized the autonomy of Tibet. That recognition disappeared in 2008, in the interests of placating China, and providing financial gains for a number of greasy palms. Britain’s role, and Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s role in this shameful betrayal of Tibet was covered by The New York Times. See: “Did Britain Just Sell Tibet?" HERE.

www.jamesedwardreid.ca

REVIEW: PUNISHMENT

This past week the Canadian press - and Canadian communities - have been asking a lot of questions about crime and punishment. With the very public revelation of Jian Ghomeshi's criminal behaviour, the public conversation includes calls for criminal prosecution all the while enacting a sort of collective trial, sentencing, and punishment in the press and social media. While listening and reading stories of his violent and repugnant behaviour, I was reading Linden MacIntyre's new book, Punishment.

Punishment is not about sexual and physical violence. Nor is it about the CBC or the media (though MacIntyre long worked for the CBC). Instead it's a book about a former prison officer, Tony Breau, who gets involved - is made to be involved - in a small town murder investigation. It's also about the consequences of telling the truth: the violence, threats, and shame that attach to those who speak out (you can see, then, why it might be a book that resonated with what I was reading and hearing in the cultural conversation around violence against women). So it's a novel that takes on the 'big' crime of murder, but it's also a novel that explores the slippery boundary between what is considered criminal, and the 'crimes' outside the criminal code: betrayal in friendship, adultery, and the willful withholding of truth from others.

Punishment offers readers a nuanced and complicated exploration of guilt, punishment, retribution and reconciliation. Early on in the novel it explodes the idea that all those in prison are criminals and that all those on the 'outside' are innocent; the novel does not belabour this point, but simply makes the observation that many crimes go unrecognized and unpunished and that many criminals are in prison for complicated reasons. Much of the novel is concerned with how and if Tony can reconcile his past with his present, his moral position with an unjust society, his care for others with the certainty that the truth can be painful. In a quintessentially Canadian literature way this struggle is worked out in the small and isolated community, where the big bad criminals come from the United States and the city, where outsiders are suspect and when guilt is both the prelude an apology and an unavoidable state of being.

What the novel does incredibly well (and with a sort of bravery, I think) is to ask readers to consider - just consider - separating the crime from the criminal; the behaviour from the person. It can be hard to empathize. It can be hard to consider empathy. When we are betrayed by lovers or friends, when a singular crime is perpetrated against us or when we are wronged by systemic and entrenched systems, the impulse is not to empathy. The push is to retribution, to punishment. As if in the punishment itself we might understand the crime or feel differently about the criminal. I am not making a novel argument in suggesting that there might be a difference between retributive and restorative justice. Rather, I'm making an argument that this novel shows - with great care and nuance - how these forms of justice differ and what is at stake for us as individuals and as communities in taking one approach or the other.

When's she not reading, Erin Aspenlieder is teaching, running or eating cookies (sometimes all at once). She prefers fiction and books made of paper. She blogs at literaryvice.ca

REVIEW: BEING MORTAL

Several years ago, I developed a list of requests to have followed for me in the event I was unable to make decisions for myself. Then things changed. Over the last two years I have visited more retirement homes, nursing homes, and hospitals providing eldercare than I care to remember. I saw and spoke to older men and women who were alert, and enjoying their lives. I also saw older people, whose minds were deteriorating, and those who now spent most of the day sleeping. Then my parents moved into a retirement home. I revised my end of life requests in response to what I saw.

I wish that I had read Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End before the events of the last few years. I’ve been reading his work for years, and think of him as the checklist doctor, who wrote The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right.  After Gawande observed a number of problems develop during the course of surgery in hospital operating rooms, he developed a checklist procedure which is now in place in many hospitals. Before an operation proceeds, the checklist involves each doctor and member of the operating team introducing themselves to each other, and describing what each member of the team is responsible for.

In Being Mortal, Gawande has examined something that many of us put off until it is too late. The gasps in the movie theatre during Michael Haneke’s film Amour, as Georges (Jean-Louis Trintignant) kills his beloved wife, Anne (Emmanuelle Riva), after she has become incapacitated by a stroke, suggest that many of us have not thought through “what matters in the end.” What will matter in the end, for the largest generation in history, the aging boomers, will loom very large for that generation. 

If you were born between 1946 and 1964, this is a book for you. If you’re a boomer, plan now—the last thing we need is retirement and nursing homes full of old boomers who didn’t make their end of life plans. Gawande’s book contains few examples of those who planned, and many examples of those who didn’t plan for the decisions necessary as the end of life approaches.

Talk to your parents about what they want. Talk to your partner. Talk to your kids. And do it soon. “Death has a thousand doors to let out life.” Read Being Mortal, and sort out what matters in the end, with whoever may be there for you, as you approach that last door. Before it’s too late. Gawande’s Being Mortal is a clearly written, deeply informed, and compassionate book.

And by the way, one more little thing for you guys who have stopped updating the Boomer Deathwatch site.

Thanks.

www.jamesedwardreid.ca