The Launch of a Novel and an Imprint

Last night I had the pleasure of attending the launch of Marianne Apostolides first novel, Swim. If my interest in the novel hadn't already been piqued by ongoing conversations with Marianne about books and the writing process (her author bio neatly sums up her preoccupations thus: "her current writing explores the contact zone between genres — poetry vs. prose, fiction vs. non-fiction, creative vs. critical"), the excellent reading that she gave from it would certainly have done the trick. And it's a gorgeous looking book as well. I arrived home late in the evening, signed copy in hand, well pleased with myself. I can't wait to read it.

Here's a full description lifted from the back cover:

Attuned to a body in motion, Swim pulls the reader beneath the logic of prose, into the eroticism of language itself. The arcing rhythm of a body breathing – a woman marking her birth as she swims in a pool – sustains the unique and hypnotic language that becomes the medium through which this story moves.

Swim entwines the present with those past actions and consequences that have brought Kat to the Greek mountain village where her father was born. She swims laps while her fourteen-year-old daughter reclines on a chaise lounge, poolside, reading a book. Without ever leaving the pool we enter discrete scenes with Kat's parents, daughter, husband and lover. On entering each point in this history, Kat reveals an undertow of sound, rhythm and words in their rippling meanings. Each new lap moves Kat closer to her impending decision: whether she will leave her husband. But the deeper tension within this innovative novel derives from the writing itself – its vital urgency that extends the possibilities of narrative beyond the fixed and into the fluid.

For publisher BookThug, last night's launch of Marianne's novel also served as the launch of the new imprint under which it appears, the Department of Narrative Studies which is devoted to the publication of innovative fiction. BookThug is an independent press, best known as a publisher of poetry, whose stated mission is "to enrich and advance the tradition of experimental literature." I've been challenged and delighted by a number of their poetry titles (The Men by Lisa Robertson is one of my all time favourites), and I'm excited to see where their foray into fiction will take them.

Alicia Giménez-Bartlett’s Inspector Petra Delicado Series

What a happy discovery Alicia Giménez-Bartlett's Inspector Petra Delicado series has proven to be.

I usually like to begin a series at the beginning and, although the translations of the Petra Delicado novels have been published out of order (as is so often and so annoyingly the case with European crime fiction), the first three books are all now available in English. But Prime Time Suspect, the third in the series, was the first to turn up on the library hold shelf, so I dived in there.

I confess that it took me a bit of time to fully enter into the book. I was distracted by a slightly off-kilter quality to the dialogue which I initially assumed to be a flaw in the translation. But I soon realized that the source of the dissonance wasn't the dialogue but rather the character of Petra Delicado. She never responds in quite the way one would expect, whether to a new development in the investigation, an emotional scene with her visiting sister, or a bit of banter with her (also rather eccentric) partner Sergeant Fermín Garzón. Her methods, her politics, and her philosophy of life are sufficiently unconventional that I found myself reading avidly as much to see what she would do and say next as to get to the bottom of the plot. Mind you, the suspense of the plot propelled me along nicely as well with plenty of twists and turns that had me guessing right to the end. And the glimpses of Spain, a country of which I know little, were a bonus as well. The series is set primarily in Barcelona, but the investigation at the heart of Prime Time Suspect had Inspector Delicado and Sergeant Garzón travelling back and forth between Barcelona and Madrid a number of times, and reflecting on the distinct character of each city in very interesting and illuminating fashion.

By the time I finished Prime Time Suspect, the copy of Death Rites that I'd ordered had arrived. So now I'm well into it, and relishing the opportunity to learn some of the back story: how Delicado developed into the woman and the police officer that she has become, and how her partnership with Sergeant Garzón developed.

That leaves me with just one more to acquire: Dog Day. But a quick google search reveals that at least seven novels in the series have been published in Spanish, and I dearly hope that more of them are due to be translated into English, as I'm keen to continue following the adventures of Inspector Delicado and Sergeant Garzón.

(Thanks to Danielle whose mention of Alicia Giménez-Bartlett prompted me to seek out these books—and I see that she too has enjoyed her first encounter with Petra Delicado.)

Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life is part memoir, part treatise/meditation on sustainable agriculture and ethical eating. In it, she recounts a year-long experiment in which she and her family opted out of the industrial food chain, eating only what they could grow or raise themselves on their Virginia farm, or purchase from their neighbours, save for a very few fair trade indulgences (coffee, hot chocolate and spices such as cinnamon and turmeric) shipped from afar. Kingsolver explains the endeavour and something of the motivation behind it thus:

This is the story of a year in which we made every attempt to feed ourselves animals and vegetables whose provenance we really knew. We tried to wring most of the petroleum out of our food chain, even if it meant giving up some things. Our highest shopping goal was to get our food from so close to home, we'd know the person who grew it. Often that turned out to be us, as we learned to produce more of what we needed, starting with dirt, seeds, and enough knowledge to muddle through. Or starting with baby animals and enough sense to refrain from naming them.

The experiment was very much a family affair and so too is the book. It contains sidebars by Kingsolver’s husband, biologist Steven L. Hopp, on relevant aspects of environmental science, the food industry and legal regulation thereof, and local food activism, and occasional short essays by daughter Camille offering up a teenage perspective on the experience as well as seasonal menus and recipes. But the primary voice is Kingsolver's and a very engaging voice it is. I've read a few books in this vein that suffer from an excess of earnestness and a dearth of writing skill. Kingsolver, by contrast, has produced a smart, funny, thought-provoking, and highly evocative book.

A good bit of it is devoted to a day-to-day, season-by-season, nuts and bolts description of the small-scale farming that brought food to their table. In the introduction, Kingsolver is quick to say of this aspect of the book that it is not intended as a "how-to," and making a case for the relevance of it to urbanites like me who lack the resources or the inclination to contemplate growing our own dinners:

...think of the agricultural parts of the story as a music-appreciation course for food—acquainting yourself with the composers and conductors can improve the quality of your experience. [...] Knowing how foods grow is to know how and when to look for them; such expertise is useful for certain kinds of people, namely, the ones who eat, no matter where they live or grocery shop.

But it turns out that I didn't need to be convinced on utilitarian grounds. The agricultural parts of the story proved to be my favourite parts. They're beautifully written and were frequently something of a revelation to me. Early on, when I found myself reading a lengthy bit about asparagus (pages 26-29 of the hardcover edition) aloud to Eric, it was clear that I was hooked. I've been enjoying asparagus for years but I had not previously so much as pictured how it looks in the ground. Ditto for peanuts. I was so taken with Kingsolver's description of cheese making that I'm contemplating learning how to do it myself despite being borderline lactose intolerant and not even slightly domestic. And who would have thought that there could be such suspense in a tale of turkey mating? The book was truly a pleasure from beginning to end. I highly recommend it.


Soup of the Day: Today's soup was a delicious Lentil and Carrot, made from a recipe in Cooking With Foods That Fight Cancer. It's the third soup recipe from this book that I've tried that has produced stellar results (the other winners are Cuban Black Bean, and Mediterranean Bean) and the Shepherd's Pie proved excellent also. This book is a companion to another that explains the cancer-fighting properties of the various foods that figure in the recipes, Foods That Fight Cancer. I haven't yet read the nutritional science behind it all, so for now I'm recommending the recipes simply on the basis of deliciousness with the healthiness factor in the background as a potential added bonus.

Next Friday: A post on Harvey Levenstein's Revolution at the Table: The Transformation of the American Diet, a most interesting social history of eating in the U.S. that spans the apparently pivotal years of 1880-1930.

Ian Rankin and Anthony Powell

This is a connection that would not have occurred to me, courtesy of David Geherin:

Rankin lists Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time, a multi-novel series which paints a panorama of English society, as his favourite novel. In twelve volumes published over a twenty-five-year period, Powell chronicled the changing fortunes of Britain's upper class from 1914 to the 1960s. Rankin began to see how he could explore not just a single character in depth, but also a place and, like Powell did, an entire society. "Everything I wanted to say about Scotland," he realized, "I could say in a crime novel."

From David Geherin, Scene of the Crime: The Importance of Place in Crime and Mystery Fiction (2008).

Shifting Away from the Narrative Desire Typical of Crime Fiction

Andrew Nestingen on Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander novels:

Mankell shifts away from the narrative desire typical of crime fiction--investigation and disclosure--yet maintains crime fiction's tension by substituting a narrative desire focused on the affective state of the protagonist. Readers may be less interested in the crime and its investigation than in how Wallander will respond to the next crisis in the investigation. Can he endure? What does he think? How does he feel? With this method, Mankell uses the police procedural to shift reader investment from anticipating and learning the outcome of the investigation to anticipating and knowing Wallander's responses, which requires engaging the ethical and political arguments about global interconnection these entail.

From Andrew Nestingen, Crime and Fantasy in Scandinavia: Fiction, Film, and Social Change (2008).

Questioning a Contradictory Review

In today's Toronto Star, there is a review that strikes me as rather contradictory by James Grainger of Lee Gowan's new novel Confession. The setting of the novel apparently moves back and forth between Toronto and the fictional town of Broken Head, Saskatchewan. On the one hand, Grainger criticizes the Toronto segments for reproducing stereotypes of urban Canada:

The Toronto scenes read like writing exercises for an Urban Alienation 101 course. Canada's biggest city is unwelcoming, smelly, a monoculture of empty consumerism and disconnected crowds – in other words, yet another in a long line of dismissive portraits of urban life brought to you courtesy of the Seriously Literary Canadian Novel.

But on the other, Grainger questions Gowan's portrayal of Saskatchewan for, at least in part, not sufficiently meshing with the stereotypes that he and fellow eastern Canadians hold of it:

The problem here is the novel's reliance on transplanted Southern Gothic literary conventions, none of which really takes root in the dry, cold countryside of Saskatchewan, where most of the novel takes place. Perhaps the Prairies are too freighted, at least for us Easterners, with associations of stoic farmers, grim Presbyterianism and the perpetual grind of hard work to stand in for the crime- and Jesus-haunted literary traditions of the American Pentecostal South.

Surely those associations of "stoic farmers, grim Presbyterianism and the perpetual grind of hard work" add up to no less dismissive a portrait of rural life and are just as much a product of the "Seriously Literary Canadian Novel" with which Grainger takes issue in the other passage that I quoted above? An odd move then to criticize the book for departing from them.

Myself, I'm intrigued by the prospect of a prairie gothic turn. With a foot firmly planted in both Saskatchewan (my childhood home) and Toronto (my current home), and as an admirer of Lee Gowan's previous work, I'm looking forward to reading Confession and arriving at my own assessment of his portrayals of both realms and, of course, of the novel as a whole.

Happy 250th Birthday to Robert Burns

Today is the 250th anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns. Alas, I will not be celebrating the occasion by partaking in any Burns Supper festivities, mired as I am in exam marking this weekend. But I will celebrate in my own small way. This afternoon I will buy myself a copy of Robert Crawford's new biography of Burns, titled simply The Bard. (I've been eagerly anticipating this one for some time and it goes on sale in North America this very day. And after his masterful Scotland's Books, who could doubt that Crawford is perfectly suited to the task of bringing to life Burns and his work in his and its full complexity?) Then later this evening, I will raise a glass and declaim a few of Burns' poems. (I find that reading them aloud increases the pleasure of them exponentially.)

Here's one of my favourites:

A Man's A Man For A' That

Is there for honest Poverty
That hings his head, an' a' that;
The coward slave-we pass him by,
We dare be poor for a' that!
For a' that, an' a' that.
Our toils obscure an' a' that,
The rank is but the guinea's stamp,
The Man's the gowd for a' that.

What though on hamely fare we dine,
Wear hoddin grey, an' a that;
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine;
A Man's a Man for a' that:
For a' that, and a' that,
Their tinsel show, an' a' that;
The honest man, tho' e'er sae poor,
Is king o' men for a' that.

Ye see yon birkie, ca'd a lord,
Wha struts, an' stares, an' a' that;
Tho' hundreds worship at his word,
He's but a coof for a' that:
For a' that, an' a' that,
His ribband, star, an' a' that:
The man o' independent mind
He looks an' laughs at a' that.

A prince can mak a belted knight,
A marquis, duke, an' a' that;
But an honest man's abon his might,
Gude faith, he maunna fa' that!
For a' that, an' a' that,
Their dignities an' a' that;
The pith o' sense, an' pride o' worth,
Are higher rank than a' that.

Then let us pray that come it may,
(As come it will for a' that,)
That Sense and Worth, o'er a' the earth,
Shall bear the gree, an' a' that.
For a' that, an' a' that,
It's coming yet for a' that,
That Man to Man, the world o'er,
Shall brothers be for a' that.

For many more fine Burns' poems, click here.

The Appeal of Scandinavian Crime Fiction

John Crace on the appeal of Scandinavian crime fiction:

While some of Scandinavia's literary elite looked down on [Peter] Høeg and [Henning] Mankell abandoning serious fiction in favour of something unashamedly mass market, there's little argument that they set the standard for what followed. Their books may have been populist but they were never pulp, and the quality of writing in Scandinavian crime fiction has remained, in general, a notch or two higher than elsewhere.

But no one buys a thriller for the writing alone: the Scandinavians have consistently come up with great plotlines that are as cold and bleak as the locations in which they are set. It's this sense of the other that sets them apart.

For the rest of the article, click here. And don’t neglect to scroll down to the very end for Crace’s list of authors to watch out for, complete with brief bios and series descriptions—an excellent resource if this is a new arena for you.

More Powerful in the Reading than in the Hearing

For a most interesting analysis by Stanley Fish (law and literature scholar extraordinaire) of the text of Barack Obama's inaugeral address, click here.

Food-Focussed Fridays

I’m in dire need of some blogging discipline and to that end I’m experimenting with a weekly feature. I’ve been doing a lot of reading about food lately so I’ll make that my focus. Welcome, then, to Food-Focussed Fridays. Every Friday, I’ll report in on or offer up a quotation from whatever I’m reading on the topic of food be it a memoir, a cookbook, a social history, a food industry exposé, a treatise on nutrition, a manifesto on eating locally, or just a particularly toothsome passage of fiction.

Fridays are also the days that I expect to have a bit of time for cooking this term, so I may double up and report on my culinary adventures here too. Mind you I’m not very domestic, and just turning on the stove is a culinary adventure for me. Nevertheless, in a quest to up my vegetable intake, I’ve resolved to attempt a new soup recipe every week for the remainder of the winter. If I make good on that, I can offer up soup reviews alongside book reviews.

Here are some of the recent acquisitions that I expect to be writing about in the coming weeks:

Andrew Carmellini & Gwen Hyman: Urban Italian: Simple Recipes and True Stories from a Life in Food;

Barbara Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life;

Harvey Levenstein, Revolution at the Table: the Transformation of the American Diet;

Harvey Levenstein, Paradox of Plenty: A Social History of Eating in Modern America;

Marion Nestle, Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health;

Michael Pollan, Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals;

Paul Roberts, The End of Food; and,

Alisa Smith & J.B. MacKinnon, The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating.


And two new releases that I haven’t got my hands on yet but that I’m keen to acquire:

Mark Bittman, Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating; and,

Hank Cardello & Doug Garr, Stuffed: An Insider's Look at Who's (Really) Making America Fat.

On the menu for next week then, a post on Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle accompanied by a report on the soup of the day. Right now it’s a toss up between Warm Pea Soup (surely the “Warm” in the title is redundant? would anyone serve cold pea soup?) and Carrot with Red Lentils…