The Westmount examiner, 25 octobre 2007, Cahier 2

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Fk i + 4 i ee 8 bo RE x, vi iN sr fa 5 3 i sr cu i 3 x Ba 5 + iM # i i Ë az i A SEY, Agr?a * 0 ; aE, ig ul a ISALNO9 Lu Hig Ji ad pes oF wr ES a po} 5 by pt ™ $ Hs mn cu + RE hy + i td is i RX 4 13:4 LEHRER inf ; 1 ; Ë Æ 3 fe i vo 5; 31 Z i fe ak TE + 143 y s È 13.i REE qqu 5 \u201c% te CL 1 ou he : soy a + ï i a ! : Er.EL § & 33 i x# Py = 4 ï i + > » 2 is ct wh 2 Sot y Ÿ $ ; fe, a 3 Al 14k £ SH008 40 M3IIAIY TY INOW sf, » > d Mary Mony Dne-year subscriptions available for $12 tS PCL IEEE Riek yo) iefr : » 0 EL ENGL OTTER LLL TOR Nt baeditoi pr the ALLAQ.Cover photo and inside photo of LOllis Rastelli by T.P.Bymes IN CAN, Jr 3 vaut The tust Montreal Review of Books hit the streets in October 1997 Inthe decade since.the ¥ mRb has given visibility to many of Quebec's best and most intngamg English-language widens i , Thanks to our taithtul advertisers over the vears, our reviewers, waiters, translators and dlustia tors.our English-language publishers, Terry Byres tor his photographs and David LeBlane di who gives the mRbaits unique style And a big thank vou to the Canada Counal of the Arts, Department ot Canadian Hentage and to SODFC your support is crucial and appreaated Louis Rastelli By han McGahee Martine Desjardins 9 Unlucky to the End: The Story of Janise Marie Gamble By ke Beurre By Richard W.Pound Kecovedy oor fyottoon Caution Can | Have a Word With You?By Howard Richler Augustino and the Choir of Destruction Kevevcod ty lin Hoss arth By Marie-Claire Blais Reviewed by Anne hudobaik 1.Little Eureka: A Decade's Thoughts on Poetry By Robyn Sarah At the Bottom of the Sky Reviewed by Brendes \u20acoce tied By Peter Dube 1.1 Scenes of Childhood A Finely Tuned Apathy Machine By Bernadette Griffin By Scott Randall Revived by Jettiey Mack The Raftsmen of the Ottawa and St.Lawrence Rivers By Leon A.Robidoux The Hole Show Reviewed by Toure Eabiam By Maya Merrick Re caved by Neat oot One Child at a Time By Julian Sher White Rapids Bove, ed by Adee Balin By Pascal Blanchet Resewod by fa hace 15 The Big Lie: On Terror, Antisemitism, and Identity By David Solway Pardon Our Monsters Re vieaved hy Mark He tteronm By Andrew Hood Resevod by Fondue Salvacr- The Skin Beneath By Nairne Holtz 16.Sitcom \u2018 By David McGimpsey Reese ed hy Ana ed Re Wet Apples, White Blood To the Far Shore By Naomi Guttman By Negovan Rajic Woodshedding By S E.Venart Loved be PAL dde qre Notebook of Roses and Civilization By Nicole Brossard Line ne bg feet Sdn on The Emily Valentine Poems By 20e Whittall The Mechanical Bird By Asa Boxer bose pe bn it Highlights of the season's books for young people hey Canada Cound ronsel dee firsts four the Arts du Canada I~) Canadian Patamoine Speke Heritage rame rates ir ® By [an MceGillis Cheap Rents, Rich Life Indie culture stalwart Louis Rastelli\u2019s full-length fiction debut renders a local scene universal very good bohemia needs its chroniclers, people who are of the scene but in crucial ways a little outside it too.People who, among the chaos and the excess and the occasional lassitude and the living for the moment, keep enough perspective to get it all down.Louis Rastelli was very much a part of the Montreal Plateau scene in the 'yos, that recessionary era that encompassed the Referendum and the lee Storm and culminated (fizzled out?) with Y2K.And he was definitely taking notes.The result, part elegy, part celebration, part parallel-universe Friends, is A Fine Ending.It\u2019s an episodically structured novel whose charms may take some time to make themselves felt but whose parts eventually coalesce into a vivid, funny and touching record of a unique time and place.If you weren't there, don\u2019t worry.Rastelli was.It shouldn't be surprising that the author is a dyed-in- the-wool Montrealer.\u201cI was adopted,\u201d says the 40-year- old over a beer in the back patio of Casa del Popolo on Boulevard St-Laurent.\u201cMy real mother as well as adopted mother are French Canadian.Both my parents were born in Montreal, pretty much the entire family on both sides still live in Montreal and has done since WWI or before, and everyone has always spoken both English and French.\u201d Looking over his largely unsung but crucial role in Montreal's indie culture of the past 15 years it's clear that Rastelli is one of those people who, once baptized into the do-it-yourself ethos of punk rock, never looked back.A tireless self-starter, he's been a cottage-industry publisher of both chapbooks and zines (his long-running Fish Piss has given many Montreal writers their first exposure), a grassroots entrepreneur (his Distroboto chain sells small artworks and books out of reclaimed cigarette machines), and organizer of the ever-expanding Expozine, the annual Montreal fair for independent publishers.Through all this he has remained an inveterate archivist and pack rat, a tendency that came in very handy when it was suggested he write a novel.\u201c1 went through literally over a thousand different files - text files, emails, journal entries, stuff from notepads \u2014 to make sure 1 didn\u2019t miss anything interesting, whether it was an episode or just a good line,\u201d he says.* Anything to make that era come alive.Even though what | kept barely amounted to 10% of what a novel needs to be, it was great to have that source material, written fresh in the voice that | had back then.\u201d The scenesters of À Fine Ending, like those of bohemias through the ages, show a mix of political awareness and social aloofness.The \u201895 Referendum, a crucial event in the era described, hardly seems to impinge on the consciousness of these partiers.| ask Rastelli if this was a conscious choice.\u201cThat was a decision influenced by the desire to make the story universal.| felt the Referendum would have stuck out a bit too much.1 do mention the (post-) Referendum riot, which hardly anyone knows about.1 think it was kept out of the media at the time to keep our dollar from plunging.The Ice Storm, on the other hand, tied in very well.At the time it was taken almost as a preview of how the millennium might play out.It was fascinating to see nature take over like that, to be in this modern urban space but back at an 1850s stage in terms of infrastructure.\u201d | suggest that, especially given Rastelli\u2019s pedigree, some non-Montreal readers may be surprised at how little francophone presence there is in A Fine Ending.\u201cThere were parts, that | kind of regret having had to cut, that did deal more with francophone Montreal.But the fact is that our circle was overwhelmingly anglophone.I used to joke that it was impossible to meet anyone who was actually from Montreal.It was at the time when the Plateau started becoming a melting pot of other Canadians.| can hardly count the number of people | know here from Halifax, Winnipeg, Victoria.In a way that serves the story well, because it keeps it more universal.It's obviously very strongly tied to Montreal, but other cities and artists\u2019 scenes aren't terribly different \u2014 cheap rents, fairly typical cliques of people.\u201d While people who were there will have hours of tun trying to spot themselves and others among the fictionalized characters, Rastelli stresses that they are just that \u2014 characters.\u201cFrom the get-go it seemed obvious that if | was going to (fictionalize) some people, I'd have to do it with evervone.For me, during the process, it became seductive to mix up some real stuff with made-up stuff, or things that were hearsay at the time, to have the license to make things flow and have a consistent set of characters.Inasmuch as there are characters closely based on real people, including me (the narrator's name is Louis), it was fun boiling things together, streamlining, culling.The few times where 1 let friends read certain passages based on incidents that they might have remembered, 1 was happy to see that the reaction was generally, *\u201cWow.I'd almost totally forgotten about that, but that's really how it was.Nobody seemed to have any problem with possibly being recognized.And if anybody does have any issues, the thing [ would probably tell them is, \u2018Well, then, it's up to you not to say anything about possibly being one of those characters.\u201d \u201cThe Ice Storm was taken almost as a preview of how the millennium might play out.\u201d A striking feature of the lifestyle shown in A Fine Ending is how these people treat their urban environment as, essentially, one big source of reclaimable life necessities.In \u201990s Montreal, it seems, it took only a little creativity and determination to live on next to nothing.Rastelli agrees, and points out how the notion is far from dead.\u201c| was excited to read, in the months since | finished the book, about the term that\u2019s been coined for people who do precisely that: the freegans.People who never pay for anything, including food.They go to restaurants and get table scraps, they raid bins, go to garage sales and sidewalk stalls.There's organizations of these people, especially in New York.They have swap meets, weekly dinners where everybody brings food that they've found for free.In a way that\u2019s how we all lived back then and to some extent still do.| hardly know anyone who buys chairs or tables or couches.We have moving day still.Nobody wanted to spend their hard- earned money on anything other than beer or music equipment or in my case publishing my little books.Part of it is just fun, like exploring abandoned buildings and seeing what people have left behind on moving day.It\u2019s a whole discovery thing.It was one of the ways that many of us had of living on.what was welfare at the time?$346 a month?A hell of a lot of people lived on that and maybe a bit of busking or some e other sundry activity.\u201d = One of the most impressive qualities of A Fine Ending is its gradually growing undertow of melancholy.How much of this is a function of the historical setting as opposed to just generally knowing thar all parties must eventually pack up?see page 18 Difficult questions AUGUSTINO AND THE CHOIR OF DESTRUCTION By Marie-Claire Blais Translated by Nigel Spencer House of Anansi $21.95, paper, 221pp ISBN 978-0-88784-752-3 n her new novel, the last in a trilogy set on an island in © the Gulf of Mexico, Marie-Claire Blais poses a difficult question \u2014 What constitutes a successful life?\u2014 in a retro stream-of-consciousness style that may raise eyebrows today.Friends and family gather to celebrate matriarch Mere\u2019s 8oth birthday.The party is \u201ca triumph,\u201d with free-flowing champagne and inter-generational dancing.But conversation veers, in typical Blais fashion, to darker topics, such as the plight of AIDS- infected orphans in impoverished regions of Africa.\u201cI really don\u2019t think 1 deserve all this when you consider the world as it is,\u201d says a chastened Mére, who suddenly wonders how she could have made it to such an advanced age without having lifted a finger to help a single orphan.Her host, an interior de- Marie-Claire Blais Augustine andl tke Choir of lestruction with, \u201cOh why think about it all che time.\u201d The story ostensibly runs the course of this all- night party, bur the narration flits in and out of the minds of the different characters, a cultured bunch with ties to many different countries, whose thoughts often turn to names and events from world history: Van Gogh's \u201ccompassionate\u201d yellow and Rosa Parks\u2019s determination stand in contrast to the Holocaust, the killing fields, and Hiroshima.When Mère, a family woman and patron of the arts, reflects back on her own life, she doesn't measure herself against her immediate peers but against the ultimate career woman, Marie Curie, who famously fell into a depression shortly after accepting her second Nobel Prize.\u201cMarie Curie was a woman of renown, the Mozart of science |.] but still .] she might not have thought her life a success, it is possible she left this world with doubts.\u201d Mère goes so far as to take details from her own life and apply them to Curie\u2019s, giving her own daughter\u2019s name to Curie\u2019s two children.This makes it difficult for readers to distinguish between the two women\u2019s stories, an effect that does not appear to have been accidental.Blais\u2019s style, both in this book and in the others of her art.The author seems fully aware of the rigours Modernist, with echoes of Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner.The punctuation, or lack thereof, is a case in point.There are no chapter or paragraph breaks and very few sentences.Instead Blais moves from thought to thought, from person to person, with nothing more than a comma to mark transitions: .did Olivier have the right to punish and hate when he had a wife and son who adored him, what is the point to our love and our tolerance and our pity, what point, for every day hate kills, hate kills, and Ari looked at his daughter as she slept with her toys.The author seems fully aware of the rigours of her art, making tongue-in-cheek references to characters whose artistic work is intentionally difficult, including one \u201cinflexible\u201d choreographer whose shows are deemed \u201coppressive.\u201d Fortunately, Blais can pull off this complicated style.A writer with a long history \u2014 she published her first novel in 1959 at age 20 and has won three Governor Generals Literary Awards for French-lan- guage fiction \u2014 she has the skill to guide che readers to the book's gently optimistic conclusion with or without the help of conventional punctuation, The English version of Augustino comes courtesy of Nigel Spencer, who was a finalist for a Governor Generals award for his translation of the second instalment in this trilogy, Thunder and Light.(Sheila Fischman translated the frst as These Festive Nights.) Spencer's translation is true to the original, with all of the characters \u2014 all of humanity \u2014 as guests at the same party, united by thought, history, and art.em signer who is often jetting off to Paris, shushes her that precede it in the trilogy, is unapologetically By Anne Chudobiak, à Montreal writer, Evoking panic and AT THE BOTTOM OF THE SKY By Peter Dubé Livres DC Books $18.95, paper, 158pp ISBN 987-1-89719-019-7 n Peter Dubé\u2019s collection of \u201cfictions,\u201d the reader enters into a strange world of the author\u2019s creation, one outside the world of the everyday.Most of the action occurs in dark places: basements, storm sewers, darkened cruising areas.Each of the 1 pieces is named for a figure from Greek mythology.Most are readily recognizable, others less so.Some background knowledge on the reader\u2019s part would be helpful, otherwise the symbolism might be missed.\u201cCerberus\u201d is named for the three-headed dog which guards Hades.Its characters find themselves trapped without light in a sewer they had been exploring.À sense of panic is skilfully evoked.While \u201cAt the Bottom of the Sky™ is a portrayal of lives on the margins, it is also a meditation on relationships, with poignant observations made in the conversations between characters.In \u201cParis,\u201d the idea of falling out of love is discussed.A man named Thom says of love that we handle it, obsess over it, and it becomes so smooth we can\u2019t hold on to it, but ultimately, it\u2019s still there, as substantial as it ever was.It is touching observations such as this that make Dubé\u2019s stories compelling.At the same time, these fictions are not straightforward narratives and the reader is often left wondering apathy what is real.But that may be what Dubé intends.A FINELY TUNED APATHY MACHINE By Mark Paterson Exile Editions $19.95, paper, 158pp ISBN 978-1-55096-087-3 he books title may be worrisome for some: is this going to be a collection of \u201cslacker\u201d stories?The answer is no; in addition, Mark Paterson is a great storyteller.His stories are set in a reality most readers can relate to: growing up suburban in Canada, in this case, Montreal.The time is the 1980s and \u2018gos and most of the stories are coming of age tales of young men experiencing life, love, and friendship.Suburbia and suburban life are given honest treatment, not approached ironically or disdainfully.Paterson uses pop culture and place references to flesh out the setting of the stories without shouting that \u201cthis is Montreal in the 1990s.\u201d Two stories stand out.\u201cThe IGA Kissing Bandit\u201d is worth the price of admission alone.Men friends dress up one of their group as a woman to try and trap one of the quotidian fever workers at the local IGA, a clerk known to kiss female customers after helping them with their groceries.Issues of sexual identity and homophobia are dealt with by the young men.\u201cLost Dog\u201d tells of a young man who comes to see his \u201ccool\u201d friends as they really are and ultimately sides with an outsider.Many of these stories arc quirky, some are harder edged, and all of «æ QUOTIDIAN FEVER ee Quoatidian Fever + New and Selected Poems 1974-2007 Endre Farkas them work except for \u201cHer Plastic Daisy and the Canadian Water to Grow It,\u201d where the political points seem awkward and cliché-rid- den.Overall, though, A Finely Tuned Apathy Machine to very strong collection.om By Jeffrey Mackie, a Montreal poet and radio host who can be heard weekly on ckut\u2019s \u201cFriday Morning After.\u201d J.GORDON SHILLINOFORD PU AL 19H 1 N 6 #8 #C The evolution of Farkas's poetry since he began writing illuminates one of Montreal's key literary figures, first, as one of the Vehicule poets of the 1970s, an experimental group of writers bent on celebrating life and pushing the boundaries of their craft and, later, as one profoundly aware of his role as a poet engaged with the world, one with a social conscience and a moral obligation to speak about it.\"One of the reasons for my liking of Endre Farkas's poems is that he writes a new book each time.Another reason is that he takes important subjects for these books.So if you were not lucky enough to be here from the start, this book is what they used to call a godsend.Here is a guy who worked diligently for several decades and suddenly became a star in the pantheon of Montreal poets.He's easy to read-\u2014like the look in a wolf's eye.\u201d \u2014George Bowering 1-897289-21-9 + $22.95 Company mb | 5 FH ORE INE 1\u20ac A hole in one THE HOLE SHOW By Maya Merrick conundrum press $17, paper, 360pp ISBN 978-1-894994-25-5 be Hole Show is Maya Merrick\u2019s second novel and is a toothsome trawl chrough Montreal vérité.There are freaks, deformities, and what uscd to be called clubfoots, all in a Henry Darger-esque jamboree.lt is the world of Sextant, Merrick\u2019s first book, plus a little of the historical sweep of Michel Tremblay complete with silverfish crawling up from the drains.Characters navigate the hazards of this universe under various monikers of convenience and for the reader, at times, this can be a bumpy ride.The storytelling bends and distorts like a bleary bottle bottom until not even a closing conflagration can untwizzle the ends of this complex and ambitious novel.Merrick\u2019s style treads a very fine line between creating and preventing the novel.The description of high art-turned- skinshow Giselle in chapter four, for in- fiction stance, is weighed down by lines like \u201cweeping edges of willows drape the wings.\u201d With its Roy Orbison soundtrack it comes off as just outré, a little too much like White Jazz James Ellroy in bed with David Lynch and a sack of razor blades.There are other parts, however, where The Hole Show establishes a genuinely creepy sense of something nasty underfoot.The description of Billy/Beau\u2019s hermaphrodite self (more of this below) in the following chapter really makes the language work for its money and the result is good.Merrick\u2019s novel is set in the emergent Montreal of the early 1960s and \"os.Society is unravelling a little and in the interstices we find Hicklin, Billy, Dolly, and all the rest.This world of interlocked lives is related through multiple points of view as if we were looking at the story through one of those Sputnik security cameras.Interesting effects with space and time definitely happen, but if you've ever lost patience with The Sound and the Fury, this is not the book for you.Little perspectival illusions happen at other levels too.The hole of the title is severally a reference to sexual identity, a place where young Hicklin hides, and the \u201cwholeness\u201d sought by Billy in the transformation to Beau.That\u2019s another thing about The Hole Show: Merrick\u2019s theme is in part metamorphosis.The novel describes not only literal kinds of changes, as in the case of Billy, but also the changes caused by the ways in which we see the world, hence the games with point of view.Depending on who is looking, Hicklin (a made up name of course) is \u201cThe Stranger\u201d and, if you are the teenage runaway Luce, \u201cThe Fox.\u201d The broken-down albino ballerina Dahlia is also \u201cThe Ghost\u201d and the icy \u201cDolly.\u201d We also see the transformations that occur when one character leans too hard on another.In the parts where Hicklin is bullied by the inevitably named \u201cThad\u201d and his sidekicks Bikky and Dink, | was reminded of the climate of dread described by Margaret Atwood\u2019s narrator Elaine in Cat's Eye.| am sure this is not a comparison Merrick would welcome.Aside from occasional freakshow, been-there-done-that banalities, The Hole Show really crackles across its 360 pages.The best parts occur sometimes at a bit of a tangent.Patience, Dahlia/Dolly\u2019s tatty doll with the broken mechanical voice, has the same chilling appeal as Ramone, the papier mâché head in Sextant.There is a film loop of rotting chickens playing at a party and a wonderful \u201cpot of homemade (though not by her mother) marmalade\u201d through which Dahlia regards the world.These ideas tend to grapple with an at times less than helpful style and narrative aesthetic, but it is a fight which I think in the end is won by Merrick.mm By Neil Scotten, a writer and photographer who has lived in the UK, Edmonton, and the Yukon.SELF PORTRAIT.PASCAL BLANCHET WHITE RAPIDS By Pascal Blanchet Drawn & Quarterly $29.95, paper ISBN 9781897299241 mRb 6 | SY I Hydro gnosis hite Rapids isn't the first graphic novel to combine stunning images with minimal text, but it's probably the first to do so in a deluxe, Art Deco travel poster style.One word: gorgeous.White Rapids is the English-lan- guage release of Quebec cartoonist Pascal Blanchet\u2019s historically based story about the rise and fall of But what policy creates, policy can also destroy.With the nationalization of Quebec's power industry in 1963, together with the increasing automation of hydroelectric installations, Rapide Blanc becomes an anachronism, and Hydro Québec moves to shut down the town.While the book does capture the villagers\u2019 profound disappointment at having to vacate their homes, no Rapide Blanc, a village purpose-built in fine style in 1928 by the Shawinigan Water and Power Company.The company constructed high-quality brick houses and other amenities to entice working families to move up north to service its remote Rapide Blanc hydroelectric power station.White Rapids offers us a stunning view into the villagers\u2019 seemingly idyliic lives in this remarkable setting.one puts up any real fight when the decision to close the town and relocate the workers comes down.The village newspaper faithfully reports Hydro Québec's claims that the workers will be consulted and given new jobs.How could this apparent fait accompli have been pulled off so smoothly?Did these blue collar families really just pack up their cars, leave their lovely homes, and drive away forever from their delightful little town, as they do in this book?Then again, the absence of such political struggles does undertine the relative powerlessness of ordinary people against the grand scale of economic policy decisions.But the workers of Rapide Blanc didn\u2019t live on such a scale.We glimpse their rich, hope-filled individual lives while the village thrives, but we see very little of them as the community closes.Critics could fault White Rapids for being more about style than substance, and they would be partially correct - but that may be Blanchet\u2019s point.His phenomenal streamlined style relocates White Rapids from the realm of history to that of myth.Canada\u2019s history \u2014 and to a great extent Quebec's \u2014 is a colonial story of resource extraction on a massive scale.Pre-planned, prefabricated ghost towns litter the North American landscape, not just in the Old West but wherever some mine, dam, or reactor once stood.In that sense, White Rapids represents a potent Canadian myth.Blanchet's treatment aptly reminds us how the decisions handed down by government and big business can make tourists out of all of us \u2014 here today, gone tomorrow.Indeed, only two things in this book can rightly bear the label \u201cindigenous.\u201d The first is Wemotaci Indian Reserve, which is featured but once, as a dot on a map.The second is \u201cThe General,\u201d a great e blind pike of such power that he\u2019s C said to shake the town's bridge whenever he collides with it.Both, we may presume, are still there.em By Ed Janzen, a Montreal writer and editor. e the short story - with a roughly Abiding artistry PARDON OUR MONSTERS By Andrew Hood Véhicule Press 817.95, paper, 160pp ISBN 978-1-55-65-232-1 mong the literary genres, the modern short story is one of the trickiest to write.Ironically, it is also the form with which many new writers hone their skills, a shallow pool to practice in before taking on the grand depths of a novel.After all, the brevity of designated but very palpable length - ought to make it more approachable than a longer work, at least in theory.Actually crafting a good short story is another matter altogether, since the best examples of the genre thrum with as much muscle as the best novels, only within a more confined and exacting space.It\u2019s little wonder that few writers make their mark with short stories alone.\u201cThat Ghost We Had,\u201d one of the 12 stories in Andrew Hood\u2019s debut collection, shows off that muscle in less than four pages.To amuse herself, a new bride invents a \u201cghost\u201d for her house by writing spectral messages to her husband on the steamed-up washroom mirror.The story, unlike the ruse, flows with nary a snag from its original premise to its sombre and ultimately poignant end.Considering the length and subject matter, it\u2019s a remarkable feat of narrative dexterity and restraint.Other stories in the collection display similar sleights of hand.The title story, for instance, follows a town in mourning over a boy killed in an accident.The catch?It appears that everyone but the narrator has forgotten the boy was a cruel bully.As the boy's remaining brothers - tormentors themselves \u2014 become increasingly barbarous under the seemingly compassionate eye of the town, it becomes obvious to the narrator that the place he once knew as home would be no more.Hood's take on the false virtues of remembrance is at turns scathing and defiant, an anti-elegy that shows its hand at the end with harrowing decisiveness.The stories in Pardon Our Monsters AXDEKK HOUD cover an extensive range, each underpinned by an incisive eye for characters in the midst of awkward transitions.From a child\u2019s quiet lament for a brother\u2019s love in \u201cA Sound Like Dolphins\u201d to the perceived scrutiny felt by a recently divorced father in \u201cThir- ty-Six in the Cellar,\u201d Hood\u2019s prose convinces with an old storytellers ease, be it lyrical or downright venomous.Take \u201cMake It a Better Place,\u201d the final story.An estranged stepmother and stepson undertake a bleary-eyed, round-the-clock road trip from southern Ontario to California for the singular purpose of being among Michael Jackson\u2019s supporters at his trial.It\u2019s the longest of the stories and filled with well-nigh surreal elements, but Hood\u2019s writing keeps it firmly grounded, as in this passage when Jackson first appears: What a mess this man has become.A sallow, hollowed out, pallid face, destroyed by so much tinkering |.| On the other side of the fence are his prime, bis excellence, his youth.His image has remained unsullied, unaged, while he himself bas absorbed all the hideousness of his excess.He is Dorian Gray's portrait.A short story collection like this is a rarity from a new writer.One is reminded of Lorrie Moore\u2019s debut, Self-Help.Andrew Hood's Pardon Our Monsters, simply put, is a powerhouse of artistry and reveals to us a writer in whom enormous talent deeply abides.mn By Faustus Salvador, a Montreal writer whose articles and fiction have been published in England, Japan, and across Canada.B= SW ICO DOI THE SKIN BENEATH By Nairne Holtz Insomniac Press $21.95, paper, 263pp ISBN 978-1-897178-39-3 ategories are often demeaning, especially when it comes to art and artists, yet how would readers find or choose a book if it didn't have a label on it?Nonetheless, the polariza- rion between literary and genre fiction is breaking down fast.Stephen King publishes in The New Yorker, it's once again fashionable to serialize mysteries in \u201cserious\u201d journals, and the term \u201cliterary thriller\u201d is no longer an oxymoron.All this is good news, especially for writers.How welcome it is to discover Nairne Holtz's stylish debut, a novel characterized by taut, sinewy prose, a suspenseful story, and deeply imagined characters readers can actually care about.The tale begins with a literal and proverbial bang.Sam O'Connor receives an anonymous postcard insinuating that her older sister Chloe was killed by a gunshot wound, not an accidental drug overdose, at New York's fabled Chelsea Hotel.\u201cYour sister died while investigating a political conspiracy,\u201d the postcard reads.\u201cCoincidence?How often do women kill themselves with a gun?\u201d Now, five years after Chloe\u2019s death, Sam has the chance to find out what really happened.While Sam once followed Chloe everywhere, \u201cdogged her, tagged along,\u201d now she retraces Chloe\u2019s steps, imagining herself inside her sister\u2019s skin as she tracks her final days in Montreal, Toronto, Detroit, and New York.Though Chloe called Sam \u201cshadow\u201d when they were little, Sam only felt truly alive when she was with her older sister, The girls were abandoned by their mother and raised by a remote father, a bow-tie-wearing art history professor never comfortable with feelings, who kept his daughters\u2019 emotions in a \u201cchokehold.\u201d Holtz deftly interweaves Sam and Mental double takes Chloe's shared past so that readers experience the depth of their bond.Flashbacks are notorious pitfalls for novel ists, but Holtz manages them gracefully through associative links.The classic hide-and-seck the sisters play as girls, where Chloe doesn\u2019t bother finding her little sister and Sam cries out, \u201c1 thought you left me,\u201d is echoed in the present: now Sam needs to \u201cfind\u201d Chloe.The cffect adds dimension to the story without slowing its momentum.Montreal is vividly evoked, with all of its charms and contradictions.The city is \u201can odd amalgam of the sacred and profane,\u201d with strip clubs rubbing up against cathedrals.* You can pray, as well as buy brand-name clothing .and lap dances within a one-block radius.\u201d Holtz also excels at the kind of pithy asides that make the reader do mental double takes.While sleuthing out one of her sister's ex-boyfriends, now the owner of an escort service, Sam muses; that \u201cHe seems to want her to like him, which isn\u2019t the same as him liking her.\u201d Indeed.Holtz jacks this scence up a notch by having the lesbian Sam apply for a job as an escort.The narrative develops an erotic charge when Sam meets up with Chloe\u2019s final roommate and experiences the ultimate coup de foudre with this unconventional beauty who seems to know more than she will cop to.An enticing mesh of fact and fiction emerges that both Sam and readers need to tease apart to reveal the truth.Who was Chloe?And who is Sam herself?At times in The Skin Bencath, a cliché jars or Holtz over-explains.These things grate simply because she is too good for these noisome tics.Perhaps she needs to give her readers more credit.We'll figure it out without the telegraphing.This is a minor quibble in an otherwise smart, edgy debut.em By Ami Sands Brodoff, whose new novel, The White Space Between, appears in fall 2008.She is also the author of Bloodknots and Can You See Me?New from The Mercury Press EE ES ni The Humbugs Diet fudres Marek Slenrh.Fiction The Humbugs Diet Robert Majzels Why are old folks falling out of windows of the Keter Gardens Retirement Home?A new novel by the author of Apikoros 1-55128-130-9 $18.95 The Prison Tangram Claire Huot Rey Pirelli is facing the first case of her career as a detective, and its a deadiy and difficult one.She has 14 days to solve the mysterious murders of two inmates at Montrose prison for women.1-55128-131-7 Murder mystery $17.95 The Closets of Time Editors: Beverley Daurio and Richard Truhlar These are the closets of tune, where memories become fictions and fictions become reality.Welcome, and please\u2014 close the door behind you.1-55128-133-3 Fiction anthology $17.95 PHOTO DANIEL JALBIRT LJ J fiction * An absolved exile TO THE FAR SHORE By Négovan Rajic Translated by Nora Alleyn Cormorant Books 822.95, paper, 298pp ISBN 978-1-896951 o the Far Shore is as much a requiem to a country as it is a memoir of a man\u2019s youthful adventures.A telling insight into the recent travails of the Balkans, Rajic\u2019s novel opens up the reader to a complicated history that can only be retold as the equally complicated story of an old man seeking exile from a country he loves.Laden with meditations on the soul\u2019s suffering, Rajic\u2019s work is heavy.With a narrator who can serve as a poster child for post-World War 11 alienation and a landscape as bleak as Dostoevsky\u2019s Russia, To the Far Shore reveals a universe of doubt.As Rajic recounts the last years\u2019 fighting in WWII Yugoslavia he reveals the ideological uncertainty in having chosen the side of the Allied Partizans over the Nationalist forces of lo The Far Shore SOT the Croatian Ustase and Serbian Cetniks.When Germany is defeated, the Allies thank the Partizans by rewarding them, and the budding socialist movement, with a country.The young narrator, eager to put the war behind him, enrolls in the faculty of engineering at the University of Belgrade.Drenched with the kind of irony that comes with a man bitterly at odds with what it means to be human, the narrator bitingly recounts how his education was compromised, and the social landscape of his country irrevocably altered, by the very leader he helped put into place - Tito.The narrator and his old friend Milenko, possessed by the prospect of freedom, plot their exile to Austria.Rajic\u2019s internal struggle over his decision to leave \u2014 his simultaneous desire for absolution and irrevocable strength of principle \u2014 reveals precisely what is so intriguing about this part of the world.In what novelist Ivo Andric once described as \u201ca place where love and hate exist simultaneously in their purity,\u201d Rajic exemplifies the very dualism of the Balkan soul, one at war with itself, desperate for buoyancy in the small area it occupies.As the young narrator walks us through his memories, his soul emerging and descending from the depths of the dark and murky history of Serbia, the reader realizes that the bloody history of the Ottoman Empire and a communist past continue to contextualize the modern-day former Yugoslavia as much as they did the country of Rajic\u2019s youth.Rajic\u2019s ruminations on the misgivings of the psyche can read a little too much like an old man looking back on a time long passed.His narrative is at times simplistic and cautious, his cynicism somewhat trying.To the Far Shore succeeds best when we are compelled to feel truly the absolution he seeks from the reader in having written this book from exile.om By Marina Malidzanovic, a former Montrealer who works with immigrants in Kitchener-Waterloo.WILLIAM E.LOGAN\u2019S 1845 SURVEY OF THE UPPER OTTAWA VALLEY Edited and Introduced by Charles H.Smith and lan Dyck Canadian Museum of Civilization $35.95, paper, 238pp ISBN 978-0-660-19662-6 VV illiam Logan was a self-motivated learner, one of Canada's great scientists when geology was in its infancy.Among his many accomplishments was laying the foundation for the modern Geological CONTEST Win 2 Tickets ty een EE ee eT Survey of Canada.Logan is allowed here to speak in his What theatre company ¥ own voice, and a very entertaining one it is.His field jour- # nal, written as his party explored and mapped the Ottawa River from Lachine to Lake Timiskaming, and from the Mattawa River to Lake Nipissing, covers the months from the end of June, when Logan set out from Lachine, to the middle of November, when he returned to Bytown.This admirable addition to the Mercury Series History Papers gives much supplementary information, including annotations to the field journal, appendices with Logan's biography, a potted history of the Ottawa Valley, and Logan's mineral finds.There is a note at the beginning of the book explaining that \u201cin the interest of making information available, normal production procedures have been abbreviated.As a result, grammatical and typographical errors may occur.\u201d This caveat is is staging plays by Vittorio Rossi, Pamela Gien, and Michel Tremblay this season?Send your answer to aelaq@bellnet.ca by November 1.Correct answer drawn \u2018An oasis of reading pleasure THE Desert Lake Finda Leith Tur: Desenr 1k: Linda Leith CURE will win a pair of theatre tickets.unnecessary, as there don't seem to be any obvious mis- NEOS + ISBN OTB-T897100-21-2 takes in this little treasure of à volume.À must for geolo- Sige \u20ac EDITIONS gists, lovers of Canadian history, and genealogists with families in the Ottawa Valley area.MG mRb 8 matiere Justice on trial UNLUCKY TO THE END: THE STORY OF JANISE MARIE GAMBLE By Richard W.Pound McGill-Queen\u2019s University Press $34.95, paper, 240pp ISBN 978-0-7735-3300-4 Ithough Dick Pound is best known as chairman of the World Anti-Doping Agency and 10C vice-president, anise Gamble\u2019s story has nothing to do with sports.And yet, to read the life of this average kid from Peterborough is akin to being caught in a safe spot on the side of a mountain, helpless, watching an avalanche roar down on an unsuspecting group of skiers.In both cases the end is inevitable.Pound chooses to use a gentler metaphor.\u201cA few small events or a couple of wrong choices \u2014 the sort of thing that could happen to anyone \u2014 may be enough to steer someone off the path of a normal, happy existence.In the same way, a butterfly stirring Pound is a skilful craftsman, a man on a mission.the air in Southeast Asia may affect whole storm systems a month later in North America.\u201d Janise Gamble was caught in a storm of her own making.A happy kid from a small town in Ontario, Janise was fatally attracted to a charmer, John Gamble, whose darker side included alcoholism, drug addiction, spousal abuse, and a life of perry crime.During their brief and tragic marriage, the mesmerized Janise continued to forgive her husband.Even after the most violent beatings she always took him back when he wept and cried that she was all he had to live for.He didn\u2019t live long.He and a buddy decided to rob a Credit Union in Calgary.The buddy shot a police officer, the pair took hostages, and the duo decided to commit suicide via a drug overdose rather than face arrest and prison.Gamble died, the friend didn\u2019t, and he and Janise were tried and convicted for murder \u2014 a crime Janise didn\u2019t commit.She was sentenced to 25 years in Kingston's women\u2019s prison where lifers were given no training for re-entry to the real world.Six years later, following a piece on CBC The Fifth Estate, a Montreal lawyer made Janise his cause, working towards her carly release.The rest of the story is the final i thundering roar of the avalanche.This is not an easy read.It\u2019s not a pleasant story.But Pound, who became interested in Janise's story when he met the Montreal lawyer, has created a compelling story with very real characters.It\u2019s a bleak picture of an abusive relationship and a striking exposure of a Canadian miscarriage of justice that is as powerful as the stories of Steven Truscott, Donald Marshall, and David Milgaard.Pound is a skilful craftsman who uses photos and phone and trial transcripts which add to the drama.But the main reason that Unlucky to the End rises far above cheap sensationalism or detective fictipn- type action is that Pound, once he heard the story from Colin Irving, was a man on a mission \u201cto sec what had happened and, to some extent, how and why.\u201d For Canadians, the *how and the why™ of this tragic miscarriage of justice is undoubtedly as important as the \u201cwhat,\u201d the grim unfolding of events which began when an uncomplicated small town girl fell in love with a sociopath.em Ufflucky to the End BICHARD W POUND By Joan Eyolfson Cadham, a journalist living in Foam Lake, Saskatchewan.Verbs nouned, nouns verbed CAN I HAVE A WORD WITH YOU?By Howard Richler Ronsdale Press $21.95, paper, 200pp ISBN 978-55380-049-1 Reviewed from galleys oward Richler has made a career out of etymology, and his fifth book is further testimony to his love affair with the English language and its evolution, Richler has plenty to work with: with only 26 letters in its alphabet, English today has 988,969 words and counting.Given that range, Richler here is fairly economical, using 69 words from A to Z as a launching pad for a fascinating look at the English language and its peculiarities.(Not to disappoint his Canadian readers, he does deal with that zee versus zed issue.) Though many of these essays are culled from Richler\u2019s Gazette column \u201cSpeaking of Language,\u201d he hastens to add in his introduction that Can | Have a Word with You?is not subject to the normal space constraints of a newspaper.With that out of the way, Richler sets out with his trusty and surely well-worn Oxford English Dictionary, guiding us through the maze of word origins and their ever-evolving, and sometimes politically charged, usages.Take \u201cabortionist,\u201d the lead word in Richler\u2019s journey through the alphabet.Depending on who is using it, this word\u2019s connotations are loaded.A pro-choice advocate is more likely to use the word \u201cabortion provider\u201d than \u201cabortionist,\u201d the latter a term more likely to be used by the right-to-life crowd.Or take \u201cblowback,\u201d coined by the CIA.Once meaning a gun, the word is now used to describe what happens when foreign policies come back to haunt, the prime example being the CIA\u2019 backing of the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan when the former Soviet Union occupied that country in the 1980s.The English language, influenced as it is by so many others, has some \u201ccolourful\u201d words, and Richler takes us through the emotions associated with such simple words as blue, green, black, and white.In another essay, \u201cTabernacle,\u201d likely to appeal to his Québécois readers, he delves into the religious origins of Quebec's more colourful curse words \u2014 exploring the permutations and combinations of seven words best not uttered irreligiously in a Catholic church.To the chagrin of language purists, English is in a constant state of flux: \u201cVerbs are \u2018nouned\u2019 and nouns arc \u2018verbed,\u201d\u201d writes Richler in his \u201c Yada-Yada-Yada\u201d essay.Seinfeld writers turned the noun \u201cguile\u201d into a verb, as in \u201cHe's never guiled.™ We can also thank Seinfeld for a host of \u201cSeinfeldisms™: \u201cyada-yada-yada™ (replacing \u201cblah blah blah\u201d), \u201cbelow the equator\u201d (the genital area), \u201cchanging teams\u201d (a gay person who turns heterosexual), and many others.Can | Have a Word With You?is written without pretension or presumption, though it is not beneath the author to launch into the occasional grammar lesson.This is a book digestible in small bites, one that is sure to please teachers, students of language, and those who just like to pull a little dinner table amateur wordsmith one-upmanship.By lan Howarth, a Montreal writer.THE WRONG MOVE By Sheila Kindellan-Sheehan Redlader PTS LE ISBN 978-1897336144 WRONG wr nna iran eesti oe mRb 9 Jalna, and the matriarch Adeline her 100\" birthday.ISBN 978-1-894B52-23-4 360 pp.Paragraphe Librairie / Bookstore @ QUESECOR MEDIA Two grandsons bring their wives home to Whiteoak celebrates SOME FAMILY: THE MORMONS AND HOW HUMANITY KEEPS TRACK OF ITSELF By Donald Harman Akenson McGill-Queen\u2019s University Press $34.95, cloth, 360pp ISBN 978-0-7735-3295-3 he Mormon Genealogical Project (once called the International Genealogical Index) started in 1894, and has grown to be the world\u2019s largest collection of genealogical data.Most genealogists, it is safe to say, use the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day of Jalna the family is fortune.ISBN: 978-1-894852-24-1 464 Dp.~ XYZ Publishing « Montréal * info@xyzedit.qc.ca » www.xyzedit.qc.ca The Gazette Rafe 8 Whiteoaks When Grandmother Adeline dies at 101, astonished to learn who will inherit her Saints\u2019 material with unquestioning gratitude.Akenson\u2019s evaluation of the material - how it has been collected, and how it is to be used - should give them pause.One of the central themes of this book is that there are four main genealogical forms whereas the LDS material uses only one.There are other cautionary tales to be found in the appendices, including the statistical likelihood of false paternity, wrongly attributed maternity, and incest blurring the nice, neat family tree.Akenson\u2019s insistence on the family as narrative is an evocative one, the \u201ckernel\u201d of each tale leading to the kernel of the Finch\u2019s Fortune 21, comes into his inheritance, and where he falls in and out of love.ISBN 978-1-894B52-27-2 492 pp.Finch Whiteoak turns | travels to England, next.His scholarly insistence on referring to \u201cYeshua of Nazareth\u201d and \u201cMiriam\u201d can grate, but he is an equal-opportunity offender: Catholics, Jews, Mormons, genealogists, and historians can all find something to be annoyed about.They can also find much to chuckle about, as Akenson is a witty and charming writer.This book should be required reading not only for all genealogists.but also for all those bureaucrats who mistakenly believe that the microfiche copies the LDS members provided of the original books of record are the real deal.MG New trade THE MASTER OF JALNA The ; ST NO SES Master Hd of Jalna After the death ! of his grandmother, | Renny Whiteoak struggles to keep the jalna estate intact.ISBN 978-1-894852-28-9 414 pp.DAVID GILMOUR The Film Club À True Story of a Father and Son (Thomas Allen) ANNA PORTER Kasztner's Train (Douglas & Mcintyre) BRUCE W POWE Mystic Trudeau : The Fire and the Rose (Thomas Allen) JAN WONG and Found in the New Forbidden City (Doubleday) MICHAEL ADAMS Unlikely Utopia : The Surprising Triumph of Canadian Pluralism (Penguin Books) JACK WHYTE Standard of Honour (Penguin Books) GUY GAVRIEL KAY Ysabel (Penguin Books) JEFFREY SIMPSON Hot Air : Meeting Canada's Climate Change (McClelland & Stewart) Beijing Confidential : A Tale of Comrades Lost JANICE GROSS STEIN & EUGENE LANG Unexpected War Canada in Afghanistan {Penguin Books) WILL FERGUSON Spanish Fly (Penguin Books: ELEANOR WACHTEL Random Illuminations Conversations with Carol Shields (Goose Lane) RICHARD B WRIGHT October (Harper Collins) TIM COOK At the Sharp End : Canadians Fighting the Great War Volume 1 1914-1916 (Penguin Books) VIKKI STARK My Sitster My Self (McGraw-Hill Ryerson) RR LOUISE PENNEY Cruellest Month (McArthur & Co) WILLIAM MARSDEN Stupid to the Last Drop How Alberta is Bringing Environmental Armageddon to Canada (Random House} MERE RTC A TH \u201cBruneau .has a saucy, punchy, even ebuilient writing style.\u201d NE Spectacular ids\u2019 books by Montreal authors & illustrators, from Montreal's own Lobster Press! A ANT [ORR gL A Aie 5 Paragraphe Bookstore Babar en Ville Livres Babar Press ™ rm poing en 9 \u201cpie sc ihe $6 fourney ic the = rere be tenons Drama Bonder Bookstore Librairie Clio Oink Oink www.lobsterpress.com Conversational criticism LITTLE EUREKAS: A DECADE'S THOUGHTS ON POETRY By Robyn Sarah Biblioasis $24.95, paper, 270pp ISBN 978-1-897231-2906 ¢¢ I fanvbody had told me, vears ago, that [would one das publish a book of literary critics, thik would have laughed out loud,™ a rather astounded Robyn Sarah writes im her introduction to Little Frrekas.Yet here itis, a tidy collecron of diverse wrinmgs gleaned from essays, columns, reviews, and collaborations, and arranged in a volume that is certainly substantial evidence of a literary life, among other things.Indeed, the volume \u201creflects personally upon a life m poetry ™ by one who has written, edited, taught, reviewed, published, and even typeset it manually.Rooted in the personal, Little Furekas ts uneneum- bered by any of the potentially daunting theory that eypically char acterizes the genre, and in this non-fiction sense, one hesitates to categorize it as LirCrit proper.If Little Furekas 1s literary criticism, then it is, as Sarah points out, certainly an unconventional contribution to the genre.Organized into five parts, Little burekus 1s a friendly, even hospitable collection, and the conversa- nonal but sophist- cared prose makes it all che more so.Pare I offers a hand ful of essavs rang- my from Sarah's account of how, as a voung girl, she \u201cFell for Poetry to 4 frank discussion of poenics mn \u201cPoetry's Borrom Lime,\u201d to à thought-provoking trio on teaching, publishing, and editing poetry.In \u201c1 To my Perils: How | fell For Poetry,\u201d Sarah describes poetry's insidious creep upon her: \u201cNo primal *Eurcka moment.\u201d Many lirtle Eurekas \u2014 some of them unconscious, smiring me after the fact.\u201d She goes on to say that \u201cit is an addiction to the hrtle Eurekas.those moments of electric response to a particular poem that makes one a reader of poetry.\u201d While the reader might not be smirten with the Little Furekas is substantial evidence of a literary life.title of the collection, the sentiment behind it - the exuberance, the joy, the electricity thar poetry can vield \u2014 is certainly true enough.Throughout the collection, Sarah shows herself to be a writer who, in the fullness of time.has developed particular ideas about things.She does not shirk from asking and answering thorny questions thar probably should be asked by more writers but roo often are not.Consider: \u201cIf poetry is a good thing, can there be too much of 027, or \u201cWhat makes a poem a poem?\u201d Nor does she hesitate to share her various gripes.For Sarah, all that ails poetry = the current cultural program, the overproduction of po- erry that nobody reads or reviews, the poet as celebrity, creative writing training, less than stringent editing \u2014 seems to boil down to an abiding concern that quality over quantity be poerry's mantra.Whether or not one agrees with her opimions, Sarah demonstrates no small courage in laying her views out clearly and plainly like so many knickers on the laundry line.Perhaps the best wav ro describe Little Eurekus is to sav that it \u201cDances with Poems,\u201d for the collection 1s, by and large, comprised of Sarah's essays on, and reviews of, poetry.In the chapter of that name Sarah 1s clear: \u201cAppreciation of poetry begins with poems.\u201d And true to her word, she is generous with quotation.Like a good dance partner.Sarah's engagement with poetrv is attentive, considered.and at its best downright inspiring.Her collaborations (with Dennis Lee and Eric Ormsby among others), taken from mterviews, symposia, and most interestingly letter exchanges.add ver another dimension to the dance.Not myself a poet, I think Sarah would be heartened to know that Little Enrekas made me want to read more poetry; it made me pick up a dusty collection from my bookshelf; it made me send a poem to a friend who seemed to require just those particular words; and it made me want to seek out some of the poems Sarah reviews.And is it not just these kinds of small jovs, these little moments of electric response.these \u2014 dare [ sav it?\u2014 hierle Furekas, that make one a reader of poetry?en By Brenda Cockfield.à Montreal writer, le W, \\ Shoreline presents Notre Dame de Grace Groene Up om ND.G, Russell Bam, sketches by John Collins Travelling Light Agnes Braceland Henches Girl in a Red River Coat Mars Peate Shaila\u2019s Take Sheuda Kandetlan-Shechan 514-457-5733 www.shorelinepress.ca shorelineasympatico.ca Ule Word 469 Milton Street Montreal Tel: 845-5640 Purvevors of the finest Second-hand Pooks Specializing in Literature ADMISSION FREE All Welcome! Atwater Library and Computer Centre Fall Events 2007 C 2 Librairie Clio A wide selection of English language books and an expert staff who will be delighted to help track down elusive titles.We will be pleased to welcome you in the new extension to Pointe Claire Plaza, next Formerly Libraime du boit ao lage to the St-Jean Junction on Highway 20 245N boul St-Jean, Pointe-Claire.Quebec H9R 3J1 Tel: (514) 695-5557 Fax: (514) 695-5124 Email: books@librairieclio.ca Atwater Poetry Project Poets Jeff Derksen and Rachel Zolf Thursday, November 9 at 7:00 pm Poets Brea Burton.Jon-Paul Fiorentino and Jill Hartman Thursday.December 6 at 7:00 pm Book Club led by writer Mary Soderstrom On Beauty by Zadie Smith Wednesday.November 7 at 7:30 pm The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill Wednesday, December 12 at 7:30 pm CWSTIT Re VE 5e mRb 12 Lunchtime Series Author Anita Rau Badami reads from Can You Hear the Nightbird Call?Wednesday, October 24 at 12:30 pm tunding from the Canada Coun io the Ares Art historian Sandra Paikowsky gives a presentation with slides on the Venice International Art Biennale Tuesday, October 30 at 12:30 pm Lawrence Healey leads a discussion on Reginald Russell's Impact on the Montreal Book Scene Wednesday, November 21 at 12:30 pm Fall Book Sale Lightly used, quality books at discount prices Thursday, October 25 from 6 - 8 pm Friday, October 26 from 10 am \u2014 4 pm Saturday, October 27 from 10 am -3 pm Atwater Library and Computer Centre info@atwaterlibrary.ca : was ue St one im EEA ake PHOTO LOUIS DES/ARDINS By Kim Bourgeois he Divine Power Desjardin's savoury approach O to history Salt Martine new novel takes a t's an unusually muggy September afternoon when | set out to meet with Martine Desjardins.In downtown Montreal the air is heavy and stale, as though summer were bottoming out in one last big huff.Yer as my cab winds its wav into the author's native Town of Mount Roval, something already teels tresher.Old trees shading Desjardins\u201d street seem to filter the smog, and here in the authors quiet home, built by her grandfather in the 1930s, even the decor is cooling.Impeccably creamy with the occasional lavender accent or bouquet of white roses, Desjardins apartment is an antdorte to the ciev\u2019s nearby clutter and congestion.A breeze waltzes in through wide-open windows, mspiring discussion.I've come to talk with Desjardins about her third novel, just translated from the original French L'Frocation ITS a book whose central theme = sale = also evokes coolness.Yet, due to the authors penchant for the macabre.winery white images are exquisitely framed in shiek, zothic darkness.Tt comes as no surprise that Desjardins cites Edgar Atlan Poe as a major influence.Set in the 18th century.AA Covenant of Salt draws on the conquest of Quebec and on Irish legend.depicting the chilling landscape of Lily McEvoy, an eccentrie recluse who hives in a County Armagh manor house with an enslaved childhood companion and two maidservants.Lily has commussioned à legendary stonceut- ter to transform the estates abandoned salt mine into a funerary monument for her deceased parents: Rear Adnural Magnus McEvoy, hero of the capture of Quebec.and Laurence, a rumoured river nymph with webbed feet.The McEvoys embody the violence that erupts when family secrets are suppressed.As characters they are archetvpal - or shadowy in a Jungian sense.Yet Desjardins says she doesn't work on the psychology of the characters per se.\u201cI don\u2019t stare with character.1 start with matter\u201d she explams, \u201cIn The Farry Ring | start with quartz and crystal.In mv second book [AI that Glitters].with gold.and in this one with sale.1 read rhus description of a salr mince in Poland where the workers in the beginning of the 19th century almost lived m the mines.They started carving statues oùt of salt and they carved a little chapel in the mine and eventually they carved a whole ballroom with a tloor made our of salt.There was a salt crystal chandelier, apparently.and the nobiliey came and visited.and thev had concerts there and halls, and this image to me was so very interesting.\u201d Desjardims, who is clearly drawn to the romantic.has fictionalized this scene heautitully.Much hke the black and white drawings she creates m her spare time, her descriptions are detailed, precise, and dreamy.Mythical creatures stemming from Irish legend and her imagination blend with religious images, providing an ornate backdrop for the McEvoy family drama.And salt, as Desjardins points out, figures prominently in the Bible, providing \u201cheavy symbolic baggage.\u201d Desjardins skilfully draws from the Roman Cathohe Church's doctrines, sculpting and polishing rehgious symbols until chev glitter like gems.\u201c1 think, for we who do not really have a mythology, [religious symbolism] as our mythology,\u201d she explams, When she began to explore the theme of salt mm particular, it was Lots wite who came to mind.\u201cI thought about this story ain which she 1s turned into à pillar of salt because she looks back on Sodom and Gomorrah, and to meat was a perfect metaphon tor how vou can become petrified when vou keep lookmg m the past.If vou're alwavs looking behind vou and not where vou are, or torward, vou get caught in the past.\u201d Which is precisely what happens 1o Lily, Attributing near-divine powers to salt, Lily believes it capable of capturing \u201call that, mm life, 1s doomed to vanish in a cloud of smoke.™ She smifts, cats, drinks, and talks of nothing but this magic powder, obsessively forming a private cult around 16.Meanwhile, the only thing that grows in her life 1s reseniment: Lily herself remains immature, both physical ly and psychologically, dried up and vic timized by her own fetish.With all three of Desjardins\u201d novels set in the past, 1 wonder about the author\u2019 own attraction to olden times, a penchant she claums has more to do with poete license than ans particular mterest in history.\u201cThe things that take place m my novels are possible, but highly unlikely.That's why af I set themoan the past at's casier.I don't think thar if set them m the present, the reader could have this suspension of disbelief \u2026.Although n does permit me to say certain things about the present,\u201d Desjardins continues, confirming a suspicion that Lily's resentment is a metaphor for Quebec politics.\u201cTo me [A Covenant] was really an see page 18 ORNTAURR IRD ni THE CARPITER - mit ta THESYANGA TEE directed by Lay Moss staring Carofine Cave by special arrangement with Mait Salinger HALF LIFE by John Mighton directed by Daniel Brooks RELATIVE GOOD by David Gow directed by David Gow MADDY HEISLER by Daniel Lilligrd directed by Roy Suretle FOREVER YOURS, MARIE-LOU by Michel Tremblay transiated by John Van Burek & Bill Glassco directed by Sarah Stanley / site sn! 514-288-3161 www.centaurtheatre.com Rivers of history SCENES OF CHILDHOOD By Bernadette Griffin Shoreline Press $18.95, paper, 78pp ISBN 978-1-896754-43-7 THE RAFTSMEN OF THE OTTAWA AND ST.LAWRENCE RIVERS By Léon A.Robidoux Shoreline Press $22.95, paper, 200pp ISBN 978-1-896754-38-3 (Reviewed from galleys) ving in Montreal, it is sometimes easy to forget that less than three hours away lies Quebec City, a place possessing every bit as rich a cultural and economic history as our own, Two new books give very different perspectives on that history, one intensely personal, the other mostly archival.Scenes of Childhood is musician non-fiction Bernadette Grifan's Actionalized memoir of growing up on rue Saint-Joachim in Quebec City in the 1940s and \u201csos.(The title is a riff on Robert Schumann's \u201cScenes from Childhood,\u201d a suite of short piano pieces Griffin would know well.) This slim set of linked tales follows the fates of a bilingual family headed by Johnny McGrach and his wife Marie- Ange Laprise, and their neighbours.In quick succession, Johnny and Marie- Ange bring six children into the world, and cram them into a series of small apartments.Johnny's sister Francie comes to live with them for a few years.A \u201ccolourful character,\u201d single at a time when that was more than faintly scandalous even without her dalliances with the occasional sailor, Francie seems to exist primarily as an historical foil.She provides the author with an opportunity to mention the Chateau Frontenac - where she works - and one of its prominent diners, Premier Maurice Duplessis.Among other scenes are those describing the Catholic Church\u2019s tremendous hold on daily life, a gifted but ill-fated Mc- Grath son named Anthony, and the narrator\u2019s life-altering piano lessons.Griffin possesses a hvely facility for storytelling, and a keen ear that\u2019s not surprising given her resumé.However, her approach tends to verge on the anecdotal, and frequently lapses into cliché when simple description would suffice.One gets the strong impression that this book was intended as a family record to pass on to grandchildren.The stories do have the authentic ring of a memoir, full of the extraordinary trivia that makes up most family histories.As a window into Quebec City life ar that time it is small, but the author's warmth and compassion are never in doubt.Scenes of Childhood is a cozy read.0\": wouldn't expect a history of rafting to be a cozy read.Léon A.Robidoux\u2019s book is both scrupulously researched and affectionately, even joyfully, related.It could be argued that there's no point in writing about a rather obscure segment of history \u2014 particularly Canadian history, which is reputed to be boring - unless you are passionate about the subject.Robidoux does not disappoint in that regard.His passion may be explained by a familial connection: One of the St.Lawrence Rivers great rafrsmen was Aimé Guerimn, the aurhor\u2019s great-grandfarher.For centuries before the last raft went under the Victoria Bridge in 1905, vast assemblages of cleverly bound logs shared the waterways with canoes, boars, and barges as modes of transport in Quebec and Ontario, Songs and sagas were written about them.Jean Talon (1625-1694) was the first builder of the timber rafts used to transport merchandise berween Montreal.Quebec Citv, and Trois-Rivières, Philemon Wright, an American, saw the benefits of the industry after initially intending to clear his land for agriculture.The raft-making and rafting industries could not have existed without a robust timber trade, which in turn grew out of the need to open land to cultivation, then quickly outpaced agriculture as an economic force in the colonies.As roads improved, engines were invented, and timber became scarcer, rafts disappeared.Robidoux\u2019s book is a fine insight into a bygone era.en By Louise Fabiani, a writer living in Outremont.Wake-up call ONE CHILD AT A TIME By Julian Sher Random House Canada $22, paper, 336pp ISBN 978-087-9313922 n many ways, the internet is to the youth of today what television was to previous generations in North America.It is the entry point to a wider world, delivering information in a neat package of images and sound.But for all their similarities, what makes the web so much more powerful than television is that while the wired world inspires the exchange of information, it also provides the means for the audience to immediately \u2014 and anonymously - share that information, whether it be through words, images, or video.The consequences of such an accessible environment are elaborated in One Child at a Time, Julian Sher\u2019s heart-rending look at how child abusers are using the web to feed their obsession, and how dedicated individuals are using that same technology to stem this online epidemic.Sher, an acclaimed investigative reporter, shows how the web has helped make child abuse terrifyingly common: \u201cChild abusers and the images they produced were around long before the advent of the internet, [but] what was once a hidden scourge restricted to the dark corners of society 1s now widely available using any search engine.\u201d This thoroughly researched and well-documented book examines \u2014 step by step, clue by clue = how the concentrated efforts of specialists, technical experts, and law officials are resulting in daring rescues of helpless victims, the seizure of millions of misbegotten dollars, and the arrest of numerous child abusers and porn merchants the world over.It also unmasks the men \u2014 and yes, women - behind this terrible crime, revealing among their ranks lawyers, teachers, doctors, and other seemingly upstanding citizens.Considering the sensitive nature of the material, this book may not appear appealing to many readers at first glance.However, for parents and those who work with youth on a regular basis, Sher's work may hold some important revelations about how to protect children from online predators.Rest assured.the writing style is detached in tone and entirely suitable to the subject matter.Out of respect for the victims, Sher purposefully stays away from graphic, sensationalistic language.Also, thankfully, the book does not contain photos.When Sher focuses on the fight against online predators, readers will be riveted.The victims he introduces elicit immediate sympathy.and although their situations are horrifying, it's difficult to rest until their fates have been discovered.When Sher dips into far more complex and controversial topics = such as the effectiveness of rehabilitation for child abusers or the \u201ccauses\u201d of paedophilia - the book becomes more frustrating.These are far too complex to be treated in a few paragraphs, and Sher does not have the space here to treat them with the detail and analysis they require.If nothing else, his comments can be an impetus for further research.Overall, One Child at a Time offers inspiring stories of the triumph of good over evil, but also serves to wake up parents who may still innocently believe that their children are sate from online predators.The book ends with a series of insightful and thought-provoking conclusions that once again prove Sher\u2019s ability to grasp complex issues with absolute clarity.Unlike the many who would deal with this situation by sticking their heads in the sand, Sher promotes a more vigilant approach for every member of society.As he writes, \u201cWe need better surveillance and awareness by parents and schools, but we also need more empowered and wary voung people who know the limits and risks of life on the web.\u201d em By Adriana Palanca, a Montreal writer.Fall 2007 This book is about.among other things, reactung that age.usually thirty to forty, when you suddenly see right through yourself.With Swift, this moment of unobstructed vision is accompanied by a fresh view of others He casts away youthful \u201ccool\u201d and tenderly mourns his tather.He recalls his courtship of his wite wherein he acted anything like the overwhelmingly irresistible Marlon Brando in A Street Car Named Desire.Pan- tully and wonderfully.he identifies with the nondescript suburban commuter he once insolently heckled in his head.These are poems of yearning.elegy realization.romance and enchantment Winter TENnis & Topo Swift \u2014 $16.95 rarer, $29.95 sount New Titles from DC Books Fiction Wilt Aitken said of Dube's Hovering World, that it was \u201cqueer in all the best senses of the word - non-con- formist.eccentric.dissenting.crazed.aberrant.and.of course.invaluable.\u201d So with Dube's second major work Again.the reader finds himselt in a Big City world of late night neon.narrow streets.lund bohemian warrens Roaming and dwelling here are strange.almost gothic characters with memorable fixations and obsessions This collection is about individuals whose zany imag! nations have finally run away with them - somewhat the the bus Thom takes whose driver announces he's Hacking the vehicle and leaving the city LIVRES DC BOOKS A tu BOTTOM OF THE Ske ty Peter Dust \u2014 $18.95 PAPER, $29.95 gounn www.dcbooks.ca mRb 14 \u2014\u2014\u2014 A RE sn (EME it avr er rain non-fiction The lone gunman THE BIG LIE: ON TERROR.ANTISEMITISM, AND IDENTITY By David Solway Lester, Mason & Begg $24.95, paper.320pp ISBN 978176502 avid Solway is a brillant writer.The power of his sentences, amph- fied by a rich and precisely honed vocabulary, places him in that raretied category of essavists for whom, as with Christopher Hitchens, rhetoric is a genie that holds sway over the reader's mind.He is also, like Hitchens, a former leftist who now supports the Bush doctrine, The first part of the book, entitled \u201cPlatform,\u201d uses Michel Houellebecq's novel of that title and the French author\u2019s notorious Islam-bashing as reter- ence points for a yo-page tirade against Islam im which, pomring out the Joy expressed by Moslems over the decima- tions of the terrorists (as in 9/11), he concludes that \u201cthey (Moslems) can scarcely be considered, in the vocabulary of Western humans, as \u201cethical subjects\u201d but remain in the service of an exclusionary universal and as such are maccessible to us.\u201d In the second part of the book, entitled \u201cOn Being a Jew,\u201d Solway lays about with his broadsword like Achilles with his heel still intact, striking ar a prejudiced Western media and Europe's \u201crelativist approach to multiculturalism,\u201d which is undermining its own Enlightenment values.Solway believes 2003 1s a repeat of 1938, when Solway believes the first aggressions of a delinquent nation were met with a soft European response.Doubting thar any negotiation is of 1938.possible with the Palestinian Authority.Solway unleashes one of his many fireballs: As for the \u201cpeaceful\u201d advocacy of such people \u2014 the journalists, the broadcasters, the bien pensants, the in- stapundits, the weathervane conmen- tators, the talking heads and Tele- dontosauri.the frequently consulted Aral plenipotentiartes \u2014 this amounts to nothmg more than a subtle technique of persuasion imtended to promote the bloody agenda of Arab leaders like the Late Yasser Arafat and Hizbullah fanatic Savved Hassan Nasrallah.The socio-historical origins of rerror- ism do not concern Solway.He vehemently rejects any and all reasons for occidental guile and.strangely for a poct and former leftist, is haftled by the apparent \u201cdeath wish\u201d in Western culture.the knell tor which has been sounded by poets and philosophers trom William Bake to The Dualectic of Frlighten- ment.Sobwav rejects the postmodern is a repeat critique of the Enlightenment, and the entire discourse surrounding the tyranny of reason with its concomitant social backlash of alienated youth.dvstunc- tional tanulies, and countercultural movements.His bold attack on the tde- ological constructs of academia appears to derive from some embarcled front where Solway has been witness to minu- nent doom.Mockmg Derrida's ghastly Stuffer 1 response to 9/11 (it was a \u201ctelegran of métonyms\"}, appalled by the \"we had ir coming to us\u201d views of Edward Said and Noam Chomsky - he dismisses the darters work as \u201cideological blather\u201d = Solway believes that the ntellectual Left 1s incapable of recognizing reality, that it wants to teed the planet on Coleridge's \u201chonev-dew.\u201d He describes the chmate of Western academic dementia as follows: \u2026 Hatred of one's own, a pronencess to delusion.and the seductive reverie of antirealism, moral cvastveness and the babit of rejigging the past seem bardicired into the mimndset of this strange buman colony, so glibly eloquent and yet so morally marticulate.He as equally troubled by the kind of mternationalism thar secks a feel-good, Kantian brotherhood of man at the very moment when the \u201cbarbarians are ar the door\u201d: Under tbe rubric of \u201csocral justice.\u201d the Left is busy trying to dismantle the imperfect but still effective political and econonue structure of the world's greatest democracy, the bulwark of what we know of as civilization, in order to pursue a universalist program of salvation on carth\u2026 Profoundly informed, contentious, bellicose, mas- rertully composed.bracing- 2003 ly un-Canadian in nts passionate opinions, The Big Lie rides roughshod over the problem of the creation of social wholes in which - whether they are God-cen- tered cultures or capitalist ones \u2014 there will be glaring inadequacies.Naicher Solway nor Hitchens appear to have any understanding of the contemplative richness of hives lived under à transcendent ideal, nor of the dangers of a ume bound society that manufactures commercialized identities.The Barbie dolls that strut about with the *I-am-an-ob- ject-to-be-desired\u201d look on their faces may he remotely related to the terrorist.But Solwav\u2019s polemic is a provocation to all lefe-leammg intellectuals who have withdrawn into a dream world of imagined togetherness, who have been lulled nto a soporific reverie by the constant drone of conthet, or who have crawled snail-hke into a rhetoric-encumbered postmodern hberal arts shell.Bearer of a tremendously personalized world of lcarnmg, and thus never pedantic, David Solway is thar rare species of fone gun imrellectual who must be treated with cautious respedt.eo Pv Mark Heffernan, a Montreni writer, QUEBEC WRI TERS\u2019 FEDERATION Celebrating exceflence in Quebec's English-Language literature {| Celebrant l'excellence en matière de htterature de langue anglaise au Québec 2000 A UN AAR) - Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-fiction ($2000) Sponsored by Champlain, Dawson, Heritage.John Abbott, and Vanier Colleges Julie Barlow & Jean-Benoft Nadeau \u201cThe Story of French Knopf: Canada Margaret Somerville The Ethical Imagination House of Anansi Press Vikki Stark My Sister, My Self: Understanding the Sibling Relationship that Shapes Our Lives, Our Loves and Ourselves on McGraw Hill/New York The Paragraphe Hugh Macl@hfian Prize Sponsored by Paragraphe Bookstore Liam Durcan Garcia's Heart McClelland & Stewart Heather O'Neill Lullabies for Little Criminals HarperCollins Publishers Neil Smith Bang Crunch Knopf Canada McAuslan First Book Prize ($2000) Sponsored by McAuslan Brewing Inc.Angela Carr Ropewalk Snare Books Nairne Holtz The Skin Beneath Insomniac Press Neil Smith Bang Crunch Knopf Canada www.gwf.org info@gw! org or 514-933-0878 Gala Wednesday, November 21 a J.hortlist ; A.M.Klein Prize for Poetry ($2000) Sponsored by Jacques Nolin David McGimpsey Sitcom Coach House Books Erin Moure 0 Cadoiro House of Anansi Press David Solway Reaching for Clear: The Poetry of Rhys Savarin Véhicule Press Transiation Prize ($2000) Sponsored by Pierre Lapointe Phyllis Aronoff & Howard Scott My Name is Bosnia Talonbooks/Karl Siegler Madeleine Gagnon Je m'appelle Bosnia VLB Éditeur Lazer Lederhendier The Immaculate Conception McGill-Queen\u2019s University Press Gaétan Soucy L'Immaculée conception Les Éditions du Boréal Robert Majzels & Erin Moure Notebook of Roses and Civilization Coach House Books Nicole Brossard Cahier de roses et de civilisation Éditions d'Art le Sabord denon Beatin gin be ge pepe Cat Rat nk Tali per ot bp 7m