Saturday May 03, 2008
OUR READERS WRITE
Clayton Chrusch from Hamilton writes: Northrop Frye's brilliant magnum opus Fearful Symmetry should be on the list. It is the best description we have of imagination, in particular the literary imagination. ... Literary criticism in the 20th century had a choice between coming to terms with Fearful Symmetry or following the dead-end path that it eventually chose.
My father, my family, my Germany
MY FATHER'S COUNTRYThe Story of a German FamilyBy Wibke BruhnsTranslated by Shaun WhitesideBond Street, 361 pages, $35Wibke Bruhns's very personal account of her family's fate across two centuries of turbulent German history has been a huge success in her homeland. Published there in hardcover in 2004, it is presently in its eighth paperback printing. Lavished with praise for its heartrending honesty and literary power, it has also been criticized for exploiting rather than enlightening the past.
The great detective stumbles
THE SUSPICIONS OF MR WHICHERA Murder and the Undoingof a Great Victorian DetectiveBy Kate SummerscaleRaincoast, 360 pages, $28.95In this extraordinary book, Kate Summerscale, former literary editor of Britain's Daily Telegraph, recreates within the conventions of the country-house mystery the investigation into the Road Hill Murder, which for a time obsessed Victorian England.
Tightrope-walking in the dark
STUNT By Claudia DeyCoach House, 245 pages, $19.95Claudia Dey, playwright and writer for this newspaper's Group Therapy column, is admittedly fascinated with peoples' interior lives. In Stunt, her debut novel, Dey cracks open the intricate interior life of Eugenia Ledoux, the irresistible nine-year-old narrator who is abandoned by her father, Sheb, portrait artist and collector of birth notices. Convinced that her father did not actually mean to leave her behind with Mink, her self-obsessed professional dancer turned B-movie actress mother, and Immaculata, her death-obsessed sister, Eugenia sets out to make sense of his abrupt departure.
When nihilists threatened the world
ANGEL OF VENGEANCE The ''Girl Assassin,'' the Governor of St. Petersburg, and Russia's Revolutionary WorldBy Ana SiljakSt. Martin's, 370 pages, $28.95Ana Siljak's Angel of Vengeance is the story of an unlikely would-be assassin. On Jan. 24, 1878, Vera Zasulich, then just 29, unmarried, gaunt, shy, the youngest child of an impoverished aristocratic mother, pulled an English Bulldog revolver from her shawl and fired two shots at General Fedor Trepov, governor of St. Petersburg. It was Trepov's misfortune - and Zasulich's stroke of luck - that he lived. For in place of his client, Zasulich's lawyer put Trepov and Russia's prison system on trial. In a sensational verdict, the jury, out for half an hour, acquitted Zasulich.
The other Israelis
Reams have been written about the Holocaust, the birth of Israel and the fate of Palestinian Arabs who became refugees in that process. But a related narrative has been neglected. During the same years, 900,000 Jews fled or were expelled from Arab countries in the Middle East and North Africa - often stripped of their citizenship, property and assets before being shown the door. These other refugees left territories where an indigenous Jewish presence predated the Muslim conquest by more than a millennium.
PAPERBACKS
ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, MINERALA Year of Food LifeBy Barbara Kingsolver, with Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver, Harper Perennial, 370 pages, $17.50Kingsolver and her family went to live on their Virginia farm, vowing to eat only food grown locally. This is a humorous and informative account of that experience, and an eye-opening investigation of the real cost of our food.
Mordecai Richler was here
MORDECAI RICHLERLeaving St. UrbainBy Reinhold KramerMcGill-Queen's University Press,483 pages, $39.95As I approached the three-quarter mark of Mordecai Richler: Leaving St. Urbain, I found myself reading more and more slowly, and even occasionally setting the book aside. Finally, I realized that I didn't want the biography to end. Mordecai Richler seemed so vividly alive that I wanted to keep hanging out with the irascible old master.
More satire, please, we're Canadian
THE BEST LAID PLANSBy Terry FallisiUniverse, 257 pages, $21.95A few years ago, CBC-TV foolishly cancelled Snakes and Ladders, a political dramedy set on Parliament Hill. The appetite for more Canadian political intrigue, especially with a satiric bent, is still there. But where do you find it in novel form?
CHILDREN'S BOOKS
EVERYWHERE THE COW SAYS ''MOO!'' By Ellen Slutsky Weinstein, illustrated by Kenneth Andersson, Boyds Mills Press, 32 pages, $16.50, ages up to 3Dogs, frogs, ducks and roosters express themselves differently in different languages. In English a dog says, ''Bow-wow;'' in Spanish it - the dog in question is a caricature of dog, a large-mouthed, small-bodied, short-legged white dog with black spots - says, ''Goo -ow; in French the dog says, ''Wah-wah;'' ''But everywhere, the cow says, ''Moo!''
A spoonful of sugar - and two of salt
HOMEA Memoir of My Early YearsBy Julie AndrewsHyperion, 339 pages, $28.95Before I began reading Julie Andrews's Home: A Memoir of My Early Years, memories of Pauline Kael's devastating comments on the actress in the nauseatingly saccharine Sound of Music bubbled in my mind: ''the clean, scrubbed look and the unyieldingly high spirits; the good sport who makes the best of everything; the girl who's so unquestionably good that she carries this one dimension like a shield. ... Sexless, inhumanly happy, the sparkling maid, a mind as clean and well brushed as her teeth.''
Handle your past with care
THE USES AND ABUSESOF HISTORYBy Margaret MacMillanViking Canada,194 pages, $30In recent years, as their wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have foundered, George Bush Jr. and Tony Blair have turned to future historians for vindication. As Blair put it, ''I am confident history will forgive.'' It's a good way to avoid awkward questions, of course, but there is also the implication that these imaginary friends are bound to see things as they do. Given enough time - and air strikes - the ''war on terror'' will take its rightful place alongside the other virtuous Anglo-American wars they repeatedly cite as precedents. Both men surely dream of being anointed another Churchill.
Madness and insight
Shakespeare's King Lear is magnificent, appalling, soaring, banal, cruel, tender, funny and complex; the virtuous are punished, justice is rarely served (and lawyers are unloved). Its scope is so demanding that it's virtually impossible to stage and its end is simply shattering - in other words, it's very much like life.
[class] bks [illustration] [source] [geography] Canada [subject] books; rankings; list [persons] [organization]
FictionTHIS WEEK/LAST WEEK/WEEKS ON LIST/TITLE/AUTHOR/PUBLISHER/PRICE 1 18Remember Me?, by Sophie Kinsella (Dial, $30). 2 -1The Whole Truth, by David Baldacci (Grand Central, $29.99). 3 -1Quicksand, by Iris Johansen (St. Martin's, $29.95). 4 82Belong To Me, by Marisa De Los Santos (Morrow, $18.95). 5 213The Appeal, by John Grisham (Doubleday, $33). 6 449A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini (Viking Canada, $34). 7 65Lost Souls, by Lisa Jackson (Kensington, $20). 8 78Change Of Heart, by Jodi Picoult (Simon and Schuster, $29.99). 9 32The Miracle At Speedy Motors, by Alexander McCall Smith (Knopf Canada, $29.95). 10 103Friday Nights, by Joanna Trollope (McArthur and Company, $24.95).
