David Cole continues his Cool Canadian Crime interviews. See what west-Quebec mystery writer RJ Harlick is up to. I’ll give you a hint… her characters are freezing their tushes off.
I dove into a collection of short stories for my 11th book of the 2nd Canadian Book Challenge. Under the banner Rafales, this collection comes from a local publishing house in Gatineau (old Hull) called Vents d’Ouest. The title Jeux d’adresses separates out the different “jeux” (games) in our lives from children’s games to forbidden games. Naturally, my favourite section was Jeux de mots!
And here’s something fun… my copy is signed by author Louise Bouley. The dedication is to “Suzanne” with “Gros bisous” (big kisses) and an invitation to explore the imagination of Outaouais.
With that in mind, I am offering up this copy as a prize to a reader who shares their favourite image from Leonard Cohen’s “Suzanne Takes You Down”.
http://www.lyricsdomain.com/12/leonard_cohen/suzanne.html
And for readers that want a crisp copy of Jeux d’adresses, shop directly from Vente d’ouest for more local francophone authors.
Jeux d’adresses, edited by Julie Huard, Michel-Rémi Lafond, François-Xavier Simard
Ventes d’ouest
You know Mark Frutkin from Fabrizio’s Return. You may have already snatched up his new quasi-autobiographical journal Erratic North: A Vietnam Draft Resister’s Life in the Canadian Bush.
Frutkin is my 10th west Quebec author and the whole time I read Slow Lighting I wanted to eat Spanish oranges.
Slow Lightening is the perfect title. The story is about a university student caught up in political unrest, something he didn’t create, can’t control, and can’t escape – like lightening. It’s like watching distant lightening slowly creeping toward you … and when you’re under it … KABOOM!
Frutkin mixes humour with politics; a cocktail I adore.
Find Frutkin’s books here:
http://www.markfrutkin.com/books.html#slow
Here is Frutkin’s interview with the Ottawa Citizen on Draft Resister:
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=a751c3d6-c7cd-4b81-a938-cf3407e9de03&p=1
Kathleen Molloy
At a second-hand bookstore today, I picked up a copy of Speak Ill of the Dead. You will recall that I read this first book of the Camilla MacPhee Mystery series as one of my 13 west Quebec authors for the 2nd Canadian Book Challenge. I picked up this second copy today because I had already book crossed author Mary Jane Maffini out to Winnipeg by the time two readers wrote to request that I hold on to Speak Ill of the Dead so that we could trade Canadian authors.
When I got home today, and started to prepare my Book Crossing label I discovered the following inscription:
“To Marcia, look for the Nova Scotia clues, enjoy – Mary Jane.”
Poor Marcia. I bet she’s looking under her bed for this one. You snooze, you lose, Marcia. This signed copy is going down east as a prize to a Nova Scotian lover of Canadian mystery books.
It’s a contest.
To qualify: 1) you have to be a Nova Scotian reader who loves Canadian mystery books
2) you have to send a comment to this blog to tell readers who your all-time favourite Canadian mystery writer is and the title you’d buy twice.
3) you can also be a non-Nova Scotian lover of Canadian mystery books too and try your luck at a mystery prize
[Did I mention that there will also be a mystery prize to a non-Nova Scotian who also loves Canadian mystery writers?]
Post your comment before Halloween 2008 and I’ll pick two random readers to win. Nova Scotians and Everyone Else are welcome to try. Post your comment and try your luck.
I’ll be happy to know that this signed second copy of Speak Ill of the Dead is in good hands.
Author Mary-Lou Zeitoun hides out in the Gatineau Hills. In my mind, that makes her West Quebec author and as such she finds her YA novel 13 on my hit list for the 2nd Canadian Book Challenge. She’s the 9th west Quebec author I’ve enjoyed for this challenge and the fourth YA author.
Today Marnie wouldn’t want to be the designer of vinyl record covers., cuz … what’s a record anyway? And she wouldn’t have to play the French Horn because no public schools have the money for music lessons anymore. And forget Spin the Bottle when you’re 13; now it’s hooking up at 10 and 11.
Ms. Julie loves books. She really loves books. No, I mean loves books. She loves them so much that she rates them on a Kiss Curve and stamps lipstick kisses on her favourite covers. Her crushes lean toward Quebec writers, particularly Quebec writers pumping out English works.
Ms. Julie has been known to stalk her favourite English writing Quebec authors at book fairs, festivals and Expos and she often photoshops herself into their pictures on the Internet.
Some might say Ms. Julie is a bibliopath.
And she is.
Sort of.
Ms. Julie is the offspring of the Quebec Writers’ Federation and the Association of English-language Publishers of Quebec. Born in 2008, she quickly grew to become the gorgeous Montreal-based librarian / book junkie all English-writing Quebec authors have come to adore.
The crush is mutual … and slightly embarrassing.
But can you blame us? Check out her blog.
http://lovemsjulie.blogspot.com/
And then check out the adoptive parents that put convinced writer/translator/reviewer Adrianna Palanca up to slide into Ms. Julie’s comfortable librarian flats.
Tales of my unfettered youth
When I was 3, I was allowed to ride my tricycle as far as the Webb’s house; three glorious doors down from the left. And my little feet were allowed to peddle as far as the hydrant; three doors to the right – one door short of Estelle the Witch’s house. The neighbourhood kids called Estelle “Estelle the Witch” when she shooed us away from stealing her chestnuts.
From age 4-8, when we were still too small to go to the park without our folks and still too annoying for the big kids to drag us along… so the little kids on the street were allowed to play in the street. Along with fierce street hockey battles we skipped, played Spud, and showed off our dangerous bike stunts that included Pop-a-wheelies and leaping off homemade ramps built from bits of wood we had scavenged from somebody’s backyard.
Somebody’s mom or dad always lingered on a veranda, watching us bounce in and out of each of the neighbour’s hedges to elude our captures in Hide-and-Seek. We called our friends’ parents “Auntie Linda and Uncle Jim”, and “Auntie Heather and Uncle John.” And when all of the parents were squirreled away cooking dinner, old Mr. Burns kept an eye out for us. We loved old Mr. Burns best because he made us jelly sandwiches at the first sight of a split knee, a bumped noggin’, or a hurt feeling. Mom said she thought old Mr. Burns had been a medic in the war. Dad confirmed it was the war of 1812. We adored Mr. Burns but we loved his slobbering orange spaniel Rusty that much more and slipped Rusty our crusts as we recovered.
We had the run of the town.
Well, actually it was only the run of Holley Avenue in what is now known as Toronto, and to be honest, it was only a swath of about 10 working-class houses in a row. While I’m confessing I had better admit that we had to come in when the lights came on… so we didn’t actually do much run’n. Still, it felt like we had the run of the town.
We were free.
This youthful freedom has been beautifully captured in Terrence Rundles West’s Run of the Town–Stories of an unfettered youth.
Moreover, West reminds us what it is like growing up as a “typical” Canadian boy, regardless of the decade of your unfettered youth, regarless of your gender.
After reading these stories, I think readers will agree that their own youth was the Golden Age for growing up.
http://terrencerundlewest.com/home.php
Notes from the website:
Unlike protagonist R.J. Martin, the town of my unfettered youth was not a small post-war northern Ontario community where Anglophone and Francophone boys designed ball-breaking insults for each other, each insult worse than the first until an interned Japanese family showed up in town and then the boys had to ban together to invent slanderous racial names to add to the mix.
I grew up a tomboy in Weston Ontario in the 70s, in a racial mixed working class neighbourhood. Alongside Dalbir (Sikh), Anson (Black), Richard (Korean), the Morel brothers (Dad Dany still had a bit of a French accent), and Timmy and the rest of the pale-faced kids I yelled “car” when our street hockey matches were interrupted. Our gang didn’t call each other names based on skin colour or maternal tongue; we called each other “fag”. It was “fag” when someone missed a goal or when a check hurt too much, or when one of the boys got distracted by jiggling boobs walking by. We wore Pepsi shoes, exchanged hockey cards, and counted the Summers until we could go to the park unsupervised. At the park we played tackling tag, tackle football and tackle baseball; fell out of trees; and blew things up.
We were loved but unencumbered by parents micro-managing our lives or hovering over us every minute of our waking days. This became a blessing in Grade 5 when girls started sniffing around the periphery of our circle after Timmy instituted Kissing Tag.
Any one of us could have been R.J. Martin, some 30 some years later.
Like R.J., I hope we all turn out alright in the end.
Run of the Town is the 8th book by a west Quebec author that I’ve enjoyed for the 2nd Canadian Book Challenge.
After 36 years of travelling I am now somehow able to read in the car without barfing. I discovered this new talent as we wound our way up Route 138. What this meant is that during the 19 hour trip I devoured 3 books by Canadian authors over 3 days.
Given that it was a road trip, I finished off the delicious Volkswagen Blues by Jacques Poulin in no time. The story begins with a fatigued writer picking up a hitchhiker in Gaspé. The writer has lost his brother, not buried him, but simply lost him. The hitchhiker tags along enroute to California where they suspect the brother has disappeared to. As they discover traces of the brother’s trail all clues suggest that the lost Canadian may have had a shady past. Or worse, he might have been a poet. As the man seeks his brother, the woman reflects on who she is as an Indian in North America and together they follow the Oregon Trail as though they were the earliest European settlers. The story telling is simple, the story is simple and the one feeling that I had after finishing it was the simple pleasure of reading about strangers being kind to each other.
The second book that I enjoyed was work of non-fiction called An Acre in Time. This work reflects on how a single acre of land has developed over time (geologically, naturally, socially, polictically…) been exploited, changed hands, changed hands again, then been exploited again and so the story goes. The acre in question is a parcel east of Canada’s Parliament buildings, on the Ottawa side of the river. Phil Jenkins’s retelling of the acre’s story is both thoughtful and thorough. It is a lyrical romp back in time and causes one to reflect on how we bandy about the word “mine” as in “my land”. It is the seventh work by a west Quebec author that I have enjoyed under the 2nd Canadian Book Challenge.
A third book, this one by Torontonian David Bezmozgis was a collection of stories aptly titled Natasha and Other Stories. It is a fly-on-the-wall look at little Mark growing up in Toronto in the 80s after his Jewish family arrived in Toronto from the U.S.S.R to try to make a go of it. What struck me about this collection is how very real the 80s felt page after page. When I was in grade six, in Toronto, in the 80s, a new girl joined our class from Poland. Katerina L was tall, pale, and elegant. She quickly became the class’s math whiz and we became instant nerdy friends. She lived in 1 bedroom apartment (her dad slept on the chesterfield – her mom and brother were still in the Soviet Union) and she smelt like pickles. I loved pickles and I adored her dissected family because her dad invited me to join them on Friday nights to go swimming. After our swim we shared a warm bowl of cabbage soup in their apartment. They had nothing yet they shared it and I loved them for that. In my 11 year-old way I tried to help them fit in. But one day when I arrived at their apartment and rang their buzzer I was taken aback when I discovered that they had changed the buzzer name plate from their perfectly-nice Polish name to “Molloy”. To this day, I’m not sure why I reacted in the way that followed and I am sure I will always regret having done this but at the sight of my family name on their buzzer I felt the “fitting in” had gone a bit too far. I felt betrayed. Perhaps I should have taken it as a compliment. Perhaps I should have discussed it with the dad; owned up to my feelings. But I didn’t. I shut down. I stopped accepting swim dates and pickles. I stopped walking to school with Katerina.
This is the sixth west Quebec author I have read for the 2nd Canadian Book Challenge.
Kiss the Sunset Pig, Lauire Gough
Since moving to Quebec I have discovered that everyone in Guelph Ontario adores Laurie Gough. I know this because whenever I meet someone from Guelph they assume “Oh, you must know my dear friend Laurie.” And when my dear friends from Guelph hop over the bridge for a visit they always pre-arrange a tea date with Laurie and her family. Laurie Gough collects good people.
Having finished reading Kiss the Sunset Pig I now know that Laurie has managed to collect good people from around the world. In her first book of travel adventures, Laurie squeezes us into her beat up old Bronco named Marcia. We accompany her on a road trip across the United States, pass the non-descript strip malls, pass the Plains, pass the bigger-than-life Americans… all the way to California. She’s looking for a cave in which she spent some time during her youth, a time when she felt safe and certain of who she was and what she wanted.
Laurie’s first trip to the cave was in her twenties, she wrote this travel log in her thirties, and she now bounces happily into her forties. Yet although we know she is a mature adult woman it is still impressive to read how she described her journey from who she thought she was en route to becoming who she wants to be.
And isn’t travelling as much about what we learn from the world as it is what we learn about ourselves? On this adventure Laurie learned that she could be happily independent, happily in love with Mr. Right if she ran him over, and profoundly lonely and isolated.
As she described her misgivings about her Korea trip I remembered the complete isolation I also felt when holed up in a Seoul hotel for three days.
My return flight from Singapore was delayed for two days because of jam. Not an air traffic jam but raspberry jam. Crates of raspberry jam had crashed in the cargo, spilling a gooey mess and forcing the passengers to sleep in the airport for 2 days while the airline searched a jam-free flight for us. It was impossible to get information from the airlines. Impossible to escape old Korean ladies body slamming their way to the front of the line. After being knocked around a line-up for almost 12 hours I finally reached the ticket counter where I pressed my elbows down flat, stretched my arms the width of the counter and spied the ticket agent dead on. He couldn’t have possibly ignored me. Yet he did. And this was because an old lady wedged herself in between the counter and my breasts. She had ducked under the stinky gap of my armpit and settled comfortably between me and the counter. My stunned response to the invasion didn’t last long and I barely got out an “Uhh excuse me,” before a second old lady joined her. Now, I must confess, I never was a girl blessed by the Hooter Fairy, so it is hard to imagine how two grown women could nestle in between my boobs. But they did and the ticket agent didn’t flinch.
My travel mates and I were shuttled to a suburban hotel where we spent 3 nights eating noodles and watching American GI TV. Just as Laurie described it, for me Seoul was bleak, crowded, overcast, polluted and… did I mention crowded? In that suburban hotel I was isolated. I woke with panic attacks fearing that the airline would lose all records of my existence and forget me there. On night two I had a nightmare that the American soldiers had taken over the city and in response the Koreans slaughtered foreigners in the street. Screaming myself awake I had only my purse and the airline-issued tooth brush to fend off the nightmares. Fortunately the hotel laundered my clothes every night but during those hours when they bleached my jeans, I can honestly say that I felt naked, my soul, my hope, my common sense - all gone.
Like Laurie, I’ve had the opportunity to explore much of this world and I’ve made some curious and oft times unhealthy travel choices. Part of the adventure right? But I have never felt as lonely and vulnerable as I did in the Korean suburb, naked, with only a tooth brush and David Letterman.
Kiss the Sunset Pig is not so much about hitchhiking through Sumatra, canoeing in the Yukon, sleeping in a redwood tree…as it is about yearning to find yourself somewhere else.
http://www.lauriegough.com/books.html
And who wants to Kiss the Sunset Pig of the title? Singer Joni Mitchell does.
http://top5.weblog.ro/2008-04-28/355177/California—Joni-Mitchell.html
I’ve picked another YA novel for the 2nd Canadian Book Challenge.
The next time one of my girlfriends confides that she doesn’t know what her teenage daughter is thinking, I’m going to suggest that they read Catherine Joyce. Coinciding with her writing career, Catherine works with youth at risk, including anorexic and bulimic girls.