Nose in a Book

Player One by Douglas Coupland

Read for: Canadian Books Challenge 4

First of all…this is totally unrelated to the book but my biggest pet peeve is when the library puts the bar code right over the title or the author of the book.  My library copy of this book has the sticker right over the title.  Why do they do that?  There are lots of other good places on this cover for the bar code that wouldn’t hide the title of the book.  Another book I have from the library has the sticker right over the author’s last name.  What’s up with that?  Anyway, rant over.

This book was really weird, and not just normal Coupland weird, but really out there weird.  It’s a good thing it was short because otherwise I might not have finished it.  It’s about these four people who are in a hotel lounge when the world goes insane after the price of a barrel of oil hits $350.  (I have to admit, as an Albertan whose husband works in the oilsands, my first thought on that was “Woohoo!”)  They barricade themselves inside the lounge and basically just talk and kill time.  Other than that, there’s not much to the book (as I said, it was short).

I guess I’ll start with what I liked.  I like Coupland’s writing.  Even when he is writing about serious stuff, he still has a little bit of irreverence in his writing that somehow makes Coupland’s version of the apocalypse easier to read about and even laugh about.  I actually also really liked his characters.  They all seemed a little lame and sad at the beginning but as I read the book I came to like them all and see the good in them.

Now for the rest.  I can’t say I didn’t like this book, I just didn’t get it.  I needed more time with it but it has to go back to the library so that’s not going to happen.  I feel like this is a pretty lame review but I just have nothing to say about the book.  If you like Coupland and you have the time to dedicate to reading it, you’ll probably enjoy it.

Generation A by Douglas Coupland

Read for: Canadian Books Challenge

It is in the future (the near future according to the book jacket) and the bees have all disappeared.  Then randomly (or not as it turns out) five people across the globe are stung.  Each of them are then brought into special isolation rooms to be studied to find out why they were stung and how this information could be used to bring back the bees.  I found this part of the book interesting but then it took an odd turn.  After the stingees are sent back to their normal lives, they are again gathered up, and this time brought together on a remote island and told to tell stories to each other.  Then there are a bunch of their short stories in the book (which I’m sure had some deep meaning to the story but it wasn’t readily apparent and I just didn’t feel like thinking that hard to figure it out).    Then after all that weirdness, there’s some zombie references and then you find out why the bees disappeared and how the scientists plan on getting them back.

So, how did I feel about this book?  I’m still not sure.  It’s taken me a while to get to this review because I’m still deciding what I think.  I did enjoy the first half and I was satisfied with the ending, but the middle part was strange.  And I can’t decide if the beginning and the ending make up for the strangness of the middle. you know?

As always with Coupland, though, there were definitely parts that made me laugh out loud and many of his characters were pretty witty which made for enjoyable reading even in the weird parts.  I think overall it was a decent book and it wasn’t too long or deep so I can see past the middle part (which wasn’t bad – just different and isn’t that just typical Coupland?)

Note: I’m labelling this as dystopian fiction because it kind of has that feel, but it’s not typical dystopian either.

St. Urbain’s Horseman by Mordecai Richler

Read for: Orbis Terrarum Challenge – Canada

This is either the third or fourth book I’ve read by Richler.  I like his books because although they are definitely can lit they aren’t as depressing as some books in this genre tend to be.  This one was no exception.  Richler’s novels (at least the ones I’ve read) tend to be satirical and sometimes funny without being satirical, which according to the wiki article linked above is one of the traits common to can lit, who knew?  (Probably lots of people, but I haven’t read that much can lit that was funny!)

Anyway, this one is about a man, Jake, who is on trial.  The book is one of those story’s where the reader isn’t given a lot of information and has to try and piece it together until your suspicions are confirmed near the end of the novel.  Richler gives us a peek into Jake’s life at the time of the trial and the reasons he is on trial but then back tracks to give the reader more insight into the Jake and his character.  As Jake remembers different incidents and times in his life he begins to question who he is and where he’s been.  St. Urbain’s Horseman, the title character is Jake’s cousin whom he pretty much worships even though he hasn’t seen him for years.  I don’t want to give away too much more about the horseman and Jake’s trial because part of what is good about the book is finding these things out as they are revealed in the book.

I wasn’t really sure if I would like this book when I first starting reading.  It took a while to get into it because as I mentioned before, the reader isn’t really given a lot of information.  I think Richler did this on purpose though.  He introduces his character, charging him with a crime and then puts him on trial.  By the end of the novel, the reader knows whether Jake is guilty or not before the circumstances around his crime are described.  We know whether or not he should be acquitted because we know Jake and we know his character.  What I didn’t like at first, I had come to appreciate by the end of the novel.  I would defintely recommend this book to most people.  It is kind of crude though, so you might what to avoid it if that kind of thing bothers you.

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

*Warning – There are spoilers in this review!*

I was going to do this book as one of my favourites, but I’m not sure yet that I can put it up there with some of the other books I’ve reviewed.  I did just reread it and couldn’t put it down.  I think I even liked it better this time around.  Anyway, onto the review!

Atwood starts the book with this line: “Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge.”  She just dives right in.  The book is divided into alternating parts.  One set of sections is narrated by Iris Chase Griffen at the age of 83.  Her writings are a journal that she is writing for her estranged grand-daughter, basically the story of her life.  The other set of parts starts with newspaper articles that tell more of Iris’ story and alternates with a novel attributed to Iris’ sister Laura, and published posthumously by Iris.  Laura’s novel is also called The Blind Assassin.

Iris begins her story with Laura’s death and then begins to describe their childhood as daughters of a  successful industrialist.  As the girls grow up they lose both of their parents and Iris is married to one of her father’s competitors.  As a result Iris and Laura end up in Toronto living with Iris’ husband, Richard.  Iris’ marriage is not a happy one and Laura does not get along with her brother in law at all.  As the novel goes on, we realize that there is a very good reason for Laura’s hatred of Richard, which Iris is unaware of.

Meanwhile,  the reader is treated to Laura’s entire novel.  It’s a story about an unhappy married socialite carrying on an affair with a communist agitator in hiding.  There are no names or details in Laura’s novel but as the story continues, you realize that the story is autobiographical and that Laura is not the author.  The details of the affair are never described, but he tells her a story in instalments.  It is in this story that we meet the blind assassin.

What I love about this novel is the way Atwood tells the story.  The reader starts out with many questions.  As the story goes on, all of those questions are slowly answered.  I just love the way Atwood gradually reveals more details as the novel unfolds. I also love the way she tells a story within a story within a story.  (I read one website that described compared them to Russian nesting dolls.) You’d think is might be complicated and confusing but Atwood does such a good job timing and relating the different parts of the story that it’s easy to follow.

The novel isn’t a happy novel with a happy ending, but I do think it’s very well written and very poetic.  This is the kind of writing that is truly amazing.  I can see why it won the Booker.  Other books by Margaret Atwood that I would recommend are Alias Grace and Oryx and Crake.  (Two entirely different books though…I’m warning you!)