What I've Been Reading

Just this minute finished Nicole Krauss's The History of Love, which was just fantastic. One of those books where you finish the last page and want to go back and start all over, just to savour the language and soul and wisdom. It's a great exploration of loss and loneliness, a search for meaning, and the many stages and forms of love. Best book I've read since Gilead by Marilynne Robinson.

Another recommendation for Rawi Hage's De Niro's Game, which has been on Canadian bestseller lists for a few years and was a finalist for Giller and GovGen awards. It's the story of two best friends growing up in Beirut during the civil war of the 80's. The story is gripping and taut and captures the nihilism and pointlessness of a modern, urban war. What I really loved though is the original writing style, which pounds and builds and echoes, with short, choppy sentences, like hip hop in a novel form. Not for the light of heart, but it will stay with you.

In the past few weeks, I also finished Anthem of a Reluctant Prophet by Canadian, Joanne Proulx. Great title and I'm as much of a sucker for the coming-of-age genre as anyone. There seems to be quite a buzz for this debut novel, but it didn't quite do it for me. Teen angst in suburban Michigan gets set off by the protagonist eerily predicting the manner and timing of a friend's death. But this supernatural power is never explained - I hate it when a literary device is used to cover a gaping hole in a story. Plus, I don't think I know anyone like the characters in the book - at least they didn't ring true for me.

Being out at Gambier for a week with no internet, tv, or Olympics meant I got a fair amount of reading done. So I also finished The Deportees, Roddy Doyle's short story collection. The stories share a theme of being set in the new, multicultural, economically vibrant Ireland. For Doyle fans it's worth the price of admission for the Jimmy Rabbitte story alone - a neat afterword to the Barrytown Trilogy. If you're not already a Doyle fan though, then this isn't the place to start as it doesn't hold a candle to his best novels.