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Book Review

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
I have always preferred Atwood's short fiction to her novels, but this is undoubtedly her masterpiece. Atwood tells the story of Iris Chase Griffen, who is coming to the end of her life and needs to set the record straight. Iris does this by telling the story of her early life, which is bound up in the story of her sister Laura who died at 25 and posthumously became a celebrated author. Iris's tale is interspersed with Laura's one novel, The Blind Assassin, which tells the story of a pair of secret lovers. When these lovers meet in squalid apartments, they tell each other the story of the planet Zycron and the fabled city of Sakiel-Norn, which exist in another dimension of space. As we move deeper into the tale, we understand that this is all one story, broken into facets. Atwood's writing is exquisite throughout, but never more so than when constructing the pulp scifi story the lovers tell. Laura is one of the most fascinating characters I've ever come across and Iris is so complete that you almost forget she isn't real. If you like Atwood, read this and enjoy. If you think you don't like Atwood, read this and become a fan.

Book Review

Dorothy Parker Stories by Dorothy Parker

This edition includes all the stories from two previous collections Laments for the Living and After Such Pleasures. These 24 short stories are little peaks into the minds, lives and conversations of various jazz age denizens including aging party girls, cheating husbands, young lovers, horse-faced nurses and society ladies. Dorothy Parker deserves every bit of her reputation as a legendary wit - my favourite story in the collection is A Young Woman in Green Lace, in which the title character finds it difficult to readjust to New York after spending three weeks in Paris. These are just perfect, beautiful, clever, heartbreaking gems of stories.

Book Review

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
It's New York in the 1870s and Archer Newland has just become engaged to May Welland, his ideal woman, when her cousin the Countess Olenska arrives in New york fleeing from a bad marriage. Meeting the Countess forces Archer to re-evaluate everything he believes about the rigid social rules of the New York aristocracy and the life he had intended for himself. A gorgeously written love story about what we owe to ourselves and what we owe to others, about loving the goodness of a person more than wanting them, and about the prisons we build for ourselves. The story is only outshone by the atmosphere - Wharton paints old New York like a canvas. Five Stars.

The 1993 Martin Scorsese directed movie is well worth a watch, too. He recreates the atmosphere perfectly.

Book Review

Passionate Minds: Women Rewriting the World by Claudia Roth Pierpont

This was an impulse buy some years ago that has been gathering dust on a bookcase. I finally got around to reading it, and it was terrific. The book is a collection of short biographies/essays on the literary contributions of a diverse group of 20th century women writers, including Gertrude Stein, Hannah Arendt, Anais Nin, Zora Neale Hurston, Dorris Lessing, Ayn Rand and others. The essays were universally fascinating (Rand was slightly less of a kook than I had thought, Margaret Mitchell, Arendt and Lessing were every but as problematic in their personal lives as Hemingway, Eliot and Pound) and I have added at least a dozen books to my list of things to read right now. The writing is sharp, it moves at a clip and no more than 30 pages are devoted to any one author. Loved it. Five Stars.

Book Reviews

Amphigorey by Edward Gorey
This is a collection of fifteen of Gorey's odd and wonderful little illustrated stories. Gorey's work has to seen to be believed. From The Gashlycrumb Tinies which illustrates the alphabet with the horrible deaths of children, to The Unstrung Harp which tells the story of the the writing of a novel called The Unstrug Harp, Gorey is delightful and slightly mad in verse, prose and pictures. My favourite story in the collection is The Doubtful Guest about a strange creature that shows up at a family home one day, wreaks havoc and says for seventeen years. Five Stars!



Foundation by Isaac Asimov
It lives up to the hype. In a galaxy far, far away, the empire is crumbling and a dark age is approaching. Hari Selden has worked out the future for the next ten thousand years using the science of psychohistory and figured out how to keep the knowledge of the empire alive and cut down the dark ages to a mere millennium - by sending 100,000 people out to a planet at the edge of the empire and starting the Foundation. It's a fascinating story and it's truly astounding that this book was published in 1951. But! And it is a big but! In this far away future women are basically invisible and not involved in scholarship, trade, politics or religion, as far as I can tell. There are only two female characters in the entire book - both so minor they don't actually have names - whose combined presence in the story lasts about three pages. Three and a half stars for the story, negative five stars for severe gender issues.



The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
First, Toro Okada's cat goes missing. Then he meets several strange women and an elderly WWII soldier. Then his wife goes missing. Finally, he climbs down a well and things start getting weird. It's very long and there really isn't a lot of plot, but it kept me fascinated right up till the end (which I need to think about a bit more). Not all the threads are woven together, but they clearly aren't supposed to be. I didn't like it quite as much as Norwegian Wood, which was the first Murakami that I read, but it's still a solid three and a half.

Graphic Novel Roundup

So April was Graphic Novel month at Chez Laura.



Stitches: A Memoir by David Small
Yes, it is another graphic memoir about a dysfunctional childhood - but it's a really good one! The story is compelling - Small went into the hospital to have a growth removed and woke up without one vocal cord, rendering him mute and only found out later that he had cancer and wasn't expected to survive. And the art is very nice.



Robot Dreams by Sara Varon
This wordless and sweet tale of friendship between a dog and a robot is a perfect example of the Graphic Novel as a purely visual medium. Lovely.



The Golem's Mighty Swing by James Sturm
A 1920s Jewish baseball team, the Stars of David, run into trouble on tour and agree to a publicity stunt - creating a Golem. Sturm's first graphic novel about baseball and racism is fascinating and powerful, though I liked his later book Satchel Paige: Striking Out Jim Crow more.


Houdini: The Handcuff King by James Lutes and Nick Bertozzi
I love graphic novels that tell short, self contained stories, especially when the stories are true. This one is about a particular trick that Harry Houdini once did - jumping into the Charles River with his hands and feet bound in chains. Really cool.



Fables: Sons of Empire by Bill Willingham et al.
The fourth Fables graphic novel I have read this year is one of the better ones. Picking up where Fables: Wolves left off, the adversary plots the destruction of the Mundy world and Bigby and Snow White deal with family matters. The series is still well worth reading, but I wasn't too fond of the art in the second half.



The Wall: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain by Peter Sis
Brilliant non-fiction children's graphic book about growing up in Czechoslovakia during the cold war. Sis includes contextual political and cultural information and parallels it with the story of a boy who drew - a boy very much like himself. A brilliant story and a brilliant way to teach kids history. Loved it.


The Professor's Daughter by Joann Sfar and Emmanuel Guibert
Strange and wonderful graphic novel about the mummy of Imhotep IV falling in love with an Egyptologist's daughter in Victorian London. Gorgeous art.


The Eternal Smile: Three Stories by Gene Luen Yang and Derek Kirk Kim
Graphic novel month continues with these three short, fascinating and stylistically different stories exploring what these three people want in life, their various escapes from reality and the reconciliation of real life and ideal life. It doesn't quite live up to the genius of American Born Chinese, but I don't think anything could have.