Wonderful storytelling of the remarkable relationship between two siblings, Nouschka and Nicolas, who have grown up without parental love: a physically absent mother and an emotionally absent father. O’Neill captures the francophone world on Montreal in 1995, leading up to the separation vote. The sibling relationship is amazingly close but they are moving in different directions: Nouschka is going forward and Nicolas is stuck in the present/past. Wonderful writing, especially the metaphors!
Category: Book themes
Flora – Gail Godwin
A 10-year-old (Helen) and a 22-year-old (Flora, a cousin of Helen’s dead mother), spend part of the summer of 1945 together. Helen’s father is working at Oak Ridge on bomb development so Flora is a companion/chaperone. Helen is a precocious, petulant, self-absorbed and incredibly manipulative kid, so interesting character and the ending to the book is a surprise.
Nocturne by Helen Humphreys
(thanks to Amy/Steph). Really excellent writing; book was read in one setting so clearly I was engaged by the story. The book describes the experience of the author’s life together with her brother, and details after his death. Perhaps I was primed by the [Miriam] Toews AMPS [All My Puny Sorrows] but I have a personal preference for introspective and insightful writing. Humphreys captures the cruelty of disease and the numbness of grief. She writes: fear the worst because the worst has happened” (first Matthew and then Anne).
The Valley Of Amazement by Amy Tan
Story set in Shanghai from approx. 1900-1930, two mother-daughter relationships spanning 3 generations. Detailed description of life as a courtesan through good times and bad times. Chinese men have anglicized first names like Perpetual and Loyalty.
After This by Alice McDermott
A really lovely book about a family just dealing with life’s relationships (Marie, children mainly). Understated, better than McDermott’s book Someone from April.
All My Puny Stories – Miriam Toews
This is a book about suicide and so it is hard to be perfectly objective but – this is her best book since A Complicated Kindness. Some back story: Toews wrote Swing Low, a non-fiction account of the suicidal death of her father. In AMPS (words taken from a Coleridge poem), the story is fiction but heavily influenced by the suicidal death of Toews’ sister in 2010.
Now for the comments: this is a heart-breaking story, that captures perfectly the inherent conflict between two sisters who love each other, but conflict because one wants to die and the other who wants her sister to live. The inevitability of the progression to the suicide is frightening, despite great efforts by many individuals in addition to the sisters. And finally, the picture of the psych staff is unflattering: indifference and ineffectiveness. Save up your energy for this but it is brilliant writing.
Perfect – Rachel Joyce
A brilliant story: sad, poignant, about fragility and uncertain realities, and the unsettling grip of mental illness. This book is even better than her previousbook The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
Under The Wide And Starry Sky – Nancy Horan
A story of the complicated, often tempestuous relationship between Robert Louis Stevenson and his wife Fanny. The setting is constantly changing in the search for a climate that is healthy, a search that eventually leads to Samoa. (Horan wrote Loving Frank which is also excellent)
Hidden – Catherine Mckenzie
A 3-way story: a man who dies accidentally, his wife, and the woman he was having an affair with. It is not so much a story of infidelity but what secrets need to be hidden.
What David Read 