Category Archives: Canadian Literature

The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

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Synopsis:
The events leading up to the “waterless flood,” a global catechism wiping out almost all of mankind, as told from the point of view of two survivors, a sex worker and a healer, both of whom were members of a radical vegetarian cult.

Review:
The Year of the Flood is Margaret Atwood’s companion to Oryx and Crake, presenting the events that led to Jimmy the Snowman’s reign over the gentle, sinless Crakers in a post-apocalyptic landscape. Atwood resolutely refuses to call either book “science fiction,” in a disingenuous bit of verbal sleighthand that I find snobbish to the core–and this despite Atwood’s status as one of my favorite authors of all time.

I’ve never liked her so-called “speculative fiction,” and The Year of the Flood tried my patience with its rampant coincidences. I’m really meant to believe that the only survivors of a cataclysm consist of:

  • a stripper with a heart of gold
  • her best friend, located in another city
  • a man both of them slept with (who also randomly ended up roommates with a third girl they both grew up with)
  • one of the women who raised them in the cult
  • that woman’s seriously abusive ex-boyfriend–who comes and kidnaps the stripper and the best friend
  • two other boys who grew up in the cult

And nobody else! It angered me to no end, these coincidences in a book whose theology seems to deny the existence of any ordering principle in the universe. I don’t believe in coincidence in stories, or in fate or destiny or any of those things. In a fictional world, you can’t escape the presence of the author’s hand, so if you’re going to deal in coincidences you have to make something of it, not just shrug it off and expect me to swallow it.

As science fiction, The Year of the Flood doesn’t offer much that’s new or innovative. The religion she invents for the God’s Gardeners doesn’t seem particularly well thought out. The hymns she writes for them lack theological depth, with barbless satire that doesn’t point to any discernible real world equivalent.

The best parts of the book concern Ren and Amanda’s friendship, but of course that’s what I’ve always loved about Atwood. Her ability to limn the contours of female relationships has always been her genius, and it shines just as brightly here. But it wasn’t enough to save this book for me.

The Alchemist’s Code by Dave Duncan

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Synopsis:
Nostradamus and his assistant, the dashing Alfeo Zeno, solve a politically motivated murder while keeping their alchemical doings from being discovered by the reigning powers in heavily Catholic 16th Century Venice.

Review:
I listened to The Alchemist’s Code on audiobook, and wasn’t aware that it was a sequel until looking up the publication date to craft this post. It definitely stands alone as a mystery novel–no backstory needed for enjoyment–but I am now curious about what I missed in the first book.

Present Tense by Dave Duncan (The Great Game)

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Synopsis:
Book two in this trilogy has our unjustly accused hero crossing back to WWII-era England, hoping to escape from the law so he can enlist on the front lines and narrating the story of his time as a battle commander Nextdoor to his cohort of rescuers.

Review:
I was not quite as enthralled with Present Tense as I’d hope to be, but I still enjoyed it. I get frustrated when fantasy stories rely too heavily on the notion of prophecy, because then the story just starts feeling like a video game. All the hero has to do is hit various marks to complete the board. Here, Edward is trying to break the prophecy, so that adds a level of tension to the predestination that kept me interested.

The theology of Present Tense is wild. Basically the gods are people like Edward who have crossed over, not meta-beings at all. The series has a core of atheism but reeks of magic. Plot issues aside, this is enough for me to want to see where he takes things in book 3.

Past Imperative by Dave Duncan (The Great Game)

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Synopsis:
An upper class young man on trial for murder in WWI England finds his destiny entwined with a girl on the road with a traveling troupe of actors in an alternate vaguely medieval world ruled by capricious and contentious gods.

Review:
I really enjoy Dave Duncan’s writing–he’s imaginative and not afraid of getting a little literary, and always comes up with great characters. Past Imperative (Round One of the Great Game) was a welcome departure from the usual epic fantasy in that half of the book is a murder mystery set in England.

Since it’s hard to sum up the first book in a series, I’ll let this review suffice for now. I’m about to dive into Present Tense so I’ll see if it keeps up the momentum.

Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay

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Synopsis:
Tigana is a country that has been obliterated by magic, down to its very name, yet a small group of rebels who remember decide to spark civil war to reclaim the honor of their homeland.

Review:
I wanted to love Tigana, I really did. Guy Gavriel Kay is a beautiful writer, excelling in exploring complex emotions and motivations within scenes that are startlingly original. There are scenes in Tigana that are achingly lovely without sacrificing dramatic impact.

However, the overall story just never clicked for me. I’m willing to give Kay the benefit of the doubt and call it the Sopranos effect–the machinations of the wranglings for power are somewhat lost on me. I’m not one for politics or strategy. I am terrible at chess and am not confident in my ability to guess the motivations of the key players because the source of their actions doesn’t like in their emotions. I don’t traffic in cold calculation and “The Sopranos” always made me feel stupid because I was always way behind the characters. I’m much more comfortable on psychological terrain, and that’s why “Battlestar Galactica” is more my style. The characters play politics, but their politics are always very personal, so I get it.

In Tigana, the main characters are playing an incredibly complicated game as they try to topple the warring sorcerers who have wiped the name of Tigana from the world. Each individual scene was gorgeous and fascinating, but by the time I got to the end I had given up on trying to figure out how it all fit together. Funny enough, that’s also the reason I got a D in AP Physics…

The Shaming of the Strong by Sarah Williams

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Synopsis:
Told their unborn child has birth defects that will likely lead to stillbirth, a couple decide to see the pregnancy through to term.

Review:
I am a sucker for stories like those found in The Shaming of the Strong. When I was pregnant with Superfast Baby I thought a lot about what I would do if I found out that something was wrong, and I hoped that I would be strong enough to make the choice that Sarah Williams made, however painful it might be. I decided not to have any testing done during pregnancy so that I wouldn’t be faced with that decision. Having suffered a miscarriage before getting pregnant with Superfast Baby, my heart goes out to all mothers whose pregnancies take a painful turn.

I actually found it hard to read this book. What Sarah Williams experienced as she carried her child to term and delivered a stillborn baby was so painful to me as a mother that I just didn’t want to get too close. It is just too easy to put myself in her shoes, and I found that I did not want to go there with her. The book was given to me by a dear friend who also had a miscarriage, and she found it very healing. I can definitely see why, and I am sure that I will return to this book in the future.

The Darkest Road by Guy Gavriel Kay (The Fionavar Tapestry, Book 3)

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Synopsis:
The conclusion of the epic battle against the darkness.

Review:
I’m sorry to announce to everyone who has been excited I’m reading Kay that I found The Darkest Road to be a slog… around page 275 I realized that I had nothing invested emotionally in any of the characters or their journeys. I just never really engaged with the story.

That said, Kay is a beautiful writer and I will certainly be checking out Tigana and Last Light of the Sun, though not for some time.

Sorry.

The Wandering Fire by Guy Gavriel Kay (The Fionavar Tapestry, Book 2)

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Synopsis:
Book 2 of the Fionavar Tapestry finds five Canadian students returning to an alternate universe where they continue to fight an epic battle against a demonic demigod and step further into their unique destinies.

Review:
As with any good second book in a trilogy, The Wandering Fire deepens the Fionavar mythology and heightens the stakes for all involved. Continue reading →

The Summer Tree by Guy Gavriel Kay (The Fionavar Tapestry, Book One)

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Synopsis:
Five Toronto college students are pulled into an alternate world where they discover their true destinies at the outset of a war that could affect all worlds, including their own.

Review:
Yep, another hard-to-synopsize epic fantasy book. The Summer Tree by Guy Gavriel Kay employs one of the standard fantasy templates–ordinary people drawn into an extraordinary world–making the book “execution dependent.” That means that Kay has to work twice as hard to make the story feel fresh and exciting. Continue reading →

World of Wonders by Robertson Davies

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Synopsis:
The premature baby of Fifth Business was kidnapped by roustabouts, grew up a circus performer, and has grown into the greatest magician in the world. His life story offers the final piece to the question posed in The Manticore: “Who killed Boy Staunton?”

Review:
Robertson Davies’s masterful Deptford Trilogy deserves to be on more must-read lists. I discovered it thanks to Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose, and can say that Davies’s writing not only warrants Prose’s close reading, it actually provokes it in the reader. Davies intimately marries story and language with sorcery worthy of his creation, the famed illusionist Magnus Eisengrim of World of Wonders, fooling you into believing you’re reading a simple story simply told, when in fact, over three books, Davies has pulled off epic spectacle through linguistic pyrotechnics. The works are that well hidden; the machine that skillfully crafted. There’s nothing obviously showy about his writing, yet the overall effect is more explosive than fireworks.

On an emotional level, the Deptford trilogy is exceedingly masculine, to the point where I can’t say I exactly connected with the characters and their journey. Of all the stories Davies tells, however, I was most enthralled by Magnus’s accounts of growing up among a traveling band of vaudevillians and circus folk. It’s such a fascinating world, particularly as Deptford doesn’t shy away from portraying its seamier side. And young Magnus, kidnapped and spirited away, is in a wonderfully rich predicament. Knowing what we know of his parents from Fifth Business, his account is infused by the specter of double tragedy. You can’t help but imagine what would have been if he hadn’t gone to the circus that day.

In each book, Davies employs a conceit to justify why the story is being told; positing a teller and an audience. In Fifth Business, it was Dunstan Ramsay’s attempt to write a hagiography of Magnus’s mother, whom he believed to be saintly in her feeble-mindedness. In The Manticore, he had Boy Staunton’s grown son enter Jungian analysis to tell his tale. In World of Wonders, Magnus’s tale is coaxed from him by Jurgen Lind, a great Swedish filmmaker who has cast Magnus to play Houdini in a biopic for the BBC. When Magnus mentioned that there is always a gap between autobiography and the truth, Lind seizes upon this notion. In lieu of Houdini’s truth, he will use Magnus’s truth to create the subtext that will give his film depth and truth.

As Magnus unfolds his tale, the tension between the telling and the truth grows ever more apparent, and it turns out that Davies is in fact interrogating the very structure he’s chosen for each of the three books. At one point, the characters debate point-of-view in art as it relates to truth. Liesl, the erstwhile lover of both Magnus and Dunstan says,

“Which man’s life are you talking about?” she said. “That’s another of the problems of biography and autobiography, Ingestree, my dear. It can’t be managed except by casting one person as the star of the drama, and arranging everybody else as supporting players. Look at what politicians write about themselves! Churchill and Hitler and all the rest of them seem suddenly to be secondary figures surrounding Sir Numskull Poop, who is always in the limelight…

This business of the death of Willard: if we listen to Magnus we take it for granted that Magnus killed Willard after painfully humiliating him for quite a long time. The tragedy of Willard’s death is the spirit in which Faustus LeGrand [alias Magnus] regarded it. But isn’t Willard somebody, too? As Willard lay dying, who did he think was the star of the scene? Not Magnus, I’ll bet you. And look at it from God’s point of view, or if that strains you uncomfortably, suppose that you have to make a movie of the life and death of Willard. You need Magnus, but he is not the star. He is the necessary agent who brings Willard to the end. Everybody’s life is his Passion…

Herein lies the crux of the Deptford Trilogy. History is subjective; yet subjectivity is really all we have. Not even a great filmmaker like Lind can create God’s point of view; as his cinematographer puts it, it’s all just a trick of the light. But I don’t get the sense that Davies is a relativist, or that this notion provokes despair. In World of Wonders, Davies gives his most disempowered protagonist an audience who fights with him, refuting him and even despising him, and that’s where hope and ultimately truth emerge.