The Eager Beaver -- A rose by any other name ...

Strip Tease
Carl Hiaasen
Warner Books

I'm having a tough time coming up with content for this entry. It's not that I didn't enjoy Strip Tease -- I did -- it's just that I don't read this kind of book very often and for whatever reason, I don't know how to talk about it.

I guess we should start with the basics. Strip Tease, on one level, is a "suspense/thriller" novel, set in the seedier parts of south Florida. The main protagonist, Erin, is a reluctant stripper (and a former FBI data entry clerk) who needs to make decent money in order to fight her meth-head ex for custody of their child. One night, a sex-addicted congressman commits an indiscretion at the club where Erin works and she is inexorably sucked into a vortex of politics, big-agriculture, extortion and murder. Sounds fun, huh?

Hiaasen's novel is more than a John Grisham wannabe -- it also provides biting social commentary about government, corruption, and the kookiness of the south Florida social scene. While I did find myself laughing out loud in parts (the Eager Beaver is actually the name of the strip joint where, ahem, a great deal of the action takes place,) I also found myself wincing and shifting in my seat. Hiaasen can definitely be funny and make his reader uncomfortable at the same time. Two and a half lap dances out of five.

Exactly, my dear Watson ...

Arthur & George

Julian Barnes

Vintage Canada

With the advent of the gift card, most of my friends have stopped giving me books for Christmas. While I appreciate their thoughtfulness and generosity, I have to admit to missing the thrill of reading something that has been selected for me by someone else. Happily, my best friend isn't afraid to buy me books (he's mastered the concept of the gift receipt) and so far, this year's picks have been top shelf.

Arthur & George, by British novelist Julian Barnes, is an extraordinarily well-crafted piece of historical fiction that tells the story of two Edwardian gentlemen -- one, a world-famous writer, and the other, a quiet, hard-working solicitor of mixed Indian/Scottish descent. Their worlds intersect when George (the solicitor) is wrongly convicted of a heinous crime and spends three years in an English gaol. George receives an early release, but no pardon, so he writes to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and requests the writer's assistance in pursuing justice.

Barnes uses the factual details from both the Edalji case and Doyle's own life to weave a compelling narrative that sweeps the reader back to turn-of-the-century England. When Doyle investigates and eventually shames the Home Office into granting the pardon, George is pleased yet unsatisfied. He wryly notes that he thinks Doyle "too influenced by his own creation." Doyle, on the other hand, is amazed by George's Tory snobbery and reluctance to admit that racism was the true cause of his wrongful imprisonment.

Arthur & George is wonderful novel. Not just because it provides a portrait of an age, but because it transcends time and deals with themes of love, honour, guilt, privilege, duty, race and class. Barnes is a masterful, witty storyteller and in this novel, it seems to me that he invokes the true spirit of Miss Austen. Already I can guarantee you that Arthur & George will be in the running for the d-e-s book of the year. A very beautiful five Janes out of five.

We Interrupt this Blog ...

For those of you who are not yet intimate with the hideously boring details of ma vie quotidienne, I quit my job back in September to hang out, go to the gym, and catch up on my sleep. Before anyone says "wow, she's so brave," I should probably inform you that it was a very low risk proposition. I was able to pick up some ad hoc consulting days and I had a whack of dough saved from a couple of lucrative years in software sales. I was pretty sure that I needed a "break" and a three-week vacation that would require me to get onto yet another airplane just wasn't going to cut it.

So, here I am now, a few months later, rested, a blogger, much more fit, and finally ready (albeit a bit reluctantly) to go back to work. I start on Monday. Why am I telling you this? Well, part of the reason I started this blog was to give myself a creative outlet that I could access while travelling. Yes, there are still going to be lots of airports and lonely nights at the hotel in my future, but I'm hoping that the idea of "the reading public" will make it a little less solitary. I also thought that it might be fun if I actually recorded the location of where I am when I make the posts. You never know ... maybe I'll be in your city and you can save me from another night of eating in the darkest corner of the bar, avoiding eye contact with creepy old guys in bad suits.

Prithee look back ...

The Bloody Chamber
Angela Carter
Penguin Books

When I was in the third grade, my best friend's name was Janice Slack. I can't remember if Janice and I met in gymnastics or at school, but for a little while there, the two of us were inseperable. We'd walk Bunny (her dog), have sleepovers in the tent trailer that was parked in my driveway, and play dress up in the crawl space of her basement. Like me, Janice was kind of nerdy-- she liked to read almost as much as I did -- and one year for Christmas, her Grandma gave us both a copy of Grimm's fairy tales. We each had our favourites and it shouldn't surprise anyone to learn that I liked the gory ones best.

The Bloody Chamber, by Angela Carter, is a collection of short stories that rework traditional folk stories, legends and fairy tales. While I can't say I enjoyed all her work, I did appreciate how she tries to turn legend on its ear and recast the female figures as active heroines instead of passive victims. Her writing is very sensual and often, borders on the erotic. I also enjoyed the smartness of her narrative -- her work is full of allusion and subtle homage -- quite a lot of fun for someone who likes to play guess the reference. Three blood-curdling screams out of five.

Conflict-ed

Three Day Road
Joseph Boyden
Penguin Canada

My second year of university, my fellow English majors and I had to take a ModernLit class that covered works from the early twentieth century. I didn't particularly love the period and for me, it was tough slogging. Joyce, Woolf, Lawrence, Mansfield, Yeats, ... they seemed to be such an unhappy lot and very little of what they wrote inspired me. The group of individuals known as the War Poets, however, moved me to such an extent that I have never been able to shake the images of what they had to endure.

Boyden's descriptions of trench warfare in Three Day Road reminded me a great deal of the poems of Wilfrid Owen. His prose is brutal, minimal and utterly devastating and it will be some time before I can get it out of my head. The novel itself tells the story of two Cree snipers, Xavier and Elijah, and the horrors they endured on the battlefields of Europe. Woven into the narrative is the the back story of Xavier's youth as well as that of his Auntie, Niska, a bush dweller, a receiver of visions, and a windigo killer.

Conflict is central to this novel and its relationships. And not just war -- Boyden raises many issues that are worth discussing, not the least of which is the collision between red and white culture at the turn of the century. This novel is beautifully written and while the reader is certainly impacted by Boyden's grim depiction of the Great War, he/she is not blinded to the greater themes/truths that the author has conveyed. Three Day Road, like Dulce et Decorum Est, will stick with me forever. Five MMs out of five.