Everything in Mercy Among the Children stems from this defining incident. After Connie gets up from the fall unscathed, Sydney goes through life in state of almost masochistic passivity and pacifism, in spite of the intolerance and ridicule he faces in his rural New Brunswick community.

Sydney’s choices eventually have consequences for his entire family, particularly his volatile son Lyle, who cannot comprehend his father’s turn-the-other-cheek attitude. When Sydney is implicated in a heinous crime in his Miramichi Valley community, Lyle decides that violence might be a more effective way to clear his family’s name.

Richards has been compared to Tolstoy for the moral questions he raises in this wrenching story. The novel is a compassionate depiction of people who struggle to endure the legacy of abuse, poverty and misfortune they’ve inherited from their parents.

Released to much praise in 2000, Mercy Among the Children was named one of the best books of the year by the Globe and Mail and Ottawa Citizen, and won the Scotiabank Giller Prize.”

Other useful links:
the Canada Reads page for Mercy Among the Children

My thoughts:
Before – This book has garnered much critical acclaim. Sometimes this heralds a good book, other times the book doesn’t live up to its hype. We’ll see which one Mercy turns out to be.

When the ridicule of the bullies in his eighth grade class at Clarkedale Elementary grows too much to bear, Peter retreats into his own vivid imagination. At night, he seeks solace in his ‘Bedtime Movies’ — glamorous narratives, where he is always popular, famous and, most of all, loved. But by day, those pesky nipples won’t shut up. When they threaten to expose Peter’s innermost secrets and desires, he is forced to come up with a new plan, one that will help him finally accept himself.

Published in 2004, Brian Francis’s coming-of-age novel captures the realities of puberty and budding sexuality in living colour. Anyone who has ever felt like an awkward teenager or grown up around an eccentric cast of characters will find something to relate to in Peter’s story. This humorous and vivid take on one teenager’s life will have you laughing one instant and wincing in recognition the next.”

Other useful links:
the Canada Reads page for Fruit

My thoughts:
Before – This book was the one I was least looking forward to. An adolescent boy whose nipples talk to him? Everything about it seems unpleasant and juvenile. I’ve heard that it’s very funny so I’m trying to approach it with an open mind, but I can’t imagine that it will be a book that I think every Canadian should read.
After – This was a very quick read. Parts were somewhat humourous and I enjoyed the flashback to the 80s aspect (like Peter I was in grade 8 in 1984 too). Sometimes, especially at the beginning, I found it rather misogynistic (all the women put down by the narrator as annoying, selfish, or in the way of what he wants). It was okay, but not fantastic. Disliked the whole preoccupation with the nipples thing & the ending was particularly dumb. Not sure if I preferred this book or The Outlander.

One by one, the characters inhabiting the cramped apartments on la rue Fabre emerge: Albertine, sister-in-law of the fat woman of the book’s title, who dreams of a more glamorous life; Marie-Sylvia, who runs the Arc-en-ciel restaurant across the street; Béatrice and Mercedes, two ‘chippies’ who ply their trade under the disapproving gaze of prudish neighbours; Duplessis, Marie-Sylvia’s fickle and always ravenous cat; and a number of pregnant women, who struggle to make ends meet while their men are either unemployed or away at war.

Their stories are relayed in the breezy, comic tones of the gossip the women exchange on the no. 52 Mont-Royal streetcar. Deftly translated into English by Sheila Fischman, Tremblay’s depiction of his childhood neighbourhood is fond but never sentimental. He describes the poverty in matter-of-fact detail and his dialogue is true to the district’s frank, expressive language.

Tremblay allows each of his characters to shine, and fashions a novel that hums with the hustle and bustle of everyday life in a big city.

Published in 1978 as La grosse femme d’à côté est enceinte, the novel was published in English translation by Talonbooks in 1981.”

Other useful links:
the Canada Reads page for The Fat Woman Next Door is Pregnant

My thoughts:
Before – I’m very optimistic about this one. My mother was born in Montreal in November of 1942, so the “fat woman” of the title might just as well be my grandmother (of course I know that she’s Tremblay’s mother but you know what I mean).
During (30.01.09) – I’m enjoying this so far, despite my general aversion to the paragraphless style. I’m about halfway through and I have a bad feeling that something awful is going to happen to Duplessis (who reminded me immediately of Mottyl, the cat from Not Wanted on the Voyage). Twice so far I’ve wanted to rap Sheila Fischman on the knuckles for saying “should of” instead of “should have”. Aaaack!
After – Loved this book. It seemed so effortless but was in fact extremely complex and multilayered. I really got used to the “megaparagraphs” and came to like the style by the end of the book. So far, it’s my pick to win.

Following this gripping opener, Mary embarks on a journey from the Prairies to the southern end of the Rockies. She encounters many intriguing characters along the way, including fellow outsider William Moreland, who is based on a real-life figure plucked from Albertan newspapers.

While she struggles to avoid starvation in a harsh and unfamiliar landscape, Mary must also contend with the dark memories that threaten to overtake her mind, in this tale of survival and liberation.

The novel’s blend of historical detail and meticulously crafted, lyrical fiction has garnered much praise since it was published in 2007. The Outlander recently won the ReLit Award for best novel and the Amazon.ca/Books in Canada First Novel Award.”

Other useful links:
the Canada Reads page for The Outlander

My thoughts:
Before – I’ve heard good things about this book & Nicholas Campbell seems to like it a lot.
During (18.01.09) – It took a while to get into this book—I didn’t really find it interesting until the appearance of the Ridgerunner guy and now he’s disappeared again, I’m somewhat bored. I don’t really like Mary Boulton as a character and I’m not sure why the author keeps calling her “the widow”: it seems an unnecessary affectation.
(22.01.09) – Another long, dull part in the middle. More not liking the characters much. A little disappointed with the Frank Slide disaster description (I can’t help but compare to Hugh MacLennan’s Barometer Rising).
After – Well, I liked parts of this book and some of the writing, but overall I wasn’t thrilled. I’ll be quite interested to see what Campbell has to say about it. I guess I never really got grabbed by any of the characters, especially Mary.

Aminata’s autobiography — or, in her words, “ghost story” — begins with her idyllic childhood in West Africa. Happy times are cut short when she is abducted at age 11, placed in chains, taken across the sea and forced into slavery at an indigo plantation in South Carolina.

But Aminata is a survivor and this is just one chapter in her remarkable life story. In a fitting twist for a book featured on Canada Reads, Aminata discovers that literacy just might be her ticket to a new life.

Following its release in 2007, Lawrence Hill’s compelling blend of history and fiction won the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and was awarded the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book in 2008.”

Other useful links:
the Canada Reads page for The Book of Negroes

My thoughts:
Before – I do believe this is the longest of the Canada Reads selections. I’m hoping it will go relatively quickly though since I really want to be able to finish all the books in time.
During (13.01.09) – Well, it is going fast. I stayed up until perhaps 3 or 4 in morning the day before yesterday and until 2 last night reading Aminata’s story. I think this is largely due to the trick of the author in laying out the plot as a journey home: the people A. meets, the ones she has relationships with, her experiences are all of secondary importance to the drive to return from whence she came. We become obsessed with knowing if and how she’s going to make it home to Bayo and what she’ll encounter when she gets there. Supporting this primary reunion plot are the three minor ones (the separation and possible reunion with Chekura, Mamdu, and May).
Other things that have crossed my mind so far: I like Aminata, but she seems kind of emotionally flat. Is this on purpose (a product of either her early upbringing or her continual traumas? a result of narrative distance)? Or perhaps this is Hill’s inability to quite sync with a woman’s perspective? I’m just not sure. The language of both the narration and dialogue often seem too contemporary to be a true representation and this sometimes pulls me away from the story with question marks hanging over my head (“a work in progress”??? what 18th Century person would come up with that???). Compare Octavian Nothing by M. T. Anderson.
After – Well, it was enthralling to the end & I did enjoy the journey. It did seem more like an author’s concoction rather than a real life history though. I’m happy that Aminata got to meet with her daughter May, but I was a little disappointed that she didn’t make it back to Bayo.

But anyway, I’m all geared up and ready to begin, just as soon as I’m finished my current read (Roughing It in the Bush). I’ll be reading The Book of Negroes first, as it is the longest of them, and the only one I currently have in my possession. I’m not sure about the order for the remaining books. Perhaps I’ll read them in diminishing order (or perhaps the order in which they arrive from Chapters…).

Some people on BookCrossing have already “signed up” to read this year’s selection with me, and I imagine we’ll have a lively debate as time advances on toward the March 2-6 broadcast of the debates.

This year, I’m planning to do as much of the blog work as I can in advance, so I’ll only have to do the actual “reviews” as I go, so I’m really hoping to succeed in keeping up and being prepared for all of the debates this year.

The 2009 Canada Reads books are:
Nicholas Campbell: The Outlander by Gil Adamson
Jen Sookfong Lee: Fruit by Brian Francis
Sarah Slean: Mercy Among the Children by David Adams Richards
Anne-Marie Withenshaw: The Fat Woman Next Door is Pregnant by Michel Tremblay
Avi Lewis: The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill

I hope that we get some real classic CanLit on the list next year though.

My plans for next year: to buy all the books, to read them quickly, to journal each one here as I read it, to send them all out as bookrings. I just wish they did it more often!

In his travels, Dr. Bryne uncovers near-mythical tales about the area and meets other eccentrics caught up in their own quests. He also becomes enamoured with Elspeth, a woman who shares his obsession with the things that lie hidden in the ice.

Told through a mixture of journal entries, clippings, scientific notes and letters, the novel blends history with fiction to tell a dazzling story of a singular place and time.

Icefields won numerous awards after its 1995 publication, including the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book, Canada and the Caribbean; the Henry Kriesel Award for Best First Book; the Writers’ Guild of Alberta Best First Book Award; and Grand Prize for Best Book Overall at the Banff Mountain Book Festival.”

Other useful links:
the Canada Reads page for Icefields
the official site of Jasper National Park
about the Columbia Icefield and Athabasca Glacier

My thoughts:
I enjoyed this book. I really liked the way the glacier worked its way into the psyche of Byrne and prompted him to come back to Jasper. It was as if he was compelled to integrate the glacier, the landscape, within his own understanding of himself. I did find the characters a little shallow — like all we’re getting is the surface, no substance, however. I wasn’t sure what to make of the ice angel — obviously something was there for Trask to see, but what? I also found the unconventional punctuation to be rather contrived and unnecessary, just drawing attention to itself for no reason.

I liked Pooker3′s description of the language (seems to sum that up pretty well): “As I was reading this, I was conscious of the simple sentences, short paragraphs and chapters; crisp language; spare and precise dialogue and I decided this must be deliberate by the author – meant to convey the simplicity of a snow covered landscape, the crispness of the cold, ice crystals and fragments, short breaths in the lung-freezing air making long winded conversation unwise if not impossible, one’s words being swept away with the wind, the need to not waste one’s energy, the cracking of trees in the cold, icicles dripping in the sun, the creep of the glacier, blah, blah, blah.”

If you like Canadian literature, stick around and read some of my other upcoming CanLit picks. In the upcoming weeks, I’ll be reading Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje (the 2007 GG winner), Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay (the 2007 Giller winner), As For Me and My House by Sinclair Ross, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz by Mordecai Richler, and that perennial favourite, Anne of Green Gables (to celebrate Anne’s 100th birthday of course).

By the way, I’d love comments, but you have to register in order to make them—I’m trying to avoid comment spamming.

Other useful links:
Canada Reads page for From the Fifteenth District
the Wikipedia entry for Mavis Gallant
The Canadian Encyclopedia Article on Mavis Gallant

My thoughts:
I’m afraid I’m finding these stories rather dull. Though they’re wonderfully written, I’m slogging through them. So far, I’ve read:
“The Four Seasons” – Story about a young servant girl and her English ex-pat employers and how the English community is faced with the war that they hadn’t foreseen.
“The Moslem Wife” – I did like parts of this story of the relationship of two married cousins (and liked it better after hearing Mavis Gallant talking about it).
“The Remission” – A very long story about an expatriate community on the French/Italian Rivera. It was okay but a little boring.
“The Latehomecomer” – I didn’t have any idea that German prisoners of war were basically made into ‘slave’ labourers in France for years.
“Baum, Gabriel, 1935-( )” – I didn’t mind this one, but I just found it went on for a very long time. I guess I’m just not that fascinated by Paris of the 50s and 60s
“From the Fifteenth District” – This I found to be the most intriguing of the stories so far. A tale of ghosts haunted by the living. The concept is a nice twist on what we would expect.

I’ve now read the final stories:
“Potter” – Another very long story which I found annoying because I really didn’t like either of the main characters.
“His Mother” – This is one of the ones I liked the best of the collection. On the shorter side and giving a real snapshot as a mother of an émigre in an Eastern European city. Reminded me a bit of De Niro’s Game for some reason.
“Irina” – Another of the shorter stories. I liked the ending & I especially liked the description of women as parcels.

Overall, I really enjoyed some of Gallant’s language, especially her descriptive imagery, but since I found the characters and their situations kind of dull, I found it difficult to read. Perhaps these stories would have been better listened to than read—I find that with texts that have so little plot: I find it hard to concentrate on just the language and expression. I also found her characters and the stories blended into one another and were a bit ‘samey’.