Author: August

I purchased this book some while back because Pearson was described on the back cover as being neo-Faulknerian. This is a term I’d never heard before, but Faulkner is among my favourite authors, is probably my favourite American author. Neo-Faulknerian? How could you go wrong? As it turns out, you can’t, at least not if buying and reading a copy of Blue Ridge was the course of action you were contemplating. Going wrong, I suppose, would involve not doing those things. Pearson’s prose does not possess the same biblical slowness as Faulkner’s, but his South is very obviously the same South Faulkner wrote about. They also share the same dry, considered wit, often showing itself to great effect when the plot would seem to suggest other directions. Blue Ridge is actually possessed of two plots that meet only briefly and somewhat superficially in the final pages. Two cousins, Ray and… Continue Reading →

My first thought upon finishing this book, and I hate that it came to me in these words, was “what a good little book.” Right away I regretted the phrase; it appears, even to me, as a patronizing remark of the damning-with-faint-praise variety, and that’s not at all what I intend to do. After all, as I said to a friend over coffee this afternoon, I would most certainly read another book by Claire Cameron, based solely on the experience I had reading The Line Painter. It was, after all, a good book. It had interesting characters that I could imagine walking the streets out there somewhere, it had an excellent plot that was, as advertised, a genuinely fresh take on a premise that has been worked over by authors and film makers literally for generations. It was decently paced and hit all the right emotional notes. It was suspenseful,… Continue Reading →

I first heard about this book when William Gibson posted about Gray on his blog some time back. I must confess that this is the way I discover a lot of new fiction; what better recommendation than one from another writer? Finding a copy of this book was another kettle of fish entirely. Of course it was available online, or locally in mass market paperback, but I refuse to buy mass market books (they are cheap, disgusting little objects) and if at all possible I’d rather not buy a book online when there are old-fashioned bricks-and-mortar book stores about. I think it was five or six months that I looked for a copy, until finally Dave at Words Worth Books in Waterloo, one of my favourite book stores in the country, was able to track down a hard cover copy for me, at a more than reasonable price. (The staff… Continue Reading →

I will confess that I only thought to read this book after having seen the movie. I kind of hate it when that happens; I feel like a bandwagon jumper or some other brand of hanger-on. A johnny-come-lately or what have you. If we were talking about music and I told you that I only started listening to Sonic Youth because of their Carpenters cover on the Juno soundtrack, you (some amorphous hypothetical you, not any specific you who might be reading this) would definitely ridicule me, and given the hipper-than-thou politics of the music scene, you would have cause. More and more lately I’ve seen a similar attitude among readers; if a film has been made or Oprah has heard of the book, then God help your street cred if you get caught reading it on the subway. You are branded a mindlessly consuming sheep. Yes sir, no sir,… Continue Reading →

In the past I have seen books published by Oberon Press that have seemed under-designed, almost Porcupine’s Quill ugly, an impression reinforced by the glossy coating on the covers. Dance of the Suitors has a soft matte cover with a lovely image (somewhere between Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt, though perhaps embroidered rather than illustrated) by Phoebe Anna Traquair, and it makes all the difference in the world. This volume of short fiction, with its heavy interior stock and clear, simply arranged type seems dignified rather than cheap. The thing that struck me the most about the work itself was the obvious care Villaverde took with the language, his obvious attention to crafting each sentence, choosing each word. I found myself reminded, actually, of Michael Helm’s In the Place of Last Things, which I read earlier this year and has since become one of my favourite Canadian novels. Like in… Continue Reading →

This book took me far longer to read than I expected, for two reasons: first, I was quite ill for two weeks, and did not read a word during that entire period, and second, much of this book was very, very boring. As you might expect, this book has two narrative lines that move towards a common point, sort of (gasp), like the shape of the letter “V”. One of these branches follows the comings and goings of Benny Profane and The Whole Sick Crew, a collection of AWOL sailors, thinkers, artists, gang members and various other slackers. It has many of the elements of your standard 1950s jazz (or “beat”) novel; the characters have unbelievable names, most of the dialogue is empty with long conversations that go nowhere, many of the characters feel a manic desire for change and an even more manic desire for travel, but both manias… Continue Reading →

I can’t entirely decide how I feel about this book. I enjoyed what was there, I suppose, but by the end, even though the plot had run its course, I still felt like things were just getting started. The prose was plain and very much “about the story”, in the sense that there was no formal experimentation or any real effort at elegance. It’s not that the prose is bad; I just have a hard time picturing Hanrahan slaving away over whether or not a sentence was quite right. The long and the short of it is that it was so easy to read that going slowly and chewing over what was happening was pointless; there’s very little here except the story itself, and it simply ran so fast that it exhausted itself early. I guess that’s maybe the problem. The story is alright, I suppose; I’m sure we all… Continue Reading →

I can’t get over the appropriateness of the book’s title. The men in this book—and the book is mostly about men, a thing that is more rare in my reading than you might think—are often violent, sometimes intensely so. What keeps them from becoming clichés is that their violence and brutality often shocks them more than the reader. It’s not a callous, unthinking brutality. It’s a brutality laced with guilt and fear and shame, with the knowledge of having failed, without always knowing why or how. There were times when I felt I’d read these stories before. Given how many writers cut their teeth on the form, I know, as a writer, that it’s certainly quite difficult to feel like you’re creating anything new. With a few of these stories, particularly the ones about childhood, like “The Helmet”, I get a palpable sense of Sellyn struggling to overcome the sheer… Continue Reading →

I didn’t realize when I started reading this series that, though three books had already been published, many more (as many as four more) had been planned. I wound up doing something I hate doing; I started reading a series before all the books were published. And now I’m stuck not knowing how it’s all going to turn out, with no recourse but to wait and hope the author doesn’t up and die on me or something. It is some small consolation that the books have been good enough that waiting, hoping the author doesn’t die, is in fact something that I’m perfectly willing to do. The Thousandfold Thought picks up on most of the issues that I discussed in my last two entries, particularly doubt and betrayal. I found myself liking only a single character in the entire book, a sorcerer called Drusas Achamian, and even then he’s a… Continue Reading →

Doubt remains as powerful a force in this second novel in The Prince of Nothing series as it did in the first. The Inrithi Holy War that had seemed a faraway impossibility and an excuse for political maneuvering suddenly becomes real and terrifying, not only because of how large and powerful it is, but because of the atrocities that follow along with any sufficiently large group of disorganized men, and because of the ease with which Kellhus and other powerful people subvert it until it becomes merely a tool towards the realization of their own personal agendas. Kellhus, who in The Darkness That Comes Before was little more than a kind of ninja-like traveler posing as a prince, manipulates those around him until he becomes the Warrior-Prophet, altering the face of the Inrithi religion until Achamian (a blasphemous sorcerer, and the only even remotely likeable character in the series) is… Continue Reading →