Literature

A co-worker saw me reading Bad Behavior during my downtime at work, and asked what it was like. My response to that question is still the most apt summation of this book that I can think of: delightfully fucked up. I found Gaitskill by way of Mr. Beattie‘s series of posts on short fiction last summer. I don’t remember a thing about what he wrote, or even what story it was (something out of Because They Wanted To maybe), but I do remember being intrigued. And when I found out that Gaitskill had written the short story that was the basis for Secretary, one of my favourite films, that clinched things for me. I’m now the proud owner three Gaitskill books, and I chose this one to start with because it has “Secretary” in it. I’ve since come across this interview from The Believer in which Sheila Heti (one of… Continue Reading →

I wanted to like this novel, I really did. I even tried to like it. Sabatini’s first book, a collection of linked short stories called The One With the News, was this amazingly nuanced examination of emotional complexity in a time of family trauma, and might be one of the best things ever published by The Porcupine’s Quill (ugly cover and all—though really, it wouldn’t be a PQ book be without a cover so ugly it could scare small children). Her second collection, The Dolphins at Sainte-Marie, was equally well-crafted, solidifying Sabatini as a disciple of Alice Munro. I learned several years ago, when Sabatini came to do a reading in Sudbury (not the first time we’d met), that she was planning to write a novel based very loosely on her grandfather’s experiences during the Second World War. Though I have no clue how much of her grandfather’s life remains… Continue Reading →

This book had been giving me the eye in my local store for a couple months before I broke down and bought it. The premise of the novel as reported by the back cover struck me as fifty percent intriguing and fifty percent off-putting. The intriguing: Auden, Hoolboom’s narrator/protagonist hears a voice in his head, a voice other than his own. When he moves from Sudbury to Toronto after discovering he’s HIV-positive, he meets video artist Steve Reinke, only to discover that it is Steve’s voice he hears inside his head. (Reinke, according to the notes, is a video artist out here in the real world too, though unlike his fictional counterpart, he is not HIV-positive. Some of his work is available to watch online.) Steve and Auden become… well, friends is the wrong word, I think, but they become close, anyway, and Steve helps Auden begin writing a book… Continue Reading →

Wandering Time was a gift from a friend of mine, and it couldn’t have arrived at a more necessary time. I’m not generally known as a nature loving sort of guy. Quite the opposite, actually. I’m known as a nature hating kind of guy. That’s not strictly true, it’s just the reputation I’ve acquired over the years by doing things like not wanting to go camping, preferring to do indoor things like read books and watch films, and leaving my rural logging town for the big scary city of Toronto. The truth is, I love nature in small doses. When I lived in Waterloo I’d go to the park to watch the ducks when I wanted to relax, and here in Toronto I go out and watch the squirrels as they frolic. They’re very calming. During the winter months, I was going through a personal crisis that was particularly bitter… Continue Reading →

Bragi Ólafsson’s Pets, published by Open Letter Books and translated by Janice Balfour is really fucking good. It’s the best book I’ve read in at least eight months, possibly longer. Bragi Ólafsson is probably best known to Canadians as the bass player for the Sugarcubes, the band Björk was in before going solo and becoming the coolest weird chick on Earth. If you’re anything like me, the first thing you thought upon learning this fact was: “a novel written by a celebrity? When was the last time you read one of those that didn’t suck?” It turns out that Ólafsson is a pretty big deal in Iceland’s literary scene. He’s a respected author who’s won a bunch of prizes and runs his own publishing house. And no wonder, really. The Pets is goddamn brilliant. Here’s the rundown: Emil Halldorsson is a bit of an asshole, but he’s a likable asshole,… Continue Reading →