Tunesday : The Living Years

The Living Years

(Robertson, B / Rutherford, M) Performed by Mike and the Mechanics

Every generation

Blames the one before

And all of their frustrations

Come beating on your door

I know that I'm a prisoner

To all my Father held so dear

I know that I'm a hostage

To all his hopes and fears

I just wish I could have told him in the living years

Oh, crumpled bits of paper

Filled with imperfect thought

Stilted conversations

I'm afraid that's all we've got

You say you just don't see it

He says it's perfect sense

You just can't get agreement

In this present tense

We all talk a different language

Talking in defence

Say it loud (say it loud), say it clear (oh say it clear)

You can listen as well as you hear

It's too late (it's too late) when we die (oh when we die)

To admit we don't see eye to eye

So we open up a quarrel

Between the present and the past

We only sacrifice the future

It's the bitterness that lasts

So don't yield to the fortunes

You sometimes see as fate

It may have a new perspective

On a different day

And if you don't give up, and don't give in

You may just be okay

So say it loud, say it clear (oh say it clear)

You can listen as well as you hear

Because it's too late, it's too late (it's too late) when we die (oh when we die)

To admit we don't see eye to eye

I wasn't there that morning

When my Father passed away

I didn't get to tell him

All the things I had to say

I think I caught his spirit

Later that same year

I'm sure I heard his echo

In my baby's new born tears

I just wish I could have told him in the living years

Say it loud, say it clear (oh say it clear)

You can listen as well as you hear

It's too late (it's too late) when we die (it's too late when we die)

To admit we don't see eye to eye

So say it, say it, say it loud (say it loud)

Say it clear (come on say it clear)

Funny that this is where my mind is this week, so let's talk about my Dad. I know I told this story before, but I think it's worth repeating that, according to our family mythology, on the day that I was born, Dad came to the hospital (at the front door of which he had dropped off my mother after she went into labour), he made his way to the maternity ward, took one discomfited look at my exhausted and disheveled mother, and after a brief glance at my own brand new self, declared, "Well, you got your girl." To which my mother laughed incredulously and replied, "Who said I wanted a girl?" I know this is supposed to be a funny story - because ironically, according to Mum, I became my father's favourite (yet I never felt I got any special treatment from him, and by assigning me as Dad's favourite, Mum also implied that I sure wasn't hers) - but I never found it funny. Actually, if I wrote a memoir "Well, You Got Your Girl" would probably be the title for how that attitude shaped my early life and still rankles me today (will I ever actually grow up enough to let go of childhood complaints?). Here's a more recent story:

A couple of weeks ago, Dave and I were at an industry dinner - a gala fundraiser downtown Toronto - and as always at these kind of things, we were at a big table with some people I've met before and some I haven't. Dave was to my left, and to my right was a man about ten years older than me; and as I am just not a small talker, I didn't have much to say to this man and I kept scanning the table for conversations I could add to. Eventually this man, Werner, mentioned in passing that he used to work at Canada Packers, and in that moment, I had to make a snap decision: do I drop my Dad's name or just let it pass? I was bored enough and feeling mischievous enough that I ploughed ahead and said, "Oh yeah? My Dad used to work for Canada Packers." Now, that was a big company in its day, and I could see that Werner was just being polite when he asked, "And who is your Dad?" I nonchalantly replied, "Pat Jones."

Werner's eyes got huge. "Your Dad is Pat Jones? That man's a legend in the industry." I laughed and said that he's a legend in our family, too. Werner got excited and told me this story:

Fresh out of university in 1979, Canada Packers was the first company I applied to. I put on my suit and tie, had my resume professionally printed up, and made my way down to two-two-two St. Clair. I'm sitting with the HR guy, and he's reading my resume, and I'm worrying if my education and experience are up to snuff, and this guy zeroes in on the fact that I played ball in high school. He asks if I can play third base, and I was a short stop but said that I could do third, and he said that was great and that I should follow him. I don't even know if I'm hired at that point, I can't believe it comes down to baseball, and we go to the basement. The first thing I see is Pat Jones - your Dad - and he's screaming at this guy, I see the spittle flying through the gap in his teeth and he's got two meaty fingers that he's jamming into the guy's shoulder. We go around the corner, and there's Art Gibney, screaming at another guy, and I'm thinking to myself, "What the hell? I went to university for this?"

Incidentally, if it was 1979, my father was 32 years old at the time. This was exactly the kind of story that I knew I could elicit, and by bringing up my Dad, Werner and I had something to talk about: he wanted to know about my parents' retirement and what they're up to now, and keeping in mind that Dad would be ticked if I revealed too much of his personal business, I was able to paint a rosy picture of life in the woods of Nova Scotia. I shared this story with Mum on facebook, and when she read it to Dad the next day, he laughed his head off at the fine picture it paints of himself as a young man (he didn't remember a Werner). And Kennedy asked me, "Were you just repeating a story about Pop driving his two meaty fingers into some guy's shoulder?" I needed to reply, "No. This was a new story - it was your Dad who heard about the two meaty finger jabs from someone he had dropped Pop's name to." Needless to say, Werner thought it was hilarious that Pat Jones is Dave's father-in-law.

Since I've written so much about working at Sha Na Na's in Edmonton recently, I'll add that I had a similar experience there. As I said before, it was business as usual to have tipsy men hitting on me at the bar, and one afternoon (I do remember this was long before the evening rush), a couple of young guys in suits were drinking and flirting, and while they weren't exactly obnoxious, they weren't as charming or funny as they thought they were. It eventually came out that they were from Ontario and had come to Edmonton on business for Canada Packers. Again, I knew exactly what I was doing when I said, "Oh yeah? My Dad works for Canada Packers back in Ontario." And again, they knew exactly who Pat Jones was, and not only did they sit up straighter and quit the flirting, but I could tell that they couldn't quite make the picture fit: If I was 22 at the time, then Dad was 42, and as big and imposing as he was, he didn't look old enough to have grown children; these two guys were only a few years older than me, so I'm pretty sure that my Dad didn't exactly look or act like their Dads. They left soon after this exchange.

When I was younger, I spent a lot of time trying to psychoanalyse my parents: they had kids so young that I figured they couldn't help but resent us for stealing their youth; for forcing them to stay together through all the screaming matches. Since my Grampie - my Dad's Dad - was such an abusive man, I figured my father must have learned by example. I actually heard so many awful stories about my Grampie - like him firing a shotgun through the ceiling to where my Grammie was hiding upstairs while Mum tried to keep us kids safe down in the corner of the living room - and I was so personally terrified by him (not just of his gruff manner, but made uneasy by the stroke that half-paralysed him) that I made a lot of excuses for my Dad and decided that he couldn't help but be abusive towards us. It was earth-shattering to me, therefore, when Mum once mentioned in passing that my father was the apple of Grampie's eye; he was never once the target of abuse; he may have witnessed terrible things, but he never experienced any himself. This father of mine, so tight with money that we wore our cheap clothes until they fell apart, was the envy of his town in his Roy Rogers slicker and rain boots. And from that moment on, I've figured my Dad has had no excuse at all for the terror that ruled my childhood.

So, to this week's song choice: I went looking for the right song to sum up what I was feeling, and there are way more "bad Dad" songs than I would have thought. But none of them - from Madonna's "Oh Father" and Everclear's "Father of Mine" to Harry Chapin's "Cat's in the Cradle" - said what I wanted to say; I realised I wasn't looking for a bad Dad song so much as a bad relationship song. "The Living Years" fit the bill, and since it came out in 1989, it sits comfortably in the timeline that I'm talking about. And while I appreciate that the point of this song is to clear up everything while my father is still alive, I know that's never going to happen - he would need to want to talk to me. My last story for the week:

Last Friday was Dad's 70th birthday, and Mum had called me the week before to say that after seeing an episode of How It's Made, Dad told her that watching them make Cornish Pasties gave him a craving, and he asked her if she would make him some special for his birthday. She said that he was feeling blue about turning 70 - and also pointed out to him that she had been blue since she turned 60 - but she said that of course she'd be making him anything he wanted. Mum also said that he didn't want any presents, but he'd be really happy if the girls texted him on his birthday. So, on his birthday, we called Dad in the morning, but just getting the answering machine, all we could do was record "Happy Birthday" and get on with our day. The girls did text their Pop, and got no response. I happened to see my brothers on Sunday, and Ken said that he and his kids called Dad around supper time on his birthday, and Dad answered and listened as they sang him "Happy Birthday" (and Dad could be heard teasing, "This is awful. Ella, you're a little sharp."), but when Ken accidentally hung up and tried to call back to actually talk to Dad, the phone was busy for the next half hour - as though Dad had left the phone off the hook on purpose to avoid talking. Kyler said that he called a couple hours after that, and after talking to Mum (who apparently sounded shaky and off her rocker), Dad talked to him for the longest time, listing off everything that he was angry about (unimportant things, like TV shows). I have no idea if Mum made him his Cornish Pasties. Yeah, things are rosy in the woods of Nova Scotia.

So we open up a quarrel
Between the present and the past
We only sacrifice the future
It's the bitterness that lasts

So say it loud, say it clear (oh say it clear)
You can listen as well as you hear
Because it's too late, it's too late (it's too late) when we die (oh when we die)
To admit we don't see eye to eye

My Dad doesn't want to clear up anything; he would prefer not to talk to us at all. I feel bitterness about my unhappy childhood and I feel bitterness about the fact that my parents have spent my children's childhoods two thousand kilometres away. And as they age and continue to keep their distance from us, I have no idea how I'm going to feel when they die. Sad, of course, but will I really feel like I missed my chance to make amends? I don't think I ever will grow up enough to let go of childhood complaints; I'd rather cling to the mythology that my Dad is a "legend in the industry" and leave his legacy at that.

Mind Picking : Canada's Squeamish Sesquicentennial

We are lucky enough to live close to where Cree artist Kent Monkman currently has his Four Continents installed at the KWAG, and we went as a family to check them out. Kennedy has long been a fan of his subversive, cheeky, yet intelligent and wise storytelling, and as Mallory has also been studying his work for one of her Native Studies classes, the two of them were happy to guide me and Dave through Monkman's personal iconography. We especially enjoyed the frequent presence of Monkman's alter ego - the fabulous drag queen Miss Chief Eagle Testickle - and the ways in which she is used to mock and undermine stuffy Western conventions. So when the girls asked us if we wanted to go into Toronto with them yesterday to see Monkman's Shame and Prejudice: A Story of Resilience installation at the U of T, we were definitely on board.

This show is masterfully curated - with period white men's writings and paintings followed by Monkman's response from the other side of the picture - and it poses powerful questions at the beginning of Canada's Sesquicentennial year: Just what are we celebrating, and over whose dead bodies? Each room of the exhibit is themed - entitled Starvation or Fathers of Confederation or some such - and each room features parchments in English, French and a presumably Cree script. These parchments feature quotes from the "official record", followed by a suitable response by Miss Chief. For the room themed Urban Rez, the parchment is:

And I totally appreciate the anger behind that; I often nodded grimly at these documents. And when we got to the room entitled Forcible Transfer of Children, I was gutted by its parchment:

This is the room that features The Scream (as shown above), and this painting is arguably the highlight of the entire show. While I had seen a picture of it online before, I hadn't expected its exhibit space to include a display of empty baby carriers, and I nearly cried out when I saw them; they affected all of us. 

(These empty baby carriers were reminiscent of when we went to Ottawa to see the Walking With Our Sisters display; the nearly 2000 pairs of empty moccasins that represent the missing and murdered indigenous women.)

The residential school legacy with its abduction of Native children - the theme of The Scream - is a hard thing for nice-guy Canadians to deal with, and it's an incredibly important issue for Monkman to explore with this piece. It's easy for us to get defensive; to complain that this was the policy of an earlier time; that we are not currently responsible for what happened then; that the well-meaning politicians in Ottawa couldn't have known what abuses were perpetrated in the far-flung schools. And while we want the whole thing to be consigned to the dead files of "ancient history", Native peoples are still living with the lingering effects of the residential school system: children who were taken from their parents, had all ties to their traditional beliefs and land and language beaten out of them, and in many cases suffered sexual abuse at the hands of despicable priests and nuns, do not grow up to know how to parent their own children. Inuit singer Susan Aglukark recently came forward to link the epidemic of Native youth suicides to the generational abuse initiated by residential schools (and one only need read the nasty denialist comments section on that article to get a sense of how the average Canadian responds to their pain).

And, as ever, as open as I am to the conversation, I feel powerless in the face of what Monkman is telling us with his art; I can't change the past and I have no political clout to improve the future. And yet, I do have my (very) small sphere of influence.

Working in a book store, every time I have been asked to select a Staff Pick for me to personally promote, I have always chosen a work of indigenous fiction. My first was Birdie (which seems to hold a clue as to why Native women expose themselves to the known dangers of Vancouver's Downtown East Side; residential schools and generational abuse are given their share of the blame), and to anyone who seems interested in this book, I'll also suggest Monkey Beach (another story that ends in Vancouver's most dangerous neighbourhood). This past Christmas, I was championing Wenjack (which exposes the reality of life at a residential school and a young boy's attempt to escape its abuses), and I am currently pushing The Break (which draws a straight line between residential schools and the current situation for Native children). As with Monkman's art, when people are trying to tell you about the reality of their lives, the least you can do is respectfully listen. My favourite thing is that I have children who are engaged with art and open to these difficult conversations.

Naturally, I want to celebrate Canada's 150th birthday this year - considering our place globally, I believe we have much to be proud of - but it's important to remember that the official story from the colonisers' point-of-view isn't the whole story. Long after we're dead and gone, art will endure; and Kent Monkman deserves to have his art endure as part of our official story.

The Wine of Solitude

She loved studying and books, the way other people love wine for its power to make you forget. What else did she have? She lived in a deserted, silent house. The sound of her own footsteps in the empty rooms, the silence of the cold streets beyond the closed windows, the rain and the snow, the early darkness, the green lamp beside her that burned throughout the long evenings and which she watched for hours on end until its light began to waver before her weary eyes: this was the setting for her life.

Learning that The Wine of Solitude – a story of a lonely and loveless childhood – is considered the most autobiographical of Irène Némirovsky's novels makes me want to quote Tolstoy's truism that all unhappy families are unhappy in their own way, and that feels appropriate beyond the obvious: in its tone and subject matter, this book feels like a feminine counterpoint – a yin to Anna Karenina's yang – that rounds out Tolstoy's masculine history and politics with a more female emotional perspective. This feels like a classic Russian novel, but in addition to the balls and sleigh rides and the boom of distant cannons, there is also a little girl determined to harden her heart against those who would try to break it. I loved the whole thing. Spoilers ahead.

The Wine of Solitude begins in the lead-up to WWI with eight-year-old Hélène Karol living in a shabby chic Kiev apartment with her beautiful and distant mother, her hardworking father (the “little Jew” who is expected to improve the extended family's fortunes), Hélène's dependent maternal grandparents, and her beloved governess, the only one who can reliably show affection to the little girl, Mademoiselle Rose. With parents who fight constantly, Hélène's life becomes both more quiet and more lonely when her father leaves Kiev for two years to build his promised fortune; two years in which Mrs Karol joins the ranks of other upper-class Russian women who spend their evenings on the arms of dashing young soldiers; two years in which Hélène's distaste for her mother grows into hatred and dreams of revenge.

She nurtured in her heart a strange hatred of her that seemed to increase as she grew older; like love, there were a thousand reasons for it and none; and like love, there was the simple excuse: 'It is because of who she is, and who I am.'

The family is transplanted first to St. Petersburg (where Hélène's father becomes more emotionally distant and her mother is more brazen about her newest young lover), and then to Finland to escape the Bolshevik Revolution. When their village is found to be on the wrong side during the local civil war, Hélène's family finally moves to Paris; the city that Hélène's family has often visited throughout the years and which Hélène herself has been taught to love through her French governess. Having grown from girl to young woman during these years, and having experienced a sexual awakening, Hélène plots to use her newfound powers to take her ultimate revenge against the mother who had always put herself (and her lovers) above the emotional needs of her only child. In the end, however, Hélène resists the urge to destroy her mother for fear of becoming her. When her father dies just as the worldwide stock markets are collapsing, Hélène makes her own bid for freedom.

I'm not afraid of life. The past has given me my first experiences of the world. They have been exceptionally difficult, but they have forged my courage and my pride. And that immutable treasure is mine, belongs to me. I may be alone, but my solitude is powerful and intoxicating.

There are so many lovely little truthful emotional moments in The Wine of Solitude, and simply delightful evocations of time and place. Having read this after Suite Française (and learning at that time that Némirovsky was eventually rounded up from France during WWII and killed at Auschwitz), there's a horrible irony to watching Hélène arrive in Paris and believe herself to be safe and free at last. I shudder to wonder at just how true to life this sad childhood might have been and marvel at Némirovsky's ability to turn pain into art.

The Burgess Boys

And so the Burgess brothers drove down to Maine from Upstate New York, along winding roads, past run-down farmhouses and farms not so run-down, past small houses and large houses with three cars out front, or a snowmobile, or a boat covered with tarp. They stopped for gas and got back on the road. Bob drove. Jim sat next to him, slumped down, sometimes fast asleep, or else staring out the passenger window.

The Burgess Boys is the third novel I've read by Elizabeth Strout, and the first not to knock my socks off. What I've admired most in Strout's other books are the absolutely believable characters and the sweet moments of recognisable truth in their relationships. In this book, Strout introduces us to an interesting cast, layers on a politically charged storyline that I initially thought would be fascinating and timely, but in the end it felt like she was trying to do too much and didn't quite pull off either the family drama or the social commentary. Still, Elizabeth Strout on a bad day is better than most writers on their best.

What we learn nearly immediately (so I don't really think of it as a spoiler): Jim and Bob Burgess are both NYC attorneys (Jim of the high profile celebrity defender type, Bob writes appellate briefs for Legal Aid), and their sister Susan (a single mom who stayed on in their small hometown of Shirley Falls, Maine) calls her brothers in a panic because her oddball nineteen-year-old son has confessed to the hare-brained “prank” of rolling a half-frozen pig's head into a storefront Mosque. It would appear that lily-white Shirley Falls has seen a recent influx of Somali refugees, and in this confused atmosphere of grudging accommodation, Susan's son, Zack, committed an act he can't really explain with bigoted overtones he apparently doesn't understand (he had no idea that pigs were particularly offensive to Muslims, he thought the building was a “gathering place”, not a Mosque, and when it was pointed out to him that his actions were especially mortifying during Ramadan, Zack claims to have no idea what “Ramadan” means). The siblings are estranged (Bob and Susan, who are twins, have never liked each other), but the brothers rally to their nephew's side as the case makes the national news, the Maine Attorney General's office threatens a Civil Rights charge, and the FBI considers whether the act qualifies as a federal hate crime. Through rotating points-of-view, Strout does a good job of setting up all sides of the issue: Susan tries to explain what it has been like for their town to feel overrun by people who look and speak differently, Bob – the outsider, do-gooder liberal – counters with an idealistic view of global responsibility and local accommodation, Jim understands and explains the political motivations and manoeuvering behind the scenes of the justice system, and a Somali elder, Abdikarim, exposes the fear and humiliation his community experienced (both when the pig's head rolled into the room and when the police responded), discusses with other Somalis the wisdom of settling in the hostile community, and aims to see justice served. 

Obviously, refugees are much in the news (Canada is filled with Bobs and Susans debating the 25k Syrians who have resettled here over the last year), and as the pig's head incident is based on a real case in Maine, the situation is ripe for a literary examination. And since Strout is not only a talented author but a member of the bar whose husband was formerly the AG of Maine, who better to take up her pen in the effort? Strout has Jim's wife, Helen, read an article on the refugee camps in Kenya from whence the Somalis came to America:

The women, in order to gather firewood, had to wander away from camp, where bandits might rape them; some of these women had been raped several times. Many of their children died of starvation right in their arms. The children who lived did not go to school. There were no schools. The men sat around chewing leaves – khat – which kept them high, and their wives, of which they could have up to four, had to try to keep the family alive with the little bit of rice and drops of cooking oil they received from the authorities every six weeks.

Who wouldn't open their borders to these suffering people? But Susan has the view from front line America:

Some say it's not different from when the city was filled with French Canadian millworkers speaking French. But it is different because what nobody talks about is that they don't want to be here. They're waiting to go home. They don't want to become part of our country. They're just kind of sitting here, but meanwhile they think our way of life is trashy and glitzy and crummy. It hurts my feelings, honestly.

(While Bob makes the case that the French Canadians eventually assimilated into the community, his point is undermined when, near the end of the book, Abdikarim meets with people who do intend to go back to Africa, where their children will be raised as Africans instead of trashy, glitzy, crummy Americans.) In a later scene, Bob's ex-wife Pam explains to him the underbelly of Somalian society based on a book she's reading (what appears to be one of Ayaan Hirsi Ali's), and his response felt to me like Strout's own final word on the matter:

That book is the right wing's dream. Do you not get that? Do you read the paper at all anymore? And second of all, I saw some of those so-called crazy people in the courtroom at Zach's hearing. And guess what, Pam? They're not crazy. They're exhausted. And partly they're exhausted by people like you reading about the most inflammatory aspects of their culture in some book club, and then getting to hate them for it, because deep down that's what we ignorant, weenie Americans, ever since the towers went down, really want to do. Have permission to hate them.

I like a book about issues, and I was enjoying all of the different perspectives in The Burgess Boys, but just when this felt like it was going to get really good, the court case fizzled out, the refugee issue ceased to be a concern, and the second half of this became a book about the siblings and their relationships. And if it was ultimately about the characters, well, I never learned why Zach pulled his “prank” (other than being a sad sack kid who doesn't quite think through his own actions, which I do kind of understand, but it makes for unsatisfying fiction), Jim is cartoonishly abusive to his brother (and I didn't understand the soap opera his marriage becomes), Bob is cartoonishly patient and good, and I didn't understand why nobody liked Susan for her entire life (Not even her twin? Just because their mother yelled at only her? She's made to feel so peripheral that the book can't even be called The Burgess Siblings? What's up with that?)

The facts didn't matter. Their stories mattered, and each of their stories belonged to each of them alone.

I liked the first half of this book and just wish Strout had stayed focussed on the courtroom drama; it was a really strong device for examining an important contemporary issue. Post-trial became less interesting, and then melodramatic. At the sentence-level the writing is strong and interesting, but I found few moments of universal truth, no satisfying character development, and no real resolution to the Somali refugee situation. I reckon it would probably be interesting for book clubs.

Selection Day

What we Indians want in literature, at least the kind written in English, is not literature at all, but flattery. We want to see ourselves depicted as soulful, sensitive, profound, valorous, wounded, tolerant and funny beings. All that Jhumpa Lahiri stuff. But the truth is, we are absolutely nothing of that kind. What are we, then? We are animals of the jungle, who will eat our neighbor's children in five minutes, and our own in ten.

I've long been a fan of Indian literature – shaped by a long and complicated history, exotic religious practises, the lingering caste system – and as today's Indian middle-class grows and more of the very poorest citizens appear to be improving their own situations, it's been interesting to watch a shift in the country's literature as well: whereas Rohinton Mistry and Vikram Seth may have told me in the 90s that your average starving country bumpkin is satisfied to make it to Bombay and cobble together a shack in the slums, today's social climber sees the slums as a mere stepping-stone to an even better life. In Selection Day, when former starving country bumpkin Mohan Kumar discovers that his elder son is a cricket-playing prodigy, he can already imagine himself moving from their mud-brick hut to an air-conditioned flat. I came to this book knowing nothing about cricket, but it wasn't necessary when this is really about striving and want and being true to yourself in the face of the desires of others. In the end, the locale and details may have been exotic to me, but the themes are universal. A fine read.

The “selection day” of the title refers to the annual event at which cricket scouts recruit talent for the pro teams. The book begins with a section called “Three Years Before Selection Day” and introduces us to the Kumar brothers – Radha (destined to be “the best batsman in India”) and the younger Madhu (wishing only to be “second best” behind the brother he admires and adores) – and their father Mohan: a chutney-peddlar and self-taught cricket expert whose questionable edicts on the proper nutrition, exercise, and hygiene for young athletes has nonetheless propelled both of his sons into public notice. When a well-known coach desires to take over the boys' training, he puts the father in touch with an investor who agrees to pay a monthly stipend to the family in exchange for a share in future pro salaries and endorsements. Cue The Jefferson's theme song as they're moving on up to that de-luxe apartment in the sky-y-y.

Selection Day is primarily told from the younger brother's, Madhu's, point-of-view, and in the beginning, his position as the second best cricket player in the family protects him from most of his father's abuse and expectations – Madhu is able to dream that once Radha makes the big leagues, he'll be able to go to college and pursue his own goal of becoming a CSI-style forensic scientist. But as the years pass and the selection day that they will qualify for comes closer, and as Radha hits puberty and begins to have “weight transference” issues that allow Madhu to surpass his brother's batting records, the father's hopes to climb even higher on the social ladder fall heavier onto Madhu's reluctant shoulders. How much responsibility does Madhu have to repay the mortgage that Mohan took out on his boys' future? What responsibility does Madhu have to his own dreams, career, and love life? Doesn't he also have a responsibility to protect his older brother's ego and reputation? That's a lot of pressure to put on a sixteen-year-old.

Looking at class issues through the lens of a sporting family is an interesting idea – and especially as I've seen my share of crazy dance moms and hockey dads. And as little as I know about cricket, this British-transplant seems the perfect vehicle for exploring post-colonial Indian values.

Cricket is the triumph of civilization over instinct. As he left the showers by the swimming pool, and dried his hair with his towel, Tommy Sir remembered that wonderful little essay of his. American sports, baseball or basketball, made crude measurements of athletic endowments: height, shoulder strength, bat speed, anaerobic capacity. Cricket, on the other hand, measures the extent to which you can harness these raw endowments. You have to curb your right hand, your bottom hand, the animal hand, giving sovereignty to the left, the elegant, the restrained, top hand. When the short-pitched ball comes screaming, and every instinct of panic tells you, close your eyes and turn your face, you must do what does not come naturally to you or to any man: stay calm. Master your nature, play cricket. Because a man's body, when all is said and done, is a loathsome thing – Tommy Sir slapped his underarms with Johnson and Johnson Baby Powder, his favorite deodorant – loath-some loath-some loath-some. More baby powder. Much more. Mumbai is a hot city even at night.

Yet there was something kind of shallow about Selection Day: it was full of a lot of ideas, but not much heart. Author Aravind Adiga squeezed in plenty of commentary on modern day Mumbai – female infanticide has led to a gender imbalance, fundamentalist Muslims are reproducing faster than the majority Hindu population, homosexuality is still punishable by a life sentence – but most of these facts had little to do with the characters in the story. Unsurprisingly, rich people have more options than do the poor and the police and bureaucrats are still corrupt; but I do appreciate how this book helped to evolve my ideas about modern Mumbai. The writing was fine and the plot was interesting and maybe I'm just a little disappointed because it's not The White Tiger again. I'm wavering between three and four stars, but as I can't say I “loved” this, I'm settling on three.

The Dry

It wasn't as though the farm hadn't seen death before, and the blowflies didn't discriminate. To them there was little difference between a carcass and a corpse.

The prologue to The Dry – with blowflies seeking, and finding, the glassy eyes and wet wounds where they love to feed – fittingly sets the mood and scene for this book: the wide-open and drought-parched countryside of rural Australia; the scene of a grisly crime. From this opening volley I thought I was going to be in for an interesting and well told story, but I was ultimately disappointed: this first page and a half were the best part of the whole book. I read this crime/mystery novel fairly quickly, but not because I was so engaged that I needed to know what happened; I was mentally detached and powering through to discover how author Jane Harper decided it all happened – I never suspended disbelief, I was aware of and made impatient by red herrings and misdirections as they occurred, and ultimately found the whole “mystery” to be poorly crafted. This just didn't work for me, but as The Dry has high ratings from most reviewers, I understand mine is a minority opinion.

Luke lied. You lied. Be at the funeral.

Immediately after the prologue, we meet Aaron Falk: a Federal Agent with the Melbourne PD (specialising in financial crimes), he and his father were run out of the small town of Kiewarra twenty years earlier after their last name was found written on a piece of paper in the pocket of a girl who had died under mysterious circumstances. Having not intended to ever return, Falk was compelled to make the five hour drive from his current home in order to attend the funeral of his former best friend Luke. It would appear that Luke had murdered his wife and child before turning his shotgun on himself, but Luke's parents refuse to believe their son was capable of such a thing: perhaps, as a financial specialist and former family friend, Falk could go over the accounts of their son's cash-strapped farm and look for irregularities? When the local police Sergeant – an outsider who had joined the two man Kiewarra force just weeks before the murders – admits to some doubts of his own, he and Falk team up to take a closer look; forcing Falk to also confront the memories of those events that had led to his own banishment.

Out here, those badges don’t mean as much as they should.

Overall, the concept is interesting enough – Falk is trying to solve the two mysteries, has no idea if they are related, and the suspects he might want to interview are either bullies from his youth who aren't impressed by his shiny police badge or are people he didn't really know as a kid, but who all know him; as the guy who probably killed poor Ellie Deacon in high school. And the setting works to amp up the tensions: after two years of drought, the farmers are desperate, their children paint pictures of brown fields and dead livestock, the main street is boarded up, and fistfights break out at the local pub nightly; Kiewarra is literally a tinderbox. 

WE WILL SKIN YOU KILLER SCUM.

Unfortunately, I found the small-town aggression to be overblown and the mysteries themselves to be pretty thin. I could see what happened in the modern day storyline as soon as characters started dishing out the clues, and anything that might have served as a misdirection if you weren't already thinking along those lines was unnecessary confirmation for me. So, really, I kept reading just to see what happened to Ellie in the past, and when that was revealed, I just mentally shrugged and said, “Okay”. And I didn't like the parallels between the two mysteries – the two notes that made accusations from beyond the grave (and as for the reason why Ellie had the name “Falk” written down, that's just a lame explanation for the ruination of a father and son), the two false alibis meant to protect secret love affairs, Luke out shooting rabbits on the days of both murders. And can I talk about shooting rabbits? Is that all people do around Australian farms? And, yes, it's common knowledge that the misguided introduction of rabbits to Australia devastated the entire ecosystem, and I'm sure they are ruinous to agriculture, but everyone in The Dry is forever popping off bunnies (and do the caretakers of rural elementary schools really have shotguns for shooting rabbits on the playgrounds?) And I didn't find it to be ironic when Falk and Raco have a laugh over the implausible solution to a crime/mystery novel that Karen had been reading before her murder; that's not meta, it's manifest. 

There was one scene I liked quite a bit, so I'll give fair warning that this is spoilerish: I found it tense when Aaron and his dad are being literally driven out of town – with Ellie's father chasing them for a hundred kilometres (!) – and when Mal Deacon finally turns back and the elder Falk can pull over and take a breather, the tension is really well maintained. I felt as stung as young Aaron when his father grabs his shirtfront and says, “I'm going to ask you only once: did you have anything to do with Ellie's death?” And when Aaron denies involvement and the desperate father demands, “Then why was your name in her pocket?”, I didn't see it coming and was pleasantly jolted when the offended son snaps back, “Why was yours?”  Too bad there weren't more of these enjoyable scenes. It was all just okay, I'd probably give The Dry 2.5 stars if I could and am feeling generous by rounding up. Not for me; maybe for you.

Serious Sweet

And there was the day when Meg had walked through her own park, the Top Park, and seemingly she could watch the push of chlorophyll, the spring fire rising in a green blaze along branches. She'd seen the drift and scatter of white petals, blushed petals, mauve and pink and cream petals, and been struck, been beautifully punched in the heart, by the presence of everything. She'd kept on walking under surely the most beautiful blue on record, a sky that should have been commemorated ever after, a phenomenon of nature. The truth of beauty had given up more truth and then more beauty and then this serious sweet truth, the singing and wordless thing, alight, alight, alight.

Serious Sweet started super slowly for me, but since it was the last title from the 2016 Man Booker Prize longlist that I had to wanted to get through (months after the awarding of the prize because it was the second of two books I ordered from Britain as they never did become available for me to buy in Canada), and since I'm an obsessive-completionist type, I powered through, and am happy that I did. Mentally comparing this title to the others, I'm surprised it didn't make the shortlist; it's as expertly constructed and socially aware as anything that did. And it made me cry. 

   She was turning on all the lights she could – she was trying to be honest. That meant he would really be able to see.

   Which you can't help feeling on your skin.

   And in the end you say things to each other.

   I will meet you.

   You say that and he says that and then it's out loud and in the open and so it might happen.

   Which is the sort of thing that can make you disappointed.

   I think maybe that it always does. Always is the same as forever.

   I will meet you.

   Serious sweet.

It started slowly because it takes a looong time to understand what's going on; to learn and connect to the backstories of the dual protagonists; and to get used to the format of this pair having constant internal arguments between their conscious minds and their contentious and disruptive subconsciousnesses (initially confusing, but ultimately, a fair description of reality). Each chapter is time-stamped and it eventually becomes clear that all of the action takes place in one twenty-four hour span. As Meg and Jon each go about their ordinary lives and have their meeting delayed and rescheduled and delayed again, it's as though Mrs. Dalloway has arranged to meet Leopold Bloom in modern day London, and the more we learn about just how broken and deserving of love each of them is, the more frustrating it becomes that the unimportant demands of modern life are delaying that which seems ever more vital. Even more frustrating is to watch as Meg and Jon talk on the phone or text or recall earlier meetings in which these internal conflicts between their conscious and subconscious minds force each of them to hedge and stammer in an attempt to protect themselves from further hurt. I totally fell for all of author A. J. Kennedy's manipulations.

   But...

   But...

   There is this possibility that opens up as soon as you can tell yourself, your world, your love, darling, sweetheart, treasure, your sweet, your serious sweet, when you can tell her everything. “But...”

   You want her not to go, not quite yet – dearsweetmybaby – and you do wish that you could have heard – allthatIcould – what you managed to tell her – allthatIam – you really do wonder the words you could have picked and offered, the ones that let her no longer hate you when you deserve to be hated. You are all unsure.

So that's the how this book is written, but as for the actual what is written, the plot is all so slowly and expertly meted out that I wouldn't want to give away any of it. I will note that, as a disillusioned civil servant nearing the end of an unremarkable career, Jon devotes much of his internal dialogue to the limp and out-of-touch state of British governance that, pre-Brexit, reads like a warning bell for the revolt of the common voter that was soon to come (in Britain and abroad. Ahem.) And a further, unrelated, note: I liked the way that Jon and Meg are forever seeking and recoiling from human contact – Jon often resorts to holding his own hand when he's feeling threatened – and I laughed at Jon comparing shaking the hand of a Minister to grabbing a sock filled with shit; shuddered along when he was forced to shake the hand of the slimy journo Melkin:

   The contact was hardly a comfort – like grabbing a starfish, a squid, a dead animal – and the graced area on Jon's palm complained mildly, not liking the touch of hot salt.

I was at first impatient with Serious Sweet and was finding it a bit overblown (with its oft thrice-repeated pretensions, I see I see I see), but then I surrendered myself to the conceit and found myself swept along. Totally worthwhile read.

The 2016 Man Booker Prize Longlist

• Paul Beatty - The Sellout
• J.M. Coetzee - The Schooldays of Jesus
• A.L. Kennedy - Serious Sweet
• Deborah Levy - Hot Milk
• Graeme Macrae Burnet - His Bloody Project
• Ian McGuire - The North Water
• David Means - Hystopia
• Wyl Menmuir - The Many
• Ottessa Moshfegh - Eileen
• Virginia Reeves - Work Like Any Other
• Elizabeth Strout - My Name Is Lucy Barton
• David Szalay - All That Man Is
• Madeleine Thien - Do Not Say We Have Nothing

Upon the release of the shortlist (and as my two favourite titles didn't make the cut), this is my ranking for the finalists (signifying my enjoyment of the books, not necessarily which one I think will/should win):

Deborah Levy : Hot Milk 
Ottessa Moshfegh : Eileen 
Paul Beatty : The Sellout 
Madeleine Thien : Do Not Say We Have Nothing 
Graeme Macrae Burnet : His Bloody Project 
David Szalay : All That Man Is 

Later edit: The Man Booker was won by The Sellout, and although it was not my pick, I'm not dissatisfied by the result.

Tunesday : Reach Out I'll Be There

Reach Out I'll Be There

(Collins, P /Lamont, D /Holland, B /Holland, E) Performed by Four Tops

Now if you feel that you can't go on

Because all of your hope is gone

And your life is filled with much confusion

Until happiness is just an illusion

And your world around is crumblin' down

Darling, reach out, come on girl, reach on out for me

Reach out, reach out for me

I'll be there, with a love that will shelter you

I'll be there, with a love that will see you through

When you feel lost and about to give up

'Cause your best just ain't good enough

And you feel the world has grown cold

And you're drifting out all on your own

And you need a hand to hold

Darling, reach out, come on girl, reach out for me

Reach out, reach out for me

I'll be there, to love and comfort you

And I'll be there, to cherish and care for you

I'll be there, with a love that will see you through

I'll be there to love and comfort you

I can tell the way you hang your head

You're without love and now you're afraid

And through your tears you look around

But there's no peace of mind to be found

I know what you're thinkin'

You're alone now, no love of your own

But darling, reach out, come on girl, reach out for me

Reach out

Just look over your shoulder

I'll be there, to give you all the love you need

And I'll be there, you can always depend on me

I had originally had a different idea for today's Tunesday, but it being Valentine's Day, and my inlaws' situation being what it is, this feels more appropriate. The tl;dr is: With their deteriorating health, my inlaws make the case for the importance of stable "til death do us part" marriage; who knows where they'd be if they didn't have each other (and it's easy to say that they should be living with their kids; we've offered and until now, at approaching 80, they haven't believed "it's time" yet). 

And your life is filled with much confusion

Until happiness is just an illusion

Around Christmastime I wrote about Bev's creeping Alzheimer's - that in addition to keeping her fed and focussed, Jim was starting to deal with her wet sheets every night, too - and while he was saying just at Christmas that he believes it's only fair that he do for his wife as she did for him when he was laid up (as I wrote about at the time), just a couple of months later, he's running out of steam. 

It's been a few weeks since I've gone up to see them - it's just wrong that they live over an hour away from all us family - and for the most part, that was an uneventful visit. We sat in the living room and talked with Bev; she seemed able to follow along as Kennedy and I chatted with her. When dinner was ready and Jim called us to the table, Bev said she needed to go to the washroom first. As we sat for a few minutes in the dining room, Jim sighed and said, "We might as well eat while it's hot. She could be a while." We didn't really want to start without Bev, but as the minutes dragged on and on - and Jim went to call up the stairs if Bev was all right; she replied "Yes" angrily - we all started to eat. Bev showed up after we were all finished, with a towel wrapped around her waist and no pants on. When Jim saw that, he nearly jumped from his seat, saying, "What are you wearing? Do you need some help getting dressed?" Bev replied angrily and confusingly, "What difference does it make? I couldn't fit everything on under." Jim offered to help Bev change into her nightgown or whatever she wanted, but she truly didn't see the problem (and we eventually left with no idea what took her a half hour in the washroom; I assume she wet through her pants as we were sitting through the afternoon?) On the drive home Dave said, "When I start showing up at the table with just a towel, you can send me to a padded room". But I pointed out that it doesn't really seem like "padded room" time when his Mom also had a pleasant afternoon chatting with and enjoying the company of her granddaughter.

During the week after this visit, Bev finally had her teeth extracted - Jim took her and watched with fascination as several teeth broke off at their rotten roots and needed to be cut out; watched as the gums were stitched and the dentures were fitted - and although on the phone she didn't complain of any pain, she also refused to eat when Jim tried to encourage her and this was making her feel weak. The following weekend, Dave and I were heading into Toronto and we called to see how they were doing, and Jim said that Bev was having a lie down, but that he wasn't going to fool around with her health; if she was still feeling faint, he'd call an ambulance. We learned later that as soon as we hung up, Jim went up to check on Bev, and finding her passed out in the hallway, and unable to lift her by himself, he did call 911 and had her taken to the hospital. Turns out that Bev was not only starving herself, but she was dehydrated too. They put her on an IV, and sent Bev home after a few hours. With only Jim to take care of her.

This past weekend, as I was at work, Dave and Ruthann went up to see their parents, and when Dave got there, his Mom came out of the bathroom - where Ruthann had been tidying her up and brushing her hair for the prior fifteen minutes - and when Bev saw Dave she said, "I'm glad you got here safely. I hope Ruthann gets here soon so I can stop worrying about her." Bev literally forgot her daughter the second she was out of sight. Dave said the whole visit was upsetting - Bev taking her dentures out to eat because they bug her and snapping at Jim when he suggested chewing would work better with them in - and as hard as his Dad is working to do all the cooking and cleaning and taking care of his deteriorating wife, Jim will now admit he's tired, but he's still not really complaining. Apparently, Bev fell down again the other night while stepping into her pants and Jim had to get a neighbour from next door to help lift her up.

Yesterday was Ruthann's birthday, and Dave called his parents to make sure they remembered to call her. He was talking to his Mom when suddenly she said, "It's nice here but I wish we had made it home in time for Ruthann's birthday." As they were at home, Dave said, "What are you talking about?" Bev said, "Well, we're up here near Sauble Beach. Oh, where is it? Jim? Where are we?" In the background, Jim said, "You're at home." Bev, impatiently, said, "No, right now. What's the name of this place?" Jim again said that they were at their own house, on his end Dave said, "You're at home, Mom", and an unconvinced Bev agreed to disagree.

Last week, I was writing about when Dave and I got engaged, and I remember that Jim and Bev came out to Edmonton to visit us the following summer and that's when I met them for the first time. They squabbled nonstop like Ralph and Alice from The Honeymooners (and Dave and I found it as amusing and old-fashioned as watching a black and white sitcom; that will never be us we laughed), and when we were playing cards one evening, Jim said seriously, "Marriage is a hard thing, and not a thing to be entered into lightly. It hasn't always been easy for us." Dave laughed and said, "Believe me, I know. There were enough times when I was growing up when I would have signed your divorce papers myself." Jim laughed and nodded and said that that was all he was going to say on the matter, but he was obviously sincere in what he was saying.

Jim and Bev may have spent the last fifty-some years squabbling, but when the chips are down, they are always there for each other; and that's the greatest gift of marriage. I appreciate that there are many situations in which a marriage shouldn't be saved, but the reward of having someone with you at the end who will wash your pee-soaked sheets (every day if needed), someone who'll find you when you've passed out in the hallway, someone who can remind you of who you are and where you live - someone who will do this without complaint or recompense - these are the wages of hard labour; the labour of long love and commitment. 

Dave and I are suddenly worried if the slow-moving plan for Ruthann and Dan to buy a duplex with Jim and Bev has moved a bit too slowly; is Bev actually in need of more care than even her daughter can help provide? We are peripheral to the decision-making - we can't rush either side - but it's obviously getting to the point where Jim can't handle things by himself any more; and he'll be 80 this year. In the end, they've been a fine model for what a marriage can be.

Darling, reach out, come on girl, reach out for me

Reach out, reach out for me

I'll be there, to love and comfort you

And I'll be there, to cherish and care for you

I'll be there, with a love that will see you through

I'll be there to love and comfort you