Mind Picking : Farewell 2023

 

Well, just like last year, we're a few days into January, Dave and I are up at Sauble Beach for the week, and I'm pretending like I had this all written and ready to go for New Year's Eve. And again: this has a been another year feeling disconnected from meaning in my life, and I've read even fewer books, made fewer posts on here, and wonder if a blog is still satisfying any need in me (but again: if I didn't have this, I'd have little proof of life, and I do like having a place to post that picture of my boys walking along a deserted offseason shoreline...still worth it for now.) The year that was:

The first of two BIG events were Kennedy and Zach's big wedding (after their Covid-forced, small gathering, backyard wedding in 2021, they rescheduled for this year; and although we offered them the cash if they decided the small event had been enough, they still wanted the big party, and it was a wonderful and happy event that everyone loved).

                                                                 

               

I did love this dress

     

And the other BIG event was our first major post-Covid trip and we went to Egypt; such a dream come true.

We got to see Kennedy in a play in February - the first time in the longest time, and it was a delight; she was the best part of a mediocre production, and I hope she keeps performing.

We saw other live theatre this year: King Lear at the Stratford Festival was well done (pretty much the Paul Gross show, but he's watchable), but Much Ado About Nothing was the most fun I've ever had at Stratford: they landed every joke and innuendo and involved the audience like we were groundlings; I'd like to see more of that, please. Also at Stratford, Kennedy and I went to see a panel discussion between three popular female authors on Gothic Literature (the source of my Halloween post this year), and in July, Rudy and I went to see Kinky Boots together (what a lame storyline, but the music was kinda fun?):

As in previous years, Dave and I attended a grocery industry fundraising gala in February - and although we usually have enjoyed the live concert (we've seen everyone from Michael Buble to Maroon 5), this year was Jason Derulo; an undeniably huge star, but we didn't know any of his songs; I think we've turned the corner and are no longer the target audience, lol. We spent time at the Lakehouse throughout the year (Family Day weekend and the week leading into Labour Day with the family), and Kennedy used it with her friends over Halloween and over the Victoria Day weekend - when they had a bachelorette party, complete with a trip into Owen Sound to see a knock off Thunder from Down Under Australian male strip group (and why does it seem that when men go to a strip club, women are being exploited, and when women go to a show - where the dancers brought women up on stage, placed their heads strategically in front of their lowered shorts, and grinded and thumped their uncovered junk into the back of the women's heads - why does that also feel like the women are the ones exploited?) In addition to the bachelorette party, Kennedy asked for a formal tea in the leadup to the wedding, and Mallory hosted one for her in her condo party room - a huge success with finger sandwiches, games, and prizes, and lots of laughs.

Now, my mother - who has not been well for a while, and hadn't been to a doctor in many years - was hospitalised in June; after identifying an internal bleed and transfusing her with many, many litres of blood, Mum was able to go back home with Dad and things seem more settled. Naturally, I decided to go down and visit them with the girls in August, and although it had been a couple of years since we had been there (I'm still annoyed that my dad blew off Kennedy's small wedding), we had a nice time seeing them, and of course I'm glad we went.

While we were away, and because Kennedy seemed to be getting a lot more attention than Zach was in the runup to their big event, I suggested to Dave that he organise some kind of manly night out for him. It might be a coincidence that I had just seen The Barbie Movie with my girls (and Aunt Rudy), but I suggested they go to the horse races (because isn't that manly?) and Zach's dad and buddies, and my brothers and brother-in-law and nephew, and a couple of Dave's buddies were all happy to attend, and they had a really good time; money was won and lost and Zach got to be the center of attention for a while.

I think that's it for trips and shows and big events in 2023 (honestly, the wedding, the trip to Egypt, and my mother being hospitalised took up most of my emotional energy this year; probably why I didn't read as much), and I continued to go to Boot Camp six days a week (not as much fun or social as before; I'm less active outside the gym, too), and I'm still working at the book store (but with a demoralising cyber attack this year, the company trying to recoup profits by cutting hours [and therefore, customer service] to the bone, and a new general manager who I think is an idiot, it's not much fun anymore, either).

I do want to say: I wish my kids were happier. Mallory is finding it hard to carry her condo by herself, and despite having two cats, she's feeling lonely and isolated. She asked me how long it would make financial sense to live there before selling and maybe buying a house for her and some friends (who are all facing housing insecurity) to live in together. This isn't a great market (low inventory, high interest rates), but I did tell her we would look into it. And Kennedy has been so unhappy in her work that she quit before Christmas and just started a new role this week: not something she's interested in, but it was the first job offer she got, and she took it. Even Zach isn't happy or satisfied in his work, and it's just hard to see. I will say that I noodled around on the real estate site and saw a beautiful flower and gift shop for sale in the charming small town of St Jacob's, and I was 100% serious when I told Kennedy that I would buy it, send her to floral arranging school, and work the shopfront with her: at least it would be creative, she (and I) would no longer work for idiots, and she did like doing her own flowers for both of her weddings...but I guess she needs something more stable than that. Bonus: just a block away from the flower shop is a three residence property - a three bedroom house for Kennedy and Zach with a two bedroom inlaw suite (something we've been talking about for our retirement, with summers at the Lakehouse), and detached from that, another three bedroom house for Mallory and her friends. Mal could always work in the shop too...but I acknowledge that's all just dreaming on my part of refilling the empty nest (on the bright side: Mallory will be promoted to manager at her vegan grocrey store next month, so hopefully money will get a little easier for her then.)

On to the books: and as a sidenote: this was the first year since joining goodreads in 2013 that I nearly didn't make my reading goal of 100 books (some years I read 150, even 160) but I have to admit to padding my numbers in December of '23; reading a couple of short memoirs, a lecture, a book of poetry, and on December 31st itself, I read and reviewed a graphic novel just to tick that goal to completed. I hope to be more engaged with my reading in 2024.

Top Ten Fiction

 

Study for Obedience

This won the Giller Prize, and I'd have given it the Booker, too. My top read of the year.

Birnam Wood

Timely and riveting.

Old God's Time

Love an Irish storyteller and an unreliable narrator.

Do You Remember Being Born?

Timely and terrifying.

The Pole: A Novel

I love a book that makes me think and do research off the page.

Rage the Night

Riveting and heart-pounding, based on true Canadian history: yes please.

River Mumma

                      A love letter to Toronto and the mythology of  its Carribean population.

The Last Sane Woman

Another book that I didn't understand until I did after-reading research; and then loved it.

James

I adored this alternate take on the events in Huckleberry Finn.

Caledonian Road

A perfect "state-of-the-nation", even if it's not my nation.

Top Ten (or so) Nonfiction

Some People Need Killing

Shocking recent history of the Philippines.

Every Living Thing

                      Swashbuckling history that makes us question why we allow old ways to endure.

The Golden Spruce

Gorgeous narrative nonfiction.

The World Behind the World

A fascinating wakeup call for the field of Neuroscience.

The House of Being

Perfect marriage of thought and format; incredible life story.

Soul Boom

The only read I found worthwhile from the "Hard 75 Challenge" (in which I had to read from a                                 self help book, among other challenges, every day for 75 days). Wonderful.                                                          

The following each look at early human history in a different, enlightening,  way:

After Eden

Before War

Eve

And perhaps not surprisingly to me, there seem to be answers to the problems of modern life in Indigenous wisdom, as found in my first and second to last reads of the year:

Embers

Challenge to Civilization

As for novels written in previous years, I didn't read many classics this year (other than Death on the Nile and Death Comes as the End while in Egypt), but I did discover that Virginia Woolf's Orlando was much more entertaining and accessible than I had feared. And although this was technically a new release, So Late in the Day is a collection of Claire Keegan's previously released short stories, so I'll put it here as an honourable mention for 2023.

I end the year grateful, once again, that friends and family gathered at our house for Christmas Eve:

And this year I need to note that my brother Ken, behind me on the stairs, has been given a terminal cancer diagnosis; a ten percent chance of living another three years; he likely has less than one more year. That makes Dave and me hesitant to book another big trip in 2024 (despite Ken's encouragement to live life while we're alive), but at Ken's instigation, a bunch of us will be going out to the Rockies together in February. This diagnosis is surreal to me - and especially when our parents, who do not seem to embrace life at all, are still ticking along in their miseries - and I wish I could say that it has made me more grateful for this life, but it's all too unreal to face. I need to focus in 2024, find ways to be there for my brother and his family, and really work on finding more joy and meaning. 

There's those boys I love again

The Dyatlov Pass Mystery

 

“Do you still consider Yudin a suspect?”

“More than ever. Ten brilliant young minds vanished without a trace out in the Urals, and only one came back. Neither the committee or I believe in coincidences. But the investigation is now in your hands. It’s up to you to solve it…with finesse. Pack your bags, Liv Nikitich, and don’t forget your warm clothes. There’s a strong chance you’ll be needing them. We’ll be waiting for you downstairs.”

A knock on the door in the middle of the night — an unannounced visit from the KGB in 1950s Moscow — and Special Prosecutor Nikitich is called upon to investigate the mysterious disappearance of nine fit and experienced young hikers who had set out on a routine mountain trek. Although Nikitich would eventually come under pressure to close this case quickly, the circumstances were strange — the expedition's tent was cut open from the inside, many of the hikers were found in the snow in various states of undress, some had signs of radiation exposure, some had compression injuries, strange lights had been sighted in the sky that night — and "The Dyatlov Pass Incident" would go on to become one of those enduring "unexplained mysteries", source of much speculation and conspiracy theories. As a graphic novel, The Dyatlov Pass Mystery presents what is known in two timelines — following the prosecutor's investigation in one thread, and what is known of the hikers' experience from their actual diaries and photographs — and more than anything, this is the story of the prosecutor himself and his earnest attempt to solve the case before being shut down by the Soviet regime. As such, author Cédric Mayen doesn't attempt to solve this historic mystery (although he does allow his prosecutor to entertain the most outlandish theories) and while this account is respectful to the memories of those who lost their lives that frigid night some sixty years ago, it is faithful to what is actually known by leaving the mystery unsolved. I had heard of this mysterious story before, and totally enjoyed this treatment by Mayen and illustrator Jandro González; a delightful way to close out 2023. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley prepublication.)

I thoroughly enjoyed the drab, colourless illustrations in the sections from the prosecutor's POV; the even more colourless sections recounting the hikers' story. Mayen imagines some interpersonal stresses that may have led to problems between the hikers, but ultimately, in his day, the prosecutor wasn't given enough information to solve the mystery; leading to outlandish theories.

In the end, and likely appropriately, Mayen shows the prosecutor haunted by the ghosts of the hikers:

In an end section titled "The Dossier", Mayen includes interviews with several modern day investigators who claim to have solved the Dyatlov Pass mystery (were the hikers victim of a kabatic wind? a slab avalanche?), and most interesting to me, he cites a popular website by Russian investigator Teodora Hadjiyska, and then notes that after agreeing to an interview with him, Hadliyska has since disappeared. And ain't that a crazy symmetry? Loved this.

Challenge to Civilization: Indigenous Wisdom and the Future

 

Challenge to Civilization: Indigenous Wisdom and the Future is the third book in my series on Indigenous spirituality. The Knowledge Seeker addressed the nature and viability of Indigenous beliefs, and Loss of Indigenous Eden examined how Indigenous sacred knowledge became oppressed, suppressed, and discounted. This book will demonstrate that Indigenous spirituality is not only still relevant but will be critical to human survival in terms of restoring balance with both natural and supernatural worlds.

Dr A. Blair Stonechild is a Cree-Saulteaux member of the Muscowpetung First Nation, professor of Indigenous Studies at First Nations University of Canada, a residential school survivor, and the author of several books on Indigenous history and spirituality. Stonechild’s Challenge to Civilization perfectly captures humanity’s current precarious position at the brink of self-destruction and makes the dual points that there was nothing inevitable about the rise of Western civilisation — one need only look to the Australian Aborigines’ sixty-thousand years of continual culture to recognise that a life lived in spiritual harmony with the environment is stable and indefinitely sustainable, whereas our six thousand year journey of greed and expansion since the first city at Ur has brought us to the point of collapse — and that it’s not too late to embrace the original, Indigenous practices that were once common to everyone on earth. I found quite a bit of this confronting, but mostly because I’m a product of Western culture and its education system; really thinking about what Stonechild has to say, it’s hard to find fault with his conclusions. Fascinating, mind-expanding read. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quotes may not be in their final forms.)

Civilization has waged a relentless and often violent campaign to colonize Indigenous Peoples emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually. Part of this campaign has been to portray Indigenous societies as proto-civilizations that would have eventually trodden the path of human self-centredness, greed, and destructiveness. As an alternative, I create the word “ecolization” — a state in which humans recognize that they are not the central purpose of creation, remain grateful for the opportunity to experience physical life, and continue to obey the Creator’s “original instructions”.

Stonechild describes his “ecolizations” as hunter-gatherer societies, in which people lived in harmony with nature, only taking what they needed from the commons, and making decisions through group consultation, meditation, and communication with the spiritual. If I had a complaint about this, it would be that he treats all communities outside of Western civilisation (including pre-colonised India and pre-Opium Wars China) as living this way — from the Aztecs, to the Celts, to anyone the Romans called “Barbarians'' — and I’m not sure that this is strictly true. On the other hand, there’s no denying that if Homo sapiens have been around for 600 000+ years, and it has only been since 1820 that “civilised” folks outnumbered the Indigenous around the world, the survival of our species did seem better guaranteed in pre-civilsed times. More than once, Stonechild takes issue with the Hobbesian “nasty, brutish, and short” denigration of a life lived in harmony with nature.

In mainstream education we are taught that archeologists, geneticists, and other scientists are convinced that life originated from some sort of biological soup. It is contended that we, as humans, are simply advanced apes — a sort of evolutionary accident. But such an account never existed among Indigenous Peoples. The theory of evolution has been around for less than 200 years, compared to Indigenous stories, such as humanity’s coming from the stars, that have existed for tens of thousands of years. So why are Indigenous stories not given more credence, or at least equal exposure to scientific accounts?

I did find this line of thought confronting — that evolution is a “theory”, no more valid as an explanation for the appearance of human consciousness than the Indigenous belief that we came from the stars (and again, is this a universal Indigenous belief?) — and while on the one hand I can feel defensive of the scientific tradition (in which I was raised and educated), on the other, I have to agree that science seems to be mostly in the service of extracting resources, expanding populations, and providing militaries with ever-deadlier weapons of mass destruction; what if we did all behave as though our purpose on earth was to learn through relationships without harm? (And speaking of science and those who thought of First Nations as “primitive” because they didn’t have Old World technology, Stonechild writes, “Indigenous Peoples, given tens of thousands of years of careful development guided by higher virtues, would have eventually discovered all of today’s sciences and technologies, and even more. However, these would have been acquired in a wisely considered way, and as such, would be safe and beneficial for future generations.” More to think on.)

The wetiko (greed-driven) cultures that are now in control of world affairs pretend to solve problems through a combination of rationalism, economic development, and military threat. Unfortunately, they lack spiritual authority and will never possess it until they reconcile with Indigenous Peoples and their ancient wisdom. Only a moral revolution can bring humanity back to its original path. What if we could redirect our intellectual, economic, and technological energies into healing Earth? This would lead us closer to a future that recognizes, celebrates, and honours the higher nature of our species.

Stonechild writes that even if we made the decision today to embrace Indigenous wisdom as a way to direct world affairs, it could take thousands of years to regain harmony and stability. He acknowledges that we’re not going to give up all of our comforts, but he’s not wrong that Western society is sick and pushing the planet to environmental ruin. Reading this book, and really taking the time to think about what he’s saying — dismissing the voice of rationality that says, “How? There’s no way. Others will always be greedy even if I’m not...” and embracing the spiritual voice that says, “You were not made to live like this...” — there’s something to Stonechild’s argument that feels satisfying and true. And yet the rational voice keeps popping up because that is what I’m steeped in. I know I’ll keep thinking on this and am enlarged for having read this.

A Year of Last Things: Poems

 

I had been alone for weeks
when we met there,
below Dante. The three of
us lounged in a pensione,
I was writing a book about
a dying man.
Twenty years later, you were in a bed,
on Brunswick Avenue. And
I kissed your feet,
Connie, one of my shy
farewells.

It was your year of last
things,
but you were luminous,
within those final fires.

excerpted from “Below Dante”

Every now and then I read a book of poetry, but I really don’t know anything about poetry; I just know what moves me. I read A Year of Last Things: Poems because I’ve read, and admired, several of Michael Ondaatje’s novels, but this feels like an apples and oranges situation. Several of the poems in this collection did move me (at any rate, many stanzas did), but overall, I couldn’t say what even qualifies some of these entries as poetry (several look and read like prose: without line breaks, rhythm, or rhyme), so I’m satisfied to attribute any failure to click to my own shortcomings. I do admire the effort and am happy to have now sampled more of Ondaatje’s writing. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and excerpts quoted may not be in their final forms.)

When that English novelist
returned to poetry
he learned again the
breaking line’s breath-
like leap
into the missed life

till there was no longer a
story, only stillness
or falling.
He’d altered so many
truths as prose
it was like herding cattle.

excerpted from “1912”

A Year of Last Things is autobiographical and intertextual — Ondaatje references his own work (explaining the inspirations behind characters in Anil’s Ghost and The Cat’s Table [one assumes the “book about a dying man” referred to in that first poem is The English Patient]) and he quotes from and makes reference to a wide panoply of artists and poets, from Bashō to Chuck Berry — and there’s a wistful sense of looking back and taking stock (with neither women nor pets sticking around forever). The landscape moves from Sri Lanka to Pompei to a “bus travelling from Marrakesh to Fez”, and throughout, there are countless rivers and estuaries; time flowing like water. This reads exactly as what it is: a successful novelist returning to poetry in his golden years to capture something of the breadth of his interests and experience. As for the poems, some did work for me, as in this opening to “Wanderer”:

Let us speak about our
enormous flaws as told
to us
by others — accountants,
wives before leaving —
about how we deceived
ourselves, even our dogs
by ignoring their
concerned pre-walk,
tear-stained howls,
though they rested often
on our chests
making sounds like old
ships.

And some were less successful for me, as in “The Cabbagetown Pet Clinic”, shared here in its entirety:

For years I wrote during
the day
above a veterinarian

The howls, the heavy
breathing, the sighs
from that faraway
untranslated world

Again: I have no tools with which to pry apart these poems and understand their construction, so I can only report on their surface effect; an uneven experience for me, but I’m rounding up to four stars because this feels successful (if a bit over my own head).

The House of Being

 

How many times, over the years, would my father remind me — quoting Martin Heidegger — that “Language is the house of being”? It would be decades before I’d read those words myself in a book by the German philosopher — who was also a member of the Nazi Party — and feel again that sharp pang of recognition: the difficult knowledge that some of the most enduring ideas had been written by complicated figures, like Thomas Jefferson, who believed in racial hierarchies, inherent superiority and inferiority. More and more I would come to understand that it was not simply ignorance that I’d need to push back against, but also the stores of received knowledge — philosophy, history, science — that I would encounter in the most learned places.

Written by Pulitzer Prize winning poet, Professor of Creative Writing, and two time US Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey, The House of Being is thoughtful, compelling, and quotable on literally every page. As part of Yale University Press’ “Why I Write” series (former entries include those written by Joy Harjo, Karl Ove Knausgaard, and Patti Smith), Trethewey answers the question deeply and provocatively. With a white father and a Black mother (whose marriage wasn’t even legal at the time Trethewey was born) and a grandmother whose house was situated deep in Mississippi at the intersection of two highways — one famous for the Blues and one named for Thomas Jefferson — Trethewey was intimately shaped by the local geography and its competing narratives and prejudices. Combining history, memoir, and a lifetime of meditation on the forces that shaped her, this is a masterwork; thoroughly satisfying and necessary. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)

My need to make meaning from the geography of my past is not unlike the ancients looking to the sky at the assortment of stars and drawing connections between them: the constellations they named inscribing a network of stories that gave order and meaning to their lives. That’s one of the reasons I write. I’ve needed to create the narrative of my life — its abiding metaphors — so that my story would not be determined for me.

Trethewey’s father — a poet himself — taught her early to describe the world around her metaphorically. In later life, people would assume that she “learned to write” from her father, but Trethewey insists that she learned as much from her grandmother — particularly the rhythms she picked up from her grandmother’s sewing machine — and from her mother, she learned how to use her voice to speak back to power; as when her mother would sing an inspirational version of John Brown’s Body whenever they drove past a Confederate flag (as on their state flag):

Singing to me as we passed the state flag of Mississippi was a way to counteract the symbolic, psychic violence of it. Through the triumphant, stirring rhythms of the song, my mother was showing me how to signify, how to use received forms to challenge the dominant cultural narrative of our native geography, and to transcend it by imagining a reality in which justice was possible. Her voice was a counterweight.

From her grandmother living at the crossroads of the Blues (according to legend, guitarist Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil in order to play as well as he did — which obviously discounts his talent, skill, and practise), to the whitewashing of nearby Ship Island (a prison for Confederate soldiers that has a plaque at its entrance, thanks to the United Daughters of the Confederacy, that lists the names of every white soldier held prisoner there but which doesn’t acknowledge anywhere that the guards were all formerly enslaved Black men that had fought for the Union Army), the geography of her childhood had effects that were both intimately particular to Trethewey herself and broadly metaphorical of the American ethos. Wanting to add her voice to those who would confront the dominant narrative perfectly answers why Trethewey writes.

The act of writing is a way to create another world in language, a dwelling place for the psyche wherein the chaos of the external world is transformed, shaped into a made thing, and ordered. It is an act of reclamation. And resistance: the soul sings for justice and the song is poetry.

This is a short read, but weighty and compelling. I loved the whole thing.

Caledonian Road

 

The professor’s study was like a painting. It had a sofa and a table that ran along the back, two lamps and jars of pens. The desk had an antique globe on it and a lot of paper folders. It faced glass doors that led onto a balcony overlooking the garden at the back, towards the shops on Caledonian Road. The garden was full of flowers and his wife was down there, watering the plants. On a bookcase to the side of the desk was a typewriter and Milo saw various piles of books; on top of one of them was a watch and a passport.

The publisher’s blurb calls Caledonian Road a “state-of-the-nation novel”, and that is precisely what it is. Opening in May of 2021 and covering nearly a year — from the loosening of pandemic restrictions to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — big events play out in the background as a wide range of characters experience life in the heart of London in ways that precisely capture the mood of our times: this is one of those rare novels that I can imagine people reading long into the future to see how we lived and thought in this moment. Author Andrew O’Hagan explores issues of class and race and justice along Caledonian Road’s mile and a half length — a North London thoroughfare famous for its high ethnic diversity and staggering disparity of wealth — and through conversations held between a variety of characters, a large breadth of ideas are offered and challenged. This is epic in scope and succeeds completely. This will, no doubt, be huge for O’Hagan upon release in 2024 and I am grateful for the early access. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)

As he sifted through the ties, he knew the truth. Campbell would continue persuading himself that his book was a ripe and playful intellectual riposte to the times they were living through, but in fact he’d just needed the money. He lived with his duplicity as if it was an energy. He failed to see the danger in any of it. He had identified a daft subject with Why Men Weep in Their Cars, a daft subject he had immediately commodified to his own advantage, hoping it would be the huge bestseller that might relieve him.

Campbell Flynn is a celebrity intellectual: climbing from humble Glaswegian roots, he met a higher class of people at Cambridge (his best friend would go on to earn a knighthood, Campbell himself married the daughter of a Countess), and on the basis of a celebrated biography of the painter Vermeer, Campbell landed a lectureship at University College (despite not having a PhD), hosts a popular podcast, writes for fashion and news magazines, and has anonymously written a maybe-tongue-in-cheek self-help book for the “easy” money. Fresh on the heels of penning a controversial essay on the vanity behind liberal guilt for The Atlantic, Campbell begins a working relationship with one of his former students, Milo Manghasa, speaking here:

“Mum used to say it was the genuine task in anybody’s life, to find your country.”
“I can see her pencil markings in the book,” Gosia said.
“It’s the thing she always talked about. She dreamed of it, her Highlands again, after her own long journey. But I never knew, really, if she meant home — like Ethiopia — or there,” he said, pointing to the book.
“Maybe she meant both, the old place and the new place,” Gosia said. “She dreamed of a road that carried the old road with it, right back to the start.” Her face was lit up when she said that, and Milo nodded.
“Like Caledonian Road,” he said.

Milo has a Masters in Computer Science, and with an Irish father and an Ethiopian mother, he’s from the poorer side of Caledonian Road; still rubbing elbows with the boyhood friends who are now gangbanging wannabe rapstars while joining Campbell for drinks at his exclusive club and challenging the professor’s own performative liberalism. This relationship delights and energises Campbell — he’s the kind of guy who thinks that unquestioningly accepting his queer daughter’s nonbinary partner means that he has nothing to learn about the world, but Milo challenges him on everything — so Campbell makes himself vulnerable to actions that Milo considers “an experiment in justice” (for example: when small amounts of money from Campbell’s bank accounts are redirected to charity without his prior knowledge, Campbell is both delighted by Milo’s presumed hacking skills and open to experiencing whatever Milo has in mind for him next.)

At one point, Milo says to Campbell, “We are who we know.” And while that’s meant to stain Campbell with the sins of his friends (Campbell’s best friend, William, is under investigation for various business-related crimes and at risk of losing his knighthood; Campbell’s sister-in-law is married to a Duke whose offences might run even deeper), there is irony in knowing who Milo consorts with: his oldest friend is a knife-toting weed-dealer and Milo’s girlfriend, Gosia, is the sister of a drug and human trafficker (who, ironically, imports the slave labour for Campbell’s best friend’s sweatshops). There are many levels at which people are interconnected — with Campbell and Milo both being basically decent people wanting a better world at the centre of the circles — and insanely wealthy Russian kleptocrats keeping the circles spinning with their money-laundering and influence-peddling. Throw in Campbell’s wife (an astute therapist), their son Angus (a jet-setting celebrity DJ who makes more money than his parents), their daughter Kenzie (beautiful enough to have worked as a model, but interested in a simpler life), Campbell’s sister Moira (a lawyer and sitting Member of Parliament), various journalists, Lords, and working-class folks, and there is a huge variety of experience and opinion explored; all of it adding up to a recognisable snapshot of our modern experience.

A sampling of quotes:

• Police invented the sickness they prosecute. Filing false reports, lying under oath, planting evidence, controlling the streets, kneeling on people’s necks. You talk about assault: police invented that stuff, and they get lucky every day because you want to play their game. You talk about Tupac being a gangster. That’s where he failed. He was a philosopher. He was the son of a Black Panther. He got lost, bro.

• Campbell needed William the way some people need to smoke, or the way others need to gamble or drink to excess. William was one of his risks. His outer limit. We need a friend who embodies the extent of ourselves.

• The house of cards inside us becomes shaky when we realise, one day, that we breathe like our parents and are nervous like them to hold the world steady.

• The Conservatives’ field day will come to an end when people at home realise, as they must, that the Britain being fetishised by the Tories doesn’t actually exist. It died in the 1980s.

• The Duke was doing what he always did on these occasions, making a dick of himself, as Campbell saw it, booming and guffawing his way round the various circles of guests, with the old-fashioned aristocrat’s tin-eared notion of party talk, obsessed with social relations but clueless about social ease.

• That’s what they do, the young, thought Campbell. When they hear something funny they say ‘that’s funny’ instead of laughing. Maybe that’s what postmodernism was in the end: the naming of emotion, as opposed to having it.

• All these new ventures of his into social theory and politics, current affairs and self-help. He’d told her it was research, and she trusted him as a writer, a kind of moral adventurer, wrong half the time. Her mother always said Campbell was as good as a novel, and that was true, for the most part, but the Countess never said who wrote it or how it would end.

• “I used to know which part of the nation’s struggle we represented,”’ she said.
“Working people. Decency and fairness.”
“That’s right. But what if working people stop voting for that?”

• “You know the Russians paid for Brexit, right? It was their money that made the Tories believe London was invincible.”

As much as I recognise the progressive themes that are being advocated for in this novel, the particular details are very specific to Caledonian Road/London/Great Britain and I am looking forward to seeing what local readers make of this. The Russians, The Firm, Brexit, local Councils: there are power dynamics here that I recognise without really knowing, so I can only really conclude that, to an outsider, O’Hagan totally captured the state-of-his-nation.

He’d always felt shielded by irony and art’s mysteries, but sitting in his cosy hut, it again occurred to Campbell that he was not above it all. Maybe that’s the way a crisis gathers force and dimension in a person’s life, when anxiety metastasises from one damaged area to another.

Running to epic length — six hundred and some pages — there is plenty of engaging plot in Caledonian Road, but it did feel a bit long. And if I had another complaint: the women characters are less interesting than the men; either saintly, brainy, and beautiful (like Campbell’s wife, sister, and daughter; Milo’s girlfriend) or self-serving and nasty (like William’s wife or “the woman downstairs”), but where it focuses on men, this could also be taken as a state-of-the-male novel; there is a reason, after all, that Campbell saw a market for a self-help book entitled “Why Men Weep in Their Cars”, and I was interested in the whole thing. I can’t give fewer than the full five stars.

All I Want for Christmas Is Utahraptor

 

The Utahraptor stood tall — twelve feet tall — before her, clothed only in his feathers and a jaunty Santa hat. His massive hocks rested half-on the lawn, crushing the gentle brush of snow that had fallen earlier that morning, and in one of his little hands he carried a large tin of Quality Street chocolates.

Okay, I can explain…I’ve never read anything like this before, and while my first instinct is to say that this follows the plot of a Hallmark Christmas movie — but with a hunky dinosaur love interest — I would have to then admit that I’ve never seen a Hallmark Christmas movie. But I’ve been really busy lately, and I was looking for something short and mindless, and honestly, All I Want for Christmas is Utahraptor is not the worst book I’ve ever read, by a long shot. Author Lola Faust (a pseudonym, apparently) doesn’t take the subject matter seriously, this is full on camp — with just the right amount of “follow your heart” and “love is love”, and aren’t those the themes explored in historical pulp fiction? Didn’t they used to write about sexy vampires as code for the queer love they weren't allowed to write about? I might not have gone into this thinking that I was the true target audience, but I was totally entertained…and maybe a tiny bit moved. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)

In her senior year they’d met Rob, a PhD student from Australia, who was studying the implications of DNA deterioration on the culture of dinosaur populations in Tasmania. Holly had been captivated by his interest in dinos; he was the first person she’d met in the wider world who took dino culture seriously, seeing it as a genuine foundational aspect of dino society rather than a veneer imposed on them by human society, seeing dinos as fully conscious, fully sentient beings who deserved equality and consideration.

Holly Grant lives with her ultrarich boyfriend in Chicago, selling thrifted antiques in an online shop. They’ve been together for four years with no engagement (let alone marriage) on the horizon, and as Thad spends ever more time as a vulture venture capitalist, looking for the next big deal, and the next, Holly’s forgetting what she ever saw in him. When Thad announces that he’s going on a work/ski trip with some buddies over Christmas, Holly decides she’ll go back to her hometown in Utah to see her Dad…daydreaming of her happy days there; especially her high school days when the school board piloted an integration program with the locally reanimated dinosaur population. In those days, Holly had been best friends with a Utahraptor named Rocky, but despite having always been attracted to him, the timing was never right to talk about her feelings. Maybe the timing will finally be right when Rocky shows up at her Dad’s house on Christmas.

The Utahraptor brought his muzzle to Holly’s mouth and nuzzled. The little feathers on his cheeks tickled her as he rolled his lizard-lips against hers, careful not to slice her open with his sharp predator teeth. It was the strangest and most alluring kiss Holly had ever received.

“Is this okay?” Rocky whispered to her, a glorious fount of meat-breath that bathed her face in a delicate mist of saliva.

“Yes,” whispered Holly. “Yes, it’s wonderful.”

An explicit scene does follow, but it’s so campy and implausible that I don’t think it’s meant to be taken seriously (he begins by exploring her “love-swamp, moist and humid as the Cretaceous jungle the Utahraptor’s ancestors would have stalked through in their search for food,” and that made me guffaw.) And I see other readers are pleased that Rocky asks for consent at every stage, but some state that there ought to be a trigger warning for Holly cheating on Thad, even though he was really a jerk and Holly had already decided that the relationship was over. I offer these points to underline that I am not the usual reader of Romance or Erotica, so I’m not critical of the tropes, just reporting my experience.

I will also note that some reviewers didn’t like where the story went “religious”, but this is Utah, and while Holly’s Dad was a non-practising Mormon (having lost his faith when his wife died of cancer years before), I appreciated his acceptance of the daughter-dino relationship:

“The Church is a human institution. We built it to honour God — but humans built it, and humans are fallible. The bond between a parent and child, though…that is God’s own work. And loving you, whatever choices you make, is loving God.”

I’m no expert on the genre, but I didn’t hate this.