My Alien Life

 

My mother was a no-nonsense woman. If it wasn’t in the Bible or on Jerry Springer, then it couldn’t happen. Of course, there’s a lot of freaky stuff in the Good Book, with ladders to heaven and angels with animal faces and such. And crazy, muckraking talk shows probably aren’t the best yardstick for anything short of how depraved humans can be. But the point is that when she was abducted by aliens and impregnated with me, she had some trouble processing. I’m pretty sure Jerry actually covered that one, but I guess she missed the show that day. 

This opening quote and the publisher’s blurb that says, “So begins this heartwarming, speculative tale…”, made me think that My Alien Life would be a weird and mindless story to listen to while I got some chores done. But it’s not weird (I don’t know what “speculative” is supposed to mean in this case.) Telling the story of a little girl who was abandoned by her mother, and then taken in by an aged relative after her father died, this is a really sweet novella about building family and making meaning from the seasons of planting and growing on a small patch of North Carolina dirt. Written by J. Martain and engagingly narrated by April Doty in a smooth Southern drawl, this made me smile; I only wish it was longer. This isn’t my idea of great literature, but it was a better story than I had been expecting, so I’m giving it four stars for the entertainment value of what it is. (Note: I listened to an audio-ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)

Aunt Magnolia held up one wiry, knobby hand and the babble stopped. God bless her.
“Child, how old are you?”
“Nine.”
“Think you can handle yourself by sixteen?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Then I can stay alive seven more years. Come on. I wanna be home by dusk.”
And so I went to live with Great-great-aunt Magnolia Rose McClennan, the older sister of my mother’s great grandmother.

Lynette did love her Daddy — if not his cooking — so when he suddenly died when she was nine, she had no idea what would become of her. Enter Great-great-aunt Magnolia, “Aunt Mags”, six foot tall if she can straighten herself to full height; a straight-talking, “greens” growing, noted seamstress, and the only relative stepping forward to take in little Lynette. The audiobook is only about an hour long, so while there are a couple of setbacks and dramatic obstacles, this is mostly a feel good story about these two characters getting to know and love one another as they garden their patch, collect stray cats, and always keep their promises to one another. And that was more than worth an hour of my time.

All The Little Bird-Hearts

 

Of course, now I know Vita’s little bird-heart, I remember those one-sided conversations differently. I see that my frequent muteness was a convenience to someone who was soft-feathered and sharp-eyed. And who sang away to herself in my presence, happily and without interruption, for she knew I had no song with which to call back.

Initially, I was thoroughly charmed by All The Little Bird-Hearts: Told from the POV of a neurodivergent main character — the story is set in 1988, so she has no diagnosis and has spent her life being told to try harder and act normal — and written by debut author Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow, who happens to be on the autism spectrum herself, I found the setup to be fresh and authentic and intriguing. But as the plot progresses — after initially being warned that this is the summer that the main character’s world will be blown apart — there was a lot of repetition, no real surprises, and a corresponding drop in charm. I continued to appreciate the authenticity of (and the privilege of being given this insight into the mind of) the main character throughout, and might have given this four stars overall, but the ending didn’t pull together for me, so I’m rounding down to three. Still: I’m really glad that this book exists and that the Booker longlisting will bring it to a wider audience. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)

The year of Vita began as a demonstration of sunshine, a visual performance of summer without real heat. Those early days were memorably bright with a hazy quality of light promising a warmth it did not provide. On reflection, that time seems now like something of a dress rehearsal for what arrived later that year, for the explosion of heat that paced up and down our hazy streets, with a fixed grin and outstretched arms aflame.

Sunday Forrester is the single mother of lovely sixteen-year-old daughter, Dolly, and they live together in the Lake District in the house that Sunday inherited from her own parents when she was sixteen. Sunday knows that her quirks are hard on her daughter: she prefers to eat and serve only bland “white” foods, she quotes often from her two favourite books (a 1950s etiquette guide and a book of Sicilian folklore), and although Dolly is the light and pride of her life, Sunday’s monotone/affectless presentation can be cold and embarrassing for the teenager. And although Sunday is mostly socially isolated (except for her friendship with the deaf young man at the greenhouse where they work together), she becomes fascinated with the wealthy couple who come to rent the house next door: Vita (flaky, charming, gregarious) and her husband Rollo (sophisticated, handsome, mostly away “in town”). Vita insists that Sunday and Dolly start having dinners with them on Friday nights; and while Sunday is mostly distracted by trying to solve the puzzle of these new types of people, Dolly is completely captivated by their charm and glamour. As Dolly spends more and more time with the couple next door, Sunday doesn’t have the social acumen to recognise the danger her little family is in or the ability to prevent what has been signalled to the reader from the start.

Again, I appreciated everything about Sunday’s interior life: how she tries to suppress her natural reactions (tapping out the syllables of others’ speech; wanting to repeat words in curious accents); how she pauses before responding to everything — filtering possibilities through what her mother instilled in her, what the etiquette guide would recommend, what she had noted as natural for others; how she loves her daughter with everything in her but knows it doesn’t get transmitted. There is something very special about having this reality shared by a writer with autism.

On the other hand, there was a lot of repetition that ground on me. Not just the repetition within the plot (the Friday dinners especially), but phrases: characters were forever speaking “with their palms facing upwards” (in theatrical surrender…in a gesture of openness, or perhaps, impatience…the pose could have been that of an evangelical speaker, or of someone trying to catch stray pieces of something falling from above...) And while I was intrigued by this novel’s title when I first encountered it, it’s used many times throughout (his was a different kind of bird-heart…I lived for and loved a bird-heart that summer; I only knew it afterwards…the King’s little bird-heart bears only his own lovely image…) and it soon lost its charming singularity.

But I think what bothered me most is just how awful most of the characters are. Vita and Rollo are the antagonists, so it’s understandable that their motives should be veiled and incomprehensible to Sunday (even if the reader sees their angle from the start). But Sunday also has to deal with an awful ex and his parents (whose behaviour in the end didn’t make sense to me); the memories of Sunday’s parents are awful (they may not have known how to deal with a neurodivergent child back in the 50s and 60s, but their behaviour bordered on evil); and ultimately, Dolly was pretty awful, too (and her behaviour in the end didn’t make sense to me). It’s natural that Sunday’s character doesn’t understand what motivates the people around her — that’s one of the novel’s greatest charms — but you get the sense that the author didn’t understand their motivations either (which is not me making any assumptions about the author’s diagnosis, but the characters did not behave like real people to me).

I did like my life, and I did not want to live like her, or like Vita, however easy they found it. Everything came effortlessly to them, and was therefore replaceable and without value. Dolly does not know if she has it in her to struggle, I thought. Or even to try hard at something, or with someone. She does not know what it is to be misunderstood, or disliked, or simply not adored. When I put my hands on my plants, or immerse myself in Sicilian culture, I am gifted with something more than I really am. The awkwardness of being no longer exists when I am part of these other worlds and aligned with something bigger. I would rather be a tiny person who wonders and trembles at their surroundings than rule over everything, manipulate it to my preference, and in doing so, come to despise it.

As hard as Sunday’s circumstances seem, we’re not made to feel sorry for her: hers is a life rich with purpose and meaning — perhaps with even more meaning than those around her who exhaust themselves in social games — and again, despite not really believing in the storyline, I did believe in Sunday’s responses and it was a POV I feel privileged to have shared.

Booker Prize Longlist 2023

A Spell of Good Things by Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀’

Old God's Time by Sebastian Barry

Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein * My favourite of the list

The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng

If I Survive You by Jonathan Escofferey

How to Build a Boat by Elaine Feeney

This Other Eden by Paul Harding

Pearl by Siân Hughes

All the Little Bird-Hearts by Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow

Prophet Song by Paul Lynch

Western Lane by Chetna Maroo

In Ascension by Martin MacInnes

The Bee Sting by Paul Murray

So Late in the Day

 

 

 

...he could hear her saying, yet again, and very clearly, and so late in the day, that she’d changed her mind...

Claire Keegan is deservedly having a moment right now, and while I’ve enjoyed joining others in reading her recent novellas, I found this collection of three of Keegan’s short stories to be even more powerful. Each of the stories in So Late in the Day concerns the relationships between men and women; and while the men presented here are all kind of awful, the women find ways to empower themselves (even if they must then live with the consequences.) From the sentences to the story arcs to the satisfying endings, I loved everything about these stories. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)

It occurred to him that he would not have minded her shutting up right then, and giving him what he wanted. He felt the possibility of making a joke, of defusing what had come between them, but couldn’t think of anything and then the moment passed and she turned her head away. That was the problem with women falling out of love; the veil of romance fell away from their eyes, and they looked in and could read you. ~ So Late in the Day

A man isn’t looking forward to going home for the long weekend and confronting the ghosts of what could have been. There’s a nice passage about the family influences that may have made him what he was — and some commentary that Irish men in general are “spoiled” — but ultimately, there’s no doubt that he got what he deserved.

As she worked, the sun rose. It was a fine thing to sit there describing a sick man and to feel the sun rising. If it again, at some later point, filled her with a new longing for sleep, she fought against it, and kept on, working with her head down, concentrating on the pages. Already, she had made the incision in place and time, and infused it with a climate, and longing. There was earth and fire and water on these pages; there was a man and a woman and human loneliness.~ The Long and Painful Death

After an unpleasant interaction with an academic who interrupted her writers’ retreat, a woman takes her revenge against him on the page. There was a real sense of menace in this story and it was satisfying to see this woman gain the upper hand.

Every time the happily married woman went away, she wondered how it would feel to sleep with another man. That weekend she was determined to find out. It was December; she felt a curtain closing on another year. She wanted to do this before she got too old. She was sure she would be disappointed.~ Antarctica

More curious than unhappy, this woman wants an anonymous fling while Christmas shopping for her family in the city. What could go wrong?

In Ascension

 

A twitching of fingers, an arc of the neck. The first stirring of a cell. Ascension: bodies rising and lifting off the ground, all of us airborne, all of us unlimited. We only look like we are rising when really we are falling. I barely recognise the faces around me: I have never seen them as expressive, as exquisite, as this. So much of the face is ordinarily buried, only two or three times in a life falling into expression, into joy, like this.

At over five hundred pages, In Ascension is a long read, comprised of five (or is it seven?) sections set around (and below and above) the world as we’re about to know it. Part sci-fi, part cli-fi, part domestic drama, author Martin MacInnes imagines a near future with a hotter planet, corporations ever more in control of the scientific process, and mysteries that trigger responses in humans at the cellular level. Told from the POV of a Dutch marine biologist, I have to admit that I was pretty bored with all of the digressions to her challenging childhood — even if the point seems to be about what is passed down through the cells — but as unengaged as I was with some sections, there were others that were thrilling and meaning-filled. I liked the science and the sense of awe at the natural world and the plot when things were happening — MacInnes captivated me with the uncanny bits — but too many parts made me sigh with impatience, and overall, this just felt unpleasantly long. Not a complete win for me, but I’d read the author again. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)

I dwelled on this as I waited out on deck, watching the activity. I questioned what else I had already missed so far, in my own life, simply through the limits of my character. If we were blind to anything representing a new category, then our individual histories might have amounted to a series of glancing encounters with unspeakable wonders – as a general summation, it felt about right. Life as a repeated failure to apprehend something. Coming close then veering away again, sensing this unnameable category, music heard distantly through a series of doors, a dull, echoing bass, a sound hitting your body.

I didn’t know anything about the plot going in, so I don’t want to spoil any surprises, and will just say: When we first meet Leigh Hasenbosch, she’s a young Dutch girl dealing with a violent father and a disengaged mother; her father is mostly under pressure because he’s a hydraulic engineer coping with rising sea levels and their effects on the Dutch dyke system, and as her mother is a maths genius working at the local university, Leigh understands and forgives her detachment. While swimming in a pond one day, Leigh has an epiphany about the microorganisms around her and within her and her place in the universe; and when she grows up to become a leading researcher into the earliest forms of life on Earth and their implications for our survival into the future, Leigh will have to choose between her career and a mother who is increasingly in need of her; fortunately, Leigh has a younger sister to pick up the slack.

As this domestic drama plays out over the course of her life, Leigh’s research takes her to some exotic and compelling locales — ie, the interesting bits — and while the overall point seems to be that life is such a rare and valuable phenomenon that we ought to honour the living from the single-celled, to one another, up to the level of the planet itself, for me, the bits were more interesting than the whole. This is sci-fi (not my usual genre), and while I thought that MacInnes wrote engagingly about biology and ecology and the genesis of life, when the story focussed on the mechanics and engineering of new technologies, I’m not sure even he understood how they were supposed to work. (Grids and Cassini ovals and autonomous slime mold?)

A family is a group of strangers with a destructive desire for common nostalgia. We had privileged access to so much of each other’s life, our early life in particular, but I’m not sure we ever really knew what to do with that. I’m not sure we ever really knew each other, in the end.

There was something interesting, if mostly unexplored, in the relationship between the sisters — why doesn’t Helena remember their father as abusive? — but I didn’t understand why the author needed his main character to be female (her gender doesn’t play into the plot at all), or why she needed to be Dutch (other than her father battling the dykes? The legacy of the Dutch East India Company living on in modern day corporatocracy?), or why so much of the story centred on Leigh’s parents (ie, the boring parts). It’s a subtle work of climate fiction — mosquitoes in Amsterdam, smog in Jakarta, everyone getting sunburned everywhere — but the best parts were about mystery and awe and connection; and the best parts were very good. Hopefully I haven’t said too much; the surprises are surprising.

Booker Prize Longlist 2023

A Spell of Good Things by Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀’

Old God's Time by Sebastian Barry

Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein * My favourite of the list

The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng

If I Survive You by Jonathan Escofferey

How to Build a Boat by Elaine Feeney

This Other Eden by Paul Harding

Pearl by Siân Hughes

All the Little Bird-Hearts by Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow

Prophet Song by Paul Lynch

Western Lane by Chetna Maroo

In Ascension by Martin MacInnes

The Bee Sting by Paul Murray

Rental Person Who Does Nothing: A Memoir

 

@morimotoshoji

I’m starting a service called Do-nothing Rental. It’s available for any situation in which all you want is a person to be there. Maybe there’s a restaurant you want to go to, but you feel awkward going on your own. Maybe a game you want to play, but you’re one person short. Or perhaps you’d like someone to keep a space in the park for your cherry blossom viewing party…I only charge transport (from Kokubunji Station) and cost of food/ drink (if applicable). I can’t do anything except give very simple responses.

With this tweet, I became “Rental Person,” a Rental Person Who Does Nothing.

Billed as a “memoir”, Rental Person Who Does Nothing is more the story of modern Japanese society than it is truly the story of its purported subject, “Rental Person” Shoji Morimoto. Morimoto gives a vague explanation for why he decided to start this service (something to do with his ex-boss at a publishing company calling him a “permanent vacancy”, saying “it makes no difference whether you’re here or not”), but really, it would seem that when he decided to leave that job and become a freelance writer, he stumbled onto the idea of renting himself out so as to get material for his twitter account: an account that currently has almost half a million followers and led to a TV series and this book. In keeping with his passive “do nothing” persona, Morimoto didn’t even write this book: Another writer (not a particular fan of Rental Person) and an editor asked Morimoto “simple questions” to which he provided “very simple responses”, and in combination with dozens of client requests copied straight from the twitter account, they have assembled a pretty straightforward story of what it is that Morimoto provides. And it’s this low effort, straightforward, intentionally impersonal style that makes this a not terribly good read, and that’s too bad, because through the “jobs” that Morimoto is asked to do, this book reveals something really shocking and insightful about Japanese society. Married with a child, Morimoto isn’t offering romance or friendship or engaged conversation — he is literally showing up to do nothing — and it was fascinating to learn the variety of ways in which people are looking for just that. Not a great book, but I’m glad I read it. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final form.)

If people are pressured by society into saying they have particular abilities, then the true value they have as themselves becomes blurred. If you say you have value because you can do particular things, you will always be judged by established social standards. So I never say I can do anything. And I don’t do anything.

The variety of tasks Morimoto engages in is fascinating — standing behind a woman while she asks a grumpy neighbour to return the laundry that fell off her balcony onto his, listening to someone say their most personal truth out loud, waving to a man as he leaves on a train — and so many of the tasks are requested by people who have friends, but who would be embarrassed to be seen enjoying an ice cream soda (as a grown man) or unwilling to risk crying in front of anyone but a stranger upon returning to Japan after missing one’s grandmother’s funeral while abroad (as a young woman). Human rental services are apparently not entirely uncommon in Japan (“According to its website, Ossan Rental ‘rents out middle-aged men who mistakenly think they’re cool. Prices from 1,000 yen an hour. They’re at your service for chats, confidences and running errands.’”), and there are evidently “volunteer listeners” who will help you with your problems, but Morimoto’s hook is that he’ll take up space at your request, but do very little else. He will sit on a tarp to reserve your spot at a cherry blossom viewing party, but he will not pick the spot; he’ll reply “good job” or “that’s cute” to a text message if you give him the response ahead of time, but he won’t give a personal opinion in a conversation; he’ll read the manga you provide if you just need someone to sit in your apartment to keep you focussed on a project, but he’s just as likely to play on his phone instead, “there’s no mental cost. It’s very easy.”

I was eventually surprised to read that Morimoto doesn’t charge his clients for anything but travel expenses ("I suppose the bottom line is that doing it for nothing seemed easier") and that he and his family were living off his savings (“Maybe it’s best to think of it as something I’m doing for fun [like a trip abroad I’ve saved up for.]”) And while he goes on to explain that many clients insist on tipping him — he likes to complain that it’s better to tip in cash than with Amazon and Starbucks giftcards — and that his first priority in choosing his clients is deciding which tasks will have the best stories for his Twitter account, several sources outside of the book say that he charges 10 000 yen per task. It seems like the rental person who does nothing is doing pretty well for himself.

Though my relationships with clients are almost always one-on-one, use of Twitter means we’re not alone — there’s also an audience of unknown size. So I feel that Do-nothing Rental is made up of three elements: me, client and audience. Anyone watching can always go up on stage as a client, and a client can always sit in the audience.

In what was Morimoto’s first request to generate a huge response, a client asked him to send the message “gym clothes” at six am the next morning. People were fascinated by the idea of someone outsourcing to a human something that could be easily handled by the client’s own technology — imagining Morimoto waking himself up before the appointed time, typing the words into his message bar, watching the clock tick off the final few seconds before he could hit “send” — one commenter said that it brought a tear to their eye. In such a disconnected and conformist society — where even if you do have friends, being honest about your thoughts and preferences is a shameful proposition — Morimoto seems to have stumbled into a valuable niche market: not only is he providing a physical presence for those in need, but he’s sharing it on a virtual platform where thousands of others are vicariously feeling that freedom and connection. What this book exhibits about Japanese society really is fascinating, but even if the disengaged/low-effort writing was meant as an intentional display of “doing nothing”, I wanted more from it.

The Secret History of Bigfoot: Field Notes on a North American Monster

 

While (Robert Michael) Pyle had contempt for the Trumpers and magical thinkers, he was equally contemptuous of those who dismissed Bigfoot out of hand. “How can you say, ‘This cannot be’?” His voice, I noticed, suddenly became more forceful. His palms were upturned in the manner of someone addressing a jury. “I’m a scientist. I know what a null hypothesis is. I know how to establish deniability. I filter everything through parsimony, and Bigfoot passes the test. Not only is it parsimonious to think of the animal evolutionarily, but biogeographically it’s not a problem. And the food dynamics — a big hairy ape surviving on what’s available — hold up. There’s also Native American traditional knowledge of great depth. Very few areas of doubt cannot be confronted with parsimony. Not to mention that parsimony does not easily admit a hoax of such grand design and coordination. Talk about a conspiracy theory!”

First time author John O’Connor teaches journalism at Boston College, and from what he writes in The Secret History of Bigfoot, he comes across as an adventurer, a thinker, and an engaging storyteller. In his efforts to follow along with Bigfooters as they go on the hunt, O’Connor meets many folks (among them former police officers, soldiers, and park rangers) who all swear that they’ve come nose to nose with a Sasquatch in the wild — some of whom were forced to leave their jobs in the wake of their experiences — and in the moment, he completely believes their testimony. Later on, O’Connor speaks with experts who insist that without physical evidence (bone, hair, spoor, a clear photograph), it’s nonsensical to believe that there’s a large mammal running around the wilds of North America, evading capture. It’s a fascinating story, told from an engaging POV — this is as much about O’Connor’s experiences and reactions as it is about the legendary Sasquatch — and I enjoyed the whole thing. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)

While I had my doubts about Bigfoot, the point wouldn’t be to prove or disprove whether it existed but to try and set aside my own convictions, unpeel the oniony layers of belief, and understand something about Bigfooters and the culture that shaped them. Knowing as little as I did, I thought America itself might even poke its head out from behind Bigfoot’s shadow.

Just as UFO sightings originated in the lingering trauma following WWII, O’Connor points out that the modern Bigfoot craze started with the Patterson-Gimlin Film of 1968: just six months before the assassination of MLK, 1968 is considered a “fulcrum point” in American history, “a time of dwindling social and economic fortunes for Bigfoot’s fan base.” It might not be surprising, therefore, that there’s a lot of crossover between those who believe in Bigfoot and those who believe in stolen elections, pizzeria sex trafficking, and the propriety of wearing a sidearm to a convention. Rust belts, outsourcing, opioid epidemics: when folks are under pressure, they tend to look for meaning in the metaphysical; and with the decline in church attendance, people aren’t necessarily looking for God. Although several countries have wild man myths, this is very much the story of how the legend of Bigfoot has evolved alongside American culture in the last few decades.

As O’Connor recounts his (mis)adventures following along with the Bigfooters, he quotes from a wide range of material: Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods, Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer, and The Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton. More than once he references the movie Predator, eventually calling it, “An ancient drama of sin and redemption played out on a biblical stage with doomed warriors battling an elusive monster from the infinite darkness of space, Predator is something Joseph Conrad might’ve written had he been born one hundred years later and huffed mescaline with Philip K. Dick. It shows us not only the ultimate chaos of nature but — and this is its genius — how randomly its phantoms materialize.” Walking through true wilderness at night — experiencing that common human reaction of enticement and dread in the face of the untamed dark — O’Connor makes the valid point that we want/don’t want the mythological to be out there (but I haven’t seen the movie Predator, so the instances of fanboying whooshed over my head).

There is, to be sure, some nontrivial convergence, well apart from the Gandalf beards and Buddha paunches, between Bigfooters and Trumpers: extreme reactionary views, a tendency toward the sensationalistic, a fetishization of traditional masculinity, a hard-bitten mistrust of urban elites generally and the federal government and its scientific minions specifically, coupled with an inverse, reflexive flag waving and suspicion of “protestors” and “kneelers,” as well as a depth of commitment we used to reserve for the church. That’s not consistent among all Bigfooters, obviously, any more than wokester inanities like defunding the police are among self-hating liberals. But there seemed to be a disproportionate number of Trumpers in Jefferson, amounting almost to a homogeneity (it was Texas, after all). A key characteristic of both is that they trust themselves and themselves alone to parse fact from fiction, while at the same time, the language they share often doesn’t register a difference between the two.

There is plenty of social commentary in this book, and although the individuals that O’Connor met with all seemed to be good and open-minded folk, the author used the name “Trump” twenty-eight times, usually derogatorily (along with cheeky sobriquets like “the Orange Lord” or “the Tangerine Tornado”), and even though I’m a Canadian with no dog in that hunt, it stood out to me as maybe…obsessive? Puerile?

On the other hand: It may have amounted to padding, but there was a long section that I enjoyed on experts who announced that they encountered the presumed-extinct Ivory-billed Woodpecker in 2005…and the other experts who insisted that without physical evidence (bone, feathers, spoor, a clear photograph), it’s nonsensical to believe that there’s a distinctively marked bird flying around an Arkansas hinterland, evading capture. The woodpecker debate illuminates and enlarges the Bigfoot debate (not that I'm convinced that Bigfoot exists) and made for fascinating reading.

The ties that bound together flesh-and-blooders with the woo’ers and idly curious had everything to do with pursuit of the extraordinary and in turn with a desire to understand the world. A commonality, it seemed to me, that hitched them to the rest of us and to the great folkloric heroes and heroines of the past. And even, in a sense, to scientific tradition. Up to a point.

Ultimately, O’Connor provides a comprehensive overview of the quest to find Bigfoot, along with the social circumstances (economic hardship, internet echo chambers, the hope that there are mysteries beyond our dull existence) that prompt people to believe in “alternate truths”, and as we follow along in his careful footsteps — both through the woods and through the research — there is plenty that this quest says about us and about our culture (and I will use “us” because, although I am Canadian, I have met people who swear they have had a Bigfoot encounter, and it’s hard to know what to think about that.) This was fun and informative and does not call for a tinfoil hat.

The Unclaimed: Abandonment and Hope in the City of Angels

 

What does it say about contemporary America that every year, without the exigency of natural disaster, Los Angeles County buries 1,600 unclaimed bodies in a mass grave? Or that all across the country, communities are struggling to dispose of growing numbers of unclaimed bodies with barely a whisper from elected leaders?

A book eight years in the making, The Unclaimed exposes a growing phenomenon in America (and presumably outside its borders; only a few other countries are mentioned): people dying alone, or without final arrangements having been made, whose bodies are collected by local authorities, cremated as an act of efficiency, and held for a few years — waiting on shelves for family members to claim them — before being anonymously dumped into common graves. This is a work of narrative nonfiction — with a compelling account of four denizens of Los Angeles who spent time on the unclaimed shelf — and since authors Pamela Prickett and Stefan Timmermans are both Professors of Sociology, this is also an attempt to understand the social and bureaucratic factors behind the phenomenon. I found the information in this book to be provocative — a little shocking, a little sad — and while I can’t imagine circumstances in which I could become totally estranged from my family in my last days, it’s a good reminder to have those final arrangements laid out and paid for. Fascinating, well-told glimpse into a hidden corner of our fractured world. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)

The unclaimed provoke us to ask whether our lives matter. To claim, which originates from the Latin word clamare or to call out, is an act of connection: When you claim, you are asserting a bond between yourself and something or someone else. To go unclaimed, then, is to be disconnected; it is an acknowledgment of severed bonds. If you die and no one calls out for you, did your life have meaning?

Training their focus on L.A. — where those 1 600 people whose remains go unclaimed each year are cremated and eventually disposed of by just two hard-working employees of The Office of Decedent Affairs — Prickett and Timmermans were able to spend time with each of the three distinct agencies that handle the bodies and estates of the dead in the City of Angels. And by telling the stories of four people whose remains were at risk of becoming unclaimed, the authors demonstrate that to a large extent, it’s these agencies and their bureaucratic red tape that often preclude a more respectful interment (one woman, Midge, had a close church community, but since they weren’t legal family, they couldn’t claim her remains to give her the burial she deserved; a veteran, Bobby, was entitled to a free burial in a military cemetery, but that information was misfiled and his estranged son had trouble raising the cremation and storage fees the city wanted in order to release Bobby’s remains to him). Telling the stories of Midge, Bobby, Lena, and David — all of whom had family out there somewhere — Prickett and Timmermans paint a sad picture of how easily any of us could end up unclaimed.

Some interesting passages:

• (According to a death scene investigator) a “trash run” is when an elderly person, often a hoarder or a recluse, is found in a neglected dwelling, after decomposition has set in and a foul smell has alerted a neighbor.

• Researchers estimate that more than 40 percent of families in the United States will experience a form of estrangement at some point — frayed relationships with fathers are the most common.

• Wealthy estates with “unknown heirs” were often skimmed off by a shadow group of private investigators, called heir hunters, some of whom had previously worked in the public administrator’s office. They knew there was money to be made amid the county’s heavy caseload, and conducted detailed research to locate heirs, sometimes even contracting with local genealogy clubs and detectives abroad to locate people.

• Yvette Vickers was a 1959 Playboy centerfold and actress who starred in the cult favorite Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. Vickers died in her home in Beverly Hills in 2010 but her body lay undiscovered for nearly a year, until a neighbor did her own welfare check.

• Families come by to pick up ashes in only about one of every six cases. The overwhelming majority of those cremated by the county — more than 82 percent — remain unclaimed.

• An estimated 32,000 people die unattended every year in Japan, their corpses often lingering undiscovered for days, months, and sometimes years. Most will depend on the government for cremation and burial. The phenomenon is so prevalent that it has its own term: kodokushi, which loosely translated means a “lonely death.”

I found it interesting that low income families are no more likely to leave a family member unclaimed than those with more money (“The poor go to great lengths to receive a decent funeral, ‘for they know,’ sociologist Tony Walter wrote, ‘there is something appalling about a human life ending, and no one noticing, no one marking it.’”) And maybe not surprising that when estranged family members are notified of a relative’s death, they are often more interested in their share of the estate than in retrieving cremated remains. Should it be surprising that it’s totally legal for unclaimed bodies to be sent to med schools for research before being sent back to L.A. for cremation? I could go on and on: This is a book full of interesting facts.

The uncomfortable truth is that the unclaimed are not marginal outliers. All signs suggest that their numbers will continue to rise if nothing changes, and those at risk already dwell among us. They are the resident of the house on the block with the overgrown front yard and disintegrating cardboard boxes piled next to the front door. The man shuffling bent over on his daily walk, always by himself. The trans teenager hitting the streets after an ugly fight with their parents. The quiet nursing home resident, fighting tears after yet another Mother’s Day without a phone call. The unclaimed-in-waiting are everywhere.

On the bright side, there are community groups who advocate for the unclaimed: The authors share stories of those who gather in military sendoffs to unclaimed veterans; those who provide burials for abandoned infants; those who congregate in ceremony during L.A.’s annual dumping of ashes in the common grave. There’s a sense that “the unclaimed” is a bigger problem in a large, anonymous city like L.A. than anywhere I’ve ever lived, but I agree with the authors that there is a growth in disconnection and social isolation everywhere. They have suggestions for strengthening the social safety net — for reexamining what we owe to one another after death — but if nothing else, this is a good reminder to finalise those “disposition” plans.

Pearl

 

She had circled the word Pearl and drawn an arrow into the margin where she wrote in capitals: CONSOLATIO. I didn’t know why she had missed off the last letter. But consolation was what I was looking for. I was ransacking her books for it. I was secretly collecting clothes from the drawers under her bed and keeping them under my pillow one at a time, trying to preserve the smell of cinnamon-soaked beads she kept in there with them. I was rubbing leaves from the garden into my palm, looking for the perfect spell of mint and pea-shoot and fresh onion, and when I pulled nettles instead, dragging the stinging side all the way up the stem between my fingers, I wrapped my hand in dock leaves and believed the stinging was a part of the magic. If I suffered enough I could make her reappear. Pearl was too hard for me to read.

Listening to Pearl on audiobook (because it was the only format in which I could get an early ARC), I agree with other reviewers who note that narrator Laura Brydon (who gives a marvellous performance) speaks with a smile in her voice, giving this melancholic meditation on memory and grief a wry, gallows humour vibe. I didn’t dislike the dissonance between voice and subject matter — and the playfulness in Brydon's voice as she recited rhymes and children’s songs did seem appropriate — but something in the voice did prevent me from emotionally connecting with the main character’s trauma; I was more amused (and there are several deliberately funny bits) than moved (despite the tragic bits), and something in that makes me want to round down to three rather than up to four stars. Still: a very interesting experience, and especially interesting for the further reading this prompted about author Siân Hughes (here’s a great, if spoilery, interview with the author) and what I learned about the medieavel poem “Pearl” that inspired this novel (and here’s an extract from Hughes’ favourite translation into modern English). Like with previous Booker Prize nominees (such as Reservoir 13, Lanny, or Treacle Walker), the Booker jury seems to have a soft spot for books that engage deeply with the British countryside and its folklore, and Hughes finds this soft spot with a draughty country home and its green garden and muddy riverbanks — all haunted by the absence of a mother who left one day and never came back. I’m certain this would be a different (better) reading experience with the written word, and while I did like this very much overall, I will round down to three stars. (Note: I listened to an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted [which I sourced from Google Books to get the punctuation right] may not be in their final forms.)

When I had Susannah, I looked over my shoulder for her, I looked up from my daughter’s new face and realised I was looking for my mother’s eyes to meet mine, to agree with me she was the fairest young maiden that ever was seen. I waited for her to join in the singing. I started looking around for her, and crying. The midwife asked if there was family history of post-partum psychosis. I said, no. Only grief. There’s a family history of grief. You can pass it on. Like immunity, in the milk. Like a song.

When Marianne was eight, her mother disappeared: leaving behind a husband, daughter, and infant son; never to return. As the police investigate the disappearance, Marianne will learn some of her mother’s secrets, and as the years go on, she’ll learn others as well. Even so: the absent mother will forever be a mystery and the greatest influence on Marianne’s life, and when the family is forced to relocate to the city to be closer to the father’s work (and child care), the loss of the family home and its property will create the second absence around which Marianne creates herself. Pearl, the novel, is told from Marianne’s POV, and as she recounts her sad childhood and troubled adolescence, it is immediately made clear that neither she nor the reader can quite trust her memories, but as she recalls a loving mother who sang her lullabies, read her children’s books, and told her the legends of the Green Children and the Little People, the mother seems but one more legend tied to the vacant rural landscape. Marianne becomes obsessed with working out the mystery of her mother’s absence by studying her annotated copy of the poem “Pearl” (about a father grieving his young daughter’s death) and she becomes a multimedia visual artist, illustrating scenes from the mediaeval epic. And when she gets older and becomes a mother herself, the post-partum psychosis Marianne suffers (as, apparently, Hughes did herself) gives her some possible insight into her mother’s unknowable mind; and makes her worry what damage she might be passing down to her own daughter.

As for format: Each chapter begins with a children’s rhyme (generally a dark one along the lines of, “Here comes a candle to light you to bed, and here comes a chopper to chop off your head”), and as Hughes explains in that interview cited above, they’re meant to act as “clips” to hold each chapter (or “pearl”) together; and when she repeats an early song in the last, climactic, chapter, it’s meant to link back to the beginning in a “rosary-like sequence”. There is something very interesting in this format — and in the variety of songs and stories and rhymes that link Marianne to her mother and to the landscape — and the rambling old house and the possibility of ghosts gives everything a Gothic tension. And again: I suspect this would have worked better for me had I read the written words.

Forgetting is not the worst thing. Remembering is not the worst thing either. The worst thing is when you have forgotten, and then you remember. It catches you out. You forgot for a moment, a day, a week, a month, but the effect is the same each time you remember. You feel it rushing back around your lymphatic system, and you remember the hurt. And there is a part of you that thinks, perhaps the pain is optional now? What might it be like to live without it? This is treachery. You hate yourself for it.

Marianne’s unreliable memory was an intriguing storytelling device, and the fact that the absence of her mother felt like a physical reality around which Marianne was moulding herself was very well done: this is a well-crafted, allusive work of literature — there’s so much in here with reference to the inspirational poem and the rhymes/legends and the idea of how the landscape and the “Mother” shapes you; and what happens when they are taken away — and while, more than anything, this felt like a meditation on grief (as is the poem “Pearl”), it’s the grief that didn’t touch me (in the audiobook format anyway), and I’m left impressed but cold. But as a debut author from an independent press, I’m happy that the Booker nomination is getting attention for Pearl and Hughes (and I wouldn’t be unhappy if this made the shortlist).

Booker Prize Longlist 2023

A Spell of Good Things by Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀’

Old God's Time by Sebastian Barry

Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein * My favourite of the list

The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng

If I Survive You by Jonathan Escofferey

How to Build a Boat by Elaine Feeney

This Other Eden by Paul Harding

Pearl by Siân Hughes

All the Little Bird-Hearts by Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow

Prophet Song by Paul Lynch

Western Lane by Chetna Maroo

In Ascension by Martin MacInnes

The Bee Sting by Paul Murray

The Circle

 

Ben ran Circles for a while. Restorative justice, they called it. Another rip-off of an old way. The concept was simple. You sit a bunch of people in a circle — everyone who hurt, everyone who got hurt, all affected — and let them share. They talk about themselves, say about how they have changed, how their lives are after this thing that happened. People who harmed others got to hear how they hurt, who they hurt, how bad it was. Those who were victimized got to hear what the people who hurt them were like, where they came from, what made them do what they did, that they’re really people. Some people, it helped them heal, for sure.

The Circle is the third volume in a trilogy (after The Break and The Strangers), and while I suppose this could stand alone, I can’t imagine it would be as impactful if you hadn’t met the characters before. As the title (and that opening quote) suggests, this novel reads like a Restorative Justice Circle — centred on the horrific crime related in The Break — with multiple characters given the space to explain and demonstrate how those events affected them over the intervening six years. Once again, Katherena Vermette shares the reality of Manitoba’s modern Métis experience — the stresses, joys, community, and intergenerational trauma — and without unduly blaming white settler culture for the destructive choices her characters sometimes make, she also shows a community getting stronger through a reconnection with their roots. There’s good stuff in here, and the plot will satisfy anyone who wants to know how the Strangers turn out, but for me, there was something missing this time around: I didn’t cry; this failed to move me. Still I’m glad I read this and am regretfully rounding down to three stars. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)

I feel like I’ve been waiting for my sister to get out of prison my whole life, and now that it’s here I don’t want it. It’s not fair. Not for Phoenix, who has waited for this, not for me, who has managed to build up this new life, one I never thought I could ever even have, just to lose it all in not even a year. I didn’t know lives like this existed.

Two years into university — and after living off-campus with a group of friends who make up her beloved found family — Cedar Stranger is informed that her older sister, Phoenix, is about to be released from prison. Cedar isn’t pleased by the news (her relationship with the volatile Phoenix has always been complicated), and as POV rotates between multiple characters with their uniformly negative reactions to Phoenix’s release, ripples are sent through the community that initiate dramatic events. Even the girls’ mother, Elsie — who is finally sober and living in the bush with an Indigenous community and their Teacher — is hesitant to meet with her troubled daughter; but when Phoenix doesn’t show up for their coffee date — and later fails to check in with her halfway house on time — the novel takes on a tenser tone. The victim of the original crime, Emily (now known as “M”), is unsurprisingly broken and traumatised; but while she continues to hide herself away in her mother’s basement, M has found success in writing and illustrating a graphic novel series. Of this work the following is written:

Her book is the third of a planned trilogy. Hardest of all. For some reason she made up a bunch of new characters, stupidest thing she could have done. The world she made broken wide open, scattered about, with no idea what to do with it all. Endings are the worst.

So, that’s Vermette obviously acknowledging that she was taking a risk with this format — there are many new characters introduced; more than I could easily keep track of — and while extending a circle further and further away from the initial crime did show how those events rippled through the entire community, this also served to distance me from any kind of emotional connection with the characters. For me: the plot works to justify the format, but the format doesn’t do justice to the story.

He didn’t know how to be a man, not really, not a good one. Not one who took care of people or loved people, and loved himself. No one around him remembered enough of the Teachings to teach him that he was valuable. That everyone together makes this beautiful Circle and each one of us is so precious and important. No one around him even knew any of that, and everyone else seemed to treat him like he was vermin. Less than vermin. Vermin at least get a role in the world. He never got a role. He thought it was something he had done wrong. That’s the worst thing of colonialization, worst in a long, long list of the atrocities and numerous genocides, that it got into their minds and hearts. All those young people who were supposed to be leading, doing, being a part were instead thinking they were wrong. Instead of feeling good about themselves, they believed those lies. So many still believe, like he did, what they said about them, and forgot, because that was taken from them too, how it was supposed to be.

In a world where hurt people go on to hurt people, it is encouraging to see characters end abuse and self-harm through a return to Ceremony and traditional Teachings. Sweat lodges and Sundances — even adapting mindfulness techniques from other cultures — lead to healing and self-love; and while that doesn’t make everything perfect in the present, it does promise a brighter future for those who are reminded of their place in the circle. And that’s a pretty good note to end on.