Shelby finds Cammie’s performance in the group almost terrifying. She watches her speak and realizes that she has no idea what Cammie’s limits are. Who knows how far she would go to preserve this fake identity. She feels like she might throw up, so instead she stands up and starts towards the door. As she walks she tries to breathe steadily and picture being home, with Coach Taylor, in her grounded place.
Told from three points-of-view — the narratives of the two “marks”, Shelby and Gibson, and opening and closing statements from “con artist”, Cammie — The Fake is a thoroughly compelling and perceptive examination of just what it is we desire and expect of one another, and what we’re willing to do or ignore to get what we want. Author Zoe Whittall has crafted something rather interesting here: Instead of just giving us another dirtbag female protagonist in the vein of Gillian Flynn or Ottessa Moshfegh — although Cammie’s actions do give us that same cathartic girl-behaving-badly-by-proxy vibe — Whittall goes on to ask whether Cammie was really responsible for her behaviour (could her actions be neurological or a trauma response?) while also wondering whether her “victims” didn't actually get the most out of their relationships (just who is using who in the end?) A shortish and easy read, with quick, propulsive chapters, I found this to be interesting on many levels.
Who are you going to believe? Someone like me, who has survived so much, and has nothing to lose? Or a pathetic man who could barely tie his shoes after his wife left him? Or a woman who always thinks she has a brain tumour and has panic attacks in the grocery store? You’re going to believe them because they have perfect teeth and never had to do anything they didn’t want to do in life. I am tough because I have had to be. You’re a smart person, obviously. You read books. I’m just trying to give you the basics right now. I have the right to defend myself. Doesn’t everyone, even these days?
In her Acknowledgements, Whittall makes cryptic reference to a time when she had had to “figure out the truth”, and in this interview she explains, “I have had experiences with people like Cammie in my life. That’s why I wrote the book. But it’s also why it took me a really long time to be able to fictionalize the experience. I needed to find the coherence and the humour and the irony in it.” So, apparently, Whittall knows of what she writes and the ironic humour is the point. It’s easy to look at a pathological liar and say that her actions are evil and manipulative, but consider the bigger picture: Just why would the recently-separated middle-aged Gibson — living in a dingy apartment filled with unpacked boxes — think that the gorgeous young Cammie found him irresistibly attractive? And why did the recently-widowed anxiety-prone Shelby believe that the larger-than-life star of their grief support group would go to great lengths to bring her back to life if Cammie didn’t also want something out of the transaction? When Gibson and Shelby insist on meeting each other (over Cammie’s protests, but Gibson and Shelby eventually demand all of “their girl”), they start to put together inconsistencies in Cammie’s stories. But instead of leaving us with the conclusion that Cammie was wholly in the wrong for using the pair for housing and a bit of spending money, Whittall insists that we consider what Gibson and Shelby (two stable but hurting adults who should have known better) gained from Cammie (a younger woman who probably has psychological challenges): there's nothing black and white in this story and that’s what makes for interesting reading.
He watches from the window as she crosses the street and lies down on her back on a bench at the bus stop, her knees up, one arm over her eyes, the other arm putting her flat purse under her shirt to keep from getting robbed. She looks like she’s done this a million times. He knows then that all the times he’s protected her, saved her, bought things for her, it was theatre. She never needed him, even once, to save her from anything.
In addition to the interesting plot and what it left me to ponder, I enjoyed all of the Canadiana: from shopping at Winners and Dominion, listening to the Weakerthans and a Tribe Called Red, I smiled at the mention of Owen Sound — the small town my mother-in-law is from — which I’m sure I’ve never read in a novel before. Much to like here.
Having never heard the song, I followed along as best I could but had to wonder why the hell he was going to all the trouble of teaching me something that no one would ever hear. Maybe he was just lonely and wanted to jam? Maybe he was graciously making some no-name kid’s dream come true by inviting me to play along with him, knowing that it was a story I would get to tell for the rest of my life? As strange as it seemed, I kept focused on his strumming hand and locked into the arrangement, banging it out like we WERE in a sold-out stadium. We ended in unison on a triumphant final crash.
I was recently on a long road trip with my brother, Ken, and The Storyteller is the only one of the several audiobooks we listened to that I liked enough to want to log. Read engagingly and conversationally by Dave Grohl himself, he comes across as a likeable guy; and as he’s about the same age as me and my brother, the cultural touchstones Grohl references were all familiar to us and cemented rapport. Listening to this memoir is like talking to a stranger at a bar — a stranger with an interesting catalogue of stories dealing with coincidences and celebrity encounters (that opening passage is about being asked to jam with Iggy Pop at the Rivoli in Toronto when Grohl was the unknown teenage drummer for the indie punk band Scream: Grohl has countless stories like this) — and because he is a stranger, it’s understandable that he doesn’t get too personal; Grohl is also talking to strangers here, not a therapist or trusted confidante. This might not be what Nirvana (or even Foo Fighters) fans are looking for, and I had enough moments of irk to think of this as a 3.5 star “read”, but Grohl is just so undeniably likeable that I’m rounding up to four.
I noticed Paul McCartney out of the corner of my eye, chatting away with friends, and I couldn’t help but stare. There. He. Was. I don’t know what it feels like to see a UFO. I don’t know what it feels like to see a ghost. I don’t know what it feels like to see Bigfoot. But I know what it feels like to see Paul McCartney, and if that’s not a supernatural event, then I don’t know what is. I tried to avert my eyes, but it was no use. I was mesmerized.
Most of my moments of irk are referenced by this passage (which comes from a bonus story after the credits in the audiobook). I see many other reviewers were put off by Grohl’s habit of jumping around in time, which really didn’t bother me until this story — of being invited to the celebrity tribute concert for George Harrison and feeling out of place at the VIP afterparty until he saw some familiar faces. And when he mentions Paul McCartney here, it’s because it was the first time they met, even though we had already heard many stories of the two of them becoming the best of friends over the years (Sir Paul even gave Grohl’s daughter an impromptu piano lesson while visiting his home), and I realised I had no idea where in the timeline of Grohl's career this story occurred. More context would have helped.
I was also irked by Grohl’s persistent insistence that he’s surprised every time “real” celebrities know who he is. Just as he apparently couldn’t believe that Dhani Harrison would give him box seats to the tribute concert and access to that “Valhalla” of an afterparty, Grohl was shocked when Tom Petty asked him to back him on drums for an SNL performance, didn’t understand why he would be asked to play Blackbird at the 2016 Oscars (which Paul McCartney declared to be “cheeky” with a finger wag), or that Elton John would get out of his car and walk down the sidewalk to shake Grohl’s hand in London. Yes, Mr Grohl, just as you get excited to meet Little Richard and Joan Jett, it’s hard to believe that you’re always surprised when other musicians are excited to meet you.
And I was also a little irked to realise that Grohl is a bit flaky. He believes that he manifested his eventual success during a teenaged ceremony before his literal shrine to John Bonham, he used a ouija board to contact the spirits haunting his Seattle home, and he shares the fact that a French psychic once told him that his lifelong dreams of alien abduction are no dreams (which begs the question of why this former resident of the Pacific Northwest also denies ever seeing Bigfoot in the last passage…) I also found his nonstop alcohol consumption to be flaky: it’s not counterculture punk to complain about being charged with a DUI when you actually blow over the limit, even if you’re driving a moped that you consider to be “as much of a motor vehicle as a riding lawn mower” (which is also illegal to drive down the street while impaired; I don’t care how high you think your “tolerance” is.) Honestly: Grohl seems to drink a lot (his pre-show ritual includes three Advil, three beers, and a shot of Crown Royal), and this constant reference to unexamined excess feels flaky.
On the other hand: you get the sense that Grohl totally earned his place in the rock ‘n roll pantheon. He had an authentic early connection with music, practised drumming on pillows in his childhood bedroom (where he had no space for an actual drumset) ‘til his fingers bled, dropped out of high school to tour with Scream with his mother’s qualified blessing (“YOU'D BETTER BE GOOD”) and his absent Republican speechwriter father’s condemnation (“AND STAY OFF THE DRUGS!!!”), sleeping in a van as they toured the country and then the world, surviving on the three-for-ninety-nine-cents corn dog special at the local gas station while jamming with the yet-to-break-through Nirvana. Kurt Cobain was only one of the close friends that Grohl would lose over the years (and the book was written before Taylor Hawkins’ sudden death), and overall, I was left glad that it all worked out for this relatable, likeable, hard-working guy. He earned this.
I firmly believe that your understanding or “version” of love is learned by example from day one, and it becomes your divining rod in life, for better or worse. A foundation for all meaningful relationships to stand upon. I surely have my mother to thank for mine. I LOVE MY CHILDREN AS I WAS LOVED AS A CHILD. AND I PRAY THAT THEY WILL DO THE SAME WHEN THEIR TIME COMES. SOME CYCLES ARE MEANT TO BE BROKEN. SOME ARE MEANT TO BE REINFORCED.
(I also read reviews in which people were bothered by Grohl’s frequent use of all-caps. Having listened to this on audio, I wasn’t affected by them, so I was surprised to see that this passage included all-caps in this way; make of them what you will.) Many of the stories here are about Grohl’s mother and daughters (curiously, others — like his wife and sister — are only mentioned in passing), and I think that this cycle of love and support is the main message that Grohl wanted to get across in The Storyteller. This isn’t really a no-holds-barred rock ‘n roll memoir (although there are plenty of rock-related stories), and this isn’t really an introspective and intimate examination of a life (although I now know more about Dave Grohl than I ever expected to), but if you met a stranger at a bar — congenially knocking back Coors Light and tequila shots — who spent the evening telling you a bunch of crazy-but-true stories, a stranger who has spent a long time on the road and might therefore be forgiven for wanting to show you pictures of his family, you’d probably have a pretty good time. And I had a pretty good time with this. Audiobook recommended.
James had soon become as enthusiastic as his father about taking the same big broom that others had been busy with all over Scotland, from Lanark in the south to Sutherland in the north, and it was galling to him now that they were so behindhand with their own removals when others — first in the Lowlands and then in the Highlands — had been making improvements, sweeping clean the countryside for decades and reaping the rewards. Like his father, he’d become impatient to make up for lost time — for there to be more and more portions of the Lowrie state that were rented out to a single flockmaster — where you could stand on a hill or rise and look out over clean, productive country that was quietly replete with sheep, instead of cluttered with the ramshackle dwellings of small, impoverished, unreliable tenants scraping a profitless living in a manner that no longer made any sense.
Author Carys Davies sets her historical fiction, Clear, at the intersection of two movements: the Clearances of the mid-Nineteenth Century (in which Scottish landowners removed small tenant farmers from their lands — many of whom had lived in the same place for countless generations — in order to put the pastures out for more profitable sheep grazing) and the Great Disruption in the Scottish Church (in which nearly a third of its ministers rebelled against the tradition of rich landowners installing ministers of their own choosing to local parishes, creating the Free Church of Scotland). Into this disruptive time, Davies imagines a solitary resident of a farflung northern island (“halfway to Norway”) — a blonde giant who is the last speaker of a unique Norn dialect — and the meek Free Church minister who takes on a paid contract to inform the islander of his impending eviction (a critical source of money for the man who hasn’t seen much income since the schism.) Davies writes beautifully of the wild landscape and its weather, she sympathetically crafts her characters with understandably opposing goals, and she absolutely captures the time and place with details large and small. On the other hand, this is a short novel and events play out as one would imagine, until suddenly they don’t, and then the whole thing ends in a way I didn’t really believe. For the detail writing — the landscape and characters — I was prepared to give four stars until the ending bits pulled me back to three. I’m glad I read this, but it’s not a favourite.
He stood for a long time in the softly falling rain and eventually he spoke to himself silently inside his own head: I have the cliffs and the skerries and the birds. I have the white hill and the round hill and the peaked hill. I have the clear spring water and the rich good pasture that covers the tilted top of the island like a blanket. I have the old black cow and the sweet grass that grows between the rocks, I have my great chair and my sturdy house. I have my spinning wheel and I have the teapot and I have Pegi, and now, amazingly, I have John Ferguson too.
I did love everything about the islander Ivar and the way that Davies richly painted his life through his unending routine of tasks and contemplation. When the minister, John Ferguson, first set foot on the island, he felt completely confident in the rightness of his task: after all, as a believer in providence, John knew that anything that happened on Earth — including the eviction of a poor recluse into the maw of civilisation — was nothing less than God’s will. But when John nearly immediately has a bad fall and awakes under Ivar's capable and generous care, John decides not to tell him immediately about his true purpose on the island. As the weeks go by and John learns a bit of Ivar’s language, helping him with his tasks and marvelling at his self-sufficiency, John becomes increasingly hesitant about his task — all while Ivar is reawakened to the beauty of companionship and hopes that John will never leave. Meanwhile, John’s capable wife, Mary, has heard stories of evictions gone wrong and she determines a rescue mission: there was good dramatic tension as these three characters’ storylines converge.
(I will parenthetically note that I did not like when John first woke up in Ivar’s hut, not quite remembering recent events, and muses that his doctor friend would tell him that temporary amnesia is nothing but a novelistic devise. That’s not meta or ironic: it’s annoying.)
There was a word in Ivar’s language for the moment before something happens; for the state of being on the brink of something. He’d tried several times to explain it using words John Ferguson already knew — with mimes and charades involving the water and the weather — but John Ferrguson had never been able to grasp what it was he was trying to tell him. In due course, John Ferguson will understand it. In due course, after a fair amount of back-and-forth and to-ing and fro-ing, he will arrive at a precise and succinct definition of it — a definition in which he will give, as examples of the sort of moment it describes, “the last moment before the tide turns; the last moment of day before night begins.”
It is undeniably a fact that true understanding between people can’t be achieved without a common language — that the death of a language is a tragedy because its specific vocabulary reveals the unique worldview and lived experience of a people — so I really did appreciate how Davies employed the Norn dialect in Clear, and how John’s increasing understanding of Ivar’s speech led to greater empathy for his position (though I don’t know if I believed they’d be having meaningful conversations after a few weeks.) For what I learned about the Clearances as it applied to the remote Orkney Islands, as well as the hardscrabble life eked out there at one time — as demonstrated by a thoroughly likeable character — I found this to be valuable. But Davies loses the plot along the way, and I can’t say that I enjoyed this over all.
