2015 books: 48-51

[the_siobhan]

At some point I made the decision to bring actual paper books with me to Ireland instead of my kindle, specifically so I could finish the things off. I mean if I decide I don't want them afterwards I can just leave them behind, right?

I didn't even realize until I got there, but almost everything I brought was written by a Canadian author. I swear I didn't plan it that way.

    

The Divine Ryans by Wayne Johnston I got this one from Fiona. The Divine Ryans is described on the cover as a black comedy. Most of the comedy centres around the main character - a nine-year old boy with the unfortunate name of Draper Doyle - describing his extremely eccentric family. I have a huge embarrassment squick and I'm really triggered by bullying, and this book manages to just barely skirt the edge of both of those things. In the end I think it's the character's awareness of how rediculous everything is, and the fact that his immediate family (his mother and sister) are ultimately on his side that allows the writer to escape that trap. And he does eccentric really well, I haven't read about a family this messed up since The Royal Tenenbaums.

I finished this one on the plane, so it got tucked into the pocket of the seat in front of me for the next person.

    

The Book of Eve by Constance Beresford-Howe The inside cover says 1993. I have this vague memory it was for an English course. The book of Eve is about a sixty-five year old woman who runs away from home. Her family loses their minds, but she loves her newfound freedom so much more than the comfort and security she used to have that she refuses to go back. She spends the first half of the book remembering the major relationships of her life, in the second half she gradually develops a chaotic network of new ones.

This is a cute little story. It's well written and it's a really good example of second-wave feminism. There was a reading lounge full of books in the hotel in Kilarney, I put it in one of the stacks.

    

The Black Queen Stories by Barry Callaghan So Barry Callaghan was one of my Professors when I was a student at York University. He sticks out in my memory in part for pissing off his entire class by making everybody in his class sign up for a year's subscription to Exile, a quarterly writer's magazine for which he just happened to be the Editor at the time. He also pissed off the student body by going on long rambling stories about the writers he used to know, but I think it was the money stuff that really got their goats. Anyway. I have no idea where this book came from. It's a series of very short stories about wildly disparate people. I didn't really like the book because nothing happens in any of the stories, they are just character sketches. Ultimately they are too short to be either interesting or engaging - I don't care about any of the people.

I left this one in the lobby of the hotel in Galway.


    

Cabbagetown by Hugh Garner The inside cover says I got this book in 1988. Cabbagetown is an area of Toronto that was traditionally where a lot of new Irish and Scottish immigrants ended up. My father's family lived there before I existed. This book takes place during the depression, when chronic unemployment and poverty are at it's peak. There are three main characters whose stories are told, a young man who travels from Toronto in search of work, a young woman who has a child out of wedlock, and a young man who joins the fascists in Toronto and blames the economic problems on "the Jews and Bolsheviks". I've seen this book called a Canadian Grapes of Wrath, but to be honest Garner isn't a very good writer and the dialogue is often painful. The whole purpose of the novel was to make a point about class and socialism, so the people are more case studies than anything else.

This one got left in one of the hotel-room drawers in Dublin, next to the bible.