Review | Life Is About Losing Everything, Lynn Crosbie

In Doug Coupland’s blurb to Lynn Crosbie’s Life is About Losing Everything, he comments that “it’s almost terrifying how deep this book goes, and how quickly it gets there.” The book is certainly intense, a blend of fact and fiction about a time period in the author’s life. I made the mistake of beginning it after a rather bad day, and after the first few chapters, had to stop because it was too depressing. Then again, with a title like that, what did I expect, eh?

To be fair, I think Crosbie’s book will strike a certain kind of reader as utterly beautiful, poignant and heart wrenching. It just didn’t work for me. (That’s not just because of my first, aborted attempt at reading it. I did give it another couple of tries before giving up. Full disclosure: I did not finish the book. I did try, but ultimately I decided to move on.)

The book saunters from vignette to vignette, some chapters in the form of lists, others more straightforward narrative. The story wanders, as if we had a glimpse right into the mind of the author as she thinks first of one memory and then another, and then perhaps doubles back to an earlier event, and so on. It’s not an easy read — the writing is soaked in bitterness and anger. Crosbie’s style is just sharp and biting enough to avoid being whiny, but hell, this novel cuts deep.

There’s a fine line between raw emotion and self-indulgence, and to my mind, this book crossed that line. The randomness of the vignettes, and the slapdash nature in which they were compiled added to the feeling that despite the hodgepodge of episodes, they all began to sound equally bitter. Blogger Buried in Print says that rather than the traditional beginning, middle and end narrative, Life is “all middle.” This maintains just that intensity that Crosbie is clearly going for, and is perhaps the reason other book reviews recommend dipping into Life a bit at a time rather than in one sitting.

Crosbie’s writing is tight and with a definite bite. However, the format of the book just didn’t work for me, and I ended up realizing that I simply didn’t care what other horrible, depressing slice of life was going to be revealed next.

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Thank you to House of Anansi for an advance reading copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Review | Calling Dr. Laura, Nicole Georges

When Nicole Georges visits a psychic for her twenty-third birthday, she finds out that the father she’s always believed to be dead is actually alive. Now, having grown up in a family of secrets and lies, Nicole considers the need to confront her mother about two things: the identity of her father, and the fact that Nicole is gay. The back blurb compares Nicole Georges’ Calling Dr. Laura to Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, and while Georges lacks Bechdel’s sly humour, she also doesn’t get bogged down by Bechdel’s philosophizing. The result is a straightforward, rather earnest, heartfelt narrative.

Georges highlights the difference between her adult life and her childhood memories through her drawings — her life in her twenties is sketched with realistic detail, while her flashbacks to her childhood are sketched in simple, stylized shapes such as a child might draw. This shift in style highlights the child Nicole’s innocence, and thereby emphasizes the pain such a figure must undergo, watching her mother being abused by various husbands. I especially love Georges’ use of this technique in a scene where the adult Nicole has a particularly devastating piece of information confirmed, and the character shifts back to the child version for two panels, before shifting back to adult mode.

The Dr. Laura in the title actually plays less of a role in the narrative than I expected. Pressured by her girlfriend to confront her mother, Nicole finally calls Dr. Laura Schlessinger for advice. The author has included bits from the actual transcript of their conversation in the memoir, and while the radio personality seemed harsh, it seemed to be the tough love Nicole needed.

Georges does a good job illustrating the atmosphere of stress and deceit in which she grew up. She relates incidents such as stress-related bowel irregularities that lead to an embarrassing situation with a friend, conspiring with her mother to skip school as long as her stepfather never found out, and having to call 911 when her stepfather tried to strangle her mother. As she later points out, even whens he discovered her biological father was still alive, her experience with fathers hasn’t given her much incentive to find him. She struggles not just with the fear of confronting her mother, which comes hand in hand with her coming out to her mother as well, but also with the fear of meeting her biological father. The simplicity of Georges’ narrative enhances the emotional impact of her decisions; she is thoughtful without becoming too introspective. While her tone felt at times too flippant, it’s an understandable way to cope with her fear, and adds realism to her narrative.

Calling Dr. Laura is a touching tale of growing up, of coming out and of trying to make sense of one’s family. The biggest emotional wallop is reserved for the end of the book. Like the rest of the book, it is heartfelt but rendered with understated precision. It’s telling that Nicole feels most free to talk about her concerns over the phone with a radio personality or over email with loved ones. The medium provides a comfortable layer of protection, yet what comes through most strongly is Nicole’s vulnerability. Calling Dr. Laura is a sweet, simple story, surprising in how much it can reveal through so little. Well done.

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Thank you to Thomas Allen Ltd for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Review | Exploring J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, Corey Olsen

I am an absolute nerd. The reason I fell in love with The Hobbit in the first place is an English class on Children’s Literature I took in university. I’d tried to read The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy several times (my mom bought me the book box set when the LOTR movies were released), but could never get into them. Then I took the class in university and, for some reason, parsing each chapter of The Hobbit made me appreciate the story in a way I never had before. The songs that so irritated me when I was younger were revealed as powerful, telling entire histories within a deceptively simple rhymes. I learned about the similarities between hobbits and children, and that part of The Hobbit‘s appeal to young readers is the idea of a small person being capable of gigantic heroism. In that class, Tolkien’s magic finally swept me up, and led me to continue reading till Return of the King. I am late to Tolkien fandom, but I now consider the series among my favourite books of all time.

So you can imagine my reaction to Corey Olsen’s Exploring J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. Here is an opportunity to learn from another professor, learn another perspective on this book! Olsen is well-versed in Tolkien’s body of work, and it shows — while he focuses on The Hobbit as a separate book, he also mentions various points where bits of The Hobbit are connected to Tolkien’s other books. Tolkien’s work invites a wide variety of ways to nerd out — people have studied the languages of Middle Earth, and others have studied the geography. There are even Middle Earth inspired cookbooks for culinary nerds.

Olsen’s book is a feast for literary nerds. Did you know, for example, that the version of The Hobbit we read today is not how the story was originally published? The legendary Ring that Bilbo finds in Gollum’s cave was originally just a ring of invisibility, and Gollum was originally an ancient creature who had every intention of playing the riddle game fairly and giving Bilbo the ring as a prize. Then, when Tolkien started writing Lord of the Rings, he decided to turn Bilbo’s ring of invisibility into the Ring of Power that sets off the events in the trilogy. This change meant that he had to rewrite Gollum’s character and change his motivations considerably. The story of The Hobbit itself still remained mostly intact, but Olsen points out a few tweaks that Tolkien made to the revised edition, and suggests how these revisions made the book fit more seamlessly into the entire saga.

Olsen also delves into a close reading of each chapter, pointing out significant moments in Bilbo’s character development, and analyzing the riddles and songs in the book. I love the chapter on “Riddles in the Dark,” where Olsen details how the Bilbo and Gollum’s riddles reveal not just their respective characters, but also, collectively, chart an escalating argument between light and dark, happiness and despair, life and death. I especially love how Olsen uses the songs of dwarves, elves and goblins (orcs, as they are known in Lord of the Rings) to reveal the character traits of each race.

I had a great time indulging my inner nerd with this book.  I’m not much of a Tolkien nerd, in that other than Mordor and Hobbiton, I would be hard-pressed to name any other place in Middle Earth, much less point them out on a map. So if you are a Tolkien nerd, if you know the various languages spoken in Middle Earth, for example, I don’t know if this book will tell you much that you don’t already know. But if you love reading The Hobbit over and over, and you actually enjoyed nerding out in English literature classes, I highly recommend this book. My copy is underlined, dog-eared, and full of marginal notations. It’s utterly fascinating, and above all, made me want to read The Hobbit yet again. Anyone up for an adventure?

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Thank you to Thomas Allen Ltd for an advance reading copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.