In My World

I do believe my sister Nancy gave me this book to read.  I really enjoyed it.  It was a good solid read and I personally like historical fiction, even when it isn't set far in the past. I'm almost scared to get into any sort of serious discussion about this book after reading a few reviews and seeing the lines in the sand drawn between the I-don't-get-it-I'm-confused group vs. the scary-feminist-agenda-making-women-who-give-birth-in-hospital-feel-bad group vs. . . . blah blah blah. Let me tell you this . . . it is a well written story, there appears to be a great attention to the details, and it is hard to put down once you start reading it.  If the author did have a hidden agenda I don't really care.  I will leave the high-brow discussions to others. Enjoy.

This a story about a 16-year-old girl living through the collapse of her family in a strict Mennonite community. Nomi's older sister leaves town. Nomi's mother leaves soon after. Her father is dealing with his own despair, leading to selling all their furniture and driving around all night and basically disappearing into himself. Nomi's despair exhibits through her rebellion against her community . . . drugs, drinking, quitting school and church. Surprisingly this novel sounds just too sad to read but the author gives Nomi a voice that is brisk, biting and sardonic.  It really is a good read. "One of the major themes in A Complicated Kindness is the practice of the ban, or shunning, common to Mennonite and related Christian communities. This form of excommunication is at the heart of what led to the breakup of the Nickel family. Originally a way to avoid bloodshed, the pacifist tactic of shunning is, as Miriam Toews’s title suggests, “a complicated kindness.”...

Room is a novel by Emma Donoghue. The story is told from the perspective of a five-year-old boy, Jack, who is being held captive in a small room along with his mother. I think Donoghue put a lot of though and effort into creating Jack's "voice." And just as the cover says, the book is absolutely riveting.  Room won or was nominated for many literary awards and has been made into a movie which released in 2015.  I have not yet seen the movie. 

I cannot believe I've never posted about this book.  I loved it.  More twists and turns than a mountain road.   Alias Grace is a historical fiction based on the true life case of Grace Marks, a young maid who murdered her employer and possibly the housekeeper.  Atwood fleshes out the story and takes the reader on quite the ride while trying to decide on Grace's guilt or innocence.  Grace's life including her time in an asylum and prison is well told.   I recommend this book highly. The book was made into a mini series in 2017.

419  scams are a type of fraud and one of the most common types of confidence trick. The scam typically involves promising the victim a significant share of a large sum of money, which the fraudster requires a small up-front payment to obtain. The last Will Ferguson book I read was Canadian Pie .   419  is so completely different and it is "genius" just as the cover says. This book is about the effects of a 419 scam on a family and it also tells so much about life on the other side of the world where the scam that caused a Canadian father to take his own life originated.  The writing is absorbing and cinematic.  This is one of those books you won't want to put down until the very last page.

The Book of Negroes is a 2007 award-winning novel from Canadian writer Lawrence Hill. In the United States, Australia and New Zealand, the novel was published under the title Someone Knows My Name. Have you read this book yet? It still stands in the list of my favourites of all time. Based on a true story, at the age of 11, Aminata Diallo is kidnapped from her African village and brought to South Carolina to work as a slave. She eventually wins her freedom and becomes a force in the abolitionist movement in Britain, but only after decades of struggle and adversity. Hill's novel is a joy and a heartbreak to read. Here is a small excerpt from the book: "I have escaped violent endings even as they have surrounded me. But I never had the privilege of holding onto my children, living with them, raising them the way my own parents raised me for ten or eleven years, until all of our lives were torn asunder. I never managed to keep my own children long, which explains why they are...

A Fine Balance is an excellent novel which allowed me to see inside a culture I would never have the ability to experience. When this happens, I truly believe we learn a little more about our neighbours around the world . . . allowing us to understand each other a little better. The book was recommended as one of 100 novels that make you proud to be Canadian, compiled by CBCbooks.ca. It is also on the O Canada! The Best Canadian Books list. The story is about four very different people, a widow, a young student, and two tailors, who come together during a turbulent time in India of the 1970s and discover friendship and love despite the extreme sadness and instability of the times they are living in. It is a very sad and emotional book but I bet you will read it a second time.

This novel centres around Bernard Valcourt, a Canadian journalist who came to Rwanda to establish a television network for education purposes. While he waits for all the red tape to clear, he spends much of his time sitting at the pool at the Mille-Collines hotel. The context of this love story (for that is how I see it) is during the Rwanda genocide and AIDS crisis. The story is brutal and often difficult to read. But we never lose hope that his love for Gentille will overcome the evil and ugliness around them. I'm not going to tell you how it ends. Read the book.

I cannot believe I have never written about The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood before.  I am a huge Atwood fan and I've read the book several times.   It is the story of a dystopian future where governments have become theocracies and women have no rights.  The centre of the story is Offred who is forced to be a reproductive surrogate to a powerful commander and his wife.  Offred remembers the time before the theocracy when she had a husband, a daughter, a job, a life . . . and dreams of escape. There is now a television series but I only watched a few episodes before I became bored.  (Of course the same thing happened when I tried to watch the television version of Alias Grace.)  I may try to watch it again some day . . . but not yet.   There is also a The Handmaid's Tale movie.  It was okay.  Not sure I would ever watch it again. I am sure I will be reading the book again soon.  

I loved it.  More twists and turns than a mountain road.   Alias Grace is a historical fiction based on the true life case of Grace Marks, a young maid who murdered her employer and possibly the housekeeper.  Atwood fleshes out the story and takes the reader on quite the ride while trying to decide on Grace's guilt or innocence.  Grace's life including her time in an asylum and prison is well told.   I recommend this book highly.

It was my turn to lead the discussion at our monthly book club, Books and Brews, and I was given The Outlander by Gil Adamson.  Apparently I didn't fall on my face during the discussion so I take that as a win. The Outlander has won many awards including Amazon.ca/Books in Canada First Novel Award 2008, ReLit Award for Fiction, Drummer General's Award and Dashiell Hammett Award.   Gil (Gillian) Adamson was born 1 Jan 1961 in North York.  She studied philosophy and anthropology at the University of Toronto.  She is the author of two poetry collections, Primitive and Ashland, as well as writing short stories for magazines, journals and collections. Adamson's original idea was a young woman, dressed in black, running like hell.  She wrote poems on this theme but was never satisfied.  After 10 years, the novel emerged. I really enjoyed this book for two very simple reasons.  First, it is Canadian, and I find so many Canadian writers are...