You don’t see enough hollow world fiction these days. There is probably a reason for that. Fortunately there are no mole people to be seen here, although there are some merpeople. Emilie and the Hollow World mixes up a couple of genres and devices to create a satisfying adventure story with a likeable protagonist. My chief criticism is simply that Martha Wells doesn’t take it far enough. This is a “safe” book.

Emilie is supposed to stow away on the steamer Merry Bell. At least, that’s the plan: stow away to Silk Harbor and flee her evil aunt and uncle to make her own way in the world. Instead she ends up stowing away aboard Sovereign, a private ship outfitted for an expedition she didn’t even conceive of existing before the steamer starts descending towards the ocean floor. Soon she finds herself an ad hoc member of a search and exploration expedition inside the Earth itself.

From the start I was concerned by Emilie as a protagonist, because she lacks the training necessary to be of much use in the situations she finds herself. After she finds her way into the Sovereign’s party, people spend a lot of time explaining things to her. This is ideal for exposition, of course, but it makes Emilie somewhat dull compared to the secondary characters. She is so young, and she has no personal stake in what’s happening.

Wells is clearly aware of these dangers and seeks to mitigate them, however. Emilie is clever and, more importantly, forthright and ready to take risks. Over the course of the story she proves instrumental in acting quickly and honestly in the best interests of her newfound friends. She is far from a Mary Sue, too: she’s not suddenly an amazing navigator or awesome sailor or able to wield a sword or gun. This makes Emilie very relatable, and while she is as much of a product of this pseudo-Edwardian society as any other character, she is less of a fully-formed person. Her youth and inexperience makes her more impressionable and flexible and matches the open-mindedness of the reader. This pairing does much to ameliorate Emilie’s otherwise vague role in the narrative, and she does serve an important purpose in much of the story.

The other chief deficiency of this book might simply be the lack of a good villain. This is a story screaming for a villain, and the banal Lord Ivers doesn’t cut it. There are a few layers of conflict to this book, from the Sovereign’s search for Dr. Marlende to the question of whether they can ever return to the surface at all. Yet when we finally meet Lord Ivers, he’s a bit of a letdown. The whole secondary climax with a mole on Soverign and sabotage, etc., should have worked better than it did, and Wells did her best to foreshadow the identity of the mole without spoiling it. Unfortunately, there is a slapstick quality to the relationships between Engal, Marlende, and Ivers that undermines the significance of the threats happening here.

Finally, I’m somewhat disappointed with the ambience of the hollow world itself. There is so much latent potential here. We learn early on that there are many different species here, from the Cirathi to the merpeople to others we don’t even glimpse. There are hints of monsters who lurk in the sub-ocean. There should be so many wonders to behold and dangers to dodge, but ultimately what we get is a fairly pathetic little war and some escape/chase sequences. Don’t get me wrong: what Wells delivers here is good quality action. Yet she just barely scrapes the surface of what’s possibly present in her hollow world, and it’s frustrating. There could have been so much more adventure here. I don’t want to tell an author how to write her book. I just love the idea of the hollow world so much that I’m sad we don’t see more of it.

If you’ve read this far (you crazy review reader you), you might have developed the impression I didn’t like this book, because all I’m really doing is harping on its flaws. There’s a reason for that, but it’s not a dislike of Emilie and the Hollow World. This is a fun novel, a relaxing but entertaining read. But there isn’t much that’s remarkable about it. If that sounds strange, given the dearth of hollow world stories these days, then it is. I can be very hard on books that try and fail, but I am even harder on books that don’t try at all just to succeed. Emilie and the Hollow World is a fine choice, and I won’t discourage you from reading it. But there are just so many other books that take more risks and present wider vistas and gutsier conflicts. I enjoyed this one, but it didn’t excite me.

Money is one of humanity’s most clever and enduring technologies. It is a brilliant way of transferring value across vast distances and decentralizing our economy. Barter makes sense on a hyperlocal, neighbourly scale, but you can’t run a vast industrial economy on it. As Niall Ferguson chronicles in his excellent The Ascent of Money, increases in numismatic sophistication were vital in increasing the range of trade and our abilities to innovate and provide services to citizens. So it seems a foregone conclusion that we are stuck with money, that we’ll never be rid of it. Yet Star Trek, particularly in its 24th century form, proposes to do just that, at least within the Federation. Trekonomics is Manu Saadia’s attempt to understand how (or even whether) this could work. This is not a deep examination of the workings of the Federation’s economy itself, so much as a meditation on how we might apply the ideas of trekonomics to our own policy-making. In so doing, Saadia follows in the footsteps of Trek itself, which is not about presenting viable predictions of the future of our species but telling stories about our species in the present.

Saadia’s timing could not be better. Obviously, the book is coming out during the fiftieth anniversary year of Star Trek. On a wider note, this book is quite pertinent to conversations happening around the world with regards to the economy and work. As automation, in the form of algorithms and robots, replaces many jobs once done by humans, and as an aging workforce retires slowly, younger people are left to wonder exactly what they’re meant to be doing when it comes to work. Holding down a career for life is not a realistic option for many of us. The world of work is changing, thanks both to changes in technology and policy. It behoves us, therefore, to examine our assumptions about capitalism and consider what alternatives might be available to us.

Trekonomics works because the Federation is a post-scarcity society. That is, everything that one might need to survive is available in abundance, at practically zero cost. The replicator is the poster child of post-scarcity and, of course, is a sufficient condition for a post-scarcity society. Saadia is quick to point to contemporary 3D printing as an example of proto-replicator technology (and no, he’s not saying we’ll inevitably have actual replicators, but 3D printing itself is pretty darn amazing). However, he makes a salient observation towards the end of the book that leaves us with a lot to think about: in Star Trek, the replicator comes last. It is the culmination of Federation progress. It’s not present in the 23rd century, where humanity is already well on its way to post-scarcity and the enlightenment that supposedly accompanies it. In other words, the replicator is sufficient but not necessary, and Saadia argues it is the result of other developments rather than the cause of those changes.

This is central to Saadia’s thesis: technology alone is not enough to tip us over into a money-less, post-scarcity utopia. Saadia does not put much store in the Singularity or the idea that technology is somehow inherently liberating or democratizing. He notes the massive potential of technologies like the Internet, but he points out that it is only a force for good if we make it so. He cites GPS and the Internet both as examples of positive externalities, public goods provided by the US government at not extra cost. GPS is an excellent example, because it’s something that has so quickly become embedded in our everyday actions. Yet the US government could easily just turn the system off.

Technology alone is not enough. Its advancement must be accompanied by progressive policies. In particular, Saadia points to eliminating poverty as a crucial step towards a trekonomics future. Poverty actually changes people’s behaviour. Saadia observes that there is a clear difference between the behaviour of the 23rd century Starfleet officers and the 24th century ones, with the latter all acting more like Spock—more rational, more civilized, more fair-minded. I happen to be watching an episode of TNG as I write this: “Force of Nature”, S07E09, which Saadia uses as the example of this. Picard and the crew are eminently rational, able to consider possibilities that undermine their beliefs in the harmlessness of the Enterprise’s mission of exploration, simply because it is their job to keep an open mind.

Saadia contends that as our technologies and policies improve our access to necessities like food, healthcare, and decrease our need to work, this will actually change our behaviour and outlook as a species. This might seem strange at first, because there is a very romantic notion that humans are humans are humans across all of time and space and that we somehow possess an intangible, indomitable spirit that will never be altered or crushed by our circumstance. But it has happened before. Our transition from hunter-gatherer to agrarian societies, culminating in urbanization, has changed the way we think and act and operate. As Saadia puts it, “culture is our killer app.” It is itself a technology that we can innovate and iterate through policy and philosophy.

If I haven’t commented much on Saadia’s exposition of the economics of the Federation or other species, it’s simply because there isn’t much in here that is new to me. When you’ve watched Star Trek as much as I have, you’re pretty familiar with it from all angles. Saadia speaks of the shows in the cadence of a rugged fan like myself, off-handedly but accurately summarizing entire species’ contributions to the show or whole themes of episodes. If you choose to read this book for no reason more than that you like Trek, you still can’t go wrong. Saadia keeps the economic terms light; indeed, I suspect that anyone with the more-than-passing knowledge of economics that I possess would be able to offer a deeper critique of those aspects.

Still, Trekonomics is not meant to be expositional so much as aspirational. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the otherwise somewhat indulgent chapter on the science-fictional influences on Star Trek. Saadia uses Star Trek to point to how we can explicitly envision and shape our own future. This is an empowering idea, but it is not a foregone conclusion that we can make such a change. To be sure, even with advances in technology, it will be a long time before we can get rid of money. I think it’s very easy to be sceptical that we will ever reach that point, to be worried about free riders, etc., in such a system. But we need to recognize that this scepticism is an internalized artifact of growing up within capitalism. That doesn’t guarantee that we can successfully replace capitalism with something else—but given capitalism’s flaws, I don’t see that we have any other moral option than to try. Treknomics is a passionate, Trek-filled reminder that we are capable of doing better. If we want to.

I didn’t intend to read two non-fiction books, two books about economics, consecutively. That’s just how it happened. However, Unaccountable: Truth and Lies on Parliament Hill, is about as far away as you might get from Trekonomics. The latter is speculating on what might or could be; the former is a deeply personal tale about politics and events that actually happened. Kevin Page, who shares a hometown of Thunder Bay with me, recounts his time as the inaugural Parliamentary Budget Officer and the relationship of that office with the Harper government. He does not pull punches, but he also remains classy and complimentary to politicians and public servants alike.

First, a little context for my non-Canadian friends reading this: last October, we went to the polls for our 42nd general election. The campaign leading up to it, at 11 weeks, was the longest federal election campaign in our history (I can already sense my American friends gasping in envy at this number). The stakes were high: Stephen Harper’s Conservative party was attempting to form a fourth consecutive government, and a second majority government. Instead, owing to a combination of Conservative missteps during the campaign and probably just fatigue for the Conservatives’ time in office, the Liberals swept into power, going from 34 to 184 seats. Although many people and polls predicted a Liberal minority government, the dramatic Liberal win was a surprise to many people.

Unaccountable’s title sums up the nature of Page’s story. Over his nine years as Prime Minister, Harper consolidated executive power in the Prime Minister’s Office, the PMO. His initial victory over the Liberals was largely due to backlash over the sponsorship scandal; for this reason, he ran his campaign on promises of openness, transparency, and accountability. (None of this is new: the history of our Parliament is largely the Liberals and Conservatives trading the reins of power as one or the other regime gets brought down by a scandal caused by corruption and overconfidence. Neither party is inherently right or just. Also it’s worth noting that Harper’s Conservatives are actually a parasite that has zombified the corpses of several centre-right parties, so it’s a little unfair to compare them directly to previous incarnations of the Conservatives.) Creating the PBO, which Page himself likens to the U.S. Congressional Budget Office, was Harper’s way of delivering on that promise.

This is all well and good. Alas, the Conservative government did not live up to these promises (surprise, surprise). Indeed, Harper’s time in office saw the government transform into one of Canada’s most secretive, closed, and retributive governments in our history. MPs were not allowed to give interviews. Directives went out from the PMO muzzling scientists and researchers. The government deliberately hobbled the census, because who needs statistics? And even as they claimed to be fiscally responsible, the government refused to produce reliable data to back up their claims.

Unaccountable is basically Page recounting all the times he called bullshit on the government’s numbers (or, more often, lack thereof) and then got told off, loudly and rudely, for, as he puts it, doing his job. From the first report his office produced—forecasting the long-term costs of Canada’s involvement in Afghanistan—to the F-35 forecasts, the PBO came under fire from the government for exceeding its mandate and attempting to work with the opposition parties. Ironically, many of the emotionally-charged responses from the government to these reports were contributing factors to the two elections and two prorogations of Parliament that we experienced prior to 2015. Meanwhile, Page and his office just kept chugging along, hoping that by keeping the media on their side and sticking to what they did best—research and reporting—they would stay intact, if not exactly popular with the administration.

Although Page’s narration is quite focused, necessarily, on his actions and the actions of his team and the effects they had on the government, I wouldn’t say he’s trying to be remembered as a crusader against the Harper government, nor is he stroking ego. Rather, he simply is very passionate about and invested in the idea of an impartial and accountable civil service. He wants people to be inspired not just by himself but by the process and passion of him and his colleagues at the PBO. He is looking back on his five years as PBO and reflecting that he has done good, and it comes across that way. Moreover, he’s trying to drum up the excitement level and present these events in an interesting way. There is a reason for that.

This is an important book. Discussions of the civil service are not sexy. Canadians have a poor enough understanding of how our political system works as it is; I doubt most Canadians would be able to tell you what the PBO is or where it fits into our system (to be fair, I had no idea it had been shoved into the Library of Parliament org chart until I read this book). When a friend of mine asked me what this book is about, she responded that her attitude towards politics in one of “blissful ignorance.” This is coming from an intelligent and educated person. And it’s exactly the kind of response that allows people like Harper to strong-arm the government in a direction that isn’t good for our country.

Apathy is the enemy of a healthy democracy. Parliament governs through the will of the people. It exists to keep the executive in check. But if the people don’t care, then Parliament is de-fanged. And while our MPs are the heart and soul of Parliament, the untold legion of civil servants who run their offices and departments are its life-blood. They are the ones who draft our laws, vet our budgets, and prepare communiques. Without them, government would grind to a halt. And their integrity is paramount: they guard against ideology trumping reality. (Yeah, I used trumping there for a reason.)

Let’s be clear: this isn’t a left wing/right wing, Liberal versus Conservative thing. Page is critical of the Conservative government’s conduct when it comes to releasing data. He very carefully does not comment on the ideology behind the Conservatives’ policies, though, just their fiscal responsibility. And this is key, both to understanding Unaccountable as well as our politics. It is not the Conservatives’ ideology that is the issue here: rather, it’s the fact that they refused to provide the methodology and data used to arrive at their budgeting forecasts, and they consistently claimed that their policies would cost far less than they would in reality. This is not surprising; no government wants to look bad by saying they’re going to spend a ton of money. And that’s exactly what the PBO did by consistently releasing reports second-guessing what few numbers the Conservatives announced. Oopsie.

Replacing the Conservatives with a Liberal government is not a panacea. Page and his publisher very deliberately timed the release of this book to coincide with the upcoming election. It’s clear he hoped to make an impact, at least among the probably nerdy Canadians who were going to pick up this book in time for it to influence their vote. But ousting Harper doesn’t automatically fix anything—remember, when he was Leader of the Official Opposition, he was quite happy to go on about transparency, only to swiftly change tune when he became PM. And indeed, there are some warning signs that the Liberals are being recalcitrant about their numbers as well. I’d say I’m shocked, but….

Unless the government actually gives the PBO the power to compel the release of government data, there is little the PBO can do except make noise. Ultimately, it’s we—the ones who put the Liberals into government—who have the power. That’s why you should read the book. Yes, it is about economics and spending and politics. But it is not full of jargon. Indeed, Page provides succinct and clear descriptions of how the PBO did its research and produced its reports. Although I had been aware of Page and the PBO’s existence during his tenure there, I didn’t really understand how it operated. Now I know more!

Unaccountable is not a tell-all full of gossip on Parliament Hill. It’s the unsexy but still quite dramatic story of a guy trying to do his job so that we can stay informed. At times he gets personal, recounting a bit of biography and sharing the story of his son’s death and how that influenced his decision to apply for this job. Your mileage may vary for these details. What I can’t shake is how none of this civil service stuff gets taught in schools. Our civic education is laughably perfunctory—we’ve been lucky, coasting off the fact that Canada’s traditionally high immigrant ratio means we get so many talented people coming into our country and caring greatly about the political process because it’s what got them here in the first place, often from places where they have less of a voice. Those of us who have grown up here, in privileged families who, by dint of economic and ethnic status, are not often the target of government policy changes, except for the better (Harper’s “old stock” Canadians if you will) forget how good we have it. And we seldom learn about the essential role that public servants play in keeping it that way.

So, here’s my assignment to the class: read this. It is not a long book. It is 200 pages. It is not a superbly written book, but it isn’t hard to read either. I suspect for most of us, though, it will fill in unexpected gaps in our knowledge.

Democracy for the individual can be thought of as comprising two questions: What do I want this country to be? and Is the current government making it so? Only you can answer the first question. Neither Unaccountable nor I are out to shame you for being Liberal or Conservative, NDP or Green, Bloc or anything else: you do you. In order to answer that second question, however, you need unbiased and detailed data—not so you can put on your economist hat and analyze it yourself, but so third parties whom you trust can look at it. The PBO and similar civil servants work to get you that data, and as Kevin Page recounts here, it is not always an easy task or one for which they are rewarded. The least we can do is pay a little more attention.

A friend lent Decoded me after I expressed a desire to “get into hip hop”. This is not a whim on my part but a recognition of a gap in my otherwise wide musical listening. Although I would say that my “favourite” music tends towards a fairly narrow swath of sound, and my tastes are decidedly more pop than hard rock in later years, I appreciate a lot of different sounds, albeit perhaps not equally. I rock out to classical music cranked loud with my windows down; I dance around my kitchen to Florence + the Machine or my classroom to … well, pretty much anything. My music collection is not devoid of hip hop either, but those songs are few and far between. More importantly, though, I lack any clear idea of who I should try to listen to. My typical musical discovery involves hearing a song that I like somewhere, figuring out who performs it, and then going through their catalogue to discover if I want all the things or just that track, then buying accordingly.

This strategy hasn’t worked for hip hop. Part of it is that I don’t often understand the lyrics when I hear a rap song. I might like the beat or the flow, maybe there’s a hook that stands out that I enjoy, and I can groove to it when it comes on. Basically, when Jay Z says:

Which is the other reason hip-hop is controversial: People don’t bother trying to get it. The problem isn’t in the rap or the rapper or the culture. The problem is that so many people don’t even know how to listen to the music.

he’s talking about me. Except I am trying to get it, but very slowly and probably poorly because I have no idea what I’m doing. This book helped, a little, but in the end I suspect I am more like Kathleen Norris, whose reaction to reading proofs Jay Z quotes in his afterword of this edition. She speaks as a poet who has been given a better understanding of something she knew was important but had no way of interpreting. I’m hobbled further by a more general antipathy towards poetry (sorry Norris), and so maybe that’s why rap, which seems so much more poetical than other genres of music, intimidates me.

Because rap is poetry. I pity people who dismiss it as anything less, and Decoded proves them wrong. Consider how Jay Z breaks down “Public Service Announcement” and compares rap to sonnets:

But even when a rapper is just rapping about how dope he is, there’s something a little bit deeper going on. It’s like a sonnet, believe it or not. Sonnets have a set structure, but also a limited subject matter: They are mostly about love. Taking on such a familiar subject and writing about it in a set structure forced sonnet writers to find every nook and cranny in the subject and challenged them to invent new language for saying old things. It’s the same with braggadocio in rap. When we take the most familiar subject in the history of rap—why I’m dope—and frame it within the sixteen-bar structure of a rap verse, synced to the specific rhythm and feel of the track, more than anything it’s a test of creativity and wit. It’s like a metaphor for itself; if you can say how dope you are in a completely original, clever, powerful way, the rhyme itself becomes proof of the boast’s truth. And there are always deeper layers of meaning buried in the simplest verses. I call rhymes like the first verse on “Public Service Announcement” Easter-egg hunts, because if you listen to it once without paying attention, you’ll brush past some lines that can offer more meaning and resonance every time you listen to them.

I love this paragraph so much. It is an eloquent explanation of what rappers are doing when they front. Moreover, it demonstrates the commitment required to create memorable and powerful verses. Jay Z is not claiming that every rapper knows the structure of sonnets and is labouring to recreate them in rap. Many rappers probably cannot explain how they rap as clearly and academically as Jay Z has here—but they still know their stuff. Indeed, they know it on an intuitive level that far surpasses someone like me with an English degree, because they live the flow. A good MC can spit rhyme any time inspiration strikes, as Jay Z recounts the days he had to rush into a store to buy something so he could get a brown paper bag to write sudden lyrics on before he forgot them.

Jay Z says he wants “to make the case that hip-hop lyrics—not just my lyrics, but those of every great MC—are poetry if you look at them closely enough”. I believe he makes that case more than adequately. Structure and cleverness, as mentioned above, aside, some of these verses are just so deep and so beautiful that it’s difficult to believe they might be juxtaposed next to a line about bitches coming on to him or the money his character has made from hustling. They are, though, and time and again Jay Z returns to the idea that it is more difficult to separate these two things in hip hop than one might want to believe—that is, “clean” rap is largely an illusion. However, he is more than willing to mock both himself and his critics by serving up self-satirizing songs like “Ignorant Shit” or the “almost a deliberate provocation to simpleminded listeners” of “99 Problems” with its clickbait chorus line but ultimately unrelated subject matter:

The art of rap is deceptive. It seems so straightforward and personal and real that people read it completely literally, as raw testimony or autobiography. And sometimes the words we use, nigga, bitch, motherfucker, and the violence of the images overwhelms some listeners. It’s all white noise to them till they hear a bitch or a nigga and then they run off yelling “See!” and feel vindicated in their narrow conception of what the music is about. But that would be like listening to Maya Angelou and ignoring everything until you heard her drop a line about drinking or sleeping with someone’s husband and then dismissing her as an alcoholic adulterer.

I grok Jay Z’s frustration; I really do. It’s so weird that our society is fine with giving PG ratings to movies that show brutal violence, yet a little bit of nudity or sex suddenly makes it R-rated. Showcase (a specialty channel here in Canada) is fine with showing a rabbit getting its head ripped off in The Magicians or Eliot getting the shit kicked out of him in Mr. Robot, but they make sure to bleep the F-word—I assume because they think if their viewers hear a single F-bomb their brains will implode?

Yet I am also somewhat complicit in this. I admit to qualifying my appreciation for rap with things like “but not gangsta rap” or “I like rap, except the parts with misogynistic lyrics”. While my intentions here might have been good, it shows an ignorance regarding the nuance that Jay Z articulates about this genre. To be frank, it’s a little racist of me: here I am, a privileged white dude, bursting onto the scene like the Kool-Aid man and insisting I’ll take “the good rap” but not “the offensive stuff”, as if I can pick and choose. Obviously it’s up to me what I listen to. But Jay Z’s stories and explanations are a stark reminder that I am so incredibly lucky with my lot in life:

Most of us come from communities where people are just supposed to stay in their corners quietly, live and die without disturbing the master narrative of American society. Simply speaking our truths, which flew in the face of the American myth, made us rebels.

It’s worthwhile having a conversation about the meanings within rap lyrics, as it is with lyrics from any genre. But such a conversation taken out of the context of those lyrics’ birth is little more than tone policing. I have the privilege of ignoring the pain and poverty that the predominantly Black communities face, the constant violence and aggressions that result in a vicious cycle of drug selling and buying. Jay Z is very critical, rightly so, of the ways in which the American government launched a “war on drugs” even as it funded drug cartels in other countries.

There is pain here, but there is also a buoyant sense of optimism and hope that hip hop is a way to improve the future lots of Jay Z’s brothers and sisters. Jay Z observes that in some cases the potential for rap to influence social change must be there, or else why would authorities go to such lengths to suppress it:

Rappers, as a class, are not engaged in anything criminal. They’re musicians. Some rappers and friends of rappers commit crimes. Some bus drivers commit crimes. Some accountants commit crimes. But there aren’t task forces devoted to bus drivers or accountants. Bus drivers don’t have to work under the preemptive suspicion of law enforcement. The difference is obvious, of course: Rappers are young black men telling stories that the police, among others, don’t want to hear. Rappers tend to come from places where police are accustomed to treating everybody like a suspect.

Opposition to rap on the basis of character, then, is another form of culturally inculcated anti-Blackness. While I suppose I was aware of this in some latent sense, it took these words to make me realize it consciously. There’s nothing wrong with finding rap music unappealing, for whatever reason—but condemning it or the “offensive” words so often used in its lyrics in a wholesale fashion is another example of wilful silence in the face of the oppression that Black people and communities face. Hip hop is the latest in a long line of musical genres used—and often even piloted and popularized by Black musicians before being co-opted and made safe by white musicians—to express the angst, pain, and raw emotion of the oppression or, as it is put, “the struggle”. Jay Z believes that hip hop’s power is far from confined to Black experiences, though:

This is why the hustler’s story—through hip-hop—has connected with a global audience. The deeper we get into those sidewalk cracks and into the mind of the young hustler trying to find his fortune there, the closer we get to the intimate human story, the story of struggle, which is what defines us all.

(Emphasis his.) This statement, lavishly splayed in white text on a black page early in the book, resonates deeply with me despite zero experience with the hustling lifestyle. I get it, because as a storyteller and reader and educator I get that need to connect on a human level with the stories we tell in all avenues of our lives.

This book is part song explanation, part autobiography, and part rumination on the politics and pressures on African Americans. Jay Z explains the meaning behind many of the lines in the selected songs, and he also comments on his choice of words and rhymes, as demonstrated above. The songs are not ordered chronologically; rather, they are grouped around loose themes that dip in and out of his history: Part 1 heavily features his adolescence, growing up on the streets, and life as a hustler, to which he compares the life of a hip hop artist; Part 2 is more about the business of hip hop and the pressure of being “known”; Part 3 gets more political; and Part 4 is an attempt to capture the zeitgeist and issues around which hip hop crystallized. Throughout this book, Jay Z openly discusses his time selling drugs, his relationship with other rappers, music that influenced and inspired him, and his attitude towards politics, particularly the election of President Obama. I imagine fans already familiar with his work will relish the first-hand explanations herein as well as the frankness of his reflection: there is more Shawn Carter here than rapper Jay Z. As someone who until this book only knew Jay Z second- and third-hand, Decoded is now a firm anchor going forward in my exploration of hip hop.

Jay Z says that he’s “happiest knowing that [Decoded]’s working as a gateway drug for kids to get into reading and into thinking about new ways to use their own voices and experiences”. I have long talked about books being my drug. And I too like to use them as a way to help people express themselves. I’ve known other teachers to use hip-hop in their classrooms; I still need to get around to reading Emdin’s Urban Science Education for the Hip Hop Generation (even though I don’t teach science), though I did pick up his latest, For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood … and the Rest of Y’all Too. Largely I’ve eschewed using hip hop because my lack of familiarity makes me worry that I’ll use it in a inauthentic way. Hence, my exploration of hip hop is not merely a desire for cooler tunes.

In my latest iteration of an English class I worked hard to improve my unit on stereotypes, drawing on the unfortunate proliferation of police shootings of Black men in July of this year. We discussed Black Lives Matter, and I did take the chance and include both Jay ’Zs “Spiritual” and Beyoncé’s “Formation” in this discussion. Though my mastery of this content is incomplete, that just means my students and I are on a quest for knowledge together. Sometimes it can be tough as a teacher to let go of needing to have all the answers, but the rewards are often worth such a risk. Although Decoded came too late for this version of the unit, it will doubtlessly inform my planning next time around. I’ll need at least that much time to mull it over anyway.

Trumpet is the August pick for the Banging Book Club, an online, tweet-fuelled read of books about sex and sexuality hosted by Hannah Witton, Leena Norms, and Lucy Moon. This is a nice change of pace after a few months of non-fiction books. All of the fiction books so far have been excellent but in such different ways. The two previous novels (Asking For It and All the Rage) had similar topics but very different narrative and thematic approaches; each broke my heart, though. Trumpet is quite different in both topic and tone. It is Jackie Kay’s only novel, and her reputation for her poetry is understandable given the lyrical lilt of Trumpet. This is a complex and moving book, not so much outraging or heartwrenching as the other two Banging Book Club novels, but certainly just as emotional. Trigger warning, for the book and this review, with regards to transphobia and transphobic language. I can’t speak for how trans people will react to reading this; I think this book is a very interesting and eye-opening read for cisgender people who might not otherwise have questioned how they talk about and think about trans people, especially trans people who get “outed”.

I love the different perspectives in this. It’s so easy to write one-dimensional characters, especially when dealing with hatred like transphobia. Kay’s depiction is much more nuanced, balancing the influence of society with each character’s personality. Many characters who don’t interact with Joss directly or know him personally treat the revelation that he is transgender as an anomaly in their otherwise orderly life: the doctor has to correct a death certificate; the undertaker ponders how he could have mistaken the body for male; the registrar laments the ugliness of the corrected certificate but ultimately takes pity on Millie and enters “Joss Moody” in the register rather than his birth name.

Trumpet is not a book of grandstanding, of intense dialogues and Picard speeches for or against trans rights. Yes, there are moments of confrontation, of accusation, of recrimination. By and large, though, this is a book of reflection and rumination. The moments in here are small and unguarded and therefore they seem much more honest. Take, for example, the undertaker’s reaction:

It had never happened to him before. He had never had a man turn into a woman before his very eyes. He felt it to be one of those defining moments in his life that he would be compelled to return to again and again.

I can understand his reaction. I imagine undertakers have a very interesting relationship with the nature of our embodiment. Kay captures some of this in her portrayal of him and his meditation on who people were before they come to him and how their personalities may or may not change after death. Confronted with the shell of Joss Moody, the undertaker has no understanding of who he was as a living person. He has only the physical archaeology to go on here. This is a deft way of commenting on the delicate balances that inform our identities. Biology may not determine or identities, gender or otherwise, but it certainly informs our behaviours and those of the people around us. Stripped of any other context, Joss’ biology is the only frame of reference the undertaker has.

The above quotation, and the undertaker’s chapter in general, also made me stop and think about the out-sized significance we place on gender performance and sex determination in our society. When you get right down to it, how often is your sex really an important factor in any given situation? So many forms, governmental or otherwise, want you to tick “M” or “F” so that they can crunch statistics and make assumptions about you. But humans are so diverse and so good at breaking out of boxes. Even in situations where it seems like biology should matter, there are better ways to take biology into account: when giving X-rays, perhaps “are you capable of getting pregnant?” rather than “are you a woman?” or “do you have testes?” when discussing testicular cancer awareness. Beyond mostly medical situations, though, a person’s sex should be largely irrelevant to how they move through the world. The fact that it isn’t, that we put so much emphasis on determining someone’s sex and remarking on when their sex doesn’t correspond with how they perform gender, is a shame.

The main characters reinforce and echo this, and their own relationships with their sex and gender colours their interpretations of Joss. Millie as a young woman struck me as being so confident in her own sexuality:

I have on a pale green slinky dress…. My dress shows my cleavage. I look sexy and my four brothers and Joss are all staring at me with similar expressions in their eyes.

It’s 1955 and she is forward and forthright and knows what she wants and that she looks good. I love it. And she so clearly loves Joss; it’s her level of self-possession that allows her to discard immediately the shock of Joss’ revelation and declare that it is a non-issue.

In contrast, Sophie’s obsession with Joss is far more voyeuristic; she serves as an avatar for the prurient curiosity we are now all familiar with thanks to social media (but this is 1997 so the web is a very different place):

What I want Colman Moody to find out is this: what made Joss Moody into a transvestite? What was the real reason for pretending she was a man? She is different, I’m quite sure, from other transvestites. Joss Moody only returned to being a woman in death. The rest of the time she dressed like a man, lived her life as a man, her own son believed her to be a man. No, this isn’t a straightforward tranny…. Was she just a perv or what? Which came first? What’s the story? How did she manage to pull it off?

Kay really captures the ignorance here: the idea that an event or series of events “turns” someone trans, similar to the idea that people get “turned” gay; the use of words like pretending to show that Sophie views Joss’ gender identity as a sham; the use of such loaded words like tranny and perv; and the idea that Joss has to “pull it off” as if being trans is some kind of magic trick.

I find Sophie so interesting because she seems like she should be a one-dimensional character: she is shallow, amoral, caring only about the potential for profit and reputation from her collaboration with Colman. Yet she isn’t one-dimensional. Kay is careful to explore the motives that have made Sophie this way, from her inferiority complex in relation to her slimmer, more competent sister to her obsession with how people see her. The paragraph I quoted above ends with this:

I look at Sophie in the mirror. I pull my hair up and put some pins in. I look clever with myhair up. I knew I had it in me. Clever Sophie.

Yes, Sophie is narrating and talking about herself in the third person here. That’s the type of person she is. She is self-absorbed and offensive, but she is as much a product of our society as anyone else. When she thinks about how she is just using Colman to make a name for herself, she says:

Why should I have scruples when men have been using me for years? As long as it takes to make good copy. He’s playing the same game, isn’t he?

So in Sophie Kay gives us an example of a woman who “leans in” and thinks the best way to get ahead is to internalize the oppressiveness of the patriarchy. This is so sad yet entirely understandable, and it makes Sophie a sympathetic if, at times, annoying antagonist. Colman is absolutely right when he belatedly declares, “You wouldn’t know a moral if it slapped you in the face”. While Sophie’s stance towards Joss is transphobic, it’s a casual kind of transphobia born more of apathy than hatred. This is important, because this transphobia is more pernicious and probably more common than people who are openly out and about slurring trans people and committing hate crimes. It’s haters who launch the bathroom bills, but it’s the apathy that gets them passed.

And then we come to Colman. I want to call him my favourite character, but I feel like I’ve said that, maybe not in so many words, for Millie and Sophie. The character game in this book is just so strong, people! Anyway, in the beginning it seems like Colman is going to be a huge jackass. And it turns out … he really is a huge jackass. But he’s a huge jackass who loves his father. In particular, he continues to use masculine pronouns when referring to Joss, even going so far as to correct Sophie when she uses feminine pronouns. His attitude towards Joss is very proprietary and becomes even more so as the book progresses.

The rift between Colman and his father, it should be noted, existed prior to Joss’ death and is far more complicated than the fact that Joss was performing gender as a man. Colman, like most of us, is a complex bundle of issues: he is adopted, he is Black, he is nominally Scottish but doesn’t feel Scottish, etc. He has memories of his father that are variously happy, sad, and awkward, and if any of the latter were influenced by Joss being trans, none of the experiences are so strange that they wouldn’t happen with a cis father. Kay reminds us that there is seldom any one reason for the way we feel about or remember someone.

It’s not just what Trumpet includes that makes it so interesting as what Kay omits. We don’t get as complete an ending as one might like—in particular, I’m sure I’m not alone in yearning for that reconciliation scene between Colman and Millie, and I respect the hell out of Kay for denying us that easy resolution in favour of making us imagine it. We don’t learn exactly what transpires between Colman and Edith. And while Joss Moody is unquestionably the central character of this book, he remains in many ways a cipher. Although we do hear a little from him, thanks to flashbacks and letters posthumously read, for the most part he does not have a voice except through the reminiscences of the other characters. Trumpet, in this sense, is not so much about Joss’ experience as a biracial, trans musician as it is about other people’s grief and attempt to process the news that he was trans. This last part is obviously important; however, let’s not ignore the book’s wider themes on the difficulty of truly knowing someone and the fact that even after they are gone, your relationship with them goes on.

Four years ago, I moved to England to begin my career as a teacher. Fresh out of Lakehead University's Faculty of Education, the dry job market in Ontario left me looking across the Atlantic. Thanks to Engage Education, an agency that specializes in recruiting teachers overseas for the English school system so desperately clamouring for them, I managed to land a classroom right away. When I moved back to Thunder Bay, I got on the supply list for our adult education centre here, which operates a little differently from high schools--and shortly after being hired, I got contract, and then permanent work. So I've only briefly been a substitute teacher, and never for the age groups or types of schools Nicholson Baker encounters in Substitute: Going to School with a Thousand Kids. I was intrigued to see how his experiences tally with my own, and to get a glimpse behind the curtain of the American education system.

NetGalley and [publisher] provided a Kindle proof of Substitute for review, and it was ... well, rough--and I'm not just talking about the formatting of the ARC (which was abominable, but whatevs, I don't knock the free books). From start to finish this book is a shambles of uneven, uninteresting, and underwhelming storytelling.

Am I supposed to know who Nicholson Baker is? Because I don't. I deduced from what he mentions to the people he interacts with in this book that he is a writer, older with children grown, and that he undertook the substitute teacher thing as a project with the intention of turning it into a book all along. All that's to the good (and I have no problem with stunt books)--I just wish Baker took the time to introduce himself directly to us, to give us some context for who he is, and where he's coming from in his life. Instead, all we get is a brief description of what laughably passes for substitute teacher training in Maine, apparently, before Baker dives into recounting each of his twenty-eight supply days.

Allow me a brief aside: America, what is wrong with you? Why can people with no experience in education become substitute teachers simply by taking a night school class for a few weeks?? I knew your education system was underfunded and that teachers themselves receive very little in the way of support or respect, but I didn't realize the situation was so dire that you're basically letting substitute teachers walk in off the street. No wonder things are in the state they're in.

None of this is meant to besmirch Baker or his intentions, though. He's pretty clear that he just wants a better understanding of how schools function in this day and age, and whether they are really serving our kids the way we want them to (spoiler: they aren't). As someone who fights that battle on a daily basis, I really empathize with him and respect him for leveraging a broken system to get that experience. He certainly seems to try to make genuine connections with some of the students he supervises. Unfortunately, the manner in which he relates his substitute experiences to his readers leaves much to be desired.

Each chapter corresponds to one day of substitute teaching and goes like this: first Baker describes the dispatch call and tells us which school he'll be at and what his position will be. Then he shows up at the school, gets his plans and ID badge, etc., and makes his way to the first classroom. He and the students say the Pledge of Allegiance, and then the day commences. For the rest of the chapter, he basically retells every notable conversation he has with students. While these are occasionally interesting or humorous, they gradually start to add up into a block of banal, boring exchanges.

That's something I've always wondered about in non-fiction books and memoirs: how, exactly, do authors remember these conversations so word-perfectly? Baker doesn't mention taking notes, and it doesn't seem like something he'd have much time for. Does he have some weird perfect recall? Or are these conversations fictionalized versions of what he can remember passing throughout the day?

In any case, the first few chapters of this are fine. We get a good sense of what Baker's day as a substitute is like, of the challenges he faces, the rhythm of the school day, etc. Baker holds no illusions about being a good teacher or even substitute teacher; he is admirably self-deprecating and quick to acknowledge mistakes. Occasionally he makes one-off observations, or his tone communicates his frustration with the system and what it does to kids, or he shares advice given to him by other teachers. These moments are few and far between, however, and they are unfortunately the only things that pass for introspection in this book.

Otherwise, Substitute is literally just twenty-eight chapters of Baker telling us, in minute detail, what passed in each of the classrooms he was in. I was not expecting this format. I went into this book hoping for someone to discuss substitute teaching in a holistic way, for them to relate their personal experiences back to what they perceive to be faults (or virtues) of the education system. I was expecting a lot more analysis, a lot more substance. Instead, drawing these conclusions is left as an exercise to the reader. There isn't even any conclusion or afterword where Baker tries to draw it all together: the last chapter simply ends with him mentioning that this was also his last day substitute teaching, and then the book is over. All this leaves me to wonder: so what?

Reading twenty-eight of what verge upon transcripts of days in a classroom is, to put it bluntly, dull. It's doubly dull for me, since, you know, I spend plenty of time in classrooms as it is. Even when Baker is in a staff room or other non-contact area and has conversations with teachers, they are about as mundane and far away from talking about teaching as you can get. I'm not sure what this is meant to do, other than add verisimilitude--is he attempting to show people that teachers are harried, flawed humans just like the rest of us? I don't know. All I know is that by Day 10 or so, I started skimming, then I outright flipped to the end, hoping there would be some kind of format shift into a more reflective mode. And even towards the end, when Baker describes something as interesting as a lockdown practice, he never shifts gears. This is a long, excruciatingly detailed book, and the only verb to describe reading it is to trudge. I trudged through this.

So I can empathize with Baker, and I appreciate the rare moments he seeks to show us how the system seems to be ignoring individual kids in favour of collective results. But there I go again--I'm reading into it, projecting my own hang-ups about education onto the book. I'm not sure a reader with less knowledge of the education system would draw those same conclusions, because there is no real point or thesis in here. It's more of a diary, than anything, and it long overstays its welcome. If Substitute reminds me of anything, it's those long, dull, dry textbooks I'm so happy that we're finally rid of.

Paolo Bacigalupi brings his unique style and science fiction sensibility to young adult fiction with Ship Breaker. If you were all, “I want my kid to read some socially conscious SF about the future of our society as global warming slowly takes hold” but were also all, “Holy shit The Water Knife has a lot of swearing and death in it!” then Ship Breaker is the book to recommend. It reminds me a lot of The Water Knife in how Bacigalupi skilfully portrays the bleakness that could accompany a warmed-over planet. And even if the violence and brutality is slightly toned down in comparison, make no mistake: this book has its share of violence, of killing—but also compassion. Above all else, it reminds us that the line between civilization and barbarity is thinner than we would like, and often which side we fall on is more a matter of luck than smarts or skill.

Ship breaking is a real industry; you can read about it in this National Geographic article from 2014. Bacigalupi is not merely fantasizing that someday we will be desperate enough to send kids into the hulks of old ships for their wire and metal. It happens nowadays in Bangladesh; his only embroidery is transposing it to the Gulf Coast. This Gulf Coast has been devastated by super-storms and other effects of climate change. New Orleans has been gutted multiple times. On the much altered coastline, in Bright Sands Bay, Nailer and other people—children, really—break ships for little pay and almost no protection. That all changes when Nailer and a friend stumble upon a wrecked clipper ship and find a survivor—a “swank” girl rich enough to be worth something if they keep her alive.

But before we meet the swank Nita, Bacigalupi does his best to introduce us to Nailer’s rough existence. It’s striking because there is nothing romantic about it. Bacigalupi very explicitly depicts everything about Nailer’s job as subsistence and survival: it is back-breaking, life-threatening, dirty and terrible work. You don’t know who to trust. Your parents might be dead or absent or abusive. The people paying you would just as soon see you gone or turned out on the beach if you can’t work for whatever reason. Nailer is lucky enough to be small for his age and able to work light crew, to crawl in the tight spaces and remove the smaller but valuable pieces of ship. One day he’ll get too big. Their crew boss girl, Pima, is verging on that moment—too big for light crew, too small for heavy crew, no idea where else she will go. This is a society from which there is no easy exit. There is no education, no regulation, no safety net.

Bacigalupi has a talent for immediately reminding us that your circumstances of birth are a fluke, a roll of the dice, yet inordinately influence what you become. I saw this in The Windup Girl and The Water Knife both, and along with his motifs of global warming and slightly-recognizable worlds, he returns to this theme in Ship Breaker. Unlike many authors whose recurring themes become staid and predictable, Bacigalupi so far has always delivered a story that is utterly unique and devastating for both its complexity and the heart-breaking narrative it contains. In this case, Nailer is clearly an intelligent but also compassionate person. Yet until very late in the book, he hasn’t even learned how to read. All he knows is barely getting by, working day in and day out on the crew, and huddling in beach huts—when they haven’t been washed away by a super-storm, that is. His life and conditions are so squalid compared to what I grew up with, and the worst part is that they aren’t even unrealistic. There are kids like Nailer all over the world, right now, growing up in conditions as poor or worse than his. Growing cold and becoming killers not because they are but because they have to be, if they want to survive.

Ship Breaker reminds us that we are only ever a power failure away from chaos, if you know what I mean. Give people food and running water (and these days, Internet) and they are civil. Take away our technology, our warmth, our comfort, and we revert to something barely more recognizable than animals. Bacigalupi emphasizes this with his inclusion of the half-men or augments, who are created from a mixture of animal DNA, including dogs, hyenas, and tigers. These half-men are fanatically loyal to whomever purchases them from the breeding houses; they are bred to hunt and to kill, yet they are in some ways more predictable and reserved than people like Nailer’s murderous, double-crossing father. Humans are both violent and tenaciously mutable in our convictions, and that is dangerous.

The plot rests on Nailer’s gradually growing relationship with Nita. Bacigalupi develops this at a nice pace: Nailer spares Nita out of decency, initially, but also with a plan for profit. He doesn’t always fully trust her, but she starts to prove herself to him—and vice versa. The layer of unrequited romance, so often present but not always deserved in YA, works very well here (and whether it’s a case of unrequited love or star-crossed love I wasn’t too sure, and it looks like the second book is a companion rather than sequel, so I guess I’ll never know). I like how Bacigalupi shows us, from Nailer’s perspective, that there is this whole, wider world out there he has never glimpsed until now, without overwhelming the reader with exposition that is irrelevant to the plot. We learn about the Patel Corporation, and the trader and fighting clipper ships that dominate the ocean in these days, but we know little enough about the geopolitical situation beyond that. And that works here, because it doesn’t really matter to Nailer’s story. What matters are the decisions he makes, which start off as decisions made merely for survival but soon become ones built from courage and self-sacrifice as he starts to care more about rescuing Nita than merely living another day. This transformation, this growth, is quite a beautiful thing against such a backdrop of ugliness and squandered opportunity.

Ship Breaker is my third novel by Bacigalupi, and so far he has not gone wrong for me. His writing is clear and sadly has notes of prescience. He hews closely to the trends of our current society, hinting at the tenor of the future if not its entire melody. Despite delivering such critical social commentary, his books are not preachy; they are, if anything, extremely entertaining adventures. I highly recommend this one, for teens or adults, young or old.

Sometimes you see a book and you just know that it’s the book you’ve been waiting for. That was my reaction when Chelsea Vowel, who blogs and tweets as âpihtawikosisân, announced Indigenous Writes: A Guide to First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Issues in Canada. You really should read her blog and follow her, because she her writing is clear and informative, and she is excellent at providing further resources. This continues in her book. I was extremely excited to get my hands on a copy, because it seemed like exactly what I wanted: a series of connected but self-contained essays that explain and highlight some of the diverse issues that Indigenous peoples face in Canada. I wanted a way to continue educating myself as well as a potential classroom resource, and lndigenous Writes lives up in every respect.

Funny story: I pre-ordered a hard copy of this when it was announced, and then last month when I joined NetGalley, I saw that it was available. I requested and received an electronic copy from NetGalley, but by the time I was going to read it, my hard copy had shown up a little early in the mail. So I thank Portage & Main Press and NetGalley for the review copy, but there is nothing like a physical book. It’s beautifully designed and laid out, and I’ve already taken it around and shown it off to friends and colleagues. (Nerrrrrrd.)

Indigenous Writes is an attempt to start these conversations in an honest, heartfelt way that is rigorous in its resources and research yet also accessible rather than academic. Vowel doesn’t assume any prior knowledge; she starts right off with a few chapters on terminology, like the differences between Indigenous, Aboriginal, Indian, First Nations, etc. From there, each essay addresses one of the numerous questions, concerns, or myths that tend to crop up over and over about Indigenous peoples, including: what “status” is and who gets it; what defines whether someone belongs to an Indigenous people, as well as more specifically what makes someone Métis; the fact that we tend to be uncomfortable, as a society, with Indigenous practices spilling over into what we perceive as “non-Indigenous” spaces, and how that becomes a transgression; as well as myths about taxes, progress, alcoholism, authenticity, etc. I wish I could just list all 31 chapter titles here! I cracked the book open to the table of contents when I first received it, and I just smiled at how much stuff Vowel manages to talk about. This is not a thick book, and the chapters themselves are seldom very long, but it is still so broadly informative.

Why do we need this book? Vowel herself eloquently provides the reason. Speaking about how settlers often deride Indigenous people from rural areas for not being familiar with urban life, she says:

On the other side, there is no expectation within Canadian (non-Indigenous) culture that Indigenous cultures must be accounted for, learned about, or even really accommodated. Knowing nothing about the Inuit, for example, is not considered a fault. Yet when Nunavummiut (Inuit of Nunavut) or Nunavimmiut (Inuit of Nunavik) go south, their lack of knowledge about city culture/living is considered to stem from small-mindedness, a lack of education, or ignorance.

Part of having (in my case) white privilege is being able to ignore not just the problems that Indigenous peoples face but, you know, their actual existence and culture entirely. Yet we expect—no, demand—that Indigenous people are familiar with settler culture, customs, and laws. That’s a little thing called colonialism, son, and it isn’t over just because we broke away from Britain.

I see this expectation manifest almost every day. I teach adults who come from remote communities in Northern Ontario to Thunder Bay on the invitation of Matawa First Nations in order to take the classes they need to finish their high school diploma and then get training for the workforce. Very often my students come from reserves with poor access to clean drinking water, poor housing conditions, little or no Internet and cell phone access, etc. Yet we expect them to somehow adjust to relocating to a city, often with young children in tow, and get used to attending classes all day for months at a time. And this is a group of students who have the support of each other, as well as Indigenous social workers, elders, etc. If they find it tough, imagine how daunting it can be for someone who does this on their own.

When the most recent (I hate having to write that, hate that there has been more than one) news cycle about the suicide crisis in Attawapiskat erupted, letters to the editor in The Chronicle Journal suggested “closing” these northern communities and relocating their inhabitants closer to urban centres like Thunder Bay. (Insert Picard facepalm here.) Aside from the incredible tone-deafness and irony of the idea that settlers should be relocating Indigenous peoples because we’ve decided what’s best for them, I was just so amazed by the lack of empathy coming from the people who had written those letters. They acted as if the people and the culture are the problem, rather than the fact we still tacitly expect assimilation even if we claim otherwise. I’m a mellow person, and I was getting angry about it—and again, I’m a settler and have all the privileges that entails, so I can’t even begin to imagine how people more connected and involved with these issues are feeling. It’s unconscionable, the state of things, yet we let it go on.

Clearly, education is an important and pressing matter, both in terms of educating wider Canadian society about Indigenous peoples and making sure that Indigenous people receive the education they need to succeed. The big buzzword these days is reconciliation. That’s a big word for me to define comprehensively, but I think part of reconciliation must entail better knowledge of Indigenous cultures and history. Yet Vowel points out in her chapter on residential schools that most provinces’ curricula do not live up to promises to teach more thoroughly about these things. When these subjects come up, they tend to be discussed in the past tense, locating the problems and the people in history.

The wider problem that Vowel also touches on in the final chapter of Indigenous Writes is that schooling in Canada is still very Westernized and therefore assimilationist. I get what she means. Although I am proud that my job involves helping Indigenous adults get their high school diplomas, I also often reflect on the extent to which I am complicit in perpetuating colonial curriculum and approaches to education. I do what I can to bring Indigenous content into the classroom: we talk about the treaties, about systemic discrimination, about residential schools. I try to listen to my students and get help from my Indigenous colleagues. At the end of the day, though, I am still evaluating these students against expectations grounded more in Western ideas of industrialized, rationalist education than anything else. That bothers me, a lot.

Indigenous Writes is going to make an excellent resource for classroom teachers like myself. It will help us educate ourselves so we can understand these issues better, and we can even use some of these essays, or the resources that Vowel references, in our classes. But I don’t think that goes far enough. We really need to change the entire system of education. Or, as Vowel puts it at the end of this chapter:

Indigenous communities as a whole simply do not have the internal resources to create an entire system of private schooling to rectify the horrendous gap that has always existed between Indigenous and non-Indigenous student outcomes. If you can judge a society by its system of education, then Canada stands clearly guilty of discriminating against Indigenous peoples by allowing this situation to continue.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this is the last chapter, and because there is no afterword or epilogue, this is Vowel’s closing statement for the entire book. It is a challenge to the idea that Canada does not discriminate, and a challenge to us to do something to make the system better.

I know what you’re thinking, though: OK, Ben, so you love this book as a teacher, but I’m not a teacher, so what would I get out of it? I’m glad you asked, invisible straw person voice.

It comes down to this, really: I keep having to remind myself is that the Canada I see—the Canada I grew up believing in—is not the Canada that many Indigenous people see. Growing up in a reserve, or growing up in a city but being exposed constantly to racist remarks or the threat of violence or being treated with suspicion and stereotyping … that necessarily brings about a different perspective. That’s what Vowel is trying to show us with Indigenous Writes. We Canadians pride ourselves on diversity and multiculturalism, yet some of us then turn around and leave racist comments on articles about missing and murdered Indigenous women, or we talk about how Indigenous people already have it too good in this country. It is a cognitive dissonance that is tragic, because it is quite literally killing people. If our country is as good and strong as we like to claim it is, we should be able to have a conversation about racism and actually act to end it.

It’s very easy to homogenize and lump all Indigenous peoples together when discussing “Indigenous issues”, and Vowel very deftly avoids generalizations. She discusses issues that tend to be common across the land, such as land claims, access to drinking water, stereotypes and myths and racism; she also discusses issues specific to the Inuit, Métis, and even particular nations. When she does this, lets her sense of humour come through, occasionally unleashing some well-deserved sarcasm as she dismantles an argument she has clearly dealt with too many times before. Like me, Vowel loves science fiction, and I greatly enjoyed how she references, analyzes, and deconstructs some authors’ portrayals of Indigenous peoples in their writing. Indigenous Writes is basically the rigour you’d expect from an academic textbook (the amount of endnotes alone could maim you if you dropped them on your toes) without the typically dry writing. It is the best of both world, academic and activist.

This is not always an easy book to read. There were times I had to take a break. Reading the essays back to back, it can feel very overwhelming, all of it, and unlike Indigenous people, I haven’t even lived it. Vowel recognizes the potential for succumbing to hopelessness, and she is quick to point out alternatives. She points to the staggering amount of research already presented on how to start the process of reconciliation: there’s the Neegan Burnside report on how to fix the urgent issue of drinking water on reserves; there is the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples with its complex, comprehensive twenty-year plan that fell by the wayside; there is, of course, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s report on the legacy of residential schools. There are indeed thorny issues here, but we have the ingredients for beginning to solve them. We just need to actually, you know, acknowledge the problem and start doing something about it instead of locating the problems in the past or twiddling our thumbs and agreeing that it’s awful but, hey, what can you do? We need to stop blaming Indigenous people for existing, for still being here after centuries of us trying to wipe them out, and stop blaming them or their cultures for the problems that currently beset their communities.

You or I, on our own, of course cannot end or undo centuries of colonization, discrimination, and assimilation. But we can start, as individuals, by filling the gaps in our knowledge, challenging our own internalized racism, and checking our privilege. We need to have conversations about this—but remember that any given Indigenous person is under no obligation to educate settlers about these issues: that is on us! So when someone like Chelsea Vowel deigns not just to speak up, but to provide us with an invaluable, detailed collection of essays and endnotes, we need to pay attention.

On that note, I don’t usually do this, but I really want people to read this book, so here’s where you can order it directly from the publisher.

This novel has quite the body count. Normally I hate hiding ARC reviews behind spoiler-walls, but it’s got to be done in this case….

I received an ARC of The Butcher’s Hook for free from House of Anansi Press in return for an honest review. And I will be honest: this book squicked me out a bit. I loves me the free books, though, and if you want me to talk about how much your book squicked me out, get in touch!

Janet Ellis serves up what seems, at first, to be a fairly standard piece of historical fiction. Anne Jaccob doesn’t want to get married—but since this is London in 1763, she gets little say in the matter. She tries to distract herself from the unwanted suit by going after the butcher’s boy, gradually developing her coquettish skills and becoming more comfortable with the desires she feels when she is around the down-to-earth young Fub. Just when you think you’ve got this thing figured out, there is a twist that sends Anne off on an entirely different trajectory. It’s not what you think … but it walks that strange line between hilarious and macabre.

The beginning is lovely. Ellis develops Anne’s character quickly: we see how she is bright and eager for knowledge, even when every young. Unfortunately, Anne discovers the hard way that her sex means this thirst for knowledge won’t always be celebrated, let alone satisfied. The scene between her and Dr Edwards is very awkward and uncomfortable, to be sure. However I was actually more moved by Anne’s falling out with Keziah. This, to me, marked the moment that Anne realizes she is different, not just from men but from other women; it foreshadows her always being alone. Anne’s lack of companionship throughout her early adolescence, her lack of confidants, seems to play a big role in shaping her prior to her infatuation with Fub.

I also like how Ellis explores Anne’s nascent sexuality. Depictions of female masturbation are too few in fiction, so it’s cool that Ellis works it into a book that is all about repressed sexuality. After the meet-cute with Fub, an overwhelmed Anne retreats to her room. Ellis briefly and tastefully—but clearly—describes what’s going on, making it clear that Anne is definitely in tune with her body and aware of how to pleasure herself. This scene, almost a footnote at the end of a chapter, is in some ways much more transgressive than either the sex or the slaughter that follows.

Because, yeah. Anne straight-up murders a guy. Then a boy. Then a girl her own age.

Watching as Anne plots the murder of Dr Edwards is fascinating. Ellis conveys the thrill that Anne receives from finally having a measure of power: she can do something, can take action, to fix something she perceives as having gone wrong in her life. She harnesses the only leverage that she has (her femininity and youthful attractiveness) and lures Edwards into a secluded spot. The clinical way that she goes about killing him, and his very calm reaction to the act, almost tilts the book towards melodrama. Almost.

What actually tilts the book is what happens next, when Anne discovers a boy who went to Dr Edwards for some tutoring is suspicious and might tip the police off about her. I love this trope (I can’t find its page on TVTropes, if one exists), where in order to cover up your murder you have to kill someone else … and then the whole thing just snowballs. But if her first murder reveals Anne’s cold-bloodedness, this murder shows her utter lack of conscience. We could have attributed her offing Dr Edwards, in part, to his abuse of her when she was younger. The boy, aside from threatening to spill his guts, was innocent. And Anne’s ability to act so calmly, both when talking to Dr Edwards’ daughter and when talking to the vicar about the boy, demonstrates her deeply amoral character.

The “Jane Austen meets Gone Girl” comparison on the back of the book makes sense now. I kind of ignored it before I read the book, because I haven’t read Gone Girl and have no interest in it. That being said, I might characterize this more as “Emily Brontë meets Gone Girl,” because I think that Brontë could very well have written Gone Girl if she were alive today. Ellis is essentially replacing the Gothic horror aspect of Wuthering Heights with a no-less-chilling more modern approach to the psychopath. Although I was looking forward more to a modern deconstruction of the matchmaking of that era, instead I got to watch Anne get discounted and ignored as a result of her sex and perceived fragility. She outright confesses to Fub, at least twice, and he laughs in her face.

That ending though.

Dr Edwards’ death is revenge; the boy’s is expedience. What is Margaret’s? Malice. Plain and simple. Anne understands she cannot ever have Fub, cannot run away with him much as she might like to … but if she can’t have Fub, then she resolves that Margaret won’t have him either. Again we see the premeditation, the careful planning and guile and flattery that she uses to put her victim at ease. This time, however, there is even more cruelty. Unlike Edwards, who—while not deserving to be murdered—did wrong Anne grievously, Margaret has done nothing wrong at all. Yet Anne brutalizes her, leaves her broken and bloody to die in a fire—which, by the way, consumes and destroys the butcher’s livelihood.

It’s this collateral damage that is, in some ways, the most ghastly part of Anne’s embrace of her full darkness. Killing individuals is terrible, and we saw the damage that did to people like Dr Edwards’ daughter. Yet Anne essentially ruins the Leveners when she kills Margaret, and she shows no evidence of remorse or guilt over that consequence. It’s all the same to her.

And so she sets off into the world. I wonder if her mother knows or suspects Anne’s nature and what she has helped to unleash on an unsuspecting Britain. The Butcher's Hook is ultimately about transformation: Anne grows up from a precocious child into a dangerous young adult, and it’s anyone’s guess where she might go or who might earn her wrath next. All in all, it isn’t the novel I was expecting, but it’s fascinating nonetheless.

Reading Adult Onset feels like watching someone else watch a movie inside a glass box: I can see them enjoying the movie but can’t quite join in. I think I’ve come to terms with the fact I didn’t like this book, but I’m still trying to figure out if it’s well written or not. That is, I’m pretty certain most of what I didn’t like is on me, not on the book—but maybe a little of it is the book’s doing. Ann-Marie MacDonald is a versatile, clever author, and I admire what she attempts with this book. But it just doesn’t quite work for me.

Ostensibly a week in the life of Mary Rose MacKinnon, aka “Mister”, liberal use of flashbacks and interstitial pseudo-narratives allows MacDonald to delve deeper into Mary Rose’s past. We get to see Mary Rose’s struggles with the quotidian tasks of taking care of a toddler and small child while her partner is out west directing a play. Meanwhile, Mary Rose ruminates on her mother’s many miscarriages and the impact this might have had on Mary Rose’s childhood and upbringing. Phantom pain in her arm from childhood bone cysts causes worries, which combine with the stress of childrearing to fray Mary Rose’s temper and set her off in front of her toddler multiple times. Adult Onset’s title, then, is meant to imply the recapitulation of crisis, emotional as well as physical, as Mary Rose worries that she might be following down the path of her own mother.

I had a hard time gaining traction when it comes to sympathizing with Mary Rose. I understand, even if I don’t know, that raising children can be hard, especially when your partner isn’t always around to help. I get that Mary Rose is exhausted and stressed and occasionally overwhelmed with all the different asks on her time. But she seemed determined to take the difficult path and to refuse the help of people around her. Conversations with Hilary that should have been sweet and routine quickly became battles in which Mary Rose validates her decision to be a stay-at-home mumma by asserting her fatigue. This portrayal and the frustration it causes for some readers are probably intentional on MacDonald’s part, and maybe I would have appreciated it more if I had found other things to enjoy about the book.

Alas, all I can say is that Adult Onset bummed me out, and not in a good or cathartic way. I tip-toed through the chapters with a sense of dread. MacDonald’s writing just seems to highlight the negatives here: Dolly’s encroaching senility and its parallels in Mary Rose’s forgetfulness; her parents’ dual homophobia when she first comes out; Mary Rose’s chronic inability to engage with the other mothers because of the age gap; the stuff with Daisy and the mail delivery; and, of course, Mary Rose’s actions verging on child abuse. This is third person stream of consciousness narration, and it just seems to jump from one negative fixation to another. This book probably needs a big ol’ trigger warning slapped on it.

As Mary Rose tries to tread the water of her life and ends up flailing, I’m just left wondering what I’m supposed to take away from it all. Being a child is hard? Growing up is hard? Mothering is hard? Loving is hard? We get it: life is hard. For all that MacDonald puts Mary Rose and her friends and family under a microscope for our examination, we get only those scenes and little else. This is a snapshot of a life, presented for our consideration, with little in the way of editorializing or endings. There isn’t so much a climax as a kaleidoscope of events affixed to a merry-go-round tour of Toronto. I just kept waiting for something to happen, but instead we get more plodding through day after day. It isn’t quite postmodern but it comes close.

This book strikes me as dithering between two paths like an uncollapsed wavefunction. It could seriously tackle issues of childhood abuse, domestic abuse, parenting, and relationships. Or it could take a more humorous tack, smile and wave at the bad while luxuriating in the essential goodness of family and community. Unfortunately, Adult Onset doesn’t ever seem to make up its mind about what sort of book it should be. It brings up serious issues, then skirts their edges and draws back, non-confrontational-like. It uses humour for highlights and shadows, but it also seems to want to be taken seriously.

The thing is that all of this seems intentional. MacDonald borrows a lot from her own life, from Mary Rose’s heritage and birthplace to her wife sharing an occupation as a theatre director with MacDonald’s wife. I don’t know (or care, really) the extent to which Mary Rose’s childhood and experiences parallel MacDonald’s. Regardless, the structure and style I’ve been criticizing are not accidental flaws. MacDonald is too careful and precise a writer for that. She has clearly tried something very different as a novel here, and it just didn’t work for me. Although I think there are some for whom this novel might work, I’m not chalking up my indifference solely to my own personality. Strive though she might to present an intriguing snapshot into this character’s life, MacDonald isn’t completely successful with this story. Adult Onset is an interesting yet flawed experiment, and those flaws chafed for me.

Fall On Your Knees is one of the few books that has a reasonable claim to being my “favourite book of all time” (such a nonsense idea that you could only have one favourite book). It is about as sublime and amazing as literature can get. I think I read The Way the Crow Flies when I was a teenager, but I don’t remember it at all, so I guess it wasn’t as impressive. I admit to some trepidation starting Adult Onset, wondering what would happen if I didn’t like it. Well, I didn’t like it. The world hasn’t ended. I’m OK with the fact that I absolutely love one of MacDonald’s novels and am lukewarm on another. It’s unfortunate, in the way that not liking a book by a talented author always is, but I’m going to recover. I mean, if you want to send me cards and chocolate (or more books), please feel free.