There’s a particular pleasure that comes with having read so much of an author’s oeuvre that you find yourself reaching deep into the back catalogue for new experiences. I love reading the less-celebrated or more obscure works by a famous author. Sometimes they are less-celebrated and more obscure for good reason! Sometimes, though, as with A Laodicean, they turn out to be undiscovered treasures!

I picked up this used copy at the same time I picked up a copy of The Pickwick Papers. I’ve been having this urge to re-read Bleak House but for some stubborn reason thought I should read a different Dickens first. So far Pickwick has proved impenetrable to me this year. It was thus with some trepidation I picked up Thomas Hardy’s book, because I wondered if I just wasn’t in the mood to work as hard as one must to translate these older works. I was so, so wrong. While it’s true that it takes a few sessions for my mind to adjust to the older language, Hardy is most emphatically not Dickens. Once you get past the recondite title and the heavy architectural jargon (and skip the pedantic introduction, obvs), you have what I can only describe as a pulp romance tale. It’s wonderful.

George Somerset is an architect at the beginning of his practice. On his ambles across the countryside he stumbles upon Stancy Castle, now in the possession of young heiress Paula Power. She engages him to draft plans for revitalizing and restoring the castle, even as they begin a vacillating dalliance—Paula is the “Laodicean” woman referred to by the title, for her indecisive nature in matters spiritual and temporal. Somerset finds himself beset with two rivals, one professional and one personal: Havill, a local architect; and William de Stancy, who is manoeuvred into pursuing this woman who now owns his ancestral home. Both are assisted, in ways sanctioned and not, by the enigmatic and villainous scoundrel William Dare, whose identity links him closely to the de Stancys. Somerset desperately wants to win Paula’s love and affection, but she is afraid of commitment—and the machinations of Dare, de Stancy, and Havill might prove to be a wedge too wide for them to overcome.

This book is just so delicious. It’s got intrigue. Dare is all about the falsified telegrams, the manipulated photos. You could totally take this story and adapt it to a modern-day romantic comedy, or even a Gossip Girl–style CW show—literally all of the ingredients are there. I thought I’d be getting a palate cleanser after reading some YA, but this is pretty much YA if the young adults weren’t quite so young any more. You could transplant this to high school if you wanted: young, rich woman stuck in a love triangle, not sure who to commit to, while other characters manipulate the situation from behind the scenes. Dare’s villainy really clinches this aspect of the plot for me. He will basically stop at nothing; Hardy makes him out to be a despicable wretch of a man who puts so much effort into obtaining money dishonestly instead of getting an honest job.

Somerset and Paula’s romance isn’t the greatest, but it isn’t the worst either. I like that the attraction is largely intellectual, or seems to be conducted upon that playing field. Paula appreciates Somerset’s architectural and historical knowledge, and his somewhat dissenting views from traditional religious and political dogma. Likewise, even the more physically capable military man of Captain de Stancy tries to impress Paula by sharpening and displaying his knowledge of European history and nobility. Paula herself is, like so many of Hardy’s other heroines, intelligent but also educated and possessive of a fierce sense of individual self-determination. She may be frustratingly indecisive, and perhaps to a modern reader, fickle—but I really empathized with the position she was in.

Hardy is, once again, attempting to subvert the ideas of Victorian society when it comes to how men and women should court one another and ultimately marry. A Laodicean feels very progressive given its time. And a lot of what happens in the romantic plot feels relevant in today’s heteronormative society as well. Men are encouraged to pursue women and to stick with it, even if she is “playing hard to get.” De Stancy and Somerset both exhibit this ruthless perseverance. The former is constantly pressing his suit, while the latter literally pursues Paula and company across continental Europe. Paula, however, pushes back. In one memorable scene, she and de Stancy have been hiking the countryside. He is about to launch into another speech about why he would be an awesome husband, when she chides him:

He again offered his arm, and from sheer necessity she leant upon it as before.

“Grant me but a moment’s patience,” he began.

“Captain de Stancy! Is this fair? I am physically obliged to hold your arm, so that I must listen to what you say!”

“No, it is not fair; upon my soul it is not!” said de Stancy. “I won’t say another word.”

I appreciate this portrayal, how Hardy shows de Stancy acknowledging his mistake and correcting his behaviour. For most of the story we’re supposed to see de Stancy as a somewhat likeable rival to the protagonist of Somerset, I expect—he is a noble figure. But the climax is supposed to reveal his true character, the way he has to choose between Paula and Dare and how his attitude suddenly becomes a mixture of imperious and pleading. It’s tempting to see this as inconsistent with his earlier character; on the contrary, it’s consistent with how Dare manipulates him throughout the book. De Stancy is noble but fairly weak-willed, according to Hardy: a good man easily led astray.

Indeed, the characters who surround this central love triangle are interesting in their own ways. Charlotte de Stancy finds herself in a quandary when she learns how Dare’s deceptions have prejudiced Paula against Somerset. Does she intervene, reveal the truth, dash her own brother’s hopes of marrying her best friend? Or does she keep it a secret, even though it means breaking apart two people she knows are well-suited for one another? I can’t say I’ve been quite in the same situation, but I can definitely sympathize with the difficulty of that choice. Close friendship of the kind between Paula and Charlotte often means having to make such choices—and also having to choose between what you want and what is best for your friend. Similarly, Havill is not quite a villain yet not an innocent either. He has a surprising amount of depth for a minor character.

The ending of A Laodicean is probably one of the reasons it hasn’t received more attention, I suppose. It’s a fairly rushed, unsatisfying, and predictable sequence of events. For modern readers who are familiar with the romantic comedy formula, it’s going to feel very, very familiar in a lot of ways. For Hardy’s readers I wonder if it felt less so—certainly, Paula’s change of heart and the actions she undertakes as a result seem quite bold and brash for a woman in her position. Her final words, which close out the book, are also somewhat enigmatic. As I read those in a bath on Sunday morning, I leaned back and pondered what Hardy might mean by them. In my opinion, he’s reminding us that love is not a panacea. Paula might be content with what she has decided, might love someone, but that doesn’t stop her from wishing things were different anyway. It’s a flawed and very human admission and quite an interesting way to end the book.

While by no means supplanting The Woodlanders or Tess as my favourite Hardy novels, A Laodicean was eminently enjoyable. It turned out to be exactly what I wanted to read right now, and it surprised me with its deftness of character and accessible, almost modern plot. Give me an adaptation!

Sherlock Holmes is arguably the most well-known fictional sleuth, but he's not my favourite. I prefer the deductive methods of Poirot. My problem with Conan Doyle's mysteries is that they usually hinge on a detail unknown the reader, thus making it very difficult for the reader to attempt to solve the mystery on his or her own.

So you’re fourteen years old, and you’re on a vision quest. It’ll be another hundred years or so before Europeans show up and tell your people that, actually, Turtle Island is going to be called “North America” and was empty before they showed up. But I digress. You want to get a vision so you can become a man, but this stupid turtle just won’t shut up … ohhhhh.

Meanwhile, you’re fourteen years old, and you’re walking along the train tracks, even though your dad told you not to, because who listens to their dad? He’s just a police officer with a totally rational fear of his kid getting hit by a train. You’re just minding your own business, avoiding a bully and saving a train from derailing because one of the tracks is out. You didn’t ask to meet Gathering Cloud and help him fight off a wendigo.

It’s always a pleasure to receive as a gift a good book that you would otherwise probably not know about. My friend Carly gave me Out of Time because she was intrigued by the promise of a time travel novel set on the shores of Lake Superior and including Anishinabe mythology. The lives of two fourteen-year-old boys from very different times and places collide, allowing them to work together to vanquish a monster and learn more about themselves in the process. It’s an adventure combined with an after-school special in that most Canadian of storytelling traditions.

Out of Time succeeds largely because David Laderoute keeps it simple. There’s a contained cast of characters, a clear enemy, and a clear goal. The plot is simple too, the arc almost predictable—but that doesn’t mean it’s unfulfilling. The way Laderoute allows the boys to defeat the wendigo temporarily, only for it to come back stronger and with a vengeance, is pretty clever. While the moments of moral clarity, as I want to call them, are a little heavy-handed, I think this is a common problem in YA (and maybe I’m wrong to call them a problem—maybe they should be this way, and it’s only my overexposure to Star Trek: The Next Generation that makes all this moral stuff look obvious to me).

Time travel gimmicks and cultural allusions aside, this is a novel about courage in the face of selfishness. It’s about being prepared to sacrifice, and about knowing when you need to stand up for others even if you’re going to get hurt in the process. It’s about choosing your battles, knowing when to wait instead of rushing forward, and always respecting and listening to the counsel of others. There is plenty of “message” here, but it’s paired with a fairly slick action-adventure. Moreover, the book generally avoids falling into any of the sundry sub-genres that seem to have sprung up in YA in the past decade: it’s not dystopian, or about gangs, or overly-concerned with high school and dating. There are no vampires, werewolves, angels, or ghosts here. Well maybe ghosts. And I’m not trying to disparage those sub-genres or tropes if they are your thing—but if they aren’t, then you’ll find Out of Time that refreshment you want.

And of course, as a Thunder Bay resident, there’s always the thrill of seeing one’s home turf portrayed in a book. In this case it’s the smaller, fictional community of Stone Harbour. But it feels very Thunder Bay at some moments, and that’s what matters.

Gathering Cloud and Riley are both viable, vivid protagonists. They are similar in a lot of ways, as energetic and inquisitive fourteen-year-old boys are wont to be. Laderoute points out their differences across time and culture but doesn’t belabour the point. Handwaving the magic of the time travel and the language barriers aside, there’s the right amount of confusion when the two first meet, and of course the hilarity of Cloud trying to navigate a world of telephones and trains. I sincerely hope that he didn’t catch any diseases while in our time. It would suck if he went back to the past only to communicate something to his entire tribe. We’re going to be optimistic here and say that didn’t happen…. Similarly, Laderoute doesn’t give us much perspective on whether Riley uses this as an opportunity to continue learning about First Nations beliefs and culture. Again, let’s be optimistic.

Although Out of Time features a creature of aboriginal myth as its antagonist, not to mention several other prominent spirits, it actually doesn’t portray any contemporary indigenous people. Riley attempts to pass Cloud off as “an aboriginal kid, you know, from the reserve up the highway,” a dubious proposition at best. And look, it’s great to increase the visibility of aboriginal culture, beliefs, and ideas in this way, and to show someone like Riley interacting positively with an indigenous person from any time. However, I just want to use this opportunity to point out that what we really need in our contemporary Canadian YA market are more books that feature relationships between white and indigenous youth. Moreover, with this approach Laderoute inadvertently perpetuates a common trope: Indigenous peoples are figures of the past and erased or invisible in our present.

Moreover, I think it’s worthwhile to question whether a story like this Laderoute’s to tell at all. From what I can gather from the biography at the end of the book, he does not identify as Indigenous. He mentions the work of Basil Johnston, noted Anishnaabe author and scholar, as a big influence and source of his knowledge. Stories about Indigenous people and their culture should be told by Indigenous people. That’s not to say you can’t include an Indigenous character in your work if you’re settler—but to take aspects of Indigenous culture, as Laderoute does here, and use it for the central plot, can easily become appropriative and irreverent. As a settler myself, however, it is not my call to make. I just want to raise the issue, since it is important to be mindful of these facts any time one reads works by settlers that feature a lot of Indigenous characters/concepts.

I could have done without the smaller-than-normal font size and the spacing between paragraphs. Conventions exist for a reason; break them at your peril. ’Nuff said!

Out of Time has a good plot and great pacing. Other than the protagonists, the rest of the cast isn’t very remarkable. I enjoyed that Jonah was more than a two-dimensional bully. However, your enjoyment of this book is largely going to come from whether you manage to care about Riley and/or Cloud and their battle against an evil spirit.

I’ll end off by saying that I am always a little more than sceptical when approaching books from small presses and by local authors. This probably isn’t fair of me, but I am only human. I’m trying really hard though to convey the fact that I enjoyed Out of Time. Neither the characters nor the subject matter happens to be what I typically read in YA (or elsewhere), despite the inclusion of stuff like time travel, so it’s hard to say this book excited me or left me tingling. All other things considered, though, it’s pretty good, and I’d recommend it if it sounds like something your speed.

In Daughter of Smoke and Bone, Laini Taylor introduced us to Karou, a blue-haired seventeen-year-old girl whose origins are far more fantastic than you could believe at first glance. She is a linchpin in a war between the angelic seraphim and the demonic chimarae of Eretz, a world parallel to Earth. At the end of the first book, Karou learns the secret behind her origins and abandons her on-again/off-again angelic lover Akiva to go to Eretz and try to find Brimstone. Instead she finds devastation and becomes drawn into a conflict in which both sides are more desperate than ever before.

My landlady makes a very apt comparison when she likens Days of Blood of Starlight to Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. This middle book of the trilogy is the dark before the dawn. Taylor seems to delight in dealing reversal after reversal to the protagonists, building them up and tearing them down. Thanks to the feat of resurrection, there are even cases analogous to Han getting frozen in carbonite. If the first book was Karou Skywalker learning that there is a war going on and she is its only hope (her name), then this book is Karou and her allies struggling against a far more powerful enemy. The odds are harsh, the stakes are high, and it’s hard to see any kind of endgame in sight. This is particularly true for Karou, because she isn’t a very good strategist. It’s as if a seventeen-year-old who has just learned of Eretz, the war, and her own chimeric origins is having trouble determining the best course of action.

Karou ends up working for the manipulative and self-absorbed Thiago, the White Wolf, creating new, winged bodies for the few chimerae soldiers who escaped the massacre in Eretz. She regrets how this turn of events places her in Thiago’s power, how she is viewed as a traitor to her people by the same soldiers she restores to newer, better, more monstrous bodies. Yet she feels loyal to these people, powerless to do anything except continue to prosecute a hopeless war. Taylor establishes from the outset that this a story with many shades of grey. It’s easy for the observer to sit back and pass judgement on characters like Thiago, who is truly reprehensible—but in Karou’s place, I’m not sure I’d do anything differently. Although she has begun to regain her memories of life as Madrigal, she is still also seventeen years old. As with the first book, Taylor avoids turning Karou into a prophesied chosen one or Mary Sue. She is fallible and vulnerable, and it isn’t fate that tempers her but the hope that so many others have placed in her. Days of Blood and Starlight is the story of Karou moving past her split identity to realize that, if she truly wants to succeed and to change Eretz for the better, she needs to stop reacting to what others do and start acting to reframe things in a different light. Eretz has known war for too long.

We become much better acquainted with the cultures of the chimerae and the seraphim in this book. The former are battered and nearly beaten: with the army almost exterminated, “free chimerae” is becoming an obsolete term in Eretz. Taylor symbolizes the desperation of the few remaining soldiers in the fierce new bodies that Karou forges for them: with each iteration, they seem to lose further human characteristics in favour of the destructive capabilities of animal features. As Karou herself reflects, she is complicit in transforming her people into the very monsters and beasts the seraphim view them as. The irony is not lost on her, but that doesn’t make it any less devastating.

The seraphim are not much better off. Soldiers like Akiva, so used to following orders without question, are beginning to have second thoughts. I remember back when reading the first book that I was so intrigued when the angels started showing up. Until Taylor dispelled the connection between the seraphim and Christian mythology, I was really looking forward to discovering why God was sending angels around to close up portals. But God had nothing to do with it. All the seraphim have is a cruel, tyrannical emperor. For all their angelic appearance, they are nowhere near enlightenment. They are just as divisive, violent, and brutal as any human culture.

In fact, the seraphim—and my evolving perspective on them—remind me a lot of the angels on Supernatural. When the angels first entered the picture in season 4, they were awesome. Demons didn’t stand a chance against them. They seemed to have nearly limitless power. And, of course, they were representatives of God. As that season, and then the show, progressed, it became clear that the angels were not unified and did not have the best interests of humanity in mind. God had abandoned them—along with the whole of Creation, it seemed—and they were disillusioned enough that they welcomed an apocalypse. Since then, the angels have lurched from one bloody conflict to another, revealing themselves to be as flawed and imperfect as the humans they sneered at for so long.

Akiva’s arc mirrors Karou’s: he too is torn between loyalty to his people and his desire for a future of all Eretz. So he begins recruiting allies and trading in truly seditious thoughts, like killing daddy emperor. And, like Karou, his inexperience in these matters leads him to be manipulated and out-maneouvred. It’s arguable that he has actually made matters much worse by the end of Days of Blood and Starlight.

The ending is definitely the best part of the book. As Karou and Akiva come together again, both worlds hang in the balance. Karou has undertaken a risky deception. Akiva has slain an emperor only to find himself a pawn in the scheme of his uncle, Jael, who now seeks to reveal the seraphim to humanity and obtain human weapons of mass destruction. Together, these two would-be peacemakers have united a slim faction of chimerae and seraphim. It is a tenuous alliance fraught with tension and bad blood; a single spark and it could go up in flames. Somehow, they need to convince an entire world of warring demons and angels to make peace. Good luck with that.

I’m very intrigued to see what happens now that the seraphim are treating with humanity. I feel sorry for the inhabitants of Eretz if they manage to frighten human authorities enough to nuke Eretz through the portals. That wouldn’t be pretty. When it comes to violence and persecution, the seraphim and chimerae create some tough competition, but humans still manage to outstrip them. Although Jael believes that humans will welcome the seraphim with open arms, I’m willing to bet that their reception will be more complicated than that. So far, Taylor hasn’t failed to deliver on complex, multi-layered plot developments, so I’m anticipating a great deal from the third book.

Days of Blood and Starlight provides confirmation that Taylor is a strong voice in young adult fiction (though I’d argue that, in this book, the story definitely transcends any such age label and is, simply, good fantasy fiction). Daughter of Smoke and Bone was not a fluke. If fantasy is your thing, don’t miss out on this series.

My reviews of the Daughter of Smoke and Bone series:
← Daughter of Smoke and Bone | Dreams of Gods and Monsters →

I have a soft spot for urban fantasy in which there is “another” world within our own world—Neverwhere comes to mind as a good example. I think it speaks to the reader in me; for someone who inhales escapist fiction, the prospect that any door could potentially be a portal to another place is just … intoxicating. Daughter of Smoke and Bone capitalizes on this idea. Karou is the human adopted daughter of a demonic being called Brimstone. He trades wishes for teeth—human teeth, animal teeth, doesn’t matter. His shop opens onto doors all across the world. But there are so many things Karou doesn’t know about Brimstone or his world.

Laini Taylor says she writes “books for young people”, and Daughter of Smoke and Bone does indeed have a “young adult” feel to it. Voracious readers of YA literature might be excused for not recognizing this feeling, however, because the recent explosion in YA might have deadened their sensitivity to what good young adult fiction is. Compared to a good deal of YA on the market, this is a lot more mature in how it deals with its subject matter. Karou is neither innocent nor helpless nor, indeed, the chosen one. She’s lost her virginity; she draws men naked; she travels across the world, risking further bullet wounds, to collect teeth from Brimstone’s traders. But she isn’t going to be taking down a dystopian society any time soon, thank goodness.

I suppose at this point I should mention that I read this book in a single sitting, something I almost never do. (I don’t mind reading books in a single day, but I prefer to get up, take a break, and distract myself with something else for a while.) I brought it with me to the eye clinic, but because I’m an idiot, I showed up at 1:40 instead of 3:40, when my appointment was actually scheduled. So I had two hours to kill in the waiting room instead of, say, twenty minutes (and then it was another hour after that before I actually saw a doctor, although I was done the book by then). So I buried my nose in Daughter of Smoke and Bone with the kind of intense concentration one can only acquire when one wishes to block out the depressing hush of the hospital waiting room. And I ripped through it, and enjoyed it.

The book engages in some interesting contortions as the story evolves. From a simple tale about Karou’s attempts to balance her human life with her role as an errand-runner for Brimstone, the story expands to encompass an all-out war between angels and demons. As Karou gleans more information about the conflict in Eretz, she also gets closer to the truth of her own origins, which are shrouded in mystery for her. She meets Akiva, an angel on the cusp of turning renegade, and their reunion proves most interesting indeed.

Despite these changes in tone and pace, I found myself enjoying each of these new parts of the book in turn. I loved meeting Brimstone and Issa and the others for the first time. I enjoyed seeing the parallels between Karou’s interaction with her family and her arm’s length interactions with her friends. She is a very careful woman, one who knows from experience as well as story that she should not reveal too much. Beneath this veneer of wisdom, however, lurks the self-centred impatience of a teenager, as demonstrated by her newfound pleasure with wishing itching.

After Karou gets cut off from Brimstone, the focus on the mystery of her origins intensifies. Until then, Karou knew almost nothing about the wider supernatural world of Elsewhere. She had no idea whether Brimstone was unique or part of a supernatural species. He never answered such questions, thrusting her instead into an almost-but-not-quite normal human existence. And while she has the option to embrace that existence totally after her access to Brimstone’s shop is cut off, she chooses instead to pursue a dangerous path towards self-discovery.

Because she’s, you know, a capable protagonist in her own right who doesn’t need to wait around for her boyfriend/love interest/plot-driving male companion. There are no extended training montages to showcase Karou’s natural skills. There are no lengthy conversations about how Karou is “different” or “special” and therefore destined to be the one to change everything. No, she goes off to Marrakesh, makes a deal with a twisted Fallen angel, and then goes on a rampage to collect wishes.

The only squicky part of Daughter of Smoke and Bone is the budding romance between Akiva and Karou. Now, he is a fifty-year-old seraphim, and she is a seventeen-year-old human. So there is an age gap there. But it’s cool because of the truth behind Karou’s existence (without spoiling it, she is special to Akiva and Brimstone and other individuals, but she isn’t special in the sense of being a “chosen one”, which is a relief). Indeed, Karou’s existence is inextricably tied to something that gives Brimstone’s people an edge in the angel/demon war—an edge that just barely keeps them from capitulating. It’s this edge that Akiva was sent to eliminate by cutting off Brimstone’s shop from the human world, and in so doing, he finds Karou and recognizes in her something familiar.

I’m ambivalent about the middle part of the book, in which Taylor flashes back to life before Karou and events leading up to her adoption by Brimstone. In revealing the details of life for the chimerae, she almost makes them seem … pedestrian. Some of that spark of magic that comes from being otherworldly and different fades as one realizes that the chimerae and seraphim are, actually, just as flawed as human beings—just with slightly different technologies for waging war and body plans.

Indeed, it’s not entirely clear what effects, if any, the war in Eretz has on the human world. I don’t know if that’s something explored in later books. Here, though, it seems like the war is nearly entirely self-contained. Aside from Brimstone’s interaction with procurers of teeth and the incursion of Akiva and his two angel brethren to mark and destroy Brimstone’s portals, it sounds like the seraphim and chimerae both give Earth a wide berth. Again, this is a refreshing change from YA fantasy that places the fate of humanity and the Earth in the hands of our protagonist, who is usually squaring off against a sinister and evil antagonist that might or might not have once been a trusted friend.

Rather, the conflict in Daughter of Smoke and Bone is not of Karou’s making, but she must decide whether or not to join up. (Spoiler: guess what she chooses?) And thanks to past events and her own present choices, she is now in a special position … but whether anything will come of that, whether she and Akiva can succeed, is up in the air. (Literally. The story ends with them ascending into a portal in the air.)

Daughter of Smoke and Bone is an entertaining and refreshing voice in young adult fantasy. Karou is a capable protagonist whose choices drive the plot. The world Taylor creates enchants the fantasy fan in me, and I definitely want to learn more about it. While there is a sappy romance subplot, Taylor manages to integrate it into the overall story in such a way that it doesn’t feel bolted-on; it is, in fact, rather necessary. If the other two volumes of this trilogy can deliver the same quality of storytelling, then I’m looking forward to them indeed.

My reviews of the Daughter of Smoke & Bone series:
Days of Blood and Starlight →

There’s a boy, and a bear, and they are on a boat. No, not “on a boat”. Actually, more kind of in a boat. A rowboat. Named Harriet.

Bears are not cuddly. They are ferocious wild animals that really just want to be left alone, to roam through the wild and eat fish and have bear sex. So I’m not quite sure how we went from bears mauling people to teddy bears and anthropomorphic bears who wear boots or hang around with that Christopher Robin kid. I wonder if there is a middle, transition state out there somewhere … a kind of supercharged Pooh Bear on steroids, looking to defend his territory and steal your camp food.

Huh. I just Googled for that last thing, and … I don’t recommend that you do the same. I am now scarred for life.

Literature has a long, rich history of irresponsible parents letting boys get into boats captained by a vicious animal. (Yes, I maintain both that one book constitutes a tradition and that Richard Parker was the captain of that lifeboat. Because he totally was.) My initial reaction was, “Gee, I wonder when this boy will be eaten?” What followed was a long series of suspenseful events in which Dave Shelton expertly manipulated this expectation to the point where I was completely hooked.

First there was the sandwich debacle. The boy wakes up after dozing off only to find it’s the next day, and instead of arriving at their destination, they are lost. Well, he thinks they are lost. Captain Bear insists they are not—but you can’t trust a bear to read a map, because bears can’t read. Everyone knows this. Also, as it turns out, the map is actually just a massive blue rectangle with a grid system overlaid. The bear has several such maps, one of which has a rock marked on it. I can only assume that the bear hired a particularly lazy cartographer. Or perhaps just one who wasn’t very good.

So the boy and the bear are lost, with their boat. They use up their provisions until they are down to the Very Last Sandwich (capitalization not mine). It’s not a very appealing sandwich, so they lock it in a lunchbox, until it escapes. It then becomes Chekov’s Very Last Sandwich, in the sense that it reappears later in the book to wreak further havoc and destruction. Meanwhile, the boy and the bear need to resort to some creative fishing to survive, which lands them in a different sort of trouble. As the hazards mount and their relationship deteriorates, it starts to look like the boy and the bear will never get home.

There is never a dull moment in this book, despite the boy’s protests to the contrary. And accompanying these action-packed paragraphs are pages of beautiful illustrations from Shelton himself. Indeed, though the story itself is a little simplistic, the illustrations definitely augment it. Everything from the boy’s grumpy looks to the bear’s particular sense of detached bumbling comes alive in Shelton’s hand.

Considering its audience, I suppose this is a satisfying book. I think it could overstay its welcome, and Shelton doesn’t always raise the stakes; he merely changes them. The boy and the bear aren’t on an adventure or a quest so much as a series of unforeseen events, and while it’s an entertaining read, at the end there isn’t really much of a sense of accomplishment. Perhaps it’s true that the boy learned something. But we’ll never know, of course, since the bear ate him.

Kidding.

I can only express some disappointment that A Boy and a Bear on a Boat is rather lonely among this year’s Carnegie nominees. I’d like to pitch my tent behind this endearing little tale, but there really are just a few other novels that captured my attention more, if only because they are for the older crowd. This is monumentally unfair, and I expect that Shelton would be entirely justified in dispatching his crack team of aqua-bears to dispose of me. If you’re reading this with someone among the target audience, I suspect you’ll enjoy it. And it could make for an interesting conversation starter, especially with the cliffhangers that Shelton often uses to end his chapters. This book isn’t quite in my wheelhouse, but I enjoyed it anyway, and you might be surprised too.

It’s hard to describe or summarize this book. Educated is a memoir about growing up in rural Idaho to very religious parents who do not trust public education or the medical establishment. Westover’s father believes that the end of days will be on them soon, and he takes prepping to an extreme. Consequently, most of the family never goes to high school. As Westover watches some of her siblings leave home, either to college or ventures of their own, she wonders what is out there for her. But she and the remaining children at Buck’s Peak must first endure many more years of abusive or negligent behaviour, until eventually Westover makes it into Brigham Young University and beyond.

But this makes it sound like Educated is a journey of self-actualization and escape. Instead, what becomes so tragically apparent is that it is very difficult to escape from one’s family, even when one has physically removed oneself from their control. Westover’s narrative structure will be familiar to other abuse survivors. For others, I suspect this is a book that we will all try to read into based on our own biases. Libertarians will see the triumph of an individual who pulls herself out of a situation on her own (she doesn’t—she gets a lot of help along the way and is in fact incredibly privileged in the opportunities that fall into her lap). In contrast, I see the failure of systems.

The American healthcare system is just so broken, I won’t go into all the details here. But the failure of the system to recognize midwifery, driving Westover’s mother and other women like her underground pretty much, is one factor. The exorbitant cost of American healthcare is another—whether it’s physical care after debilitating accidents (so many accidents in this book) or mental care for issues like bipolar disorder, which Westover eventually speculates might be a factor in her father’s irregular behaviour. And, while I’m not opposed to homeschooling in principle, the failure of a child welfare system to check in on children supposedly being homeschooled is another factor in this tale.

Westover’s story is intense and inspiring, for sure, and she should be commended for all the obstacles she has navigated throughout her life. Yet for all the Tara Westovers who worked hard and received help rising above these issues, there are so many people who did not escape, people like Tara’s pseudonymous sister, Audrey, or even her brother Shawn (who himself needs some help).

This is a difficult book to read. Westover recounts what she remembers, backed by her journals and consulting with people who were there, with as little editorializing as possible. She often speculates about people’s intentions but tries to avoid moralizing about it. She wants you to understand where she is coming from, as clearly as possible, without injecting too much hindsight bias. So we experience, over and over, the repetitive traumas of Westover’s life. The car accidents. The child labour accidents. The emotional abuse and manipulation. The stunting of emotional and psychological growth—when Westover finally makes it to university and realizes how little of the outside world she has been exposed to, it’s heartbreaking all over again.

As disturbing as Westover’s childhood is, it’s her experiences after leaving Buck’s Peak that really resonated for me. I teach adults who are trying to achieve their high school diploma. Most of them do not come from such an extreme background as Westover, but all of them have some trauma in their past that contributed to them not graduating as a teenager. So when Westover talks about having to choose between books or food, about not knowing how she will have the money for another term, about considering dropping out, over and over … oh man, I feel that. I never had to go through that myself, because I am privileged, but I have seen students struggle with that. I have seen parents drop out of my classes because they don’t have reliable childcare. Students drop out because they need to work instead to pay the bills. People who have so much grit, so much potential, who are being told once more they have to delay bettering themselves just to survive. I can’t imagine how having to deal with manipulative parents on top of that would work.

Like many stories about overcoming abusive relationships, Educated demonstrates how it is easy to fall back into the same destructive cycles even when one knows they are destructive. Most of the criticism of this book feels so rote and predictable at this point: why didn’t she leave sooner, why did she go back, why didn’t she stay away from Shawn if his behaviour was so vicious, how could she be so successful if she didn’t go to school…? People are incredulous because it just sounds unbelievable, if one hasn’t experienced it oneself. People don’t want to believe that it happens, want to believe that if you are just “strong enough” you can pull yourself out of any situation. And that is not true. There are so many moments in this book where Westover isn’t strong enough—and there are so many moments where she is strong enough, but the timing or something else means she can’t quite pull away.

One of my favourite moments of the book actually isn’t something Westover does but her sometime-boyfriend Charlie. He leaves:

We met one final time, in a field off the highway. Buck’s Peak loomed over us. He said he loved me but this was over his head. He couldn’t save me. Only I could.

I had no idea what he was talking about.

Obviously now, looking back and writing that, Westover does understand. Smart boy, that Charlie. Too often those of us who are around people experiencing abuse fall into a saviour mentality—and that is not healthy for anybody involved. I was very impressed to see such a young person recognize that he couldn’t swoop in and save Westover from that life. And I hope that, in modelling that behaviour for her, Charlie helped Tara understand something important about her own life and her role vis-à-vis her siblings or friends in similar situations.

Because however you slice it, it’s complicated. Yes, Westover’s parents abuse her and neglect her. But they also love her. They believe what they are doing is best for her, what they are doing is right. Some of her father’s behaviour could be a result of mental illness. Some of it is ignorance or misguided religiosity. Whatever the case, I totally understand why it takes Westover so long to extricate herself from their influence—because at the end of the day, they are not solely this negative, draining force in her life. People and relationships are seldom black-and-white, good-or-evil, positive-or-negative, and these relationships are no exception.

Another criticism I encountered as I read reviews of this book is that Educated is beautiful but ultimately fails to have an overall point or message. It’s just a recounting of family drama. Westover doesn’t actually explain what she is doing now, where she is going from here. She hasn’t fully healed or moved on; she isn’t ready to write this. All of these things may be true, but I fail to see how they are criticisms, given that this is a memoir. Memoirs don’t need points or messages … that sounds like a marketing gimmick. And I think that’s the problem—this book might have been marketed to some as this big exposé of what ultra-religious and isolated parenting might do to someone, and I don’t think that’s this book at all. This is an incredibly personal story, and as such, it’s neither perfect nor is it supposed to represent some powerful point.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I find it hard to be too hard on Educated and Tara Westover. It would be different if she were writing a political manifesto or if this were actually a book syncretizing 19th-century philosophy and Mormonism. It is neither of those things. This is a story of one woman growing up in an unhealthy household. It is raw, and it is flawed, and no, the book itself is not perfect, and yes, it is painful at times. This is not the end-all, be-all of memoirs or stories of abuse, nor could it ever be. So in that respect, I guess Educated might become a victim of its own positive hype. In reality, this is not an amazing book, and I don’t see why we have any right to expect it to be, beyond the inflated expectations conveyed by rave reviews.

This is a story. It’s one person’s story, one person’s personal story, and it is going to be biased and inaccurate and sometimes it won’t deliver the closure we demand of our narratives. Beyond that, though, what matters is whether or not Educated captures Westover’s own feelings about what she experienced and endured. Does it communicate to us her understanding of her life and her upbringing? Yes. It is one story, another story of abuse among so many others already out there, for us to read and consider as we ponder how we can improve this society we’ve built.

Time loops. An English country house murder mystery. Shifting identities and allegiances. Yes please. The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle has so many things that attract me to a novel. For the most part, Stuart Turton’s execution kept me riveted: I inhaled this book over the course of two days, stopping only because I really did need to sleep.

A man comes to consciousness in the middle of a forest. All he remembers is the name Anna. He feels he is being pursued by a killer. Convinced this Anna is the killer’s victim, he stumbles back into the country house where he is apparently a guest. Told his name is Sebastian Bell, he awkwardly makes it through the day only to wake up in the body of another person the next day … and so goes the life of Aiden Bishop, as he eventually learns is his real name. Aiden must solve the murder of the eponymous Evelyn, inhabiting the bodies of eight people in Blackheath over eight consecutive days. But he is not the only one trapped within this strange time loop: there is a footman hunting him, and the mysterious Anna, who might be friend or foe. Pulling the strings like the director of a macabre play is none other than an elusive man dressed as a medieval plague doctor. Aiden chafes at these rules, and moreover, he decides he doesn’t just want to solve Evelyn’s murder: he wants to prevent it.

Let’s get one thing out of the way: as far as a mystery goes in the Agathe Christie style, this is neither clever nor original. It’s extremely straightforward and pretty obvious, for the most part (there are a couple of over-the-top cases of mistaken identity or paternity that feels a little bit more Shakespearean than anything). To be fair to Turton, this is for the best: if the mystery itself were too clever, that would overshadow and diminish the science-fiction conceits of the book.

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle feels rather like an episode of The Outer Limits. Turton carefully limits the amount of exposition around Aiden’s situation. This allows us to deduce things along with Aiden as far as the rules of the game go. By having Aiden awake in a new host’s body each day, Turton ups the ante from your regular, Groundhog Day-style time loop. The same goes for Aiden’s frenemies who have similar knowledge of the time loop. I particularly like how, as the week elapses, the barrier between Aiden’s personality and that of his host’s diminishes to the point where he struggles to resist or control his host’s impulses….

In this way, this is a very character-driven novel. Sometimes these types of mysteries result in a lot of stock characters, you know? By having Aiden inhabit at least eight of these people, though, Turton forces himself to really develop a careful backstory for so many of these characters. Hence, while we never actually meet Sebastian Bell or any of Aiden’s other hosts, we learn a lot about their lives—and how they are connected to the tragedies at Blackheath—than we would if Aiden were just present as himself, or as a single character. Turton remains true to the trope common to this subgenre (most subgenres?) of mystery: everyone has something to hide. Everyone has skeletons in their closet.

When we learn more details about how long Aiden has been inhabiting this loop, we also learn more about Aiden himself—as well as who he might be becoming. Turton presents for us a character study of one man, albeit through a very unusual lens. Each host reveals different facets of Aiden’s personality, and if the Plague Doctor is to be believed, Aiden himself has been changed by this experience.

As far as the ending goes, well….

I liked the ending overall. I had my dad read this before I got to it, and he didn’t like the ending too much—he thought it was contrived, a happily-ever-after thing stuck on awkwardly. I see where he’s coming from. Nevertheless, I like the postmodern ambiguity. I like that Turton doesn’t spend any time trying to show us the world outside the time loop, or resolve what happens after the time loop is over. Any of that would draw attention away from the mystery of Blackheath, which is the story.

My one qualm would be that I’m not sure I agree with Aiden about Anna. Not so much whether or not she has changed—more so, I disagree that Aiden has the authority or knowledge to make that kind of determination. Perhaps the most jarring, fascinating moment of this entire book happens somewhere in the last act. Aiden observes that, by waking first in the body of Sebastian Bell and having a very positive interaction with Evelyn, he becomes predisposed to liking her. Some of his subsequent hosts are very poorly treated by her, either through cold indifference or outright hostility. He remarks that, had any of those encounters been his first impressions of Evelyn, perhaps he would not feel so much sympathy towards her or want to save her so much. It’s kind of an “oh damn” moment where we get reminded of how important the order of events is to our lives.

That’s probably why I like this book so much: Turton’s mastery of the time loop structure, the subtle ways in which he allows Aiden to manipulate it, is great. I’m not really concerned with whether or not this book is as original as some people say. Nor am I overly concerned about whether or not it holds up as a mystery or as a science fiction thought experiment or even whether the ending is good. Time travel books are really hard, and to be honest, a lot of them have plot holes and dangly bits. I love Doctor Who, after all—I’m not going to be too hard on this one.

Read this with a full cup of tea and an open mind ready to be blown, and you probably won’t be disappointed.

I made it through four or five of the “episodes” of The Witch Who Came in from the Cold over several days. Then I looked at how much more of the book I had left to go. I looked at my colleague, who has been reading very, very long, semi-serialized work on places like Wattpad. And I gave her this book, having not finished it, because I think she might like it more than I did.

There is nothing wrong or objectionable about this book. It just didn’t work for me. The plot was unspooling too slowly for my tastes. The main characters didn’t really speak to me. Often, depending on the author of each episode, the writing was a little too simplistic or sparse. I enjoy reading Russian-inspired tales of espionage, but this didn’t do it.

I live in Thunder Bay, the place of the eponymous sleeping giant, Nanabozho, and a location steeped in anti-Indigenous racism and an ongoing legacy of colonial oppression. So, despite being a white settler and thus the privileged party here, I do have to deal with these issues—and like other settler Canadians, I’ve got a tremendous responsibility here. I picked up The Sleeping Giant Awakens: Genocide, Indian Residential Schools, and the Challenge of Conciliation because I was intrigued by David B. MacDonald’s promise to engage with the legacy of residential schools from the perspective of legalist interpretations of genocide. Sure enough, the book remains focused and on-topic, encouraging the reader to think critically about our concept of the Canadian state and Canada’s identity.

The Sleeping Giant Awakens benefits from being hot off the presses from my perspective as a reader in August 2019. It went to print recently enough to mention the resignation of Jody Wilson-Raybould over the SNC Lavalin affair, for example. So it is incredibly up to date in its discussion of all of these issues, which is important, because while it’s true that successive governments have continued the legacy of colonialist, paternalist attitudes towards Indigenous peoples, it’s worth examining the most recent such examples. Justin Trudeau’s Liberal party came to power making big promises regarding a nation-to-nation relationship with First Nations and … that has not come to fruition. Not even close. But that’s how the cycle goes: governments make positive, encouraging noises, then walk back those promises, because at the end of the day the rest of Canada is happy enough to ignore these issues.

MacDonald does not mince words here, which I respect. He is highly critical of the Government of Canada (past and present), particularly in its highly selective and creative enshrining of the United Nations Genocide Convention into the Criminal Code of Canada. Similarly, he wastes no time excusing or apologizing for the government’s tendency to fight in court, with taxpayer dollars, things like human rights tribunal rulings. MacDonald is pretty careful in how he approaches these issues and his tone, however. He’s upfront about his background as a racialized settler Canadian and how that means that much of this isn’t his story to tell. Instead of communicating his feelings about these issues, he quotes people who are much closer to this: Survivors, their family members, TRC commissioners, etc. MacDonald argues that while we settlers are not disinterested parties, we are the parties who should do the learning.

He also engages directly with several other writers, often critiquing their positions. For example, he criticizes J.R. Miller for rejecting the label of genocide in his book on residential schools, which I read back when it came out. As someone not embedded in this academic field of study a lot of this intertextuality goes above my head; I’m not part of this fray. It’s very interesting, though, to see different thinkers engage with one another in this way. I don’t really know enough about this subject to analyze whether MacDonald’s critiques are valid.

I guess what I’m trying to get out of this book, and others like it, is a much more nuanced understanding of what’s going on right now in our society. That is to say, I’m past the basics. I understand what residential schools were. I accept that they are part of a much larger colonial framework of assimilation and, yes, genocide. But if we take all of these as givens, where do we go from there? The Sleeping Giant Awakens is interesting because it grounds a lot of this thinking in very concrete, very specific legal documents and precedents. Nevertheless, don’t let that scare you away: the book remains accessible to us laypeople.

At the end of the day, whatever position you personally take on the definition of genocide and its applicability here, I’d say this book is worth reading for the level of detail alone. Yes, this book is about genocide and residential schools. It’s about identifying how we can achieve “conciliation” (as opposed to reconciliation, and yes, I feel like we’re now playing buzzword musical chairs, but whatever)—but I think it goes deeper than that. Ultimately, The Sleeping Giant Awakens challenges the complacent cultural narrative we have of Canada as a “good” country for some vague, white-bread definition of good. This is what you see when the Prime Minister pats himself on the back for his latest announcement. When our textbooks laud our international peace-keeping efforts but don’t mention our arms deals to places like Saudi Arabia. When we pretend we don’t have a history of colonialism despite the ongoing oppression of Indigenous peoples here.

It’s not enough to be “woke” in the sense of knowing what the issues are. If you acknowledge these issues are real, that this oppression is really causing harm, then it follows that you should be considering what actions must be taken to change things. We can disagree on what those actions should be, but if we aren’t considering action at all … we’re still asleep.

So for those reasons, The Sleeping Giant Awakens was pretty good. Honestly, I’m not sure it’s going to be as informative or eye-opening for people who are only starting their learning when it comes to residential schools. MacDonald intentionally avoids going too deep into the details of the system. He hits the highlights, talks about Duncan Campbell Scott, etc. But if this is your starting point, you might be disappointed by his focus more on the aftermath and the behind-the-scenes view of the TRC’s decision to use the phrase “cultural genocide.” This book does not stand alone as an all-encompassing examination of residential schools (nor do I think for a moment it intends to). If, however, like me you’re looking to get deeper and to challenge your thinking some more, you’d do well to read this.