thebacklistborrower's Reviews (570)

 House of Anansi advertised this gorgeous reprint during Black History month, and I just had to get it. Between the title, and the cover (and I love A-List prints), I knew I needed to read it, and have it. 

This is a collection of short stories that take place in Barbados, and Toronto, and are about the experiences of leaving home in search of a new one, as well as the racism that immigrants face on arrival in Canada. What I really liked is the short stories all had the same cast of characters in them, so over the course of the book I felt like I got to know them all somewhat. 

I loved the tone and style employed by Clarke in this book. The stories were very descriptive of the emotional and physical environment of the characters, and the turns of phrases used were beautiful, heartbreaking, and perfect. I found myself underlining so many sentences, descriptions, and sparklets, and still left so many hidden on the page to find on my next read through. If you are a reader who appreciates beautiful language, pick up this book.

I think my favourite story was “They Heard a Ringing of Bells”, simply about a trio sitting in some grass to hear church bells ringing. One is being deported back to Barbados, and the other is dying of TB. It was the second in the book and was so simple in its story, but so much was packed in that it really showed me what Clarke was capable of. Two others that really stuck with me was “A Wedding in Toronto” and “What Happened”, the first about an interracial couple’s wedding, not attended by the bride’s family and broken up by the police. The latter is about the husband coming to terms with his wife’s racism, previously hidden behind “appreciation”, but which was truly exoticization and fetishization, but how he still loves her. 

Each of these stories weave together a community, telling stories of their life in Canada and Barbados, finding love and success, or not, and each densely packed with feeling. After reading this book, I can’t wait to get to the other two Clarke books on my TBR. 

Before the Coffee Gets Cold is a fantasy realism novel about a 10-seat cafe in a back alley of Tokyo that lets you travel back in time (with many rules). The book is divided into four parts, each following the story of somebody who travels back in time to face their past. A young woman visits a man the day they broke up, a wife visits her husband before Alzheimer’s took him from her, two sisters visit one last time, and a mother visits her daughter.

Originally a screenplay, the book reads as one. Entrances and exits are prominent, tone, sounds, and movements are exaggerated. I think knowing this improved the experience of reading the book, and overall I enjoyed the stories.

What I really liked about this book were the rules to travelling in time: only one seat in the cafe sends you back in time, you can only visit people who have visited the cafe, you cannot leave your seat, you must return before your coffee gets cold, and nothing you do will change the present. To me, this was an incredibly unique take on time travel, and raises interesting points as to why the various people travel to the past. If you can’t change anything, why bother? Each struggle with the question in their own way and come to justify it for their own reasons. 

I’d recommend this book to people who enjoy emotional books, or fantasy realism. If somebody is a big sci-fi nerd who wants to read about the mechanics and theory of the particular type of time travel, they will be disappointed. However, as somebody who knows a lot of time travel mechanics and “physics”, I enjoyed imagining how it all worked and didn’t feel this was a gap in the story at all. 

Instead of mechanical details, there was a deep level of physical and emotional detail in the book, from the character's movements to their internal thought processes. It made the book very immersive and I felt very connected to the characters and the space, but it never felt heavy or exhausting. This is a great lighter read for people looking for an escape.

 

Tatouine is a stream-of-conciousness novel set inside the mind of an unnamed twentyish man with cystic fibrosis who goes about his life. He gets jobs, leaves jobs, sees his sister, has a romantic interest, changes rentals, takes his drugs, struggles with writer’s block, and makes more than one trip to the hospital. The author himself is a poet and has CF, and this was his first novel.

The moment-to-moment thoughts were sometimes hard to sit with. He is just so lonely, and some of his thoughts so dark. But, he also has a certain amount of levity, a humorously perverse way of seeing the world, and the way people interact with him, that I didn't often find myself putting the book down. I actually found his consciousness fairly easy to fall into, and I would just go with it through its eddies and falls, and as a result read the book much faster than I expected to. I think this book would have brought some AMAZING discussion to Canada Reads had it made the short list. The narrator is constantly escaping, and in so many different ways. With imagination, with alcohol, and just sometimes physically moving himself out of a situation. 

The narrator also shows what life with chronic illness is like: literally everybody else’s, but with a bunch of other crap tossed in. How do you hold down a job when you might have to unexpectedly take 3 weeks off? Then how do you pay rent? Even through tender moments, like a new girlfriend waking him up, alarmed by his breathing. 

Overall, I enjoyed this novel. I couldn’t help but hope for the narrator’s life to change. For something to work out for him. For him to get the help he needs. For him to not push away people who cared for him. I also knew none of that would happen, but to witness and to hope kept me going through.

 On the Canada Reads longlist, and billed as a “Quebecois Bridget Jones’s Diary”, I had high hopes for this book, and proposed it as a read to my book club. Unfortunately, it didn’t really land for us. 

Autopsy of a Boring Wife follows Diane after her husband leaves her, citing he was “bored”, and had been having an affair with a younger woman. With her children grown and gone, and on her own, Diane falls apart, barely holding it together.

Diane goes through many of the oldest cliches of the post-breakup trope: wild lifestyle changes (dying hair, taking up running), taking a LITERAL sledgehammer to furniture and the house (repeatedly), and drinking white wine with friends. A book with “autopsy” in the title should be expected to be full of introspection into what went wrong, what could have been done differently, and strong character growth. However, while Diane does go to therapy, and could be said to make some modest improvements, she figures she’s done once she decides to cut her hair and get it dyed grey, and there aren’t that many other introspective scenes.

While there were some funny parts, overall the book wasn’t that great. Diane doesn’t seem to undergo very much character growth, many of the scenes seemed cliched, and not many of the characters seemed that likable, if we got to know them well enough to make that assertion at all. Although there are 2 more books in the series, I would still expect a book to stand on its own. 

However, as this book is about a woman in a much different stage of life than I, I do wonder if that is part of why I couldn’t connect all that well. But it wasn’t any easier to connect with the other younger characters either, like her kids. They just seem to flit in and out of her story. And the friend’s teenagers were every millenial/Gen Z/teenager trope in the book. 

I think I’d give this one a pass. There are so many great books about aging and divorce (Il pleuvait les oiseaux/And the Birds Rained Down by Jocelyne Saucier being one of my favourites), it might be best to just reach for one of those.

I’ve got a lot of thoughts about this book, and I’m finding them hard to sort out. So, if this review feels more train-of-thought than usual, I apologize!

Butter Honey Pig Bread is a magical realism book about three Nigerian women: Kambirinachi, and her twin daughters, Kehinde and Taiye, telling the intergenerational stories of Kambirinachi and her upbringing, and her daughters’. After a series of traumas, including the loss of their husband and father, the family becomes estranged, with Taiye and Kehinde following their own paths across the world, leaving Kambirinachi in Nigeria with her grief. From there, the book is about finding identity, and the things we do when we leave things unsaid.

The writing in this book is beautiful, and the descriptions of music, clothing, and cities were rich and deep. The book has a very strong focus on food, detailed to such a degree you can cook some of the foods by their descriptions -- and make you hungry. But all in all, I did not find building a strong connection to any of the characters easy. I was not engaged, and while I was transported to Lagos, Paris, and Halifax, it felt superficial. 

The book is quite non-linear, jumping around between Kambirinachi’s, Kehinde’s and Taiye’s past and present, flipping between the different characters, and between their different times, as they remember, or reflect. While normally I enjoy books with this storytelling style, I wonder if this time it did impact my connection to the characters and story.

Lastly, I found the ending came too soon.  The core conflicts of the story are barely resolved before the book ends. I’ve read books that have ended this way, but this time it actually made it feel like they hadn’t been resolved at all. It was still too uncertain. 

I’m seeing lots of very positive feedback about this book, so if you like the sound of it, definitely give it a go, but it just didn’t work for me this time, especially compared to the other Canada Reads novels. We will see what the debaters think!

 I haven’t enjoyed a world so much in a long time. This book reminded me why I love sci-fi and fantasy, and reminded me I need to read more of it. Hench captured my attention from the first time I saw it in the longlist, with a synopsis that could not be ignored. 

Hench is about Anna, a woman working as a temp worker for supervillains -- a “hench”, the gendered term “henchman” no longer in use. However, during a placement, she is injured by a hero, and loses her job. During her recovery, she begins to research and blog about the property and collateral human damage wrought by heros, and begins to realize they do more harm than good. Her work captures the attention of the greatest villain of the world, and he hires her as a data analyst to take her work to the next level.

Anna’s temp life is so relatable to any office worker, since even villains need data entry and IT support. Her experience in precarious work, and the outfall when she is injured with no job security, would be no different from an Uber driver. But beyond the office mundanity is police raids and ransom plots. The absurdity couldn’t help but make me laugh. But what really kept me engaged was Anna’s story. It was normal enough to be relatable, but as she got deeper into her project, and farther from what I was familiar with, the book remained engaging with a large, diverse cast of multidimensional characters that support, foil, and antagonize Anna, and by exploring complex questions of what is good and evil. All of this combines into a great, engaging read or listen. The version narrated by Alex McKenna is  excellent.

This book transported me into a world where people are dealing with so many of the same issues as in our world, but with another whole dimension of heroes and villains on top. And also into a Cinderalla story of a woman who is plucked from a temp Hench life into a job where she can really make a difference. It was a life and a world I enjoyed being transported to. 

One warning I have for readers is there is significant body horror, usually after fights: People get hurt, and Walschots is very verbose about how. 

 

 The Midnight Bargain is about Beatrice, a young woman with strong magical powers who is an ingenue at Bargaining Season -- a series of weeks where eligible women with magical powers are wooed by men who wish to make advantageous marriages to increase the chance of magical children. However, upon getting married, women are blocked from their magical powers, until they are menopausal and unable to bear children. Beatrice doesn’t want this future: she wants to follow the path of magicians blocked to women, but also must marry to save her family from poverty. Maybe this is dating me, but the magic system feels very much like the Bartimaeus Trilogy, and the rest of the story gave me strong flashbacks to the Great and Terrible Beauty books.

The discussion about women being forced to stop practicing magic to bear children is addressed as an issue of bodily autonomy and a right to family planning. Masculinity in both its toxic and healthy forms also is featured prominently. But none of this comes across heavy-handedly. Beatrice, her friends, and gentleman-callers have different reasons for pursuing their various goals, and it all feels very natural throughout the story. 

The Midnight Bargain is a young adult book, and reads like one, so if you’re looking for in-depth discussions and steamy romance, you will be disappointed, but I LOVED it. If you suffer from second-hand panic/embarrassment, you may struggle through parts (I did), but the book kept me hooked throughout and the conclusion was satisfying, even if I didn’t want it to end.

How does it transport me? As a fantasy, it is simple enough of just transporting me out of earth, out of Canada, into Chasland, where men carry political and magical power while women carry their children, except for those who fight the system. It was a very enjoyable place to be transported to.

I’ll be recommending this book to lots of people. The romance is very PG, with just some kissing, so it is appropriate for most teens.

This was my first Canada Reads 2021 read, and I got it done in just over a day. I wasn’t trying to finish it off either-- it's just not a large book to start with, and the storytelling is so engaging that I never really wanted to stop (although I’m sure those in line behind me appreciated it).

Johnny is a two-spirit “NDN glitter princess” who lives in Winnipeg, making money as a cybersex worker, while trying to navigate all the other parts of growing up and leaving home for the first time. However, when he learns his step-father has died, he realizes he has to get back to the rez, and starts trying to make enough money to catch a cab in time for the funeral, one week away. In this week, Johnny reflects on his past, his identity, and his space in the world.

What I found so engaging about this book is Johnny’s stories are at once both tender and heartbreaking. We hear about how his babysitter, Kokum, and mother accept his two-spirit identity, but then how others rejected it, often through verbal and physical violence. But somehow, Johnny still comes through tender and loving, not hardened. As he weaves in and out through time telling stories, his vulnerability made me rally for him, and love him. How he protected himself by changing the expression of his queer indigenous identity as he interacted with white people, indigenous folk, city folk, rez folk, and cybersex clients really stood out to me and made me feel deeply for Jonny, who is just trying to find his place. 

So, to come to the Canada Reads theme, how does the book transport me? This book transported me through time, and it wasn’t always to a place I wanted to be transported to, but so often it was: moments of tenderness between Johnny and his Kokum, or mother, or his childhood friend Tias. These flashbacks, describing scenes so brief, but with so much detail and love, are places that were worth the darker moments. 

This was my LAST book in @CBCBooks 30 Works of Canadian Fiction to Read before you Turn 30. And what a book to end with! I expected something so different than what I got. Rooted in magical realism, we follow a handful of characters who struggle with identity and belonging in a colonized Canada.

The storytelling of this novel is one of the best examples of non-linear, decolonial storytelling that I have read yet. As we switch between characters, and times, and places, the story of the creation of Turtle Island and First Woman is told and told again, but each time remixed with a colonial story, from a lecherous Noah on his arc, to Jesus walking on water, to Ahab and Moby Dick. All these patriarchal characters try to interfere with and subjugate First Woman but she rejects them and moves on from their story. 

The most interesting characters to me were the “Old Indians”. Four indigenous men and women, said to be between 100 and 500 years old (depending on who you ask), who live in an asylum in Florida but escape periodically to change the direction of the future. They exist in all times and places in this book and are not the “serious elder” trope often used in colonial fiction, but probably the goofiest, most fun characters in the book. I still smile thinking of them all crammed into the back of a truck singing “Happy Birthday” on repeat.

All the characters each struggle with their own issues of identity, and how their first nations identity interacts with the colonial world they are attempting to navigate. What does it mean to leave home, and come back, or come back too late? What needs to change to fit in in a white world? Can you get around the stereotypes that stand in the way of self-determination?

But for all these hard questions and hard answers, there are also soft, funny, and loving moments, and the book is well worth a read for the cast of characters you won’t soon forget.

 

 Written as an exercise book to be completed over 28 days, this book leads readers through prompts which encourage introspection into their own racist biases and actions, and towards the end, help guide the reader towards anti-racist actions and committments. Each day covers a different topic, from unconscious bias and white fragility, to racism against black women and children, to tokenism and white saviourism. 

Instead of a daily practice split into 4 weeks, I split this book into 4 months, giving myself more time to reflect on each day’s reading and complete the journaling. Some days certainly took longer than others and were personally more challenging to address.

I learned a lot about myself and my biases and stereotypes through this book. While I had read about issues like white exceptionalism and fragility, and understood cultural appropriation and systemic racism, being guided in seeing those issues within myself was a valuable, if challenging exercise. The biggest thing I learned about myself is my reliance on silence -- fearing the impacts of calling out or calling in people who say or do racist things, I often say nothing, preserving white people’s comfort (including my own) and, in the case of family and friends, my interpersonal relationships, instead of allying myself with BIPOC to point out the harmful actions. 

The last day of the workbook calls upon the reader to make commitments. Based on how often my white silence showed up in my journaling, I decided to commit to challenge racism by actually using my voice for anti-racism work, by attending events, and calling out/in strangers, acquaintances, friends, family, and leaders. 

I don’t write this so I earn ally cookies, but to encourage more white people to pick up this book and do the work as well. However, I wouldn’t recommend it as a starting point, as the daily readings are very short for people who may be starting out. I’d start by reading at least two of these: White Fragility, Hood Feminism, Inconvenient Indian, Policing Black Lives, or So You Want to Talk about Race. These will give a broader, and deeper foundation to start a path to anti-racism.