Book Review - WE ARE ALL COMPLETELY BESIDE OURSELVES

Graphic from: http://www.nytimes.com/
imagepages/2013/06/09/books/review/
0609-bks-KINGSOLVER-cover.html

In We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler, Rosemary Cooke begins her story in the middle. She is in college in a cafeteria where she meets Harlow who is angry at her boyfriend and having a tantrum. Rosemary defends Harlow during her arrest and gets arrested herself. We soon learn Rosemary is broken, in a way. She is not close with her parents and estranged from her brother and sister. It is the mystery of Rosemary's relationship with her parents and how her brother, Lowell, and sister, Fern go missing that drives the story forward. When Rosemary's narrative circles back to the beginning of the story, we learn that her "sister", Fern, is a chimpanzee brought into the home to be raised as her "twin" for an experiment her scientist father was conducting in the seventies.

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves is a wonderful coming of age novel that is interesting both in the style of the narrative and in the story, containing a powerful message. The title refers to the fact that, when placed beside humans, animals--particularly apes--are not that different. Growing up, Rosemary's father's lab assistants endlessly compare Fern's progress with her own. While Fern reaches certain landmarks before Rosemary--such as walking and "talking" (really signing)--Rosemary's growth soon outperforms Ferns with little fanfare and she grows jealous of Fern's attention which leads to Fern's removal from the family. In doing this, Rosemary asserts her alpha role in her family pack, not unlike how later, Fern becomes the alpha animal in her lab "family". When Rosemary tells us the end of her story, we learn the reason for her brother's disappearance. Everything, from Rosemary's inability to fit in with her peers to her brother's absence, her mother's emotional distance, and her father's depression traces back to Fern's removal from the family and Rosemary spends the remainder of the book trying to set it right.

Fowler has penned a page-turner here. Her prose is artful and easy to read, something to which, as an author, I aspire. The narrator is so candid in her guilt, the story reads like a written confession, which is where the interest lies.  We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves is a book with social conscience, prompting us to think about the connection between people and animals and how, when we compare them side-by-side with ourselves, we are not so essentially different.

About the Author
Elise Abram, English teacher and former archaeologist, has been writing for as long as she can remember, but it wasn't until she was asked to teach Writer's Craft in 2001 that she began to seriously write. Her first novel, THE GUARDIAN, was partially published as a Twitter novel a few summers back (and may be accessed at @RKLOGYprof). Nearly ten years after its inception Abram decided it was time to stop shopping around with traditional publication houses and publish PHASE SHIFT on her own.

Download PHASE SHIFT for the price of a tweet. Visit http://www.eliseabram.com, click on the button, tweet or Facebook about my novel and download it for FREE!

Dexter Meets Nancy Drew

 http://www.goodreads.com/
book/show/16131077-the-
shining-girls

Harper Curtis squats in a house, the owner dead and rotting in the hallway. In his pocket he finds a key. When he uses the key in the front door, he is taken to whatever time he imagines. He returns later to bludgeon the owner, thus coming full circle in the timeline. Harper travels through time looking for his “shining girls”, girls that emit an aura-like light that he alone can see. He finds them as children, making contact with them when he does, promising to return again, sometime in the future. When he finds them as adults, he brutally slays them, leaving with them a souvenir from a previous kill. The book opens with Harper gifting Kirby a small, plastic horse, years before the date left behind by the mould on the bottom off the horse’s foot. He returns later to murder Kirby, but unbeknownst to Harper, she survives and devotes most of her adult life to bringing Harper to justice. Harper’s hubris in leaving behind these anachronistic souvenirs is what eventually helps Kirby orchestrate his undoing.

The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes is part Dexter’s evil twin, part grown-up Nancy Drew in the perfect combination. It’s been a while since I’ve read a page-turner, and The Shining Girls is a mesmerizing one at that. Beukes’ prose is literary and compelling. Her tone is gritty and dark, whether from Harper, the murderer’s, Kirby, the victim’s, or Dan, the reporter’s points of view. Whether depression, disco, or near-twenty-first century, Buekes’ story makes the era come to life. I love time travel as a plot device, but it must be done right. I need to know about the technology that transports the characters from one time to the next. Beukes chooses to make the device a psychic key, of sorts. Beyond the question of how the original owner obtains it (which is told in the final chapter), the reader is too caught up in the lives of the characters to question it’s true origin (i.e., from where or whom it originated in all time and how it got its power), which is a credit to the author, as I thought this would hang me up and sour me on the novel altogether; it didn’t.

Like The Time Traveler’s Wife, The Shining Girls is one of those novels I can see myself returning to in the future (no pun intended) to read and re-read before I am able to grasp all of the subtle nuances of the manuscript. And I will do this with gusto.

About the Author

Elise Abram, English teacher and former archaeologist, has been writing for as long as she can remember, but it wasn’t until she was asked to teach Writer’s Craft in 2001 that she began to write seriously. Her first novel, THE GUARDIAN was partially published as a Twitter novel a few summers back (and may be accessed at @RKLOGYprof). Nearly ten years after its inception Abram decided it was time to stop shopping around with traditional publication houses and publish PHASE SHIFT on her own.

Download PHASE SHIFT for the price of a tweet. Visit http://www.eliseabram.com, click on the button, tweet or Facebook about my novel and download it for FREE!

Review of "Mount Pleasant" by Don Gillmor

Graphic from:
http://www.dongillmor.ca/

I first heard about Mount Pleasant by Don Gillmor on CBC Radio One. The reviewer said he couldn’t read the novel in public because he was embarrassed by the laugh-out-loud moments. I could use a good laugh, I thought to myself, and went home, downloaded and read the preview, and liked it enough to buy the ebook. The premise of Mount Pleasant is simple enough—a middle-aged man faces the realization that life is not what he’d expected.

When Harry Salter’s father dies leaving much less by way of inheritance than Harry thought, he hires a forensic accountant to find out what has happened to his father’s money. On the way he has an affair with his father’s younger second wife, learns his own wife had an affair decades earlier, comes to terms with his son’s new girlfriend, and his ailing mother. In his quest, Harry discovers his father was cheated out of his money by colleagues involved in a ponzi investment scheme. Now, in addition to the fact that he’s barely staying financially afloat, he must pay the forensic accountant for his services and convince his wife to sell the house in order to ease their financial burden. He must also come to grips with a sense of his own mortality after a colonoscopy yields a number of polyps.

Mount Pleasant—named after the cemetery in which Harry’s father is buried—is beautifully written. It is funny in a way, but the tone is more dark and ironic than laugh-out-loud funny.  The novel paints a detailed picture of Harry and his disenfranchisement from both his family and society. Though he teaches and still has contact with youth, there is the sense that the world has passed Harry by, and Harry doesn’t quite know what to make of it. While reading the novel, White Noise by Don DeLillo came to mind as both Gillmor and DeLillo write about coming to terms with a changing, postmodern society. In White Noise, fear of the future comes in the form of airborne toxins and invisible technological miasma. In Mount Pleasant, it is in the form of growing old alone (both literally and figuratively), and finding oneself unable to maintain accustomed lifestyles in a rapidly approaching retirement.

Mount Pleasant is worth the read. Gillmor’s prose is literary, his descriptions—whether on point or on tangent—superb. Gillmor’s storytelling is even paced, though anti-climactic. Mount Pleasant is a slice-of-life parable with which many aging baby boomers will identify.

About the Author
Elise Abram, English teacher and former archaeologist, has been writing for as long as she can remember, but it wasn’t until she was asked to teach Writer’s Craft in 2001 that she began to write seriously. Her first novel, THE GUARDIAN was partially published as a Twitter novel a few summers back (and may be accessed at @RKLOGYprof). Nearly ten years after its inception Abram decided it was time to stop shopping around with traditional publication houses and publish PHASE SHIFT on her own.

Download PHASE SHIFT for the price of a tweet. Visit http://www.eliseabram.com, click on the button, tweet or Facebook about my novel and download it for FREE!

Critique - "The Imposter Bride" by Nancy Richler

The Imposter Bride by Nancy Richter documents the life of a young Polish woman who steals a dead woman’s ID during the Second World War and uses it to come to Canada as a mail-order bride of sorts. In Montreal, Lily marries her betrothed’s brother, has a child and flees, leaving the child behind. As fate would have it, she meets Lily’s real cousin, whose daughter marries the man Lily was originally supposed to marry. The story is primarily told from two points of view, that of Lily and of her daughter Ruth. Lily’s story reveals a woman who feels guilty for having stolen a dead woman’s identity and who is so scared of being found out as an imposter she must flee. Ruth grows from a child to a woman with children of her own as the book unfolds, wondering the whole time why her mother left.

Nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, The Imposter Bride is told from third person omniscient point of view, which I found confusing. Chapters either tell Lily’s tale or Ruth’s and I would have a better feel for each of these potentially amazing women if their stories were exclusively told. In one paragraph I’m given Ruth’s thoughts, in the next, her grandmother’s, and I felt jarred at the shift, having to re-read sections as a result. The climax is told, rather than shown, quickly wrapping up most character’s lives in a single chapter and with little emotion. Maybe this is why I found it hard to identify with any of the characters.

At times, the writing is amazing. I feel the tension between strangers Lily and Nathan, especially on their wedding day, and the mystery of imposter Lily’s life drives the reader forward. Though I didn’t like the objective telling of the climax, I found this and the prologue the best parts of the novel as well as the most satisfying, but as I’ve said, lacking the emotion that helps me care when someone dies or achieves the closure for which she’s searched her entire life.

Richler overextends the plot as well, telling the story of Lily—both the real one and the imposter—and Nathan, his brother Sol and his wife, Elka, and children, Ruth and her friends and husband and children, and of grandparents Bella and Ida. There is a journal belonging to the real Lily, with which Ruth is nearly obsessed that haunts her childhood because it’s written in Yiddish and no one is willing to read it to her, and the stones that her mother randomly sends her on birthdays and the meaning Ruth makes of them. Richler also tells about Lily’s life after she leaves Nathan and Ruth, leaving the reader with too little information about too much and no specific detail about any of the characters and what motivates them beyond Ida’s exposing Lily for the fraud she is and Ruth’s obsession with the minutia—either real or perceived—of her mother’s life.

Though Jewish, I tend to stay away from novels simply for their Jewish content as there is no guarantee a connection will be made between reader and protagonist beyond religious upbringing. I made an exception this time because of the first chapter which so poignantly sets up the relationships between Lily and Nathan and his brother Sol and the diamond-cutter’s daughter, Elka, but came close to closing it for good so many times for lack of that connection.

The Imposter Bride is well-written and has the potential for a great story behind the premise and wonderful voice, but something is lost in the telling of it, as the story jumps back and forth in time and in and out of too many characters’ minds.

About the Author
Elise Abram, English teacher and former archaeologist, has been writing for as long as she can remember, but it wasn’t until she was asked to teach Writer’s Craft in 2001 that she began to write seriously. Her first novel, THE GUARDIAN was partially published as a Twitter novel a few summers back (and may be accessed at @RKLOGYprof). Nearly ten years after its inception Abram decided it was time to stop shopping around with traditional publication houses and publish PHASE SHIFT on her own.

Download PHASE SHIFT for the price of a tweet. Visit http://www.eliseabram.com, click on the button, tweet or Facebook about my novel and download it for FREE!

If a tree falls in the forest...?

Graphic taken from
http://writers-write-creative-blog.
posterous.com/quotable-donna-tartt

If a tree falls in the forest does it make a sound? Does anyone care that it’s fallen? More precisely, if I complete a manuscript, publish it, and no one reads it, can I still call myself a published author?

That sounds weird: me; a published author. It took a lot for me to admit I aspired to be an author, as I thought it would be viewed as a frivolous pursuit. I think it was because I was pushed hard growing up to do the right thing to become independent and successful. I pursued archaeology as a career instead, something I loved and which my mother supported, my father didn’t understand and my grandfather ridiculed. Yes, ridiculed. “Find any gold, yet?” he used to joke every time he saw me. I wish I could chalk it up to old world mentality, that archaeology, the search by those in the present seeking to understand those in the past is lost on those who have lived through it, but my grandfather was second generation Canadian and probably younger than my mother is now (i.e., not that old). My father, an avid reader of the newspaper, cover to cover, each and every night, with his grade 9 education and demeanor too weak to tell my grandfather that he should demonstrate pride in lieu of derision for his granddaughter’s accomplishments, ironically would have understood. Though not a fan if fiction, he would have supported my endeavour, recognized it as a noble pursuit (much in the same way I marvel at my son’s artistic ability, as something I could never, no matter how many lessons or how much effort, could duplicate). With the eye for detail he’d groomed over years spent in the printing industry, he’d have made me excellent proofreader.

It turns out, people actually believe writing, publishing, is a noble pursuit. I had an interesting discussion with my cousin, just last week that demonstrated this for me. He’d asked how my book was selling. I told him I was selling copies at the rate of about one a month. He’d picked up on my disappointment and told me that, nevertheless, I had sold copies and I could call myself a published author which was more than most could say. I reminded him that I’d self-published and anyone could do that. He reminded me that few people did and he pointed out I was the only one he knew who did. I also think about my mother and how she practically begged me to get her a print copy. I reminded her that she would be better suited to an e-book with which she could adjust the text size until so she could actually read it. I don’t think she was happy about my suggestion, but she agreed. Tell people you’ve published an e-book and they congratulate you; show them the physical book and they’re impressed. Show to make an impression; don’t tell—what author hasn’t heard that old saw?

As for me, I continue to write for the same reason I continue to teach, for the same reason I cling to my lottery fantasy of leaving it all to run an archaeology camp in the backyard of an old Victorian somewhere in the city—because it’s my passion. Always has been, for as long as I can remember (except for the lottery fantasy which has only been around for 20 years or so). I continue to cling to the “if you build it, they will come” school of thought—if I continue to write, publish, and publicize, like Shoeless Joe and his teammates and fans, the readers will eventually come.

In droves.

About the Author
Elise Abram, English teacher and former archaeologist, has been writing for as long as she can remember, but it wasn’t until she was asked to teach Writer’s Craft in 2001 that she began to write seriously. Her first novel, THE GUARDIAN was partially published as a Twitter novel a few summers back (and may be accessed at @RKLOGYprof). Nearly ten years after its inception Abram decided it was time to stop shopping around with traditional publication houses and publish PHASE SHIFT on her own.

Download PHASE SHIFT for the price of a tweet. Visit http://www.eliseabram.com, click on the button, tweet or Facebook about my novel and download it for FREE!

(Former) Archaeologist's Lament Addendum

Excerpt from THE NEXT COMING RACE (as yet unpublished).

Pot hunters held rave-type, secretive, pic-nic-style parties, complete with bar-b-ques and beer, on little known or overlooked archaeological sites. They socialized, ate a good meal, and then broke out the shovels, leaving behind a landscape so littered and cratered you'd think you'd landed on a mock-up of the moon.

I suppose what happened next was my fault. Goaded by the wealth of my online data mining and the voracity with which we’d hatched the previous night’s plan, I emailed the others with my findings, urging them to follow through with our stratagem.

It got exciting two months later. One of the pot hunters suggested they get together and investigate an abandoned and soon to be demolished property south of Stouffville. They used SurveyMonkey to determine the best date and settled on having a tailgate-style dinner prior to the dig. Undaunted by the sheer gall of what the pot hunters had suggested, I emailed every one of the original archaeologists. None of us had the slightest clue as to how to proceed. We knew that prosecuting the buggers would be a difficult task—to date, there had been only one case of successful prosecution documented. The solution, we all agreed, was to be on hand to disperse the rave and then hightail it to the Ministry of Culture to register the site.

So we’d have some official capacity, we’d enlisted Michael’s assistance whose job it would be to flash his badge and look menacing, no grand feat for Michael who had the physique of a well-padded football player and the sombre, stoic gaze of a Terminator on a mission permanently tattooed onto his face.

On the date in question, we caught the looters with their metaphoric pants down, munching on ribs and chicken, guzzling beer and Coke by the cans-full. We drove up the dirt access road at dusk, circled them with our vehicles and parked with our brights on. Mesmerized to paralysis at first, the looters presently scrambled, Hibachis and shovels clanging as they were thrown into the beds of their pickups. One by one they snaked between our cars and drove away.

Our group had participated in no less than three such raids since.

To have that power, to be able to do something to protect our passion from marauders, was exhilarating, if not entirely legal. To that end, we swore each other to secrecy, vowing only ever to meet clandestinely, and only when dictated by the slightly lesser legal activities of our pot-hunting nemeses.

The ghost town of Ballycroy in the northern GTA was our first failure. I’d been monitoring online chatter for weeks, trying to pinpoint the message containing the exact date and time of the party. Once I’d found it, I’d marked it on my smart phone’s calendar. Busy at school, I hadn’t gone back to check for revisions. At some point between entering it into my calendar and the scheduled date, the pothunters had changed their meeting and I’d missed it.

After a few minutes of uncomfortable silence between us I said, “I fucked up big.”

“Come on, Moll,” Palmer said, “you had no way to know.”

“I need to put Vash’s email on my cell,” I said. Vash, the archaeologist-slash-profiteer character from Star Trek: the Next Generation, was the pseudonym I adopted in the pot hunting chat rooms. “If I’d thought of it sooner, I wouldn’t have missed the time change.”

“Hindsight is 20/20,” Michael said.

“Really, Michael?” I said. “Platitudes? Now?”

“Say, is there any cream?” Michael asked. He left the table and took his coffee with him.

“You need to calm down, Moll,” Palmer told me. “Stop beating yourself up.” I looked deep into his dark eyes and saw the calm I sought. How was he able to slough off what had happened so easily? Probably because he wasn’t on point for plan-making. “Crestwood means well, you know he does.” Palmer reached out and pried my hand from the near death-grip it had around the coffee cup, and squeezed.

When Michael returned to the table I apologized.

We agreed I would be the one to go to the Ministry office first thing the next day and register the site. Not that it would stop future looters from spoiling the archaeological record, but if we were ever going to see these guys prosecuted, it was the first step.

About the Author
Elise Abram, English teacher and former archaeologist, has been writing for as long as she can remember, but it wasn’t until she was asked to teach Writer’s Craft in 2001 that she began to write seriously. Her first novel, THE GUARDIAN was partially published as a Twitter novel a few summers back (and may be accessed at @RKLOGYprof). Nearly ten years after its inception Abram decided it was time to stop shopping around with traditional publication houses and publish PHASE SHIFT on her own.

Download PHASE SHIFT for the price of a tweet. Visit http://www.eliseabram.com, click on the button, tweet or Facebook about my novel and download it for FREE!