Books come alive in this charming video

Several Facebook friends have posted this, so I had to take a look. Toys aren't the only things that come alive when humans are away! This was filmed in a bookstore in Toronto, Type Books, by a husband and wife who had the idea after organizing their bookshelf. This must have taken HOURS to do!!

Midnight at the Dragon Cafe: Chinese girl in small Ontario town

Midnight at the Dragon Cafe
by Judy Yong Bates
My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

As a small child, Su-Jen arrives in a small town outside of Toronto to live with her father, whom she has never met. She and her mother have immigrated from Hong Kong, much to her mother's dismay. Su-Jen (or Annie, her Canadian name) feels completely caught between cultures as the only Chinese child in her small town in the 1960s (her parents run the one Chinese restaurant). She's constantly walking the fine line between being a good Chinese girl and growing up as a Canadian.

Bates based her story on her own life experience...she too came to Canada as a girl. As she drove through Canadian small towns, she couldn't help but wonder what life would be like as the only Chinese family in town.

When Su-Jen's brother comes to stay, the family's staid but settled life gets thrown into disarray. Her mother's deep unhappiness comes to light, in addition to her father's willingness (and the Chinese cultural approach) to overlook unpleasant things to maintain peace and face.

Bates beautifully describes the life of an immigrant child who is always caught in the middle, feeling as if she never fits in anywhere. She desperately wants to try out for the lead role in a school play until one of her friends tells her that a Chinese person would never get the lead role. She opts to be in the chorus instead of trying out.

Su-Jen's mother is a woman trapped by her beauty, bitterness, and lack of choices. A woman with a child in the 1960s--either Chinese or from another country--did not have many options beyond finding a man to take care of her. Stories about people feeling trapped in their lives, deeply unfilled and unhappy, make me sad.

Ultimately, the secrets fall out, as they always do. Su-Jen realizes that secrets can cause anguish and pain, but so can revealing them.

The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay: Growing up in New Brunswick

The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay, by Beverly Jensen
My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

I should have learned my lesson by now. The first (fantastic!) review I wrote about this book vanished into thin air when I hit "publish" on blogger. This oddity has happened to me often enough that I should know better and draft my posts on Notepad (like this one, which I did). Grr!!

This book drew me in because of its story about sisters and setting in New Brunswick, Canada, where my mother's ancestors lived.

Idella and Avis Hillock live on a hardscabble farm on the edge of a cliff that overlooks the ocean. The story begins with the young girls searching for mayflowers to give to their mother on Mother's day. Tragically, their mother never made it to Mother's Day, because she died soon after giving birth to their youngest sister, Emma. In addition to Idella and Avis, she left behind her husband, "Wild Bill" Hillock, a rough, hard-drinking farmer, and their son Dalton, who escapes their difficult home life by retreating to his lobster boat.

As soon as they are old enough, Idella and Avis leave Canada to move south to the U.S. The book follows their lives, loves, and losses over the next 60 to 70 years in a variety of locations, from Maine and Boston back to New Brunswick. Straitlaced, traditional Idella marries a philandering husband and has four girls. Wild Avis ends up with a series of men, none of which she really loves, and serves a few years of time in prison.

I loved the character development in this novel, as well as the beautiful descriptions of the land and environment, especially in New Brunswick. I also enjoyed reading how the small Canadian community supported each other in a crisis. The sisters, although dramatically different in personality and values, were the one constant in each other's lives. Even though their lives were difficult, they shared a few laughs, such as attending the opera or drinking cherry cider in the back of Avis' boyfriend's car.

It's easy to see that this novel was written as a series of short stories, as its one weakness was the disconnectedness of many of the chapters. Some characters lived large in certain chapters, only to then disappear during the rest of the book (such as the French-Canadian maid, Maddie).

The author, Beverly Jensen, wrote The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay while she was taking care of her children, and then she died from pancreatic cancer. Her husband, Jay Silverman (English professor at Nassau Community College), published her work posthumously. Jensen's death is especially poignant considering the fact that these characters' lives were so shaped by their mother's death.

Vancouver: in historical layers...

Vancouver by David Cruise and Alison Griffiths

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Beginning in 13,477 BC with the stories of Manto and Inish, First Nations people, and ending in the 1990s with the story of another First Nations person (down on her luck in Chinatown), this Michener-like sweeping saga describes the hopes, dreams, and journeys traveled of people around the globe, all heading for Vancouver, BC.

Written as a series of short stories, some interweaving, its characters not only include First Nations people, but also a Georgian cartographer sailing with Juan de Fuca, a Scottish fur trader, a Chinese worker, an eccentric English adventurer, a Sikh immigrant, son of a German count, and a conniving and unlikable Canadian stock trader and his daughter. This book doesn't appear to be very widely read in the U.S. (as I've often found to be the case with Canadian fiction, a sad fact), but some of the reviewers have faulted the book for being about the journeys TO Vancouver, and not always taking place entirely in Vancouver. I do not agree with that criticism. I did find this complimentary review from the Seattle Times, circa 2003.

I chose to read this book because of our recent vacation in Vancouver in early August, and I was in plowing through this book while there. At 750 pages, it took me several weeks to finish.

I believe it paints an evocative picture of the unique landscape around Vancouver and also educates the reader about the crusty, adventurous sorts who built Vancouver into what it is today. It also respectfully pays tribute to the First Nations who were there before the city and have suffered in so many ways because of industrialization, disenfranchisement, and discrimination (and plain old white greed and colonization).

Many of the stories were not easy to read...especially the early First Nations stories, given the extremely low status of women and the horrible way they were treated. Most of the characters in the book were not particularly likable or sympathethic, with a few exceptions. However, I found their stories and struggles to be fascinating.

The only exceptions were the stories of Walter and Tiffany Dolby (especially Tiffany). All of the stock wrangling and backroom dealing did not hold my interest, and it did not help that Tiffany was completely unlikable and sleazy and used her sex appeal to become rich. I had a much higher opinion of the book until I reached those chapters, which I ended up scanning through.

The authors clearly did an amazing amount of research to write this book. Overall, I really enjoyed it and would recommend it for anyone traveling to Vancouver or who loves that fascinating city.
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Frommer's Toronto: Another good travel guide

Frommer's Toronto 2009 by Hilary Davidson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I love Frommer's travel guides. We are heading to Toronto at the end of August, and it looks like a fascinating city!



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In the Skin of a Lion: Arty historical fiction about Toronto

In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

In the middle of this novel, Ondaatje writes:

"The first sentence of every novel should be: "Trust me, this will take time but there is order here, very faint, very human.'"

And this seems to be Ondaatje's philosophy about his novels.

I read this book because we are headed to Toronto at the end of August, and this was described to me as the "quintessential Toronto novel." However, I found myself scanning pages and anxiously hoping that I would get to the end. Not signs of a good novel for me!

Some passages I found intriguing--notably the ones about the workers building the viaduct, tunneling under Lake Ontario, and laboring in the tannery--Ondaatje has a knack for describing the dirtiest and most dangerous sorts of work and helping the reader understand what it is like. Ondaatje is a poet, and some of his writing I found beautiful.

He had a few strong female characters in the story too.

I have a certain amount of tolerance for novelists flitting from one character's perspective to another, or one point of time to another. But this book made me dizzy. I was hoping that I would have a better understanding at the end of how it all fit together.

Many goodreads reviewers describe this book as one of their favorites. It's very arty and avant garde: not really my cup of tea, I suppose.





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Clara Callan: Canadian life in letters--lovely!

Clara Callan: A Novel by Richard B. Wright

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When I was a few pages into this fine Canadian novel, it struck me how much I have always enjoyed epistolary novels. Clara Callan is told entirely in diary entries and letters between two sisters and a few other people in their lives.

The sisters grew up in a small town in Ontario, Canada, raised solely by their father after their mother died. After the death of their father, the younger sister, Nora, moves to New York City to become a radio actress. The older sister, Clara, stays in the small, insular town of Whitfield, working as a schoolteacher.

Wright paints strong multidimensional characters in the parts of the two sisters. I am like neither sister, and they are very different from one another, but I found myself admiring and relating to each sister.

Through their trials as single working women in the mid-1930s, they realize that they have more in common than they first thought. Each sister is strong and independent in her own way, even though that strength and independence is not valued by those around them (or by the sisters themselves).

Nora's friend Evelyn is a wonderful spunky character and her role adds depth to the story. With one exception (Clara's obsession with Charlie, which does not seem true to life to me, given her experience), I believe that Wright did an excellent job portraying the intimate lives of these women and their experiences in a Canadian small town and depression-era New York City.

I didn't want the novel to end!

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Frommer's Vancouver with Kids: Outdated but helpful

Frommer's Vancouver with Kids by Eve Lazarus

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Yes, it was outdated (written in 2001), but this book hasn't been updated since then. I found it to be a great help on our recent trip to Vancouver. I love Frommer's guide books, and the ones with a focus on family trips are especially helpful.



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The Day the Falls Stood Still: Beautiful historical novel about Niagara Falls

The Day the Falls Stood Still by Cathy Marie Buchanan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Bess is seventeen, finishing up her junior year at a Catholic school overlooking Niagara Falls. She has grown up the pampered daughter of a man who heads the hydroelectric company. When her father gets sacked and becomes unemployed, her life changes dramatically. She returns home to find that nothing is the same.

Her beloved sister is terribly depressed, her dad is gone drinking all day long, and her mother takes in sewing to keep the family afloat. Bess meets Tom, a rough-and-ready river man. Tom makes his living by working in a bar and fishing dead bodies out of the river.

Having visited Niagara Falls last August, I loved reading about life in the region in the early part of this century. Much Buchanan writes about the river I did not always follow, but I enjoyed her storytelling.

Bess was a spirited, strong young woman, and she and Tom were able to find some happiness in the midst of great hardship. Tom is concerned about the hydroelectric companies tapping so much from the river, and he fights this push toward "progress" with his whole being, even when he makes a deep personal sacrifice for his own family.

Here's the spoiler: This book is very sad in a couple of places. This is the second sad novel I've read in a row--time for a happy book! But I enjoyed it nevertheless.

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