Monthly Archives: April 2013

Review | The Truth About Luck, Iain Reid

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978-1-77089-241-5_lIain Reid has a gift for getting right into his readers’ hearts. In One Bird’s Choice, he made us fall in love with his quirky, hilarious parents, as well as with a certain bird named Lucius. These characters make an appearance The Truth About Luck as well, but Reid’s second memoir shifts the author’s focus to his adorable, utterly loveable 92-year-old grandmother.

The premise of the book is practically guaranteed to make anyone with a grandmother go “Awww…” When Reid’s brother reneges for the first time on a joint birthday gift for Grandma, Reid decides to take his grandmother on a week-long road trip, gifting her with something far sweeter than a quirky portrait: his time. Unfortunately, for reasons that are unclear to me (finances? lack of planning?), the much-anticipated road trip turns instead into a staycation in Kingston. I do wish I understood better why Reid opted for a staycation instead, especially since the original plan had allowed for the possibility of the grandmother paying for the trip. As it is, I felt bad for Grandma, who’d looked forward to a road trip for months, and had possibly even brought her swimsuit. Worse, Reid admits he had no idea how to entertain his grandmother for a week — a cringe-worthy admission, though admittedly, we’ve all been there.

Reid is endearingly self-aware, unflinching in his portrayal of himself and unafraid to make fun of his own quirks. At times, he tries a bit too hard at self-deprecation — people likely aren’t paying as much attention to his treatment of Grandma as he imagines — but this as well is rather sweet, a heightened concern for his grandmother’s well-being. A wonderfully wry passage near the beginning of the book sums up Reid’s self-deprecating humour pretty well:

I called a friend to see if he had any ideas for me, tips on how to inject some carefree mirth into the trip. He reminded me that I wasn’t really the fun or adventurous one in our group. […] When pushed for which one in the group I was, he used the word egghead and asked what the opposite of an adrenaline junkie was. I wonder if I can offer Grandma a sherry first thing tomorrow morning? [p. 60]

Fortunately for Reid, his grandmother is such a sweet, gracious woman that she genuinely seems as excited over a week in Kingston as she originally was over a road trip. Grandma is the heart of this book, and Reid’s prose is a lovely, loving tribute. The staycation offers him the chance to listen to his grandmother’s stories about her past, a rare opportunity with a woman more accustomed to asking about her grandchildren’s lives than speaking about herself. In a coffee shop, as his grandmother speaks about her life during World War II, Reid notices the other customers busy with their books, laptops and mobile phones, and feels the urge to command them all to listen. Grandma’s life is far too interesting to ignore.

My own 89-year-old grandmother, who has always been a feisty, chatty woman, has recently begun exhibiting signs of dementia. She has difficulty remembering events and recognizing people, and is most comfortable speaking in Chinese, her first language and, unfortunately, one I don’t speak myself. Reid’s book makes me think of all the stories I may now never have the chance to hear, and makes me wish I’d paid closer attention all those times my own grandmother spoke about her past. I remember our trip to China, and my grandmother’s attempts to teach me Chinese, and wish I could remember more of what she taught.

This book then, perhaps more than any road trip, may just be the best, most precious gift Reid could have given his grandmother. Not only will he forever be able to remind himself of her stories, but he has also immortalized her past for people who have never even met her. Time and again, his grandmother frets that she is boring him with her stories. Time and again, Reid assures her that he is fascinated. And thanks to Reid’s masterful prose, so are we.

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Thank you to House of Anansi for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Review | A Girl Named Digit, Annabel Monaghan

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9780547668529I loved the premise behind Annabel Monaghan’s A Girl Named Digit – seventeen year old Digit is a math genius whose ability to recognize numerical patterns leads her to uncover a terrorist plot and she is recruited by the FBI to track the bad guys down. Sure, the premise is far-fetched, but the story had the potential to be a fun, fast-paced thriller with lots of awesome math nerditude.

Instead, we get fluff. Digit’s ability to see mathematical patterns is certainly impressive, but we get perhaps only three instances where this helps the investigation. Most of the time, we get a Lizzie McGuire type character whose reactions to events are immature at best. It’s understandable that Digit wants to try to fit in at school by hiding her mathematical prowess and pretending to be a ditzy Party Girl, but even when on the run with the FBI and free to be 100% Digit, she seems more concerned about kissing the hot FBI agent than about escaping the bad guys. In a publishing industry with such kick ass heroines as Katniss Everdeen, or heck, even Kim Possible, Digit’s lack of common sense is just grating. I understand that not every girl is a Kim Possible, and that the book is meant to be a lighthearted beach read rather than a thought-provoking tome, but seriously: you’re on the run from bad guys known for torturing people, you know they’re planning something soon and they want to kill you before you can stop them, you’re in a cab with a tense FBI agent and a mysterious bag and all you can think of is whether or not the FBI agent will kiss you? Seriously? I don’t care how hot he is, there are somewhat more important matters at stake.

And what was the point of Digit making the stupid decision to keep her (easily trackable!) cell phone when all she did with it was read text messages from a friend about bikinis and the prom? I would understand if she wanted to keep the connection to her real life, and perhaps saw those text messages as comfort, but she just found them annoying. Digit’s ditziness is even more annoying because of her sense of superiority over her school friends — she views them as vapid and thinks she has to hide her own intelligence to fit in. This would be annoying enough if Digit actually showed her smarts, but instead, she just came off like a delusional Mean Girl.

The mystery/thriller part of the book gets woefully buried under piles of rom com, which frankly is more boring than it is witty. Digit’s math skills do come into play at the end, but for the most part, any Hillary Duff or Selena Gomez character could’ve been in Digit’s shoes and it wouldn’t have made much of a difference. The worst part is, the book started off really well. I love the description of how Digit feels compelled to hide her math smarts in order not to seem weird — she was a real, sympathetic character. Unfortunately, Monaghan falls into the Stephenie Meyer trap and sacrifices her intriguing premise to focus on the romance. The book is touted as Da Vinci Code meets Clueless but is more a Disney Channel TV show than anything.

Finally, as with Twilight, the idea that romance is far superior to anything else, including a career, bugs me. In A Girl Named Digit, the FBI agent, John, admits he wants to enter an elite program that will unfortunately prevent him from pursuing romantic relationships or having a family, but will for some reason be even more awesome than being a regular FBI agent. It’s a sacrifice John’s father refused to make so he could marry John’s mother, and good on him for being happy with that decision. My problem is that Digit expects John to give up this dream to be with her. She’s seventeen! And perhaps they really are the loves of each other’s lives, but a couple of weeks of romance is hardly enough for John to give up a lifelong dream. Digit’s heartbroken reaction to this may be understandable, but the shallowness of Monaghan’s writing just makes Digit seem bratty rather than sympathetic.

I love the premise of a young girl using her brains to stop bad guys — we need more brainy heroines, I think. Digit, despite her ability with numbers, just isn’t one of them.

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Thank you to Thomas Allen Ltd for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Review | Life After Life, Kate Atkinson

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15749844What if you could live your life over and over, until you got it right? This intriguing premise informs Kate Atkinson’s new novel Life After Life, which begins with a woman named Ursula in November 1930, shooting Adolf Hitler. Flash backwards about twenty years, and Ursula is just being born in a quiet English town. She dies at birth. The narrative loops back a few hours earlier, again, we see Ursula being born, and this time, she survives. She lives a few years, then dies in an accident. She is born again, lives, and so on.

Unfortunately, the concept behind this novel is much more compelling than the novel itself. The story starts off slow — in order to establish Ursula’s unique situation, Atkinson gives her the unluckiest childhood ever — accidents and ailments befall her over and over again, only to have “darkness fall” over her, and loop us right back into that cold, snowy night in 1910 when she is born again. It is not so much unbelievable as it is predictable.

In a later scene, another character asks Ursula how she thought it would be like living your life over and over (look! clever meta moment!), and she responded that it sounded exhausting. On one hand, I do sympathize — Atkinson reveals how tired Ursula feels, as if she had “lived a hundred years.” On the other hand, reading about her string of reincarnations is wearying as well. There are moments I caught myself waiting for her to die, and I groaned when we returned to the moment of her birth — not again!

The story does pick up around the halfway mark, when Ursula herself becomes somewhat aware of her situation. She doesn’t completely understand it, but she does sense there’s something more going on than ordinary deja vu. Atkinson as well allows Ursula to live a bit longer each time, developing a bit more complexity and depth with each succeeding narrative. This, of course, is part of the conceit — the whole point of being able to live the same life over and over again is the ability to rectify your errors from the previous attempt. And despite Ursula’s limited understanding of her situation, she instinctively knows enough, for example, to discourage an overly aggressive man from kissing her the first time.

Unfortunately, this also diminishes much of the emotional impact. Each vignette is compelling, sometimes tragic, on its own, but knowing there’s the safety net of reincarnation made it difficult to care. At one point, when Ursula was trapped in an abusive relationship — a horrible situation, and one that would normally get me all worked up — all I could think was, how long until she dies in this life and starts again?

Worse, the narrative then suggests that Ursula is born over and over in order to fulfill a purpose, and until she accomplishes this purpose, she is doomed to keep repeating the cycle. The superhero/avenging angel twist is jarring, particularly after the quotidian nature of Ursula’s earlier experiences through her multiple lifetimes. I’ve suspended my disbelief throughout many of her lifetimes, as she learns each time and improves her next incarnation, but this just seemed not to fit. What began as Ursula’s very personal, private story shifted to a more public sphere, and to me, it felt tacked on. After all, and understandably, when the protagonist lives over and over again, how can you end it with a satisfying climax?

Life After Life has an interesting, and admittedly ambitious, premise. To be fair, I don’t know what else Atkinson could have done with the story that I would have liked better. Also to be fair, Atkinson is a talented writer, and even with the concerns I pointed out, I was compelled to keep reading. However, the story failed to live up to the promise of its concept.

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Thank you to Random House Canada for an advanced reading copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.