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Review | The Chemistry of Tears, Peter Carey

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A woman I met at the Peter Carey event in Toronto Library’s Appel Salon told me that she loved Peter Carey’s books because of his beautiful way with language. I told her I had read only the first few pages of The Chemistry of Tears, and that I was enjoying it so far, to which she replied that the rest of the book was nothing like that. The first chapter, about museum conservator Catherine Gehrig finding out her married lover had died, barely touched the surface of Carey’s prowess with words, and when the story really gets underway, the language becomes practically breathtaking.

I relate that incident because I think the woman’s assessment sums up really well why the book would appeal to a certain type of reader, and why it ultimately didn’t work for me. I generally look for a gripping plot, a story that will transport me, and unfortunately, Chemistry didn’t do that. The language is, indeed, pretty. Lines like “How she loved him — she was alight with it…” are used generously, infusing the book with emotion and romance. Carey also employs old-fashioned cadence often, giving the book a bit of Victorian charm:

Trapped — my little criminal, in the middle of the white-washed room, shaking, crying, crumpled letter in his hand. Then it was knock knock knock and rattling on the handle and here was the accomplice, “The maid of the room,” a red kerchief around her wheaten hair. [p. 52]

The woman I met was right — Carey has a unique way with language. The language didn’t transport me, as it had transported her. To be honest, I think after a while, it just felt indulgent to me, especially as the heroine, Catherine, wallows in her grief in a particularly loquacious, poetic way. Still, indulgent for some, breathtaking for others.

Chemistry is about grief, and how people can deal with it. For Catherine, whose relationship with her lover had been a clumsily kept secret (in the sense that everyone apparently knew, even though they had to keep up appearances of not knowing), she immerses herself in her work, which means investigating a mechanical swan from the Victorian era. In a particularly poignant moment, she emails her boss that “it was highly ‘inappropriate’ to give a grieving woman the task of simulating life.” The boss clearly means well, and Catherine later does find solace in the task, but the irony of the assignment is indeed painful.

Parallel to Catherine’s story is Henry’s, the 19th century man who commissioned the mechanical swan. He had actually commissioned a mechanical duck, a treat for his dying son, but the inventor decided a mere duck wasn’t quite grand enough. As with Catherine, Henry has to deal with the loss of a loved one — his son is dying and he can’t stop it. The creation of a mechanical bird is a lovely, but ultimately futile, gesture.

Henry’s story had potential, but it never came to life for me. He travels to find someone who can create an automaton for him, and there are some fairy tale type scenes where he meets colourful characters who warn him about other shady figures. This is where, I suspect, I could have been transported by the language. Unfortunately, I just found the story meandering. Part of it is that I knew how it would turn out — we have Catherine in the 21st century reading Henry’s journals and working on Henry’s swan — so Henry’s anxiety over his automaton lacked urgency for the reader. Also, however, Carey seems to be attempting to infuse this storyline with an almost otherworldly air, and yet doesn’t quite succeed. It’s a different world, but not one that captivates, and so instead of being caught up in Henry’s adventures, I wanted to get back to Catherine’s.

Catherine’s story was a bit more interesting. Her pain in struggling to keep it together is palpable, and her snappishness and mood swings realistic. Along with reading Henry’s journals, she is obsessed with deleting her lover’s emails to her from his work computer — why they communicated such intimate material on their work emails rather than their personal ones is a minor irritant that I still don’t get. This preoccupation is endearing, and even though, as a character later points out, there are far more efficient ways to go about the task, I can understand Catherine’s desire to draw it out, turn the email deletion into a ritual that keeps their relationship going for as long as possible.

Catherine’s grief does feel indulgent after a while, and I think it struck me as such because Carey’s narrative indulges itself in her thoughts and emotions. We as readers barely get relief from her pain, and what little distraction there is — her work on the mechanical swan, or her conversations with her lover’s family — is so intricately linked with Catherine’s grief that it compounds rather than distracts. I can certainly understand the overwhelming nature of grief — I just thought this book tipped over the line.

The secondary characters were compelling. Catherine’s boss is kind and understanding, the kind of boss people probably wish to have until he reveals certain secrets about himself. Catherine’s assistant is a psychological loose cannon, but highly intelligent and in certain ways, more intriguing a character than Catherine herself.

The Chemistry of Tears had promise, but the book never really took off for me. The cover design is absolutely beautiful — one of my favourites this year, and certainly representative of the lyrical emotionality of the text. The story had some powerful elements, yet didn’t have a powerful overall impact. Carey uses a mechanical swan as a symbol and focal point for life, death and loss, a potentially potent symbol, yet not compelling enough an object in this book to make me care.

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

Review | The Next Best Thing, Jennifer Weiner

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I like Jennifer Weiner. I like her Bachelorette tweets, and I applaud her for calling attention to the gender imbalance in mainstream book reviews. I loved In Her Shoes  — that scene where Cameron Diaz’s character (who has difficulty reading) reads a poem for her sister’s wedding makes me cry every time. And yes, when I read it in the book, that scene made me cry as well.

So, when in the mood for a fun, lighthearted read, I decided to pick up Weiner’s new book The Next Best Thing. The book is about Ruth Saunders, a young writer who moves to Hollywood with her feisty grandmother and gets the green light for her sitcom, the eponymous Next Best Thing, about a young chef who moves to the big city with her feisty grandmother. Fine. A lot of writing is autobiographical, and even with the additional meta layer (meta meta?) of Weiner herself having been a screenwriter, I could deal with it. After all, I started the book looking for a fun, lighthearted read, not an earth shattering emotional tale.

Weiner adds gravitas to her character by giving her physical scars. Ruth’s parents died in a car crash when she was a child; she’d been in the car with them and her scars had never healed. In one of the few truly poignant scenes in the book, eight year old Ruth writes in her diary, “I will never be beautiful.” Personally, I thought it was a bit much — physically scarred Ruth writes about an overweight chef, hoping to inspire other girls who don’t fit the traditional idea of physical beauty. Ruth also falls in love with a man who is paralyzed from the waist down. It’s a bit heavy handed with all the physical and emotional scarring, though to Weiner’s credit, she never gets maudlin about them.

Here’s the thing though: I really didn’t like Next Best Thing. It read like a mediocre sitcom meandering from plot point to plot point yet never hitting its stride. My overall reaction: meh. And in my view, such indifference may be an even worse reaction than utter disgust. 50 Shades of Grey at least, while much, much more horribly written, at times fell into the “so bad it’s funny” category. Weiner had some funny lines — I especially love the description of one man as looking like a favourite uncle who’d bring you the latest Baby Sitters Club book, and one woman whose cleavage was big enough to hide an iPad. Overall, however, I was reminded of something a character said about the process of a screenplay being turned into a TV show: it’s a lot of waiting. Reading this felt like that, checking off plot point boxes one by one while still waiting for something to happen that’ll make you care.

The crux of the plot is that Ruth had written a screenplay that would inspire the everywoman. Her character was plus size, insecure, yet witty, and that character’s success will inspire the viewers to go for their own dreams. Hollywood takes over Ruth’s show and begin to turn it into a standard sitcom, with a size zero heroine, crazy sex-crazed elderly lady and stupid, sexist jokes.

This story could work only if we believed that Ruth’s original screenplay was worth fighting for. It’s not. We are given scenes with Ruth’s unadulterated vision, and later see her dismay at the studio’s interference, and all I could think of was that while the edits did make the show more stupid and offensive, they weren’t much worse than the original. The scene that Ruth was so proud of, an emotional, rah rah scene between the heroine and her grandmother, just sounded trite. I admit, a confrontation scene between the heroine and an ex-boyfriend did make me cheer, but that was one good moment in a TV show pilot that we’re supposed to believe would have been the next Golden Girls, if only Hollywood hadn’t interfered. It’s not. Even Ruth’s original is blah, and because of that, the stakes for the entire story are depressingly low.

As for the subplots — Ruth’s relationship with her grandmother and her crush on her boss (the aforementioned paralyzed man in a wheelchair) — again, the stakes just aren’t high enough to care. The grandmother is the most colourful, most interesting character in the book. I love the description of her waltzing into a restaurant like a movie star and the maitre’d wondering  who she was. Unfortunately, she isn’t given many interesting things to do, and serves mostly to provide rah rah support to her granddaughter. Even the big conflict that put Ruth and her grandmother’s relationship at risk — while it did have the potential to be big and emotional — barely fizzles. The romance is sweet, and the sex scenes endearing, but again the conflict feels contrived and the outcome easy.

I wasn’t expecting to be blown away, but I was expecting to be entertained. Unfunny and lacklustre, The Next Best Thing failed to deliver.

Blog Tour Review | Hey Canada! Vivien Bowers, illus. by Milan Pavlovic

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Remember encyclopedias? Hardcover books with glossy, colourful pages. In my nerdiest moments, I had a great time flipping through them and learning random factoids about Elizabethan drama, far away places and whatever other topic catches my attention. Wikipedia is a much more efficient way to research, but there’s a certain charm in an encyclopedia’s glossy presentation of information.

Reading Vivien Bowers’ Hey Canada! reminded me of that experience. The story is simple: Gran takes nine-year-old Alice and eight-year-old Cal on a road trip across Canada. They visit all the provincial capitals, and learn about each one’s history and points of interests. It’s a fun, informative introduction to Canada for 7 – 10 year olds, a wonderful book for parents to read with their children to teach them about this country. As a recent immigrant myself, I would recommend this book to other immigrants, particularly those with children. Written in clear, easily accessible language and filled with photos of Canadian landmarks, Hey Canada! is a great way for a family to learn about the country together.

I enjoyed reading the facts and looking at the photos. I remember being in elementary school, and studying the dialects, cultural traditions and top industries of various regions in the Philippines. I imagine Canadian school children have studied the same about the various provinces. Hey Canada! is a great resource for this. I assume the plant and bird at each province’s chapter heading is the official plant or bird of the province (i.e. the osprey is the official bird of Nova Scotia and the mayflower the official plant), and I like that this was taught via a simple illustration in the chapter heading.

I liked the historical comic strips for a similar reason. Having not grown up studying Canadian history, it was fascinating to see small glimpses of each province’s history. For example in the chapter on Quebec, we see the British attack Quebec City in 1759, and the final panel shows the present-day Plains of Abraham as an idyllic park. I now want to visit the area, and perhaps read a bit more about this history.

The Find It! boxes are also particularly interesting as a teaching tool. It lists highlights in the chapter, and so, especially for parents reading with their children, it helps make the reading experience a bit more interactive. The only thing I didn’t like was that the list items sometimes referred to illustrations or text. Since they referred to highlights of the province, I would have preferred them to have referred to actual photographs. As well, and this admittedly is partly because I’m lazy, but I would have also liked the images to have labels, just so if I’m flipping through the book, I can immediately see what an image is, without having to search the entry.

Cal’s Tweets seemed designed to make the book seem more contemporary. Unfortunately, other than being labelled a tweet and, I’m assuming, consisting of less than 140 characters, it looked and sounded just like a regular Cal factoid rather than a tweet. I think using @ mentions, hash tags, and perhaps even formatting it to look like a tweet (with photos being labelled Twitpic or Instagram, and the Reply, Retweet etc buttons) would have helped these be more tweet-like. That being said, the primary appeal of Hey Canada! is its classic format, and the tweets just stand out as incongruous with everything else.

Hey Canada! is also very narrative in style, along with being informational. Gran and the kids joke around a lot, and there’s even a subplot about Cal’s hamster. The humour is very gentle, geared towards younger children and mostly about Gran’s singing and Alice’s snoring. It’s light family entertainment, and again, good for children or families reading together. With Canada Day coming up soon, it’s a great time to take an imaginary trip across the country with your whole family, and Hey Canada! is a fun way to do just that.

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Thank you to Tundra Books for providing me with a copy of this book.