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Review: Vital Signs, Tessa McWatt

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Tessa McWatt’s Vital Signs begins with an image of the narrator’s wife Anna wearing an electrode cap. She has a brain aneurysm that causes her to mangle her sentences and that endangers her life. The narrator Mike is devastated by his wife’s condition and guilt-ridden over an affair he’d had years ago. He wants to confess.

When I started reading Vital Signs, all I could think of was, this is such a depressing book. I ached for Anna and her inability to express herself. I found the opening scene with Anna wearing the electrode cap and speaking about hummingbirds very painful, and for a book to begin with that image should’ve warned me that this book was just going to get even more depressing.

Still, it’s sadness with sweetness as well. I love hearing about Mike and Anna’s love story, and how their family deals with Anna’s condition. In one of my favourite passages, Mike thinks that perhaps Anna’s nonsensical sentences are her way of exerting control, of perhaps playing a game with her doctors. It’s false hope, of course, but I was moved by his all too palpable need to grasp any bit of hope he can.

I cared about Mike, Anna and their children. The entire time, I wanted more than anything for Mike to decide not to confess his affair. Seriously, with what his wife is going through, what would his confession achieve other than salving his own conscience? If Anna were to be trapped in a world where she can communicate only to herself, I wanted her to hold on to the wonderful memories she’s had with Mike, and not have to deal with the less-than-wonderful truth. I cheered their daughter Charlotte on when Mike sensed she didn’t want him to tell. I wanted Anna to get better, and worried with her family whether surgery was an acceptable risk.

That is why I was so let down by the plot twist near the end of the book. Without giving any details about it, all I can say is that I felt cheated. I felt like it just provided an easy resolution to what was, till then, a gripping plot point. Other than that, I thought Vital Signs is a good book, with a fitting overall ending. It’s a short book, but by no means an easy read.

Review: Sand Queen, Helen Benedict

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What a powerful book! Also somewhat depressing, so definitely not something to read if you’re in the mood for something light. Helen Benedict’s Sand Queen tells the stories of nineteen-year-old American soldier Kate Brady and Iraqi medical student Naema Jassim in Iraq in 2003. I don’t usually enjoy war novels, so I wasn’t sure how much I’d like this one, but I quickly found myself engrossed in the tales of both women.

Kate is assigned to an American prison in Iraq, where Naema’s father and thirteen-year-old brother have been unjustly detained. The first thing that struck me about this novel is the less than heroic portrayal of the American military. Seen through Naema’s eyes, American soldiers are bullies, much less brutal than Saddam’s soldiers, but still picking on innocent Iraqis like her brother. I like how Benedict shows this, and also shows the other side’s perspective. For example, Kate notices how the Iraqi prisoners are actually getting better food and accommodations than the American soldiers.

I like the scene where Naema tells Kate that she’s a medical student, and Kate admits she thought Iraqi girls “weren’t allowed to do anything except get married.” “Do you know nothing of my country?” Naema asks, and they chat a bit about their families.  I love that bit of cross-cultural interaction, and the idea that, even in the very midst of the war, an American and an Iraqi can discover common ground and become friends.

Naema’s story started out emotionally gripping. We see her enjoying a quiet dinner with her family, her father and brother being arrested, and her outrage and desperation in trying to find out about them. However, I found Kate’s story much more engrossing, and shortly after Naema and Kate’s initial interactions, I found myself skimming over the Naema chapters.

Kate’s story is just very disturbing. As a young, female soldier, she routinely gets harassed by her fellow soldiers and by prisoners. In Sand Queen, Benedict uses the real life stories of female soldiers in Iraq that she had researched for her earlier, non-fiction book The Lonely Solder: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq, and perhaps it’s because of this source material that Sand Queen ends up feeling much more like Kate’s story than like Kate and Naema’s stories.

The level of harassment and sexism that Kate and her fellow female soldiers face is horrific, and it was difficult but felt utterly real, to see her turn from a somewhat innocent girl just trying to do her job to a rage-filled, hurting woman capable of kicking a bound man and grinding his face into the ground. We see glimpses of Kate’s life after the war, and we understand how she got there — after all she’s been through, who wouldn’t be broken? There’s a sweet romance with a fellow soldier who tries to protect her from a rapist, and I was cheering on that romance all the way. With so much horror everywhere else, that friendship and developing love stood out as the potential for hope.

Sand Queen is a powerful and, quite frankly, depressing novel. It’s wonderfully written; even with such heavy subject matter, the story moves really quickly. It’s an eye opener, both to the lives of Iraqis during the war and to the experiences of female soldiers. Not a breezy read, but definitely worth reading.

Review: The Borrower, Rebecca Makkai

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Young librarian Lucy Hull wants to help ten-year-old book lover Ian Drake, who has a lively imagination, but whose mother wants him to read only books “with the breath of God in them.” Mrs. Drake also enrols Ian in gay rehab classes with Pastor Bob. So when Lucy discovers Ian hiding in the library after hours and intending to run away, she goes with him. Lucy pretends to believe Ian’s story that he’s really just running away to his grandmother’s house in another state, but the truth is, Lucy just wants to show Ian a world beyond his mother’s rigid boundaries. Rebecca Makkai’s The Borrower is a funny, entertaining book, about the love of reading and the transformative potential of stories.

I love so many things about this book. Both Lucy and Ian are obsessed with reading, which is something to which I can totally relate. While it appears to be only Ian running away, it soon becomes clear that Lucy is also trying to escape something. I love Lucy’s parents; the father especially is such a colourful character, a member of the Russian mafia with so many stories about his childhood. Lucy has always accepted these stories as true, albeit exaggerated. Her realization that her father’s stories may not have been as based on reality as she believed when she was younger is a beautiful, poignant portrayal of our own growing up. I grew up reading a lot, and it kinda sucked realizing high school wasn’t anything like Sweet Valley or finding out Carolyn Keene (who was one of my favourite authors growing up) isn’t even a real person.

The Borrower is a tribute to children’s literature, with lots of references to wonderful books. For example, Lucy’s father ran a chocolate factory in Russia. (What avid reader would not immediately remember his/her experience reading Roald Dahl?) There’s also a chapter written in the style of Choose Your Own Adventure, another of my childhood favourites, and one chapter begins in the style of “This is the house that Jack built.” The story of The Borrower is interesting enough to read, but it’s these little winks to beloved children’s books that I loved the most.

I also love that Ian himself challenges Lucy’s perceptions of him. For example, Lucy sees a scar and immediately assumes Ian is being physically abused, but it turns out not to be the case. Ian glumly borrows some Bobbsey Twins books because Lucy assures him they’ll meet his mother’s “breath of God” requirements even though they’re horrible (as a Bobbsey Twins fan myself, I have to say I’m offended by that). So Lucy assumes Ian only likes to read the kinds of books she does (admittedly also a good list, including The Hobbit), only to be shocked that Ian also enjoys reading a Christian YA series. Lucy can’t understand how Ian can “fall” for that, which I think also shows her own limitations. I liked this because it shows that, although Lucy appears to be the hero, wanting to break Ian free to be himself, she also imposes her own preconceived notions on what he should be.

Not sure how I like the ending. The Borrower ended with a whimper, which felt like a let down after such building up through most of the book. Yet at the same time, the ending also felt very fitting. Like, how else could their adventure have ended, and how else would a book extolling the virtues of reading close its story? The Borrower is a fun, breezy read, and a wonderful homage to the magic of children’s literature. Love reading? This is worth checking out.