This is Your Dog on Drugs

 Just a quick post before I proceed with the five-stars, because I keep vague-blogging about Lucy being a little dopehead last week-end and felt like I should clarify.

Anne asked what kind of dog Lucy is - she's half chihuahua with poodle and yorkshire terrier, so we call her a Chipookie. We see all of her breeds on occasion: she gets crazy-eye chihuahua face sometimes, she sheds very little, and she shakes a toy like it's a rat that insulted her mother. 

Eve had been asking for a dog since she was small. I was a little apprehensive because I love dogs, but I've never owned one, and I am an easily overwhelmed woman. Matt had dogs growing up but wasn't jumping at the bit. Angus was indifferent. I started telling her that we could talk about it when she was ready to take responsibility for the dog, walk it and pick up its poo. Unlike most kids who would like, she would think about it and say "I can wait".

I've always loved big dogs, but we live in a neighbourhood with houses that are very close together and small yards, and our neighbours have a chocolate lab who is adorable but does seem big in their house and yard. Then they got a second dog, Riley.

The day they brought her home I could not freaking BELIEVE how cute she was. We puppy-sat a few times, and then I said to Eve that we could get a dog if it was like that, and we emailed the person who owned the parent dogs to see if she was planning another litter. 

When we babysat a baby dog and a baby baby

(Yes, technically we shopped, didn't adopt. I am all for rescuing a dog if that's your jam, but I was nervous about what I could handle. And we didn't pay for the dog, just her first shots.)

We brought Lucy home on Eve's 12th birthday. And now we had a dog.

It was weird. It was wonderful. It was February. And really fucking cold. House training was a bit of an issue. We just kind of got used to cleaning stuff up, which was not that bad because it was all tiny. Walking was only to the end of the driveway, until one day when she suddenly vaulted the snowbank and started to pull me down towards people talking in the next driveway, which I had to call a halt to because I was bralass and Thelma and Louise were frozen and not up for company. 

For a few weeks I took a break from whatever I was doing after lunch and watched tv while cuddling a sleeping puppy. That was pretty awesome. 

She won everybody over in short order. 

Matt was determined that we would crate her when we left the house and at night.

That worked for a few weeks. Then she got wise to me and, well, she was fast and small. And Matt went away and as if I wasn't going to let the puppy sleep in bed with me. Then he got home and went up to bed early and half an hour I thought 'oh shit', ran upstairs and he was in bed and she was asleep on his butt. So that was that.

So, fast forward a few years and we have a dog, and everything is cool. And then I take her for a walk after dark soon after New Year's Eve, and after I get back she starts acting really weird. The way her head was shaking made me think she had brain damage and I was terrified. We went to the emergency vet and they took her away and then the vet came back to talk to us and said she wasn't a mandated reporter, but this was 98% likely marijuana toxicity so did we keep pot in the house?

I texted Angus "look, I won't be mad, but.." and he said nope, no way. We got her settled and started the drive home and Matt said "look, I won't be mad, but...." and I said IT WASN'T ME (this was years ago, it wasn't legal yet and there was no way there was any in the house. A few years later someone gave me a joint at a Halloween party and I stuck it in my bra and then got home and threw all my stuff in the wash and then had to search the laundry room frantically so my bra joint didn't kill my dog). 

The next day we went back and the vet tech told us that this happened pretty frequently to people after walking the dogs, because people drop the little roaches and they smell delicious to animals. She also told us about a couple who brought their dog in and when they were questioned the dad said "well we shared a cookie that was in the freezer and I don't feel great either", and then their son was in a lot of trouble. 

So it was a scary night and an astronomical vet bill. We did some reading and agreed that if it happened again we should probably try to ride it out at home.

It was some kind of Murphy's Law thing that whenever Matt traveled when the kids were little (which was a lot), one or both of them would get sick or injured the second he was out of Canadian airspace. I thought I was clear of all that once the kids grew up and left home.

I still had a dog.

Same deal. Walk, then strange behaviour. I settled her on her blanket on the couch, and she promptly barfed, which was gross but I thought it might be a good thing. I put another blanket down and put her down. She was obviously distressed - she kept startling as if something was flying at her, and couldn't put her head down. I called Matt just to check that he was good with me sticking to our previous plan, but I was feeling really freaked out being the person who had to make the actual call. 

I had a really good group on my local Facebook chat offering counsel and encouragement. We all did some reading and most of it indicated that a small amount of marijuana was very rarely fatal, and that the night would be unpleasant but not tragic. The major problem was that most of what I had to do was wait and see, and I am very, very poor at waiting and seeing. I kept trying to force-feed her chicken broth, because one article had said if she couldn't swallow then it was time for the vet. Then I gave myself a shake and realized that she was swallowing fine, she probably didn't want any food or liquid because she was nauseated, and not having water for a few hours wasn't going to kill her. 

So I waited. I sat on the other end of the couch with a book and checked on her every few minutes. After a couple of hours she finally put her head down and curled up as if she was comfortable enough to start sleeping it off.

After another hour, I picked her up and set her down outside the back door to see if she might pee right there. She actually went down the stairs and looked around a little. She didn't pee, but when she came back in she ate a small treat and licked some water off my hand. After that I was confident I wasn't going to kill her.

I was awake until four a.m., although she was asleep and probably fine by two or so. We both slept pretty late, and when I got up to let her out and feed her she was back to normal, which was much sooner than the 18-24 hours the internet had prepared me for. 

Is it weird that after these little episodes I am totally fine with people making jokes about my stoner doggy? That I make them myself? Enh, my family deals with things with bad humour, it's not strange that my friends do the same thing. 

Can you believe I've never had to nurse my kids through a bad hangover or trip, and I've had to do it with my dog TWICE? I was so anxious I nearly popped an edible myself. 

Don't do drugs!

Four-Star Fiction Read in 2022: Winter Discontent

How is everyone doing? Is it winter where you are? And does winter mean snow and icy temperatures? And is that cool with you, or not so much. I know that Nicole feels energized and ready to get back at 'er in January (picture the "I'm so happy and not at all jealous" meme also HI NICOLE) and Suzanne loves the snow (HI SUZANNE). I like to have enough snow that things look white and pretty but not so much that it makes driving dangerous and we have to shovel a lot because I worry about Matt's heart and my back. I used to love cross-country skiing, and we did buy skis when we first moved here, but then we had a baby really quickly and somehow never managed to get back to it, which makes me very sad. 

My mental health is not awesome at the moment, but compared to last year it is better, so I am focusing on the positive. Last year I pretty much only left the house for work and the rest of the time sat in my reading chair staring out the window and hardly reading. This year I've had to pull back on some things but I'm getting out with Lucy and doing yoga most days. I still haven't managed to put away the last few Christmas decorations that we kept out for our New Year's 2.0 party that we had on January 14, but Matt is away this week and I spent the weekend dealing with a stoned dog, so I am forgiving myself for that. 

It's helping that the kids are doing great at the moment. Eve hardly FaceTimed at all last week, and when she did she was bubbling over with funny anecdotes about her housemates and the Arts and Science social they went to even thought it went until TEN O'CLOCK on a TUESDAY NIGHT (Eve does not share my love of the late bedtime), and the really neat elective she's taking called Sex, Drugs and Rock 'n Roll (it's about addiction). Angus headed back to school last weekend and first spent Alumni Weekend at his old college with friends and had a great time.

 Matt is in San Jose, but first went to Tijuana and his Uber broke down and four of them had to walk the last kilometer to the factory and locals kept asking if they were missionaries. Today it's been snowing barely perceptibly and yet it keeps accumulating, we have a snowfall warning and getting to work tomorrow might be interesting. There's an app called TouchPlow where you can hire a person with a plow to come do your driveway, which I did use once when Matt and Eve were away and Angus and I needed to get to work and driver's ed in the morning through a truly apocalyptic amount of snow. I prefer not to use it, though, so I'm hoping if I shovel before I go to bed I can ram my SUV with snow tires out of the driveway and down the street in the morning and then take care of the rest of it when I get home. I'll let you know how it turns out.

The Penultimate Post! It's always good if I can actually get these done by the end of January.

Four-Star Fiction

To Be Sung Underwater by Tom McNeal: Synopsis from Goodreads: Judith Whitman always believed in the kind of love that "picks you up in Akron and sets you down in Rio." Long ago, she once experienced that love. Willy Blunt was a carpenter with a dry wit and a steadfast sense of honor. Marrying him seemed like a natural thing to promise. But Willy Blunt was not a person you could pick up in Nebraska and transport to Stanford. When Judith left home, she didn't look back. Twenty years later, Judith's marriage is hazy with secrets. In her hand is what may be the phone number for the man who believed she meant it when she said she loved him. If she called, what would he say? 'To be Sung Underwater' is the epic love story of a woman trying to remember, and the man who could not even begin to forget.

-”’He seemed to be waiting for her to say more, but what she’d said felt not only incomplete but disloyal, a kind of useless pandering to her audience, so she didn’t say anything more. After a few seconds Willy said, ‘You know, for a while there we kept horses for the boys, and we had a mare that had broken down. Couldn’t ride it, except maybe to walk it around the corral. You could feed it and brush it and water it was all. Sometimes I’ve thought that’s what most marriages get to. A horse you still care a little bit about but cannot any longer ride.’”

I read this because I read another book by the same author, a children's/young adult book that was breathtakingly original and completely different from this - it always amazes me when an author has this kind of range. This book is about so many different kinds of love and a few different kinds of coming of age. It is so perceptive about human nature and the different ways we are wounded and self-wounding. The complex relationships between parents and children, between spouses, between lovers and friends, all dissected kindly but unrelentingly. What kind of responsibility do we bear to people who love us? Is everyone responsible for his or her own choices? It made me want to move to Nebraska, or maybe just rent a storage locker.

No One is Talking About This by Patricia C. Lockwood: Synopsis from Goodreads: A book that asks: Is there life after the internet? As this urgent, genre-defying book opens, a woman who has recently been elevated to prominence for her social media posts travels around the world to meet her adoring fans. She is overwhelmed by navigating the new language and etiquette of what she terms "the portal," where she grapples with an unshakable conviction that a vast chorus of voices is now dictating her thoughts. When existential threats—from climate change and economic precariousness to the rise of an unnamed dictator and an epidemic of loneliness—begin to loom, she posts her way deeper into the portal's void. An avalanche of images, details, and references accumulate to form a landscape that is post-sense, post-irony, post-everything. "Are we in hell?" the people of the portal ask themselves. "Are we all just going to keep doing this until we die?"

Suddenly, two texts from her mother pierce the fray: "Something has gone wrong," and "How soon can you get here?" As real life and its stakes collide with the increasingly absurd antics of the portal, the woman confronts a world that seems to contain both an abundance of proof that there is goodness, empathy, and justice in the universe, and a deluge of evidence to the contrary. Fragmentary and omniscient, incisive and sincere, No One Is Talking About This is at once a love letter to the endless scroll and a profound, modern meditation on love, language, and human connection from a singular voice in American literature.

-“The people who lived in the portal were often compared to those legendary experiment rats who kept hitting a button over and over to get a pellet. But at least the rats were getting a pellet, or the hope of a pellet, or the memory of a pellet. When we hit the button, all we were getting was to be more of a rat.”

I requested this weeks before I got it, and then couldn't remember what it was supposed to be about. The big ring on the front made me think it might be science fiction. Then for the first bit I wasn't sure if I was on board with it. It seemed like an almost-too-cute listing of memes and internet in-jokes. Then I was pulled in as I was reminded how much fun this kind of this is if you're in on the joke - the washing of her legs because of the furor about some people not specifically washing their legs in the shower, the slightly different spellings of words like 'bitch' that inexplicably make them funnier (Eve once said "so then they basically said 'no, beetch' and I laughed so hard I almost choked. I am easily amused.) Then a family event occurs that changes the focus of the narrator's life, and everything becomes very real and immediate. The second half is heartwrenching and beautiful. The acknowledgements reveal that the book is largely autobiographical, which makes it even more poignant. The book is written in short aphoristic sections, which always makes me wonder - is it easier to write like this, without having to work up connective tissue between pithy anecdotes? Or is it harder, because it makes things actions and personalities seem more remote and inaccessible? I can't decide, but it's an interesting style, and when it works it seems to work really well. I will be looking for more of Lockwood's writing.

The Round House by Louise Erdrich: Synopsis from Goodreads: One of the most revered novelists of our time - a brilliant chronicler of Native-American life - Louise Erdrich returns to the territory of her bestselling, Pulitzer Prize finalist The Plague of Doves with The Round House, transporting readers to the Ojibwe reservation in North Dakota. It is an exquisitely told story of a boy on the cusp of manhood who seeks justice and understanding in the wake of a terrible crime that upends and forever transforms his family. Riveting and suspenseful, arguably the most accessible novel to date from the creator of Love Medicine, The Beet Queen, and The Bingo Palace, Erdrich’s The Round House is a page-turning masterpiece of literary fiction - at once a powerful coming-of-age story, a mystery, and a tender, moving novel of family, history, and culture. 

I have read one or two of her books before and am quite in awe of her writing prowess. This was really raw and difficult to read in parts and the way she captured the voice of 13-year-old Joe was remarkable. It's a coming-of-age story, a cultural commentary, a family drama and a very dark crime story. The sense of place and character was vivid, cinematic almost. Not enjoyable, but impressive.

Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt: Synopsis from Goodreads: For fans of A Man Called Ove, a charming, witty and compulsively readable exploration of friendship, reckoning, and hope, tracing a widow's unlikely connection with a giant Pacific octopus. After Tova Sullivan's husband died, she began working the night shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium, mopping floors and tidying up. Keeping busy has always helped her cope, which she's been doing since her eighteen-year-old son, Erik, mysteriously vanished on a boat in Puget Sound over thirty years ago. Tova becomes acquainted with curmudgeonly Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus living at the aquarium. Marcellus knows more than anyone can imagine but wouldn't dream of lifting one of his eight arms for his human captors--until he forms a remarkable friendship with Tova. Ever the detective, Marcellus deduces what happened the night Tova's son disappeared. And now Marcellus must use every trick his old invertebrate body can muster to unearth the truth for her before it's too late. Shelby Van Pelt's debut novel is a gentle reminder that sometimes taking a hard look at the past can help uncover a future that once felt impossible.

-Tova knows how dearly Barb had loved her golden retriever, Sully. Perhaps more than she’d loved her late husband, Rick. And in the space of a few months, last year, she lost both. Tova wonders sometimes if it’s better that way, to have one’s tragedies clustered together, to make good use of the existing rawness. Get it over with in one shot. Tova knew there was a bottom to those depths of despair. Once your soul was soaked through with grief, any more simply ran off, overflowed, the way maple syrup on Saturday-morning pancakes always cascaded onto the table whenever Erik was allowed to pour it himself.”

This is the kind of book that I didn't know I needed desperately until I was reading it. It reminded me a bit of How the Penguins Saved Veronica. The writing wasn't show-offy, there were no 'big twists' - everything is telegraphed from a mile away, which is fine because this isn't meant to be a thriller, but a bittersweet, charming story about connections of various sorts, the indignities and victories of getting older, and the ways in which the universe can be a giant dick and then also astonishingly kind. I've heard that the reader who voices Marcellus in the audio book is wonderful, but I can only listen to audiobooks on long drives - I found his voice just as strong and compelling in type.

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett: Synopsis from Goodreads: The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' storylines intersect? Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person's decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins.

I made Matt buy this for me for Christmas the Christmas before last because I really wanted to read it. And then I promptly...didn't read it. Sometimes once I own a book the urgency drains away in favour of library books that have a time limit on them. Fortunately Eve fell in love with the cover, then decided she wanted to read it, so I had to mainline it before she left for school. I really liked it, but I've had trouble deciding how to describe why. It seemed really clever to use twins as a device, so that it's almost like showing how one character's life could have ended up if they'd gone in different directions. The synopsis says "looking well beyond issues of race", which I really like, because this very much does not feel like a one-note book - she goes deep into issues in marriage, particularly between people of different classes, and other unconventional relationships. 

The Bass Rock by Evie Wyld: Synopsis from Goodreads: Surging out of the sea, the Bass Rock has for centuries watched over the lives that pass under its shadow on the Scottish mainland. And across the centuries the fates of three women are linked: to this place, to each other. In the early 1700s, Sarah, accused of being a witch, flees for her life. In the aftermath of the Second World War, Ruth navigates a new house, a new husband and the strange waters of the local community. Six decades later, the house stands empty. Viv, mourning the death of her father, catalogues Ruth’s belongings and discovers her place in the past – and perhaps a way forward. Each woman’s choices are circumscribed, in ways big and small, by the men in their lives. But in sisterhood there is the hope of survival and new life. Intricately crafted and compulsively readable, The Bass Rock burns bright with anger and love.

-”Come the Christmas holidays, they will be bolder, stronger, more resilient, the head had told them proudly over ginger snaps. What they hadn’t asked was what methods were used to produce this resilience. Ruth buried the thought. The head was war-aged and was missing the ring finger on his left hand. He wore a black prosthetic instead, which attached with a band around his wrist. It was rather elegant. So strange, she always thought, how a bullet could take out just a finger or it could take the whole person. After Antony died, she had taken the bullet casing her father kept as a paperweight and studied it. How absurd that the human body could not survive with such a small hole through it, such an unassuming object. A great disappointment.”

This is my second book by this Australian author, and both have been unflinchingly bleak but also masterfully written. This one is about a geographical feature that witnesses the many ways men express their fear of women over a long period of time, from accusations of witchcraft to modern marriage. The various relationships are different and yet distressingly alike, and the landscape illustrates how much has disappointingly stayed the same and yet, how change, however incrementally small and slow, still takes place. Evie Wyld's mind must be a dazzling but frightening place.

Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle: Synopsis from Goodreads: Welcome to Trace Italian, a game of strategy and survival! You may now make your first move. Isolated by a disfiguring injury since the age of 17, Sean Phillips crafts imaginary worlds for strangers to play in. From his small apartment in Southern California, he orchestrates fantastic adventures where possibilities, both dark and bright, open in the boundaries between the real and the imagined. As the creator of Trace Italian - a text-based, roleplaying game played through the mail - Sean guides players from around the world through his intricately imagined terrain, which they navigate and explore, turn by turn, seeking sanctuary in a ravaged, savage future America. Lance and Carrie are high school students from Florida, explorers of the Trace. But when they take their play into the real world, disaster strikes, and Sean is called to account for it. In the process, he is pulled back through time, tunneling toward the moment of his own self-inflicted departure from the world in which most people live. Brilliantly constructed, Wolf in White Van unfolds in reverse until we arrive at both the beginning and the climax: the event that has shaped so much of Sean’s life. Beautifully written and unexpectedly moving, John Darnielle’s audacious and gripping debut novel is a marvel of storytelling brio and genuine literary delicacy.

-"So I stood in a state of partial focus, waiting. Looking for an opening, and then not looking, because I wanted to let my dad and his friend do what they felt like they had to do here. I did hope that at some point I'd be able to explain my recent theory that it isn't really possible to kill yourself, that everybody goes on forever in multiple dimensions, which was less a theory than an attempt to do exactly what Ray'd been doing since he started talking: to draw some lesson from a place where no lessons were."

-It's really just simple math, the whole of it. There are only two stories: either you go forward or you die. But it's very hard to die, because all the turns pointing that way open up onto new ones, and you have to make the wrong choice enough times to really mean it. You have to stay focused. Very few players train their focus on death."

I am pretty sure I read this because I found it in a list of "Horror Books You've Never Heard Of" or something like that. I had, in fact, never heard of it, but I feel it is a mischaracterization to call it horror, and if I'd read it at another time I might have been bitter and felt misled. All of the 'horrific' events have already taken place, and the story largely features the thoughts of a disfigured man who spends a lot of time alone. The thing was, I really loved his thoughts. There was no fast-paced plot, or ghosts, or supernatural villains, just a suffocating sense of melancholy dread, except also sometimes shimmering moments of achingly beautiful human connection. I sort of wanted some areas filled out, and I sort of loved the way they were left as traces and trails. I was happy following the meandering threads of Seans' life, edging backwards to the inevitable formative act of his life. It wasn't the book I expected, and I understand why it didn't work for some people, but it was the perfect book for last October for me.

Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead by Emily R. Austin: Synopsis from Goodreads: Gilda, a twenty-something lesbian, cannot stop ruminating about death. Desperate for relief from her panicky mind and alienated from her repressive family, she responds to a flyer for free therapy at a local Catholic church, and finds herself being greeted by Father Jeff, who assumes she’s there for a job interview. Too embarrassed to correct him, Gilda is abruptly hired to replace the recently deceased receptionist Grace. In between trying to memorize the lines to Catholic mass, hiding the fact that she has a new girlfriend, and erecting a dirty dish tower in her crumbling apartment, Gilda strikes up an email correspondence with Grace’s old friend. She can’t bear to ignore the kindly old woman, who has been trying to reach her friend through the church inbox, but she also can’t bring herself to break the bad news. Desperate, she begins impersonating Grace via email. But when the police discover suspicious circumstances surrounding Grace’s death, Gilda may have to finally reveal the truth of her mortifying existence.

I really enjoyed reading this, although upon further reflection I have a couple of quibbles, especially about the ending. But four stars just means 'I really liked it' after all, and I did. I'm from a family that deals with all manner of trials with twisted humour, and I am always here for a book that does the same. Gilda is lost and despairing, endures a string of daily humiliations and ends up in a ridiculous situation - if you can't identify with that on any level, we're probably not going to be great friends (which is okay, the world needs people who don't make idiots of themselves on the regular too). I bought a copy for Eve, because I liked the book and also because of the super cute cover (we aim for honesty on this here blog), and she liked it too.

When You Read This by Mary Adkins: Synopsis from Goodreads: For fans of Maria Semple and Rainbow Rowell, a comedy-drama for the digital age: an epistolary debut novel about the ties that bind and break our hearts. For four years, Iris Massey worked side by side with PR maven Smith Simonyi, helping clients perfect their brands. But Iris has died, taken by terminal illness at only thirty-three. Adrift without his friend and colleague, Smith is surprised to discover that in her last six months, Iris created a blog filled with sharp and often funny musings on the end of a life not quite fulfilled. She also made one final request: for Smith to get her posts published as a book. With the help of his charmingly eager, if overbearingly forthright, new intern Carl, Smith tackles the task of fulfilling Iris’s last wish. Before he can do so, though, he must get the approval of Iris’ big sister Jade, an haute cuisine chef who’s been knocked sideways by her loss. Each carrying their own baggage, Smith and Jade end up on a collision course with their own unresolved pasts and with each other. Told in a series of e-mails, blog posts, online therapy submissions, text messages, legal correspondence, home-rental bookings, and other snippets of our virtual lives, When You Read This is a deft, captivating romantic comedy—funny, tragic, surprising, and bittersweet—that candidly reveals how we find new beginnings after loss. 

-"And what about the moment we forget? They are there, too, needles in our haystack-selves, a part of us even though we may never find them again and wouldn't know where to look. They prick us every now and then so we know they're there."

I loved reading this, and then I tried to buy a couple of copies to give away for Christmas and it seems to have sunk in the publishing world without much of a splash, which makes me sad, although I know that's just how it goes sometimes. It ties in painfully with the theme of wondering what is left when we die, especially if the end comes far too soon. This is my second modern epistolary novel of the year, this one including a blog, and although the format doesn't always succeed, this one hit it out of the park - everyone had a very distinct voice, the void left by Iris's absence is obvious, as well as the way discovering her blog brings several grieving people together.

We Spread by Iain Reid: Synopsis from Goodreads: A new work of philosophical suspense. Penny, an artist, has lived in the same apartment for decades, surrounded by the artifacts and keepsakes of her long life. She is resigned to the mundane rituals of old age, until things start to slip. Before her longtime partner passed away years earlier, provisions were made, unbeknownst to her, for a room in a unique long-term care residence, where Penny finds herself after one too many “incidents.” Initially, surrounded by peers, conversing, eating, sleeping, looking out at the beautiful woods that surround the house, all is well. She even begins to paint again. But as the days start to blur together, Penny—with a growing sense of unrest and distrust—starts to lose her grip on the passage of time and on her place in the world. Is she succumbing to the subtly destructive effects of aging, or is she an unknowing participant in something more unsettling? At once compassionate and uncanny, told in spare, hypnotic prose, Iain Reid’s genre-defying third novel explores questions of conformity, art, productivity, relationships, and what, ultimately, it means to grow old. 

-"I've never wanted to avoid darkness in my own work, my own darkness. But revealing my own shadows is not enough in itself. What I want, what I've always wanted, is for another person to feel relief from their darkness when they look at my work."

This prompts a bit of a callback to when I said speculative fiction is sometimes the best at describing the human experience - some people shelved this as a horror book. Is it a description of encroaching dementia, and a treatise on the interconnectedness of humanity, or are all these aging people being held captive by a crazed horticulturist? Beautiful writing, and a palpable sense of disquiet.

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones: Synopsis from Goodreads: Newlyweds Celestial and Roy are the embodiment of both the American Dream and the New South. He is a young executive, and she is an artist on the brink of an exciting career. But as they settle into the routine of their life together, they are ripped apart by circumstances neither could have imagined. Roy is arrested and sentenced to twelve years for a crime Celestial knows he didn’t commit. Though fiercely independent, Celestial finds herself bereft and unmoored, taking comfort in Andre, her childhood friend, and best man at their wedding. As Roy’s time in prison passes, she is unable to hold on to the love that has been her center. After five years, Roy’s conviction is suddenly overturned, and he returns to Atlanta ready to resume their life together. This stirring love story is a profoundly insightful look into the hearts and minds of three people who are at once bound and separated by forces beyond their control. An American Marriage is a masterpiece of storytelling, an intimate look deep into the souls of people who must reckon with the past while moving forward—with hope and pain—into the future. 

This is a book that was on my radar for ages before I finally read it. It packs quite a punch, and manages to be a searingly topical commentary and also just a pretty riveting story that really goes deeply into the details of some very complicated relationships.

If An Egyptian Cannot Speak English by Noor Naga: Synopsis from Goodreads: In the aftermath of the Arab Spring, an Egyptian American woman and a man from the village of Shobrakheit meet at a café in Cairo. He was a photographer of the revolution, but now finds himself unemployed and addicted to cocaine, living in a rooftop shack. She is a nostalgic daughter of immigrants “returning” to a country she’s never been to before, teaching English and living in a light-filled flat with balconies on all sides. They fall in love and he moves in. But soon their desire—for one another, for the selves they want to become through the other—takes a violent turn that neither of them expected. A dark romance exposing the gaps in American identity politics, especially when exported overseas, If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English is at once ravishing and wry, scathing and tender. Told in alternating perspectives, Noor Naga’s experimental debut examines the ethics of fetishizing the homeland and punishing the beloved . . . and vice versa. In our globalized twenty-first-century world, what are the new faces (and races) of empire? When the revolution fails, how long can someone survive the disappointment? Who suffers and, more crucially, who gets to tell about it?

Another from the Giller Prize short list. For the first little bit, I was unsure about what was going on and what the questions at the head of each chapter were supposed to mean. Then I worried that I only thought the book was good because I felt like I was too dumb to comprehend for a while. I'm still uncertain about a few things, but there were moments of writing that affected me deeply, and I did feel like Naga drove home the dissonance in the relationship between two people from strikingly different worlds, and the way she kind of comes at it obliquely reinforces that. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to sympathize with some of the shockingly misogynistic notions of the boy from Shobrakheit, given his background ("the more fucking a girl has done, they shyer she pretends to be" ?? we could all see from the peach-plump wetness of her lips how the skin of her other, lower lips would look"??? EW) But then the American woman is very much a flawed character also ("He showed me the mosque on Abd El-Khalik Tharwat, where he slept when he had nowhere to go, and his body bears scars in places that should not have seen sharpness. So, fine, it’s been rough. But even so. The boy can’t boil water or heat bread on the eye of the stove. Leaves the milk out of the fridge. Tries to cut an apple in the night and I wake up to blood spattered on the kitchen floor, seeds everywhere. There is all the evidence of a past tended by a woman’s hands - he’s at least as spoiled as he is damaged, I mean".), so I should be careful not to confuse the author with the narrator. I think it was one of those reading experiences almost like reading in a second language, when if you just keep going suddenly it all starts to hang together, which is kind of cool.

Four-Star Short Stories and Non-Fiction Read in 2022: The Sleepless in Barrhaven Edition

I thought this post would include fiction, but I have a terrible headache and it's quite long already, so I'm going to post what I have.

Last Sunday night was the worst episode of insomnia I've had in years. I work early Monday morning, and I never go to bed early enough, but I can usually get at least five hours, which is enough to be functional and uncranky. This was one of those nights where you desperately tell yourself that surely you got more sleep than you feel like you did, but I really don't believe it. I saw every hour on the clock. Weird things hurt. My legs were twitchy. I was too hot, then too cold. I got through my work day, checked in on my parents, made dinner and then crashed for an hour - it was impossible not to. I felt weird for the rest of the day, and didn't do that whole "well I must be tired enough to sleep tonight without taking anything" thing.

 On Tuesday evening Angus and I went over to have dinner with my parents (Matt had important work visitors so couldn't make it) before Angus headed back to Ithaca the next day. We started talking about Blue Monday - supposedly the saddest day of the year - and I said 'didn't it actually turn out to be a fake thing?' and my mom said she thought it was something travel agents made up. Then my dad said "well my chair got fixed, so it was a great day for me" and I said "hang on, that was yesterday! Blue Monday was yesterday? That was ABSOLUTELY the worst day in recent memory for me", and it wasn't confirmation bias because I didn't even know it was supposed to be. So now I don't know what to think. Except that I just realized "the saddest day of the year" is a weird thing to call a day that's only about three weeks into the new year. 

Anyway, last night I had a fairly good sleep - the night before not so much (I'll tell you about my train wreck Saturday night baby-sitting my tripping dog some other time).  

Four-Star Short Stories

The Best Horror of the Year 13 edited by Ellen Datlow:  Synopsis from Goodreads: From Ellen Datlow (“the venerable queen of horror anthologies” (New York Times) comes a new entry in the series that has brought you stories from Stephen King and Neil Gaiman comes thrilling stories, the best horror stories available. For more than four decades, Ellen Datlow has been at the center of horror. Bringing you the most frightening and terrifying stories, Datlow always has her finger on the pulse of what horror readers crave. Now, with the thirteenth volume of the series, Datlow is back again to bring you the stories that will keep you up at night. Encompassed in the pages of The Best Horror of the Year have been such illustrious writers as: Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, Stephen Graham Jones, Joyce Carol Oates, Laird Barron, Mira Grant, and many others. With each passing year, science, technology, and the march of time shine light into the craggy corners of the universe, making the fears of an earlier generation seem quaint. But this light creates its own shadows. The Best Horror of the Year chronicles these shifting shadows. It is a catalog of terror, fear, and unpleasantness as articulated by today’s most challenging and exciting writers.

I always read these. There are always a few that don't quite hit, but overall they are very, very good. I always love A.C. Wise, who is in brutal good form here. Likewise Stephen Graham Jones. "Clever, Meat, and Block" by Maria Haskins is one of the more chilling zombie stories I've ever read. There's a really good Everest story - it's crossed my mind that it's funny that so many people want to climb mountains when mountain climbing is such an abundant source for horror stories, but then I guess no one should ever go camping or live in a house ever, either. "It Doesn't Feel Right" by Michael Marshall Smith starts with trying to put socks and shoes on a child "or, as it's known privately between Helena and I.... Footwear Vietnam". Okay, I'm looking these over and it's just making me sound like a deeply disturbed person for liking them. If you know you know, stop looking at me like that.

Someone in Time: Tales of Time-Crossed Romance edited by Jonathan Strahan: Synopsis from Goodreads: Even time travel can’t unravel love Time-travel is a way for writers to play with history and imagine different futures – for better, or worse. When romance is thrown into the mix, time-travel becomes a passionate tool, or heart-breaking weapon. A time agent in the 22nd century puts their whole mission at risk when they fall in love with the wrong person. No matter which part of history a man visits, he cannot not escape his ex. A woman is desperately in love with the time-space continuum, but it doesn’t love her back. As time passes and falls apart, a time-traveller must say goodbye to their soulmate. With stories from best-selling and award-winning authors such as Seanan McGuire, Alix E. Harrow and Nina Allan, this anthology gives a taste for the rich treasure trove of stories we can imagine with love, loss and reunion across time and space.

-"He imagined, when he finally fell into the right time and place, the story he was destined to have, he would feel a tiny, silent pop, like a puzzle piece snapping into place, or teeth breaking the skin of an apple." (Roadside Attraction by Alix E. Harrow)

I can never resist a book of time travel stories, especially a library ebook of them that is free and has the added benefit of appearing before me without me having to get off my ass to obtain it. It took me an embarrassing number of stories before I reread the title and realized it was time-travel ROMANCE, which I just went on and on about not really being my thing. I'm kind of glad about that, because I also said that maybe I should read more romance because when romance is the focus, hopefully it will be an interesting spin on romance. Turns out that romance involving time travel is very much my thing. This collection is also refreshingly non-heteronormative - I was four or five stories in before there was an un-gay one. 

Lesser-Known Monsters of the 21st Century by Kim Fu: Synopsis from Goodreads: In the twelve unforgettable tales of Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century, the strange is made familiar and the familiar strange, such that a girl growing wings on her legs feels like an ordinary rite of passage, while a bug-infested house becomes an impossible, Kafkaesque nightmare. Each story builds a new world all its own: a group of children steal a haunted doll; a runaway bride encounters a sea monster; a vendor sells toy boxes that seemingly control the passage of time; an insomniac is seduced by the Sandman. These visions of modern life wrestle with themes of death and technological consequence, guilt and sexuality, and unmask the contradictions that exist within all of us.   Mesmerizing, electric, and wholly original, Kim Fu’s Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century blurs the boundaries of the real and fantastic, offering intricate and surprising insights into human nature.

-"There was a way in which Liddy's wings didn't strike us as extraordinary. The realm of pretend had only just closed its doors to us, and light still leaked through around the edges. Everything was baffling and secretive then, especially our own bodies, sprouting all kinds of outgrowths that were meant to be hidden, desperately ignored and not discussed, hairs and lumps that could be weaponized against us."

Another from the Giller Prize shortlist. These are quite genre-blurring - some veer closer to dark fantasy/sci fi, even horror, but I think when it's this literary we just call it magical realism? I'm not trying to be snarky, except maybe I am a little bit because speculative literature often gets short shrift, when in fact sometimes fiction that isn't obsessed with verisimilitude is the best way to really get at how strange it can feel to be a human person experiencing the world. I loved these - they deal with the courageous vulnerability of childhood, the wonders and perils of technology, and the vast and peculiar territory of marriage; they are thought-provoking and unsettling, poignant and beautifully written. 

Four-Star Non-Fiction

All the Lives We Ever Lived: Seeking Solace in Virginia Woolf by Katherine Smyth: Synopsis from Goodreads: A wise, lyrical memoir about the power of literature to help us read our own lives -- and see clearly the people we love most. Katharine Smyth was a student at Oxford when she first read Virginia Woolf's modernist masterpiece To the Lighthouse in the comfort of an English sitting room, and in the companionable silence she shared with her father. After his death -- a calamity that claimed her favorite person--she returned to that beloved novel as a way of wrestling with his memory and understanding her own grief. Smyth's story moves between the New England of her childhood and Woolf's Cornish shores and Bloomsbury squares, exploring universal questions about family, loss, and homecoming. Through her inventive, highly personal reading of To the Lighthouse, and her artful adaptation of its groundbreaking structure, Smyth guides us toward a new vision of Woolf's most demanding and rewarding novel--and crafts an elegant reminder of literature's ability to clarify and console. Braiding memoir, literary criticism, and biography, All the Lives We Ever Lived is a wholly original debut: a love letter from a daughter to her father, and from a reader to her most cherished author.

Sometimes I read or buy books in groups according to whimsical rules (e.g. Middlegame, Middlemarch and The City in the Middle of the Night). After my SIL sent me My Life in Middlemarch, I bought this book and one called How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer (haven't read that one yet).

I didn't love this as much as the Middlemarch one, didn't find the author as likable, but it was an engaging read. It's largely about the author's relationship with her father, a lifelong alcoholic who dies of cancer (and the effects of alcoholism) as she is studying in college. She connects this with her love of Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse, which I read in university but now intend to reread, as I didn't realize at the time how autobiographical it was with regards to V.W.'s own parents. I didn't connect to it or love it like Smyth did - I became more of a Woolf fan after university when I read her diaries. I'm not sure she connects her own life with Woolf's that well -- it's more like she talks about the book, Woolf's life, then her own -- and I couldn't get over being annoyed by the ways I felt she was unfair to her mother, the more stable and therefore less glamorous parent (not that she's the first or only person to do that). I still wanted to keep reading, and I found a lot of her writing on grief to be true and insightful. I would really love to do the Virginia Woolf Road Trip Smyth did with her parents and grandmother.

I Was Told to Come Alone: My Journey Behind the Lines of Jihad by Souad Mekhennet: Synopsis from Goodreads: "I was told to come alone. I was not to carry any identification, and would have to leave my cell phone, audio recorder, watch, and purse at my hotel. . . ."  For her whole life, Souad Mekhennet, a reporter for The Washington Post who was born and educated in Germany, has had to balance the two sides of her upbringing - Muslim and Western. She has also sought to provide a mediating voice between these cultures, which too often misunderstand each other. In this compelling and evocative memoir, we accompany Mekhennet as she journeys behind the lines of jihad, starting in the German neighborhoods where the 9/11 plotters were radicalized and the Iraqi neighborhoods where Sunnis and Shia turned against one another, and culminating on the Turkish/Syrian border region where ISIS is a daily presence. In her travels across the Middle East and North Africa, she documents her chilling run-ins with various intelligence services and shows why the Arab Spring never lived up to its promise. She then returns to Europe, first in London, where she uncovers the identity of the notorious ISIS executioner "Jihadi John," and then in France, Belgium, and her native Germany, where terror has come to the heart of Western civilization. 

Mekhennet's background has given her unique access to some of the world's most wanted men, who generally refuse to speak to Western journalists. She is not afraid to face personal danger to reach out to individuals in the inner circles of Al Qaeda, the Taliban, ISIS, and their affiliates; when she is told to come alone to an interview, she never knows what awaits at her destination. Souad Mekhennet is an ideal guide to introduce us to the human beings behind the ominous headlines, as she shares her transformative journey with us. Hers is a story you will not soon forget.

Another cool find in a Little Free Library. And - wow. She's so smart and determined and
fearless. Mekehennet is German-born but of Muslim descent, which allowed her to blend in in countries where white journalists stood out. She also made a point of visiting places she was writing about, and expressed a level of contempt for journalists who only did interviews by phone. I was breathless during some of the dangerous exploits she described even though I knew she lived to write about them.

One point she made that I felt sort of naive to have not considered was that the west automatically assumes that democracy is the best political system, even when it is demonstrably true that sometimes totalitarian regimes do a better job of protecting minorities (because they don't have to pander to everyone for votes)- and Hitler came to power through elections.

This gave me a lot to think about, and to research further, since it was more of a memoir that sometimes touched fairly lightly on each period of her life and reportage.

Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers by Jude Ellison S. Doyle: Synopsis from Goodreads: Women have always been seen as monsters. Men from Aristotle to Freud have insisted that women are freakish creatures, capable of immense destruction. Maybe they are. And maybe that’s a good thing...  Sady Doyle, hailed as “smart, funny and fearless” by the Boston Globe, takes readers on a tour of the female dark side, from the biblical Lilith to Dracula’s Lucy Westenra, from the T-Rex in Jurassic Park to the teen witches of The Craft. She illuminates the women who have shaped our nightmares: Serial killer Ed Gein’s “domineering” mother Augusta; exorcism casualty Anneliese Michel, starving herself to death to quell her demons; author Mary Shelley, dreaming her dead child back to life. These monsters embody patriarchal fear of women, and illustrate the violence with which men enforce traditionally feminine roles. They also speak to the primal threat of a woman who takes back her power. In a dark and dangerous world, Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers asks women to look to monsters for the ferocity we all need to survive. “Some people take a scalpel to the heart of media culture; Sady Doyle brings a bone saw, a melon baller, and a machete.”—Andi Zeisler, author of We Were Feminists Once.

Sometimes I go to buy one book and end up buying a whack of books based on whatever falls into the orbit of the first book. The minute I opened it and saw the opening quote, which was from the movie The Craft, I knew it was going to be good. It's not like she breaks any new ground for anyone who has half a clue about how terrified men in general are of women in general, but I loved how she illustrated it, and her style is so fast and smart and funny. For a slightly more scholarly take I like I Don't: A Contrarian History of Marriage by Susan Squire, but for a pop culture take this is flawless. 

Permanent Astonishment by Tomson Highway: Synopsis from Goodreads: Capricious, big-hearted, joyful: an epic memoir from one of Canada's most acclaimed Indigenous writers and performers. Tomson Highway was born in a snowbank on an island in the sub-Arctic, the eleventh of twelve children in a nomadic, caribou-hunting Cree family. Growing up in a land of ten thousand lakes and islands, Tomson relished being pulled by dogsled beneath a night sky alive with stars, sucking the juices from roasted muskrat tails, and singing country music songs with his impossibly beautiful older sister and her teenaged friends. Surrounded by the love of his family and the vast, mesmerizing landscape they called home, his was in many ways an idyllic far-north childhood. But five of Tomson's siblings died in childhood, and Balazee and Joe Highway, who loved their surviving children profoundly, wanted their two youngest sons, Tomson and Rene, to enjoy opportunities as big as the world. And so when Tomson was six, he was flown south by float plane to attend a residential school. A year later Rene joined him to begin the rest of their education. In 1990 Rene Highway, a world-renowned dancer, died of an AIDS-related illness. Permanent Astonishment: Growing Up in the Land of Snow and Sky is Tomson's extravagant embrace of his younger brother's final words: Don't mourn me, be joyful. His memoir offers insights, both hilarious and profound, into the Cree experience of culture, conquest, and survival.

What an splendid person, and what an amazing life. He makes living in sub-Arctic Canada sound like a magical adventure, despite the obvious rigors of feeding, clothing and sheltering a big family in such an extreme climate. I loved how he so patiently explained how Cree names come out sometimes bizarrely in English, and how he incorporated his native language throughout the book.

I was mentally preparing myself for horrors when he eagerly boarded the plane to fly to the residential school, then surprised when the experience was largely positive, and how he described so many of the priests and nuns as kind people "who loved us", who spent all night wrapping Christmas presents and taught him English and music. This doesn't in any way negate the appalling conditions of many other schools, of course, and there is one keeper who sexually abuses some of the boys and causes years of trauma. Highway is also bullied for his perceived femininity and weakness, and one keeper punches him in the head at one point. The fact that even with all this Highway consider his schooling a positive experience... I don't even know.

Tomson Highway seems to be an exceptional person, someone who manages unfailing optimism, gratitude and grace. The obvious love he has for his parents and siblings, particularly his adored late younger brother, the eagerness for learning languages and music, the 'permanent astonishment' for all the wonders the world holds. I don't know if he was born predisposed to this resolute optimism and generosity of spirit, or if it's something he practiced until it was second nature.

I did make a bit of an embarrassing and possibly slightly racist mistake, where I thought I had seen Highway speak at McMaster when I was there. I did study Highway's Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing in university, but the indigenous writer I saw speak, the one who said "the truest humour comes from pain" was Drew Hayden Taylor. I realized this when I looked at Highway's author photo. He does say in this book, though "if any one force will save my people, it will be laughter. It will be the joy that anchors Cree. It will be the Trickster-fuelled, spectacular sense of humour that sparks it to life".

Highway was born in a snowbank in the sub-Arctic and now speaks multiple languages, many honorary doctorates, and has traveled the world through his writing, speaking, piano-playing and activism. I'm so happy I got to read this book.

I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy: Synopsis from Goodreads: A heartbreaking and hilarious memoir by iCarly and Sam & Cat star Jennette McCurdy about her struggles as a former child actor—including eating disorders, addiction, and a complicated relationship with her overbearing mother—and how she retook control of her life. Jennette McCurdy was six years old when she had her first acting audition. Her mother’s dream was for her only daughter to become a star, and Jennette would do anything to make her mother happy. So she went along with what Mom called “calorie restriction,” eating little and weighing herself five times a day. She endured extensive at-home makeovers while Mom chided, “Your eyelashes are invisible, okay? You think Dakota Fanning doesn’t tint hers?” She was even showered by Mom until age sixteen while sharing her diaries, email, and all her income. In I’m Glad My Mom Died, Jennette recounts all this in unflinching detail—just as she chronicles what happens when the dream finally comes true. Cast in a new Nickelodeon series called iCarly, she is thrust into fame. Though Mom is ecstatic, emailing fan club moderators and getting on a first-name basis with the paparazzi (“Hi Gale!”), Jennette is riddled with anxiety, shame, and self-loathing, which manifest into eating disorders, addiction, and a series of unhealthy relationships. These issues only get worse when, soon after taking the lead in the iCarly spinoff Sam & Cat alongside Ariana Grande, her mother dies of cancer. Finally, after discovering therapy and quitting acting, Jennette embarks on recovery and decides for the first time in her life what she really wants. Told with refreshing candor and dark humor, I’m Glad My Mom Died is an inspiring story of resilience, independence, and the joy of shampooing your own hair.

-”’You’re just getting boobies.’

Oh. No. The only thing worse than a cancer diagnosis is a growing-up diagnosis. I am horrified of growing up. First, I’m small for my age, which is a benefit in showbiz because I can book roles for characters younger than me. I can work longer hours on set and have to take fewer breaks by law. Logistics aside, I’m more cooperative and can take direction better than those seven-year-old scumbags.”

-”I can’t go places anymore without being recognized. I no longer go to Disneyland, my favorite place, because last time I tried, I was walking down Main Street and so many people came up to me that they had to stop the Christmas Fantasy Parade midway through. Goofy looked pissed.”

I had seen that this was coming out but didn't have any particular plans to read it (although I was all in favour of her having written it and it being an all-out bestseller);  it's just not my usual genre. Then I saw browsing my library's express ebooks and it was available, so I borrowed it, figuring I could use it for the 'written by someone not known for being a writer' book bingo square, and couldn't stop reading once I had started.

The publisher says she didn't have a ghostwriter, which I tend to believe - her voice is pretty distinct and not entirely polished, but some appealing wit and snark come through. Having watched and loved iCarly with my daughter and loving her character, it's appalling and devastating to read how she played a hedonistic glutton while in actual fact she was calorie restricting horrifically and weighing herself five times a day, breaking her neck to succeed in a profession she didn't even love just to satisfy her rabid narcissist of a mother. In fact, a lot of information that's come to light makes me wonder if I should just stop watching tv and movies altogether, for fear that the people I'm admiring are miserable, overworked and/or addicted to something - and I don't mean this in a glib way, it's a sincere worry.

I was happy to know that McCurdy was actually friends with Miranda Cosgrove, and sad that she was resentful of Ariana Grande, although she was honest and clear-eyed about how they were played against each other. She seems to be in a pretty good place now, although I don't see how you ever outgrow that kind of abuse. She's apparently signed a deal to write fiction, and I wish her all the success and happiness in the world.

Erebus: One Ship, Two Epic Voyages, and the Greatest Naval Mystery of All Time by Michael Palin: Synopsis from Goodreads: Intrepid voyager, writer and comedian Michael Palin follows the trail of two expeditions made by the Royal Navy's HMS Erebus to opposite ends of the globe, reliving the voyages and investigating the ship itself, lost on the final Franklin expedition and discovered with the help of Inuit knowledge in 2014. The story of a ship begins after the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo, when Great Britain had more bomb ships than it had enemies. The solid, reinforced hulls of HMS Erebus, and another bomb ship, HMS Terror, made them suitable for discovering what lay at the coldest ends of the earth. n 1839, Erebus was chosen as the flagship of an expedition to penetrate south to explore Antarctica. Under the leadership of the charismatic James Clark Ross, she and HMS Terror sailed further south than anyone had been before. But Antarctica never captured the national imagination; what the British navy needed now was confirmation of its superiority by making the discovery, once and for all, of a route through the North-West Passage.

Chosen to lead the mission was Sir John Franklin, at 59 someone many considered too old for such a hazardous journey. Nevertheless, he and his men confidently sailed away down the Thames in April 1845. Provisioned for three winters in the Arctic, Erebus and Terror and the 129 men of the Franklin expedition were seen heading west by two whalers in late July.
No one ever saw them again.

Over the years there were many attempts to discover what might have happened--and eventually the first bodies were discovered in shallow graves, confirming that it had been the dreadful fate of the explorers to die of hunger and scurvy as they abandoned the ships in the ice.
For generations, the mystery of what had happened to the ships endured. Then, on September 9th, 2014, came the almost unbelievable news: HMS Erebus had been discovered thirty feet below the Arctic waters, by a Parks Canada exploration ship.
Palin looks at the Erebus story through the different motives of the two expeditions, one scientific and successful, the other nationalistic and disastrous. He examines the past by means of the extensive historical record and travels in the present day to those places where there is still an echo of Erebus herself, from the dockyard where she was built, to Tasmania where the Antarctic voyage began and the Falkland Islands, then on to the Canadian Arctic, to get a sense of what the conditions must have been like for the starving, stumbling sailors as they abandoned their ships to the ice. And of course the story has a future. It lies ten metres down in the waters of Nunavut's Queen Maud Gulf, where many secrets wait to be revealed.

-"Barrow's multi-pronged attack on the Northwest Passage had brought results and, even when unsuccessful, had so firmly gripped the public imagination that men like Parry and Franklin and James Clark Ross were becoming shining lights in a new firmament -- a world in which heroes fought the elements, not the enemy."

-"So far as the wildlife of the island was concerned, McCormick seems to have regarded it principally as a form of target practice. It's impossible to turn a page of his extensive journals without marvelling, or perhaps despairing, at his appetite for admiring God's creatures, then shooting them. On 15 May he identified the chioni, or sheathbill, a 'singular and beautiful bird...so fearless and confiding, (it) seems peculiar to the island to which its presence gives a charm and animation, especially to a lover of the feathered race like myself.' This is followed next day by the succinct entry, 'I shot my first chioni.'"

Someone put this on the book club list, and I'll be honest, I put off reading it for as long as possible. I don't even know why, I love Michael Palin. Anyway, it was fantastic. The story is fascinating, and his style is so informative, clear, and funny - he has the enthusiasm of a child telling you about his favourite dinosaurs. It really takes you back to a different time, when so much of the earth was unexplored and it seemed like the grandest adventure to set sail on a ship stuffed to the gills with food and provisions. Outfitting the ships is a tale unto itself, and I liked hearing about the ship from the Franklin Expedition that wasn't the Terror, and the voyage it went on before the Franklin one, which was fascinating in its own right. 

I didn't take good notes on this because I read the actual hard copy rather than an ebook (which means I screenshot all the quotes I like), but I still remember Palin's bemused description of the naturalist on board the Erebus who wrote rapturously of all the new species of birds he came across - and then shot them all. I was a bit chastened by the descriptions of rigorous "scrubbed hammocks and washed clothes' - I'd always imagined that men living in close ship's quarters would be, um, pretty ripe in short order. John Ross naming a mountain range that turned out to be a cloud bank, and being forever mocked for it. And then Jane Franklin like a ferocious little bulldog campaigning for her past-his-prime husband to lead the Franklin expedition, and then trying to emotionally blackmail people to keep looking for him long after any hope of survival was gone. From the delirious heights of discovery and conquest to the utter despair of loss and death, it really feels like a story that has everything.