Book Review: Far to Go by Alison Pick

I've been putting off reviewing this simply because I don't see how I can possibly do it justice. Reading this book was somewhat akin to being stabbed very deeply with something very sharp -- you feel like you might get away okay, and then you walk a few steps and realize you're bleeding all over the place.

Holocaust literature is such a delicate, marshy, minefield-laden thing. You have to respect an author -- a young one, at that -- who even attempts one more entry in the field, and this one is very, very good. The narrator of the book interviews Holocaust survivors and their children for her books, and says that "they can come off as selfish, these survivors and their children. As closed and cramped, dark knots of grievance. That too is Hitler's legacy: the poison never fully flushed out." This articulates something I have often struggled with, how the Holocaust killed six million Jews and also blighted the lives of so many who didn't die, by killing the people they would have been, by leaving them unable to live unpoisoned lives, or to raise their children without transmitting all their terror and despair down through generations. 

There are tropes -- the wealthy, secular Jews who can't bring themselves to envision how bad things will get until it is far too late, the non-Jewish family friend who manages little by little to convince himself of the morality of stealing from his friend and business partner -- but they become fully-realized characters, and the increased closing-off of their options is claustrophobically palpable. The character of Marta, the nanny to six-year-old Pepik and witness to the secrets and frailties of Pavel and Anneliese, the Jewish couple, is finely drawn and compelling. They are all so clearly caught in a huge maelstrom of monstrous unfairness, and you want to cry out and warn them while understanding that of course they wouldn't want to leave their home, their livelihood, or send their children away to strangers, because who could really believe what was coming?

The 'mysterious narrator' conveys an overarching sense of bitterness and fatalism, which increases with the realization that none of the events recounted are actually known to have happened, but are rather an imaginative mosaic pieced around a few facts and letters. This kind of thing can go really badly wrong sometimes, but Pick seems to have found the exact formula for making it work. Somehow she renders it completely clear, that we'll never know all the stories of all the people, that all we'll ever have is letters, fragments, statistics, and that the only way to overcome this and properly mourn the people is to imagine the stories.

"I wish this were a happy story. A story to make you doubt, and despair, and then have your hopes redeemed so you could believe again, at the last minute, in the essential goodness of the world around us and the people in it." It's not a happy story. It is note-perfect, and devastating.

Something to be Said for Skipping Mondays...

So I hit the school library bright and early this morning, shelved some books, got some kids squared away, saw both my kids with their classes which for some reason they love, got Eve to straighten up the Goosebumps books because they're on a very low shelf and it hurts my back, got confirmation from the librarian that this was not, in fact, improper use of my child, went to the other library, returned some books, picked up some books, went to Farm Boy, got some groceries, was driving by a gas station and remembered that I was almost out of gas so got gas because Eve has dance tonight and last dance night we almost ran out of gas. Then I hit the drugstore where I didn't have a list but I was sure I remembered everything because I was ON FIRE today. Then I got home and realized I'd forgotten the saline stuff for my contacts which isn't actually saline any more because I wear hard contacts instead of soft contacts, but the fact remained that if I didn't have the whatever tonight I would have to leave my contacts dry or wear them for roughly twenty-four hours altogether, neither of which seemed a viable option. Then I checked not very hopefully under the sink and there it was! A brand new unopened bottle! The fortuitousness of it would make me dizzy except not, because the other great thing about today is, there's nothing like having a headache for five or six days to make simply not having a headache seem REALLY EXCITING.

(I'm in the process of switching medications. Apparently there can be some side effects. I can't recall the exact list at the moment but I'm going to venture a guess about inappropriate affect and hyper mania. And run-on sentences. I hope the FDA is on top of that.)

It's Friday, Right?

I often miss the Crazy Mayor's Friday Funny thing because I'm just too disorganized and I can't be funny on cue, dammit! At my sister's wedding she said she wanted my speech to be funny, so I figured I'd have to do it on rollerblades -- me rollerblading? Now that's funny. 

Matt was trying to get Angus to watch this show called The Quantum Tamers with him the other night. He was hoping that they would have some kind of father-son 'physics is cool!' moment born of quarks and particle/wave uncertainties. It didn't really happen, but hopefully it laid a little groundwork. This reminded me of an episode of WKRP in Cincinnati wherein Venus explains the atom to a wannabe high school dropout in terms of gang activity. This in turn reminded my husband that he thinks I'm a bit of a whack job with a fanciful imagination while somehow rendering him unable to recall that whenever he doesn't believe me about this kind of thing I'm almost invariably right. Witness his delicious humiliation here.

I don't actually spend a whole lot of time on Youtube, but being on there reminded me that I had been quite disappointed that I hadn't been able to find one of my favourite Saturday Night Live episodes (this used to be a link to youtube but the sketch was removed for copyright so now it's just a transcript which is a little less funny but still funny), where Alec Baldwin and Tiny Fey were riding home from work and everything either of them said offended the other one for some obscure reason. I think of this episode every time some other person goes public to 'demand an apology' for something. So I checked again and there it was -- and it wasn't Tina Fey! Which is nice for my husband, because I was just a little bit wrong. Happy week-end, and enjoy.

Knowing Me Knowing You (with the usual whiny accompaniment)

Perspective is a funny thing. I have overly reactive, chronically inflamed airways, and when I get sick I get a rib-breaking breath-stealing consumptive cough that can last for months. I always think that my husband must feel really bad for me when he hears me coughing like that. Then when he gets a cough -- his normal wussy-man cough although he acts like it's the final stages of the bubonic plague, naturally -- I find it really annoying and ask him to sleep in the basement. Then I think maybe he doesn't actually feel that bad for me when I cough.

I'm tired. It's been a good, kind of busy week. My husband had out-of-town people in at work so he's been wining and dining them while I meet the teacher and feed and bathe and supervise homework and piano practice more or less solo. Plus I've been sleeping like crap. Lying there with the same goddamned song running through my head a hundred and forty-two times, totally awake and yet yawning until my jaw creaks every few minutes. If there was a way to strangle yourself I'd be all over it.

Pam and I went for a lovely walk in a fun area of town where we never go this morning. For a little over two hours. It was wonderful, and I came home thinking it was just what I needed and I would probably sleep well tonight. The problem was, I wanted tonight to start RIGHT NOW. Then my husband came home after lunch and said he had a migraine and threw up at work and was going to bed. I managed to mutter something vaguely sympathetic, went to pick up the kids from school and fed them dinner and supervised piano practice solo AGAIN. Then he got up and ate four times what he usually eats and disappeared back upstairs with his laptop, which I may now go upstairs and beat him over the head with. Did I mention I have my period? I'm not sure how well this new blogging initiative is going. I looked at yesterday's post and it ended on a strange note about Angus's picture having a Charlie Brown head with no nose. For that I forgot to put Eve to bed until nine-thirty and went upstairs and found her nodding sleepily over a Junie B. Jones book in my armchair. I hope Zarah can live with herself.

Oh right, Knowing Me Knowing You...whatever month this is. Yay Fairy Blogmother.

1. Started your Christmas shopping yet?

Oh hell no. Well, a couple of tiny insignificant things that I have shoved in my closet and won't be able to find in December. I'm not buying the kids anything 'for Christmas' this year, except things that they would get anyway, because I always end up with way too much stuff, most of which they could have easily done without. At least that's the plan. I'll let you know how it works out for me.

2. Fall is here, what is your favourite cold weather comfort food?

Anything I cook in my crock pot that means I'm not cooking at four-thirty p.m. The most comforting thing is not having to cook dinner at dinner time. Pork chops in peach sauce, hungarian goulash, beef stew. Plus, you know, booze -- comforting in any weather.

3. Are you watching any new TV shows?

Don't think so. I usually love new fall TV, if only because none of it has had the chance to suck yet, but there's so much on it just makes me tired and I go read a book instead.

4. Have you read Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett?

Nope. I'm a horrible snob -- if everybody loves a book I avoid it like the plague because three million people can't possibly be right. Perhaps you remember how well that worked for me with Twilight.

5. Is the top of your desk cluttered or clear?

Why do I have a desk? And anyone who's seen my house knows better than to ask if the top of my anything is cluttered or clear. The top of everything has a stack of books and a flurry of pink post-it notes on it. And possibly a shrivelled mushroom and a dead caterpillar from Eve's nature box, which has a distressing habit of thinking out of the box.

My kids have been in pajamas since 5:30 and some kid on America's Funniest Home Videos just put boobs on a snowman. I'm going to bed.

Teacher Feature

Tonight was Meet the Teacher night. It's an annual thing that takes place in many schools, with the actual date being determined sort of like they determine Easter. With Easter it has something to do with how Sundays fall in relation to the Paschal full moon and the vernal equinox. Meet the Teacher night always falls on a night in October when it's pouring rain and I have my period. Fortunately my kids are teacher-pleasers, so nothing really exciting ever happens anyway (one kid in Eve's classroom was wandering around hiding behind random strangers and shooting people with some kind of dart gun). It's one of those pain-in-the-ass things that you just kind of have to do -- or hey. Maybe I don't. I work in the freaking school libary. I know all the teachers. Oh, but then Eve wouldn't get to show me her art and writing, that's not at all different from the art and writing she does at home. And then we wouldn't get to walk around looking at nineteen globes made from paper plates and toilet paper rolls, trying to remember/figure out which one is hers because she can't quite remember how she coloured it or find her name. Then the teacher confessed that every time the curtains get closed the paper plate globes fall off the toilet-paper-roll stands and we realized that the globes could all have been switched around and I thought we might still be there when school started again tomorrow morning. Then the teacher found Eve's globe. I love the teacher.

Angus's teacher is pregnant. Angus's teacher is always pregnant. In grade three he started the year with one teacher, the classes got shuffled, and we found out he was going to have another teacher, who I loved. He came home the first day he had her and said "she so nice! And she's pregnant!" I thought "fuck", because if she was pregnant enough for my oblivious son to notice, she had to be about to drop the kid. Sure enough, she was gone a month later and we had a third teacher before Thanksgiving, who fortunately was also wonderful. Last year he came home in October and said "guess what? Madame is pregnant." She lasted most of the year. A couple weeks after school started this year he came home and said "you won't believe it!" and I said "Don't tell me -- she's pregnant?" It's really annoying that these women can't schedule their reproductive needs more conveniently for me. Also, get this -- my friend, who used to teach at our school, mentioned that the second teacher's pregnancy might have been unplanned since she wasn't married. I said "huh? Then why do we call her Madame?" I still haven't gotten a satisfactory answer for that one. I mean, seriously -- what is this, 1940? It's not even a Catholic school! I'm doubly annoyed because I just realized that I meant to be annoyed by this all this time, and I've basically forgotten about it until now! What -- are we too lazy to say Mademoiselle? Is it some twisted morality thing? No, it can't be, because we called them all Madame before they were even pregnant -- oh, but maybe we suspected they were having sex!

Sorry. I've clearly looked at too much student art tonight. Angus drew a picture of himself in Toronto outside the Rogers Center, with the CN tower in the background. He had a Charlie Brown head with no nose.

Further Eve-isms

Last night Eve was working on a project called My Life in a Box. She had to put in three things to represent things she liked doing (a marker, a book and a shrivelled up mushroom for drawing, reading and collecting 'nature-y' things), one thing to represent what she wanted to be when she grew up (a microphone because she wants to be a singer) and something that represented her family. She thought about putting in a picture of us but dismissed that as too obvious. Someone else had put in a movie that their family liked watching together so she didn't want to copy that. She finally decided on Yahtzee dice because we like playing Yahtzee together, and then she could tell everyone about the time her father picked up the dice to toss them into the cup we shake them in and tossed them into his drink instead, and it was almost empty but there was a little bit of wine left in it. Because, as she put it "I get to talk about booze -- (holding two thumbs up) -- Mom, that's gold!"

Tonight on our way home from dance I told Eve that when we go to our friend Chris's wedding she'll get to meet his wife Lisa's eleven-year-old daughter Hannah. Eve said "She's eleven? I love people who are older than me and aren't my brother!"

Mea Culpa

Some people have been commenting that September was a 'bad month' for my blog. Some people seem to think that if they click onto my blog on their lunch hour and there's no new post I've been a 'bad friend' and a 'disappointment to humanity'. Some people may have stopped short in the parking lot at Zehr's and driven my seatbelt into my windpipe and then suggested that I should start blogging more regularly again if I 'know what's good for me'. Okay, I'm paraphrasing.

I had the most blissful, idyllic, big-sappy-smile-making week-end. On Thursday I drove to Oakville to see my friend Elaine who has an eleven-year-old boy, a six-year-old girl and a seven-month-old gestating little girl in her belly. She looks fabulous, particularly for someone who's clearly lost her mind (kidding! I'm kidding! It's the envy talking. Mostly.) We talked, we walked, we ate our way through the bakeries of downtown Oakville. We had Thai food with a hilarious server who set down the panang and informed us seriously that this curry was going to ruin us for all the other curries (which it pretty much did). We made fun of Elaine's husband's fish pants. We looked at a bunch of incredibly expensive organic bamboo baby stuff, including an armless sleeper/swaddler thing, which we thought was ingenious, and then realized that she could just cut the arms off a sleeper and sew the holes shut and start a college fund for the kid with the money she saved. We picked up the kids at school in my van because Holly really wanted to ride in it -- we asked Aidan if he wanted to come too instead of riding his skateboard home and he said "I guess" like he was really just doing it as a personal favour to us and not because he wanted to. Elaine's kids are scarily like my kids.

Then I drove to Barrie to see Zarah (who did take me to H&M before she started trash-talking about my blog laziness). We walked, we shopped, we ate. She congratulated me on no longer (hardly ever) wearing clothes that are way too big for me. She told me to try some eyeshadow. I said I hadn't worn eyeshadow since high school, when I would put it on and ask my sister if I was wearing too much and she would say "where is it?" I put some on and we went downtown for lunch with Zarah's friend Holly and at lunch Zarah said the eyeshadow looked nice and Holly looked at me and said "you're wearing eyeshadow?". So maybe not a great leap forward, but still. We were looking after a dog named Gemma, who is a mix of lab and collie and some other stuff, and was constantly trying to herd us onto the same floor and into the same room. By the last night I was there she refused to go out to pee unless both of us went with her. Zarah and I are clearly not the dominant bitches we've always thought ourselves to be.

Zarah's kids came back from their Dad's on Sunday a few hours before I had to leave. Sophie is about to turn six and little and adorable and looks like Cindy Lou Who. Alex is eight and smart and serious and I constantly try to crack him up and instead end up sounding like a jackass while he looks at me like I'm, well, a jackass, and yells "Mom! Allison's trying to make me be whimsical again! Make her stop!"

Now I'm home with my wonderful family and Angus says he missed me and he's not just saying that to make me feel good, and Eve fell asleep beside me while I was reading last night and my husband changed the sheets before I got home and none of them have started to piss me off again, so I'm in a very very nice place right now. Aside from my stupid reference work assignment with the stupid impossible-to-find facts about Canadian epidemiologists and the first settlers in Kelowna B.C. and the stupid labyrinthine MLA citations... no no no. Not going there yet, can't make me. I'm happy.