The Cue Card

I read Joyce Maynard’s novel “Labor Day” this week, so I could be ready for the movie adaptation of it, which comes out on Friday. Apparently the author loves the movie made by director Jason Reitman, who also did “Up in the Air” and “Juno,” so that’s a good sign. It also stars Josh Brolin and Kate Winslet, who earned a Golden Globe nomination for her role in the movie even though it wasn’t out then.

My husband actually got the novel in 2009 when we met Joyce Maynard at our city’s annual book festival called WordFest. Joyce did a reading from the book then, which we heard. We talked to her after and she inscribed it for us: “To Robert & Susan with undying faith in the power of love, Joyce Maynard.” Her inscription likely refers to the theme in the book, or perhaps it was because I had recently moved to Canada to be with Robert, which we might have talked about. I guess I like to think it was a bit of both, even if that’s sort of wishful thinking.

In any case, it was nice meeting Joyce Maynard. I did not bug her by asking her about J.D. Salinger, which I know now she hates getting asked about — her brief relationship when she was 18 with the reclusive author of “The Catcher in the Rye” who was 53 at the time. He had crushed her early young life then, and also was known to have taken up with a dozen other young teens, she says. Yikes, the more you know about Salinger the less you want to. But at the time that’s what I knew mostly about Joyce — that she had this thing with Salinger. Which is really too bad because she’s a talented writer in her own right and shouldn’t always be associated with this painful experience she had so many decades ago.

Anyways “Labor Day” is my first novel of hers that I’ve read. It’s about a divorced, depressed single mom and her lonely 13-year-old son living in a small New Hampshire town. At the start of Labor Day weekend they come to give a lift to an injured, escaped convict who talks his way into staying at their house. Over the next few days, they get to know the man, learning his story and finding out he’s not at all like the murderer he’s portrayed as. Among other things, the man shares with them the secrets of how to bake a good fruit pie, repairs their house, and teaches the boy how to field and hit a baseball.

But the adolescent son who’s going through puberty comes to believe his mom and the man, who are falling for each other, are going to run away together without him, leaving him with his father’s new family. This ends up starting the ball rolling towards a conclusion that will affect all of their lives.

“Labor Day” is a fast, dramatic read, told from the boy’s point of view. It was easy to slip into the characters and to imagine their circumstances and the small town they lived in. Just when I got to know and like them, their situation gave me an awful pit in my stomach that things would come crashing down soon and I didn’t like where that was heading. Fortunately it didn’t end all doom and gloom. It’s a moving story with an “undying faith in the power of love,” among characters that don’t have a whole lot left to lose. Just read it and you’ll see.

How about you — have you read this novel and what did you think? And do you plan on seeing the movie?

“The Curve of Time” is a nonfiction Canadian classic that my husband gave me as a gift quite a while ago. In fact, he gave me two copies, the paperback edition and the first Canadian hardback edition published in 1968. I knew that since I live here in western Canada, I had to read this West Coast gem. It’s such a treasured touchstone, and one of Canada’s most enduring bestsellers.

“The Curve of Time” was written by an independent woman, a widow, Muriel Wylie Blanchet, who lived an adventurous life. Every summer for 15 summers starting in 1927, she piled her five home-schooled kids into their 25-foot power boat The Caprice and cruised with them along the coastal waters of British Columbia. “The Curve of Time” is her account of the summers they spent living on the water and ashore in very remote places for that time.

It’s a book that draws on your imagination, letting you experience their adventures on the small boat motoring along in a world rich with islands, inlets, sounds, forests and mountains. You can only imagine the natural beauty they saw, the lushness of the landscape, and the elements such as the tides, fog, rocks, and storms they contended with. Capi, as she was called by her kids, traces the voyages of Captain George Vancouver to the area in 1791-95 and also the discovery claims of mariner Juan de Fuca’s.

She’s incredibly brave as a mother alone out there on the remote West Coast with five kids. Along the way, they befriend loggers, explore Native villages, and have run-ins with bears, cougars, and killer whales. At times, Capi has to fix the boat’s engine and battery, which strands them in precarious situations. The weather often turns bad and I sometimes feared whether they had enough to eat.

Capi is great though with her kids and is able to teach them so much about the natural world and life situations; it’s better than being at any camp. She’s a born naturalist who is able to describe her surroundings — the fish, the trees, and the water – everything in such wonderful detail. It makes it easy to imagine what they experienced. The kids reminded me ever so slightly of the Box-Car Children (if you recall those books). They come off as curious, industrious, eager to be a part of the boating adventures, and helpful as crew members. They’re not consumed by today’s iPhones, Xboxes, and computers. You got to admire their childhood long ago in the Pacific Northwest.

“The Curve of Time” is broken up into the various episodes the family has and jumps around in time over the summers they spent. There’s no real chronological order to it. You can pick it up at any point and read an episode and not miss a lot of background. It’s difficult to track exactly the boat’s course and all the inlets and places she describes. You’ll confound yourself if you try to read it for places you need to pinpoint. It’s best just to lose yourself in the whole experience of their seafaring. After all, it’s a place she describes as if time did not exist.

I enjoyed “The Curve of Time” a lot, even if at times I got lost about exactly what or where she was talking about. I was drawn to Capi and her kids from the very start. She narrated with an admirable sensibility and made journeying with their troupe interesting and fun, if not, at times alarming, such as the time one son took a bad fall and she had to get him to a doctor quickly although they were in the middle of nowhere. She prevailed though, and I was sorry to see her go by the book’s end.

Capi Blanchet is a real-life heroine I’ll have to add it to my most-admired list. Unfortunately she passed away the year her book was first published in 1961 and she did not get to see the success of “The Curve of Time.” It is great though that the book’s popularity has endured, and that it has become an iconic Canadian classic.

It should be required reading for anyone remotely interested in boating on Canada’s west coast, or as a glimpse into how things once were and how maybe they still are for a lucky yet adventurous few. I envy them.

How about you have you read or heard of this book? And what did you think?

I had had William Landay’s legal thriller “Defending Jacob” on my to-be-read list for quite awhile, ever since high praise about it came out after it was published in 2012. So I recommended it to my book club to discuss this month for a fast winter read, and it didn’t disappoint. I’m actually surprised that the suspense-filled “Defending Jacob” hasn’t been made into a movie by now (though it’s still in development I think). The twisted novel “Gone Girl” will beat it to the box office in 2014.

“Defending Jacob” has all the elements of a riveting “Presumed Innocent” courtroom crime drama. It reminded me a bit of the 1987 Scott Turow classic mixed perhaps slightly with Lionel Shriver’s 2003 novel “We Need to Talk About Kevin” — it’s just a bit different and maybe not as intense. But if you liked those, there’s a good chance, you should jump to get this one as well.

Landay’s novel is about a district attorney and his wife whose 14-year-old son, Jacob, is accused of killing a classmate. The evidence against Jacob doesn’t look good, though his parents believe in him and will do what it takes to prove his innocence. As his murder trial approaches and things seem desperate, the defense must guard against potential accusations in court that Jacob inherited a genetic disposition to commit murder based on his father’s violent family. On top of that, it must poke holes through all of the prosecution’s evidence.

“Defending Jacob” keeps you guessing till the end whether Jacob is guilty or not. Narrated by the father, the story portrays a family of three at the edge of its breaking point. It raises questions about what the responsibilities of parents’ with troubled teens have to each other, to their kid and to the public at large. I found the novel to be very compelling on this level.

My only qualm with the book perhaps was the redundancy with which it goes over the evidence before the trial then the same during the trial. I felt some of the book’s repetition in the middle slowed it just a bit. But the ending is definitely a doozy and a page-turner. I’m hesitant to say anymore, but just to get it if you like a good thought-provoking legal-crime thriller, then you’ll just fly right through it.

How about you — have you read this one? And what did you think of it?

Christmas is almost here, so Merry Christmas everyone! We finally made it to California to spend the holiday with my folks after our usual three hour flight turned into 24 hours of travel. We were stuck in airports awaiting the passing of a snowstorm in Salt Lake City. Holy Moly, I thought we’d never make it. But thanks to the pilot and crew who landed us at LAX at 3:15 a.m. and to a fast cab driver who hurried us into the remaining night. Thanks as well to Will Schwalbe’s engaging book “The End of Your Life Book Club,” which held my interest during a very trying long day.

Now that I’m here, I have a cold and will likely spend the rest of the week coughing and gulping down cold medicine. But man it’s great to be here. I’m undeterred and grateful at this time of year, just a little weary from this head-cold-fever-bug thing. Perhaps eggnog will lessen the effects.

Meanwhile, this week I finished the enjoyable 2012 novel “The Light Between Oceans” by M.L. Stedman. It takes place in the 1920s at an isolated lighthouse on Janus Rock, an island off the coast of Western Australia.There, the lighthouse keeper (Tom) and his young wife (Isabel) come to find a baby that washes up in a rowboat with a body. But instead of reporting it, they decide to raise the child as their own, which ends up having tough consequences down the line for everyone involved.

The book, you could say, is a morality play about a couple that makes a choice that is ethically wrong but they do it for sympathetic reasons, namely that they are unable to have children and they believe the baby’s parents are deceased. They so want a baby, too! The wife believes the baby is a gift from God. Both have suffered so much — the husband through WWI and the wife through three miscarriages. You truly feel for them, but you feel queasy at the same time. And the more you read “The Light Between Oceans,” the queasier things get.

The heart-rending novel is cleverly done, and the descriptions of living at the isolated lighthouse and the characters are vividly portrayed. Who can resist a good lighthouse story? (Not I). It was hard to believe that this is M.L. Stedman’s first novel; it’s very well imagined and constructed. You don’t know for a long while how things will play out. I was quite consumed by “The Light Between Oceans” and will look for what the author writes next. My only criticism perhaps is that the ending got a wee bit crazy with the drama and went on a bit too much. But still I throughly enjoyed the novel, especially the lighthouse parts and living on Janus Rock. It very slightly reminded me of Stephen King’s “The Shining” and what happens when a troubled person goes to a very isolated place for too long a time. As a reader, you know things will likely not turn out all too well.

What about you — have you read this one? And what did you think of it? What are you reading this Christmas? I hope you enjoy it and have a very merry holiday!

I must say “The Art of Racing in the Rain” took me by surprise. I’m a big animal and dog lover (we have a yellow Lab) but I typically don’t read novels about them. I’m especially leery of novels with animals talking or ones narrated from their point of view. It’s just that the books are often pretty bad — totally unbelievable, or silly, or filled with saccharine. I have a lot of respect for dogs and animals in general so I sort of steer clear of novels that make them seem fake or ridiculous, or in which the animals’ owners are irresponsible as well.

So when a friend dropped “The Art of Racing in the Rain” in my lap with a little dog in a flying costume on the front cover (which is a different cover than the one I pictured here) I sort of thought “no way.” However it was a friend and I couldn’t return the book without trying.

Sure enough it’s narrated by a dog, and yet this one didn’t drive me crazy like a lot of the others have. There’s so much more to it and the story and characters stood on their own, pulling me in along the way. Here’s what it’s about:

Enzo is a Lab, terrier mix who loves his human family that lives in Seattle; he thinks when he dies he’ll be reincarnated as a person. His owner Denny works at a fancy auto shop and is an up-and-coming race car driver, Eve, is his wife, and Zoe, their young daughter. Denny and Enzo love to watch old auto racing videos together, gleaning the wisdom these races can transfer to their lives. Yet when Eve becomes ill and Zoe’s taken in by her grandparents, Enzo must back Denny in the most challenging days of his life.

It’s a heart-jerking story and reaffirms the love a dog has for his family and vice-versa. I liked Denny and could see why Enzo thought so highly of him. By the end, I was taken in by the book hook, line, and sinker. I almost lost it on the last few pages, which rarely ever happens. “The Art of Racing in the Rain” is both humorous and touching. I was impressed by author Garth Stein’s depth and commitment to Enzo and his family, a true canine appreciator no doubt. My preconceived qualms about reading this turned out to be unfounded. It’s a human story as much as it is a dog’s story and one that I’m glad not to have missed.

Another book I finished recently was “Dear Life” by Alice Munro. It’s a collection of 14 short stories my book club chose to read and I was pleasantly surprised it offered quite a bit of discussion at our meeting. For a while I couldn’t get my head into the stories. Whether the characters didn’t really speak to me or my thoughts were focused elsewhere, I blame my own distracted reading rather than the clever writing of Alice Munro, who recently won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

I had read and liked her previous collection of stories called “Too Much Happiness,” and I did appreciate many stories in this collection as well though I felt perhaps a bit detached. They’re all a bit dark or unsettling in various ways: in “Amundsen” a girl goes to teach at a tuberculosis sanitarium where she enters into a dismal relationship with the head doctor; in “Corrie” a woman believes she’s being blackmailed for an affair with a married man; in “Gravel” a girl feels guilty for the drowning of her sister; and in “In the Sight of the Lake” a woman with Alzheimer’s dreams about when she got lost on her way to the doctor’s.

Women are often getting the bad end of the stick in these stories. At the end, the collection includes four stories that are “autobiographical in feeling,” Munro says. I’m not sure they’re too revealing but they give a slice of life or impressions of what Munro’s upbringing was like in rural Ontario, where her father was a fox farmer and her mother, a school teacher, before she developed Parkinson’s disease.

I plan to read more of Alice Munro’s short story collections in the future. Eventually I’ll work my way backward through her works from most recent to the past and will get to “The View From Castle Rock” (2006) and “Runaway” (2004) in due time. Hopefully I’ll learn some more from reading from the short story master.

What about you — have you read either “Dear Life” or “The Art of Racing in the Rain”? And if so, what did you think of them?