Bow Before My Geekiness.

I don't get it: The Sisters Brothers

The Sisters Brothers was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and The Giller Prize.  It was recommended by Amazon, Indigo, the chick in the bookstore, and some guy on the radio.  There was a write-up about it where someone went on about the book's design and how awesome it was.  So when I found it in soft-cover (I don't buy hard cover), I bought it right away despite really wanting to finish up Dombey and Son.

I was expecting a lot.  What I got, though, was the cowboy, post-modern lit version of Seinfeld: It's a book about nothing.

Now don't get me wrong: I loves me a book about nothing!  I've read four Barbara Pym novels and absolutely nothing happens in those novels.  I mean, what happened in Jane and Prudence?  Nothing!  OK, Miss Whatserface ends up with the widower instead of Prudence and Prudence starts dating that guy in her office.  Yeah, tonnes of action there!  And just the other day I was telling my workmates -- a bunch of engineers who all list "Lord of The Rings" as the last book they read -- that a book doesn't "need a twist" to be good.  But I spent the whole of The Sisters Brothers waiting for something -- anything! -- to happen.

All right, all right...In all fairness things do happen:  Eli's tooth gets infected and they meet some random women and they run into some guy who's crying on his horse and they meet a kid on a dying horse and whatnot, but it's like some kind of cheap version of Krzysztof Kieślowski's Trois Couleurs series where the random actions in the background all have some kind of metaphysical meaning.  And by "cheap version" I mean that none of these background actions appear to have any metaphysical meaning.  It literally feels like an unfunny, Old West, post-modern lit Seinfeld.

There is a dramatic dénouement at the end where our two protagonists change, but it's not like a real epiphany.  It's not Lucy Honeychurch coming to grips with her non-conformity and marrying George.  It's not Renton realizing that his friends are assholes and running off with their money.  It's not even Rob and Laura's anticlimactic realization that it's just easier to stay together than to start over, apart.  No.  It's nothing.

It is a book devoid of point.

And it made me wonder what everyone saw that I didn't see.

From The Shelf of Books Left Unread: Loose End by Ivan E Coyote

I have a whole shelf of books that I haven't read.  Actually, my new bookshelf can only stack books two levels deep, so it's two shelves of books.  But whatever.  In any case, I have a pile and a half of books that I've accumulated over time that have been left unread.  Many of them are leftovers from back when I was doing my radio show, when publishing houses would send me piles of craptastic books for my "consideration".     These books were usually Canadian and they were usually boring as all get out.  Sure, occasionally I'd get something awesome like...like...um...OK, I never got anything awesome.  I got a few Camilla Gibb books, but unlike everyone else in Canada, I can't abide her writing.  So I'd just abandon her books in building lobbies and on subway trains, hoping that someone would think it was a find.

Anyways.

Loose End was one of the books I got randomly.  It's published by Arsenal Pulp, so I probably got it at a book show or something.  I'm surprised it's not signed.  I never read this book for two reasons:  it's Canadian and it's supposedly short stories.   I already can't stand short stories, but when I get a book of short stories that has a picture of the author looking all Canadian-outdoorsy on the back cover, I know I'm just not going to like the book.

But I was wrong.

I picked up Loose End off the Books Left Unread shelf because I wanted something light to read.  I figured I'd give it a shot.  Plus, upon closer inspection of the cover, I discovered that Ivan E Coyote is actually a woman and her stories are actually selections from her "Loose End" column in Xtra!West.

These were not, as I thought, stories of the rugged outdoors written by some urban outdoorsman in a folksy tone.  No no no.  These were stories of being genderqueer in Vancouver!  And they were really short!  Like a couple of pages short.  This was awesome!

The "stories" (if you can call them that) are interesting vignettes of living in a city full of different people.  They span a variety of themes, though Coyote's genderqueerness is a factor in almost all the ... I can't call these stories ... um ... essays?  The stories are witty and sometimes funny.  The writing is accessible.  Even if you aren't queer, you can appreciate the stories.

Apparently since Loose End came out, Coyote's written more books of stories and even wrote a novel.  Go figure.  I don't know if I really want to read her novel, but I do know that I'm going to add her Xtra!West "Loose End" column to my list of "Things to Read When I'm Slacking Off At Work".

Villette or The Sucky Life of a Prude

Lucy Snow, the supposed heroine of Villette, is Charlotte Bartlett of A Room With a View, but years earlier when she was younger.  

Before I start discussing how much I came to really hate Lucy Snow, I need to first admit that I dislike the works of the Brontë sisters with a passion.  I tried reading Wuthering Heights something like 12 times over the past 20 years and never got past Chapter 1.   I never read Jane Eyre because I assumed that Charlotte Brontë was just as much of a bore as her sister.  But then someone told me that Villette was an awesome book, way better than Jane Eyre, and that I should give it a chance.  The internets confirmed this, telling me that Villette was the epitome of a great, but underappreciated, novel.  So I went out and actually bought the book before I realized that it was available as a free eBook.

Reading the eBook would have saved me money, but buying the book meant that I actually read the whole damn thing.  I had to skip many words to get through the book -- and I spent the better part of my several months with the book rolling my eyes -- but I finished the damned thing.  I finished all 500+ pages of it.

The gist of the story is that Lucy's orphaned and pretty poor.  She gets a job as a governess in a school in Villette (Belgium) and ends up becoming a teacher.  She ends up living a miserable life.  She divides her time between passing judgment on others, feeling superior to everyone else, feeling sorry for herself and congratulating herself for being so good that she's miserable.  Oh yeah, and she "falls in love" with an abusive asshole who is, supposedly, our romantic hero.

You can see in Lucy the beginnings of A Room with a View's Charlotte Bartlett.  Charlotte is a single, older woman (a spinster, in the parlance of the time) who spends a good deal of A Room with a View judging others, feeling sorry for herself and congratulating herself for being so good that she's miserable.  Charlotte also spends a lot of A Room with a View trying to convince Lucy, her niece, that she should also be proper and miserable and marry the socially acceptable, but totally dickish and cold, Cecil instead of the more interesting George.

Now back to Lucy Snow and her miserable existence. 

Lucy could totally change her fortunes if she just chillaxed and stopped spending her time over-analysing everything and second-guessing every single minute action of hers.  You want to wear a pink dress to the ball?  Wear the damned pink dress and STFU!  Don't spend your time wondering what everyone thinks about your dumbass pink dress.  So what if the students snicker at you and M Paul makes fun of you.

Speaking of M Paul,  he gets alternately called M Emmanuel.  Just like Dr John also goes by Graham and by some other name I now forgot.  I'm not sure why Charlotte Brontë insisted on using more than one name for these two characters.  Maybe she thought her book was too readable and she needed to make it a little extra confusing.  Or maybe they get referred by different names depending on context and I didn't notice cuz I didn't give a flying fuck about these characters.

Anyways.

Lucy gets rescued by Dr John after she collapses on the road on her way out of a Catholic Church (and of course Lucy's all "Oh Noes!  Did he see that I went to a heathen Catholic church?!").  She could have totally made her life so much less miserable had she just let the guy pursue her.  But no.  That wouldn't have been proper for reasons that were very wordy but otherwise amounted to "because I'm meant to be miserable."


Instead, Lucy "falls for" Paul Emmanuel, the incredibly abusive asshole who spends 90% of the book insulting her and putting her down -- to her face!

OK, look, I like stories where two head-butting individuals find love as much as the next sappy girl, but this storyline was not right.   I mean, Pride&Prejudice would be a boring book if Elizabeth and Mr Darcy didn't spend most of the book hating each other, but at no time did Mr Darcy ever call Elizabeth names to her face! 

Paul Emmanuel, though, is an arrogant prick who calls Lucy names, "punishes" her for imaginary indiscretions and puts her down at every chance he gets.  Then, when he sees she's getting upset, he apologizes and does something nice.  And Lucy, like a good abused wife, takes it.  And she likes it.  And she falls for it.  And they're totally going to get married so that he can continue abusing his victim, except (spoiler!) he dies in a shipwreck. 

Of course the death by shipwreck is described by Lucy as yet another misfortune to befall her and she totally feels sorry for herself at the end of the book, despite the fact that this guy's untimely -- and hopefully slow and painful -- demise at sea was the best thing that ever happened to her.

In conclusion, I hated this novel more than I've hated any novel I've ever read.  I hated the writing.  I hated the characters.  I hated the story.  I hated it all.  I want to take this book and throw it into a murky, sewage-filled canal and hope that time forgets it.