East by Edith Pattou

A few weeks ago, my daughter gave me a stack of books with the instruction to "READ!". This was the first one I picked up.

East is a beautiful retelling of the old fairy tale "East of the Sun, West of the Moon". It's set in a sort of alternate-historical Norway and told from the point of view of five people: Rose, a feisty girl with a serious case of wanderlust; Neddy, her older brother who is the closest to her of her seven siblings; Rose's father; a troll Queen who has enslaved a young man in the body of a white bear; and the white bear himself.

If you're familiar with the fairy tale, you'll know the basic premise here, though there are many versions of it. In East, Rose is forced to go off with a talking bear in order to save her family from illness and poverty. She spends a year living with the white bear in an enchanted palace and grows to love him. Meanwhile, her family desperately searches for Rose in an effort to bring her back home.

I loved the way this novel was written; it was lyrical and evocative. I look forward to reading more of Edith Pattou's work.

Getting caught up

Thanks to my frequent bus rides, I've had lots of reading time since classes began, but precious little time to sit down and compose thoughtful posts about the books I've read. I'm going to do my best to catch up today with some "short and sweet" comments. Hopefully the more in-depth posts will return in the near future!

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

I've read much about this book and finally got a chance to read it. I love Ishiguro's novels, with their keen insight into human nature and the relationships between people. Never Let Me Go had all that, with a somewhat chilling science-fiction parcelling. The novel is told from the point of view of a former student of Hailsham, a boarding school for cloned children who are brought into the world for the sole purpose of donating their organs once they're adults. There is a whole subculture within the Britain of this novel for these organ donors, who grow up knowing they are different, but not exactly why, and who then go on to care for others like themselves while they wait for their turn to become donors and eventually, to die. Their longing for a normal life while knowing that it is an impossible dream is what makes this novel both chilling and poignant.

Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict by Laurie Viera Rigler

You could say Courtney Stone, a sassy modern-day girl from LA, is down on her luck. She's just discovered that her fiance is cheating on her, and that her supposed best friend was covering it up. There's nothing more comforting for Courtney that to get thoroughly pickled while re-reading her favourite Austen novels for the umpteenth time.

Bizarrely, though, when she wakes up the next morning she finds she has been somehow planted in the body of a Regency-era woman named Jane Mansfield. Alarmingly, Jane is on the verge of being "bled" by a physician who wants to cure her from a head injury. Somehow, Courtney recovers from this double shock and even, over time, gets used to being inside Jane's body and living the constricted life of a young, unmarried woman in the England of two hundred years ago. As time passes, she begins to learn a lot of things about herself and come to terms with the life choices that led her to be betrayed by her bastard of an ex-fiance. Now, if only she could get back to LA and live her own life again...

This was a fun, light novel - the characters were believable, and the premise was entertaining, with elements of fantasy fiction that you have to be able to swallow if you want to enjoy it.

Secrets from the Vinyl Cafe by Stuart McLean

I'm a loyal CBC listener, and though I don't make it a point to listen to any particular program regularly (I wish there were a TiVo for radio!) I still enjoy hearing Stuart McLean read his stories aloud during The Vinyl Cafe when I catch it. I know I've talked before about this program here so my apologies for repeating myself.

This is the latest installment in the large collection of short stories McLean has written about the oafish Dave, his bland wife Morley, and their family, friends and neighbours. Most of the stories fall into the "cute and sweet" category, and they usually have a sappy ending. Occasionally, though, they hit that perfect mixture of absurd, comical and believable and then they become immensely funny. There's one story in this book that made me laugh till I cried, and has earned its place next to the story in Vinyl Cafe Unpluggedabout how Dave tried to toilet-train his sister's cat, which had a similar effect on me. There's another that is quite hilarious but somehow I felt it would have been much funnier if I'd heard it on the radio. In case you read this one, I'm not going to name the stories I thought were funniest, but I'd love to hear your opinion if you happen to be a Vinyl Cafe fan.