Friday, June 26, 2015

Lost Between the Edges by Eldon Garnet


Well, you all should know by now how much I hate it when authors use real people as characters in fictional stories. I'm not sure if this could be categorized as a straight up fictional story - it's sort of more of a polemic - but it does involve a narrative of events that didn't happen, and other (probably) fictional characters, so I'm not super into it. The real person in question is Ernst Zundel, who is still living, so I'm surprised this publisher wasn't sued (and maybe they were, who knows).

The story follows X, a university student working frantically on his thesis on antisemitism and persecution of the Jews. He is a member of the Anti-Racist Alliance, and with the other members of the ARA, cooks up a plan to infiltrate the "bunker" of known neo-Nazi/Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel and get video footage of both the inside of the bunker, and of Zundel saying something incriminatingly racist. The group poses as a CBC film crew doing a feature on free speech issues (Zundel had a case before the courts on the issue at the time), and as a supplementary crew of documentary filmmakers filming the filming of the feature (why??).

They are allowed into the bunker, but X is frustrated with their lack of progress on bringing Zundel down, and ends up setting fire to the bunker in the middle of the night (something that did happen in 1995, and for which the Jewish Armed Resistance Movement claimed credit, but no charges were ever filed). This poking of the hornets' nest sets into motion a dangerous conflict between the neo-Nazis and the ARA, leading to a huge post-baseball brawl in Christie Pits Park, obviously and clumsily meant as an homage to the historic 1933 riot in that same park.

The story is interspersed with sometimes lengthy documents - court transcripts, excerpts from Zundel's published works, etc. - showing the arguments against the Holocaust having happened. One excerpt from The Turner Diaries describing the bombing of an FBI building is supposed to, I suppose, draw an equivalence in violence between the fascists and anti-fascists? Towards the end of the book the documents turn around and refute the findings of the Holocaust deniers. I have to say, I didn't fully understand the point of these interjections and found them a rather tedious addition.

I didn't like this book. The story was compelling enough but the writing style was awful; every sentence was punctuated with an abundance of colons, and thoughts and speech were indicated in quotation marks, so it was hard to tell if someone was thinking or if they had spoken the words aloud. X was a poorly drawn character who, besides his anti-racist views, I found it hard to sympathize with or connect to in any way.

The book does use Toronto well and name checks many places (the bunker on Carlton Street and Christie Pits Park, as well as Cafe Diplomatico on College Street spring to mind). But as realistic as the city is, the characters are ridiculous - they make poor choices, have seemingly no real goal behind their actions, and no actual characteristics besides "fascist" and "anti-fascist". I would not recommend this book.

One CN Tower out of five.



Friday, June 12, 2015

All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews


Well this book is a real punch in the gut. I think the words used to recommend it to me were "heartbreakingly beautiful" which is definitely an accurate description.

The story follows two sisters, Elf and Yoli, who grew up in a Mennonite community in rural Manitoba. Elf is a piano prodigy, who goes on to become a world-reknown pianist. She has, in her younger sister's eyes, everything - a wonderful career, a happy relationship with a man who loves her, more money than you could shake a stick at. But Elf suffers from crippling depression, a family trait that led her father to take his own life when the girls were young.

At the beginning of the book, Elf has just made an unsuccessful attempt to kill herself and is in the hospital in Winnipeg.  Concerned loved ones surround her, including her sister Yoli, who I guess you would call the protagonist although it is Elf's actions that really drive the story. Yoli leaves her home and two teenaged children in Toronto to crash at her mother's house and visit Elf for hours every day. The novel is a mish-mash of Yoli's recollections of their shared childhood, her reflections on her own current messy life, and her attempts to argue Elf out of her depression.

Even though the story is really about these two sisters, the supporting characters are very good and well-drawn; their mother is amazing and hilarious, with her own fierce sister Tina; Elf's partner Nick is relentlessly patient and completely hapless; and Yoli's kids, seen through text messages, are typical teenagers - but the fact that they always ask after Elf is one of the more heart-rending details of the novel.

This is another one of those books that I can never do justice through describing, because the genius of it is in the poetry of the writing, and the heartbreaking accuracy of the themes - of music, sisterhood, sadness and carrying on, life and death and redemption (sticking with my current theory that all stories are about redemption in one way or another).

Toronto plays a very small role in the book - the last few chapters, probably the last quarter of the book, are set in Toronto. I really enjoyed the fact that Yoli seemed to live in my neighbourhood, and a couple of places were name-checked - including an intense argument about suicide at Saving Grace. But if anything this is a love sonnet to Winnipeg (if one can imagine such a thing) - although there isn't much setting outside the hospital walls, the description of the sound of the ice breaking on the river resonates through the story.

This is a beautiful, beautiful book. It is also an extremely emotional read. Proceed accordingly.

Five CN Towers out of five.