I'll Never Get Out of this World Alive

by Steve Earle

I was pleasantly surprised by Steve Earle’s “I’ll Never Get out of this World Alive”. I think we’ve all been burned by reading the literary efforts of a favourite actor or musician, so our expectations are often fairly low. I’m not really familiar with Steve Earle’s music- I’m more aware of him as an actor and fellow Townes Van Zandt fan. I was drawn to Earle’s book initially by its cover design- it’s beautiful, cluttered, busy collage rife with religious iconography.

Inside the book, he combines the best parts of Tom Robbins and W.S. Burrroughs, with plenty of his own genius thrown into the mix. Writing about addiction and the seamier side of life is often tedious and rings false, but Earle’s been there, and come out the other side. Earle also has the benefit of years of practice telling stories through his music.

The protagonist Doc is a washed up physician turned addict. Doc is joined by a great cast of characters- the cranky ghost of Hank Williams, who seems doomed to follow him; a bear sized drug dealer with a heart of gold, who seems to think it’s his duty to protect him; a young Mexican woman with miraculous healing powers and an Irish priest with a serious chip on his shoulder. What amazed me about the book was how soon it abandoned its focus on junkies, and became a tale about religious hypocrisy, reproductive rights, hope and redemption

At its center “I’ll Never Get out of this World Alive” is a book about the presence of beauty and compassion in any walk of life. Highly recommended reading for anyone looking for an uplifting read with an edge. - Caroline

Divergent

by Veronica Roth, will get it's hooks into you and not let go until the very end. Don't be scared off by the 487 pages, you will probably read this in a few days like I just did. Admittedly, I have not read very many of the dystopian novels that have been coming out for teens in the last few years, so I don't have much to compare Divergent too.

However I was completely captivated by Beatrice's story in a future war-torn Chicago. Society is now divided into five factions, each dedicated to fully being a particular virtue. Candor is honesty, Abnegation is selflessness (Beatrice and her family belong to this faction), Dauntless is bravery, Amity is peacefulness and Erudite is intelligence. Each faction is responsible for particular jobs in society, for example Abnegation runs the government as society because they won't be corrupt if they are selfless. Factions are recognized by their particular clothing and hairstyle, so Dauntless is known for their multiple piercings and tattoos.

The novel opens the day before Beatrice is tested to determine which faction she is best suited for. Her test shows that she does not belong to one faction, she can belong to several. This is called a "divergent" and Beatrice is warned by her tester not to share this information with anyone. Now she is even more confused by what she should do and who she is. If the faction that you choose is different than your family, you will never associate with them again. At the choosing ceremony, Beatrice surprises everyone including herself with her choice.

Beatrice renames herself Tris, during the highly competitive and brutal initiation that follows. She struggles to learn who are her friends and if anyone around her is also a divergent. She must hide her divergent identity so as not to be found out and killed. One of her trainers seems to assist her at times, and other times work against her. As the initiation continues, there are growing conflicts between the factions in the outside world, that may unravel the supposed perfect society. All of these pressures confuse and frustrate Tris as she must learn to survive her faction and become an adult.

I don't want to share anymore of the plot in case I give too much away. I will, however, share my favourite line in the book: "...I never thought I would need bravery for the small moments of my life. I do." This book had me gasping out loud with its surprising twists and turns. Divergent is the first book in the series and I wish I could read the next one right now! This as a great summer read for older teens and adults. Check out the book trailer below. - Bronwyn

Gillian Sze ~ Anatomy of Clay

Gillian will be appearing at our Small Press Event on May 30th at the Starlight. For more information about the event, please click HERE

The Anatomy of Clay

Taking off from the myth of human creation, this poetic collection explores the individual as a sentient mystery. The first section examines overlooked moments with urban characters—the woman on the bus, a neighbor talking to plants, or the girl smoking after a storm. The second section takes a confessional turn towards the author’s inner life. At times reflective, instructional, playful, or strange, exception is found in the ineffable distinctions between people, selves, objects, and histories.

Gillian Sze is the author of Fish Bones and the cofounder and coeditor of Branch magazine. She lives in Montreal, Quebec.

Gerry Fostaty ~ As You Were: The Tragedy at Valcartier

Gerry will be appearing at our Small Press Event on May 30th at the Starlight. For more information about the event, please click HERE

SUMMER, 1974 — Six teenaged boys died and fifty-four were injured in an explosion on a Canadian Forces Base in Valcartier, Quebec. A live grenade inadvertently made its way into a box of dud ammunition, and its pin was pulled during a lecture on explosives safety. One hundred and forty boys survived, each isolated in their trauma, yet expected to carry on with their lives. Thirty-four years later, Gerry Fostaty, who was an 18-year-old sergeant that summer and one of the first on the scene after the explosion, received an unexpected e-mail from his former sergeant-major, triggering a journey into memory, a quest for a true picture of what had happened on that day. In As You Were, Fostaty pieces together the story of how a series of preventable mistakes led to tragedy. The only full account of an event that received minor attention at the time, As You Were is the story of a normal day turned horrific, how duty, responsibility, and honour make ordinary people take extraordinary measures, and how an embarrassed military did their best to ignore this devastating incident.

Gerry Fostaty spent six years as an army cadet, climbing the ranks until he became an instructor. Leaving the cadets at 19, he became an actor, working on stage and in film and television for more than 20 years. He now works as a marketing manager at an information technology company. He lives in Aurora, Ontario.

Helen Guri ~ Match

Helen will be appearing at our Small Press Event on May 30th at the Starlight. For more information about the event, please click HERE

Match
Robert Brand has given up on real women. Relationships just haven't ever worked out well for him. He has, however, found a (somewhat problematic) solution, a new feminine ideal: the 110-pound sex doll he ordered over the internet. Showing an uncanny access to the voice of the rejected, unimpressive, emotionally challenged modern male, Helen Guri''s debut collection explores Robert's transition from lost and lonely to loved, if only by the increasingly acrobatic voices in his mind.

Helen Guri graduated from the University of Toronto’s Creative Writing program, and has taught writing at Humber College. Her work has appeared in many Canadian journals, including Arc, Descant, Event, Fiddlehead and Grain. Match is her first collection. She lives in Toronto.

Sean Dixon ~ The Many Revenges of Kip Flynn

Sean will be appearing at our Small Press Event on May 30th at the Starlight. For more information about the event, please click HERE

In the second novel from Sean Dixon, a rising-stakes vendetta develops between a young rose seller and a building developer, spiralling outward to envelop family, lovers, friends, landlords, wormpickers, window cleaners, Vietnamese gangsters, stand-up bass players and tour-bus guides, involving subway accidents, arson, drainpipes, buried rivers, backhoe wars, stretch limos, ultrasound technicians, poorly fitted windows and an aubergine Saab.

Sean Dixon is a novelist, playwright and banjo player. His first novel, The Girls Who Saw Everything, is about a young women’s book club in Montreal that opts to read the first book ever written, on its original stone tablets. It’s been published all over the English-speaking world and translated into Romanian. He is the author of two books for young readers, The Feathered Cloak and The Winter Drey, and many plays. Currently he is writing a new play involving Ovid and the banjo.

Tony Burgess ~ Idaho Winter

Tony will be appearing at our Small Press Event on May 30th at the Starlight. For more information about the event, please click HERE

In Idaho Winter, the young title character is tormented by all who know him. When Idaho discovers that his miserable life is the creation of a cruel writer, he locks the author in a closet and takes control of the narrative. When the author emerges from the closet, he finds his story completely unrecognizable and sets out with a number of secondary characters to repair the novel.

Tony Burgess has published poetry, screenplays, criticism, and fiction. In 2009, his novel Pontypool Changes Everything was made into the award-winning movie Pontypool directed by Bruce McDonald. He is also the author of People Live Still in Cashtown Corners, The Hellmouths of Bewdley, and Caesarea, among others. Burgess lives in Stayner, Ontario.

The Oracle of Stamboul

This is the story of a magical child who lives during a fascinating time in Istanboul's history, near the end of the Ottoman Empire. A mysterious pair of midwives arrive at the Cohen home. They say that the signs of a prophecy their last king gave on his deathbed has come true: a sea of horses, a conference of birds, the North Star in alignment with the moon. They attend to Eleonora's birth and shortly after the birth, the new mother dies.

Eleonora is raised by her father and her strict, bitter stepmother. Her childhood is relatively uneventful and happy for the most part. Eleonora is followed by a flock of hoopoes, the same birds that settled over the roof of her house when she was born. When Yakob, her father, teaches Eleonora to read, the girl's intelligence is revealed. She takes to reading as though she has always known how, to the delight of her father and the chagrin of her stepmother.

When Yakob announces that he must leave for Stamboul for a month on business, Eleonora is fearful of being left behind with her stepmother and decides to be a stow-away on the ship. She reveals herself to her father on the last night of his journey. They stay in Stamboul with Moncef Bey, her father's business partner. One of his servants, who attends to Eleonora, happens to be one of the midwives that delivered her. Eleonora is enchanted in the new world of mystical Stamboul.

I was fascinated with Eleonora's character and wisdom. She touches your heart and makes it hard to put this gentle, shimmering novel down. This is a good one to pick up if you want to get lost in another world, one that won't overwhelm you. - Bronwyn

Tiny Sunbirds, Far Away

Looking for a good novel to curl up with during these gray rainy days? Or, perhaps you're like me, and you hoard books for Summer reading purposes all Spring? Either way Tiny Sunbirds, Far Away, is a great pick! Our Random House sales rep, Tim, recommended this book. He compared it to Cutting for Stone and Little Bee, both of which are favourites of mine. However, I think the only comparison of Blessing's story to the two other novels begins and ends at the setting, which is in Africa (Nigeria to be specific). Blessing is 12, that in-between time of girlhood and becoming a young woman. When the book opens, she is living with her older brother, Ezikiel, and her parents in a luxury apartment in Lagos. When her mother catches her father with another woman, Blessing and Ezikiel moves back to her mother's family in a small village in the Niger Delta.

Warri is a frightening place for Blessing at first. There is a cast of eccentric characters in both her maternal family and the village. The comforts that Blessing has been raised with are no longer, her mother is working day and night to support them, there is no running water or electricity. Ezikiel's asthma acts up and her kindly eccentric grandfather recommends Marmite as the solution to this and every other health problem.

It is Blessing's grandmother that begins to show her the magic of the village and rural life. Grandma is a traditional midwife and healer, who begins to apprentice Blessing. As Grandma shares her wisdom, by guiding her through a birth, or by telling traditional fables, Blessing begins to grow up and mature. She also becomes more aware of the threats to Warri's village life from the British and American oil companies, as well as threats and changes to the villages traditions.

I don't want to give much more away, however, I found this a captivating book, that is witty, wise and beautifully written. Blessing's journey into becoming a woman in a difficult life stayed with me long after I read the last page. This is a novel that will make you think deeply about life. This would also be a good choice for teenage girls.

- Bronwyn

A little something

to whet your appetite for our event on Thursday night with Vincent Lam and Charles Foran.

Vincent Lam's book profiles Tommy Douglas, the founder of the NDP party.



Charles Foran writes about Maurice Richard, the great Montreal Canadian

Countdown

to Robert Rotenberg and Emma Ruby Sachs on May 17th.

Thanks to all that come out to hear Elizabeth Hay and Antanas Sileika - it was an amazing night!

THIS just came across my desk:

20 Writerly Questions for…Emma Ruby-Sachs

The Water Man's Daughter

EMMA RUBY-SACHS's journalism has been published in The Nation and The Huffington Post. A graduate of Wesleyan University and the University of Toronto law school, Ruby-Sachs lived in South Africa for periods in 2003 and 2004 while studying. She has worked as a civil litigator in Windsor and Toronto and currently works with Avaaz, a progressive online organization. Emma lives in Brooklyn. Her new novel is The Waterman’s Daughter.

1. How would you summarize your book in one sentence? The story of three very different women who are thrown together when a water executive is found murdered in a South African township.

2. How long did it take you to write this book? 6 years, but going to law school kind of slowed down the process.

3. Where is your favorite place to write? Any local coffee shop.

4. How do you choose your characters’ names? They all have meanings that relate to their character – for example, Nomsulwa means purity.

5. How many drafts do you go through? Too many to count!

6. If there was one book you wish you had written what would it be? The Unbearable Lightness of Being – smart and sexy!

7. If your book were to become a movie, who would you like to see star in it? Sarah Polley

8. What’s your favourite city in the world? Toronto, my home town.

9. If you could talk to any writer living or dead who would it be, and what would you ask? Emma Goldman, how do you risk your life to break a man out of jail after he has broken your heart?

10. Do you listen to music while you write? If so, what kind?? That changes with my mood, everything from Eminem to choirboys

11. Who is the first person who gets to you read your manuscript? My girlfriend.

12. Do you have a guilty pleasure read? Mystery novels, really junky ones where someone is trying to kill the U.S. President with a new bioweapon…

13. What’s on your nightstand right now? Elizabeth Hay’s new novel.

14. What is the first book you remember reading? Lizzy’s Lion by Dennis Lee – best line: “Candy piffle, candy poo!” That always made me crack up.

15. Did you always want to be a writer? Yes – except when I wanted to be professional baseball player…. So maybe no.

16. What do you drink or eat while you write? Coffee, matte, candy, many things that aren’t good for my health. You wouldn’t catch me dead eating carrot sticks and working.

17. Typewriter, laptop, or pen & paper? Laptop - my handwriting is illegible.

18. What did you do immediately after hearing that you were being published for the very first time? I went for a bike ride at my cottage and tired myself out enough to stop shaking from excitement.

19. How do you decide which narrative point of view to write from? I write from many and then figure out which one works best. It’s a totally inefficient process.

20. What is the best gift someone could give a writer? A great book, of course (But I accept cookies and chocolate with a gracious smile…)

It will be a Zany Sunday

on May 15th with kids authors Jeff Szpirglas and Danielle Saint-Onge!

Jeff Szpirglas lead an awesome session for kids at last year's Turning Pages Festival. We are super excited to be bringing him back to Waterloo, this time with his wife, Danielle Saint-Onge. The couple have written a book together that they will be sharing with us on May 15th, in the store at 2pm.

SOMETHING'S FISHY

Jamie loves sharks. He reads about them. He talks about them. Sometimes he even pretends to be a shark. Too bad no one else wants to join his Shark Club. His peers and parents are quickly growing tired of his current obsession.

When Jamie's teacher, Mr. Claxton, brings in a new class pet, Jamie is put in charge. But Jamie has an accident while feeding it, and everyone becomes upset with him. He needs to find a way to make things right. In the end, he comes up with a solution that pleases both his teacher and classmates, a solution that also gives Jamie an opportunity to share his newest obsession—lizards.

YOU JUST CAN'T HELP IT!

How many times have you been frightened and felt the hairs on the back of your neck stand up? Or been unable to hold back a laugh? Or flinched when an object whizzed by, too close for comfort? The thing is, you just can't help yourself - you're only human! This unique book provides a cultural, historical, and socio-biological perspective on human behavior. Szpirglas's goofy, kid-friendly sensibility paired with the book's look, energy, and scope is guaranteed to engage and captivate young readers. Children read about body language, birth order, staring contests, fits of laughter, crowd behavior, sniffing dirty diapers, yawning, dreaming, and the art of lying - only to realize that science is at work behind each action! You Just Can't Help It! is an enthralling and slightly zany exploration of the basic human biology that determines our reactions, social interactions, and the ways we communicate with one another.

This event is part of our Family Sunday program, a fun filled hour of story time, crafts and games for kids and their parents (or Grandparents). Each afternoon is centered around a theme or specific author.This event series is suitable for pre-school to older children.

We Promise...

That this will be an astounding evening! Elizabeth Hay is back in Waterloo next week to promote her latest novel, Alone in the Classroom. Joining her is Antanas Sileika, author of Underground. David has read both novels and loved them.

Elizabeth Hay ~ Alone in the Classroom

For a crime guy like me, just about the only thing that could make an Elizabeth Hay novel better would be a murder at the centre of it. In Alone in the Classroom, Hay has gamely provided one.
The novel hinges on the relationship between Connie, a prairie school teacher, the oddly fascinating and malevolent principal Parley Burns and a student struggling with what we'd now call dyslexia, Michael Graves. Without giving too much away, a single act of violence has reprocussions through generations and provinces, as the story shifts between the Ottawa Valley and Saskatchewan. Elizabeth Hay is at the top of her game with Alone in the Classroom.
This is deftly plotted stuff, the principal characters are fully fleshed out and illustrate how we become the adults we become, and how events seldom stay frozen in their time. Elizabeth Hay has abundant gifts and she's simply one of the best writers of prose at work in the country today.

Antanas Sileika ~ Underground

Antanas Sileika is a writer I knew first as an erudite and insightful literary critic. He was unafraid to call out a lazy interpretation and his reviews were full of fine turns of phrase.
Then I read Women in Bronze a couple years ago. It was a story of an Eastern European folk artist who longed to go to Paris and become a a 'real' artist between the wars. It stuck with me, simply because he wrote great sentences and I'm a sucker for anything set in Eastern Europe.
Now the third book in a loose trilogy (Buying on Time opens things up) Underground has arrived and is getting good reviews across the country.
The story of the Lithuanian resistance to the Red Army as seen through Lukas and Elena, lovers and fellow resistance fighters in the mid to late 1940's. Lukas is a scholar tapped to translate the BBC news reports for his Partisan fighters and fashion propoganda from them. His academic leanings soon give way to the revelation that he's a crack shot. His marksmanship makes him a hero, but after a time, the Russians find him and Elena. Believing her to be killed, Lukas flees the country and ends up in Paris, writing and speaking on behalf of his comrades. He is then called back to Lithuania, and the denoument is at hand. In some ways there are similarities to Joseph Boyden, but there's a subtlety in Sileika's prose that recalls Alan Furst, the noted spy novelist. Literary to be sure, but with a shotgun blast of a plot; Underground is a great piece of writing that illuminates a war that many in the West never knew existed. My kind of stuff.