Category Archives: Reviews of the written word

Readers, buy this mouth-watering treat

Island Wineries of British Columbia (updated and expanded)
Edited by Gary Hynes
Contributors from EAT Magazine
Photographs by Rebecca Wellman
TouchWood Editions, 256 pages, $29.95.

Reviewed by Candace Fertile

This book was first published in 2011 and won the 2012 Gourmand International Wine Books Award for Canada, among other accolades. That a revised edition was deemed necessary is a testament to the growth in wine-producing on Vancouver Island.

The volume is a visual treat that will whet anyone’s appetite for the marvels that can be produced in our own back yard, from the Saaanich Peninsula to Sooke to the Cowichan Valley and beyond. Port Alberni has wineries. Saturna and Saltspring have wineries. So much is happening in regard to local food and drink, and Island Wineries of British Columbia provides an excellent introduction not only to wine from grapes, but also to wine from other fruit, plus mead, cider, and spirits. There’s even a selection of recipes featuring local ingredients—and suggestions for wine pairings. Chai Tea Honey Cake with Summer Fruits (suggested beverage—Venturi-Schulze Brandenburg No. 3 or a sparkling wine or blackberry dessert wine) is next on my baking list.

Hynes has assembled a huge amount of information by various writers, experts in the topics and, perhaps even more important, lovers of the local. Larry Arnold gives a short history of Island wines; Adam Tepedelen describes the Island wineries, often by using the words of the growers and vintners. Jeff Bateman, Treve Ring, and Adam Tepedelen explain the varieties of grapes; Julie Pegg gives us recipes sources from local restaurants. Kathryn McAree suggests some touring routes, and the volume concludes with a list of restaurants featuring Island wines.

Island Wineries of British Columbia is useful for beginner and expert alike, and the gorgeous photographs of Rebecca Wellman add to the mouth-watering effect. This book is marked by the sheer exuberance of the contributors: drink and food are pleasures, and to explore the pleasures of Island offerings is relatively easy. And the overall message is that what we have here is different from what is available from other wine-producing areas. The terroir changes the taste, as do the weather and the skills of the wine-maker. Over and over, wine-makers assert the challenge of making wine in BC. The growing season is short compared to, say that of the Okanagan. But the mild winters create an advantage in protecting vines. White wines, especially bubbly, tend to be more successful than red, but the local growers and vintners are in a constant state of experimentation and openness to what may work.

And the wine world on the islands is new. While people have made wine for ages, the business of it is only about twenty years old. What is being made is remarkable and testifies to the dedication of the people involved and the natural gifts of the regions.

Island Wineries of British Columbia would make a lovely gift for those interested in local fare. Buy one for yourself and one (or more) to give away.

Candace Fertile is a voracious reader who also enjoys food and wine.

“Rapid reads” convey deep meaning

Stolen
By John Wilson
Orca Book Publishers, 119 pages,  $9.95

Him Standing
By Richard Wagamese
Raven Books, 129 pages, $9.95

Reviewed by Marcie Gray

Ever start a book and then put it down for so long that when you pick it up again, you have to reread the beginning? Ever take a book out of the library and discover it’s due back before you’ve flipped it open? I’m guilty on both counts. I’ve read gorgeous books in fits and starts, all the while knowing that I’m missing out – that the book is not getting the attention it deserves, that  its beauty is betrayed by the cracking of its cadence.

What can I say? Life interferes with good books. Orca Book Publishers recognizes this and offers rewarding alternatives for those pressed for time, and for those pressed for interest. Reluctant readers, young people reading below their grade level, newcomers who are learning English as a second language. You can hand them a classic and hope it enthrals, but 300 pages and a dictionary later, odds are you’ve lost them. Better, perhaps, to offer a quick and entertaining book that will help the reader gain confidence and go on to the next novel.

Two books released this spring hit that mark. Stolen, written by John Wilson, is part of the “Orca Currents” series, aimed at middle-school students falling behind in their reading skills. Him Standing, by Richard Wagamese, belongs to the “Rapid Reads” series, targeting an adult audience.  It’s published by Raven Books, which is an imprint of Orca.

In Stolen, a Canadian boy named Sam arrives on the southern coast of Australia. He’s pulled into a mystery involving shipwrecks and stolen artifacts and international art thieves. The pace is quick and the language simple. This is a plot-driven, character-light whodunit where young protagonists use logic to solve the mystery and become the heroes of the hour. (Or perhaps two hours–that’s about how long it took to read this book.) This is not criticism; rather, I’d expect this book to engage young readers as they follow Sam’s escapades over the course of just two days.

Orca, based in Victoria, shows it’s treating these “rapid reads” seriously by turning to authors with solid track records. Wilson, a Lantzville writer, has written nearly 40 books, both fiction and non-fiction, many of them for young people. Wagamese, the author of Him Standing, has a remarkable resume as an award-winning author and journalist. He’s Ojibway, originally from Northwestern Ontario, now living in Kamloops.

Wagamese’s culture is front and centre in his story of a young man with a magic of his own. Lucas Smoke carves images in wood. His grandfather taught him, but Lucas is a natural. He faces danger when a stranger spots his talent and hires Lucas to carve a spirit mask. Wagamese dips into deep issues such as balance in the universe and the power of fear, and wraps them up into a mystical story that clips along and clocks in at 129 pages. An impressive feat. Also impressive is the voice he creates for Lucas; the young man’s internal dialogue feels genuine throughout.

Stolen and Him Standing are great at what they are meant to do–engage readers and keep them hooked to the (quickly nearing) end. They accomplish another task too–they make you want to read more. Next on my reading list: other works by Wilson and Wagamese.

Marcie Gray’s resume includes years spent reporting and producing for CBC Radio. Today she’s working on her own novel of youth fiction.

Leduc’s risks work brilliantly

The Miracles of Ordinary Men
By Amanda Leduc
ECW Press, 321 pages, $18.95
 
Reviewed by Jenny Boychuk

Amanda Leduc’s debut novel, The Miracles of Ordinary Men, follows the lives of Delilah Greene, a young receptionist, and Sam, a thirty-something school teacher. The novel is written in parts and switches back and forth between the two characters; each of their stories unfolds separately over the course of ten chapters—until, inevitably, they meet each other.

Or perhaps it’s not the heartbreak that scares her, but the possibility. The possibility of a heart more than whole, or a life that reaches so far beyond what’s expected that you can’t see where it ends and forever begins.

***

“I wanted a small life,” Sam said, his voice low. The chance to touch a few lives, to love them deeply and carefully and well. To make mistakes and claw back from them a broken, humbled man, fusing back together.

Lilah left home as soon as she could to travel the world, leaving behind her dysfunctional mother and much younger brother, Timothy, who misses her terribly while she’s away. A decade or so later, Timothy is living on the streets of Vancouver and Lilah spends her afternoons looking for him. When she finds him, she tries to convince him to come home with her, to come see their dying mother who constantly worries about him. Timothy insists that Lilah doesn’t understand him, though the siblings’ love for each other is never in doubt. One afternoon, Lilah’s boss, Israel Riviera, asks her to dinner. This marks the beginning of an abusive relationship in which Lilah is confronted with her guilt, and seeks penance in every crack of Israel’s whip.

Meanwhile, Sam wakes one morning to find he has wings, which continue to develop over the course of a week. Few people can see the wings: a few priests, his cat, and one of his students. When he goes to a doctor, she tells him she can only see deep scars in his back. Then his mother dies unexpectedly. Sam, desperate for answers, reaches out to Father Jim, and alcoholic and the priest of his church when he was growing up. After the funeral, they spend their days questioning God, faith and the fine line between what makes a miracle and what makes a curse.

“You’ll know.” Father Jim reached across and took Sam’s plate and stacked it on top of his own. “And as to what you’ll do—well, that’s different, according to each and every man. Some of us are called to action and others to observe.”

Though the two stories read quite separately in the beginning, they come together masterfully in the end. Leduc’s choice of structure is risky, and it works.

Perhaps the novel’s greatest strength lies in which questions it seeks to answer and which it does not. What is the link between pain and the divine? Guilt and God? What are we meant to see, and what form does God take (if any)? Leduc never answers questions bigger than her characters—a humble and essential quality of the story.

Leduc has reimagined the homeless Vancouver street kid, the parent dying of cancer, the receptionist waiting for something bigger to happen. She has created characters we’ve met many times, but have never seen like this.

The poet Jack Gilbert wrote a poem in which there is the line, “Stripping everything down until being was visible.” This is exactly what Leduc has accomplished in this heartbreaking novel. And God, did she do it well.

Jenny Boychuk is a Victoria writer and reviewer.

Artist brings new light to the Raven legend

Raven Brings the Light
By Roy Henry Vickers and Robert Budd
Harbour Publishing, 48 pages, $19.95

Reviewed by Susan Hawkins

Occasionally, a story comes along that resonates throughout generations regardless of age, belief, or cultural and national identity. How the Raven brought light to the world is one of those stories. Celebrated First Nations artist and storyteller Roy Henry Vickers has teamed up with his good friend and historian Robert “Lucky” Budd to create a book based on the millennia-old story. It belongs to the people of the Northwest Coast and has been passed along in the oral tradition for thousands of years.  This new book tells the story with text and eighteen stunning new images.

As the legend goes, at a time when darkness blanketed the land, a boy named Weget is born who is destined to bring the light back to the Earth. With the aid of a raven skin, Weget journeys to the sky where he tricks the Chief of the Heavens and steals back the daylight and returns it to Earth. The legend has been traced back at least 3,000 years and images of Weget’s journey have been found in petroglyphs along the Skeena and Nass Rivers. This version of the story was told to Vickers when he was a teenager by Chester Bolton, Chief of the Ravens, from the village of Kitkatla around 1975.

“I’ve heard it since I was a very, very young man, so it has been part of my life,” Vickers said in a recent CBC radio interview. “And now as an elder, I see that it’s not only the physical light of the sun that it talks about, but it’s a spiritual light. It’s the light of truth. And because I’m about living my life as truthfully as possible this is the story I chose to put into this book.”

Raven Brings the Light is a stunningly beautiful book, and according to Robert Budd, is only the first in a series of traditional stories to be developed by this accomplished duo.

Roy Henry Vickers unveiled his large collection of new prints at Raven Brings the Light: A Roy Henry Vickers Art Show & Book Launch with Robert “Lucky” Budd, at Madrona Gallery, Contemporary and Historic Canadian Art, 606 View Street, Victoria in May.

Susan Hawkins is completing her PhD in History in Art at the University of Victoria. 

Genetic sleuth tells engaging tale

The Jugglerʼs Children
By Carolyn Abraham
Random House, $32, 380 pages

Reviewed by Lynne Bowen

Carolyn Abraham is a prize-winning Canadian journalist and author whose impressive list of writing credits includes such subjects as crime, immigration, politics and medicine. Having written about topics as varied as Einsteinʼs brain and Dolly, the first mammalian clone, Abraham has earned praise in Canada, England and America for her ability to make difficult scientific topics understandable and engaging.

This ability is put to the test in her latest book, The Jugglerʼs Children, in which she describes her seven-year-long search for the origins of two of her great-grandfathers through the new discipline of genetic genealogy. Family lore had given these men–one a murderer and a juggler, the other a shipʼs captain–exotic origins but little other information.

Like a modern-day detective, Abraham submits cheek swabs from various of her male relatives for genetic testing of their Y chromosomes and travels to such far-flung places as the Nilgiri hills of southern India and a beach on Jamaicaʼs north shore. In both locations, she follows leads that may or may not turn into hard evidence, but each newly-proven connection is a triumph for both the writer and the reader.

The use of the present tense works well in Abrahamʼs description of her detective work, but when she explains the science behind genetic testing of Y chromosomes–the human chromosome capable of carrying information precise enough to follow a family back in time–she runs the risk of losing the interest of non-expert readers.

Making a technical process understandable to a layperson while still maintaining that personʼs interest is a challenge for a nonfiction writer, but a necessary one. In The Jugglerʼs Children, Abraham successfully maintains my interest as she explains matches and markers, surnames and generations in clear and metaphoric writing. But when she takes me into a complicated discussion of haplogroups, haplotypes and nucleotides, her prose bogs down. This happens regularly in the otherwise gripping account of her quest. The discovery, however, of an elderly auntʼs address book or a headstone hidden in the Jamaican undergrowth rejuvenates the prose.

An astounding number of people have sent cheek swabs for testing at one of several genetic labs in the hope of finding a connection to royalty or a trace of an indigenous ancestor. What the testing reveals is always a surprise, but not necessarily what they were hoping for. Rather, as Abraham discovered, we all have ancestors from both sides of the whip: ancestors who were slave-owners and ancestors who were slaves.

I found reassurance in the message that Abraham brings to her readers in the last pages of The Jugglerʼs Children. Given that we are all descended from the first organism identified as a human being, we all carry that personʼs genetic information. And as the population of the world continues to become more and more mobile, we are all inching ever closer to becoming a blend of all racial groups with little to distinguish one from another. We are all family.

Lynne Bowen lives in Nanaimo and is the author of Whoever Gives Us Bread: The Story of Italians in British Columbia.

When wool and words entwine

FictionKNITstas Reading Series
Dede Crane, Gillian Campbell, Nicole Dixon and Stella Harvey
Monday, May 27, 7 pm
Beehive Wool Shop, 1700 Douglas St, Victoria

Reviewed by Liz Gusul

“Colourful place, isn’t it?”

Surrounded by hanging skeins of cotton and baskets of wool, a chatty group gathers and mingles at Beehive Wool Shop in downtown Victoria. Some members of the group are knitters, and some are not. Some buy yarn and patterns, dreaming of their next project, while others stroke the knitted samples around the shop. All are readers and literature enthusiasts, gathered for a knit-related literary event hosted by Victoria writer Dede Crane.

Since 2006, FICTIONistas has organized annual events such as this evening at Beehive Wool Shop, which will include readings from three books by Canadian women writers. The events were conceived as a way to promote works by female authors, and this year’s event, titled FictionKNITstas, focuses its attention also on knitting.

Each of the authors involved in the FICTIONistas tour has been paired with a local knitter, who read and had time to reflect on the written work before embarking on another sort of creative process. Whether an existing pattern was used, or the knitter chose to create her own design, a hand-knit garment was created for each book. The inspirations for these knitted pieces could come from any aspect of the book. Some knitters focused on concrete images, textures, or even colours of the book, others on thematic imagery or cultural context.

Gillian Campbell, author of The Apple House wore a bright red shawl, matching the colour of the novel’s cover. The outline of a boxy farmhouse and two trees on the shawl set the scene for the passage Campbell read from her novel, a book, she says, about a girl with big feet who happens to marry a shoemaker, about a widow, about a life.

Reading from Nicolai’s Daughters, Stella Harvey describes how the textured stitches of her shawlette reflect the mountains of Greece, where sections of her book are set, and how its brilliant blue hue is an iconic colour in Greek culture. She hints at a tragic and not much remembered event in Greece’s past, but reads tender and amusing passages about cultural separation in families, and inter-familial relationships.

After a cancelled flight in Cape Breton, Nicole Dixon hadn’t had the chance to connect with her knitter, and was without her knitted garment. She explains however, that it is a cozy wrap sweater, as the knitter felt that the characters in High-Water Mark, Dixon’s collection of stories, needed a hug, and she wished to create something that would offer both comfort and warmth. Dixon reads the story High-Water Mark which, although bitingly funny, does evoke a blustery cold feeling.

Blue-grey light filters through the windows, and buses roll along Douglas Street as the readings conclude. The books which were sampled tonight are available for sale. The group lingers, fingering the brightly coloured skeins of silk, mohair, and merino.

“Will you sign my book?” I overhear. “And are you a knitter?” someone asks, as the writers autograph copies of their books for patrons. Whether leaving Beehive Wool Shop with a new book, a ball of yarn, or both, all of tonight’s patrons are inspired to spin a yarn, whether literary or literal. The event kicks off a Canada-wide tour, visiting eleven locations over the next week and a half. To view additional tour dates and locations, or for more information about the FICTIONistas, please visit fictionistascanada.wordpress.com.

Liz Gusul is an avid reader and knitter who lives in Victoria.

Third-person narrative distances reader

Caught
By Lisa Moore
House of Anansi, 304 pages, $29.95

Reviewed by Jenny Boychuk

Lisa Moore roots her readers firmly in 1978 Canada in her new novel–problem is, reading this book often felt like being stuck, then trying to run through mud.

Perhaps this is fitting for the beginning of the book as the protagonist, David Slaney, escapes from prison on the east coast, where he’s been held for four years after trying to smuggle marijuana from Colombia to Newfoundland via boat. Slaney runs through the muck and woods in search of a logging road, where he has been told a driver will come for him. He will either escape, or be caught. But he has to go. “There are mistakes that stand in the centre of an empty field and cry out for love.”

Slaney hasn’t escaped to live a quiet life in hiding. He needs to get to his friend and accomplice, Hearn, in Vancouver. He wants to try again, to go back to Colombia. The marijuana will make them millionaires. But it’s not just the money that’s at stake: 25-year-old Slaney wants to get Jennifer, the love of his life, and her daughter back. He wants to be free.

Readers follow Slaney across Canada, down to South America, then back again—with many stops and starts along the way. I often felt like there were many false endings, while the starts felt glazed over. It seemed as though Moore was planning the route as she was writing. She would leave Slaney in a place for a while, in which nothing would happen, and then in the next chapter we were on the road again. As I read, I felt as though I was always missing the middle of things. There is also a great emotional distance from the reader and Slaney, as the story is written in third person. I wanted to be rooting for this character and, even though he’s an anti-hero; I didn’t want him to get caught. But I felt a little too distant from him to care.

But the novel is worth reading for writing like this:

He whispered to himself. He spoke a stream of profanity and he said a prayer to the Virgin Mary, in whom he half believed. Mosquitoes touched him all over. They settled on his skin and put their fine things into him and they were lulled and bloated and thought themselves sexy and near death.

Moore’s characters are fascinating and full of flaws you can’t help but love as soon as you’re introduced to them.

‘Nice to meet you, sir,’ Slaney said.

I was in Korea, the old man said. I saw an arm on the ground. Just the arm. Not attached to nothing. Just lying there in the leaves.

Pops is decorated, the girl said. He got a few medals in there he could show you sometime.

We were marching, he said. I just saw this arm. It was lying on the dirt. Wet leaves stuck on it. That was one thing I saw. I saw a lot of things. You’ve done some travelling, have you?

Yes sir, Slaney said.

Caught is a story about loss, love, risk and betrayal. It tries to redefine innocence and it makes the reader question what is inevitable and what isn’t, and how a person chooses to move forward in order to get what he wants. Moore’s prose is meditative, but the story is about a chase. Whether the two can work together, I’m still unsure.

Jenny Boychuk is a reader and writer who lives in Victoria.

Collection’s stories are sharp and true

The Green and Purple Skin of the World
By paulo da costa
Freehand Books, 208 pages, $21.95

Reviewed by Yasuko Thanh

Born in Angola, raised in Portugal, paulo da costa won the Commonwealth First Book Prize in 2003 for his collection The Scent of a Lie. In The Green and Purple Skin of the World, his first book of short fiction in 10 years, language and its power form a thread through many of the stories and words are highlighted in entertaining characters such as Dona Branca, who collects newspaper clippings of disasters and glues them in an old photo album.

In “Those Who Follow,” a tale of hunter and hunted, a cougar reminisces, “Perhaps my mother wrapped me in words of hope to help me tolerate the immense body of pain she understood was coming.”

Language acts as a kind of saviour. In the title story, da costa explores the world of love and loss through a tale told in letters. The epistolary device works because the letter writer never gets a reply and, as such, her longing is more keenly felt. The narrator, Shana, writes, “Home is any language I speak.” Yet as hope bleeds into disappointment, she also concedes, “There are sounds in my mother tongue your throat will never set free.”

The one-sided love affair is underscored by the recurring, transient image of a bubble blown from a bubble wand. The story unfolds through a thoughtful, poetic treatment (not surprisingly, since da costa is also a poet). Every sentence feels carefully controlled, aiming for its effect.

In “Not Written in Pencil,” my favourite story in the book, we learn about the dissolution of an auto mechanic’s 13-year marriage to a cheating wife. Her new-age justifications spur his anger. The narrator’s self-deprecating voice is tempered by a wry humour and a sarcasm he employs to shed light on his own tragic upbringing. The voice here is strong.  Authentic.  His heartbreak and raw shock is perfectly captured in blue-collar fashion as he tries to explain his current failure with his own dealings with his son. Voice carries this piece. This is the best story in the collection because it allows us to enter the narrator’s heart, in lieu of the omniscient perspective da costa favours in other stories.

In “Table,” a man does what needs to be done for his young family and is defined, as are other men in the collection, by those moments of quiet suffering. He chops off his own index finger to save himself from the draft. “He offered his finger to the officers, asking them if that ‘qualified as sufficient proof he could not pull the trigger or did they require his whole arm?’ ”

Da costa seems to imply that real heroes don’t die for others but live for others. My own heroes are those who sacrifice themselves quietly, without reward, day after day, heading to a crappy job, riding home on the bus, looking after loved ones. Da costa nicely blends both types of heroes in “Table.”

The stories are tightly written, sometimes with seeming thematic agendas. Imagine the beam of a flashlight shining onto a vast landscape. The focus is often so spot-on that many of the stories function almost as proverbs. The light might be perfect for some readers, though others may find the beam too singular. If you have a preference for stories that aim sharp and true, with few loose threads about them, then this collection might be for you.

Yasuko Thanh’s short story collection, Floating Like the Dead, was recently nominated for a BC book prize.

Novel connects Budapest and Toronto

Under Budapest
By Alisa Kay
Goose Lane, 256 pages, $19.95

Reviewed by Judy LeBlanc

Like ghosts surfacing from Budapest’s fabled subterranean regions, lives from the 1956 Hungarian uprising breathe anew in post-soviet times. Alisa Kay’s debut novel raises many questions about history. Is there really a labyrinth of tunnels beneath the city, once used as both prisons and storehouses for Soviet loot? No one knows for sure, Kay seems to suggest.

In Under Budapest’s densely woven plot, as serpentine as these tunnels, a myriad of characters confront their past. The present is 2010 in a right-winged Hungary, a time of fomenting nationalism spurred on by hatred for Jews and Romas. Within the large cast of characters, the fast-talking hoods, an historical intellectual revolutionary and his passionate youthful lover are a little too stock for my liking, though they make for a page-turning read.

Instead, bland historian, Tibor Roland, his mother Agnes and her memory of her mother, give this novel its psychological complexity, taking it beyond the genre of a decent crime thriller. Tibor, reeling from an affair ended largely because of a deception on his part–deception is a recurring motif throughout the book–signs up for a conference in Budapest. His mother, born and raised there, fled to Canada after the uprising. Recently she has learned that her missing sister may have escaped through the mythical tunnels. During their visits, mother and son separately encounter acts of violence and deceit that ultimately intersect in a tangle of past and present. Agnes’s mother, in 1956 Budapest thinks, “But no change has ever held. It always turns back, turns bad.”

In clean, often insightful prose, Kay’s narrative moves seamlessly between past and present. While her sister embraces the fervour of the uprising, Agnes runs away, repulsed by the violence. After witnessing a horrific murder in Budapest, Tibor, fearful he will be framed by the corrupt police force, also flees.

Watching TV back in Toronto, Agnes and Tibor are decidedly unheroic, which is possibly what lends this novel its greatest interest. They are safe, reflecting a choice many immigrants to this country made. In spite of his reluctance to revisit the horrific event he witnessed, Tibor agrees to meet with the dead boy’s Canadian father. It’s as if his experience in Budapest has enabled him to see beyond violence as merely academic, as simply a subject of study, and to accept it as near at hand: in his mother’s history, in his own life.

In contemporary Canadian literature, there is a preponderance of stories unearthed from the past by a generation of writers distanced from the heat of revolution and yet wrestling with its residual effects. In the end, Agnes shares her personal history with Tibor, and he thinks, “He was a child of these circumscribed facts, of all she’d left behind. And he felt, well, he felt it added something to him.”

Judy LeBlanc has her MFA from UVIC and writes fiction from her home in Fanny Bay.

Jack’s a solid character at 12

Record Breaker
By Robin Stevenson
Orca Book Publishers, 142 pages, $9.95

Reviewed by Marcie Gray

The moment I picked up this book of youth fiction, I thought, “How brilliant! A story about a boy who wants to break world records!” Brilliant, because I’ve found that if you have an emerging, reluctant reader of the male variety–and you want him to read something other than comic books, hand him a copy of Guinness World Records. He’ll snatch it up and quickly memorize who has the longest fingernails, who has swallowed the most knives, who has broken the most bones. So it makes exquisite sense that this book–about 12-year-old Jack and his quest to be famous–would appeal to its young audience.

But Victoria author Robin Stevenson’s novel is not just an accounting of weird and wonderful feats. She uses world records as a device to draw in readers and tell a deeper tale about love and loss and thinking beyond yourself. Stevenson grew up in southern Ontario; she sets her story there, during the Cold War world of the Cuban Missile Crisis and U.S. President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Amidst this global chaos, Jack faces his own family crisis. His baby sister dies. Now his mother can’t get out of bed, and his father offers little comfort. Breaking a record takes on more significance as Jack hopes to make his mother laugh and make his father proud. Plot spoiler: Jack eventually realizes to help his family, he’ll have to do more than devour 17 sausages in 90 seconds.

Stevenson sets a tough task for her protagonist, but she helps us believe he’s up for the job by giving him a solid, thoughtful personality and friends who are likeable for their quirks. The story is told in first person, which can be tricky for a writer, and occasionally Stevenson does slip into a voice that is too old for a 12-year-old. I also wonder whether my own 10-year-old son would understand references to “the bomb” and “nuclear holocaust.” Ask him about 9/11 or why airline security is so tight, and he’s quick with answers, but potential nuclear war is too remote.

A little more explanation on the history side might help keep young readers interested. While this book has tension, it still feels like a gentle read, as we follow Jack in his daily life in a small town. I enjoyed the pacing but I’m not sure the sausage swallowing and other exploits would be enough to keep my boy’s nose in this book instead of Harry Potter or Percy Jackson. It’s a safer bet that Record Breaker would really score in a classroom, with a teacher guiding along a group of young readers.

Marcie Gray has a background in CBC radio journalism and is at work on her own novel.