Tag Archives: jenny boychuk

Winning novel’s captures war’s high cost

Lucky: A novel
By Kathryn Para
Published by Mother Tongue Publishing
213 pages, $21.95

Reviewed by Jenny Boychuk

Kathryn Para’s debut novel and winner of The Great BC Novel Contest, Lucky: a novel, explores how we distance ourselves physically and mentally as a way to try to adapt to unthinkable tragedy and suffering.

Anika Lund is a photojournalist working on assignment in the war-torn Middle East when she meets Viva from Syria, a woman in search of her husband’s kidnapper, whom she believes to be in Fallujah, Iraq. Ani’s job is to take photos—of dying children, of broken buildings and dust—that will explain the state of the Middle East to westerners in a way words cannot.

Given the machine gun and the destruction of Murad’s house, Murad, perhaps, is the man she seeks, the one with ties to Zayid’s terrorist franchise that ripples through the Middle East. But on the ground, cradling his head, he looks less like a terrorist than an ordinary man. She takes another photograph of him, and the acid in her stomach lifts, swirls and threatens. Trembling comes next, followed by cold sweat. She lowers the camera and stows it in her bag. Maybe this trip will have been worth the effort. Maybe this time she has taken the photograph that will stop the war.

Ani joins Viva in hopes of finding the photographs that will change everything. Eventually, they are joined by a cocky journalist named Alex, with whom Ani has fallen in love. Together, and well-aware of the dangers that await, they devise an intricate plan to reach their destination. But when Viva’s search for her husband’s kidnapper grows fiercer, something terrible happens in Fallujah.

The novel alternates between the past in the Middle East, and the present in Vancouver, B.C.  Each thread is written in the present tense, which allows the reader to witness the urgency of Ani’s time abroad as she relives it. Para has done something structurally fascinating: like a camera lens, the story fluctuates between zooming the reader uncomfortably far into Ani’s mind post-trauma in Vancouver, and zooming back out to create distance as Ani, Viva and Alex fight for their lives in Fallujah. The pieces of the story that take place in Vancouver are written in first-person point-of-view, from Ani’s perspective, while the parts set in the Middle East are written in a limited third-person point of view, also from Ani’s perspective.

Back in Vancouver, Ani struggles to live with what has happened. Her therapist prescribes a concoction of different anti-depressants and tranquilizers, which Ani mixes with alcohol in an  attempt to escape reality. Then, at a party, Ani’s publisher introduces her to another journalist, Levi, who she thinks might be able to help Ani with her book, to persuade her to open the box of photos she can’t bring herself to look at. Levi is mystified by Ani’s brokenness and, though it isn’t long before the two become locked together physically, she won’t let him into her mind to see what she saw.  By the time a reader reaches the end of the novel, it is not difficult to see why.

Levi finds me later under a tree in the park. I explain that the willow roped me, twisted me around and hog-tied me like a calf, hid me under the dead leaves. My sweet Levi. My swagger man in his tight jeans, my cool-word man with his Mac computer, my investigator man with his laid-back methods. He waits for people to open themselves up. He’s a tricky man.

While the ambitious structure is successful, Ani’s internal first-person voice is much more engaging and interesting. The contrast between voices is obvious but not jarring, and mirrors the premise so well that Para can easily get away with it.

Lucky explores notions of reality and memory and how we skew them in order to try to move forward—or even just exist. The novel succeeds portraying both the deterioration of a civilization and the singular self—and shows how we continue to do the enemy’s work long after we’ve escaped them.

Jenny Boychuk is a BFA graduate about to launch post-grad studies in writing.

Russell Books expands into vintage

Russell Books Vintage Grand Opening
with readings from Esi Edugyan, Steven Price and Marita Dachsel
May 14, 2013

Reviewed by Jenny Boychuk

In a time when many independent bookstores are closing their doors, Victoria’s Russell Books has expanded yet again with the addition of Russell’s Vintage.

Russell’s Vintage (located beneath Russell Books in what was formerly Fort Street Café) held its grand opening recently, featuring readings by local authors Steven Price, Esi Edugyan and Marita Dachsel.

The space filled up quickly as people drank wine and browsed the shelves for vintage gardening guides, cookbooks, magazines, volumes of the Guinness Book of Records, poetry, children’s literature and nearly ancient copies and first editions of their favourite classics. The atmosphere was warm and friendly, and it seemed everyone met someone they knew.

Every seat was filled with many people left standing as event organizer and Russell Books employee Vanessa Herman kicked off the night. She announced that Russell’s Vintage will begin holding a monthly reading series. Next, manager Andrea Minter talked about her family and the history of Russell Books, which was founded by her grandfather in Montreal in 1961. The store (now relocated in Victoria) is Canada’s largest used and new bookstore.

“Books are my life and we are so excited for this,” Minter said.

The space is perfect for a reading, with a small stage at the front of the room, set against a backdrop of antique books. The readings proved fitting for the occasion as each of the authors read about history or the making of it.

Marita Dachsel launched her new collection of poetry Glossolalia, which is essentially a series of monologues written from the point of view of each of Joseph Smith’s 34 polygamous wives. (Joseph Smith was the founder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.)

“You always hear about people launching books,” said Dachsel. “But you hardly ever hear of people launching bookstores.”

After an intermission and the cutting of a fabulous cake (an unreal replication of each of the authors’ books stacked on top of each other), Steven Price talked about his and wife Esi Edugyan’s history and love of Russell Books.  Apparently, the couple visits so regularly that the staff is set on adopting their baby daughter.)

“We don’t get out much,” joked Price. “But when we do, we go to three places. Russell Books is one of them.”

Price read from his poetry collection Omens in the Year of the Ox, and from Into That Darkness, his novel about a massive earthquake hitting Victoria.

After more wine, cake and door prizes (orchids, t-shirts, winery tours, books), Esi Edugyan ended the evening with a reading from her novel, Half-Blood Blues, much of which is set in pre-war Berlin.

I expect Russell’s Vintage will see many more nights like this one.

 

Jenny Boychuk is a local writer and reader.

 

Poet’s first book brave and fierce

1996
By Sara Peters
House of Anansi, 65 pages, $19.95

Reviewed by Jenny Boychuk

Sometimes you need a poet who will lead you into the dark woods without promising to bring you back to safety again. Sometimes you need a poet who will show you the decomposing bear at the edge of the river—and the kids placing red gumdrops along its spine.

Sara Peters is this poet, and this exceptionally brave and fierce first collection left me shaken. Every poem is surprising, though Peters never uses the same trick twice. Often I found myself holding my breath for multiple poems at a time before she turned the knife in my gut. Peters was born in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. She is a graduate of the MFA program at Boston University and was a Stegner fellow at Stanford University from 2010 to 2012.

The first poem, “Babysitters,” sets an appropriately eerie and mysterious tone for the collection. At the end of the poem, I realized the rest of the book would consist of things parents would never talk about in front of their children.

A foreshadowing:

. . . But when she thinks herself
alone, you hear back seat of the car, then
with a trench knife, in the orchard. Secrets thud
like June bugs against screens,
and all you have to do is let them in.

The collection consists of six sections with five poems each, which provides a pleasing sort of symmetrical reading experience. Peters’ controlled lines work best when they slowly release distilled moments and the rhythms provide an almost incantatory effect:

She didn’t mean to braid the horses’ manes and tails
hundreds of times with so much élan—French, four-stranded—

but up was the only unoccupied direction,
so how else to get there? And always

these questions: Who set those fires?
Who broke those mirrors? Is that your blood?

Peters’ poems often have narratives and through them she tells stories of teenage nostalgia, physical attraction, heartbreak, family, religion, nature and the body wearing down. She is skilled with a knife and handles heavy topics with impressive emotional restraint.

From “Bionic”:

My brother’s twenty-two and therefore believes he’s bionic.
He’s home from school,
he’s supposed to look after our mother for the week.
She’s senile and probably dying.
He’s cruel but his cruelty’s probably temporary.

He’s dressed her in a T-shirt that says
I kill everything I fuck // I fuck everything I kill.
She stares into a bowl of cornflake milk;
I carefully cover my breakfast in ketchup.

My brother is funny and blunt.
Whenever I say something sentimental,
or talk—for example—about the ocean,
he says, You know what?
You should write a poem about that.

While there were points where I thought Peters tried to tackle too much within a poem, I won’t soon forget the haunting details and alarming imagery. This is a collection of secrets, a photo album of things not meant to be photographed—and we should be grateful for the chance to look.

 

Jenny Boychuk has just completed her BFA and is thinking about her future.