Author Archives: Christie

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About Christie

Book lover. Tea Drinker. Teacher. Writer. Mother. Canadian.

The Story of My Face by Kathy Page

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An elegantly compelling story of how a young girl’s obsession forever changes the lives of those around her…a disciplined exploration of the complexity of human motivation and our need for redemption. – Lynne Van Luven, Vancouver Sun

Kathy Page’s The Story of My Face is at once compelling and confounding. Page is a skilled enough writer that you are pulled into the mysterious events surrounding Natalie’s disfigurement– the cause and extent of which you learn little about until the book’s final pages– from the beginning. But the central event of Natalie’s life is buried in adult-Natalie’s search for meaning and understanding.

We meet Natalie Baron as an adult on her way to Finland to research Tuomas Envall, the leader of a strict religious sect. Natalie’s own connection to the cult comes in the form of Barbara Hern, her husband, John, and son, Mark. These three people have important roles to play, particularly Barbara for whom Natalie has a possessive affection.

Page weaves past and present together, but for me– the story was at its most compelling during the time Natalie is with the Herns on a retreat with other members of this religious sect.

The story of what happens to her face is actually not as startling as how she impacts the lives of the Hern family, most specifically Barbara.

Darkness Bound by Larry Brooks

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Two strangers meet. A woman without inhibitions…a man without limits…for a private game between two consenting adults.

Yeah, so it’s obvious why I chose this book- but it didn’t turn out to be the book I expected. Instead of a book filled with kinky sex, this turned out to be a well-written crime story, filled with lots of twists and turns. Dillon Masters and his wife, Karen, separate. Dillon’s a stock broker with a penchant for kinky sex– something his wife doesn’t exactly share. So, when the mysterious woman of his dreams – a woman who seems to know all his dark desires– walks into his life, he can’t resist indulging in his fantasies. Turns out that this ‘Dark Lady’ is far more dangerous than Dillon had first giddily anticipated.

Lucky for the reader, though, Dillon’s no slouch– he’s able to more than hold his own with her and Darkness Bound turns out to be not so much a book about naughty sex, as a cat and mouse thriller where the players try to outmaneuver each other.

I read it in an afternoon and had a ball.

Men at Work by Denison, Bangs, Davidson

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So this book was on the display of books that have been reduced; I can never walk by that display. I always have to buy something. Sometimes I luck out. I found Denise Mina that way. All I can say about Men at Work is that it only cost $4.99– and it was worth about one third of that because the second and third stories were so bad, I couldn’t even finish them.

So, yeah, this book is supposed to be “three sizzling tales of men who are good with their hands.” Okay– what?

If you can believe it, there’s actually a review.

Trust me– if you’re looking for smut I can recommend some great stuff. I can’t recommend this.

Taming the Beast by Emily Maguire

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A thought-provoking and searing first novel. -The Age

Sarah Clark is a smart kid. That’s what we’re told, anyway. By the time she turns fourteen she’s read every one of Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets, and then the works of Donne, Marlowe, Pope and Marvell. At fourteen she meets the English teacher, Daniel Carr, who will change her life.

“For the entire forty minutes of his first class he spoke about why Yeats was relevant to Australian teenagers in the year 1995. In the second class, Sarah put up her hand to make a comment on something he said about ‘Hamlet’. When he called on her to speak, she started and could not stop. She stayed in the classroom all through lunch, and when she re-emerged into the sunlight and the condescending stares of the schoolyard cliques, she was utterly changed.”

It’s not a huge leap to believe that a meeting of the minds turns to a meeting of the flesh. But their sexual affair is not quite the same as the poetry they’ve discussed– it’s raw, aggressive often brutal. The obvious questions to ask would be: is this abuse? (Clearly he’s breaking the law based on his position and the difference in their ages.) But Sarah has a penchant for this sort of sex, it seems.

And when Carr is forced to choose between Sarah and his wife and children, he chooses the latter– leaving Sarah to drift through the next eight years of her life in a haze of alcohol, drugs, and sex with hundreds of men.

Until Carr re-enters her life.

This is not a love story. Watching Sarah move through her days (and nights) is like peering through the windows of a car wreck. The characters are almost despicable– and so as I was reading, even when things were particularly horrible, I kept thinking –you know what, you guys deserve each other.

Saturday by Ian McEwan

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I am not a McEwan newbie. Saturday is the 4th of his books I have read and, thus far, my least favourite. But even though I didn’t love this book, I would still have to praise McEwan’s ability to write. If I have a criticism of Saturday it’s that it’s over-written. That may be the fault of McEwan’s decision to set the novel in one day in the life of neurosurgeon, Henry Perowne.

Saturday is Henry’s favourite day. He plays squash, does some shopping and on this particular Saturday– anticipates the homecoming of his daughter, Daisy. But, of course, this Saturday isn’t going to be like all the others. He awakens in the middle of the night and watches from his bedroom window as a plane– streaming fire, cuts across the sky to (crash, he assumes) land at Heathrow.

This event wouldn’t be the cause of so much concern if this story wasn’t set post 9/11 and on the very day when hundreds of thousands on people are set to march in London’s streets to protest the war against Iraq.

As Henry sets out to accomplish his long list of things to do before his daughter arrives he gets into a minor fender bender that will propel (although not quickly) the book towards its denouement. Whether or not you find the ending, or the book for that matter, satisfying, will depend on how much you care for Henry and the minutia of his Saturday.

Carrie’s Story by Molly Weatherfield

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Man, it’s hard to find good porn. And I was hopeful about this book, I truly was. Apparently I have been spoiled by the Internet, though. Or perhaps I am just more perverse than I thought I was. Perhaps, five years ago this book would have shocked me…or made me hot. But…now?

Carrie’s Story is exactly what the title says it is: Carrie’s account of being a sexual slave to Jonathan, a rich, good-looking guy with a penchant for having his shoes licked and beating Carrie’s perfect ass.

Carrie’s a smart cookie. She analyzes every little thing that happens to her and makes no apology for the fact that s/m turns her on. And, to her credit, Weatherfield doesn’t make any apology for it either. She acknowledges that whatever floats the boat between consenting adults– even if that means acting like a pony– is fine by her. And she writes about it intelligently.

But for me it was just so-so in the erotic department. I guess I just like my porn to be, well, pornier.

Sweetness in the Belly by Camilla Gibb

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British born, Canadian-raised writer Camilla Gibb’s stunning new novel Sweetness in the Belly divided my book club. I was among those who loved it. The book tells the story of Lilly, born to hippie parents and brought up as a Muslim, after their death, in the city of Harar. Her story is told by layering her young years in a politically charged Ethiopia with her life as a nurse in London. It’s a fascinating picture of a world torn apart by poverty and prejudice and by Lilly’s own beliefs. It is also a love story as we wait with Lilly to learn the fate of her lover, Aziz.

I know nothing of the politics of Ethiopia under Emperor Haile Selassie. I know very little about the Muslim religion, but Gibb’s beautiful prose and attention to detail (she conducted fieldwork in Ethiopia for her PhD in social anthropology) makes this book a page-turner. The characters are complex and interesting and the day-to-day struggles of the women, in particular, are riveting. I was both gutted and elated by book’s end.

The Ruins by Scott Smith

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Smith’s book has been on my to-read list for a while. I have had a life-long love affair with horror novels…both the truly creepy (Peter Straub’s Ghost Story springs to mind) and the truly schlocky (just about anything by John Farris) but I don’t read them too much anymore. Still, The Ruins came with quite a pedigree. Smith wrote A Simple Plan a kick-ass book about how the discovery of a crashed plane and millions of dollars irrevocably changes the lives of three average guys. If you haven’t read it yet, I highly recommend it.

The Ruins follows the fortunes of four friends on vacation in Mexico. They go to the site of Mayan ruins with Mathias and Pablo to search for Mathias’s missing brother. What follows is an entertaining enough story of pure fantasy- meaning that the horror they encounter isn’t the worst thing to happen to them. (And it’s not all that believable, even for a horror fan.) Smith’s true talent is in scraping at the dark things people do to each other and themselves when they find themselves in a bad place.- For my money though, A Simple Plan does a much better job of making us both wince and shudder.

Stephen King called The Ruins “the best horror novel of the new century.” I’m a King fan, but I’m going to have to disagree. If you want to go to the dark place, read A Simple Plan or better still, read King’s classic, It.

Rise and Shine by Anna Quindlen

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Anna Quindlen’s book Black and Blue, was the first novel my book club ever read together- almost eight years ago now. I remember liking it quite a lot, so when her novel Rise and Shine was chosen for last month, I was quite happy.

Until I started reading.

Meghan and Bridget are sisters living in New York City. They couldn’t be more opposite. Meghan is the famous host of a morning TV show, Rise and Shine, and her sister, Bridget, the dowdier and less confident one, is a social worker. You can already see where this is going, can’t you?

Although Meghan seems to have it all- a wonderful husband and a fabulous son, both of whom Bridget adores, there are cracks in her seemingly perfect life and one day she utters something wholly inappropriate on live television and her world comes crumbling down. And the problem with the book is  I could care less.

What follows is 269 pages of Meghan and Bridget trying to sort through their personal baggage and come to terms with each other on a different level. And all of that was okay- not great, but okay…until the last 50 or so pages when Quindlen does what I hate….takes all the lives she’s dangled in front of us and propels them into the future giving us the ‘happily ever after’ she so clearly thinks they deserve.

Ugh.

The Lake Dreams the Sky by Swain Wolfe

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I don’t know how Swain Wolfe’s novel The Lake Dreams the Sky ended up on my bedside table. Somehow I managed to score an advanced reading copy of it and it has been in my ‘to-read’ pile forever. I finally picked it up and couldn’t put it down.

The Lake Dreams the Sky tells the story of Elizabeth, a high-powered something or other who returns to the lake of the title to visit her elderly grandmother and reacquaint herself with the Montana landscape of her youth. What follows is a beautiful love story prompted by Liz’s discovery of a picture she’d admired as a child.

Liz’s story isn’t anywhere near as interesting as the story the picture has to tell. Ruth, a white woman raised by the Red Crow and Cody, a drifter who arrives in town when his truck breaks down, meet and fall in love. They are both good people who got dealt a shitty hand and their relationship fuels the jealousy of the small-minded people who live in the town. Their only allies are the owner of a local business, who is also an outsider of sorts, and Rose’s Red Crow mother.

Theirs is a story of passion and hope and it is beautifully told. If you aren’t rooting for them to make it by the book’s end, you have a hole where your heart should be.