Manga happy

Favourite manga title of the day (from the series One-Piece):

"The Crap-Geezer"

Indeed.

While you're busy making other plans

Or rather, reviewing is what happens to me while I'm busy making other plans.

I've been AWOL from the reading list for the last few months as firstly (as I mentioned), Isobelle Carmody's new book weighs approximately the same as two cans of Stagg Chili (ignited by Habanero Peppers). Object lesson:*

Paul really likes Stagg Chili. Each time we buy it, he says "ignited by Habanero Peppers."

It kind of looks like something you would imagine a bum eating in the depression.

Anyway. Secondly, reviewing always takes longer when you get a cold and tend to fall asleep during your lunch break when you should be directing enthusiasm through the prism of intellect. Still, my words about that little bunch are now on their way to being stamped on paper.

Back to the Favourites list, right? WRRRRRRONG! The few months will be spent in a reading-and-not-getting-a-cold frenzy. Meet my new friends:

Nine weeks; sixy-five books. Sums; you do them. So given that there'd be another dearth of blogging, and who's going to tell me off it's my blog anyway, I thought maybe I could branch out here into the generally book-related bits of my life.

All in favour say "Ignited by Habanero Peppers!"

*Dramatic renenactment. Actual results may vary.

Obernewtyn (Obernewtyn Chronicles, #1) by Isobelle Carmody

From the favourer: "Part of me likes the idea of the basic simplicity of the characters lives, i.e.. no electricity, cars, everything done manually, and using traditional forms of healing. I can't be sure, but this book may have been one of the reasons why I wanted to study Naturopathy. And the tragic romantic in me definitely responded to the budding relationship of the main character!"

The stars seem to have been in alignment for my choosing this time to read (well, re-read) this favourite book. Just as I started on Obernewtyn, the long awaited 5th book in the series appeared on bookshop shelves. So I thought I may as well rip through all four previous books so that my memory was refreshed of the story arc in time to read the #5, The Stone Key. Then, just after I bought the latest book/doorstop, the lovely Pam of Viewpoint asked me if I was an Isobelle Carmody fan, because they were looking for someone to review book #5 and would I do it? I proceeded to look slight panicked and squeak out the question that springs foremost to every reviewer's mind:

"By when?"

Mid-April. This should be okay. Despite the fact that I also have 6 books to review for ABR due on the same day. And despite the fact that now I really need to re-read the past four Obernewtyn books, as I can't remember anything that happened in the last book, I don't trust wiki-summaries, and I don't want to appear any more ignorant than possible when I'm in print. And despite the fact (last one) that the latest Obernewtyn book is 1000 pages long and weighs 1.05kg. If I was to sell you this book on eBay, you'd have to pay $9.40 to have it posted to you. So note to all my friends: if I can't see you for the next month, it's because I have to spend every spare moment reading.

Obernewtyn fans are very patient people. We've been waiting for this 5th book for nine years. That's a long time to wait. Generally you're only willing to assign that kind of waiting time to things like unrequited love, or a really nice holiday. You also become a fairly different person in that waiting time if that gap falls between you as an 18-year-old and you as a 27-year-old. I'm taller, for instance. (No really. I've grown 4cm in that interim. Don't people usually stop growing by 18?)

But hey, I ran into Mr Dragonlance Reader #1 on the train again last week! He was reading a Dragonlance book. He asked me if I was still reading the Dragonlance books, to which I replied "Err, no." But I held up Carmody doorstop #4, and that seemed to pass muster.

Anyway, on to Obernewtyn. It's been through several cover art incarnations since its publication in 1987, all of which I rather like. My copies are the first and second styles of covers, though I must say the latest photographic covers are very attractive:

The first-incarnation cover, which is the copy I read for this review, is a nostalgia-inducing Puffin Plus 1980s design, and contains many misprints throughout, most amusingly that "Seeker" is printed several times as "$eeker", which puts rather a different spin on what is being sought.

Elspeth Gordie knows that she is different. She also knows that her kind of difference is enough to see her ritually killed or sterilised, should anyone find out. After the Great White, an apocalyptic event that wiped out most of human life on earth, the civilisation that is slowly rebuilding itself is superstitious and has no tolerance for seditioners or Misfits - humans born with unusual mental capacities. If discovered, they are Burned (in a capitalised ceremony that smacks of witch-trials), sterilised, or sentenced to a slow death working on Council farms. Her own parents Burned as seditioners, Elspeth has managed to keep her mental abilities a secret as she moves between Orphan Homes. But though they do not suspect the extent of her abilities, a representative of Obernewtyn buys Elspeth to take her to this mysterious place in the mountains. Rumours are hazy and sinister, but Obertnewtyn is generally thought to gather up Misfits to work towards 'curing' them. Keeping secret the vast powers of her mind (which include the ability to read minds, communicate with animals, and coerce people to do/say/see things), Elspeth and some new-found friends begin to investigate what is really going on at Obernewtyn. What is the purpose of the never-sighted Doctor's 'treatments' of Misfits that seem to do more harm than good? What do the guardians of Obernewtyn really want with all these Misfits?

Going back to the first of the Obernewtyn books has reminded me why it still seems to be the strongest of all the series. Firstly, I think it's the way it's written predominantly as a mystery story. Elspeth has spent so long just trying to survive and keep her talents hidden, that when she begins to discover the dodginess of Obernewtyn's goings on, it's her love for her friends that prompts her to act. She doesn't initially have a goal or a quest to fulfill, she just wants to find out why people are being hurt. It annoys me when fantasy novels disclose a 'quest' too early, so you simply spend the rest of your reading time waiting for the hero to get on with it, and any emotional/character growth simply gets in the way of the narrative. In Obernewtyn, Elspeth's quest unfolds bit by bit as she gradually pieces together what is going on at Obernewtyn, and the role she must play to avoid a repeat of the Great White. So while her quest does turn out to be rather a lofty one - saving the earth usually being left to the Buffys amongst us - both the intriguing mystery style structure and the relatively small cast of characters means you never feel that fantasy-novel-distancing effect I sometimes encounter as a reader. And matching up what we learn of the Beforetime earth to our earth is great fun. Carmody always writes it as tantalisingly both our world and not-quite-our-world, which makes your brain hover in a weird unsettled place between realism and fantasy.

The character of Elspeth herself is another reason why Obernewtyn is so enjoyable. I've always especially liked that when faced with the possibility of torture, she's pretty certain that if pain is inflicted, she'll spill everything about her friends to get the pain to stop. So rather than cliche-heroic stoicism, she decides in a Jane Eyreish "Keep well and not die, sir" kind of way that she'll just have to avoid being tortured. In the later books Elspeth does veer a bit more towards being the lofty noble heroine (I suppose having the fate of the world hanging over you would have to have an effect eventually), but in this first novel she's a very humanly flawed breath of fresh air.

While the later novels do get spectacularly more complex and epic in scope, in them the first book's committment to non-violence towards all humans and animals, and to fighting with words, mental abilities and cunning rather than broadswords deepens. This is a 'principle' I love about this series. I hate big 300/Lord of the Rings cast-of-thousands macho battles. They are UGLY and BORING. In the Obernewtyn series, the one death that Elspeth causes recurrs through the series as a deep mark on her aura, even despite the fact that she did not intend to kill.

Of course, there's also the longing that I've metioned before as something I associate with reading fantasy novels. Obernewtyn makes you desperately want to be able to communicate with animals, and have a one-eyed grumpy half-mad cat as your lifelong friend. Well, Paul's cat Vada (star of this entry's photo) is grumpy and half-mad but I still can't talk to her. Her ability to understand "dinner?" doesn't count. And Obernewtyn makes you want to live in a wild mansion in the mountains, and you want herbal healing to actually work, and you want to be part of a civilisation at its very beginning.

But mostly you want to be able to talk to animals. And ask them what they think of LOLcats.

The Razor's Edge by Somerset Maugham

From the favourer: "I think the reason this book made such a big impression on me had something to do with not settling for things just because other people have certain expectations of you. The only other book that gave me a similar face-slapping sense-check was 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being'. In retrospect, I think 'The Razor’s Edge' smacks more gently and keeps the soft leather gloves on while doing so."

I’ve heard it said that you need to read The Razor’s Edge before you’re 20, preferably while you’re an Arts student. So I’m seven years late on the former and four years late on the latter, but given the fact that I only stopped being a student in 2006, and the added fact that I still haven't managed to leave campus, I think I’ll be okay.

Set amongst the high society of the 1920s and 30s, The Razor’s Edge is narrated by Maugham posing as himself. A writer who suddenly finds moderate success and the fame that goes along with it, he begins to be invited to dinner parties by Elliott. Elliott is an amicable career snob who has made it his life’s work to climb the ranks of the social elite: to charm every rich old lady, attend every important party, and host dinners that are the social equivalent of a golden ticket in a Wonka bar.

At one of Elliott’s lesser (but still beautifully orchestrated) dinners, Maugham meets Elliott’s niece Isabel and her fiancé, Larry. Maugham doesn’t pay much attention to Larry, but notes that “though…he hadn’t said half a dozen words since entering the house, he seemed perfectly at ease and in a curious way appeared to take part in the conversation without opening his mouth.”

As Maugham’s friendship with Elliott and Isabel grows, he learns that rather than obediently taking a highly paid job and marrying Isabel, war veteran Larry has decided instead to pursue a notion unthinkable to the circles in which he moves: he wants to go to Paris and, in his words, “loaf”.

But Larry’s version of loafing doesn’t involve home delivery pizza and a boxed set of The West Wing, he goes there to live in a tiny room, spend basically no money, and to learn. This royal “screw you” to expectations and society obviously does not go down well, but Isabel agrees to allow Larry two years in Paris to get it out of his system before they marry. This was never going to work.

The proposed two years turn into a quest that sees Larry move from studying in Paris, to working in coal mines and on farms, to discovering mysticism in the mountains of India. But what is he really looking for? And what of those he leaves behind?

You’ve gotta love Maugham. Despite the fact that the female characters in his writing are generally whores or heartless bitches (I don't think he liked women very much), he creates such wonderfully varied, intriuging and rounded characters and writes them so wittily you can’t possibly be annoyed.

This includes the whores and the bitches, to his credit. I especially loved Sophie, alcoholic opium addict of 'dubious repute' who Larry intends to marry and ‘save’ from herself. Instead she racks off back to Paris to her old life, and in a great moment drawls to Maugham: “Darling, when it came to the point I couldn’t see myself being Mary Magdalen to his Jesus Christ. No, sir.” Don't blame her myself.

Larry is not a blind crusader, however. When Isabel initially tries to convince him that she could perhaps try his style of life in Paris, he observes:

“One can dress very nicely without going to Chanel. And all the interesting people don’t live in the neighbourhood of the Arc de Triomphe and the Avenue Foch. In fact few interesting people do, because interesting people generally don’t have a lot of money.”

When Isabel says: “Don’t be stupid, Larry…You know I’m not a snob. I’d love to meet interesting people”, he replies:

“Yes, in a Chanel dress.”

Quite.

I actually found Larry less interesting as he became more spiritual. It’s hard to really like a character that becomes so removed from natural fluctuations of human emotion. Perhaps it says more about me than about him, but I always find a suspicion of smugness in spiritual transformations. It’s the same irritation I have with the smiles on images of mystical gods, they tease: “I know something you don’t know...”

I much preferred Larry in his Paris phase, and even felt a brief touch of first-year-uni nostalgia (craziness, I know) after his conversation with Maugham:

“‘Don’t you think you might tell me what you’ve been up to all the time you’ve been in Paris?’
‘I’ve been reading a good deal. Eight or ten hours a day. I’ve attended lectures at the Sorbonne. I think I’ve read everything that’s important in French literature and I can read Latin, at least Latin prose, almost as easily as I can read French. Of course Greek’s more difficult. But I have a very good teacher. Until you came here I used to go to him three evenings a week.’
‘And what is that going to lead to?’
‘The acquisition of knowledge,’ he smiled.
‘That doesn’t sound very practical.’
‘Perhaps it isn’t and on the other hand perhaps it is. But it’s enormous fun. You can’t imagine what a thrill is it to read the Odyssey in the original. It makes you feel as if you only had to get on tiptoe and stretch out your hands to touch the stars.’”

It gave me a little thrill of familiarity to read that paragraph.

Maugham, in his narrator incarnation, is a sharp and never-impartial observer, able to encapsulate amorphous character traits with amusing brevity. He describes Elliott, who tries to insist on escorting him to his flat every time, as having “the feeling I have noticed in some Americans who have lived many years abroad that America is a difficult and even dangerous place in which the European cannot safely be left to find his way about by himself.” Heh heh.

In fact I found Maugham to be one of the most interesting characters in the book, despite the fact that you spend most of the book standing next to him rather than looking at him. I wonder if anyone else has felt this way? In his way Maugham-as-narrator is just as much a rebel as Larry – always forthright, amused by Elliott’s ambitions, and never hesitating to call someone on a statement if he thinks it's crap. And it is his voice in the final paragraph that reveals, in his light and typically backhanded way, a truth about his friends that you could easily miss beneath the veneer of affectionate sentiment.

While I do understand why this book has a kind of cult following among students, I also think that the under-20 restriction is a bit harsh. Even leaving aside the fact that it’s beautifully written and corner-foldingly, email-signature-quotingly witty, I think it’s a book not just to inspire, but to re-inspire.

If you’ve ever had an overwhelming urge to yell: “Bugger the system, I’m going to hurl the mortgage to the wind and embark on a journey of discovery and adventure/pursue knowledge for the pure love of it/search for wisdom and happiness, and not give a rat’s arse if I end up without two pennies to rub together,” then there’ll be at least a part of this book that will reawaken that urge.

And if you haven’t had that “bugger expectations” urge, ever, in your entire life, then you need this book immediately.

And possibly some kind of electro-shock therapy.

The Cook's Companion by Stephanie Alexander (2004 edition)

From the favourer: "Steph is the 'go-to girl' for all food-related matters. My kitchen bible."

*Warning to vegetarian friends, this blog entry contains photos/video of a recipe using meat*

Given that this book is somewhat of a doorstop, I thought that rather than reading the entire thing (which could take years in itself, especially if I read every ingredient measure), I would instead randomly open the book, read the introduction to whatever foodstuff section was being featured, and then pick a recipe from the chapter to cook for Paul and I, with accompanying photographs and videos of our success/dismal failure/burning the house down.

This whole random recipe choice thing seemed a great idea. So, we sit down on the couch the night before our weekly supermarket shop, and I open the book in my lap. I've opened it at the 'nectarine' section.

"Nectarines," I say.

"That's not really a main meal," says Paul.

Amendment #1: we will cook from any section of the book that will actually provide us with dinner, rather than just, say, a sauce.

I open the book again. Brussel sprouts.

"I hate brussel sprouts," says Paul.

I open the book several more times. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. I heave the book at Paul:

"You find a good one!"

He opens it, first time, at duck. Duck! I love duck. We'll roast a duck. Paul is all in favour.

Then he turns the page to the photo of a cute and friendly looking (live) duck. Paul's eyebrows go up. He looks at me with big liquid eyes.

We're not having duck. Sigh.

Amendment #2: We will not eat any animal that is pictured in a cute and friendly way opposite the recipe.

How many times are we going to have to 'randomly' open this book? Paul has another go. Kangaroo! They have kangaroo at our local supermarket! And there is no cute picture of a kangaroo on the following page. We're set. Maggie Beer's barbecued kangaroo with anchovy vinaigrette and soft polenta.

The Cook's Companion is always a wonderful read - I've found myself in past times reading whole sections describing, for example, how to open an avacado. It's just so nice to read! I advise you to keep it on your coffee table, pick it up in spare moments, read yourself into a ravenous stupor (and then probably order a pizza because like us your fridge contains a lettuce and some raw chicken wings for the cat).

So I read the whole section on kangaroo and wallaby before starting, and learn that the meat is best served pretty rare. This suits me fine. It also provides some information about the methods of kangaroo farming/hunting which are, I think, intended to comfort the squeamish. This is interesting but unnecessary for me; I think that if you choose to be a meat eater, you should be under no illusions about where your food came from, what its origin looked like, and how it was brought to you in its pretty polystyrene presentation.

We buy our kangaroo, all the other ingredients, and are ready to cook.

Uh oh:


The olive oil can is empty! The local supermarket is shut already. I sniff the olive oil then compare my sniff to the peanut oil (only other oil in the house apart from fish oil. We're not using fish oil). Peanut oil will have to do.

Many vital pre-cooking operations ensue:

Some of the instructions leave me a little unsure. I'm making a half-size recipe for Paul and I.

"What's half of 3/4 of a cup?" I ask Paul.
*pause*
*pause*
*sip of wine*
"It's too hard," says Paul. We continue cooking for a bit.

"WAIT!" yells Paul, "It's 1/3 of a cup! Isn't it? Hang on, no it's not..."
We conclude with "bugger it" and chuck in 1/2 a cup.
Sally forth!

The polenta & vinaigrette dealt with, we move on to the kangaroo fillets. I've decided to obey the instructions to the letter (except for the olive oil thing, but that was an accident. Oh, and except for the inclusion of mint. I hate mint. It's a strange thing to hate. My other ingredient dislikes are equally unlikely: balsamic vinegar, walnuts, melon and bananas. One day my fellow librarian Aimee brought a salad to work to share. It comprised melon, mint and balsamic vinegar. I had to leave the room). Fillets are to be sizzled for 45 seconds then roasted for 4 minutes. Paul is appointed timer.

"How long to go?" I say, a little while into the roasting.
Paul frowns at his watch. "I don't know," he says.

I try to turn them over with a fork. They're stuck! Paul comes to the rescue, aided only by a spatula. ("Where'd you get your neat spatula?" "SPATULA CITY!")

Fillets are finally removed from oven.

Now the recipe informs me we have to rest the fillets on a warm plate.

Warm plate! We don't have a warm plate! Why didn't it say, earlier on in the recipe, "you will soon need a warm plate"? Action stations:

On the home stretch now...serving time...and the result? NOM NOM NOM:

The final verdict:

Hooray for Stephanie Alexander! Zzzzzzz......

DAAS Book by the Doug Anthony Allstars

From the favourer: "Now, where did I leave my literary pretensions? Not at your place are they? Oh no, here they are: The Doug Anthony All-Stars were the future of comedy that never became its past - DAAS Book displays why this (so frequently) goes without saying. Existentially rich, philosophically profound, emotionally purile - its omissions are as tellling as many a great work's content."


This was not the book I was expecting. I'm not sure it was the book the blurb-writer was expecting either, as they seem to have written their blurb before actually reading it. This seems to be a recurring theme with the books I'm reading - at this rate I'm expecting the blurb of Wuthering Heights to describe it as a slapstick verse novel.

But DAAS Book is something of a difficult book to describe, aside from saying that if you have ever seen the Doug Anthony Allstars perform, or if you haven't, it won't be what you're expecting. The closest I can get is to ask you to image an absurdist exercise in revulsion and surrealist dream sequences, teamed with a carefully signposted jigsaw of a mystery that is only just too complicated to keep in your head all at once.

Oh, and some of it is prose and some of it is comic-strip style. And there's a lot of bodily fluids.

Got that? Right. Let us move along.

When I started reading, I was basically expecting the DAAS version of Monty Python's Big Red Book or Spike Milligan's A Dustbin of Milligan, ie. a compilation of funny bits and pieces. By about page 24 (yes, a little slow on the uptake), I finally noticed there was a story. So I turned back to page 1 and started reading again, which was a good idea because this is a book where you're rewarded for taking notice and putting it all together.

Penanse Kihhes is confined to a wheelchair, and cared for by the repulsive and cruel D. But there's more going on behind Kihhes' blank stare than D. suspects. Kihhes knows things that are likely to shorten his lifespan if D. thinks he could communicate them to anyone. But recently, Kihhes has started typing. With his head. He can't move his arms and legs, but he can bang his face on the typewriter keyboard. It looks like a mess of random letters, but it's making D. anxious.

Through flashbacks, stories, comic-strip sequences and a drunken road-trip taken by the DAAS boys themselves, we can gradually piece together the connections between D., Kihhes, the Hogman, the whore, and numerous other characters.

To paraphrase a line from the book, its repulsion is its attraction. I kept making the mistake of reading this book while I was eating, and having to put it down again. I'm not particularly squeamish - barring cat spew - but I think putting it down briefly is understandable if you're encountering geriatric sex scenes as imagined by D. in his horror of getting old (erm, warning for faint of stomach to skip next paragraph):

"There are bits of tooth coming loose from the bleeding gums, through chipped enamel they exchange saliva, pus, blood, as the dentures slip from mouth to mouth and back again...There they gyrate, undulate in a sea of blood, and pus and spit and piss like salt and shit and crippled semen dripping off his wang and they swim in it, an ebb tide of oozing flesh."

It's a bit like watching early Peter Jackson - it makes you a bit nauseous, but it's hard to look away. Though even D. has his own wisdom gleaned from inspecting the bedpans of the patients he cares for, my favourite of which is: "People may disguise the shit in their lives, but they cannot disguise the shit from their arse."

The second half of the book veers away somewhat from the spectacularly scatological - though there's still a healthy amount of vomit - and includes more drawings and humour (in typically black-edged, nasty DAAS style). There are some lovely, darkly florid sequences, such as Tim's dream of escaping as a young boy from an ancient aunt into the depths of the garden:

"...he slips from view, a canopy of twisting branches, with heavy fruit, hidden from her prying cataracts he lies now, in shorts with short-sleeved shirt, his thin brown bones protruding obscenely on his back, for a moment drops of sunlight anoint his forest floor, a fire races over the leaves still wet with dew, a carpet of broken snail shells, dead from well placed pellets, a sticky trail like his own dried spit, criss-cross from dead slugs' arses, spider webs of the same fine spit hold gingerly their gracious carcasses - as unwilling guests as he."

Most of all, I enjoyed wondering this book out, picking up tiny references back to past events that link together some of the puzzle. Of course, I also inescapably enjoyed feeling rather clever about myself when I noticed them. Despite the fact that everyone must do the same, and more so. I was so intrigued that by the end, where a 'facsimile' of Kihhes' head-banging typewriter stylings are printed, I wandered over them for far longer than my "I-hate-sudoku-and-IQ-puzzles" attention span usually permits. I think I was rewarded for this (and not just with an eye-strain headache).

DAAS Book will quickly confound any confidence you have that you've worked it out. Right when you find a narrative it becomes a patchwork, and vice versa.

It's a weird book. One minute it dares you to make sense of it, and the next it teases you for taking it seriously:

"Infinity is relative."

"Aeroplanes don't kill you. The ground does."

"Read the print before you read between the lines."

"Never trust a dog with two dicks."

If you see what I mean. I love a book that messes with your head.

The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx

From the favourer: "The characters are as good and grotesque as real people and so honestly described (no-one could accuse Annie Proulx of sugar-coating anything), and the language is so dense and apt; I also find the book funny in places (eg the headline 'Stupid Man Does Wrong Thing Once Again') and I think that despite all the awfulness it's an optimistic book at heart."

Librarians have a tendency to read the title pages of books. I think it's an instinct born of excessive amounts of cataloguing, but you do come across some lovely subject headings (one of my favourites is "Rich people - Pet loss"). Note to aspiring novelists : if you want libraries to buy your book, get yerself an interesting title page. When I turned to the title page of The Shipping News, I discovered the disclaimer:

"This is a work of fiction. No resemblance is intended to living or dead persons, extant or failed newspapers, real government departments, specific towns or villages, actual roads or highways. The skiffs, trawlers and yachts, the upholstery needles, the logans, thumbies, and plates of cod cheeks, the bakeapples and those who pick them, the fish traps, the cats and dogs, the houses and seabirds described here are all fancies. The Newfoundland in this book, although salted with grains of truth, is an island of invention."

So basically I already like the book at this point.

Quoyle is a failure. He knows this because from very early on in life his father informed him of all his failings:

"failure to speak clearly; failure to sit up straight; failure to get up in the morning; failure in attitude; failure in ambition and ability; indeed, in everything...All stemmed from Quoyle's chief failure, a failure of normal appearance."

With negative self-esteem and a hulking, enormous body, Quoyle shuffles through life, finally ending up as a hack journalist for a crappy newspaper. Then one night he meets Petal - a sharp, shining-hot woman - and falls obsessively in love. For a while it seems that Quoyle's miserable failure of a life is about to be redeemed. Unfortunately, if Quoyle is a failure, then Petal is a bitch. She is "crosshatched with longings, but not, after they were married, for Quoyle." Petal is everywhere else with everyone else - flying to other countries with other men, disappearing with a new boyfriend every night. And hating Quoyle for his forgiveness and pleading, the frustrating way that he waits for her and her anger. To be honest, at this point I empathised with Petal just as much as I did Quoyle.

But one night Petal sells their two daughters, aged 6 and 4-and-a-half, to a porn film maker for $7000, and is killed almost immediately afterwards in a car crash. These final actions define her for the rest of the book. The girls are quickly recovered unharmed (though their buyer "clearly had something in mind"). Grasping desperately at the chance to start again, Quoyle uses Petal's life insurance payout to up stumps and head with his aunt and daughters to the Quoyle ancestral home in Newfoundland.

Now, at this point I stopped reading briefly and turned to check the blurb of this book again, just to ensure I wasn't delusional. Yes, it really does say: "The Shipping News is an irresistible comedy". I read it a few times, just to check. Yep, that's what it says.

Horrible events can overshadow happy ones in our lives. It is one of the many gifts of this book that Quoyle's new life in Newfoundland is such beautifully gradual path to something approximating happiness that even the reader doesn't consciously notice the change. It's a wonderfully plotted book in general, Proulx dropping revelations into the book piece by small piece, subtly building backstory and characterisation in a way that reflects that way we learn about people in our own lives. We don't get to know our friends and family through self-contained, block-capital outbursts (take note, Japanese Story). We know them though their instinctive reactions, jokes, uncensored facial expressions, gestures, overheard conversations, embarrassed confessions, drunken moments, and favourite episode of The Simpsons.

Despite my confusion over the book's blurb, which had me wondering if my copy had been misbound with the back jacket from another novel, this book is often very funny. I still think it's bizarre to term this book and 'irresistible comedy'; I think the humour is more subtle than that. It appears in the form of the darkly comic, the eccentric mis-en-scene, and the dry observation.

Like the favourer, I loved the way that Quoyle's newspaper-man training leads him to make headlines out of everyday life. My favourite is when Alvin Yark and Quoyle finally finish building Quoyle's boat. Yark has an annoying habit of singing a song under his breath to fill any silent moment in conversation:

"Yark half-sang his interminable ditty, 'Oh the Gandy Goose, it ain't no use, cause every nut and bolt is loose, she'll go to the bottom just like the Bruce, the Gandy Goose, and kill a NewfoundLANDER,' while he transferred the measurements to the rough boards.
'You'll 'ave your boat next Saddy. She'll be finished.'
Thank God, thought Quoyle. Man Escapes Endless Song."

But like all of Proulx's characters, even Yark isn't left solely as a point of humour. When the boat is finished, Yark's "mouth cracked open. Quoyle, guessing what was coming, got there first, roared 'Oh the Gandy Goose, it ain't no use,' sang it to the end, swelling the volume until the lugubrious tune took warmth from his hot throat. Old Yark believed it was a salute, embroidered stories for half an hour before he went up to his tea, the tune still warm in his ears as a hat from behind the stove."

Lovely.

But stays with you most about The Shipping News, as the favourer notes, is the language. Reading Proulx's prose is a little like being whacked in the face with something disgusting and interesting. Quoyle is described as "a great damp loaf of a body...Features as bunched as kissed fingertips. Eyes the colour of plastic." What's the colour of plastic? I don't know, but it still makes me feel squirmy.

Her sentences are often brief and poetic in their immediacy, such that I sometimes read paragraphs as if they were poems, placing my own mental line breaks. It's a writing style that suits the setting of the book perfectly; her short phrases bunt against each other like boats in the harbour:

"Conscious of warping sea-damp, corrosive salt. A woman in a food-splotched bathrobe, hair the colour of sewage foam, sat on the sofa. Her hands clashed in bracelets, rings. Feet stretched out, blunt purple ankles."

It's a very effective form of description that could easily be overdone, but The Shipping News is hardly an example of style over substance. Like the favourer, I also found it an optimistic book at heart, and all the more moving for the relaltively small amounts of happiness required to shine out against what has come beforehand.

A book that lives up to its title page.

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This book will be released into the wild in a week - but readers get first dibs! If you'd like this book, send me an email at greenknowe@hotmail.com and I'll post it to you.