Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte

Call me nutty, but to me, Victorian Novels are real page-turners; unputdownable, gripping stories. I don't know if it's the rich interior lives of the characters or the ornate, baroque settings and description that makes material all our gravest hopes and fears, or maybe it's the clarity of the writing, devoid of all impressionism, infusing characters and scenes with portent. Whatever they do, these novels grab and hold me, and so it is no surprise that I burned through Jane Eyre in a weekend. Once I'm in VicLit land, it's hard to pop back home for mundane concerns, not when every moment, glance, buttonhole is fraught. Look away and you leave a hole in the tapestry. Jane Eyre, as you probably know, is a dark tale of redemption through common decency and self-respect. As her name suggests, the main character is as light as air, but as forceful too, but embedded also in that name is all the goods and ills that Jane is heir to. First her inheritance is all hardship and cold comfort, but she learns from it to be humble and decent, and that, in the end, guides her to all that she needs to be happy. It is the heroquest of a nobody, and as such, depicts life as art: that you are your greatest creation when you find good where you stand, and choose hope instead of suffering, however noble.
I bought this at Balfour's on College St. in a routine perusal of the 'B' section which, at one time, contained all the writers I wanted to read: William Boyd, Anita Brookner, and any Bronte. You can spend a lot of time in the 'B' section. This is one of those old school bookshops with scrabble squares spelling out the sections and lots of wood and a dog. The owners choose great books and organize and display them with skill and sense and they have served me well over the years. This blog has made me much more aware of the intimate connection I have, not only with my books, but with my local booksellers, and of the gratitude I feel for their irreplaceable service: to give me what I don't know I want, to vet the vast literary landscape and gather the gems for me to peruse. Thanks to them.
I read this at home on the green mission couch back at our last house with its chilly floors and blurry boundaries, and a wallow in the world of decency and clarity was like a hot bath or a beam of sunlight that makes you remember what warm is.
This copy is a true old style Penguin Classic, king of all book formats- can be held in one hand, read on its side in bed without collapsing on itself in the last chapters, capable of being carried in one's normal possessions, ie. bage, purse or pocket, AND it uses less paper than other books! 
I do love this format, and this is a story that bears repeated readings, so I'll hold on to Jane. 

The White Bone, Barbara Gowdy

Every once in a while, you come across an author who can render another reality so realistically that it realigns the reader's perception of the world. The White Bone is one of those. It articulates in language a world never captured in word or thought. Call it an emotional landscape or sub-logic or whatever you like, this animal universe is opaque to us until Barbara Gowdy gives it flesh and substance, until she encloses it in image, feeling and wonderous beauty. The story is a simple hero quest, in which a young elephant, Mud, tries to survive in an environment so hostile that it takes away all that she loves and leaves her vulnerable and unprotected, young and inexperienced though she is. The beauty of this novel is that we, the reader, see, really see, through the eyes, and with the thoughts of the animals that populate this story. Their worlds are ornate and complete, but utterly different from each other, except that each species views itself as unique, peerless and central to creation. Just like us.
I got this novel, like so many others, at the front table at She Said Boom on College St. I read it here in this house at the end of another harrowing school year. I took it in in gulps, arid though the scenery is, because it was not here, was not familiar, was not me or mine or anything I've ever seen before. Gowdy took me away from all this, and I thank her.
This is a treat of a novel and I recommend it strongly, but I can let it go just the same. You can't go back to newness.

Ascension, Steven Galloway

The opening scene of this book is one of the most gripping I have ever encountered. Starting this book is like stepping off a building and suddenly, you are suspended in midair, gasping and utterly alert, alone with your breath and the wind. It captures the highwire experience like the documentary Man on a Wire did, in slow, exquisite detail. That's what sticks with me about this book; I don't remember the plot much, (it's a story about a tighrope walker, all other plot pales by comparison) but I was there, up on that wire and I felt what it is to be so constricted as to be utterly free, quiet inside, calm to the core because the alternative is too sickening to envision. It's like Lars von Trier says, that limitations in art are liberating, they become a lens through which the creative force is magnified, intensified. So it is in the physical world, and in this book, we are made free by walking the tightrope in this man's shoes. And it is worth the walk.
I bought a small stack of novels from the front table at She Said Boom on College. I think one of the other books was Saramago or something achingly sad that I just couldn't face, and then I picked this up and fell in. I was at the cottage, at the beginning of the summer, under the window and over the lake just as the season was turning to hot, the school year over, vacation ahead.
Thinking about this book makes me want to read it again and let go like that, but maybe I'll just reread that first scene and then let it all go.

Cry, The Beloved Country, Alan Paton

This book is one of those rare cases that actually can be judged by its cover. The awkward yet still graceful beauty, the simplicity, rich tones and utter honesty of the cover image encapsulates this work. The innocence of the boys mirrors the sad bewilderment of the the characters in this novel, caught up as they are in forces that neither know them nor care for them, and yet have come to have power over their lives and land. But theirs is not the innocence of children, the innocence of forgetfulness or ignorance, these are people are possessed of the understanding that they need for their world, wisdom that makes them good and welcome among their people, but they cannot fathom the ruthlessness, the folly, the baseness of their invaders, and so they are always unmatched. This is the kind of story that makes you weep quietly and then pause for a moment at the end to acknowledge the struggle, the nobility, the dogged decency of the characters, and of their creator.
My sister used to live near where the story takes place, so I always meant to read it, but it didn't come my way till about ten or fifteen years ago when I found it at Balfour's on College Street in Little Italy. It was reduced from five to three dollars, and is one of the old school Penguin paperbacks that you could fit in one hand. I miss them.

Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood

I can't go any further on this list without including some Margaret Atwood, if only because she is one of the few authors whose entire cannon I have read. This isn't her best work, that would be Alias Grace, if you ask me, but this is her most vivid and thought-provoking novel. The story flips back and forth from shortly after the apocalypse to the events leading up to the end of days. The landscape of the future is noisome and arid, stuffed with rotting leftovers from the human age, all now irrelevant, while the past (our future) is sterile and corrupt. The characters are vapid, selfish and small, filled with data but ignorant of the most basic sense of humanity, slavishly serving a morally bankrupt society dominated by massive drug corporations. The reader can't help but wish they'd go extinct. And then they do.
Jimmy, or Snowman, manages to survive, and so do his charges, genetically modified humanoids, created to survive in Earth's hostile environment, created to be nice and care for each other and not let sex and the will to power turn them against each other. So, in the presence of these little guys, we are left with a flavour of hope, however bleak the present landscape. And that's quite an accomplishment, if you ask me.
I bought this copy full price at Book City on Bloor as soon as it came out in paperback, as I usually do with her books. I read it at my old house, in the back yard in a hammock I bought in Mexico for twelve dollars and two pens on my way back overland from Costa Rica. I meant to go to Argentina, but misjudged distance, money and massive transportation challenges.
This book has really stuck with me. It is harsh, but fair, but even so, I don't see reading it again in the immediate future.
Score- +3 (6 released, 9 saved)

Winter's Tale, Mark Helprin

This book became part of my psyche one winter when I was living in a big old house with a buddy, studying Celtic Myths, writing poetry and partying like a nutter. Every morning I would wake up and dance out the door to something funky on my walkman, parse myths all day, drink till evening and then read this book. Mark Helprin creates a lovely, fluid world where history, fantasy and faith intertwine without boundary, and I longed for it when I was away at work and play. The story is a quest in which everyman, Peter Lake, makes his way in a hostile world, but this hardly matters in the tapestry of character and setting so well rendered as to be captivating. But it is the beauty that Helprin makes of winter that is the true genius of this book: baroque scenes of lavish winter games and culture that are utterly real, lush and alive with colour and activity.
I bought this remaindered in a cubby on Queen Street in the Beaches maybe twenty-five years ago. That store is probably a big chain now, that's the way of things, but the Beaches once had all these dark old stores that sold candy and books and records and baseball bats because the rent was cheap and nobody that was anybody would live there. I paid a quarter for this copy from the bin out front, the 'Quarter Bin' they called it. The owner said that bin kept the store afloat.
I don't know how many times I read this copy, but it encapsulates that magical time when the world was full of possibilities and everyone was a potential friend, when I was full of faith and filled my days with wonderous and beautiful stories. I'll keep this one.
+4 (5 released, 9 saved)