The Cue Card

I was game for another dystopian futuristic novel and I hadn’t read the acclaimed author Chang-Rae Lee before so I eagerly picked up “On Such a Full Sea,” whose title is taken from a line in Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar.”

It takes place in a wasted American landscape where three segments of society exist: the wealthy elite that live in walled-off Charter villages; the service workers in labor settlements that support the Charters; and the less fortunate who vie for survival in the open counties where it’s dangerous and difficult to get by.

The story follows a 16-year-old girl named Fan who lives in the labor settlement B-Mor that was formerly Baltimore. She’s a well-skilled tank diver who takes care of the fish supply sold to the Charters. But one day her boyfriend, Reg, who has an immunity to C-illnesses that the population doesn’t, goes missing. Soon after, Fan leaves B-Mor on a dangerous journey into the open counties to find Reg. Along the way she meets various odd characters such as Quig, a vet-turned-doctor living in a compound who barters away his patients; a murderous acrobatic family; and Miss Cathy, a wealthy woman who holds a troupe of young artistic girls in a room at her house.

But will Fan persevere and find Reg? And what happened to him? The novel reads like a tale about two folk heroes who become symbols to the troubled workers of B-Mor, which is undergoing a decline and crackdown.

You won’t find out about Fan’s and Reg’s fates till the end, but I almost wasn’t sure I was going to make it there, even though the novel is a normal 352 pages. “On Such a Full Sea” took me quite awhile to read. It’s challenging and dense on the whole and many pages don’t have any paragraph breaks.

The book’s narration by a B-Mor resident, who tells the tale of Fan, drove me crazy. At times he’s actively telling her tale, which is interesting to follow, but at other times he’s musing philosophically about this and that, which hindered the story and was generally boring to stick with. I kept wishing that Fan had narrated her own story so that it would come more to life. As it is, she is quite distanced as this folk hero, and you don’t really get to know her well.

Although the author conjures some vivid passages and images of a futuristic world in trouble, I came away from the novel feeling that it was a bit of a slog to read. The narration muted its suspense and I kept wanting it to deliver more. I had set my sights high for this novel but on the whole I was rather disappointed.

How about you — have you read this one? Or do you plan to?

I read Joyce Maynard’s novel “Labor Day” this week, so I could be ready for the movie adaptation of it, which comes out on Friday. Apparently the author loves the movie made by director Jason Reitman, who also did “Up in the Air” and “Juno,” so that’s a good sign. It also stars Josh Brolin and Kate Winslet, who earned a Golden Globe nomination for her role in the movie even though it wasn’t out then.

My husband actually got the novel in 2009 when we met Joyce Maynard at our city’s annual book festival called WordFest. Joyce did a reading from the book then, which we heard. We talked to her after and she inscribed it for us: “To Robert & Susan with undying faith in the power of love, Joyce Maynard.” Her inscription likely refers to the theme in the book, or perhaps it was because I had recently moved to Canada to be with Robert, which we might have talked about. I guess I like to think it was a bit of both, even if that’s sort of wishful thinking.

In any case, it was nice meeting Joyce Maynard. I did not bug her by asking her about J.D. Salinger, which I know now she hates getting asked about — her brief relationship when she was 18 with the reclusive author of “The Catcher in the Rye” who was 53 at the time. He had crushed her early young life then, and also was known to have taken up with a dozen other young teens, she says. Yikes, the more you know about Salinger the less you want to. But at the time that’s what I knew mostly about Joyce — that she had this thing with Salinger. Which is really too bad because she’s a talented writer in her own right and shouldn’t always be associated with this painful experience she had so many decades ago.

Anyways “Labor Day” is my first novel of hers that I’ve read. It’s about a divorced, depressed single mom and her lonely 13-year-old son living in a small New Hampshire town. At the start of Labor Day weekend they come to give a lift to an injured, escaped convict who talks his way into staying at their house. Over the next few days, they get to know the man, learning his story and finding out he’s not at all like the murderer he’s portrayed as. Among other things, the man shares with them the secrets of how to bake a good fruit pie, repairs their house, and teaches the boy how to field and hit a baseball.

But the adolescent son who’s going through puberty comes to believe his mom and the man, who are falling for each other, are going to run away together without him, leaving him with his father’s new family. This ends up starting the ball rolling towards a conclusion that will affect all of their lives.

“Labor Day” is a fast, dramatic read, told from the boy’s point of view. It was easy to slip into the characters and to imagine their circumstances and the small town they lived in. Just when I got to know and like them, their situation gave me an awful pit in my stomach that things would come crashing down soon and I didn’t like where that was heading. Fortunately it didn’t end all doom and gloom. It’s a moving story with an “undying faith in the power of love,” among characters that don’t have a whole lot left to lose. Just read it and you’ll see.

How about you — have you read this novel and what did you think? And do you plan on seeing the movie?

“The Curve of Time” is a nonfiction Canadian classic that my husband gave me as a gift quite a while ago. In fact, he gave me two copies, the paperback edition and the first Canadian hardback edition published in 1968. I knew that since I live here in western Canada, I had to read this West Coast gem. It’s such a treasured touchstone, and one of Canada’s most enduring bestsellers.

“The Curve of Time” was written by an independent woman, a widow, Muriel Wylie Blanchet, who lived an adventurous life. Every summer for 15 summers starting in 1927, she piled her five home-schooled kids into their 25-foot power boat The Caprice and cruised with them along the coastal waters of British Columbia. “The Curve of Time” is her account of the summers they spent living on the water and ashore in very remote places for that time.

It’s a book that draws on your imagination, letting you experience their adventures on the small boat motoring along in a world rich with islands, inlets, sounds, forests and mountains. You can only imagine the natural beauty they saw, the lushness of the landscape, and the elements such as the tides, fog, rocks, and storms they contended with. Capi, as she was called by her kids, traces the voyages of Captain George Vancouver to the area in 1791-95 and also the discovery claims of mariner Juan de Fuca’s.

She’s incredibly brave as a mother alone out there on the remote West Coast with five kids. Along the way, they befriend loggers, explore Native villages, and have run-ins with bears, cougars, and killer whales. At times, Capi has to fix the boat’s engine and battery, which strands them in precarious situations. The weather often turns bad and I sometimes feared whether they had enough to eat.

Capi is great though with her kids and is able to teach them so much about the natural world and life situations; it’s better than being at any camp. She’s a born naturalist who is able to describe her surroundings — the fish, the trees, and the water – everything in such wonderful detail. It makes it easy to imagine what they experienced. The kids reminded me ever so slightly of the Box-Car Children (if you recall those books). They come off as curious, industrious, eager to be a part of the boating adventures, and helpful as crew members. They’re not consumed by today’s iPhones, Xboxes, and computers. You got to admire their childhood long ago in the Pacific Northwest.

“The Curve of Time” is broken up into the various episodes the family has and jumps around in time over the summers they spent. There’s no real chronological order to it. You can pick it up at any point and read an episode and not miss a lot of background. It’s difficult to track exactly the boat’s course and all the inlets and places she describes. You’ll confound yourself if you try to read it for places you need to pinpoint. It’s best just to lose yourself in the whole experience of their seafaring. After all, it’s a place she describes as if time did not exist.

I enjoyed “The Curve of Time” a lot, even if at times I got lost about exactly what or where she was talking about. I was drawn to Capi and her kids from the very start. She narrated with an admirable sensibility and made journeying with their troupe interesting and fun, if not, at times alarming, such as the time one son took a bad fall and she had to get him to a doctor quickly although they were in the middle of nowhere. She prevailed though, and I was sorry to see her go by the book’s end.

Capi Blanchet is a real-life heroine I’ll have to add it to my most-admired list. Unfortunately she passed away the year her book was first published in 1961 and she did not get to see the success of “The Curve of Time.” It is great though that the book’s popularity has endured, and that it has become an iconic Canadian classic.

It should be required reading for anyone remotely interested in boating on Canada’s west coast, or as a glimpse into how things once were and how maybe they still are for a lucky yet adventurous few. I envy them.

How about you have you read or heard of this book? And what did you think?

I had had William Landay’s legal thriller “Defending Jacob” on my to-be-read list for quite awhile, ever since high praise about it came out after it was published in 2012. So I recommended it to my book club to discuss this month for a fast winter read, and it didn’t disappoint. I’m actually surprised that the suspense-filled “Defending Jacob” hasn’t been made into a movie by now (though it’s still in development I think). The twisted novel “Gone Girl” will beat it to the box office in 2014.

“Defending Jacob” has all the elements of a riveting “Presumed Innocent” courtroom crime drama. It reminded me a bit of the 1987 Scott Turow classic mixed perhaps slightly with Lionel Shriver’s 2003 novel “We Need to Talk About Kevin” — it’s just a bit different and maybe not as intense. But if you liked those, there’s a good chance, you should jump to get this one as well.

Landay’s novel is about a district attorney and his wife whose 14-year-old son, Jacob, is accused of killing a classmate. The evidence against Jacob doesn’t look good, though his parents believe in him and will do what it takes to prove his innocence. As his murder trial approaches and things seem desperate, the defense must guard against potential accusations in court that Jacob inherited a genetic disposition to commit murder based on his father’s violent family. On top of that, it must poke holes through all of the prosecution’s evidence.

“Defending Jacob” keeps you guessing till the end whether Jacob is guilty or not. Narrated by the father, the story portrays a family of three at the edge of its breaking point. It raises questions about what the responsibilities of parents’ with troubled teens have to each other, to their kid and to the public at large. I found the novel to be very compelling on this level.

My only qualm with the book perhaps was the redundancy with which it goes over the evidence before the trial then the same during the trial. I felt some of the book’s repetition in the middle slowed it just a bit. But the ending is definitely a doozy and a page-turner. I’m hesitant to say anymore, but just to get it if you like a good thought-provoking legal-crime thriller, then you’ll just fly right through it.

How about you — have you read this one? And what did you think of it?

Christmas is almost here, so Merry Christmas everyone! We finally made it to California to spend the holiday with my folks after our usual three hour flight turned into 24 hours of travel. We were stuck in airports awaiting the passing of a snowstorm in Salt Lake City. Holy Moly, I thought we’d never make it. But thanks to the pilot and crew who landed us at LAX at 3:15 a.m. and to a fast cab driver who hurried us into the remaining night. Thanks as well to Will Schwalbe’s engaging book “The End of Your Life Book Club,” which held my interest during a very trying long day.

Now that I’m here, I have a cold and will likely spend the rest of the week coughing and gulping down cold medicine. But man it’s great to be here. I’m undeterred and grateful at this time of year, just a little weary from this head-cold-fever-bug thing. Perhaps eggnog will lessen the effects.

Meanwhile, this week I finished the enjoyable 2012 novel “The Light Between Oceans” by M.L. Stedman. It takes place in the 1920s at an isolated lighthouse on Janus Rock, an island off the coast of Western Australia.There, the lighthouse keeper (Tom) and his young wife (Isabel) come to find a baby that washes up in a rowboat with a body. But instead of reporting it, they decide to raise the child as their own, which ends up having tough consequences down the line for everyone involved.

The book, you could say, is a morality play about a couple that makes a choice that is ethically wrong but they do it for sympathetic reasons, namely that they are unable to have children and they believe the baby’s parents are deceased. They so want a baby, too! The wife believes the baby is a gift from God. Both have suffered so much — the husband through WWI and the wife through three miscarriages. You truly feel for them, but you feel queasy at the same time. And the more you read “The Light Between Oceans,” the queasier things get.

The heart-rending novel is cleverly done, and the descriptions of living at the isolated lighthouse and the characters are vividly portrayed. Who can resist a good lighthouse story? (Not I). It was hard to believe that this is M.L. Stedman’s first novel; it’s very well imagined and constructed. You don’t know for a long while how things will play out. I was quite consumed by “The Light Between Oceans” and will look for what the author writes next. My only criticism perhaps is that the ending got a wee bit crazy with the drama and went on a bit too much. But still I throughly enjoyed the novel, especially the lighthouse parts and living on Janus Rock. It very slightly reminded me of Stephen King’s “The Shining” and what happens when a troubled person goes to a very isolated place for too long a time. As a reader, you know things will likely not turn out all too well.

What about you — have you read this one? And what did you think of it? What are you reading this Christmas? I hope you enjoy it and have a very merry holiday!