Good to a Fault by Marina Endicott (a review)

“Absorbed in her own failings, Clara Purdy crashes her life into a sharp left turn, taking the family in the other car along with her. When bruises on the mother, Lorraine, prove to be late-stage cancer, Clara tries to do the right thing, moving the family into her own house and upending her life in the process.” (from the dust jacket)

Good to a Fault by Marina Endicott is the story of a woman who feels stuck in an unfulfilling life after the deaths of her parents. Forty-three years old and alone, Clara yearns to do some good in the world, to help others, but also, more fundamentally, to connect with them. Ironically, it is a car crash that jolts her out of her rut: in an effort to do the right thing (she was technically at fault), she finds herself inviting the family to stay in her home while the mother receives treatment for cancer. This novel examines what it means to be good in today’s world, what we owe each other as human beings and the cost of charity.

I loved the way this book is written, both its language and its structure. Although it is most often told from Clara’s point of view, the novel also shifts to the points of view of several other characters including Darlene, the oldest of the three children; her mother, Lorraine; and Paul, Clara’s priest. Endicott gets into the heads of each of these characters, revealing their thoughts and motivations. Darlene (aka Dolly) was one of my favourite characters—she is first introduced (through Clara’s eyes) with this description: “The little girl sitting on the pavement looked almost happy, as if her pinched face had relaxed now that some dangerous thing had actually happened” (p. 8). Dolly’s life changes dramatically as a result of staying with Clara. For one thing she discovers the power of books and clings to them as a lifeline:

Dolly put her head down and read. She stuck her book inside her language arts book, and she whipped through her math so she could read, the book under the desk and the textbook on top. She read Mistress Masham’s Repose as hard as she could. She did not mind reading about Maria whose mother was dead . . . because it was in a book, and it was away from here. And it was pretend. (p. 201)

In spite of herself, in spite of all this tragedy and waiting, Dolly could not help sopping up knowledge in huge violent spasms of brain-expansion in school; she read all the time, at lunch and at home. Vanity Fair was like everything, like her life only clearer. She loved it from the very first moment when Becky gets a dictionary after all, and then she throws it back. She was as good a liar as Dolly.

After Vanity Fair she had more books, like insurance: the whole stack left to go. It was as if all books had suddenly unlocked, and now she understood everything. (p. 225)

I also loved the fact that each chapter is almost a story unto itself (and each has a title). Although in one sense not much happens in this book, there is a quiet intensity about it that completely drew me in. When I first got the book and read Elizabeth Hay’s blurb on the cover (“A wise and searching novel about the fine line between being useful and being used”), I was afraid this meant the novel was going to be about a well-meaning but misguided woman who is taken advantage of by a downtrodden and desperate family. In actual fact, this book is a much more generous, complex and surprising story than that.

Good to a Fault was shortlisted for the 2008 Giller Prize.

This was one of my favourite books in 2008. Read my thoughts on rereading this book.

To read other reviews of this book, visit these blogs:
Compulsive Overreader • Farm Lane Books Blog • Lori’s news and events • S. Krishna’s Books

or these sites:
Quill & Quire • The Gazette • The Star • Vue Weekly • Women’s Post

Read an interview with the author at The Writer’s Pet.

Thank you to Mini Book Expo and Freehand Books for sending me this book to review.

A Wood Engraver’s Alphabet by G. Brender à Brandis (a review)

I’m embarrassed to admit that I misunderstood the blurb about this book on the Mini Book Expo site, so I was very surprised to realize A Wood Engraver’s Alphabet by Gerard Brender à Brandis contains no words past the three-page introduction, other than the names of the 26 plants illustrated.

Although I am, in some small way, a “student of the complexities of nature’s creations,”* as I have studied herbology, my main interest is in wild medicinal plants, so I wasn’t familiar with many of the plants illustrated here. And I don’t really know anything about wood engraving. Disclaimers aside, this is a beautiful book: I love the texture of the book’s cover (which I can’t help stroking every time I pick it up), and the woodcuts themselves are intricate and lovely. A few of them seem too small to do justice to the details of the engravings, but for the most part I felt like I could spend hours gazing at each of them, marvelling at Brender à Brandis’s skill and meditating on each plant. My favourites are the pussy willow (which is actually on the dedication page), a small and delicate woodcut that so clearly bursts with life, and the Bird of Paradise, which has captured the paradoxical elegance and gawkiness of this amazing plant (and which also happens to be the largest illustration in the book). One small quibble: being a bit of a purist, I was disappointed that “FoXglove” was used to illustrate the letter X. (Are there no plants with names that start with X?)

For other reviews of this book, visit these sites:
Associated Content (Josh’s review) • Owl’s Court

Thank you to Mini Book Expo and The Porcupine’s Quill for sending me this book to review.


*According to the blurb on the back of this book, “This collection is intended both for the student of the complexities of nature’s creations and the patron of the intricate art of wood engraving.”

The Nettle Spinner by Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer (a review)

The Nettle Spinner by Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer is the story of Alma, a treeplanter who has found refuge in a ghost town in northern Ontario with a man who claims he was a stowaway on the Titanic. Interwoven with this present tale are flashbacks to Alma’s last summer of treeplanting as well as a Flemish folktale about a nettle spinner.

My sister spent years treeplanting and Mr. B, my partner, planted for one summer, so I’m familiar—from a distance—with this world. However, Kuitenbrouwer’s descriptions of life in a treeplanting camp transported me there—these segments of the book were my favourite by far. Kuitenbrouwer draws the transplanting crew with a sure hand: her cast of quirky characters could easily have become caricatures but instead their eccentricities are what make them feel real. And Alma’s scathing critique of so-called forest management practices makes for compelling reading.

My favourite scene is Alma’s encounter with a bear—part rant about the craziness of what she’s doing, part comedy of errors, part philosophical musing about the nature of right and wrong, this is possibly the best woman-meets-beast scene I’ve ever read—complete with a Janis Joplin soundtrack no less.

However, my enjoyment of this segment of the book didn’t carry over to the rest of it. The nettle spinner’s tale is a grim story of a peasant girl who catches the fancy of the local landowner, a cruel man who is used to taking what he wants. The story in the present is disturbing and almost hallucinatory in parts—on more than one occasion I wondered if Alma was imagining what was going on. I was also dismayed by how the women in this book are portrayed as acquiescing/participating in the violence perpetrated against them. And after all the build-up, the end of the book feels anticlimactic: as Alma says herself, “the great anticlimax.”

The blurb on the front cover of The Nettle Spinner calls Kuitenbrouwer “a brawny and gifted writer” (this is according to Jonathan Bennett). I wouldn’t disagree. I just didn’t care for where this story went.

Thank you to Mini Book Expo and Goose Lane for sending me this book to review.

Aberrations by Penelope Przekop (a review)

Aberrations by Penelope Przekop is the story of Angel Duet, a young woman who suffers from narcolepsy, a sleep disorder, and who has spent her entire life mourning her mother who died giving birth to her. As I read about Angel’s struggle to stay awake and uncover her family’s history, I struggled in turn to maintain an interest in this story. It’s not that the story itself isn’t interesting, but rather that the writing style just didn’t work for me. Angel’s voice is too odd, full of confusing and overly dramatic ramblings that seemed to have little bearing on the plot such as: “Unlike those perfect people like Carla whom I sometimes wished to disembowel, Christian had no bowels. While the others stored reality, proof of their imperfection, deep within carefully constructed façades, he sported an empty compartment, clean and hollowed out” (p. 86). Plus the Southern dialect felt forced to me, an afterthought, as if peppering “ordinary” dialogue with “cain’ts” and “thangs” was enough to make it Southern—it distracted me rather than adding anything to the story. Since pretty much every single review I’ve seen of this book raves about it, I was disappointed when I realized I probably wouldn’t have finished reading Aberrations if it wasn’t for the fact that I was expected to review it. In the end, however, I’m glad I did, because I was able to better appreciate what Przekop was doing—how in fact some of her strange imagery fit together. I especially liked the multilayered meanings she attached to the cloud pictures taken by Angel’s mother. And there is no question that this book has the best book cover I’ve seen in a long time, both because it is beautiful in itself and because it works so well as a snapshot of this book.

I feel bad giving this book a bad review, in part because I’ve so enjoyed reading Penelope Przekop’s blog, Aberration Nation. However, what makes this blog one of my favourites is Przekop’s honesty and courage, so I can only hope she won’t fault me too much for being honest in this review.

Although this book wasn’t for me, lots of other people enjoyed it. For much more positive reviews of this book, head over to the following blogs:
BCF Book Reviews • Bookish Ruth • Kathleen’s Book Reviews • Pop Culture Junkie • Random Wonder • The Literate Housewife • Traci’s Book Bag

Przekop’s site also has a fascinating Q&A with the author. (Be warned, however, that the discussion contains some spoilers.)

Thank you to Mini Book Expo, Emerald Book Company and Planned Television Arts for sending me this book to review.