No, I haven’t suddenly switched teaching subjects – this is a collection of stories by Italian Jewish author Primo Levi. It was recommended to me by James, one of the current crop of PGCE students at school, as a more ‘manly’ read – he was a bit taken aback by the titles being bandied about at the last book group meeting; there were only two guys in the room at the time, however…

The book is a collection of recollections and fiction that are centred around various elements of the peroidic table. Each story is titled by an element, and this element features in the story, even if tangentally. The opening story, ‘Argon’, looks at the properties of inert (‘noble’) gases and compares their properties to those of his ancestors:

The little that I know about my ancestors presents many similarities to these gases. Not all of them were materially inert, for that was not granted them. … But there is no doubt that they were inert in their inner spirits, inclined to disinterested speculation, witty discourses, elegant, sophisticated, and gratuitous discussion. It can hardly be by chance that all the deeds attributed to them, though quite various, have in common a touch of the static, an attitude of dignified abstention, of voluntary (or accepted) relegation to the margins of the great river of life.

These personal, and often tragic, recollections are surprisingly interspersed with fiction: the account of the ancient Scandinavian who travels into continental southern Europe taking with him the secret knowledge of the working and uses of lead; the man living on an island who buys new wives for himself and his companions with refined mercury; the imagined journey of a carbon atom with which the collection ends. Yet I found all of the stories, whether factual or fiction, tinged with sadness. This has undoubtedly to do with the circumstances of his life – Levi survived the Holocaust, but only just – as well as the great burden of knowledge that Jewish people carry; that within living memory, someone hated them enough to try to exterminate their race. Perhaps I am imposing the over-arching sense of tragedy; I have never been able to descibe my feelings about the Holocaust – it just leaves me with an indescribable feelings of loss and sadness. I visited Dachau while on a school trip to Europe in high school, and the idea of the ovens (which looked like large bread ovens to me – ordinary, until you knew what they were used for) still leaves me breathless with horror. I still remember not being able to hear any birds while on the site, despite the warm spring day and the abundance of trees and other foliage around the camp. Perhaps I just blocked them out, but even the most annoying of the kids on the trip were hushed and stunned by the impact of the camp. How much more so for those who lived though it.

Levi does have the ability at times to see through the sadness and fear to some happy times – the meeting of his wife and their marriage are not elaborated on here, but are mentioned as well as an almost-affair with a beautiful goya (non-Jewish woman) – but they too are tinged with self-depreciation. Both he and Guilia (the goya) remember and reminisce about what might-have-been, although his primary feeling over the relationship seems to be one of regret. And the school-days friendship with the ferrous Sandro ends with the story of his death at the hands of the Fascists and their prohibition of the burial of his body; his body was abandoned in the road.

And yet for all this sadness and tragedy, this is a book you should read. It took me longer than usual – it’s not long, but the emotions it stirs gave me pause – but it is good for us to read about things that are disturbing as well as those that are amusing. But this is also a good piece of writing. It allows us to see into a time that most of us know about but don’t understand; that we can’t understand unless we are a member of a persecuted race. And that all these events may have lead to Levi’s death – the coroner ruled that he committed suicide in 1987, although many people believe his death was accidental – adds to the sadness, but also the understanding of the events of this terrible part of the 20th century.

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I decided to get ‘Toast: The Story of a Boy’s Hunger’ by the TV chef Nigel Slater for a couple of reasons – first, I seem to have this obsession with toast recently – see The Interesting Thoughts of Edward Monkton and Jasper Fforde’s creations – but also I thought perhaps it would be good to read a biography, as I’ve been rather obsessed with fiction lately. And it got good reviews on Amazon, so, hey…

I was both intrigued by the writing style and saddened by the story. Because of his culinary interest, the book is not written in a general ‘when I was 6, this happened…’ style, but is broken down into memories centred around food. It starts with a memory about toast – seemingly the most perfect food, according to Slater – but charts his relationship with food as it relates to his mother (who was a horrible cook, apparently), through the tensions in his relationship with his father, and to the competitive nature of his relationship with his stepmother. Although the memories are grouped in generally chronological order, there is no sense of a continuous narrative. To me, this meant that it always seemed fresh, and was never boring.

But neither was it always comfortable. Slater did not have a terribly happy childhood. His mother died, presumably from asthma although it is never stated directly, when he was about 10. What I found crushingly sad was that he wasn’t even allowed to go to the funeral – he wasn’t even told it was happening. He was packed off to his aunt’s house, and brought home again when it was all over. No wonder his relationship with his father was strained! And although the reader can sympathise with the way his father actively sought companionship after his wife’s death, you ache for the boy Nigel as he is pushed aside in favour of the not-so-fairy tale wicked-ish stepmother.

What I found disturbing (although I do hate to admit it – I’ve obviously led a sheltered life…) were the overt sexual references throughout the book. There were a few rather dodgy experiences with uncles or men that worked at the house – Nigel must have been a vulnerable target, as he was the youngest by far in a household with an ill parent – but also the frankness with which he describes his sexual experiences during and after completing culinary college and during his first jobs gave me pause a few times. It’s not graphic – he does have a way of being frank, but not explicit in his descriptions – but it did make me feel uncomfortable to think that people felt they had to behave like that. Like I said – sheltered life, me.

So – verdict? I enjoyed the style, as I found it refreshing not to be a diary or chronology but rather a genuine collection of memories, although – as is realistic, if you tell the truth – I did find some of the content difficult and heart-wrenching. But that’s life isn’t it? Not everyone lives a fairy tale…

I can’t believe it myself.

Upon finishing an extremely good ‘Anansi Boys‘ by Neil Gaiman this afternoon, I have officially read 50 books this year.

I either need to get out more, or get a new hobby…

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Chinese and Japanese culture has fascinated me for quite a while – I think ever since my brother first became interesed in the samurai’s intricate code of conduct – and when I can combine it with my love of reading, I’m a very happy person indeed. For example, I devoured Cloud of Sparrows as well as Across the Nightengale Floor and Grass for His Pillow not only for their incredible storylines, but also for their insight into medieval Japanese culture. I’m also a fan of Chinese martial arts films – I think Hero is one of the most stunning films I have ever seen – but I’m always excited to find Eastern culture mixed with Canadian insights – as is found in Wayson Choy’s book, The Jade Peony.

First, I have to say that there are some parts of Canadian history that, frankly, I’m ashamed of. We have built up a world-wide reputation for being fair and peacemakers (and for apologising endlessly, but I’m digressing – sorry! ) but parts of our history show just how intolerant we can be. The Chinese have a long history in Canada – they practically built the Canadian Pacific Railway through the Rocky Mountains and across British Columbia to the Pacific. And they weren’t valued, either – they were made to pay a $50 head tax when they came into the country, and only men were allowed at first, as they were needed to work. Wives, children, relatives – they weren’t ‘necessary’ – they might encourage the ‘Chinks’ to stay – and were not allowed into the country until much later. Even into the 1940s and ’50s a Chinese person couldn’t immigrate to Canada unless they were sponsored by a relative. And on the railroad, the Chinese were given the most dangerous jobs – placing nitro glycerin for blasting through rock, etc. They say that one Chinese man died for every mile of track laid across British Columbia. When you look at how big Canada is – that’s a lot of wasted lives.

Canada’s track record didn’t improve in the 20th Century, either. After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour during the Second World War, Canada rounded up the rather large Japanese immigrant population (and even first- and second-generation Japanese Canadians) and put them into internment camps so they couldn’t pass information onto the ‘enemy’. Most of these people lived in British Columbia, which, remember, is just across the Pacific from Japan (cue heavily ironic tone), and they were moved inland and their homes and property sold. Their story is told in Snow Falling on Cedars - something that still is sitting on my ‘to be read’ shelf! Although this book is set in the US, the situation wasn’t much different for the Canadian Japanese. My own family experienced some of this discrimination from another cultural point of view – German immigrants weren’t especially popular either during the war, but at least they weren’t forcibly removed from their land and rounded up like cattle.

But, back to the book. The Jade Peony is the story of three younger children growing up in a Chinese Canadian household in Vancouver in the 1940s. Their father is a journalist and activist for Chinese rights, and the situation of the Chinese in the war against Japan. Their lives are dominated by Poh-Poh, or Grandmother, a formidable woman who believes strongly in the ways of Old China, where children no longer played from the age of six, but worked hard as servants, in the fields, or on their studies. She adheres to a strict code of hierarchy in their house. Father’s First Wife died in China before they came to Canada, but the mother of his two youngest children is always known as Stepmother at Poh-Poh’s insistence, even to her own children. This was to keep things simple. Poh-Poh said that girls were worthless, especially girls like Jook-Liang, whose fingers weren’t fast enough for tying silk-ribbon flowers. She coddled Sek-Lung, the youngest, because he was a boy and because he was a sickly child, and she showed a tough love toward Jung-Sum, Second Brother, who was adopted into the family after his father killed his mother and then committed suicide. These three children tell the story of growing up in a place where you didn’t belong, of a place where your enemy, the Japanese, lived down the street, where you had to reconcile the Old Ways and language (with its many, confusing dialects) with new, western ways of living in Canada.

What fascinated me about The Jade Peony was the attitude of the different cultural groups within Canada toward each other. I have always seen growing up in Canada as a positive experience, that the experience of growing up with different cultural groups – everyone in Canada, with the exception of the First Nations people, are or are descended from immigrants – helped to form my ideas about tolerance and living with one another peacefully. There are always people in any society who are intolerant of others; in Britain they are usually members of the BNP; in Canada they are colloquially known as ‘rednecks’. What was surprising to me was that members of one minority community could have so such hatred and ill-feeling toward members of another minority community. And yet, it makes sense – the Japanese had invaded China and were committing, by all accounts, horrendous atrocities against the Chinese, so why wouldn’t the Chinese community in Canada feel hostile towards the Japanese community? Despite their own persecution from the white population at large, the majority of the Chinese community felt that the Japanese deserved everything that was coming to them. And yet, the Canadian ideals of fairness and tolerance come out again in Choy’s writing through his portrayal of Lin Meiying, a beautiful young Chinese girl who falls in love in a Japanese boy. Through her tragic story we see the consequences of hatred and hostility between cultural groups. And perhaps this is Choy’s message throughout, as Meiying’s tale is the last in the book, to be told through the eyes of seven-year-old Sek-Lung, who himself is torn between the grand war-stories he makes up with his friends about fighting the Japanese and admiring the incredible baseball skills of Meiying’s Japanese lover, Kazuo.

I had a similar experience reading this book as I did the last Canadian novel I read, Monkey Beach – that of falling into a familiar world and not wanting to come out again – but such a different, and colourful one. But it has again left me with a sense of awe about the Chinese culture, almost as in a fairy tale where ghosts come to life and everything is dressed in bright colours and embroidery. And to have that Canadian tone of tolerance and acceptance thrown in gives me a sense of homecoming, but is important for everyone to hear.

This book won the Trillum Book Award

Since my hubby has created this opportunity to share my thoughts about books, thought I’d do so…

Now, books are very close to my heart. Having grown up in a fairly remote part of Canada where TV was not readily available until satellite dishes were invented, I grew up on books. I can remember the first time I read a book to my mom and dad (an ‘I Can Read’ book called ‘Small Pig’), and my mother still glows with pride when asked about her children’s early reading ability. Both my brother and I read before we went to school, something that was actually frowned upon at the time; parents did not know how to teach their children how to read, of course – that was the school’s job! Good thing my mom was a teacher then…

It also helped that, as already mentioned, there was a conspicuous lack of a television until I was about 10 (at which time I’m sure I made up for all those lost years…) but I think my love of books can be traced back to my mother and my family. All of my aunts and uncles on both sides of my family are well-educated, and I can include several teachers and even university professors amongst those ranks. All of which meant that reading and learning have always been valued in my family. And this was undoubtedly one of the reasons I chose to become an English teacher. And being an English teacher, it’s actually part of my job to read novels and plays! Some things in life do work out well, don’t they??

Regrettably, with all the afore-mentioned marking (see previous post…), I haven’t had the time of late to pick up a book, but I did get some great novels for my birthday. And one of them that I’m really looking forward to is ‘Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister’ by Gregory Maguire. I ran across his work on the plane home from Canada in October – Air Canada had a channel that was running excerpts from recently published books. One of them was a book called ‘Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West’. It’s a re-telling of the Wizard of Oz from the point of view of said witch. It opens with the witch spying on Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodsman and the Cowardly Lion as they are on their way to defeat her. The close description of Dorothy and the other characters from the witch’s point of view was startling, as was the concept. I hadn’t thought of taking such a well-known story and looking at it from another pointof view. And of course the shoes really did belong to the witch- they had belonged to her sister, and her sister had no other living relatives – she was the next of kin. So much is made of the witches being evil that you assume in the original story that Dorothy is, of course, in the right to take the shoes. But what if the witches weren’t evil, but just had a different point of view or belief system to the majority of the population? What light does that put Dorothy in? She becomes, at worst, a murderer, or at best, a foolish and naive girl. The most intriguing thing I found about the book was the fleshing out of the rather one-dimensional society that Frank Baum created in the Wizard of OZ books. What would happen to that society if Animals (those who could speak and were intelligent, as opposed to the common sort, animals) were discriminated against, and there was a movement (that eventually became underground and miliant) that fought for Animal Rights? Or if the Wizard was a dictator who ruled OZ with a fascist-like government?

This book was intricate and detailed, a close examination of an unsual person who became misunderstood and persecuted because of her differences in looks (she was born with pale green skin and very sharp teeth), and in belief. It is a sharp portrayal of how being ostracized can affect someone of intelligence and sensitivity. It was one of those books that I couldn’t put down, which was unfortunate in some ways because it’s too long to read at one sitting (without days off and a lot of coffee, that is…) and I didn’t get much work done while reading it. Which is one reason why I’m going to leave ‘Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister’ to the summer holiday – I can’t afford to skive off work at the moment!!

Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (Gregory Maguire, Douglas Smith)

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