Blurred Line

Three of the books that I read over the course of the past few weeks (I think I read six in total) were worthy of recommendation, so I thought I'd get to them today. Although all three of them are technically classified as literary fiction, there's a little bit of something for everyone here. No cover shots, unfortunately, since Blogger's giving me some upload trouble, but I think you'll get along fine without it.

I'd been hearing the name Frances Itani quite a lot, as she lives in Ottawa and gives a lot of talks on writing around the area. So, when I saw her acclaimed debut novel, Deafening, on sale at BookCloseouts, I picked it up. The story takes place in two parts - the years leading up to the first World War and during the war itself. The lead character is Grania, a deaf girl living in small town Ontario, struggling to cope with her disability. In the second part of the novel, the story skips between the adult Grania in Ontario and her husband Jim, who is fighting overseas. The first portion of the novel is an interesting, if not terribly page-turning, read. It's when Itani sets Grania's deafness against the horrors of war that the novel becomes truly awe-inspiring. This is definitely one to check out. It's retailing for $11.48 at Amazon, and for five bucks at BookCloseouts.

With his first novel, The Beach, Alex Garland had already achieved something resembling cult status, and usually people like that tend to stick within their niche. Not so with Garland's sophomore effort, The Tesseract. Aside from the fact that its set in Asia, the novel has nothing in common with its predecessor. The Tesseract is, in a way, similar to movies such as Crash or Magnolia, where you have a number of characters coming together at one event. This specific even centers around Sean, who's on the run from a group of Filipino mob types. While Sean remains veiled in mystery during the novel (and part of an interesting metaphor Garland sets up), his flight introduces us to a local crime kingpin's driver, an affluent doctor who left behind a torrid childhood love affair, and a street kid who's still trying to figure out the world around him, among others. I'd link to its Amazon page, but it's only $1.30 for the paperback and just two bucks for the hardcover at BookCloseouts, so why even bother?

The last novel was Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. This one's garnered a number of comparisons to Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, if only because it's a piece of literary fiction with science fiction underpinnings. Ishiguro's novel is told by Kathy, who reflects on her life at Hailsham, a prestigious and somewhat mysterious private school, where she grows up with her best friends Ruth and Tommy. One blurb on the book notes that Ishiguro is one of the world's most "observant" writers and that certainly seems the case here - he absolutely nails the social dynamics of childhood and the teenage years, right down to the silly little meaningless arguments. The mystery looming in the background (although it's never technically a mystery, since it's out there, but Ishiguro's way of delivering information in a slow-drip manner spins things into mystery) is based in science fiction, but shouldn't turn off the literary crowd. This one's definitely for you if you enjoyed Atwood's novel or things along the lines of Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveller's Wife. Check it out at Amazon.


Profile Editor. Writer. 9-5er. Lord of the Dance. Blurredline.com Apodis Publishing Fusion Fragment cterrill(at)blurredline.com Buy Goodbye, Darwin Amazon.com Amazon.ca Chapters.ca Barnes&Noble.com Read it free in PDF Format Buy Blurred Line Amazon.com Amazon.ca Chapters.ca Barnes&Noble.com Read it free in PDF Format The Short Stuff "Learning Magic From Mint" - published May 2007 in Atomjack "Between Eternities" - published October 2005 at Speculative.ca "Smoke and Mirrors" - published June 2005 in Byzarium Submissions Log Total Subs: 25 Acceptances: 3 Rejections: 17 Withdrawals: 3 Subs Out: 2 Quality Blogs Scalzi's Whatever Dave's Blogography Bookslut The Struggling Writer SF Signal the0phrastus Paperback Writer Scribe's Writing Desk Nathan Bransford Lyons Literary LLC The World in the Satin Bag Book In The Oven The Word Perhaps We Learned Something... Words, etc. Archives March 2005 April 2005 May 2005 June 2005 July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007 June 2007 July 2007 August 2007 September 2007 October 2007 November 2007 November 2008 December 2008 January 2009 February 2009 March 2009 Et Cetera Cavan @ Last.fm Cavan @ LibraryThing Feeds Atom Feed RSS Feed	Tuesday, August 08, 2006 - Three Books Three of the books that I read over the course of the past few weeks (I think I read six in total) were worthy of recommendation, so I thought I'd get to them today. Although all three of them are technically classified as literary fiction, there's a little bit of something for everyone here. No cover shots, unfortunately, since Blogger's giving me some upload trouble, but I think you'll get along fine without it. I'd been hearing the name Frances Itani quite a lot, as she lives in Ottawa and gives a lot of talks on writing around the area. So, when I saw her acclaimed debut novel, Deafening, on sale at BookCloseouts, I picked it up. The story takes place in two parts - the years leading up to the first World War and during the war itself. The lead character is Grania, a deaf girl living in small town Ontario, struggling to cope with her disability. In the second part of the novel, the story skips between the adult Grania in Ontario and her husband Jim, who is fighting overseas. The first portion of the novel is an interesting, if not terribly page-turning, read. It's when Itani sets Grania's deafness against the horrors of war that the novel becomes truly awe-inspiring. This is definitely one to check out. It's retailing for $11.48 at Amazon, and for five bucks at BookCloseouts. With his first novel, The Beach, Alex Garland had already achieved something resembling cult status, and usually people like that tend to stick within their niche. Not so with Garland's sophomore effort, The Tesseract. Aside from the fact that its set in Asia, the novel has nothing in common with its predecessor. The Tesseract is, in a way, similar to movies such as Crash or Magnolia, where you have a number of characters coming together at one event. This specific even centers around Sean, who's on the run from a group of Filipino mob types. While Sean remains veiled in mystery during the novel (and part of an interesting metaphor Garland sets up), his flight introduces us to a local crime kingpin's driver, an affluent doctor who left behind a torrid childhood love affair, and a street kid who's still trying to figure out the world around him, among others. I'd link to its Amazon page, but it's only $1.30 for the paperback and just two bucks for the hardcover at BookCloseouts, so why even bother? The last novel was Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. This one's garnered a number of comparisons to Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, if only because it's a piece of literary fiction with science fiction underpinnings. Ishiguro's novel is told by Kathy, who reflects on her life at Hailsham, a prestigious and somewhat mysterious private school, where she grows up with her best friends Ruth and Tommy. One blurb on the book notes that Ishiguro is one of the world's most "observant" writers and that certainly seems the case here - he absolutely nails the social dynamics of childhood and the teenage years, right down to the silly little meaningless arguments. The mystery looming in the background (although it's never technically a mystery, since it's out there, but Ishiguro's way of delivering information in a slow-drip manner spins things into mystery) is based in science fiction, but shouldn't turn off the literary crowd. This one's definitely for you if you enjoyed Atwood's novel or things along the lines of Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveller's Wife. Check it out at Amazon. Cavan blogged at 2:59 PM \| 0 comments	Progress Zilch! 0/0 Listening A.J. Croce - "Maybe I'm Amazed" My Music Reading Bright Lights, Big City - Jay McInerney My Library Watching Black Book: B Sweet and Lowdown: C Breakfast on Pluto: B Wishlist Bridge of Sighs - Richard Russo Rachael Yamagata - Elephants...Teeth Sinking Into Heart