This is a very big, very packed book, apparently diligently researched. It addresses the persistent efforts of mid-nineteenth-century 2.5 rounded down
This is a very big, very packed book, apparently diligently researched. It addresses the persistent efforts of mid-nineteenth-century American women to gain access to medical education and physician training. Blocked by male doctors, these innovative and determined individuals created their own medical schools, as well as hospitals and clinics for women and children, even as they continued to agitate for entry into established mainstream medical institutions. They energetically and strategically networked with wealthy, influential socialites and thinkers in order to gain funding for their projects.
The key figure in the book is Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi, the foremost female physician-scientist of her time. Unfortunately, we often lose sight of her for large stretches due to the author’s tendency to get sidetracked. Other women doctors—the Blackwell sisters (Elizabeth and Emily), Ann Preston, and German-American Marie Zakrzewska (as well as a few men, painted as the clear enemy) also loom large. An amalgam of biography, history, medical and social science, the text is also a sort of feminist disquisition and a virtual who’s who of the suffragist and women’s rights movement. By the end, a coeducational graduate medical school is slated to open at Johns Hopkins due to the efforts and money of wealthy young female philanthropists, and the book turns to the matter of women’s suffrage itself.
Much of the content the author presents was new to me. I wish I were better equipped to assess her interpretation of some of the material. However, there was enough of a slant to Reeder’s writing to prevent my fully trusting her. I think her unnecessary mention of Jordan Peterson as a “modern-day Victorian� started it. Apparently, the issue is that “he has published three books arguing that women’s capabilities are defined by their biology and their evolutionary ties to child-rearing.� (No specific passages from his work are supplied as support.) She then goes on to suggest that Peterson is in the same league as a couple of the nineteenth-century physicians she features, men vehemently opposed to and actively engaged in obstructing women’s access to higher education. I have not read Peterson’s books, but I’ve seen him interviewed multiple times and have not heard him question women’s intelligence or their right to pursue an education or a career of their choosing. I do not find the idea that evolution and biology have shaped the interests, behaviour, and personalities of the sexes unreasonable or objectionable. This idea doesn’t exclude the impact of culture, nor do I see it as reason to deny women opportunities to advance in the larger world.
Some sections of The Cure for Women interested me a good deal more than others. For instance, I found the biographical sections about Mary Putnam Jacobi strong and engaging —particularly the parts describing her dogged attempts to gain entry into the Sorbonne’s École de Médecine, the fatal illness of her young son, and her faltering marriage to “father of pediatrics� Dr. Abraham Jacobi (who turned out to be more a product of his times—sexist, stodgy, inflexible, and less egalitarian—than Mary had bargained for). However, I regularly lost patience with the book.
Perhaps the first great trial for me was Reeder’s lengthy chapter on Dr. Edward Hammond Clarke’s 1875 controversial Sex in Education. In that book, the Harvard-affiliated physician-author declared his opposition to the coeducation of males and females and argued against girls engaging in any intensive intellectual activity at all. Clarke received considerable public and institutional support for the absurd notion that when females studied too much, their bodily energy was diverted from the uterus and ovaries, compromising function of those organs and potentially causing infertility, insanity, and even death. He was a eugenicist who evidently feared the Anglo Saxon race was threatened if its women left the domestic sphere. According to him, girls shouldn’t be exercising their brains at all when menstruating; they should be resting. Reeder really goes to town on this matter: she seems to have included rebuttals to Clarke’s ideas from every leading light of the period.
Women’s rights activists, concerned that real setbacks could occur in response to Clarke’s assertions, engaged the esteemed Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi in the battle. The scientific research she subsequently conducted on the female reproductive system was shaped into an essay, which won a prestigious Harvard University prize. Based on her findings, she’d concluded: “There is nothing in the nature of menstruation to imply the necessity, or even the desirability, of rest.� Jacobi would also go on to criticize—and offer an alternative to—prominent neurologist Silas Weir Mitchell’s famous “rest cure�, a six-to-eight week isolation treatment for “neurasthenic� women (who were experiencing lassitude, emotional disturbance, and anorexia and whom Weir Mitchell viewed as being disobedient, spoiled, selfish, arrogant, and malingering). His treatment sometimes involved force feeding and painful, humiliating remedies for constipation. This “therapy� is the focus of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story The Yellow Wallpaper. Those familiar with Virginia Woolf’s life are certainly aware of the rest cure as well.
I don’t think anyone can dispute that Weir Mitchell’s paternalistic, pathologically controlling approach to women’s mental distress was horrendous. Some women died while under his care. Reeder, relying on Nancy Cervetti’s biography of Mitchell for details, describes the case of one of them—Winnie (the daughter of renowned novelist William Dean Howells) who died while being held in one of his clinics. (view spoiler)[An autopsy revealed that she did not have neurasthenia after all but some unspecified “organic� ailment. (hide spoiler)] Was Mitchell as bad as he’s presented in this book, and did the harms of his rest cure completely overshadow his actual significant accomplishments? Not having read a biography of him, I find it hard to judge. However, I have reservations about Reeder’s unrelentingly negative portrait of this physician, sometimes called the father of American neurology. She describes his unpromising and directionless youth, disparagingly comments on his literary oeuvre, scornfully notes the opulent setting in which he lived, but she mainly highlights (alongside his rest cure) his vivisectionist experimentation, depicting him as an arrogant peacock and a cruel, even sadistic scientist. She foregoes mentioning any of his discoveries, many related to his work with soldiers of the Civil War: the naming and describing of causalgia (complex regional pain syndrome), erythromelalgia (a vascular-neurological condition that causes painful reddening of the hands and feet), and phantom-limb syndrome to name a few.
The author’s own “heroine�, Mary Putnam Jacobi, also performed experiments on live animals, “was a leading proponent of vivisection,� and advocated for her students to learn from it as part of their scientific medical education. It is intimated in the book that her animal experimentation was humane and merciful. I’m doubtful. In childhood, Jacobi had shocked her mother by stating her wish to cut open a dead rat to view its internal organs. As a young medical professor, she was impatient and disdainful of her students to the point that a group of them circulated a petition demanding that she be let go or at least cautioned. Yes, Jacobi was formidable—and that no doubt got her where she wanted to be. It appears that she wasn’t known for having an agreeable or compassionate nature. She made it clear that she valued reason over emotion—the latter of which she equated with sentimentality.
Exhaustively (and exhaustingly) detailed, this book runs to well over 350 pages. While I did learn a fair bit, I can’t say I enjoyed the experience. Part of the problem is that I'm not interested in reading the fine details about the somewhat niche subject of women’s struggle for entry into mainstream medical schools, which is a huge part of this book, or about the machinations involved in women’s obtaining the vote (in the state of New York ). I would’ve preferred a concise text with a more nuanced approach than Reeder offers. A sustained focus on Mary Putnam Jacobi herself would have been welcome. Going in, that’s what I thought I was getting.
I believe huge sections of this text could have been safely cut (for example, the numerous descriptions of meetings for medical school fundraising and women’s suffrage, the biographical sketches of peripheral figures—such as Jacobi’s husband’s best friend from childhood, details about the interior of the dean of Bryn Mawr’s Victorian gothic cottage (who cares?!), the lengthy discussion of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s case and the full summary of her famous novella—we can read it for ourselves if we want to! The author makes much of gender fluidity and how likely Putnam Jacobi would have been to embrace such an idea and the work some researchers are now engaged in to prove that there is no “male� or “female� brain. Again, I’m doubtful, and I think Reeder is pushing it to make such a judgement. Based on my own reading, I understand that women’s and men’s brains are far more alike than different, but there is evidence that points to some notable variations in structure as well as in the preferences and innate predispositions of the sexes. Gender fluidity is not a concept I find myself interested in or sympathetic to. I simply believe that neither women nor men should be barred from pursuing interests or careers traditionally associated with the opposite sex or prevented from reaching their potential.
I see that many have enjoyed Reeder’s book, but in the end I can’t recommend it, having too often found it a slog. My main feeling upon completion is absolute relief....more
”W Memorial first began holding conversations with former Ostarbeiter some years ago, we knew only the broad brushstrokes of their experience, for ”W Memorial first began holding conversations with former Ostarbeiter some years ago, we knew only the broad brushstrokes of their experience, for their fate had been largely disregarded in the broader history of the Great Patriotic War [World War II] . . . We had failed to appreciate the scale of this ‘forgotten� episode in history and the consequences of the long years of silence endured by hundreds of thousands of people. There was no collective memory that Ostarbeiter could relate to, and since their accounts had been omitted from the war narrative, the magnitude of their trauma had been largely ignored. Little thought had been spared for the teenagers who had been forcibly taken from their homes, deported to the country of their enemy and condemned to servitude, hunger and humiliation. In sharing their stories with us, the hundreds of people we interviewed were finally shaking off the burden of a prolonged period of silence . . .�
During World War II, an estimated 3.2 million Soviet citizens were deported and forced to work for the Third Reich as slave labour. Known as Ostarbeiter, “eastern workers�, they have been mostly “forgotten victims� of the war. This book seeks to remedy that. It is a self-described “literary mosaic�, consisting of exposition interspersed with generous excerpts of interviews with multiple eastern workers, photographs, and passages from memoirs, letters, and other documents (all from the archives of Memorial, an international history and human rights organization).
The text is organized chronologically, divided into sections based on subjects� life stages. It covers eastern workers� early lives in peacetime, as World War II broke out and the Germans occupied Soviet territory, the workers� deportation to and slave labour experiences in Germany, and, finally, their liberation and repatriation.
This is a clearly written and fluently translated book. It is factual, well documented, compassionate and sometimes poignant, but it has a fragmented quality. In each section, snatches of memories of 30 or more workers, identified by name and region, are typically presented. Overall, the testimonies of well over 100 survivors have been drawn on. As the pages turn, the reader becomes familiar with some of the names and can piece together a few individual histories, but there’s a choppy feel to the book overall. I would have preferred a collection of separate short autobiographical pieces (that is, entire narratives) from those taken to German work camps/settings, rather than a bits-and-pieces thematic approach, which prevented me from getting any single person’s unique story. Having said that, I understand the authors� desire to create a panoramic view of the Ostarbeiter experience by having a symphony of voices. After all, these workers were placed in diverse settings—mines, factories, farms, and domestic situations—and they were overseen by very different types of employers.
Shortly after the Nazis aggressed on the Soviet Union in June 1941, over 60 million Soviet citizens found themselves living in German-occupied territory. The mass transports to Germany of young Slavic men and women (most between the ages of 15 and 18) began shortly after that—in the fall of 1941. The majority of deportees were impoverished peasants, who’d suffered during the politically motivated famine of the early 1930s and the Soviet collectivization of farms. These young people came from small towns and villages in Ukraine, Belarus, and southern Russia. They had little life experience and were not from a literate culture. Although ample postcards (with coded communication to get around censorship) are quoted, most of the information presented in this book is based on interviews collected by representatives of Memorial. The authors note that many Ostarbeiter destroyed paperwork and evidence of their time in Germany out of fear and shame. (Such documents were often used by authorities as Kompromat—damaging information to incriminate them.)
When the workers were repatriated after the war, they were treated as Third-Reich collaborators, traitors to the Motherland. The women were called prostitutes. (In Germany, they’d often been reviled as members of an inferior race.) Blamed by their own government for being conscripted by the fascist enemy, some were subsequently forced into Soviet “work battalions�, performing hard labour, such as felling timber and rebuilding Soviet mines and power plants that had been damaged in wartime. They weren’t allowed to settle in big cities (Moscow, Leningrad, Kyiv, and others), even if these centres were their original homes. For years they underwent interrogation by the secret police, with surveillance only ceasing after Stalin’s death in 1953. According to the authors (Alena Kozlova, Nikolai Mikhailov, Irina Ostrovskaya, and Irina Scherbakova), the Ostarbeiter weren’t the victims of one dictatorship but two. It took until the 1990s for them to feel some degree of liberty to tell what had happened to them.
Having read Natascha Wodin’s compelling 2022 biography of her eastern-worker mother, She Came from Mariupol, I was keen to read further accounts about these people. I am glad to have encountered OST: Letters, Memoirs, and Stories from Ostarbeiter in Nazi Germany . This is a comprehensive, exhaustively detailed text, but not an academic one. My only real criticism is that that the contents of a few too many postcards home are included. (Invariably, these communications request news of family, express the longing for home, and ask for clothing, food, or tobacco.) I’d recommend the book to those interested in learning about a relatively little known aspect of World War II which so many tragically endured and were profoundly altered by....more
Darce Fardy worked for the CBC, Canada’s national broadcaster, for forty years, first as a journalist and then in management, as the head of CBC curreDarce Fardy worked for the CBC, Canada’s national broadcaster, for forty years, first as a journalist and then in management, as the head of CBC current affairs programming. After his retirement, he became Nova Scotia’s freedom of information officer. An outgoing, lively, intellectually engaged, self-described “political junkie�, he was also an optimist, and he ended up becoming an activist of sorts. In 2013, at the age of 81, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease. His family had noticed that he was repeating himself and persistently asking questions he ought to have known the answers to. Instead of angrily denying their concerns, he saw medical professionals. Hearing the verdict, he accepted it, and rather than stubbornly clinging to his car keys, he very reasonably surrendered them and stopped driving. No pleas, no exasperated efforts to convince him, no doctor interventions were required. He accepted his fate and fairly promptly made a pitch to the editor of the Halifax Chronicle Herald about writing a regular column about his day-to-day experience with dementia.
Darce’s larger goal was to reduce the stigma associated with the condition. Over the next six years, he wrote (his capable wife Dorothea increasingly serving an editorial role) and was well read by many Haligonians. Recognizable and approached around town, Darce relished the attention. He also received many emails, notes, and letters, in which he received words of encouragement and gratitude, as well as personal stories. (I’ll add here that Atlantic Canadians are known for their warmth, friendliness, and sense of community.)
This book is a collection of many of Darce’s columns, interspersed with others by prominent Halifax geriatrician Dr. Kenneth Rockwood, who was involved in Darce’s care early on. Darce was diagnosed in the early stages of Alzheimer’s Disease, and Rockwood observes that he was “able to comport himself well and act on his own terms more than most.� The columns� main message was that dementia was not the end and that a good quality of life could remain for some time.
Initially Darce and Dorothea aimed to sell their home and move to a waterfront condo. However, one son and one daughter and their families lived very close by, and family stopped in daily. The couple just couldn’t do without that much-valued regular contact. They decided to make the alterations to their home that they knew would be needed. A basement bedroom and bathroom for live-in care, the relocation of the laundry room, and the installation of railings were some of the changes made.
In his columns, Darce documents his commitment to physical fitness and maintaining strength and balance. (These would inevitably fail, and his falls would be the subject of a number of his pieces.) He also volunteered for many research projects and enjoyed speaking at conferences and workshops. He was “ahead of the game� on the matter of accessibility, advocating for public spaces and homes to be better designed for an aging population increasingly likely to be diagnosed with dementia. His commitment to reading persisted for some time. Dorothea eventually would joke that he now required no more than two books. When one was done, he could turn to the already-read text and experience it as something entirely new. Of greatest importance to Darce, and the subject he returned to most of all, was the love, support, and humour of his family and friends. His early life in St. John’s Newfoundland was also regularly alluded to. As one might expect, there is some repetition, but I suspect this was not that noticeable, given that the newspaper columns appeared intermittently, not on a weekly basis.
I grew to love Darce Fardy and his family. He did, of course, eventually reach the point (a couple of years before his death) where he could no longer put together a 500-word personal essay. He died in 2022 in Halifax, his loving family surrounding him....more
This text is apparently no longer applicable to Canada (and has not been for some time now). It was written before Medical Assistance in Dying was legThis text is apparently no longer applicable to Canada (and has not been for some time now). It was written before Medical Assistance in Dying was legal. In the early pages of the book, the author states that Canada, among other Western countries, will be performing assisted suicides. (With assisted suicide, the doctor prescribes the patient medication or a cocktail and the patient takes it himself, rather than the doctor personally administering drugs that cause death—as veterinarians do.)
Patients giving themselves physician-prescribed cocktails is not what’s going on here in Canada. A 2022 article that appeared in CMAJ (the Canadian Medical Association Journal) “Medications and dosages used in medical assistance in dying: a cross-sectional study� cites statistics from the Second annual report on medical assistance in dying in Canada 2020 and the CFPC Task Force on End-of-Life Care. A guide for reflection on ethical issues concerning assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia:
Although nearly 7000 Canadians have died with medical assistance, there is little information on the technical aspects of providing MAiD. The current literature predominantly explores the ethical issues, eligibility, and the impact on patients, families and health care providers. However, it is clear that, across Canada, self-administered MAiD is rare, with fewer than 7 cases reported.
What we have here in Canada is undeniably “voluntary euthanasia�.
Contrary to the author’s dismissal of “exaggerated� concerns about allegedly vulnerable people being pressured into early departures, I’d argue that there is growing evidence that this has occurred, is occurring, and (we have no reason to doubt) will continue to occur (and expand) in Canada. We’re on a slippery slope. On second thought, I think we are well past it. We’ve slid right down the slope. I expect at some time in my life, when I have a condition that Canada’s cookie-cutter approach to medicine can’t be bothered to investigate or treat, I will be offered MAiD. Believe it or not, it’s now considered a “treatment option�, and bonus: it costs and demands so little from this dreadful, failing healthcare system, Canada’s ultimate sacred cow.
A couple of years back, a young woman presented to a British Columbia hospital. She was in distress and seeking help for her suicidal feelings. She was interviewed by a mental health professional who asked her if she’d considered MAiD. The young woman was informed of the inadequacy of mental health services and told a story of someone who’d long suffered with suicidal ideation who had finally succeeded in killing him or herself and was now at peace.
When the media learned about the young woman’s experience and contacted the health authority for an explanation, the latter blew off questions about why a suicidal person requesting help would be asked about MAiD. Officials responded that it was a “screening� question to see how intent the sufferer was on killing himself or herself. In this case, a young woman wanted help and was shocked by the interviewer’s comments. MAiD has not yet been approved for mental illness. Why was this discussion even occurring?
Many of us do understand why assistance in dying might be needed by patients whose deaths are imminent, but a whole host of problems has developed around those whose deaths are not imminent, many of which Yuill appears not to have foreseen.
My comments are based on samples of the text, and the author may well make other pertinent arguments about assistance in dying. My sense, however, is that this book could do with some serious revision. The model in Canada is much more like the Netherlands. In the Netherlands, however, at least the patients� family doctors perform the euthanasia. In Canada, the last doctors are essentially strangers. How invested can a stranger be on the right course of action for patients and their families?...more
People suffer. They live, they have hope, they even have love, and they still suffer. Everyone does. Those who think they’ve not suffered are lying2.5
People suffer. They live, they have hope, they even have love, and they still suffer. Everyone does. Those who think they’ve not suffered are lying to themselves.
Love comes in so many different forms, but it is always love.
I’m ambivalent about Elizabeth Strout’s fiction. I read her earliest novel Amy and Isabelle years ago, when it was first published. In recent years, I’ve read her two volumes of connected stories about Olive Kitteridge. I had some niggles, but generally liked these books. Those about Lucy Barton were another story. I’m afraid I found them sentimental—at times, bordering on maudlin. And perhaps that’s the source of my trouble with this novel: Lucy. She figures prominently in this book and is mostly presented in such a tiresomely hagiographic light—so willing to listen, empathetic, intuitive, innocent, childlike, and full of joy (but also melancholy and loneliness)—that I became increasingly exasperated. She’s not really the main character per se; Bob Burgess is, but he’s essentially the male equivalent of Lucy: a kind, sensitive, long-suffering man with a history of childhood trauma. (For most of his life, he’s been burdened by the knowledge that he may have been responsible for his father’s untimely death.)
Tell Me Everything revolves around Bob’s friendship (which burgeons into romantic love) for Lucy, by whom he feels deeply and satisfyingly understood. (I can’t tell you how relieved I was when, in the last fifth of the book, this idealized pair finally had a spat. It was a long time coming. Too long. (view spoiler)[As it happens, Bob is also relieved. Intoxicating as it may initially be, romantic love really can become a burden. (hide spoiler)]) The book is also about Bob’s legal work on a murder case in rural Maine and his befriending of the suspect, Matthew Beach (view spoiler)[a strange 59-year-old who paints remarkably accomplished nudes of women in various stages of pregnancy. One of Beach’s works ends up on a wall in Bob’s house. Really? This fairly conventional, unassuming man—who’s never heard of Solzhenitsyn but is apparently sophisticated enough to recognize first-rate artistic talent—displays a nude in a prominent position in his home? Hmm. I think not. (hide spoiler)] Members of Bob’s family figure in the story—his first wife, Pam Carlson, who’s become an alcoholic; his older brother, Jim, whose wife dies; and his nephew, Larry, who has a life-threatening accident. The book also details Lucy’s implausible meeting up with Olive Kitteridge—courtesy of Bob, who knows both of them—so that the two can hear each other’s stories of “unrecorded lives.� Yes, Olive and Lucy form a friendship too.
Strout’s big themes concern love (romantic and other), loneliness, the essential unknowability and brokenness of all of us, and the need for connection. The latter, Strout makes clear, can never be more than imperfect, given the impossibility of understanding others and even ourselves. While reading this novel, I often thought of the epigraph to E.M. Forster’s Howard’s End: “Only connect�. But Strout is not Forster, and while the value of personal relationships may be her focus here, Forster’s subtlety and nuance are lacking. Strout has also chosen a strange authorial voice: the first person plural “we�. Who is this “we� and why did Strout adopt this point of view, writing like some sort of sovereign of the world of fiction? I don’t know but suspect it has something to do with her sense that she’s conveying “truths� known to many. This and her clunky, entirely unnecessary practice of telling the reader what to think or prioritize—e.g., “It should be noted�; “the real point here is. . .�; “as we have said, Bob was not a reflective fellow�; “Oh, Poor Pam! Seriously, you should feel sorry for her.”—and her gauche announcements of plot transitions, supporting evidence, and reminders to the reader (in the manner of a high school essay-writer)—“Two weeks after Lucy visited Olive Kitteridge, this happened:�; “Here is what had been happening to Pam:� ; “Here is an example:� ; As we mentioned earlier . . .”—irritated me.
I was able to complete the book—it’s undemanding and very readable, and I do believe Strout asks good questions about our lives and makes some worthy observations about personal relationships. Having said that, I do not think this is great literature. It tends towards sentimentality. (view spoiler)[Bob’s friendship with Matthew Beach, who’s suspected of killing his elderly mother, is a case in point. Bob, who provides legal representation for Matthew, discloses personal details of his own traumatic history to the younger man and even lets Matthew use a locator app on his cell phone, so he can track Bob’s whereabouts. How appropriate is this? He links Matthew up with a therapist. Growing in confidence and self knowledge, the once reclusive man ultimately manages to have a romantic relationship with a woman. I found all of this pretty hard to believe. My sense is that readers were supposed to buy it because Bob is such a good man. (hide spoiler)] I’ll refrain from discussing the melodrama.
I wish an editor had reined Strout in—i. e., requested that she do away with the “royal we� narration, cut a few of the deep “connections�, and turn down the emotional volume. As is so often the case, less would have been more. It’s my view that with a judicious trimming, a mediocre book might have become a good one.
Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for a free advanced reading copy....more
Felipa is a little Andean girl whose abuelita, grandmother, has recently died. She misses her terribly and has been reassured by her parents that whenFelipa is a little Andean girl whose abuelita, grandmother, has recently died. She misses her terribly and has been reassured by her parents that when people die their souls live on forever. But where, Felipa wonders, is Abuelita’s soul and what might she be doing? The girl consults her grandmother’s animals: her donkey, pig, and llama. None has a thing to say. When her mother suggests that Abuelita is with the spirits in the snow-covered mountains, the determined girl walks for hours to get to them. Her father ends up having to retrieve her in the cold darkness.
The following day, Felipa is informed that though people cannot visit souls because they live in their own world, the spirits are able to make a long journey to visit every year. The living cook special treats to welcome them, and a celebration goes on for a whole day and a whole night. At first, all the wonderful food is laid on a large table, along with flowers and candles. Then, the following day, the festivities are taken to the cemetery, where the graves have been beautifully decorated.
This year Felipa experiences the festival. At Abuelita’s grave, Felipa feels her dear one’s presence. She talks to her grandmother and her parents share memories of her. Though the little girl is sad at the end of the day knowing that her grandmother cannot stay, she feels hopeful about reuniting with her on the next Day of the Dead.
An afterword tells us that German author-illustrator Birte Müller studied art in both Mexico and Bolivia and wrote the book to introduce European children to the tradition. I feel her narrative succeeds wonderfully, and I must say that I wish this tradition could be adopted elsewhere. Rituals to remember the loved ones who have left us are so valuable. Having said all this, I have to add that I was not at all keen on Müller’s primitive and pasty-looking paintings. In fact, I found the illustrations quite ugly, and I don’t think they would appeal to young children. (The lovely cover is a bit deceiving. I found it the only attractive image!)
I’d rate the simple, but well-told story a 4, but the art/illustrations only a 1 or 1.5. Overall, then: 2.5, which I have rounded up....more
A few standouts; a few inconsequential pieces. A few absolute duds (the podcast story, and the TV series story.) I was not consistently engaged. Fo2.5
A few standouts; a few inconsequential pieces. A few absolute duds (the podcast story, and the TV series story.) I was not consistently engaged. For this reader: although the prose is technically proficient, some essential quality is just lacking. A lot of the book is, quite simply, ugly....more
During the last months of World War I, Toby Havenshaw, a Halifax Evening Mail crime reporter in his mid thirties, is sent by his editor to Parrsboro, During the last months of World War I, Toby Havenshaw, a Halifax Evening Mail crime reporter in his mid thirties, is sent by his editor to Parrsboro, Nova Scotia to attend a preliminary hearing for an unusual crime. On the night of their wedding, twenty-four-year-old Elizabeth Frame killed her husband Elliot, shot him three times with the military revolver he was inexplicably carrrying in his satchel, apparently because he declined to “come to the window� to see a massive whale that had beached not far from the inn where the couple were staying. The hearing, it turns out, is as bizarre as the crime: the stenographer, Peter Lear, was at Passchendaele, and is shell shocked, and the demolitionist, brought in to “remove� the whale’s carcass by explosives, is suicidal (he, too, was at the front). The plot of the novel mostly revolves the murderess’s flight from justice —with Lear, the stenographer—part way through the hearing. It also considers Elizabeth’s peculiar romance and prior marriage to a Bavarian music teacher almost two decades her senior, who was once held under suspicion of seditious activity. (view spoiler)[Elizabeth, it turns out, is guilty not only of murder but also of bigamy. She married Oscar, the Bavarian, in March and Eliot, a Parrsboro native returned from the front, a month later. She’s also carrying Oscar’s baby! (hide spoiler)].
Norman is a very quirky writer, and I love his deadpan voice, philosophical musings (Heraclitus is big in this book, so is sleeplessness), and general marvelling at the strangeness of life and human behaviour. Having said that, I should add that a very significant part of this novel is dedicated to Toby’s marriage to a female surgeon who has served at the front. She, too, suffers from PTSD. And this is the issue for me: as much as I enjoyed reading about their relationship and delighted in their conversations, I was not convinced that this pair were of their time. They seemed far too modern in many ways. Spanish Flu also plays a big role in the novel (particularly in the story’s resolution); however, the epidemic isn’t convincingly handled. Amelia, Toby’s surgeon wife, says influenza is rampant at her hospital, but the Halifax papers aren’t reporting on it, and life seems—very strangely—to carry on almost entirely normally. The virus’s lethality basically seems bent to suit the plot.
I’ve really liked what I’ve read from Norman. It’s his point of view, sensibility, and unique take on the human condition that appeal to me. I’m quite willing to suspend disbelief and go along for the ride. In this case, however, I found it hard to overlook that Toby and Amelia seem to be a present-day couple dropped back in 1918. They didn’t quite fit....more
Eleven-year-old Anthea’s parents drowned in a sailing accident six months ago. Their bodies were never recovered. She is now living with her same-agedEleven-year-old Anthea’s parents drowned in a sailing accident six months ago. Their bodies were never recovered. She is now living with her same-aged cousin Flora and Flora’s liberal, noisy, and disorderly family, the Wakefields, who have a sort of back-to-the-land project going: a vegetable garden, chickens, and pigs. The family lives in the house that belonged to her and Anthea’s deceased grandfather, “Old Lionel�. Everyone says the dwelling is haunted. The old man’s portrait hangs in the hall and his spirit drifts about the place, making clear that he disapproves of his son’s—Flora’s dad’s—desultory attempts at renovation. Lionel Junior has stripped the panels from the walls of “the big room,� exposing all the wires and pipes, and there’s a huge hole in the wall between Anthea’s and Flora’s bedroom. Anthea feels as though she has no private space here.
The story opens with Anthea’s reporting a strange dream at breakfast one morning. In this dream, she emerged from a crack in the earth in a high, windy place. The world she found herself in—and, indeed finds herself in repeatedly on subsequent nights—is linked with the old picture cards found in the spare room. As children, Grandfather and his younger brother (“dead Henry�) used to view these cards with a stereoscope (an old-fashioned device which merged two photos of the same scene or object, providing a sense of depth and solidity.) It doesn’t take very long for Anthea to realize that the dream world she is entering is based on these cards. Dead Henry (who seemingly did not live into adulthood) created and mapped this world, known as “Viridian�. He and his older brother appear to have played some sort of imaginative game in which they travelled there, using special names—“Griff� for Henry and “Leo� for Lionel.
Forsaken for years by his brother, who obsessively guards the house instead of travelling with him as promised, Griff has now settled on Anthea as a companion. In her he recognizes the loneliness and desire for space that he craved as a child. He wants her to make the long journey with him to the dragon-shaped island in the inland sea. For her part, she believes she might find her parents there.
Initially, Anthea’s nightly trips into this vast realm are mysterious and exhilarating. However, as she begins to be assimilated into her new family, she has reservations about Griff, Viridian, and their destination. (I kept envisioning Swiss artist Arnold Böcklin’s eerie 1883 painting The Island of the Dead [] and wonder if Mahy may have had it in mind when writing this novel.) The path to the sea that holds the island eventually becomes treacherous, and an ominous dark cloud follows the children. Recognizing Anthea’s increasing doubts about continuing with him, Griff becomes desperate and threatening. I have to say that even as an adult reader, I found him frightening. (I’m familiar with Mahy’s skill in evoking such moods, having read her wonderful novel The Haunting, which kept me up late into the night the first time I encountered it.) The story’s conclusion involves Anthea’s cousin coming through for her in an unexpected way.
While Dangerous Spaces is billed as children’s literature, it is really a very sophisticated and rather abstract psychological novel. I cannot imagine that it would have much appeal to most older children. There are no details about Henry/Griff’s early death, his sense (while living) that there was no space for him—that he was crowded out by his older brother. The reader is also left in the dark about Old Lionel’s sadness and why his spirit will not leave the house. What is actually holding him there? A great deal must be inferred and much—too much, I think� of the book operates on a symbolic, psychological level. Descriptions are intricate and require careful reading and strong mental visualizing capacities in the reader. Since so much of Dangerous Spaces involves the dream world, the story quite naturally lends itself to Jungian interpretation.
While this is an interesting novel with some marvellous writing,I cannot in the end recommend it for anyone but diehard Mahy fans....more
Zero patience for this author. Zero. Maybe I’m just too old, but I doubt I would like her work even if I were younger. I can’t stand her characters—whZero patience for this author. Zero. Maybe I’m just too old, but I doubt I would like her work even if I were younger. I can’t stand her characters—who are depressing and uninteresting with ugly lives� and her fragmentary writing style isn’t my bag either. I see no beauty or wisdom in the work.
I truly don’t get the to-do about Rooney. I’ve tried three of her novels and have never succeeded in getting very far in a single one. I understood that Intermezzo was supposed to be different. It wasn’t—for me, at least. Aversion therapy has not been successful....more
I read most of the first section, “Jane�, and could not tolerate the ostentatious, trying-too-hard-to-be-clever prose. Writing should serve a story, nI read most of the first section, “Jane�, and could not tolerate the ostentatious, trying-too-hard-to-be-clever prose. Writing should serve a story, not showily detract from it. Not for me. Glad to abandon this. Yet again I am glad libraries exist and books can be borrowed and returned guilt-free, no money lost....more
This is a fine collection of short stories. Written in lucid, unadorned prose, there is a sameness to the narratives, which appears to be intentional.This is a fine collection of short stories. Written in lucid, unadorned prose, there is a sameness to the narratives, which appears to be intentional. All are written in the first person voice of a man in early middle age, confronting the losses of youthful dreams and identity, friendships, and relationships. Similar details and patterns crop up in many stories, linking them, and giving the impression that they’re really about one man trying on several lives. The characters are often university sessional instructors or have work related to the arts. A few are unemployed and directionless. Most struck me as quite passive. There are many couples presented, and, the men, for the most part, appear to be strangely incurious, sometimes frankly obtuse, about what is going on in their female partners� minds. There’s a lot of wine drinking, cigarette smoking, succulent gardens, art, and Mexican food (all but one story are set in San Antonio or Austin, Texas). A sense of anxiety and vague foreboding pervades many of the narratives.
I appreciate Porter’s clear writing. No pretentiousness here. The prose does not obfuscate but allows one to enter the situations of his characters. I hope to read more by this author....more
For fifteen-year-old Lizzie McGill and her siblings, the last couple of years have been challenging. Her high-powered lawyer parents divorcRating: 3.5
For fifteen-year-old Lizzie McGill and her siblings, the last couple of years have been challenging. Her high-powered lawyer parents divorced two years before the novel opens. Her father was seldom around anyway, even when the family was supposedly intact, and when he left, her icy and aloof mother Connie’s workaholic tendencies became even more pronounced. Lizzie took on almost all domestic duties (cooking and cleaning). But that pattern has recently been disrupted by the arrival of Tim, the McGill siblings� new stepfather. The kids didn’t even know of his existence until their mother announced her intention to remarry a mere three months before.
Erica, the youngest McGill, has taken to Tim, a potter who works from home and who more or less wrested responsibility from Lizzie. The older siblings (Lizzie and her brother, Evan) resent Tim’s presence, doing all they can to make life difficult for him. The latest blow for them is that Connie and Tim will be accompanying them for the summer to their beloved grandmother Terry’s island camp in northern Manitoba. This is a trip that the McGill kids have always made on their own.
Once at Gran’s camp and seeking refuge from her unhappy family, Lizzie begins canoeing to nearby Rain Island, a location the kids have been barred from boating to, ostensibly because the sharp rocks along the shoreline could badly damage a watercraft. At the centre of the rocky island, among a stand of pines, Lizzie discovers the remains of a long-collapsed cabin, now covered in moss. When she removes some of the overgrowth, she discovers a decorated table and a mug containing a pair of wire-framed spectacles. When she dons the glasses, she has a window into the early part of the twentieth century, becoming acquainted with a mysterious woman named Frances Rain, who, Lizzie learns, fled to the island and shunned interaction with the local folk. In time, the spectacles also allow Lizzie to watch a young, sickly girl arrive on the island to live with Frances. Frances, Lizzie soon finds out, died long ago. Now her ghost has a task for the teenager.
Buffie’s novel for middle-school students was published in the 1980s. Although some of the cultural references are dated, the domestic tension and the supernatural elements of her story remain engaging. I believe younger adolescents would still enjoy Lizzie’s story, which concerns coping with family issues and delving into a mystery that turns out to be connected with her family’s history. ...more
Most people are familiar with the terms “extrovert� and “introvert�, and many are aware that these personality types were first identified Rating: 2.5
Most people are familiar with the terms “extrovert� and “introvert�, and many are aware that these personality types were first identified by Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung. A few years back, Susan Cain attempted and, I think, succeeded in rehabilitating the idea of introversion, which has always had a bad rap. At best, the introvert was regarded as shy, diffident individual, afraid of her own shadow. At worst, he was the lone gunman responsible for multiple casualties at one US school or another. You know: the quiet one who always kept to himself, the one the neighbours always wondered about. In her book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking, Cain traced how the preference for the pro-social, outgoing, party-loving extrovert came to be viewed as the norm for the emotionally healthy American adult. She also detailed the strengths and value of those with a quieter approach to being in the world, people who required solitude, enjoyed their own company, and were drained by too much time with others.
Now, Israeli-American psychiatrist Rami Kaminski has devoted a whole book to another personality type that he’s apparently come upon many times in his four decades of practice. He calls this type the “otrovert�. Honestly? I don’t buy it. To me, Kaminski has made a critical error or two. He appears to have assumed that introversion is invariably accompanied by shyness. The otrovert, he makes clear, is not shy. While introverts are as concerned about being accepted by others and “belonging� as extroverts are, Kaminski writes, from Day 1 the otrovert, feels like an outsider, failing to identify with any group, and feeling no sense of belonging. Indisposed to small talk, the otrovert engages in deeper conversations even with strangers, forges strong, close friendships with individuals, and is preternaturally observant and intelligent. This type values his own company, but he’s not shy or retiring (the hallmarks of the introvert, according to Kaminski). Even though the otrovert is depleted by social events and communal rituals, people might actually take him for an extrovert.
Kaminski provides thumbnail sketches of many of his past patients, but his theory doesn’t seem to rest on any actual research. There’s no science here. Just long and fairly idealized descriptions of this personality type. (Did I mention that the author identifies as one?) Among other things, there’s advice to parents about what to do if they’ve got an otrovert child. The advice isn’t bad, but it applies equally well to parents dealing with an introverted kid. That’s because, in my mind at least, otroverts don’t exist. They’re just variations on introverts. Kaminski also asserts that because the otrovert’s entire life has been a “solitary journey�, he or she is is more equipped to deal with death. Knowing that togetherness was only an illusion, otroverts don’t struggle with their demise as “communal� people do. There is, of course, nothing much to back up this claim (beyond the author’s report about a wise, elderly patient). And this points to the big problem with Kaminski’s book. There’s really nothing objective to support his clinical observations: no neuroimaging, no cognitive studies, or anything else to convince the reader that he’s on to something.
One thing that I did find valuable is Kaminski’s observation that deep understanding of oneself and one’s own needs (independent of what the group imposes) and acceptance of one’s difference from others can bring contentment. It is wonderful to know that with practice one can learn to rely on the remarkable resources within. So I did appreciate the author’s emphasis on self knowledge. I think he’s right that many are unaware of themselves. Their busyness, while distracting and seemingly protective, can be harmful.
This book was a quick enough and occasionally interesting read—and a few may even see themselves in his descriptions. In the end, however, I’m doubtful that The Gift of Not Belonging is going to bring about a revolution in the study of personality types. ...more
As far as I read (which, I admit, was not very far), Gray Matters was a dull book, presenting information I really had no interest in: the public percAs far as I read (which, I admit, was not very far), Gray Matters was a dull book, presenting information I really had no interest in: the public perception of neurosurgeons; the sort of individual who chooses to enter the specialty; the way in which neurosurgeons are presented in film media; women and minorities who have entered the field; and a brief summary of the life of Harvey Cushing, the father of modern neurosurgery. I understand that Schwartz goes on to document details about operations performed on celebrities (I have zero interest in celebrities) and that he also presents some of his own surgical cases. Based on what I read, I couldn’t imagine spending a couple hundred pages more with him. His writing reads like a very extended dry encyclopedia entry. There was little to engage with emotionally or philosophically. I found I simply did not care. I appear to be in the minority in my response to this book. I have liked the autobiographical works of other neurosurgeons—Henry Marsh, Rahul Jandial, Frank Vertosick Jr., and Christopher Honey—and recommend those over this one....more
Small Rain needed to be reined in and made smaller—by at least a third and perhaps as much as a half. Too much minutiae; overall, a long-winded, ramblSmall Rain needed to be reined in and made smaller—by at least a third and perhaps as much as a half. Too much minutiae; overall, a long-winded, rambling, and tedious work. While Greenwell does capture the pain, shock, and subsequent transformational nature of pulling through a sudden, dire, and rare medical condition, less would certainly have been more. I’m surprised an editor didn’t take him in hand....more
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