Six Metres of Pavement

Farzana Doctor
Dundurn Press
Reviewed by Nancy
4 out of 5 stars

Summary

Ismail Boxwala made the worst mistake of his life one summer morning twenty years ago: he forgot his baby daughter in the back seat of his car. After his daughter's tragic death, he struggles to continue living. A divorce, years of heavy drinking, and sex with strangers only leave him more alone and isolated.

But Ismail's story begins to change after he reluctantly befriends two women: Fatima, a young queer activist kicked out of her parents' home; and Celia, his grieving Portuguese-Canadian neighbour who lives just six metres away. A slow-simmering romance develops between Ismail and Celia. Meanwhile, dangers lead Fatima to his doorstep. Each makes complicated demands of him, ones he is uncertain he can meet.

My Review

I started reading this book on the eve of my 20th wedding anniversary. It was fun getting immersed in other people’s lives and problems rather than spending time pondering whether human beings are meant to spend more than 20 years together.

Ismail Boxwala is devastated by the accidental death of his baby daughter, burying his sorrow in alcohol and casual sexual encounters. His growing friendship with a grieving Portuguese widow and a homeless queer girl shifts his focus away from himself and onto helping others through their difficulties. Ismail gradually learns to process his grief and find some inner peace. This story takes place in Toronto and features a cast of unique, engaging and diverse characters going through significant changes in their lives. The pace is gentle, and while there is some drama, it shies away from intensely emotional interactions and upsetting situations. Instead, it shows how unlikely people can intersect and through friendship and understanding they can find themselves and discover meaning in their lives.

Ismail, Celia and Fatima are such well-drawn characters that they can be your friends, neighbors, or relatives. Their struggles and joys feel authentic. It was hard for me to leave them when the book ended.

This is a big-hearted, comforting and hopeful story that explores grief, aging, loneliness, rejection, identity, culture and traditions, as well as the diversity and fluidity of modern families.

Highly recommended.

STEPHEN KING'S POLITICAL THRILLER STILL HAS BITE

The Dead Zone by Stephen King
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

“We all do what we can, and it has to be good enough, and if it isn't good enough, it has to do.”


Who else but Christopher Walken could play Johnny Smith in the highly praised David Cronenberg film?

Johnny Smith is a rookie teacher with $8 in his pocket, just enough money to take his best girl Sarah, also a new teacher, to the local county fair. Sarah is coming off a couple of recent relationships that were exciting with aggressive, unpredictable men. Johnny is a step in a new direction, maybe a more responsible direction not driven as much by physical attraction as by mental stimulation.

She has no idea who Johnny is, but that can’t be helped because Johnny doesn’t really know who he is either.

We get our first inkling that something is different about Johnny as they are leaving the fair. The Wheel of Fortune guy running a crude version of the roulette wheel tempts Johnny over to try his luck with his last few remaining dollars. Johnny starts by betting on black or red and wins. As his confidence grows, he starts picking exact numbers and keeps winning. A crowd is drawn to this run of luck.

But is it luck?

He turns his meager money into three months pay.

Sarah becomes sick from a bad hot dog. Johnny quits the game to take her home. Since they came in her car, he takes a taxi back to his apartment.

There is an accident, and Johnny goes through the windshield.

He doesn’t wake up for four and half years.

His mother, never a stable person before, becomes more frantically religious. She throws herself at every new religious concept, even going so far at one point to joining a commune who are waiting for alien space ships to come pick them up to take them to God. With each new religious venture she brings the Smith’s closer to bankruptcy. Religious zealotry is always so scary to me. They believe it, whatever it is, so fervently that any rational thought is wrestled to the ground and pinned by unquestioning faith.

When Johnny comes out of his coma, he has the ability/curse of being able to touch someone or something owned by that person (psychometry) and see pieces of their future. Some key elements always seem to be missing, and those murky parts Johnny calls The Dead Zone.

An ability like this? Well...it scares people.

”The nurses were lined up against the glass of the nurses’ station, staring at him. Suddenly they reminded him of crows on a telephone line, crows staring down at something bright and shiny, something to be pecked at and pulled apart.”

That does seem to be our nature to fear what we don’t understand, quickly followed by the need to destroy what we fear. Anyone different, whether they have a unconventional sexual orientation or a disfigurement or just see the world differently, will feel the constant pressure to conform or...disappear. It is only logical of course that if Johnny knows about a fire before it happens that he must have been involved in setting that fire. The possibility of clairvoyance is too unique, too extraordinary for others to comprehend.

Johnny is ridiculed, exposed as a charlatan. He is fine with that. It might mean he has a chance to find a normal life.

He is doing well until a small town Sheriff can’t catch the Raincoat Serial Killer.


A handshake can be so revealing. And yes that is Martin Sheen playing Greg Stillson.

As Johnny is finding himself back in the spotlight, there is another man, a Bible salesman by the name of Greg Stillson, who is starting to have big thoughts, dreams of more power than any lunatic should ever have.

Stephen King is setting up a collision course between the two men, both unusual, both psychotic, but on opposite sides of the same scale.

When Johnny shakes Stillson’s hand, he sees a future that can not be allowed to happen.

If you could build a time machine and go back to 1932 and kill Adolf Hitler, would you do it? It seems logical that you would save millions of lives, which I can’t even calculate the number of descendants of those saved lives. The implications of lives that never existed in our timeline suddenly being thrust into our era are staggering. The reshuffling of the DNA deck is mind boggling. On a micro level it could change your own personal history significantly. Your grandfather might marry someone different or your mother might meet someone before your father that didn’t exist before. You could wink out of existence before you can even fire up the time machine to return to 2015. Knowing the historical results of Hitler being alive, even though there is always the risk that someway, somehow by altering history you might make our present worse, I would still have to vote that I would gladly assassinate Hitler. On top of being a monster, Adolf was also monstrously annoying.

I might even take a short detour and take out Joseph Stalin as well. I’m already rolling the dice, so why not cast them out there one more time? I’d chalk up another couple of million lives saved.

Alter another gazillion time lines of history.

Good lord, the enormity of it and the logic and the illogicalness of it all start to circle back around until it becomes very easy to talk oneself out of such a risky decision.

Nobody wants to destroy the world while trying to save it.

Johnny goes through the same thought processes. Logically, he should find a way to stop Stillson, but there is the nagging worry that he could just make things worse.

This is not a horror book. It is a psychological thriller written by a writer near the top of his game. While working in the book business, I have always puzzled over why Stephen King was read by so many people. Of course, then I didn’t read him. I didn’t need to read him because there were already plenty of people queuing up to buy and read his next book. My job, of course, was to read people like Cormac McCarthy or Alan Furst, or writers like John Williams and try to bring them to a wider audience. I have tried a couple of newer King offerings, but have found them to be bloated, overwritten, and ponderous. I read The Shining, fairly recently, and realized that the King’s gold is in the dusty trunks of his early writings.


The book spawned a movie, which spawned a popular TV show starring Anthony Michael Hall.

King even made a playful reference to his book Carrie in this novel which made me laugh-out-loud. It was a bit of tongue in cheek referring to his own celebrity.

This book also fits very nicely into my 1970s nostalgic tour of horror books even though technically I can’t call this horror. Here are the other books that I've read on this quest.

The Exorcist Review
The Shining Review
Jaws Review
The Omen Review
Harvest Home Review


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Nineteen Seventy-four

Nineteen Seventy-four by David Peace
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

When a little girl goes missing, crime reporter Eddie Dunford is on the case. Eddie finds a pattern between the girl's disappearance and others. Where will the trail lead and will Eddie have anything left when he gets there?

There's a greasy spoon close to my house that serves something called The Mess, a pile of scrambled eggs, hashbrowns, bacon, sausage, and gravy, a meal that will simultaneously help you achieve Nirvana and hit your nadir. That's what this book reminded me of.

Nineteen Seventy-four is a cluster fuck of biblical proportions. Crime reporter Eddie Dunford is in way over his head from day one. In fact, I don't really buy him as a crime reporter seeing as how he's kind of a coward.

The narrative starts a bit slow but is soon bouncing around at ninety miles per hour, zig-zagging like a mouse on a speed. Much like Eddie, I had no clue what was going on a great percentage of the time.

The repetitive style grated on me after a while, making me long for the prose of such crime writers as Lawrence Block and George Pelecanos. In fact, Eddie reminds me of a less competent version of Nick Stefanos.

Another thing I wasn't crazy about was all the people with similar names. Also, practically every damn character in the book was in on the crime. I wasn't sure if I actually liked the book while I was reading it and wasn't any more certain by the end.

Nineteen Seventy-four was unique and powerful at times but I can't really say I enjoyed it. I guess we'll call this a 2.

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The Affect of Cats on Horse Racing

The Cat-Nappers by P.G. Wodehouse
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A case of pink spots on Bertie's chest (maybe it's a touch of malaria, who's to say?) sends him to the country on doctor's orders to rest and relax. Rest and relax? If you've ever read a Wodehouse, you know that's not bloody likely.

Troublesome aunts, daffy explorers, strong-willed dames along with their ardent suitors, crusty landlords, and charming cats all conspire against poor old Bertie Wooster. His butler Jeeves seems to be his only ally in this perpetually-yet-vaguely 1920s, god-help-us world.

Wodehouse did it again! Well into his Jeeves & Wooster series, the insanely prolific writer of the early-to-mid 20th century churned out another quality book replete with a finely paced plot, delightfully nutty characters and enough laughs to fill The Laugh Factory with wall-to-wall guffaws.

At this point, I'm predisposed to enjoy anything by Wodehouse, so perhaps The Cat-Nappers has received a gratuitous star in the ratings from me. If you're already a fan, this will crank your chucklebox. If you're new to Wodehouse, I might suggest -NAY!- I would suggest starting with something else. Go ahead, ask me. I'm full of suggestions!


READER'S NOTE: The Cat-Nappers is alternately titled Aunts Aren't Gentlemen.

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Here's an Unnecessarily Long Title for a Book with a Ridiculously Long Title

Things Mother Used to Make A Collection of Old Time Recipes, Some Nearly One Hundred Years Old and Never Published Before by Lydia Maria Gurney
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Tis the season for old timey home-cookin'!

I'm an amateur cook with a degree in terrible taste, but that doesn't stop me from trying! I love to fry up this, sauté that, and get down on some good old fashioned baking, especially this time of the year. So, what better time than now to read Things Mother Used to Make: A Collection of Old Time Recipes.

Originally published over a hundred years ago, the accumulated knowledge within probably dates back to tried-and-true practices of the "old country". The recipes are for simple fare, require few ingredients and are easy to follow.

The author was a New Englander and it's reflected in these traditional recipes for chowdah, coffee cake, gingersnaps, sponge cake, Boston baked beans, rhubarb pie, and hasty pudding.

I suppose some of those may be familiar to certain people and others not. It all comes down to what mom used to make. For instance, even though I was born and raised in Massachusetts, I'd never heard of huckleberry dumplings, bannocks, rolley polys or hermits.

Beyond recipes, Things... also includes a section of how-to suggestions with tips on boiling a lobster, canning peaches, ways to make pies brown and shiny, and how to corn beef. I picked up a tip for a lighter cake by beating yolks and whites separately. The bit on how to prevent children from losing their mittens is classic mom ingenuity.

There's also a section on "Household Hints Old and New for Housekeepers Young and Old," where I learned a thing or two I may try out, like keeping the iron clean with newspaper and salt...wait a minute, I can just use a scouring pad. Okay, so maybe some of this stuff is a little dated.

Additions like a weights and measures page shows that practicality was the name of the game back in the day when a book like this was the kitchen bible.

I read a kindle version and it didn't come with any bells and whistles. No pics, minimal design. Quite spartan. However, something tells me the original wasn't overly decorative either.

All in all, it's a solid book filled with tried and true wisdom....though I'm not sure about that racist and insensitive recipe "Cracker Tea for Invalids".

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Richard Estes

John Wilmerding
Rizzoli Publications
Reviewed by Nancy
5 out of 5 stars

Summary

Richard Estes (b.1932) is one of America's leading photorealist painters. This new large-format book will cover fifty-five years of Estes's work, from 1950 to 2005, and will include paintings, watercolors, and preparatory sketches. Estes is regarded as one of the most important painters of the New York urban landscape. The crisp clarity of Estes's paintings is reminiscent of photography, yet upon closer inspection his work reveals elements and perspectives that do not exist in reality and have more to do with minimalism and realism than with traditional landscape painting. The book will also include his work of the last ten years, much of which will be published here for the first time. A detailed chronology and list of exhibitions and public collections are included.

My Review

After enjoying a magnificent photorealism exhibit at my local art museum and reading Richard Estes’ Realism, I just can't get enough of the artist, so I dragged this big book home from the library.

It was published in 2006 and covers fifty-five years Estes’ work through 2005.

John Wilmerding does a nice job discussing Estes’ life, his career, his artistic influences, and the detailed processes of creating his art.

“Estes will take hundreds of photos, often returning to reshoot a site of special appeal. He will print up dozens of contact sheets, from which to select and then assemble the parts of a tentative composition.”

By using a combination of photographs, the artist can then create an original piece that is so meticulously detailed, the delicate brushstrokes practically invisible, that it looks as precise as a photograph. Yet, if you look at the work closely, there is a sense of unreality about it that makes it unique.

Among my favorite paintings are Estes’ richly detailed NYC street scenes that are so effective at evoking particular moments in the city’s history. I’m really glad this book devotes a large section to these works.

The book has a few flaws, however. I wish the paintings had been better organized. I found myself flipping through the book numerous times to see what painting the text is referring to. There was also a lot of white space that could have fit larger versions of certain paintings. It’s a minor complaint, though. If you are interested in photorealism and the work of Richard Estes, this book is a perfect choice.

Check this out! My local museum recently acquired Baby Doll Lounge for its permanent collection.

THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE BY PHILIP K. DICK

The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“They want to be the agents, not the victims, of history. They identify with God's power and believe they are godlike. That is their basic madness. They are overcome by some archtype; their egos have expanded psychotically so that they cannot tell where they begin and the godhead leaves off. It is not hubris, not pride; it is inflation of the ego to its ultimate — confusion between him who worships and that which is worshiped. Man has not eaten God; God has eaten man.”



If Franklin Delano Roosevelt had been assassinated in 1934 instead of dying of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1945, what would the world look like? Do our lives, our futures, hang on the shoulders of one man? The New Deal that gave Roosevelt so much power, so much influence with the American public, would not have been possible if presented by a different man, a less sure man, a man more willing to make deals to pass the legislation even if it guts the intent of the program. The American people have probably never trusted a politician as much as they trusted FDR. So if we remove him from history during those critical years in the 1940s when the world went mad, what would happen?

Philip K. Dick is going to tell you.

We lose.

The Pacific States form a new country called The Pacific States of America and are controlled by Imperial Japan. A Rocky Mountain States is formed as a buffer between The Reich Controlled East Coast of America and the PSA. Europe is under the management of the Reich. The Soviets were completely destroyed by the Reich, and most were exterminated. A cold war has sprung up between the two remaining superpowers: the Japanese and the Reich. Adolf Hitler has descended into madness…batshit crazy madness... not the garden variety I want to rule the world madness.

”Old Adolf, supposed to be in a sanitarium somewhere, living out his life of senile paresis. Syphilis of the brain, dating back to his poor days as a bum in Vienna...long black coat, dirty underwear, flophouses.”

There is this interesting film called Max starring John Cusack from 2002 that was directed by Menno Meyjes. It discusses the possibility of what would have happened if Hitler had been accepted as an artist. Would he have channeled his anger into something more edifying than world destruction? I know that others, besides myself, must have watched that film, but they seem to be few and far between.


Noah Taylor plays the young, frustrated Hitler.

Martin Bormann has been in charge of the Reich, but with his death a power struggle has broken out between Joseph Goebbels, Reinhard Heydrich, and Hermann Göring for the ultimate leadership. The thought of those men surviving the war gives me a chill. Hitler may have brought the vision, but these were the men who implemented it.

Robert Childan owns an Americana antique business on Montgomery Street in San Francisco. The Japanese are avid collectors of old American gadgets, comic books, and toys. He used to run a bookstore, but found that dealing in Americana was much more profitable. He isn’t an expert, which as the story unfolds, creates some issues for him. People don’t mind paying exorbitant prices as long as what they buy is legitimate. He meets a young progressive Japanese couple who want to discuss a future based on the book by Hawthorne Abendsen called The Grasshopper Lies Heavy which presents an alternative reality where the Axis lost and the Allies won. It is still different from our present day, but certainly more recognizable than the dystopia of The Man in the High Castle.

Philip K. Dick is having a bit of fun writing an alternative reality which includes a novel about alternative reality.

The young couple are very disappointed to learn that Childan has not read the book. They assumed that any “American” would want to read this book. They were also disappointed that Childan, when pressed for his own philosophical take on this life, mouths the platitudes of the controlling governments because he thinks that is what his potential clients want to hear. I expected more from one of my own kind, a retired bookseller, but in his defense he doesn’t want unwarranted attention. He doesn’t want change as much as he wants to be safe. “What they do not comprehend is man’s helplessness. I am weak, small, of no consequence to the universe. It does not notice me; I live on unseen. But why is that bad? Isn’t it better that way? Whom the gods notice they destroy. Be small . . . and you will escape the jealousy of the great.”


Mokkei Tiger from the 13th Century

Childan does get a glimmer of a lost past that might be reclaimed by the future when he holds the Frank Frink jewelry collection in his hands. Frink has recently left his work of employment, where he made replica guns from America’s past (for those Japanese collectors), to start his own business designing and creating original jewelry. To Childan the jewelry is much more than just pretty bobbles to adorn women’s throats, fingers, and wrists. It represents the American ingenuity that used to determine the fashions, trends, and innovations that led the world.

Meanwhile, Frink’s ex-wife, who lives in the RMS, has taken up with a truck driver who is not who he says he is. He has an agenda involving The Man in the High Castle. The man, Abendsen, who has taken the world by storm with his book depicting a different outcome from the war.

The I Ching plays a pivotal role as characters use I Ching to make decisions. Dick also used the I Ching to determine the twists of the plot as he was writing it.


Having difficulty making decisions? Do you find that most of the time you make poor decisions? Turn your life over to the I Ching. Your future will no longer be your fault.

This book convinced me of the viability of this alternative reality. I certainly would have read more about this world that Dick created. The ending is open because Dick had always planned to write a sequel, but he couldn’t progress on the second book because he couldn’t stand the thought of going back and reading about Nazis. I’m in the same boat recently with all the history channels that I normally watch suddenly becoming obsessed with everything Third Reich. This is disturbing to me because programming is based off viewership, and obviously they have determined that people are tuning in to watch Nazi documentaries more than other much more fascinating time periods of world history. *Sigh* I don’t know what that means!

Amazon has recently filmed the pilot episode of a new series based on The Man in the High Castle. The episode is available on streaming. I read this book another lifetime ago, but wanted to refresh my memory before watching the pilot episode. I’m glad I did as much of my memories of the book had eroded into snippets of disjointed pieces. There is much more in the book than what I’ve discussed, but I hope what I have decided to highlight will encourage more people to read this novel of science fiction that also can rest comfortably on the same shelf as literature.

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The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath: A Graphic Novel

The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath: A Graphic Novel by I.N.J. Culbard
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Randolph Carter wanders the dreamlands in search of Kadath, home of the gods, in order to find a path to the sunset city of his dreams.

First off, I'm going to say something that may get me eaten alive by a swarm of zoogs but I've never held the writing of H.P. Lovecraft in high regard despite loving a lot of his concepts. Untold aeons ago, I read the prose version of The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. When I saw the graphic novel version, I decided it was time to revisit it.

The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath works fairly well as a graphic novel. The adaptation has a somewhat disjointed feel, which I think fits the tale since it is a dream, after all. Unlike a lot of Lovecraft tales, it's a quest story rather than a race toward insanity. Randolph Carter encounters all manner of Lovecraftian beasties on his journey and I.N.J. Culbard depicts them rather well. Much like the pacing, the art contributes to the dreamlike feel of the story.

Even though I only have vague recollections of reading the prose version of this story, I felt like something was missing at times. The transitions from scene to scene were a little rough in places. Overall, though, I felt this was a worthwhile adaptation. Three out of five stars.



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Truly Terrible Jokes

Funny Jokes (FREE Joke Book Download Included!): 125+ Hilarious Jokes by Johnny B. Laughing
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The other day the family went out for dinner together and my niece decided to entertain us with jokes, which I thought would be AWESOME!

Unfortunately, her jokes suck.

She's five, she just started school and she needs help, as I am of the opinion that all right-thinking kindergarteners should know at least a few ham-fisted knock-knock jokes. So, I commenced a dinnertime lesson in hilarity....only to discover I actually didn't know any jokes. I tried the old "Orange you glad I didn't say banana?" classic and f-ed it up. I needed help.

This led me to Johnny B. Laughing's Funny Jokes: 125+ Hilarious Jokes. You know you're in good hands with an author with a surname like that! Dude must've been born funny! At least you'd think so, but this book is filled with some real duds...


Q: Which astronaut wears the biggest helmet?
A: The one with the biggest head!

Q: What kind of doctor does a duck visit?
A: A ducktor.

Q: What do you get if you cross a skunk and a wasp?
A: Something that stinks and stings!

In fairness, there are a few good 'uns...


Q: What happened when the owl lost his voice?
A: He didn't give a hoot!

Q: What did the worm say to the other when he was late home?
A: Where in the earth have you been?

Q: Did you hear the joke about the skunk?
A: Never mind, it stinks.

By the time I finished I was inspired to pen one of my own off the top of my head...

Q: What's a monkey's favorite letter?
A: Eeee-Eeee!






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A Gaiman Book That Doesn't Feel Very Gaimany

InterWorld by Neil Gaiman
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I didn't know what to expect. Once I knew, I expected more. I got less.

Interworld is the coming-of-age story of a boy finding himself, quite literally. Joey Harker is your typical kid, whose main concern is a certain girl and popularity at school. He comes off fairly average, but the way he's written, you're never sure if he's smart or stupid. Whatever the case, he sure did know a lot of pop culture references through out the ages, regardless of his own age and point of reference, so I would have to guess that he spends all of his time gathering useless knowledge that a kid his age normally wouldn't know. That isn't really touched on in the book.

Everything seems normal, until SUDDENLY occasionally bad writing with adverbs and such force the plot and Joey into a world where science (or pseudo-science) and magic are thrust together, supposedly in many forms, through out a multi-dimensional universe. Countless possibilities exist on an infinite number of planes...yet the survival of everyone and everything falls into the hands of one boy and his misfit band of buddies. Of course it does. What is everyone else doing? Why don't they lend a hand? I mean, there is quite a lot at stake here, their own existence for one. Meh, let's sweep that under the rug. Ain't nobody got time for that!

So, Joey and his pals fight the baddies with special powers and it's all supposed to be very exciting, but it's not. I've read worse, but seldom do I care less and just want to get through with a book.

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