Black Robe meets ABC's Lost

by Ted Langlais

A Review of Elle by Douglas Glover

Whether it has been intentional or not, the Governor-General’s award for literature has, with few exceptions, been awarded to the best Canadian novel of the year that says something about Canada, rather than the best literary achievement. For years, this meant buying the award winner meant getting some kind of history lesson, not necessarily an enjoyable read. Thankfully, however, the past few years have seen a trend toward fiction that is actually quite readable, enjoyable, and memorable.

Douglas Glover’s Elle, while still using Canadian history and folklore as its focus, provides a reasonably enjoyable romp. The language is clever, the narrator’s voice is wittily poetic, and Glover knows when to cut a scene before it becomes dull. At just over two hundred pages, Glover’s novel is the perfect length for his subject matter. Not so short that you feel you are getting ripped off if you buy it, but not so long that your eyes water with boredom before you are half way through.

The story deals with the legend of Marguerite de Roberval, a young French woman left stranded on an island in the St. Lawrence River in 1542. According to the novel, Marguerite is thrown off of a French vessel for having sexual relations with her lover and is, along with her servant, abandoned on an island somewhere near the mouth of the river.

She soon discovers that she is pregnant, but it is a pregnancy that is doomed from the beginning as the neither the woman nor the servant have the necessary survival skills to find nutrition and sustenance on this island. Marguerite soon finds herself alone, starving and delirious until a Native Canadian saves her with his indigenous knowledge of the territory. He helps her survive the winter, heals her spirit by having sex with her even if he does find her thoroughly ugly, and eventually leaves her to her own devices.

She escapes the island after the long winter, crazed with malnutrition and intellectual starvation. She is cared for first by an old woman and then by a fishing tribe before finding a means of travelling back to France.

As is typical with such works, Elle is a story of self-discovery, of finding one’s true self in the struggle for survival, learning to be one with the land and the surroundings; absorbing wisdom from the native culture.

Where Elle differs is in its language, voice and exploration of the feminine. Glover’s descriptions of traditional Native Canadian legends read more like Burroughs’s LSD induced hallucinations than respectfully dreary recounting of folklore. Still, his depiction of the landscape captures Canada’s mystical and deadly beauty.

And his heroine is decidedly contemporary.

In one of Virgina Woolf’s essays, she discusses how men never write about women except with regards to how the men relate to them. Glover does his best to contradict this and is almost successful. His protagonist emerges as a completely unique and interesting character in her own right. The novel reflects her mental as well as physical isolation from the masculine world. She is, in many ways, caught out of time as many intelligent women of her day most likely were.

Of course, I’m sure that my old Canadian Fiction professor up in Montreal would disagree with my interpretation of the character and claim that Margaret Atwood and Alice Munro are the only two living Canadian authors who could depict this woman in the way she should be portrayed. Nevertheless, Elle is a truly engaging and absorbing work.

Vikram Lall's Memoirs

by Ted Langlais

A Review of The In-Between World of Vikram Lall by MG Vassanji

The opening paragraph of The In-Between World of Vikram Lall, has the title character claim he has been labelled “one of Africa’s most corrupt men”. We get the impression thereafter that the novel is being written as a treatise to help clear his name and prove to the reader that he is not guilty of whatever horrors he has been accused of, or at least justify his actions to us.

The structure of the novel presents us with Vikram writing his memoirs near a small town in Ontario. Each chapter of the Kenyan-based narrative returns to the present where we are given glimpses into what the present holds for Mr. Lall and teasing references about the fates of the characters in his past.

He leads the reader through nearly three periods of Lall’s life before learning the true nature of his guilt. We begin with his young childhood during the beginning of Elizabeth II’s reign. Vic and his sister Deepa, both of Indian descent become lifelong friends with Njoroge, an indigenous Kenyan, as well as the ill-fated children of white Europeans. His father is a fanatic of English culture, even though he doesn’t know very much about it; his uncle is a leftist supporter of the guerrillas fighting against the colonial rule who will be responsible for an early tragedy in Vic’s life; his mother takes great pride in her familial roots, a pride which will condemn her children to a life of obligation and duty rather than happiness and passion.

With the basis of Vic’s early life laid out, he then takes us to his early twenties and finally through to his career in the Kenyan government where we eventually learn what it is that has earned him his infamous reputation.

Despite Vassanji’s Kenyan heritage, he is first and foremost a Canadian writer, and as such, his hero’s act of villainy is not as visible nor as grotesque as we are led to believe throughout the novel. Perhaps it is the influence of Hollywood’s horrific depictions of historic events in this age of Abu Ghraib torture, and genocides that plague African nations that makes this novel so effective. When we finally learn the extent of Vikram Lall’s villainy, it is almost laughable how tame it is compared to what we were expecting. That is, until we examine the implications behind his actions and realise that, although he has not held the dagger that has killed a thousand men, he has certainly written the cheque that bought it.

Make no mistake; Vikram Lall is a criminal, no matter how easily he is able to write the ends that justify the means. The best villains are always those who never believe that they are truly evil. The structure of Vassanji’s first person narrative, while not being overtly original, still holds the power over the reader in the rhythms and innocence of Lall’s voice. We become trusting and affectionate toward the protagonist against our better judgement.

Vic continues to believe, truly believe, that he has been caught between worlds. Between the Europeans and the Africans in colonial Kenya, between his duties to his business and his duties to his family, between is loyalty to his father and to his mother. He also holds the conviction that the crimes he has committed were done to him, that he was simply following through on the circumstances that had been laid out before him and that he had no alternative; his life could not have been lived any other way. He falls into a job with the new government, then as aid to the Kenyan leader, and ultimately into a business that thrives on the corruption of the country’s political structure.

This sense of things happening to him, rather than being in charge of his own life, is the secret to understanding the character of Vikram Lall. As we race toward the final pages and learn about his state of mind, and his unfaltering belief in his own innocence, we come to wonder what Vic has left out. What has he not told us?

In the end, it matters not how we judge Vikram Lall but how the character judges himself. And it is this certainty that his life has been one of circumstance, lived in-between the desires and wishes of others, rather than living it for himself and taking matters into his own hands once in a while, which provides a framework for understanding the novel’s shocking and unforeseen conclusion.

Vernon Goddamned Little

A Review of Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre

For the most part, I don’t have a problem with appropriation of voice in fiction. If you are a white Caucasian lesbian, you should feel free to write a novel from the perspective of an African American straight male in the fifties. Provided you do it believably and appropriate to the subject matter and tone of the novel that you are writing. If you can’t meet these criteria, then it is perhaps better if you toss away your novel idea and start something new that fits your talent and vision.

Likewise, if you are writing a satire and using humour to attack an aspect of society then that humour should be sophisticated and subtle enough to rise above the raunchy blue-collar humour in which most of us indulge during drunken conversation in a bar room. It helps if you also have a knowledge of the subject matter so that your satire is appropriate and attacking something truly worthy of criticism.

Vernon God Little does none of this. It is base without redemption; attacks the easiest, most obvious stereotypically criticised aspects of American culture; and its narrator’s voice is nothing like any teenaged Texan in the Lone Star state.

How the novel won the Man-Booker Prize for 2003 is beyond me and I’m sure there are a lot of writers from last year’s long list that have used a few of Vernon Goddamned Little’s blasphemes after finishing the novel.

The book opens following a Colombine style massacre at a High School in the uneventful Texan municipality of Martirio. Vernon Gregory Little, although not on school grounds at the time of the massacre, is convicted in the eyes of the public because he was a friend of the victim. As the citizens of Martirio condemn and deride Vernon publicly, they proceed to cash in on the disaster by selling more types of tie-in memorabilia than George Lucas could devise.

Vernon himself is innocent. He claims he was not even on campus at the time and there is the evidence to prove it: fecal remains from when he relieved himself in a junkyard at the time the massacre was taking place. Why he wasn’t on campus and what he was doing is not explained until the end of the novel, but we do learn that it involves a gun that Vernon feels will incriminate him.

This is the one aspect of the character that Pierre gets right, the confusion and uncertainty of the teenage mind. In fact, thanks to Pierre’s manipulation of events, it seems that Vernon is perfectly justified in his mistrust of adults. His mother is wrapped up in her personal affairs including the desire to purchase a new refrigerator for the house. Also, she begins an affair with Eulalio Ledesma, known as Lally, who claims to be a CNN reporter but is actually a layman trying to find fame and fortune by cashing in on the school killings. He pretends to be Vernon’s friend to his face, but is really making plans to have him prosecuted and executed on national television.

Vernon just can’t get a break from the adult world. Even the psychiatrist assigned to his case turns out to be a child molester and the college student whom he’s had a crush on for years ultimately sells him out in exchange for her own brand of fame and fortune.
The problem with all this is that it comes across as completely contrived. Vernon doesn’t get a break because the author doesn’t let him, not because it comes naturally to the story. The novel goes too far over the top in its effort to make fun of things that have already been joked about in the media for years. The jail scenes become a television reality program, with entire pages pulled from any number Science Fiction pulp stories. The trip to Mexico seems to come straight out of a Robert Rodriguez movie. The dialogue is derivative of South Park with a British slant to the expressions rather than the Texan one that it should have.

Unfortunately, South Park has more intelligent and relevant satire, as well as funnier dialogue.

How this novel was ever chosen as the Booker Prize winner for 2003, I have no idea.

A discussion of this review can be held at the ScribeCentral.com Discussion Forums at CanadianFiction.com.

The Prisoner of Azkaban: a review

by Theenglish

A couple of years back I read the first two Harry Potter books, preferring to have a knowledge of the original stories before seeing the movie adaptations. The Potter saga had already reached its pinnacle. The story of adults and children alike flocking to the bookstores to purchase The Goblet of Fire in record numbers had come and gone. But I still approached the stories with an air of scepticism, the same scepticism I currently hold for The DaVinci Code.

I was pleasantly surprised to find the Potter stories refreshing, unique, and enjoyable. Entering the world of Hogwarts was like journeying into Baum’s Oz, Carroll’s Wonderland, or White’s world of talking pigs and spiders. The best of children’s literature has maintained the capacity to appeal to adults. The author’s of these books don’t patronize children; they don’t speak as a parent or teacher, but as a peer, respecting children as intelligent beings.

Rowling carries on this tradition, weaving an intricate, complex tale that rivals any fantasy creation with the possible exception of Tolkien’s Middle Earth. Hogwarts and the World of Wizards become more detailed with each passing book. Her wordplay is clever, her analogies to the real world sound without being preachy.

By the end of the second instalment, for example, we see that Harry Potter’s arch-nemesis, Lord Voldemort is the wizard representation of Hitler. He wishes to purify the wizarding race by wiping out all those who have impure “muggle” blood, even though he himself comes from impure blood.

The Prisoner of Azkaban shows us that the wizarding world, like the real world, is not as harmonious or benevolent as we’d like to believe. The wizards have crime, and sometimes imprison the innocent unjustly. The good giant Hagrid spends some time in Azkaban toward the end of The Chamber of Secrets. Rowling shows us that the terrors that await in a magical prison are even worse than await us in human prisons.

The Dementors, guards of Azkaban, suck the life force from the prisoners, denying them the pleasures and freedom of thought in addition to keeping them away from the rest of humanity. They are creatures as evil as the prisoners they are there to guard and easily the most disturbing creatures and images of the trilogy thus far.

Even though the novel was published years ago, with the movie being released this month, the analogy to Abu Ghraib prison will be hard to ignore. It is more likely, however, that Rowling is making a criticism of our modern day prison system. The prisons where prisoners from all walks of crime are placed together and often, a man who has done something as simple as rob a few items from a car, will be subjected to the same rape gangs that a violent offender is forced to endure.

From a story perspective, we are given more insight into Harry’s background and his relationship with Voldemort. Professor Snape it turns out has a grudge, not against Harry himself, but against the whole Potter family. Dumbledore seems to have had affection for Harry’s parents as well.

The story is as fast paced as ever. This time it is Harry and Hermione that work together at the end as Ron is subjected to a fate similar to that which left Hermione bedridden in the second volume. The ending, however, is not resolved as nicely as it was in the first two novels and for the first time, we are left we a true sense of dread and expectation for the future of Harry Potter and his friends.

The book is not without its flaws. Really, can anybody but the biggest Potter fans, distinguish between the opening paragraphs of each of the novels? Each beginning has started to run together in almost the same way that Star Trek episodes do. We are given the same stock footage of Privet Drive like we get the same stock footage of the Enterprise flying in front of a field of stars. The novels also have nearly identical structures. A few chapters in the muggle world, off to Hogwarts to meet the new teachers (this time Hagrid has been given a position thanks to Harry clearing his name in the second volume), a few Quidditch matches, a break for Christmas when our characters stick around to stir up more trouble, exam time, and the Grand Finale.

I’m really hoping that Rowling starts to spice up the books and add some variety. Perhaps she already has. I have not yet read the fourth or fifth instalments of the series.

What am I hoping for in the upcoming tales? A bond to grow between Snape and Potter perhaps; further character development for Malfoy (I want to see him turn into a good guy the same way Cordelia Chase was converted in the Buffy series), and most of all, a change to the format.

Rowling is a competent writer, and her characters are real. Hogwarts, for all its magical staircases, wandering ghosts, and talking paintings bears a strong resemblance to the schools we all know. The bond between the characters makes us nostalgic for that bond many of us had with friends before the world made us cynical. The teachers are as varied as those we remember from our own childhoods, complete with quirks, strengths, and compassion.

It is not the wonder of the magic and fantasy that makes the Hogwarts tales popular, but rather the similarity and the familiarity of the settings and characters that brings us back for more.

Dirty Limerick: A Review of Angela's Ashes

by Theenglish

Of the true Irish I have met in my life, some have been adamant supporters of the IRA while others have only desired an end to their country’s hostilities. Some have taken a serious interest in and somewhat racist attitude toward the religious and political conflicts pervading Northern Ireland, while others done their best to put those types of conflicts behind them. Of all the Irish I have known, there has been a passion and an intense, patriotic dedication to their stories, their music, and their Guinness.

And this is what the memoir of Angela’s Ashes is truly about.

Many have harped about its portrayal of poverty and marvelled at the lack of resent expressed by author, Frank McCourt. His portrayal at his families intense poverty, only augmented by his father’s addiction to alcohol is a frightful experience. The ignorance of his father’s attitudes about work and money was directly responsible for the deaths of several siblings, yet McCourt still finds moments to show us the warmth and tenderness of the father figure in the story.

His old man is responsible for introducing young Frankie to the folkloric traditions of the Irish people, and the beauty of their stories. It is these stories that stick out in the mind of the readers, sometimes moreso than our anger toward the drunken bastard squandering every last shilling the family has, forcing their mother into a life of begging and the family into a squalid home where the public lavatory for the entire lane is just off the kitchen. The house flies that the family picks from their soup were hanging out in the feces of dozens of people, only moments before. These flies were most likely responsible for the bout of typhoid and conjunctivitis young Frankie goes through while living in this house. If it wasn’t for being saved by nuns and government sponsored medicine at the last minute, he wouldn’t have survived to write the memoir.

The saving grace of his young life is introduced to him through his fathers stories of Cuchulain and, later, an old man’s love of Jonathan Swift. This man pays young Frankie to read to him even though he has Swift’s work memorized. Later, while in the hospital, recovering from typhoid, young McCourt learns the beauty of Shakespeare, even though he doesn’t understand what the words actually mean. He also gets his first taste of poetry from a young girl dying from diphtheria who introduces him to The Highwayman, much to the dismay of the nuns. The typhoid is also directly responsible for McCourt’s first reward in the field of creative literary endeavours as an essay he writes shortly after prevents him from being held back due to his long absence at school.

As surprising as it is that the narrator holds no resentment toward his father, it is even more surprising that he holds none against his mother. Even after leaving home late in the novel, at the young age of thirteen he still holds affection for her. This, even though the mother is nearly as awful as the father. As much as anything else, it is obvious that her nagging is at least partially responsible for his father’s drinking habit. And, later, when his mother moves back in to sponge off his one pound a week pay check. Through all of this, Frankie remains surprisingly resilient.

Despite the horrifying depiction of the squalor and poverty drenched streets of Limerick, the book shines in its humorous moments. Frankie’s First Communion is marred by his fear of confessing that he heard the word “piss” spoken by a neighbourhood boy. He is dragged back into the confessional only a few hours after receiving Communion because of vomiting it up in his grandmother’s yard. Another time he is embarrassed about being caught wearing his deceased grandmother’s dress to keep himself warm.

The writing itself, achieves truly poetic moments while remaining highly readable. McCourt seems to be a kindred spirit of Roddy Doyle, and many of the anecdotes will ring familiar to anyone who has read Paddy Clark! Ha! Ha! Ha! What it lacks however, is the ability to break free of the structure and rules of narration that McCourt has set for himself. It is narrated entirely in the voice of the child, relating in detail his emotional reactions to each of the events, but by the end of the story, we are left starving for perspective, for an adult’s reflection upon the child’s experience.

Please Mr. McCourt, we want to scream, unleash your vitriol, your invective toward your mother and your childhood, or your compassion and understanding if that’s the way you feel. How do events like this, a childhood lived the way you tell it, stain, or strengthen the psychology of the adult?

Obviously, he has done well for himself, having been a teacher in New York for thirty years. Was the novel written as a therapeutic endeavour, and to provide reflected insight would only destroy the intention of the telling? These are questions that remain hanging in the air, even after one has finished the final pages of Angela’s Ashes.

The Return of the Other King: A Review of The Gunslinger

by Ted Langlais

Although I’m a High School English teacher, I’m not ashamed to admit that Stephen King is the reason I became interested in literature. I remember as a young boy taking Firestarter from my mother’s paperback collection and being entranced by the very first paragraph. The gruesome repulsion and attraction of the main character’s headache being described as a horse running over the tissue of his brain caught my attention even then.

To this day, I am a defender of King’s works, his early ones anyway. His ability to generate realistic and believable characters and to put them into fantastical and bizarre situations has always been second to none. It is a shame that his works became overly self-aggrandising and poorly edited during the mid eighties. Thousand plus page tomes with little more than three hundred pages of actual story filled the best seller lists for years and, coupled with flop after flop at the box office, my esteem for King’s talent diminished in much the same way as it did for U2 during their Rattle and Hum period.

After having learned more of King’s life, however, and his past addictions, I kind of picture him as Jack in The Shining, under the influence, and typing page after page of nonsense, believing every word to be a spark of genius.

Thankfully, that seems to have changed in recent years. Dreamcatcher, despite the terrible movie inspired by its pages, shows glimpses of the wonder and fun of King’s early works. In the afterward of that novel, he discusses how it was written during his recuperation following the car accident that nearly took his life a few years back. One can easily imagine that this accident helped King to find himself and his true muse once again.

In the introduction to the newly revised, The Gunslinger, the first instalment of King’s The Dark Tower series, he writes about this accident; he mentions how it changed his view on life and how he now understands that it sometimes takes a brush with mortality to truly understand that we cannot stay young forever. And it was this realisation that helped King to find the impetus to finish the fantasy series that has been nearly thirty years in the making.

When The Gunslinger first came out as a single volume in 1982, I was that young boy, just beginning the Firestarter. I continued to read King’s novels throughout my teenage years, holding off on The Dark Tower until it was completed. I didn’t want to start something without being able to finish it immediately. Other than The Dark Tower, I ravenously devoured everything King wrote up until Pet Semetary, but couldn’t seem to get through the mid-point of any book after that. I did read Misery in the early nineties, but all those other Stephen King paperbacks, the ones where it is difficult to see the cover behind the letters of his name, just seemed to be the same old, same old.

A year and a half ago I picked up Dreamcatcher as a discarded paperback in my mother’s home and made my way through it in less than a week. It rejuvenated my interest in King’s work, but not enough to go back and plough through those other books. Last summer, I read “On Writing” and enjoyed it immensely; King is always wonderful in his non-fiction. His conversational tone draws the reader in, makes one feel as if you are sitting and chatting with the guy over a few beers.

For newly published version of The Gunslinger, King has finally learned that revising a book can make all the difference in the world. He talks about removing adjectives and re-writing passages to make them more readable in addition to re-working elements of the plot that have become contradictory to the later works of The Dark Tower series.

The result is a highly readable piece of escapism that achieves moments of true brilliance. It revels in the author’s profoundly vivid imagination. King is back to the full strength of his seventies’ works. It stands alongside The Shining, The Dead Zone, and Carrie in its characters and its story. It is not so much a novel as it is a series of related short stories, and indeed, they were originally published as such.

Roland of Gilead and his young companion, Jake, wander through the tales in search of the Black Man. Roland faces many enemies, but his true nemesis comes from within himself and his own past and is revealed in flash backs to his days as a gunslinger-in-training in a palace community lifted straight from the pages of more standard fantasy works.

The newly written introduction to the novel details how it was inspired from both Lord of the Rings and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Roland is much more of a Clint Eastwood type than a Viggo Mortensen, and in many ways the biggest shame about this series is that it has taken so long to reach its completion. Eastwood has simply grown too old to play Roland in the movies.

The story opens with our hero wandering the desert in search of the Black Man, a figure that has intricate ties to Roland’s past. During the course of his chase, he recounts a harrowing experience in a town where the inhabitants listen to “Hey Jude” and an evangelical preacher, Silvia Pittston who is more evil than any preacher you’ll see on Sunday television; he rescues Jake, a young boy newly born to Roland’s world after dying in a car accident in New York 1977, he allows himself to be raped by a mystical plant-like Oracle in an effort to discover more information about his quest; deep within the darkness of a mountain train tunnel, he faces a group of undead mutants straight from a seventies horror flick; and finally he discovers the secret of the Black Man and the Dark Tower, only to have even more questions raised about where his journey will take him.

Despite the mystical, post-apocalyptic setting, it remains true King. References to twentieth century pop culture, American westerns, and even his other works are all present in this collection. In addition, I’ve read recently that The Dark Tower is the collection that binds King’s other works together in a single universe, that references are to be found to many of his other novels and stories, making the experience highly rewarding for fans of the horror master.

For the first time in fifteen years, I’m truly excited about the world of Stephen King and can’t wait to jump back into Roland’s universe sometime in the near future.

Hardcover: 256 pages
Publisher: Viking Press
Revised & Expanded: June 23, 2003
0.93 x 9.42 x 6.10 inches
ISBN: 0670032549

The Hunger, a review of Life of Pi

reviewed by The "EX" Patriot

“This novel was born as I was hungry,” says the opening line of Yann Martel’s the Life of Pi. And, indeed, this is a novel about hunger. Hunger found in the stomach of its main character, Pi Patel who is stranded in a life boat after the ship he was travelling upon sinks into the Pacific; and hunger in the form of the Bengal Tiger that is trapped with him. It is about spiritual hunger as Pi’s zest for life and religion leads him to become a practicing Muslim, Hindu, and Christian. And it is about the hunger for stories.

Like the fictional author of the book, the adult Pi, too, hungers for stories. The house in Canada from where he relates the details of his boyhood adventure is filled with religious symbols and trinkets so that one gets the sense that it is a home brimming with tales ready to be told. But to paraphrase what Pi says of the Christian religion, this novel has but one story. All the stories coming before it are merely a prologue. And this one story only takes on its complete horrifying, yet life-affirming and spiritual eloquence in the final few pages, long after the reader feels the tale has reached its conclusion.

Perhaps the most refreshing thing about Life of Piis its readability, its capacity to capture the reader from the outset and hold on page after page until the end. It is so rare that novels that have garnered the critical praise that the Life of Pi has received are as easy to read as a Stephen King yarn. But Martel has accomplished just that. His prose lures the reader into Pi’s story with the ease of a skilled fisherman, and tightens the line at just the right time so that it is impossible to let go. The reader has no choice but to give in to the struggle and be led through the exquisite pain of Pi’s ordeal willingly, craving for more, but not wishing to reach the end.

Martel achieves this accomplishment through two very clever devices. He creates a character that is impossible not to love, and weaves the subtle details, that make the story believable, subtly into the context of the plot.

From the opening descriptions of Pi’s academic studies in Religion and Zoology, and his strange attachment for Richard Parker whom he seems to miss greatly, through his adventures at his family’s zoo in India, to the stark, minimal existence of his days aboard a life boat, Pi is an immeasurably loveable character. We feel for him when he breaks his vegetarian existence, and share his horror upon discovering that what appears to be his salvation is actually a danger more voracious than the perils of the sea. He is such a gentle, loving person that when we approach the end of the novel we honestly don’t believe this young, pacifistic young man is capable of committing even the slightest atrocity.

Martel also pulls us in with the details of his characters, so finely integrated into the story that the has no hesitation to believe it is possible for young Pi to survive aboard the lifeboat with Richard Parker, the Bengal Tiger. Even the name Richard Parker conjures up familiar images of Poe’s character and the alleged real life cabin boy who was devoured by his crew mates. Pi’s understanding of and compassion for animals stems from his upbringing. His knowledge of the details of lion training, their habits in the wild, and their biology come to him so naturally that we accept them at face value.

Martel knows that stories of man against the sea have existed since the dawn of civilisation, from ancient myth down through the years until the such products as the hit Tom Hanks film a few years back. We have a strange Oedipus complex with the ocean. It gave us birth and we are attached to it, yet we are continually aware of its temper and ability to deliver harsh punishments upon us. It is the ultimate metaphor for nearly anything an author wishes, forever constant and immortal, yet in a perpetual state of change. And Martel uses this natural metaphor to its full effect.

But despite Life of Pi’s façade as a novel of high adventure at sea, it is ultimately a profoundly psychological novel. It is at once a modern Robinson Crusoe and a contemporary Heart of Darkness. Through Pi’s story we are brought into the belly of the whale with the depths of its darkness, and back out again into the light. This is a novel that makes us profoundly aware of the beast that lives within us all.

Life of Pi
by Yann Martel
Winner of the 2002 Man Booker Prize
Hardcover: 336 pages
Dimensions (in inches): 1.10 x 9.30 x 6.38
Publisher: Harcourt

Leaving the Cave, a Review of An Odd Odyssey

reviewed by The "Ex" Patriot

Glen David Short has a passion for life. Real life. His book, An Odd Odyssey, California to Colombia by Bus and Boat, is in fact a treatise about the nature of learning to live in the ‘real’ world as much as it is about his trip through Central America. In fact, there is something more than vaguely Platonic about his metamorphosis from tunnel worker to world traveller and author.

After six years of labouring in the shadows of man-made caves, Short had a close call when part of the tunnel in which he had been working collapsed. The site of a chunk of rock the size of a Volkswagon falling in close proximity provided the impetus to search for something more from life. But the “real world” in which his friends lived, the world of couples, and mortgages, cell phones and car payments, and 2.5 kids and bedtime stories was as shadowy, grey, and undefined as the tunnel. It was time to break away.

Like the cave-dwellers in Plato’s metaphor, Glen David Short was about to emerge into the brilliance of the real world.

The setting of his travels through Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Panama, and ultimately Colombia is the vivid rich earth of Central America where the past shines as intensely as the present. A society where friendly strangers who are willing to invite you into their homes like an old friend exist side by side with thieves and murderers not much older than the children of Glen Short's thirty-something friends.

The book itself is ambitious for a first time author. Short’s goal is nothing less than to share every aspect of his journey with the reader, so that by the end one feels as if they had accompanied him every mile of the way.

He is not a trained or a practiced writer but he has a natural poetry about himself and about the way he sees the world. He relates with infectious passion, descriptions of the natural and urban landscapes, details of the ancient remnants of the Aztec and Mayan civilisations, portraits of the many people he met along the way, the history of the countries he visited, and perhaps most importantly, his own spiritual journey.

The beginning is a jumpy collection of anecdotes, wandering from one locale to the next. The reader shortly discovers the reason for this is that his notes had been stolen on the Mexican subway during a hectic couple of days that saw him robbed not once but twice. This event seems to help bring his trek into focus, both in his mind and on the page.

From this point on, his entries are dated and more detailed. As if his eyes have finally become accustomed to the brightness of the world around him, he settles into his life as a traveller. More confident, less naïve than before.

This focus is mirrored in Short’s prose. At the beginning, one can feel that words and sentences seem foreign to him. His descriptions and imagery are tentative jabs into the unknown sometimes reaching their mark, sometimes not. But as the pages pass by, his confidence grows; he begins sharing more and more of himself. His prose becomes more refined and mastered. By the end, his prose is as professional and flowing as that of more experienced writers.

We grow to trust Short’s observations and opinions of the people he meets, sometimes in spite of how we know we would react in the same situation. The crazy Swede, Ari, for example, who consumes large quantities of drugs to help him meditate and who relishes showing strangers the knife which will be his defense in any situation is a character whom many of us would dismiss offhand as someone we would rather avoid. Short’s optimism in the human spirit, however, leads him to try and become more closely acquainted with this character. We grow to learn that Ari is a human being with the same passions and loves, which we all share, a guy who experiences a child-like enjoyment of the fruit drinks sold at the restaurant across the street from the hotel.

In fact, it is Short’s love of the human spirit in all its incarnations that provides some of the truly remarkable passages in this book and elevates it to something better than your average collection of travel articles. The people accompanying him through his journeys are just as colourful and exciting as his ascension of Pacaya Volcano or his life aboard a yacht in the Caribbean.

An Odd Odyssey also provides a first-hand insight into the world of backpacking. A world which some enter into like sponges ready to absorb all it has to offer but others wander through shielded by a wall of personal cultural bias. We also learn the ephemeral nature of friendship in this world where bonds seem to grow between travellers quickly, but fade just as fast as people go their separate ways.

The flaws found in An Odd Odyssey come from the nature of its publication. Short took the route of publishing through a "Print on Demand" company and although the binding, cover-art, and paper quality at first give the impression of a truly professional publication, we soon see the inconsistencies and flaws in such a work. The pages are missing chapter headings to help the reader remember where he or she is; the font is a little small and compact in comparison to most modern works; and journal entries do not have extra spaces between them to make reading easier. But these things are minor, and given the nature of the work can be overlooked.

Glen Short’s freshman foray into the world of travel writing represents a journey both mental and physical which many of us only fantasize about. He begins confused and uncertain about where his adventure will take him, but as he sheds the conceptions of the “real world” that he had been taught were absolute, he discovers the bounteous wonders around him. It is the story of how one man works up the courage to leave the shadows of his personal cave, and bask in the rays and glory life has to offer.

An Odd Odyssey, California to Colombia by Bus and Boat
published by
Trafford
290 pages, perfect bound QPB
$19.75 US

The publisher's page can be found here.

Glen David Short's Official Homepage and his complete An Odd Odyssey information page.

Glen David Short at ScribeCentral.com