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How about giving a book this holiday?

December 7, 2024 by Carolyne Montgomery

Like many of you, I’m reluctant to buy books for myself. Here on Vancouver Island, the Regional Library service is excellent. I can find what I’m interested in reading but I enjoy receiving books as presents. (Are you listening Father Christmas?) Here are some suggestions for your friends. ( or to share with friends)

Tell Me Everything

Elizabeth Strout’s latest, Tell Me Everything, is set in the fictional Maine town of Brunswick. In her piercingly accurate, simple prose, told from multiple points of view, the reader inhabits the ordinary indignities, failures and temptations of her character’s lives. There is a murder story woven in too.

As Bob and Lucy visit the bench where Bob can sneak a cigarette without Margaret knowing, the reader wonders if they will choose a future together. Will Bob leave Margaret? They are surrounded by a rich cast of extended family and players with their problems, including a re-appearance of Olive Kitteridge.

What are the costs of cumulative betrayals by a loved one? Is reconciliation the same as forgiveness? And why bother? Are relationships the linchpins that hold us together? And how do we nurture our souls? How many of our damaging choices are made because we were poorly nurtured or abused in our childhood? There’s a lovely passage where a healthy soul is likened to a billowing, flashy, coloured spinnaker. (paraphrasing) This book would make a great present and book club choice.

Your Body Was Made For This

In the CanCon section, I enjoyed Debbie Bateman’s linked short story collection, Your Body Was Made For This. And yes, Debbie, parts of this book are screamingly funny. The ten stories address the realities of owning, operating and accepting a female body in the hostile environment of societal binaries. Bodies that leak milk, blood or pee—too much or too little at the wrong time for the wrong reasons. Characters struggle with fertility–wanted and unwanted, body size and shape, and power struggles with partners and parents. The collection examines misogyny and competition from all genders. It questions the societal expectation of female caregiving at all life stages, at the expense of self.

Breasts—the character, Brianna, points out after her bilateral mastectomy. “The breasts are not a vital organ.” The middle-aged body is a “renovation project…off schedule and over budget,” but still the currency for acceptance. Join these characters making perogies with their mother’s recipe, surviving ectopic pregnancy, pumping iron in the gym, training for a marathon and struggling for power and acceptance in their lives. Sounds like another great present and book club choice.

All Fours

I have to say the title of Miranda July’s latest novel, All Fours, put me off. I imagined a collection of graphic passages of off-putting, violent sex, with little regard for the pleasure of the “bottom” person. When visiting a friend, I pulled the book off the bookshelf and settled in for a nearly non-stop read. It’s a quest story, a road trip but not a road trip. It’s funny.

You may remember her 2007 short fiction collection, No One Belongs Here More Than You. My first encounter with her writing was reading her 2017 story, “Metal Bowl” in the New Yorker.

All Fours may fall into the scantly populated category of perimenopausal literature but it is so much more. It validates and honours female sexuality and desire in all its forms. (yes, many descriptions of female masturbation) But there is much more that the forty-five-year-old protagonist is struggling with. It’s funny and unabashed as it tackles the challenges and conflicts of being an aging woman in our society. I’m wondering how the Sally Rooney crowd finds it. A way to understand their mothers?

Notre Dame

If you are despairing of humanity with the impending holiday season and the state of the world, console yourself, with the triumph of the successful rebuilding and restoration of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris over the last five years. Now there’s a story.

Happy Holidays to you all and thanks for reading my blog.

Adaptations and Memories

October 9, 2024 by Carolyne Montgomery

Harvest Gourds — Comox Valley Saturday Market

The rains are here, providing grey-toned contrasts to the sunny moments bright with the reds, oranges and yellows of autumn. It’s time to let go of the warm pleasures of summer—the outdoor adventures and late sunsets viewed from the porch. After so many years, the routine changes and adaptations are expected and welcomed.

Unexpected, unwanted changes are inevitable but harder to adapt to, especially those associated with aging. Perhaps, more about that in another posting.

But for now, it’s a back-to-school atmosphere and gratitude for the ordinary. I’ve stored the summer clothing and brought out the warmer woollens. I’ve harvested the marrows and pruned (some) of the plants for overwintering. There are indoor classes at the recreation centres—Yoga, Pickleball (turns out, it’s a ton of fun) and Swimming. The Instant Pot is dusted off, and the aromas of the soups and stews fill the house. The writing groups start up again and the dark mornings are better for sustaining my writing practice.

Outdoor Pool Memories

Centennial Pool after Labour Day Weekend

But the summer was lovely. It was the 75th Anniversary of the local open-air pool and the community offered complimentary access. It’s an old-school heated pool, thirty metres long. An awkward length and I’m not sure why. The changing rooms are pokey and well-worn.

A regular cohort of soon-familiar bathers showed up most Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings. In the crisp morning air, golden fingers of dawn stretched up over the East wall. The water transformed—glistening and diamond-filled, as we splashed up and down the lanes. Magical, like being a kid again.

I’m reminded of an outdoor pool in Ontario in the ’60s; two years before the national celebration of EXPO 67. My siblings and I, all under ten, with a few neighbourhood kids, trekked to the pool. Sometimes, a kid rode his banana seat bike. Not a minor feat, considering the route.

My older brother was in charge of the quarters required for admission. There were no sun hats, no sunscreen, no snacks, and no water bottles. There were no parents. Wearing our bathing suits, K-Mart flip flops and carrying our beach towels, we’d hike through the subdivision and then north on a narrow trail through the woods beside the Oshawa Creek. How far? Maybe a mile. We were an Imperial country then. At the place, where the water was shallow, we forded the creek to the pool, Somerset Pool. It’s filled in now. Repurposed. We’d wade across the muddy creek or hop from slippery rock to rock. Stones were thrown and skipped. We’d scamper up the grassy bank to the pool—a blue rectangle of water, sparkling on a dry, hot summer’s day.

Diving, cannonballing, pushing, running, splashing. Lifeguards shouting. Whistles blowing. The pool was evacuated for unknown reasons on an unknown schedule. Then, it would start all over again—diving, cannonballing, pushing, running, splashing. Kids flopping, exhausted on the hot concrete to warm up and dry off.

No one had a watch. Was there even a time we were supposed to be back? Somehow the decision was made. We’d slurp down a couple of mouthfuls of water from the water fountain and troop home. Sliding down the bank and wading across the creek, hiking down the root-crossed path, taking the tricky shortcuts through the neighbours’ gardens to get back.

Home with peeling noses, tender shoulders, muddy shins and stubbed toes. Swimsuits damp, and beach towels, heavy and muddy. To slake our thirst, a plastic jug of purple Kool-Aid—carefully made, trying not to spill the sugar or there’d be trouble. And sometimes a fight, deciding how to share the two remaining homemade popsicles. We’d collapse on the old couch in the cool of the basement.

Canadian Short Story Collections I’ve been reading

In September, I read a few short fiction collections, by Canadian authors and publishers. All are available at the Vancouver Island Regional Library—a fabulous resource. But if you can, buy these books

Carolyne Adderson’s A Way To Be Happy is an eclectic collection of characters in unusual situations. A pick-pocketing unhoused person at a New Year’s Eve party, male fragility in the setting of colonoscopy, missing dogs, phone sex, TOEFL teachers, sperm donators, fork-lift drivers. And my favourite, is the female character whose “excessive novel reading” results in her incarceration in an asylum.

In Caroline Adderson’s contribution to Resonance, essays on the craft and life of writing, edited by Andrew Chesham and Laura Farina, she writes “the character element…which …creates plot, is motivation.” Indeed.

Alex Ohlin’s We Want What We Want examines painful abandonments, rejection and loss. Mistaken loyalties and subsequent betrayals. Who has power and who is a victim? I enjoyed the drunken, palliative care nurses decompressing at their dart’s night in the local pub.

The author, Jann Everard is new to me. Her collection, Blue Runaways, explores dramatic physical losses (deaths and mutilations) in diverse settings. The stories are vivid and provocative. “The Robe” is so much more than your typical mother-daughter drama.

While not short fiction, Bad Ideas by Missy Marston, is loaded with lovable misfits in the Canadian setting of the St Lawrence Seaway. Fascinating history and great use of multiple POVs. Will Jules succeed in navigating his rocket car across the St Lawrence?

And what about an interconnected short fiction collection? Good Citizens Need Not Fear by Maria Reva’s explores the absurdity of surviving in the Ukraine, pre and post-1989. Zaya, warehoused in an orphanage, with her socially unacceptable deformity, escapes and finds allies to help her make her way. But where and what is home?

Happy fall and happy reading to you all.

Open Secrets

July 10, 2024 by Carolyne Montgomery

Many of us were shaken this week, Andrea Robin Skinner, (ARS), revealed in a first-person piece in the Toronto Star, that she had been sexually abused as a nine-year-old when visiting her mother and stepfather, Alice Munro’s second husband, Gerald Fremlin in 1976. And worse, when ARS told her parents, she received no support.

I wondered what was up when Munro Books in Victoria (started by Jim Munro in 1963, but with independent owners since 2014) cancelled an Alice Munro celebration in support of ARS. You can read their statement here.

In 2005, when ARS was in her thirties, Gerald Fremlin was charged with indecent assault and received two years probation in a court ruling in Clinton, Ontario.

After decades of isolation from her family in her late forties, after her divorce, ARS began therapy with The Gatehouse, a therapeutic centre for victims of childhood sexual abuse, in Etobicoke. The Gatehouse’s vision is “a future where those impacted by childhood sexual abuse can heal and reclaim their voices. Her piece survivor’s story from Oct 22nd, Andrea: To heal is truth and peace can be found here. There is also a video, So Let’s Talk About This, by ARS, crediting her sister Jenny Munro with production and Rebecca Garrett, who runs a media company, for camera, editing and direction. Subsequently, The Toronto Star published her story on July 7th. This article and several others by Deborah Dundas, Betsy Powel, Heather Mallick, Stephan Marche of the Star and Marsha Lederman of The Globe and Mail are behind paywalls.

The Writing versus the Writer

Learning that AM did not act to protect her daughter is a bitter pill to swallow. Can and should one separate the writer’s morality from the greatness of their work?

While it would be a tragedy to erase her work from literary study, it is appropriate to examine what she wrote in light of this new knowledge—A mother who failed to protect her daughter and who remained married to the man who was abusing her youngest daughter. A mother, living with the knowledge that she failed to protect her daughter. A mother, whose actions led to her estrangement from her daughter.

But why was Andrea not protected?

We can only speculate as to why AM made these choices. Fear? Fear of damage to her reputation and career? Fear of Financial loss? Fear of rejection or abuse by her husband?

Blame? Her daughter’s behaviour and not her husband’s. Blame the victim.

Shame? And thus denial of the implications of the abuse?

Impotence? A sense that she was powerless to change the situation?

We don’t know AM’s story. Was she a victim of abuse? Is this an intergenerational story?

We can only speculate on the complicity of the CanLit world in protecting AM’s reputation. Who knew this secret but did nothing to help Andrea or AM?

Family matters—Fear, denial, diminishment, and impotence to justify doing nothing.

The literary community is re-examining her work, particularly the last story “Vandals”, published in her 1994 collection, Open Secrets. See Laura Miller’s piece, “The Writer and the Brute” in The Slate where she examines the story as possible atonement by AM.

Are there connections between the stories and the timeline of Andrea’s story? Are there clues as to why AM refused or could not help or protect her youngest daughter?

Our LIterary Heroines are not Saints

Sadly our literary heroines are not saints. We needily and blithely project our needs and wants onto them to be so. There is a crushing sense of loss, betrayal and disappointment when they are found out to be fallible, flawed and messy like the rest of us.

I have deep compassion for Andrea Robin Skinner and her recovery journey after the immoral and unambiguous denial of her needs and safety by her family and society. I wish her, her siblings and her family all the best in their recovery journey.

And many thanks to my friends who forwarded me the various articles over the last few days.

A Letter to My Daughters

In 2013 after AM was awarded the Nobel Prize, I wrote a short piece about unexpected moral frailty. I’m sharing it below. Of course, it would have been different, if I knew then what I know now!

A-Letter-to-My-Daughters-Google-Docs Download

“It’s more like a house”

May 30, 2024 by Carolyne Montgomery

May is short story month. I was celebrating finishing my collection of twelve interlinked contemporary fiction stories—Working title, Watermarked. My main event was sending the query letters to the first round of Canadian agents. “Tick” as we overly task-oriented people might say.

The second most exciting thing, a long-kept secret, May is for Margaret! Margaret Atwood is coming to the Comox Valley. I managed to secure tickets to two events. Stay tuned for a post in June where I’ll share my experience with you.

my photo of poster in Abraxas, the bookstore on Denman Island.

But then Alice Munro died

These events were overshadowed by the passing of dear Alice Munro, one of my short fiction idols. It was time to pause and reflect. To re-read. To appreciate. With the publication of Dear Life in 2011, she warned us that this was her last collection of stories but one could still hope for an interview, some more wisdom or creative output.

The media was full of tributes, accolades, and lists of her favourite stories. I gathered all my books and flicked through them wondering which are my favourites.

The media was full of tributes, accolades, and lists of her favourite stories. I gathered all my books and flicked through them wondering which are my favourites.

my photo

“What is real”

Many times, in various creative writing courses, I’ve been offered her advice to think of the short story as a house, but I’d never seen the entire quote.

It originates in an interview titled “What is real?” from over forty years ago and was published in Making It New: Contemporary Canadian Stories by John Metcalf, originally published by Carswell Legal Publications. Methuen Publishing Ltd. 1982. The gist of the conversation is a response to the constant questioning about how much of her fiction is real (based on actual places, people and events) as opposed to created.

I haven’t read the original in the Metcalf but found it reproduced by this blog. The reference for the reproduction in the blog, Living in the Library World, is Gary Geddes (Editor) The art of Short Fiction. Harper Collins, 1993. And if you are keen, a used library copy of the Metcalf is available on Amazon.

In Dana Gioia and R.S. Gwynn, The Art of the Short Story. Pearson Longman, 2006 “What is Real” is partially reproduced as a craft essay, “How I write short stories.” It follows the 1974 story, “How I Met My Husband.” And further down the rabbit hole, this is attributed to the Metcalf source.

Many of you will recognize John Metcalf as the grandfather of the Canadian short story. His recent book Off the Record is a compilation of craft essays that includes several authors who have inspired my work—Caroline Adderson, Cynthia Flood, Shaena Lambert and Kathy Page.

my photo

“It’s more like a house” An excerpt from “What is real?”

“I will start by explaining how I read stories written by other people… It’s more like a house. Everybody knows what a house does, how it encloses space and makes connections between one enclosed space and another and presents what is outside in a new way. This is the nearest I can come to explaining what a story does for me, and what I want my stories to do for other people. … I’ve got to make, I’ve got to build up, a house, a story, to fit around the indescribable feeling that is the soul of the story…”

The soul of the story. There’s something to think about. And I think that’s why I return to her stories. To feel those indescribable feelings and to examine the craft. “How did she do that?”

A few of my favourite stories

In no particular order:

The Children Stay

Silence

Miles City, Montana

What is remembered

Red Dress – 1946

Wouldn’t an e-bike be great for that trip to Portugal?

October 26, 2023 by Carolyne Montgomery

A few weeks ago, I was part of a group of six cyclists on a self-guided cycling trip in Algarve, Southern Portugal. Why Portugal you ask? It’s been touted as a great tourist destination — naval history, Moorish architecture, seafood, wine (including port) and varied natural beauty all condensed into a country that is one-third the size of Italy or one-half the size of Great Britain.

We settled on the touring company, Algarve Bike Holidays and chose a six-day tour of distances ranging from 40 to 70 km and the biggest day of climbing was 970 metres. Our route was a mixture of shoreline and ascents into the hills to Alte and Monchique.

What were the bike options?

My initial thought was to use their front-suspension touring bike option that was recommended for the mixed surfaces, that I was expecting along the shorelines. The injured knee in May and lack of training forced me to reconsider my bike choice as I paid the uninsurable balance of the trip in late July. Luckily, I did do some decent riding (for me) during August and September.

My e-bike experience prior to the trip was a spin around a parking lot on a buddy’s e-bike. Here in Comox, the e-bike has become commonplace, often mostly replacing the car for riders of all ages. Our friends at Comox Bike Company would be happy to sell me an upper mid-range carbon fibre Specialized road bike format, e-bike for about ten thousand dollars.

The tour company provided us with bikes powered by Bosch drivetrains. Of course, it would have been helpful to read some of this material before we went but…

As we travelled along the various routes and surfaces, our group discussed the Pros and Cons of e-bikes from the perspective of a group whose ages ranged from mid-50s to mid-70s and there was a broad set of athletic interests. One of us is committed to indoor spin classes three times a week and only rides outdoors on bike trips. Another was a former triathlete, IronMan (Person). We all have our shopping lists of various chronic ailments that require creative athleticism.

What I learned on the fly:

Our touring e-bikes were heavy, 25 to 30 kg. If you didn’t pay attention and are used to a light road bike, you would find yourself lunging to stop it from crashing onto the pavement as you fiddled about with your Garmin or phone. The kickstand was useful, possibly essential but then you had to remember that you’d deployed the kick-stand before you started off again. On the plus side, when you got the bike rolling, there was an incredible amount of momentum. Thank goodness for disc brakes.

There was a 5-square digital display on the handlebars depicting the amount of battery power remaining. For some of us, an estimated remaining range in kilometres was shown. Presumably, the scale was linear. This was a source of obsession on the first day as I had no idea how much battery power I was using or what distance the remaining four squares of power would support in terms of distance. I couldn’t find the range meter on my device.

Bosch battery range indicator — *Power and range indicator (Bosch website)*

The on/off control and power level indicator looked similar to this picture. There are five modes: Off, ECO, Tour, Sport, and Turbo each more powerful and using increasing battery power. Our advice during the orientation session was to leave the bike in ECO mode unless more power is needed. The feel of the bike in ECO mode is similar to a self-propelled touring bike, the power counteracting the heaviness.

By the end of the first day — mixed surface (tarmac/sand/hardpack/gravel) of about 62 km along the southern shore of the Algarve — I learned that I was fine in Off most of the time but ECO or Tour was handy to power through segments of soft sand. And I’ll add here that I was on 38 mm extremely knobby tires. The Ria Formosa nature park had frequent views of the Atlantic, the salt pans and various bird life. We saw white flamingos, storks and many other shore birds.

Another PRO of the e-bike was that you can load up the panniers. My pannier might contain all of the following: backup tool kit including the mysterious 15 mm wrench, the bulky and heavy battery charging pack, the power bar for plugging in all the bikes, the backup Garmin navigation device and a rechargeable AA battery system. Plus, my bathing suit. In addition to the grand hotel fancy pool swims, we had a lovely dip in the Atlantic Ocean at Praia da Rocha, the day of our descent from Alte after three pitchers of sangria (one white, two red if I recall correctly) in the delightful beach resort town.

The Recharging Routine

The routine at the end of each day’s ride was to plug in the bikes in the bike rooms of the various hotels and at Alte in the corridors and hotel rooms. This sometimes required creative bike, extension chord and power bar arrangements. My battery recharged from 4 to 5 bars within an hour. No one ran out of battery power while riding despite the two days that were mainly climbing. Theoretically, for touring trips, this means you can plan longer or more difficult days and see more of the country.

Riding Along

For the remaining 5 days, I toddled along in Off and ECO modes with no concerns about running out of battery power or exhaustion of personal energy should the ride get more difficult. For example, the big headwind we encountered as we turned south toward Sagres and the Southern tip of Portugal or unplanned extra kilometres due to dodgy route-finding. I’m thinking of you Hotel Alte Tradition.

It was comforting to know if my knee acted up, I was covered. I learned to treat myself to a few bursts of Tour or Sport on the steeper grades or soft terrain and on one tricky occasion both.

Everyone in the group was able to ride at their preferred personal energy output and use the battery power to stay with the group. The e-bike is a serious leveller for groups of riders with different experiences, fitness levels, abilities and goals. Everybody gets to go on the trip and everybody gets to have fun without being thrashed at the end of the day. This means more energy for port and wine tasting and eating the amazing Portugese tapas, seafood and salads.

So what’s the verdict?

Definitely consider an e-bike if your group has diverse abilities or your fitness is a bit wobbly for the requirements of the planned trip. By adjusting the level of battery support, each rider can still get the level of workout or assistance they want.

Would I rent an e-bike again?

Depends.

(trip photo credits to Alvin Nirenberg)

It’s August and it’s Fire Weather again

August 21, 2023 by Carolyne Montgomery

Hope you’re having a safe summer. It’s hard not to be anxious with these unprecedented fires in Yellowknife, Kelowna and Maui. In May, I was telling just about anyone who would listen to read John Valliant’s Fire Weather. I’ll repeat myself here. Please read this book! Please cooperate with any emergency directives. Read about Britt Wray of Gen Dread further on.

A Busy Six Months

This is my excuse for the extended gap in posting. In mid-July, I wrapped up a virtual manuscript completion course, led by Aislinn Hunter through The Writers Studio at SFU. Along with five other students, we met bi-weekly to review our writing, encourage each other and incorporate teaching points into our revisions.

The group was six professional women—three memoirists and three fiction writers. Ann’s working on the story of a female conductor, Jac, who is balancing the demands of a punishing career in a misogynist environment against the demands of family life. Cate is writing a collection of stories based on the letters and published writings of the late novelist, essayist, and LGBTQ activist Jane Rule.

Alaa is writing a creative non-fiction tribute to mothers in war zones by telling a mother’s story in the context of the Iraqi-Iranian War and subsequent Gulf War. Dani’s memoir recounts the challenges of raising an autistic child in the setting of her own loss of her mother at age ten. Laura’s memoir is a braided story of her life caring and advocating for her handicapped child and her pilgrimage to The Island Walk on PEI to reflect on her experience.

I entered the course with a collection of related short stories of varying quality that I’d written over the last four years. I’d worked on four of them previously with the guidance of Traci Skuce, a Comox Valley writer. (“The Road Trip”, “The Hummingbird” and early versions of “Untethered” and “Saving Things”)

With Aislinn’s inciteful comments and frame working of the craft. We discussed the optimum POV, clear and adequate signposting, and the balance between the backstory and the front story. I improved specificity and character arcs—even the dog needs a character arc! The deadlines motivated me to revisit the stories that were waiting patiently for a refreshed and more experienced writer to revise them. Every story was improved.

They say (I don’t know who said this originally but it was recently repeated to me by Anosh Irani at last year’s DIRWF) a short story is like a place on a river, there is an upstream and a downstream to it, the time before the story and the time after it. The creative challenge is to know when to start and stop your short story. I’ve spent the last four years hanging out with this family and I think I’m ready to let them go. Three of my stories have already gone out into the world and with a little more perseverance and luck I’m hoping the collection will find a publisher. My current step is learning how to find an editor.

I haven’t chosen a book title. Surfacing is already taken! An author recommended that I try ChatGPT. Well, there’s an adventure. I signed up and gave the bot some keywords or asked a question. “Is the Rules of Flotation a good book title?” I tried water and adversity and so on but the whole thing was very uninspiring.

I’m looking forward to seeing this collection published and sharing it with you. In the meantime, you can read early versions or excerpts of some stories here.

Denman Island Readers and Writers Festival

In July, I attended the excellent Denman Island Readers and Writers Festival. I met Britt Wray, the Author of Generation Dread—Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Anxiety. Her Substack Gen Dread is aimed at finding “community, comfort and practical coping and acting strategies.”

Tsering Yangzom Lama, author of We Measure the Earth With Our Bodies gave a revision workshop. I learned about the American Korean writer, Matthew Salesses’ book, Craft in the Real World. He challenges the structure of traditional workshopping structure and the implicit and explicit cultural expectations of these encounters. He describes alternate formats where the dynamic remains writer focused instead of reviewer-focused. His book should be mandatory reading for anyone supervising or participating in the workshopping process. I’m hoping to incorporate some of his suggestions in the writing circle I’m leading this fall with the Federation of BC Writers. Check out the groups that are offered here. Registration opens on Sept 13^th.

What am I reading?

I’ve been reading a selected collection of autobiographical short stories, This Time, That Place by Clark Blaise. “Most novels are watery, diluted, and bloated. They do not have anything like the richness of a short story.” “I’ve always favoured the short story for its energy, a result of its confinement, and for the fact that its length reflects the author’s ability to hold it entirely in his/her head like a musical note.” There is a wonderful forward by Margaret Atwood.

So good-bye for now and I apologize for no photos in the post.