"Wanderlust: Stories on the Move"
Anthology edited by Byrna Barclay
Published by Thistledown Press
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$20.00
ISBN 978-1-77187-135-8
How does a book idea begin? Wanderlust: Stories on the Move started
when seven reputable Saskatchewan writers enjoyed a barbeque together. In her
introduction, editor Byrna Barclay explains that the idea for this anthology was
spawned when Shelley Banks expressed a desire to tour and read with her fellow
prose-writing diners at a Regina barbecue. Barclay compiled and edited the
work, and though no theme was suggested, she found that "in every story a
person embarks on a journey of discovery". Along with Banks and Barclay, Brenda
Niskala, Linda Biasotto, James Trettwer, Kelly-Anne Riess, and Annette Bower share
imaginative journeys, and the result's a literary road trip that takes readers
to places near and far, real and imagined.
Niskala transports readers to a Norse
trading voyage in 1065 in her exciting novel-in-progress, "Pirates of the
Heart," and Biasotto's favoured Italian locales. Trettwer takes us to a
fictitious potash company, and Riess has contributed a moving novel chapter about
a twenty-one-year-old who's never been kissed, and is leaving Saskatchewan for
the first time. "Tara had never seen a moose before or a bear, let alone
any mountains, except, of course, on TV." Will Jasper deliver the joy
she's been missing? Will the attractive stranger who's taken the bus seat beside
her?
Each story or novel excerpt possesses its
own charms. I give the Menacing Mood Award to Biasotto, for "The Virgin in
the Grotto," with its eerie tone and flirtation with matricide: "The
only sound from her mother's room is the fan dragging the air in one sustained
breath". Niskala wins Best Action-Adventure Award, for her sterling
sword-fight scenes. Barclay's gem is the long story "Jigger," which
melds Saskatchewan history – the Depression, the Regina Riot, a train-riding
hobo, and the Weyburn Psychiatric Hospital – and a tender tale about first love:
she receives the Most Effective Storytelling Award. I quickly warmed to
Trettwer's downwardly-mobile character, Miller - who drinks himself into
oblivion and forgets his daughter's birthday: Realistic Characterization Of A Contemporary
Character Award. Banks easily takes the Local Colour Award, with her excellent
descriptions of smalltown Saskatchewan, ie: "We drive past the lot where
the hardware store once stood, and the rows of Manitoba maples that shaded the
long-demolished school and playground, now covered in thistles." (Big
points, too, for her "rusted advertising sign for a forgotten brand of
engine oil".) Riess's single contribution, "Bus Ride," earns the
Reader Empathy For A Character Award, and Bower, in her piece about aging women
looking out for each other, secures the Dark Humour Award.
Linda Biasotto hosted the barbeque
where it all began, and she deserves mention for one of the finest images. In
"Flying," her teen protagonist describes a veranda at a rich friend's
home as "a white barge ready to detach and float across the new
lawn". I love it when a writer helps me to see the ordinary in a brand new
way, and when a group of writers brainstorm an idea and it comes – beautifully,
deliciously - to fruition.
THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL
BOOKSTORE OR FROM WWW.SKBOOKS.COM
__________
“Double Exposure”
by Pat Krause
published by Burton House Books
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$20.00
ISBN 9-780994-866936
Pat Krause was a founding member of the
venerable Saskatchewan Writers Guild, a short story writer and memoirist, and a
longtime resident of Regina. Krause died in 2015 but her literary legacy
continues with Double Exposure, a novella
and new short stories, recently published by Burton House Books.
Double
Exposure is a family affair, in more ways than
one. Pat Krause penned the stories, Barbara Krause was responsible for the
cover and interior artwork, and the book opens with a quote from a poem by
Pat's daughter, Judith Krause. Titled "The Women in the Family," the
poetic excerpt's a fitting introduction to this work that explores the dynamics
between generations of female family members and between the north
(Saskatchewan) and the south (Alabama, where the characters and the author both
lived), and both realistically and rompishly documents the vagaries of aging
and the grief that accompanies the final tolling of the bell.
The book's eccentric and outspoken
characters include outrageous Gran Tiss, who had the nerve to up and die on the
eve of her 100th birthday; her daughter Vee, who's horrified that the night she
passed her mother was kicking her heels up at the January Jubilee in the Odd
Fellows Hall; her granddaughter (and novella narrator) Prentice, a
self-professed hypochondriac in Indian Head; and the omnipresent Lusa – Tiss's superstitious
nursemaid and the family's longtime nanny, who came north with them from
Tuscaloosa. Lusa describes a scene from the dance: "[Gran Tiss] done took
up the vegetable tray. Plopped a heap of carrot sticks and celery and broccoli
and cauliflower on top of it and rhumba-ed round the hall like the Brazilian
Bombshell!" This quote illustrates both Tiss's personality and Lusa's
voice, and indeed, strong voices are what Krause excels at in her
rich-in-dialogue novella, "Southern Relations," which makes up more
than half the book.
In a tragi-comedy of errors, guests
from near and far arrive for the birthday party only to learn that they've
arrived to a wake rather than a fiesta, and the birthday gal is "laid out
on the living room right there on the chesterfield!" A pair of wig-adorned
senior twins, "The Ladybugs," provide entertainment in the form of
sitting and tap-dancing (with shoes on their hands), and afterward everyone
physically able to "boogied up to the attic" to take home Gran Tiss
souvenirs, including a sugar cane knife, and "The complete set of Sherlock
Homes".
Krause's writing chops also make their
appearance in wintery descriptions. "Hoarfrost turned the spruce trees
into herringbone designs raked into the sky," she writes in the novella,
and in the final story, "Last Dance," the narrator remembers when she
was a child and "scratched a poem in frost on [her] bedroom window, with
the end of a bobby-pin".
In an afterword, Burton House's Byrna
Barclay writes that during Krause's final days she was living in the Gardner
Park Care Home, and "she slept in a geri-chair, using her bed to sort new
stories". That's dedication. And that was Pat Krause.
THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL
BOOKSTORE OR FROM THE SASKATCHEWAN PUBLISHERS GROUP WWW.SKBOOKS.COM
__________
“Beethoven”
by Jim McLean
published by Burton House Books
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$20.00
ISBN 9-780994-866929
Moose Jaw's Jim McLean is all over the
place - in a good way. He wrote about
the CPR in his first book, Secret Life of
Railroaders; about growing up in Saskatchewan in Nineteen Fifty-Seven; and he co-authored Wildflowers Across the Prairies. Now he's turned his poetic
attention to that singular composer, Beethoven. Indeed, Beethoven is the title of McLean's third solo publication in an
over thirty-year span; surely a distinguished career with Canadian Pacific
Railway and Transport Canada had much to do with the lapses between books.
Beethoven
is a lively collection of poems presented in several
invented voices, including the composer's, the voices of the women in his life
- though he's a "poor incompetent/Don
Juan"- and that of Beethoven's tyrannical father, but one of the
strongest pieces, "On His Deafness," concerns an anecdote about
McLean's own aging father, whom the poet is trying to impress with garden
"Brussels sprouts/big as fists
tenderly/coaxed from the hard/prairie earth" and a well-heeled
garage. Silent and apparently nonplussed, the elder man walks away,
"humming softly to himself/off key …" This clever merging of disparate
elements - ie: nature - with musical references is maintained throughout the
book.
In "Scene by the Brook (Symphony No. 6 in F (Pastorale)), the
poet provides the music of a prairie afternoon, including "scolding
sparrows the meadowlark's song always
new," and grasshoppers that "chew through the afternoon" beside
the rest of the insect "orchestra". McLean brilliantly writes of
"frogs singing from the sloughs/a thousand melancholy cellos".
There's much variety here, including a
poem in German (translated by the book's editor, Harold Rhenisch); a sestina;
and a humorous long poem in which the poet talks directly to Beethoven, who
appears to him in an attic room in Calgary's Palliser Hotel. The book's also
scored with McLean's simple but impressive illustrations.
Kudos to the poet for his daring,
self-deprecating poem "Alfred Brendel at the Clavier," in which the
poet questions his own ability, and, meta-fiction style, inserts "I tried
to get that into a poem/but it never fit" and "Tonight while writing this I learned/the plural of opus is opera."
McLean claims that he "had the
audacity" to write about Beethoven because of his ability – and anyone
else's – to appreciate "beautiful, powerful music". He internalizes
and translates the music, convincing the reader that he does share an intimate
connection with Beethoven. McLean writes "the reason I mention Beethoven's
Fourth Piano Concerto/is that he wrote it for me/one cold homesick night/in
Winnipeg."
Clearly much research went into this
book, but research aside, the poet again wrestles with his nerve in writing
about Beethoven, and perhaps the finest poem-within-a-poem (it's also William
Carlos Williams-esque) is this imagistic shorty:
All I know
is that the Fifth Symphony is playing
smoke rising from chimneys
under a full moon
at thirty below
The egotistical composer's great
repertoire provided all the inspiration the prairie poet (and railwayman)
required to wield his pen, and, as happens with talented conductors, fine songs
are the result.
THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL
BOOKSTORE OR FROM THE SASKATCHEWAN PUBLISHERS GROUP WWW.SKBOOKS.COM
