“The Beautiful Place”
Written by Lee Gowan
Published by Thistledown Press
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$24.95
ISBN 978-1-77187-208-9
Saskatchewan born-and-raised writer Lee Gowan has penned a thick new novel—The Beautiful Place—and it’s a beautiful thing. Gowan’s three previous novels have garnered much attention (Make Believe Love was shortlisted for Ontario’s Trillium Award), and his screenplay, Paris or Somewhere, was nominated for a Gemini Award. Currently the Program Director of the Creative Writing and Business Communications department at the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies, this award-winning author’s giving readers something completely different with The Beautiful Place, which delves into the sci-fi world of cryonics; the realistic world of failed marriages, 21st Century parenting, and dementia; and the ever-precarious world of art and art-making.
What Gowan’s done here is ingenious: he’s imagined an ongoing life for Philip Bentley, Sinclair Ross’s protagonist in As for Me and My House. Gowan’s tri-provincial sequel to that prairie classic’s told from the perspective of the minister-turned-artist’s grandson, also known as Bentley. The younger Bentley—a fired, semi-suicidal cryonics salesman, writer, and father of two daughters from different wives—is approached by a beguiling woman named Mary Abraham who “met Jesus in a dream and walked with him to a desert well” and “met Buddha under a tree by a river.”
Abraham’s also dreamed about the younger Bentley, and she’s on a mission: as he’s one of few who know where the cryonics company, Argyle, keeps the frozen bodies of the deceased, he must reveal this location so that she can extract her late husband’s disembodied head, because he posthumously told her that he “wished to be buried and that it was [her] duty to get him underground.” The younger Bentley must also try to appease his wise-cracking ex-wife and finance their rebellious 23-year-old daughter’s New York art school, plus figure out his own place in the world as the grandson of a famous painter (whose body’s also in The Beautiful Place). Bentley himself doesn’t believe in cryonics—“a longshot gamble at eternal life”—even though he was Argyle’s sales manager.
It’s complicated, as they say, but, Gowan adeptly directs this cast of disparate characters with their strange plights, and the often witty dialogue reveals why he’s such a revered writer. Upon the birth of a daughter, Bentley’s wife says: “She looks like a live roast.” Another character says “urologists always have such lovely personalities.” Speaking of his wife’s TV-star ex, the protagonist says: “He wishes he were indigenous; he wishes he were gay.” And it’s a hoot to read that Philip Bentley lived beyond Ross’s novel and became an artist with “pictures hanging in the Vancouver Art Gallery next to Emily Carr.”
This book is a complex weaving of the real and the impossible, of hope and grief, and of dreams and hard realities. Though the protagonist believes that “The point of existence … was to vanish with as little trace as possible. Stay out of the frame,” this shimmering and beautifully-organized novel will ensure that its author, Lee Gowan, will not disappear within the lexicon of Canadian literary writers.
THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL
BOOKSTORE OR FROM THE SASKATCHEWAN PUBLISHERS GROUP WWW.SKBOOKS.COM
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“Only If We’re Caught”
Written by Theressa Slind
Published by Thistledown Press
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$25.95
ISBN 9-781771-872119
In the opening paragraph of Only If We’re Caught, the debut short story collection by Saskatoon writer (and children’s librarian) Theressa Slind, readers are viscerally transported to Aspen Grove, a seniors’ residence—where the hallway “is painted the colour of cookie dough”—and into the mind of Parkinson’s-afflicted protagonist Margaret, who can no longer speak. We soon learn that Margaret’s not just any ninety-three-year-old nursing home resident with a “porous-boned spine curling in on itself” … she’s also telepathically communicating with a visiting child.
This bizarre circumstance is typical of the tales in Slind’s collection of fifteen stories, some of which previously appeared in literary journals. The borders of normalcy are blurred, and that’s what makes this collection stand out. Perhaps the finest example of this is “Amygdule,” about a funeral director, Ben, who “commune[s] with ghosts.” Ben has a crush on his employee, Alice, who delivers a fountain of black humour. She “arrives in an eddy of formaldehyde,” and says things like “I like my men ripe” and “Back to work. Mrs. Chan isn’t going to embalm herself.” This story is also about a treasure hunt, geology, a fatal accident, and loneliness.
The common thread between Slind’s characters is that they all have crosses to bear. Pregnant teen Natalie had wanted to go to medical school: “But by the time she’d raised the kid and Andy, well, did they even let you into medical school past thirty?” And Toba, a children’s librarian whose only child “climbed a neighbour’s two-storey aluminum ladder, fell, and died.” After the tragedy, guilt-and grief-ridden Toba takes to hiding behind a hare mask (“This is no Easter Bunny”), both inside the library and out. When she’s asked to do a TV interview on a sexual health information fair—titled “Sex in the Library”—the now semi-famous (thanks to her Twitter account, “@Hareofthefields,” and Youtube) librarian wears the mask. The interviewer metaphorically traps her with his question: “Tell me, Bunny, what’s with the mask? Let’s get to the bottom of this. What are you hiding?”
Readers cannot guess which direction Slind’s going to take them in this original short story collection, and that’s a good thing. Some of the situations made this reader squirm, like realtor and father Martin Woodrow’s uncomfortable reality in the story “Family Style”. Woodrow and his wife are about to have dinner with their daughter Amanda and her fiancé in a Calgary restaurant … and the fiancé is Martin’s former colleague, Bob, “who’d driven Amanda home from play dates with his own daughter, Brandi”. We really get the sense of Martin’s despair: a testament to Slind’s skill.
The author also slings several comical similes and metaphors, ie: Ruth “smelled like scented maxi-pads,” and grieving parents Alex and Trudy, Canadians travelling in Europe: “packed their grief, carry-on and oversized, and it bumps along behind them over the old cobblestones.”
These edgy, slick and diverse short stories feature characters in life-changing moments. Slind’s is a welcome new voice on the map of Saskatchewan literature.
THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM THE SASKATCHEWAN PUBLISHERS GROUP WWW.SKBOOKS.COM
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"Don’t They KICK When You Do That? Stories of a Prairie Veterinarian"\
Written by Dr. Gary Hoium
Published by DriverWorks Ink
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$19.95
ISBN 9-781927-570746
While conducting author visits in schools over the decades, I’d often ask students what they wanted to be when they grew up, and, invariably, veterinarian was a top response. I understand that. Who doesn’t love animals? Interestingly, Dr. Gary Hoium—veterinarian and author of Don’t They KICK When You Do That? Stories of a Prairie Veterinarian—never intended to become a vet. It was “never a goal or an ambition of mine while I was growing up in rural Saskatchewan,” he explains in his just-published collection of experiences as a mixed-animal veterinarian and clinic owner in Weyburn. Instead, Dr. Hoium had his hopes set on an NHL career, but when that and medical school admission attempts failed, he applied to the Western College of Veterinary Medicine and was soon on his way to becoming a vet for the next 36 years.
His conversational stories about animal patients (and their humans) are shared over 41 short chapters, many of them humourous. The cover image of this conversationally-toned book shows a smiling Dr. Hoium at work: left hand holding up a cow’s tail while his right arm’s disappeared “up the south end” of the animal. This in-the-field photo—and that impish grin—set the book’s light tenor.
A few weeks after graduating from the WCVM, Dr. Hoium was already working for a Weyburn veterinary practice, and one of the first calls was to treat a sick snake: Dr. Houim’s not a fan of snakes. Another early call concerned the delivery of twin calves. An emergency C-section was performed, and Dr. Hoium and a fellow vet discovered that the calves were conjoined at their sternums. He writes: “ … it sure made for an unceremonious welcome to the real world for this neophyte veterinarian.”
The author’s often self-deprecating: he alludes to some of his miscues as well as his successes, like the time he thought he was spaying a cat and “spent the better part of two minutes fishing with [his] special surgical spay hook in the abdominal cavity” before he learned the cat was male.
This witty vet is highly entertaining,
and I imagine he’s been sharing these tales with receptive audiences for years.
The disparate anecdotes provide a close inspection of a rural veterinary
practice and some smalltown characters, like nefarious Terry, the bouvier
des Flandres’ dog-owner who had “sticky fingers,” was frequently drunk, and
referred to Dr. Hoium as “bro”.
There are strange situations aplenty. A cat that’s gorged on grasshopper parts; a farmer who kept a calf whose feet had frozen and fell off (“because she seemed so healthy, we decided to keep her”); untangling a clump of tail-tied grey fox squirrels in a Weyburn parking lot; a $25,000 ostrich with a mangled leg; a cat with “a thistle in his pistol”; and the vet’s unforgettable electric fence jolts … and I’m not even going to get into the sheltie collie’s rectal issue.
But back to that cover image. Do they kick? Read the book, and you’ll find out.
THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL
BOOKSTORE OR FROM WWW.SKBOOKS.COM
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“Grandpa’s Garage”
Written by Amber Antymniuk
Published by Blow Creative Arts
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$22.00
ISBN 9-781999-546212
I’ve noticed that an increasing number of children’s authors—and particularly new writers—are opting to self-publish. Alternately, they could wait for months to hear back from a trade publisher regarding whether a book will be accepted for publication, then wait for up to several years (I’m speaking from experience: I had a book accepted in 2010 and released in 2020) for that book to hit the shelves. When one possesses artistic talent as well as literary talent, it makes especially good sense to self-publish, and that’s precisely what Saskatchewan creator and Arts Education teacher Amber Antymniuk did with Grandpa’s Garage.
Antymniuk’s second book for young readers (or listeners) explores the wonderfully diverse items that appear in “Grandpa’s Garage,” and each page features rhyming text in a large font, an appealing watercolour illustration, and enough white space to make the words and images pop. Antymniuk mostly makes it personal, describing things that I expect actually do reside in a relative’s garage, like “farm cats,” “An old radio tuned to the local station” and “a stack of manuals and a bent fishing fly,” but near the end she writes “Whether Grandpa’s Garage is a shop or a shed. Or a room beneath the stairs nearly bumping your head.” This transition away from the personal makes the story inclusive: anyone who has a grandfather (or grandfather-figure) in their life with a specific place where items are stored and repaired can imagine the interior of their own special person’s shop, shed or garage, and experience the warmth and love within that relationship.
I appreciate how Antymniuk used the often gentle and tender medium of watercolour to portray items some might not consider paint-worthy, ie: the business end of a hammer, the rusty pail, a “hanging trouble light” and a power drill. Lovely contrast.
Antymniuk grew up near Tisdale, SK, and now lives and parents in Saskatoon. Her publishing moniker, Blow Creative Arts, is an homage to her grandparents and their children, all of whom “have had a lasting impact on the community.” As the author publishes under her married name, she’s chosen to honour her first family in this unique and lovely way. See www.blowcreativearts.ca .
THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM THE SASKATCHEWAN PUBLISHERS GROUP WWW.SKBOOKS.COM
"Stories from the Churchill”
Written by Ric Driediger, with Illustrations
by Paul Mason
Published by Your Nickel’s Worth
Publishing
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$24.95
ISBN 9-781988-783727
Ric Driediger’s positively reverent when he writes about the beauty and challenges inherent in canoeing Saskatchewan’s vast northern waterways. The owner/operator of Churchill River Canoe Outfitters in Missinipe, SK may already be known to readers—and fellow canoeists—through his first book, Paddling Northern Saskatchewan: A Guide to 80 Canoe Routes. Now this knowledgeable paddler has penned Stories from the Churchill, and he describes it as “the book [he] wanted to write” whereas the earlier book was the one he “needed” to write. There’s a difference. What comes through the page is that Driediger’s doing exactly what he was meant to, both professionally and personally, and he knows just how fortunate he is.
Even if you never intend to canoe across a morning-calm lake, brave big-lake wind and river rapids, portage through “swampy muskeg,” lose yourself in the boreal wilderness, “go solo” (“a spiritual experience”), or winter camp, this book will inform and entertain you. It’s well-written in a conversational tone, and includes anecdotes from Driediger’s own adventures and stories from his clients’ and staff’s experiences, too.
Driediger’s a natural storyteller, and in this softcover with 20 stand-alone chapters—and occasional cartoon illustrations by another canoeing aficionado, the author’s longtime friend, Paul Mason—readers are privy to a canoe-seat view through what the author describes as the best canoe routes in the world, but this is more than a book about canoeing: Dreidiger also shares his “philosophy of life” and his “understanding of the importance of experiencing wilderness.”
His introduction to canoeing began in 1972, just after high school graduation. He and his cousin joined a group of young adults who got a “crash course in canoeing and canoe tripping” from farmer/canoe instructor LaVerne Jantz, and in one day they went “from never having paddled to running rapids.” During that initial trip on the Churchill, Driediger “absolutely fell in love with the rock shoreline, with the complexity of the lakes, with the moss in the forest, with the knowledge that just over the hill another lake waited.”
One intriguing chapter concerns the writer’s preparations for and experiences with winter camping on the Churchill River. He awoke one morning—it was -54 degrees Celsius—unable to put his pants on: they were “flat, frozen solid.” He and his companions used their axe “to chop pieces of peanut butter, jam, honey, and chocolate,” and they “ate as [they] walked” because it was too cold to stop.
In another chapter, Driediger’s created a fictional story to explain the discovery of a sewing machine in the depths of a lake. He demonstrates how canoeing teaches humility and canoe groups form lifelong bonds. There also harrowing anecdotes about being stuck in a rapidly-filling culvert; 140 km hour winds and 1.5 metre waves; fatal lightning strikes; and drownings. Still: “Driving on the highway is far more dangerous.”
Canoeing romances, cross-continent adventurers, respect for First Nations’ neighbours and the land, and the history of Churchill River Canoe Outfitters … Driediger’s book is a compendium of captivating stories.
THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM WWW.SKBOOKS.COM
