Special for My Sister, Part One

    Hello.  Yes.  You. Over there.  My faithful readers.  Hi. I'm back.

What?  Where have I been?  Oh yes.  It wasn't a planned absence.  It was a cumulation of everything this year, and especially, what my sister and her family have been going through. I suddenly couldn't say anything.  Not until now.

    My sister's son, my nephew Mathew, has Ewing's Sarcoma.  It's a rare form of bone cancer.  It hits young people and children only.  My nephew is 20.  One day last winter he started complaining that he had a pain in his leg.  It took 5 months and many, many trips to the ER and the doctor's before finally, the tumor was found, in June.  Then two months to get the diagnosis of what kind of cancer it was.  It is in his spine. It is aggressive. The treatment finally began in September.  And the very best news was received last week:  the tumor has shrunk by one third.

This is my Christmas present, and my sister's, and brother-in-law's, and niece's. And most especially my nephew's. This is the best news, and the only thing we all really wanted for Christmas. So thank you to the doctors, nurses, specialists, family and friends who are in New Brunswick where my sister lives, everyone helping in big ways and the small.  The cancer treatment lasts a year, so there is a long road ahead.  There is much needed light now on this road.

My sister is detailing Mathew's treatment on her blog over at patriciaspage.wordpress.com. Her hope is that as they go through the treatment with Mathew, the things he goes through, the mistakes and the successes, can/will help someone else who has this rare type of cancer.  If you know someone who has it, or has had it, please get in touch with her, and let her know what you are going through.  Sharing helps lighten the burden, especially in this long tough fight.

The news is so good, so wonderful, that my sister sent me a text earlier this week and asked me to get back on my blog and start posting about books so she could know what to read next. 

Her wish is my command.  So this is for you, sis.  Love you very much.

Susan's books of the year, Part one. 

I have been a bad blogger.  I have tried to blog about books I read and enjoyed, especially those I loved.  And yet, many of my favourites from this year somehow I missed!!  I think I was saving them for the special I-just-loved-this-book-post, so please consider if I write a review about a book now here in  this post and the next one (planned for tomorrow), as the post I would have done back then.

Books I Loved:

Of Blood and Honey - Stina Leicht.  I didn't post about this one, and this is a book that deserves it's on post. It is a fantasy about fairies, but not those fairies.  Faeries.  The dark and dangerous kind.  In this book, book one, Liam is growing up in 1970's war torn Derry, Northern Ireland.  He is caught in the Troubles, only his danger is coming from a small man in a red cap with pointed teeth.  Every time Liam sees him, trouble comes and he is in danger. Liam grew up a Catholic family, and his mother eventually reveals that his father is one of the Fallen, a man from ancient Irish myth, one of the main central figures of Irish myth. The war Liam is caught up in doesn't just involve the Protestants or the Catholics, but the Irish faeries, too.  Very different, and very good.  I really enjoyed this one, though a warning that it is dark, very dark, but then the Troubles were a terrible time, too. I like the extra dimension of the myths wandering in the pages, and trying to figure out which is which.

A Dying Fall - Elly Griffiths.  The most recent book in the Ruth Galloway series, set in Norfolk, England.  She is an archeologist,  and in this one she is called to Blackpool to help identify some bones that may or may not be old, or even ancient, and of great importance: are they the bones of King Arthur?  As preposterous as that sounds, it has to be investigated, so off she goes.  Blackpool is also the family home of Nelson, the police chief she has a daughter with.  He is married to someone else, and in this book, some of the characters start to put the pieces together.  I really enjoyed the meetings Ruth has with Nelson's mother and sister, and how Cathbad ends up there too.  This is a brilliant mystery series, with the crimes always believable, and for sad reasons, as they are in real life.  Ruth is fun, and engaging, and hilarious as she recounts why she feels like she can't manage being a single mother and working at the same time.  Often thoughts I have, and I am married, but balancing work and children is difficult. Highly recommended as a thoroughly entertaining mystery series.  I love how she writes about the sea, too, and the wind and the sky, in the marsh where Ruth lives.

The Vampire Tapestry - Suzy Charnas McKee - I reviewed the book, here.  It is one of the best vampire novels.  I have had most of the year to let it sink in, and I really like how we get the different perspectives in this book through the three linked stories.  He is evil, ruthless, but it is all to survive.  Can we blame him?  He simply is. 

The Beautiful Mystery - Louise Penny.  Outstanding.  I have a confession to make.  For a long time in my life, I have been fascinated by monasteries and retreats that ordinary people can make there.  The idea of two or three blissful weeks by myself, alone, in silence, has always called to me.  So, this summer, I took three weeks by myself when my family went to England to visit my husband's family.  I really needed the silence.  And since then, I have made a point to be more still, to find a time in the day when I sit, and be quiet.  It is amazing how powerful this is. And I realized I don't have to go to a monastery to find it.  I can find it in my own home.  So when I saw that the second to latest in the Armand Gamache series was set in a monastery, I was eager to read this mystery.  And it doesn't disappoint.  It was everything I wanted, in a mystery set in a monastery.  The monks in this book are of a group that were being hunted by the pope back in the 17th century for being heretics.  They fled to the wilderness of the province of Quebec, and remained hidden there for centuries.  Until one enterprising monk taped their music, and in the craze for Gregorian chants that really swept the world in the 1980's and 90's, these monks sent their tape out and it became a huge hit.  Suddenly, they were discovered.  And ordinary people came by the hundreds to seek them out. What does sudden fame and wealth do to a monastery that has no wealth and needed to remain hidden?  Why was the music sent out?  There is quite a bit about music in this book. Penny makes it an integral part of the monastery - all the monks who are there, are chosen for their voices.  This book is about harmony, and how each part fits into the whole, in the community and in the music.  It's wonderful writing.  When one monk is discovered dead in his garden, Armand Gamache as the head of the Surete de Quebec is called to investigate, along with his trusted second in command, Guy Beauvoir.  And in the secluded setting of the northern Quebec woods, the monastery on a lake, a beautiful setting, in the deep silence of the woods, secrets are revealed that change not just the future of the monastery, but also the lives of Gamache and Beauvoir, forever.

The Bone People - Keri Hulme.  Reviewed here.  I still feel the same way about this novel.  Amazing, brutal, beautiful, breathtakingly sad and poetic and haunting.

Some Kind of Fairy Tale - Graham Joyce.  What happens when you have a sister who disappeared one day, and 20 years later she comes back?  Where was she?  And then she says that she went away, taken by a fairy.  Would you believe her?  In this story, this is what happened to Tara Martin, and her brother Peter is the one who has had to hold the family together in the 20 years since.  When she walks back into their lives, 20 years has gone by.  Everything has changed.  For her, it has only been a year or so.  Not 20.  There is something unworldly about her, something that being in fairyland has done to her.  It's an odd story, about the effects her disappearance has had on her, and what her coming back does to them.  She is not the same, and nothing can be the same as it was. The frightening thing is that the fairies want the girls to go with them - in this story, as in the fairy story Tam Lin, it is girls the fairies want, to share their country with.  Tara hasn't come alone, the fairies didn't want to let her go.  The most unsettling part?  The fairies want young girls to go with them.  We meet another character who has been taken by the fairies, and the book ends with the threat of the fairies already laying their charms on another character.  Be careful of strangers, be careful in the woods, don't go in the woods alone......and you can't go home again.  Haunting and gentle, sweet, and melancholic.  This is what fairies are, and what they do.  It's not for children though, this is an adult fairy story. Effectively creepy and dangerous, which is what faeries really are, even if enchanting too.

Wide Open - Deborah Coates. Reviewed here.  I really like the tone of this debut mystery, and the main character herself.  I don't particularly like the ending, though the setting - South Dakota - and the characters are interesting, and the plot - that she can see ghosts - has a fresh air about it.  I haven't picked the second one up yet, but will be in the new year. 

The Burning - Jane Casey - also in the same review above.  I really want to read more in this series.  Bad me for not picking more of this series up this year.  Writing this post is making me realize how much I haven't followed up in mystery series yet!!!!
.

Despite my silence on here, I have been reading as much as I can this year.  The last two weeks I haven't been able to read anything.  Nothing seemed right. I tried three books, mostly science fiction so I could read for Carl's challenge, but nothing held my attention.  The night before last, I might have found the right one:  Ship of Magic by Robin Hobb.  I'll know more later today and tomorrow.  We are expecting freezing rain for much of the day tomorrow, after receiving close to 20cm of snow through the day yesterday.  Once I get my turkey for Christmas dinner, I plan to stay in and read.  The second best Christmas present for me.

Tomorrow:  Part Two of my books of the year.

The Bone People - Keri Hulme - an extraordinary novel

    You know how you go into a bookstore, looking for something, you're not sure what?  And you ask quietly to the book goddess, "help me find something that will surprise me with how good it is," as you wander the shelves?  That happened to me a week ago.  I went into the bookstore, my little indie book store left on the west side of town, Perfect Books (once long ago I worked here for two months, before I got another job with more hours).  And this book, which  Chris at Stuff Dreams are Made Of has made mention countless times as one of his favourites, was there.  So being curious, and remembering Chris loves this book,  I picked it up.  I had picked it up a few times before, but wasn't ready for it then.  This time, I read a few lines. And then a few more.  And then several pages.  And then I had to buy it. (PS.  Go right to where the story begins, the first two pages won't make sense until after you've read the book. Trust me.)
                                         

In the meantime I read Doctor Sleep, and it was so good (review will follow!) that I carried around The Bone People for a few days before I could begin it.  I started seriously reading it Thursday, stayed up until 3 am on Friday night, and finished it yesterday afternoon.  I'm so glad I could read it at home, because two thirds of the way through I was crying so hard that I couldn't see the pages.  "Crying my eyes out" is the phrase I said to myself as I wept over the pages.  It's been a long time since I cried this hard over a book.

The Bone People is about Kerewin Holmes, a reclusive artist hiding away from the world in a tower she has built, and the urchin who steals into her home, Simon, and his foster-father Joe Gillayley.   It is a retelling of the timeless tale of how a curmudgeon has their heart healed by an orphan child.....but it's much more, much richer than that.  There is Maori myth and legend woven into this grand novel.  There is most of all, love, and the idea of what makes a family. Each of the three is carrying a great burden, that makes it too easy for them to react in hurt when they perceive rejection.  But what makes this novel so great, is the determination they each find as they realize that they were made for one another.  They are the true family they each were seeking.  It's a beautiful novel, and so evocative, so real, that for me Kerewin Holmes and Joe and Simon Gillayley are alive somewhere in this world.  The novel is set in New Zealand, and I have come out of this book feeling like I know a little bit about how the land feels, what it is like to live there.  Especially, the ocean.  Kerewin the artist lives the by sea, and fishes a lot.  Simon came from the sea, washed in on a terrible storm, and mute, so no one knows who he belongs too.  And for Joe the full Maori, who takes in Simon,  the sea is where their people originated from, where life has its source.  The sea comes alive in this book, the many colours it has, the shades and the moods, the wind, the sky, the world that Kerewin and Simon and Joe live in.  I could feel the cold, the sea, I could hear the waves, see the different light in the sky depending on when Kerewin is looking at it. I could feel their emotions, and sympathize with each character even though they did things that were mean, even cruel.  One of the great wonders of this book is that despite the terrible act it the center of it, the revelation of abuse, I kept reading because even as I despised the act, I liked the characters so much.  And the characters struggle with it too, they don't hide from it. 

 There is something about this book that made me feel like I was right there, in the story somehow, intensely involved in it.  There is a timeless quality to it, so that it could be anytime this past century.   The story is woven in such a way that the three together do go together, and I got to see how they are drawn to one another, how they see what they love in one another.  I saw their inner thoughts revealed, that bares the soul of these characters to us, and makes it a story that wraps itself around me, stealing into my own heart and soul.

I keep wondering what Kerewin is doing now, and how Simon is, how happy he is.  They seem like real people and ought to be alive somewhere in New Zealand.  Like we have dipped into this year in their lives, but they have gone on.  Which is the best kind of story.   Love, and family, and guilt, and terror, and hurt, and healing.  This book will break your heart, it broke mine, it broke me open, and then pulled me back together again just like it did for each of the three characters.  There is myth and magic here too, of a kind that makes the reader realize that sometimes, there is forgiveness, here, and now, not in some afterlife.

It's wonderful.  It's beautiful.  It has the most exquisite use of language that I have seen in a novel in a long time:  Keri Hulme made words go together: stonegreyblue, sneakthievery, gentlefingered, laughingeyed, that are right.  They make sense, in this book.  As if putting these words together, makes the world seem new, and a little strange, so the events in this story are like a story told around a fire.  A rhythm, a song, a creation myth, for the beginning and the ending, of the family.   The words like this are like poetry, without being poetry, in the novel. So the book is about a new way of seeing things. It's magical and marvelous and grounded in reality - all the myth I am talking about, isn't the center of the story, it lurks in the background, breaking in only when the characters are completely broken down also.  Which is when myth can come in, when people are open to the numinous to come into their lives.  Which makes this is a wise novel, too. 

It won the Booker Prize in 1985.

Other reviews:
Boston Bibliophile
The Guardian Book Club
BookLust
Raging Bibliomania
CaribousMom
Lizzy's Literary Life
Farm Lane Books Blog
DogEar Diary
1morechapter
Stuff as Dreams Are Made Of 
An Adventure in Reading