….I’m way behind and I only have one full week left before I head back to the classroom

As you can see I may have bitten off more than I can chew but some of these books I had started earlier in the year and didn’t finish, some I’m half way through and one was a book club book that we discussed at the beginning of the month. The last one I finished and will discuss briefly in this post.

The first book that I finished this summer is The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson. This is one of the books that I started last year, picked it up again earlier this year and finally finished it in July. It was a struggle. It was the winner of the 2010 Man Booker prize and for the life of me I can’t understand why it won. I went over to Amazon.com to read some of the reviews on this book and discovered that you either loved this book or hated it. I think that some of the best comments that resonated for me included:  …..”You might also love it if you’re into angst and want to read many pages about people full of angst, who spend their waking hours worrying about angst, wondering what to do about their angst (or, indeed, whether to do anything at all), asking who’s to blame for all that angst, trying (and mostly failing) to find a meaning in angst, even questioning whether their angst is real or whether they’re imagining it.”……”Reading this book feels like reading an angst-ridden teen’s diary: endless self-indulgent delving into identity. Who am I? How can I know who I am? Why am I who I am? What does it all mean? What if I’m not really who I think I am? Is it okay to be who I am? Should I try to be someone else?….. are you bored yet?” 

This pretty much sums up how I feel about this story of three childhood friends, two who are Jewish and one who isn’t, and how they interact with each other later in life when the two of them become widowed. Some reviewers found it brilliant, funny and thought provoking. I tried to like it but the story didn’t work for me.

The next book that I read was Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese. I loved this book, as did everyone in my book club. The book was a 2013 Canada Reads contender.

The story is about Saul Indian Horse, an Ojibway man from Northern Ontario, who has to confront his past in order to overcome his drinking problem. Saul’s difficult journey takes the reader through his childhood when he is  separated from his family and land and sent to a residential school where he suffers abuse from the nuns and priests who reside there. He soon discovers he has an amazing talent for hockey and he finds brief salvation in playing the game.

The novel was an eye opener for me of the harsh reality of life in 1960s Canada. We don’t often think about racism existing in our own backyard but in this story racism is a central theme and Saul’s spirit is destroyed by the harsh realities of cultural displacement. A must read for all North Americans and Canadians in particular.