Things I've Been Reading Lately

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga (Free Press)
I was in the mood for a page-turner, and that's what I got. Balram Halwai, the narrator and main character, explains how he left the "darkness" in rural India for the "light" of the cities and eventually became a successful business owner in Bangalore. His tale is a compelling story and kept me hooked until the end, but something about the narrative set up for the novel kind of bothered me. The narration is given over seven nights, all told in long letters that Balram is presumably writing to a Chinese politician. To me this narrative frame seemed a bit gimmicky, and at the end I still saw no real reason for its existence. I think the best parts were somewhere in the middle, when this frame fell away and the real story emerged. Winner of the Man Booker Prize in 2008.

The Man of My Dreams by Curtis Sittenfeld (Random House)
Someone asked me what I was reading recently and I was a bit embarrassed to reply "The Man of My Dreams." I had expected that the title might be some kind of ironic play on words, but no, it really was about a girl searching for the man of her dreams. Not really sure why some editor didn't change the title. I picked this up because of my love for Sittenfeld's first novel, Prep, and while I can't say that I was as wildly enthusiastic about this one, it was still a good read that I had a hard time putting down for three days. The narrative drops in on Hannah, the main character, at several points in her life between the ages of 14 and somewhere in her late 20s. Hannah is self-conscious, neurotic, depressed, and often seems to say the wrong thing, but there's still something likable about her. Less precocious and somehow more depressing than Prep, but still worth the time.

Stripmalling by Jon Paul Fiorentino (ECW Press)
This is Jon Paul Fiorentino's first novel (he's published several books of poetry and a book of short fiction), and of course it's hilarious, much like JPF himself. The protagonist, Johnny, works in a strip mall. But he has bigger aspirations: he wants to be a writer and eventually starts writing a novel called Stripmalling. Self-referential but not annoyingly, over-theoretically so, Stripmalling is a hybrid of novel and graphic novel, a pastiche of diary entries (mid-life crisis reports), letters, interviews, and confessions. It's very clever and very good fun.

Jack by Mike Spry (Snare Books)
I really liked these poems. They're quirky, narrative-driven, honest, confessional, and funny. There are recurring characters and themes that give the collection a real sense of continuity that keeps you reading. My favourite was a long poem in the middle called "Skate Betty," which starts and ends with the image of the narrator's four year-old son holding up a photograph, and in between tells the story of the narrator's relationship with the girl in the photo: "My mum would often ask about you./'Where's your little girlfriend?'/'She's not my girlfriend, Mum.'/'Why isn't she your girlfriend?'/'Because she has a girlfriend, Mum.'/'Well that's just silly.'" And each section of the poem takes its title from a song by The Smiths - what's not to love?