Hard to Do: The Surprising, Feminist History of Breaking Up

Hard To Do: The Surprising, Feminist History of Breaking Up, by National Magazine Award-nominated journalist Kelli María Korducki, is a lifeline for women navigating expectations, standards, and break-ups in today’s liberated, but uncharted, relationships. Using examples from history, Korducki unpacks society’s conventional views on marriage and monogamy, which often plague millennial women, despite their freedom to seek what they want in a relationship. She provides validation to women who feel guilty when rejecting traditional ideas of what it means to be a “good” partner, while also reaffirming the importance of friends when breaking up with societal pressures.

The Doll’s Alphabet

Pick up The Doll’s Alphabet, a spellbinding collection of short stories by Camilla Grudova, and prepare to have your day and night dreams forever and delightfully altered by Grudova’s uncertain universe. In it, meet exceptionally original, gorgeously dark, grotesque, and utterly fantastical characters conjured up by Grudova’s masterful storytelling and weird and wonderful ways of engaging with her obsessions. They include sewing machines, dolls, tinned foods, vintage items, dead people, societal oddities, transmogrified objects and people in dystopian worlds, and more. Now, if only David Lynch, Guillermo del Toro, Floria Sigismondi, or Tim Burton can get a copy of this book in their hands.

Any Other Way: How Toronto Got Queer

Any Other Way: How Toronto Got Queer provides an illuminating look into the multi-faceted history of queerness in Toronto. From a peer into the formation of the Unity Mosque, to an exploration of one of the world’s largest lesbian hockey leagues, each story presents moving anecdotes and historical accounts surrounding the people, places and spaces that make up Toronto. When brought together, the anthology sheds a candid light on the wide and colourful history of the city’s marginalized communities.

The Last Word: Reviving the Dying Art of Eulogy
By Julia Cooper
Coach House Books, $14.95

Not knowing what to say when death arrives is precisely why readers should pick up Julia Cooper’s lifesaver of a book, The Last Word: Reviving the Dying Art of Eulogy. In this critical examination and analysis of the eulogy in its various forms—poetic, humorous, honorary, theoretical, fictional, online, heartfelt, and heartless—Cooper theorizes there are no right words or timelines to express one’s thoughts when it comes to death. By interspersing her own reflections of loss, the author bravely shows that these “final” goodbyes are just veiled beginnings of a long, difficult, and deeply personal dialogue with sorrow.

The Island of Books

An ode to books, Rhonda Mullins’s translation of Dominique Fortier’s The Island of Books captures the emotions of two struggling individuals hoping to find strength in writing. Told from the perspectives of an illiterate, grieving artist from the 15th century who becomes a monk and moves to the island commune of Mont Saint-Michel, and from a present-day novelist dealing with writer’s block, Mullins and Fortier weave between two tales while seamlessly interjecting facts about Mont Saint-Michel’s history. With each paragraph ending on such powerful sentences, there’s something profound about the writing style; the book exudes an aura of grandeur mimicking that of Mont Saint-Michel.

Shot-Blue

Set against the backdrop of a remote lake, Jesse Ruddock’s debut novel Shot-Blue follows a boy who learns to survive in a land that was once his home, but is now changed by strangers.

Packed with characters who are at times intertwined and disconnected—as evidenced by the novel’s alternating points of view—Shot-Blue sheds light on the reality of love, loss, and loneliness.

While the book is difficult to follow at times, Ruddock exquisitely breathes life into feelings we all know too well. Feelings that are felt so powerfully, even when conveyed through very few words.

Details of Invisible Publishing Titles. (L-R: Bats or Swallows, Ghost Pine, Fear of Fighting, This American Drive, Rememberer, The Art of Trespassing.)

Even when it’s not faced with an uncertain digital future, the publishing industry occupies a very uncomfortable place at the intersection of art and commerce. “Intersection” may not be the right word; it’s more like art is one end of a teeter totter and money is the other, with publishing in the middle, trying to make sure neither side bounces too hard or falls off or knocks the whole thing over. It’s a tough act.

Enter Invisible Publishing. Started in 2007 in Halifax by pals Robbie MacGregor, Nic Boshart, and Megan Fildes, Invisible chucked out the teeter-totter in favour of one giant sandbox. It’s a collective, in that beautiful old lefty way; they’ve just officially incorporated as a non-profit, though that term seems a little dry for a group that has so much fun together. The three chiefs have titles, sort of: Robbie is publisher, Megan is art director, and Nic, who has decamped to Toronto, is president, a title he can’t quite say with a straight face. They all have other jobs; Nic works at the Association of Canadian Publishers, Megan as production designer at Halifax’s The Coast, and Robbie spends his days at the Halifax Public Library—which means they don’t depend on Invisible to pay their rent. In fact, Invisible doesn’t pay them at all.

That’s right: they spend their evenings making books because they want to. And that sets the tone for the whole enterprise. They don’t publish books for authors, they publish with authors; writers can participate as much as they like, as can just about anyone else who’s keen to be a part of Invisible. So people offer to help. Jenner Brooke-Berger, for example, volunteered to read the slush pile and ended up doing promo and editing. Sacha Jackson, an editor, tackled marketing. And Sarah Labrie made an e-reader case for one of Invisible’s book covers. They even have a manifesto (not a mandate, a manifesto), which includes these lines: “We are collectively organized, our production processes are transparent. At Invisible, publishers and authors recognize a commitment to one another, and to the development of communities which can sustain and encourage storytellers.” Publishing as communal act: what a brilliant idea.

Speaking of brilliant, perhaps the most important part is the work they do. The folks at Invisible publish smartly: award-winning design; a forward-thinking and successful focus on e-books, complete with a super-smart blog; distribution and marketing savvy; and, most important, a discerning eye for talent. Commercial viability isn’t Invisible’s primary concern; good writing is. They’ve published 14 books, including Devon Code’s In a Mist, Stacey May Fowles and Marlena Zuber’s Fear of Fighting, and Ian Orti’s L (and things come apart), which recently won CBC’s audience-choice Bookie award. Invisible’s most recent release is about Montreal band the Dears.

Make no mistake: publishing is no picnic these days. Books are having a tough go of it in an age where people expect to get information for free. No one is in publishing for the money, but Robbie, Nic, and Megan take their labour of love one step further and make publishing a vehicle for creating community. With that, Invisible proves that publishing is not down for the count—not in the least.

A woman of letters herself, Brossard’s Québécoise protagonist, Anne, labours to write a novel in a “foreign language.” Far from the familiar cadence of her mother tongue, Anne is exposed to the violent emotions that lie hidden beneath everyday language. In a glorious outpouring of hot, confusing words, Brossard, a two-time Governor General’s Award winner for poetry, writes of the profound anxieties and desires that Anne discovers in her linguistically alien world, a “realm … that is no longer euphoria but an endless dawn with its own heat.”

Anne’s futile attempts to write that world eventually shock her into silence: “I don’t dare write: I am frozen, fossilized in combat position.” She is paralyzed by a puzzle: how can fiction attempt to do what we, its creators and consumers, cannot—make sense of war, intimacy, the calamity of being born? Brossard leaves the question unanswered, though the answer not unhoped for.

IDEA MAN

It always makes me wild with rage when the complexities of a federal election are idiotically reduced to a single issue for voters. The major parties, and the mainstream media, seem to assume that people have the attention span of three-year-olds.

Then along comes Jack Layton’s Speaking Out: Ideas That Work for Canadians, explaining multi-faceted, economically sound solutions to our biggest problems: health care, hydro, tuition, industries, you name it.

While Layton can’t help but write from the perspective of the leader of the NDP, this book is not the NDP Orange Book. It’s not a list of Layton’s own ideas and accomplishments or a collection of essays. Nor is it an elegant piece of persuasive writing.

What it is, however, is a list of “best practices,” independent of any particular party, taken from home and abroad. The barrage of ideas can, at times, be overwhelming. Doubtless, many will dismiss these ideas as naïve or simple. But, their simplicity is their strength. Regardless of political affiliation, Canadians owe it to themselves to read this book.

Although a former academic, Layton wisely combines the research and analytical skills of his political science PhD with the hands-on community approach of his political experience. The ideas aren’t full-length studies, backed by statistics, but they are considered and convincing: for example, ordinary people can understand how a “green car” industrial strategy brought together such seemingly odd bedfellows as Layton, the Canadian Auto Workers union, Greenpeace and an MP from Windsor. How money spent on health promotion can have a bigger payoff than money spent on treatment. Or how investing in affordable housing will save us money.

God forbid, long-term planning? Optimism? Faith in the powers of ordinary people? This guy can’t be a politician.
— Sue McCluskey

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I know you are but what am I? by Heather Birrell (Coach House Books)FICTION

Time and again in this nine-story collection, Birrell weaves patterns of flashbacks, walk-on characters, best-ever similes (an airplane window like an eyelid), and—most importantly—struggling, complicated protagonists. This creates little universes that are both vast and intimate. “Not Quite Casablanca” and “Congratulations, Really” are particularly wonderful. Too often, though, there is a paragraph near the end in which the protagonist ruminates over the diverse threads that have made up the story, reminding readers that they’ve been reading a story, an artifice, all along. Even so, I will read this book again, and soon; Birrell has a talent matched by few others for tapping the rich details of our experience. (A note to the designer: the book’s cover does it a disservice.)
—Adam Lewis Schroeder

Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity by Lawrence Lessig (Penguin Press)NON-FICTION

Every movement needs an inspirational figure, someone able to both set the terms of debate and lead by example. The “free culture” movement has found its leader in the unlikely person of Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig. He has been arguing for years that the internet is on its way to becoming the most highly regulated place on Earth. In his new book, Lessig takes on “Big Copyright,” the system of cultural ownership that has given copyright-rich corporations an unprecedented degree of control over popular culture. The copyright wars are shaping up as the civil rights issue of this decade, and Lawrence Lessig is the one setting the agenda.
—Andrew Potter

Viral Suite by Mari-Lou Rowley (Anvil Press)POETRY

It is rare to see science and poetry mixed as seamlessly as they are in Mari-Lou Rowley’s Viral Suite, but not surprising for Rowley, a science and technology writer. The linguistic gymnastics and energy of the verse is at its best when she combines the world of physics, mathematics and molecular biology with real physicality; as in the third section, “Elucidata.” Visceral gems such as “Sex in Space Time” allow language and image to do their work without interference from the empirical voice, “For the same reason the earth revolves around/ the sun, a hand falling through any arc of/ air will choose the swelling mass of thigh/ over nothing, for warmth/ for meaning.”
—Rajinderpal S. Pal

Sue McCluskey is a writer, editor and country and western musician. She blushes easily.

Andrew Potter belongs to the public domain. He teaches philosophy at Trent university and is at work co-writing a book with Joseph Heath on the counterculture and mass society.