How to Write an Autobiographical Novel by Alexander Chee

Dear Alexander Chee,

Thank you.

Thank you for sending your book out into the world. Your stories traveled many miles and I caught them all the way up here, caught myself between of a town of 6,000 and a village down the mountain, population 500. They caught me when I'm having trouble catching up to my own thoughts.

No one can tell me that trip isn't made of magic.

Reading your book was like slowly opening a gift. Tied up beautifully, your story unraveled, ribbons of words, live and exposed, forming personal meaning as they dropped from your book into my outstretched hands. Each new chapter was a layer of tissue paper, delicate yet protective. Each layer gently revealed to me the parts of what makes you, you. The way your journey along winding paths formed you both as a writer and as a human being. It wasn't until the lid was carefully removed, that the ribbons unfurled, that the layers of tissue were slowly peeled away with anticipation that I found you revealed inside.

What a gift your stories are. You carefully shared yourself at your most vulnerable. The more I read, the more I gradually came to understand why your particular book found its way into my hands. It was a book I was meant to receive.

Your words taught me so much. You were generous in your giving and your teachings and I am grateful to have received so much. I don't know you - we are strangers after all - but that's the beauty of books, particularly a book like yours. I went from not knowing anything of you at all to gradually being immersed in your life as I read your writing.

It feels odd, this one-sided relationship. You know nothing of me except that I am a reader, yet I know some of your most secret of secrets. It takes a lot of bravery and trust for a writer to share so much of themselves and to send it out there into the unknown. For that reason, I want you to know that you touched right into the heart of me. Writers like you make me want to keep writing. Writers like you make my dreams richer. Writers like you wrap me with bravery and with each part of you that you share, it makes me feel less afraid of myself, of the world around me.

I'm sorry for your losses. I'm sad that you lost so many of your friends. That for much of your life, you've been persecuted and misunderstood. A target of bullies, young and old. I'm sorry that your country, the one right below mine, is currently a ship heavily listing in the midst of an unpredictable storm. But there is hope: it's stories like yours that allow us to unite and empathize and become better people. It's stories like yours that make me want to drop everything and pick up a pen and write my own story.

And even though you've been told "this isn't important, that it doesn't matter, that it could never matter"...it matters. It matters because the sparks that form when the words that pour out of the writer are seized by the reader who is open to receiving, it adds a layer of lushness to their world, it spreads courage, and it brings us together. It will never not matter to a reader like me.

Thank you for inspiring this fellow dreamer. 

With respect and appreciation,
Christine

Boy Swallows Universe by Trent Dalton

Twelve-year-old Eli Bell has a lot coming at him. His beloved mother and stepfather are immersed in the heroin trade. His older brother, August, stopped speaking at the age of six after experiencing a deep trauma and communicates by sky writing with a pointed finger looping words through the air. His alcoholic dad is long gone. His best friend is many years his senior, Slim Halliday, a notorious prison escapee and unconventional babysitter/mentor to the young Eli.

There is an escalating drug war happening in the broken down Brisbane suburb of Darra. Fearless kingpins are dueling for control over the lucrative heroin trade and everyone wants in on it. Just as you might expect, very bad things happen to good people who have made questionable decisions. But don't worry - you're in for a surprise if you think this might be a predictable tale.

There is a mysterious red telephone that is a character unto itself. There are underground tunnels and secret rooms. There is a reflective moon pool. There's an infamous prosthetic limb innovator and his underlings that are enough to scare the socks off of you. A kind, well-meaning teacher. A foe-turned-friend, Darren Dang, whose drug-dealing mother has the best nickname: 'Back off' Bich Dang. There are freaking machetes and knife fights and chases and severed limbs and catastrophes here, there and everywhere. There's a girl. Of course there's a girl, but she's a bad-ass crime reporting girl and she has the career of Eli's dreams. 

We follow Eli from age twelve through age nineteen as he navigates the crime-riddled streets of Darra, his family struggles, and the wisdom borne only of long stints in prison. We follow Eli as he tries to find out what's real and true and what's hidden behind smokescreens, behind hidden desires, behind people's words and actions.

It was so much fun tagging along on Eli's wild adventures that real life almost feels mundane in comparison. This is the kind of book you leap into, swim around in, absorb everything you can - the fantastic, the magical, the horrific - and then exhale a large volume of air as you slowly climb back out into the real world.

Thanks for the memories, Eli. I will always remember you.

Judge the cover: 4/5

When You Read This by Mary Adkins

The main cast of characters:

• Smith Simonyi - Owner of a PR firm. Gambling addict with significant mother issues.
• Iris Massey - Late administrative assistant to Smith. Brink-of-death blogger who died of cancer at age thirty-three.
• Jade Massey - Chef and sister to Iris. Full of attitude. Having a hard time processing her sister's death.
• Carl Van Snyder - Smith's intern. Full of sass and questionable branding ideas.

Iris Massey passed away, leaving behind her grieving sister, Jade, and a blog that she wants published posthumously. Her boss, Smith, still writes her emails even though she's no longer around. He gets in touch with Jade in order to get permission to publish Iris' blog and is initially met with hostility. 

Jade's all over the place, trying to take care of her elderly mother who lives in another state, while sorting out her career as a chef and trying her best to fulfill what she believes were Iris' final wishes.

Smith is also trying to find his footing. He's also processing his feelings about Iris' death, while trying to save his flailing business and come up with the money required for his quadriplegic mother's care. This involves a lot of asking his former roommate, Rich, for money, while trying to suppress an online gambling addiction.

Carl is Smith's young intern, a.k.a. the source of comic relief. While trying his best to help and be proactive, his time with the firm is an endless series of screwups and misunderstandings, though his heart is in the right place. Carl rocks.

This epistolary novel is creatively told through blog posts, diagrams, emails, and text messages. It's format is imaginative and what could be a very sad tale is sprinkled with so much humor, the funny far outweighs the dark. It was a quick, entertaining read that, while oftentimes was a little predictable, allowed for enough insight and laughs that it didn't ultimately matter. A lighthearted read about a young woman's death by cancer? Sure, why not. Sometimes it's funner to laugh than cry when life as you know it is turned on its head.

Judge the cover: 2.5/5

Wondering Who You Are by Sonya Lea

This is the second heartbreaking memoir I've read in a row. It's such a cliché, but it's truly amazing what people can live through and survive.

After twenty-three years of marriage, Sonya Lea's husband, Richard, was diagnosed with an extremely rare form of abdominal cancer. His internal organs were being overtaken by mucous-producing tumor cells and his prognosis was bleak. He decided to undergo an (at the time) experimental surgery. It was a surgery so complex, it was dubbed the MOAS by survivors, the Mother of All Surgeries. 

Unfortunately, during this surgery, things went very, very wrong and his stomach cavity filled up with liters of blood. When he woke up, Richard was not only physically less able, but due to the extreme blood loss, he developed a brain injury that cruelly made him lose his memories and identity. Not only does Richard not recognize the man he has become, his wife must reconcile the fact that the man he used to be - the man she fell in love with and built a life with - likely wouldn't fully return to his former self. 

The chapters start in alternating formats of the early love story between Sonya and Richard when they met and fell in love as teenagers with the years after the surgery to the present day after thirty or so years of marriage. It's a scathingly honest account of how Sonya comes to terms with her family's new normal. Her husband's personality has changed from smart, headstrong and hardworking to passive and agreeable. He tires easily and becomes reclusive. He must undergo a myriad of major rehabilitative therapies in order to try to restore some of his physical and mental abilities. In the meantime, his wife is mourning the former partner she had: the memories they shared, the unique experiences they had that formed them as a couple, and the years of bonding, discussions, and ups and downs that made them into who they each were individually as well as a couple. 

Initially, Sonya was full of resentment. She just wanted the man she loved with to rehabilitate back to his former self. She was angry at finding herself in the role of caretaker and grieving the physical relationship they'd formed as a couple. She was stressed out from a medical malpractice suit they filed and from taking on the brunt of the workload.

As she processed her feelings towards her husband's new state of being, she also started to question her own identity. Over the years, she slowly discovers the ways in which we imprint our own biases and points of view onto our memories and that with enough time and patience, it's possible to slowly rebuild and come to a place of acceptance and understanding. And sometimes, when enough time passes and where there's an abundance of empathy and love, a terrible tragedy can make us come out changed for the better on the other side.

Judge the cover: 5/5

A Mother's Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy by Sue Klebold

On the morning of April 20, 1999, Sue Klebold got up and went to work like any other day. By lunchtime, she received an unsettling frantic phone call from her husband that something happened at her son's school. By afternoon, she was kicked out onto her driveway while swarms of police pulled apart her house, not giving her any information. By evening, neighbours were blocking off swarms of media while the Klebolds bolted into the night trying to find a safe place to stay.

Sue Klebold learned her son was dead. Not only that, she learned he was one of the killers during the Columbine massacre. Her living nightmare had just begun.

A few months ago, I read Columbine by Dave Cullen, a thoroughly researched journalist's account of what happened when teenagers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold secretly planned and then executed a mass shooting at their high school. A Mother's Reckoning shares the personal side about how that terrible tragedy impacted Dylan's family who was left behind, specifically his mother, Sue. 

How do you get through each day when your world has been turned upside down? How do you grieve your son's death by suicide while simultaneously coming to terms that he was also a sadistic murderer? How do you cope with everyday life when you are suddenly blamed for your son's actions, your surname is now equated to mass murder and you are facing what your lawyer warned you would be "a firestorm of hatred"? What do you do when you need to process your feelings but can't join a support group because the other members could be subpoenaed for information? How can you possibly comfort/apologize to/provide reassurance to parents of children who have been murdered by your own child? How do you return to work when your head is spinning and you can't stop crying? Who can you talk to when absolutely no one can truly relate to the exact situation you're going through? How do you respond to media speculation when everything you, your friends, or family members respond to gets twisted and misrepresented? How do you reconcile memories of what you thought was your normal, loving child with the reality that your child has hidden the most evil, nightmarish secret plans from you? How do you grieve a child you loved with all of your heart, whose monstrous actions you hate, while discovering he wasn't at all the person you thought he was? How do you attempt to convince everyone around you that you honestly, truly had zero idea of your son's intentions? That he simply wasn't the person you raised or knew?

How do you go on?

This is the story that attempts to answer all of these impossible questions. It's about a mother who is left to sift through the wreckage that her life has become as she tries to make sense of the living hell she's been put through. She used to just be a regular mom; in the aftermath, she's broken, terrified, suicidal, a detective of her own life trying to figure out where it all went wrong. It's just as heartbreaking as it sounds, but I can't tell you how much respect I have for this woman who woke up one day as a normal, everyday loving mother and in the blink of an eye found herself thrust into the worst nightmare one could imagine. 

Yet somehow she found a way to go on.

Judge the cover: 3/5

The Prison Book Club by Ann Walmsley

When her entrepreneurial friend, Carol, asked her to help with book selections for a prison book club she'd established, Ann Walmsley was a bit apprehensive to say the least. A few years prior, Ann was mugged outside her home in London, England. The incident had left her very shaken. As it turns out, her friend was very persuasive, so she decided to give it a go with the idea that she could write a book about the book club. By attending the meetings and giving some of the inmates journals so she could get their perspectives of the book club and prison life, this is Ann's account of an eighteen-month journey where she would leap outside of her comfort zone, tucking away her paranoia along with her preconceived notions of what to expect from the heavily tattooed inmates, as she visited the Collins Bay medium-security prison in Kingston, Ontario, on a monthly basis. She gathered more courage than she thought she had and entered a world she never could have previously imagined she'd end up in...

It's always interesting to recognize landmarks from your everyday life as backdrops in books. One of my favourite thrift shops is located directly across the street from the Collins Bay Institution. If you were passing by and didn't know that it was a prison, it looks like a beautiful limestone castle with a distinctive red roof, often with flocks of Canada Geese wandering freely on the outside grounds. I have always conjured an image of what it's like on the other side of those tall stone razor-topped walls, always carried a "what if" scenario of what I'd hypothetically do if I were to see an escaped inmate running across the street into the parking lot as I'm unloading my bags of thrifted treasures. (I don't know, scream? I've always just hoped the situation stayed hypothetical...)

But after reading so much about the group of inmates who convened at the Collins Bay Book Club, I gained a whole other perspective. First of all, I didn't just admire Ann Walmsley for being brave enough to actually enter a prison and meet with inmates after what happened to her in England, but I equally admire her for her seemingly bold book selections. She often chose books with protagonists who were prisoners themselves, or who had endured abuse or been involved in cover-ups. She chose books that could potentially be considered triggering, but for the very reason that most of the men could relate to these types of situations themselves, it made for such interesting discussions. Through reading about these men, it's evident that we're not so very different as people. They may have found themselves on a different path in life, but apart from that, we can all learn from each other and we can all gain deep insights and emotion from the books we choose to read. The fact that the men were also brave enough to join a book club in the first place gave me a different sense of admiration for them.

Ann and Carol would travel from their luxurious homes in Toronto to Kingston every month to facilitate the prison book club. They were also involved in a women's book club in Toronto where their counterparts were also well-to-do ladies. The two book clubs were complete opposites of each other: the Toronto ladies would have wine and cheese and fancy desserts in a calm, well-appointed condo while the men's prison book club took place in an often stuffy room off the chaplain's office. X-rayed cookies were served from clear packages. (The free cookies were the only thing some of the less literary-minded inmates showed up for.) 

At one point, Ann's women's book club and the men's prison book club read three of the same books simultaneously. They each provided written insights that the other club would read. Carol remarked at one point that "the women's book club gathering was often more emotional than the men's." Maybe so, but the men - perhaps due to the sheer amount of time they had to dedicate solely to reading - often provided certain points of view that never crossed the women's minds. Ann also provided some of the more long-standing members with journals for them to record their observations about the books and prison life. These gave us a better understanding of what they were going through on a daily basis, how they viewed their futures and how the books they were reading helped them process their ideas.

After a few months, Ann and Carol also ended up traveling to the Beaver Creek Institution, a minimum-security prison where Carol had set up yet another book club. (Ann traveled to this prison in order to follow two of the book club members who had been transfered from Collins Bay.) In fact, by the end of the book, we learn that Carol's passion and ambition propels her to operate a book club in every single federal prison in Ontario. She further continued (and likely continues) to open more book clubs in prisons all across Canada, as well as sharing her expertise to help prisons outside Canada who also want to establish their own book clubs. As noted near the end of the book "research continues to point to interesting links between reading literary fiction and the growth of empathy" making her herculean efforts well worthwhile especially for a group who is often left at the fringes of society.

I really enjoyed reading The Prison Book Club, as it reminded me a lot of one of my favourite books about books, The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe. Both are great books for true book lovers, for readers who want to discover even more great books and who love hearing other readers' different insights and perspectives. However, one very important thing that you need to be aware of if you plan on reading The Prison Book Club is that (perhaps obviously, since it is a book about a book club, after all...) the books are discussed in-depth, meaning there are spoilers throughout. Deaths, plot twists, and endings are all revealed! But, having already read a few of the books that were discussed, it was interesting to hear what others thought of the books. Some of the discussions reminded me of portions of books that I'd forgotten about or how they made me feel when I read them myself. And, of course, I now have a huge list of more great books to go and check out.

I recommend, like Ann, you go in with an open mind before you enter behind the prison gates of Collins Bay. Sometimes what intimidates us the most doesn't turn out to be quite as scary as we first thought. And this book is proof that books can really bring people together and unite us while opening our minds to worlds we could never ourselves imagine.

Judge the cover: 3/5