Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird by Agustina Bazterrica

Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird by Agustina Bazterrica is a book of short stories that might be better described as a book of premises. In a tight 154 pages, Bazterrica offers 20 horror stories, bringing the average story length to just under 8 pages, and that doesn’t count the blank pages between the end of one story and the start of another. Don’t get me wrong, short pieces can be moving and powerful, but a number of the stories read as concepts rather than fully fleshed out narratives.

Granted, short stories are not my preferred genre as a general rule, so Bazterrica is facing an uphill battle. Some of the stories have a compelling premise, but the condensed format seems to prevent the concepts from really breathing or building their emotive or thematic force. In some cases, the stories feel like they should be starting where they’ve ended. In others, the full narrative arc is there, but it’s glossed over too quickly to really hit.

One example of the issue is “No Tears,” which, despite its flaws, is one of my favourite pieces in the collection. The story follows Juan de Tartáz whose family has a long tradition of not crying. To them, tears are disgusting and vile and pathetic. His father’s dying words, even, were to never abandon the family tradition with tears. In the present, Juan goes to wakes for strangers and he tells jokes, sometimes distastefully, because he’s unaware of the circumstances of peoples’ deaths. His goal is to prevent as many tears as possible; yet, he starts noticing an eagle-faced woman at wakes for strangers whose sole goal seems to be to make them cry even more. She confesses that she is sad and refuses to be sad alone, and thus goes to funerals. Juan tries to force her to back off his territory, and there’s a scene where she bursts into tears, splashing him with the salty liquid, forcing him to flee. That moment felt so promising; in the hands of another author, I could see the story dwelling in his terror, his paranoia, his pain at feeling the tears of another. Bazterrica returns to the main narrative rather quickly and Juan notes the same woman crying at a website until her eyes have gone dry and notes: “I knew that this was her little hell, her private torment, because now she had nothing to cry about, because she was emptier than ever before, and her wings had finally dissolved into sadness. She needed me. She wanted me to stop the vultures, to wipe away the tears she no longer had” (110). The build-up to her catharsis seems unearned, and then Juan sees her smile, flies away, and sheds a single tear. This story, in my view, would have been worth fleshing out further in order to heighten the impact.

Other stories are probably the perfect length. “Unamuno’s Boxes,” for example, describes a ride in a taxi. The narrator describes all these small indications of the taxi driver’s murderous intent. She reads a bracelet on his wrist that reads AMANDA and imagines her his first victim. She describes the ritualistic practices he engages in when murdering, talks about playing his victims classical music and filing their nails, cleaning and lotioning these women in their final moments before killing them and collecting their fingernails in little boxes. What I like about the story is the twistedness of the narrator’s imagination; she pictures herself, even partially invites herself, being kidnapped, the cab taking a route not asked for. The self-destruction plot is unfortunately quotidian in reality. The cab driver charges her one eighty-four and she pays with exact change to punish him for not being a murderer. The final conceit of the story is that, as she’s paying, Unamuno places a coin in his box, which is full of nail clippers and nail polish—she leans back into the car and begs him to take her with him: “you know where” (18). It’s a twisted tale of imagining the abyss and willing your own destruction. The psychological framework of the story is enough of a justification for it, and it does not overstay its welcome.

Self-destruction emerges as a motif throughout the collection, sometimes in a frankly laughable way. “The Continuous Equality of the Circumference” is about Ada, who wants to be a circle. Not a sphere. A circle. Rooted in some kind of idea of perfection, partly as outlined by Saint Augustine, Ada wants to convert herself into a circle. She doesn’t want to be a “deformed rectangle,” so she tries to fatten herself up on spherical and later only round foods—grapes, cookies, etc. She develops a series of pulleys and creates a device to sever her own arms and legs to get closer to her ideal shape. She tries to roll towards a cookie—but her right arm blocks her. She bowls herself another way, rolling through broken glass, and is blocked again by her left arm. She dies by choking on a grape, “the mirror [too] far for her to admire the perfection she has become” (117). Honestly, the story is too outlandish for me. It’s a literalization of the harmful self-destruction of body dysmorphia and trying to meet societal expectations placed on women. There’s an essay in the literary theory world that essentially argues that neuroses in women are responses to societal expectations—women ought not to be seen, so they become anorexic to take up less space; women are not expected to be listened to, so they develop selective mutism. I’m not sure where that line of argumentation comes from, but I’d be amazed if Bazterrica had never heard of it.

There’s another story that involves gradual dismemberment (is it “Earth”? I can’t recall) and a number of the works in the collection involve body horror of some kind. “Roberto” is a more concise body horror piece with some genuine tension that gets undermined in the final lines. Narrated from a child’s perspective, the premise is that the main character has a bunny between her legs named Roberto. He’s cute and he’s hairy and he sleeps a lot. She coaxes another girl to take turns showing their vaginas to each other, but when she discovers her friend has no hair, she backs out of the big reveal. Her teacher hears the rumour and holds her back and tells her how pretty she is, and how she’s so much smarter than the other children, and how he wanted to see her bunny and teach it to be on its best behaviour. In just a page of dialogue, Bazterrica builds such a monstrous and disturbing scene. It’s a real shame that the final line of the story reveals there to be a literal bunny: “Roberto moved his ears and bared his teeth. Mr. García screamed and ran away. Roberto went back to sleep” (11). What a joke. It undermines the genuine tension with something so laughably stupid that the whole story feels like a waste. 

Contrasting that is the story “Anita and Happiness,” which also has a twist but one that lands much more effectively. The story is about a woman named Anita, whom Pablo suspects of being an alien. Everything she does feels too rehearsed. Pablo hates her, but falls in love with her, “if only to confirm whether her apparent weakness could be hiding a mastermind capable of conquering the universe, or a tireless predator harassing the human race” (33). She suggests that they should reproduce. When they have sex, it’s as if she’s studying his caresses “so that Pablo would notice she’d had an orgasm when she was supposed to have one” (36). Pablo’s anxieties provide a slightly comic tone to the piece, not only his concern that she’s an alien but also that she’ll tell all of her alien race how bad he is in bed. The twist to the story, though, is that she disappears. Pablo is proud because it confirms his suspicions that she is an alien that needed to return to her home planet. However, he sees her on the subway one afternoon and runs up to her asking how she’s doing. She tells him that she is not Anita. Pablo tells her to stop messing around and she says, “I’m not Anita, I’m Clarita” (37). Despite being identical, there’s something different about her: “She was prettier, if an alien could be described in that way” (37). The story ends with him introducing himself to “Clarita” and the thought that “The invasion has begun [...] and he felt a mix of terror and joy” (37). The story feels more satisfying as a narrative, but again, feels as if it could be developed into a more substantial and paranoiac doppelganger story.

The descriptive quality of the stories varies. Sometimes the sentences don’t really ‘pop,’ and I wonder if that’s a translation issue. That said, the story “Architecture” is rich with engaging turns of phrase. The story doesn’t really do much, but it describes dragonflies in a church: “The dragonfly of the night vibrates and engenders a violent void that settles into the walls, the architecture. It’s a great spiderweb of transparent threads that destroys the celestial breath” (132). What a wonderful cosmic image!

The closing two stories show some promise, but the endings simply don’t land. In “Mary Carminum,” we open with a compelling premise: two horrible men are competing to sleep with women during a night on the town; they rank them on numerical scales and it’s clear that they’ve drugged women before. We get these awful guys and see them getting into a situation where a woman has led them to a strange party. It’s a compelling reversal where the men can get their comeuppance. The few men at the party are essentially zombified and become the playthings of the Mother-Mary-worshipping women who also perform strange out-of-tune songs and make the men clap. It’s fine, but I think the lack of interaction and lack of self-awareness of the main character in his situation pulls away the dramatic tension. If only he started putting things together, trying to escape a little more dramatically, or resisting his capture, he might have been a more compelling character. Instead, he’s already a mindless zombie before he becomes a literal mindless zombie. The final story, “The Solitary Ones” is again a great premise but it ends when it should start. The main character is working late on New Year’s Eve and takes the subway to, hopefully, make it in time for the toasts. The power on the subway goes out and “you” find “yourself” having to walk through the unlit subway tunnels until “you” finally get to a room which, then, lacks an exit. There are mysterious white figures that turn. They have been waiting for you. The liminal space horror, vaguely intimating the afterlife, gives us something to work with, but there’s ultimately no impact. The psychological impact of the experience is cut short.

Ultimately, I think the selection is pretty forgettable. It isn’t overtly bad; it’s just flat. Bland. The style is fine. The premises are sometimes even good, but as a collection, the delivery is just lacklustre. The ideas need to be fleshed out, the suspense needs to be heightened, otherwise the payoff falls, at best, flat, and, at worst, laughable. I’m sure there’s an audience for these stories, but, sadly, it is not me.

Happy reading!

Walking in Two Worlds by Wab Kinew

  Well-known politicians often write books, usually about their career trajectories, the laws they passed, and / or shooting the beloved family dog. Two years before Wab Kinew was elected as premier of Manitoba, he published Walking in Two Worlds, a young adult fiction novel that I’m considering teaching in grade 9 English.

The big appeal of teaching Walking in Two Worlds is its relatability for a range of teenage experiences. Our main character, Bagonegiizhigok Holiday (Bugz) is an Indigenous girl who is a pro gamer and streamer for a virtual reality game called the Floraverse. I like the gaming aspect of the novel because it also provides the opportunity for some fantasy battles that I think would appeal to young people craving action scenes. Conversely, Bugz’ brother is a dancer at pow wows and impresses the folks on the reservation. With two worlds in the book, it gives a broader range of students the opportunity to connect—though the ‘real world’ sections are more prominent.

There’s another storyline, too. There’s a boy named Feng, a Uyghur sent from China to live on reserve with his aunt. He and Bugz develop a connection, despite Feng being part of an online gaming clan called Clan:LESS that targets Bugz. Indeed, the book starts with Clan:LESS teaming up against Bugz only for her to dominate them. The Clan:LESS group is essentially a group of white supremacist misogynists that want to take out the Indigenous girl and can’t stand that she’s better than them.

I like the idea of the online game being a focus, though it isn’t without some question marks. Number one: it is both a full-immersion virtual reality and a real-world crossover. The details are a little unclear on how it works. When you’re not in the game, it seems to play for you. Also, if you die in the game you have to start over again, and it takes real money to develop your player. It’s a little hazy when Bugz is streaming and hearing and seeing all kinds of comments from her fans where those actually appear if she’s experiencing the game. It’s also a little implausible when Bugz takes out groups of opponents at once and, repeatedly, “hundreds of gamer tags went floating up.” It feels implausible, but we have to just sort of accept it because Bugz has access to a magical resource, a sanctuary that exists in the real world as an Indigenous sacred site, that doubles as a special site in the game.

I think the game is the more engaging of the storylines in the text, though it gets a little less attention as the book goes on. There’s some tension with The Alpha (Clan:LESS’ leader) and Feng, a measly underling trying to earn his place among this misogynist horde. It also seems a little implausible that he’d be friends with Bugz in real life, although maybe I’m just naive to think that young men can resist the temptation of the manosphere.

The book is a little bit on the nose and spells things out for the audience, but I suppose that’s okay for a young adult novel. There’s no ambiguity that Clan:LESS is in the wrong and that Feng needs to abandon the oppressive mindsets to reconcile with his real-world friend. There are a few things that grate on me as being both on-the-nose and stereotypical, but again, maybe that’s just speaking to the adolescent experience. Bugz, for instance, has a number of concerns about her weight; in the real-world, she’s a little overweight, while she made her avatar a hot badass girl with a thin waist. There’s also a sequence in which Bugz considers suicide, indeed goes so far as hanging the noose, and I feel a little uncomfortable with how direct the planning and execution are depicted in the book. The discussion of the Uyghurs and Chinese Islamophobia is also a bit direct, but helps to build a framework for broader issues in the world. The depictions of China and its government might not be entirely “fair and balanced” but maybe it will start a conversation.

The ‘real world’ storyline is a little less gripping to me. There are some interactions with mean girls, her budding romance with Feng, her anxieties about her weight, and so on. More importantly, Bugz’ brother has some health concerns and it’s revealed that he has cancer. The prognosis is not great. The support Bugz and her brother have for one another, though, helps to drive the story forward and leads to some moments of magical realism where they save each others’ lives.

The book touches on a number of key themes I hope to emphasize in the grade 9 English course: identity, community, and voice. It’s the story of a girl who finds herself through and in relation to her community and uses her voice to make a change in online spaces. The book drags a little in places, and the ending is a bit of a flop—we never see the big battle after Bugz’ resurrection—but overall the story is reasonably engaging. I think students would probably like it, but we’ll see how they feel about reading this one soon.

Happy reading!

The Nights are Quiet in Tehran by Shida Bazyar

  Of the International Booker Prize shortlist for 2026, The Nights are Quiet in Tehran by Shida Bazyar is my penultimate read, with only the winner remaining. This year’s International Booker Prize seems to have much more of a theme than last, each book reflecting some level of arbitrary rule and tension between the individual and societal expectations. Bazyar explores these ideas through the sometimes confusing historical milieu of Iran, jumping through the narrative in decades across generations: Behzad in 1979, Nahid in 1989, Laleh in 1999, Mo in 2009, and Tara’s un-yeared epilogue.

Like other novels that have multiple narrators, I feel like each section took some acclimatizing. Every new decade was an adjustment period, and it took me probably fifteen pages or so to really get into the flow of the ‘new voice.’ By the end of each section, I felt generally invested; in particular, Behzad’s section involves a plan to transport leaflets and operate through cloak and dagger to contribute to a Marxist revolution. The plan involves a car tradeoff, secret passwords, and mysterious signals like a woman standing in a doorway. That political intrigue was one of the most compelling moments in the first half of the book for me; I also liked Behzad’s quiet, nearly invisible romance with Nahid and the way it developed through a few glances at revolutionary meetings.

Nahid’s section takes on a more domestic flavour—that is, on the surface. Below the surface, there’s a clear concern with the people who’ve been imprisoned, the people who’ve been lost, and the guilt that goes along with leaving them behind. One of my favourite scenes in Nahid’s part is when she and her husband receive a letter that offers a surface reading and a hidden one. The letter “spoke of a lightning strike, a crumbling in the backyard, and rats scuttering through the cracks and getting into her house” (82). It goes on to talk about a rat “hiding stubbornly in her kitchen” enjoying a “nice life of food and familial love” (82). The letters ends in italics: “Walls are crumbling everywhere, and they’ll never stop!” (82). I love the scene of Behzad and Nahid reading the letter together, agreeing, among other things, that the crumbling walls referenced a bomb hitting the prison where their friend was being held, implying that the rat in the house is a harboured former political prisoner. I appreciate the way The Nights are Quiet in Tehran shows how new networks of meaning form in response to censorship, to oppression.

Of all the sections, though, Laleh’s was by far my favourite. The section takes place after years in Germany and Laleh returns with her mother to Iran. Her experience as a teenage girl in Iran, alienated from her friends and relatives, is the most compelling and personal experience in the book. It gives the book a beautiful balance between the historico-political context and the more tangible everyday experiences that define us. Watching Laleh do something as simple as getting her eyebrows done or keeping a secret boyfriend is elevated to an epic status. It’s also around this time that I started reading the book aloud and really noticed the beautiful cadence of the phrases. There’s a beauty that is easy to gloss over if reading too quickly, but following the punctuation gives the sentences a warmly hypnotic quality.

For Mo’s part, the voice is very different. His priorities are very different from his sibling’s and I was pleasantly taken aback by the mention of Russian ska-punk in the opening pages. While Laleh grows into a politically engaged adult (like her parents), Mo is more concerned about his social bonds. He somewhat reluctantly gets involved with the student protests and stays up late watching Youtube videos about Iran when his friend’s girlfriend comes to sleep in his bed. Mo’s concerns are generally less political, and he distances himself from his family’s engagements—at least for the first stages of his journey.

All of the International Booker Prize short list have been good, even great, but Bazyar’s entry falls into the middle of the pack for me through no fault of her own. I think if I were more informed and educated about the history of Tehran and Iran in general, some of the more quiet resonances would land more meaningfully. Keeping track of the different allegiances and the symbolism of small actions would be a little easier.

That being said, I liked The Nights are Quiet in Tehran. While my interest in the sections fluctuates and I need to reset at each new decade, ultimately I found myself connecting with the characters and getting entranced by the pace and rhythms of the writing. There was a lot to like, and, while I have a lot of gaps in my own knowledge, it did make me feel like a more competent and worldly person. I hope that’s true, but it may be too utopian.

Oh, and one more thing: the epilogue offers a glimpse into the future (?). By virtue of the section not having a specific date listed, we might want to believe it’s 2019 to fit the pattern, but the lack of a year suggests that a resolution is both too far off and that it could happen at any moment. The epilogue is about the renewal following the death of an oppressive leader. It’s a moment of liberation, a moment of return for Behzad and Nahid. I hope I live to see that moment.

Happy reading!

The Book of Grief and Hamburgers by Stuart Ross

  Stuart Ross was a mentor to me in my undergrad and, at the time, I charged through several of his poetry collections (shout out to You Exist. Details Follow.). Strangely, I never branched out into any of his ‘novel-esque’ projects and much less his memoirs. Well, that ends today (technically last week when I finished it, but what even is time?)一here we are with The Book of Grief and Hamburgers.

The Book of Grief and Hamburgers exemplifies the masterful happy-sad tone of some of Ross’ best works. The central conceit is that when Ross writes poems that are getting too heavy, he throws in a hamburger. Hamburgers are delightful, they’re a surprise, they’re funny. They displace / replace feelings that are too difficult to deal with. Despite the apparent silliness of Ross’ poems sometimes, there’s also a tenderness and sadness that feels even more powerful precisely because of the apparent silliness. He walks the razor’s edge between whimsy and sorrow wonderfully.

The Book of Grief and Hamburgers in particular operates—somewhat—as a “research” exercise (Ross himself uses that term loosely). Ross scans through poems looking for references to hamburgers as a form of consolation and, often not finding them, instead writes hamburgers into famous poems, historical quotables, and novel lines. It’s a fun, silly surprise. Try it. “It was the best of hamburgers, it was the worst of hamburgers.” “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the hamburger.” “I saw the best hamburgers of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical bunless.” The motif of seeking hamburgers and creating hamburgers is a source of amusement, but again, reinforces the sadness at the core of the book.

Indeed, death permeates the pages of the memoir project. Ross recounts the loss of several of his family, his friends and fellow poets, his dog. There’s such a human approach to addressing the challenges of grief (what is grief, anyway?), including reconciling political tensions with estranged siblings briefly before their passing and doing the ‘death math’ of the proper sequence of death. Ross notes that, in his family, he is the only one that will die in the ‘right order.’ In a particularly moving section, Ross describes the passing of David W. McFadden, another notable poet that I had the privilege to see do a reading. Ross describes McFadden’s Alzheimer's, which is absolutely tragic, but also McFadden reading love haikus at Ross’ wedding, which is absolutely beautiful. After his passing, McFadden’s remains were buried in a Dilbert cookie jar, and the specificity of that image will resonate with me forever.

Many of Ross’ losses are described as vignettes, as short stories. In one, a poet friend rages against the dying of the hamburger—I mean, rages against the euphemisms we use for death. Not pushing daisies, not passing on, not succumbing to illness. He dies. When asked about arrangements for his death, he continually replies: “I don’t care, I’ll be dead.” Does he want his “collected works” to be published posthumously? He doesn’t care: “I’ll be dead.” There’s a bleakness in the repetition spread out throughout the vignette. After his gradual decline, he’s eventually asked again about having works published after his death and provides a slight nod. It’s a beautiful character study that, I hope, brings Ross some consolation.

This book-length essay on grief explores what grief is, how to feel it, what it means to grieve. A conclusive definition continues to elude us, but the exploration takes readers on an emotional journey where Ross demonstrates his deep appreciation and love of those he has lost. It’s quite an achievement in memorialization.

Add to this Ross’ voice. His tone, certainly, and that careful blend of sadness and extra pickles, but his literal voice, too. I listened to The Book of Grief and Hamburgers as an audiobook and it’s a delight to hear Ross’ reading voice. He has a distinct reading style, and it made the book feel all that much more personal to hear that reading voice again, probably for the first time since around 2012.

I really liked this longform essay. Even in its brevity, it captures the feeling, hard to describe, of mourning. It offers beautifully crafted narratives and moments replete with happiness and sadness, all while offering elegies to some of Ross’ loved ones. “Don’t ever tell any hamburgers anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.”

Happysad reading!

Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle That Defined a Generation

        I have a vague recollection of commercials when I was a kid that repeated the line “Sega does what Nintendon’t” and the frantic discordant shouts of “SEGA!”. Blake J. Harris’ Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle That Defined a Generation explores that moment in pop culture, approaching the story from the context of journalism and historical analysis. It’s a nice companion to Jason Schreier’s Blood, Sweat and Pixels or Press Reset: Ruin and Recovery in the Video Game Industry. The books collectively explore the ups and downs, the rivalries and tribulations of a burgeoning industry, recreating the drama of the era.

Console Wars in particular explores the key figures in the rivalry between Nintendo and Sega, documenting all the underhanded plays (mainly by Sega) to tackle the industry giant. Nintendo presented a more wholesome and family-fun image to Sega’s more irreverent and wildly juvenile approach. The tactics are pretty entertaining, and if you’re interested in advertising and marketing I imagine that the two of them present a case study replete with do’s and don’ts.

What is most surprising about Console Wars is how precisely it recounts the conversations for key figures. In that respect, the book is novelistic. For instance, the book opens with an account of Tom Kalinske on vacation at the beach with his family when Hayao Nakayama, the president of Sega Enterprises, approached him and asked him to fly back to Japan with him. Harris reproduces the conversation Tom had with his daughter and future colleague in its full tenderness and drama.

In fact, the book follows that approach consistently. It feels like every business meeting, sales pitch, public outburst, resignation, promotion, marriage proposals, etc. is provided with a word-for-word reproduction—so much so that at times it feels outright unbelievable. How would anyone possibly remember the exact words they shared in the heat of a conflict? Perhaps it speaks to the thoroughness of Harris’ research and creativity in style. Some details, I imagine, are recorded in official records—recorded speeches at E3, for example—while others would only be verifiable through multiple corroborative interviews. If a bit implausible, Harris’ approach is nonetheless compelling as a narrative.

In terms of the details, the ground Harris treads isn’t exactly new. A number of people have given their accounts of the famed console wars—it’s kind of amazing that the whole book spans only about 6 years in real life; a whole career seems to be crammed into a short half-decade. The strength of the work is in its depth. Harris covers a lot of detail, including specific campaigns and movements. The book documents the highlights of different generations of consoles and the public response. From Super Mario to Donkey Kong Country to Sonic the Hedgehog to Night Trap to Mortal Kombat, the book runs the gamut of gaming landmarks. Harris documents the drama of developing a Sonic sequel and the internal conflicts between Sega of America and Sega of Japan, with the latter sandbagging the marketing gimmicks to the frustration of poor Tom Kalinske.

The book uses the console wars as a jumping off point to examine broader industry movements, including the legalities of violence in games and the push to create the ESRB rating system. It also documents the formation of Nintendo Power and the inaugural E3 conference. It’s compelling to see how the strife of the time period led to creation and flourishing of an industry, despite these rivals essentially trying to ruin the market share of one another.

Overall, the book isn’t anything groundbreaking. It doesn’t revolutionize the way I think about gaming, exactly, but the colourful cast of characters and the novelistic approach is very engaging as a story. It’s light, fun, and pretty informative. It hits the nostalgia buttons but also pulls back the curtain on how cutthroat and wild these fun colourful pastimes really were amongst adults while kids picked up the controller and demanded another try.

Happy reading and happy gaming, whichever side of the console war you fought for.

Strangers by David A. Robertson

I’ve been on the hunt for a new Indigenous novel that would work for a grade 9, which led me to Strangers by David A. Robertson. It has an engaging premise: a teenage boy returns home to his reserve after a decade of living in Winnipeg, summoned by his old friend via a series of urgent texts. The novel is framed as a murder mystery, but has a number of other layers, including a pandemic, a conspiracy, and supernatural beings like omniscient shapeshifting coyotes and ghost girls on fire.

I’m sorry to say that, ultimately, Strangers disappointed me. Expecting a murder mystery, I was waiting for a series of clues to unfold and then be pieced together in a way that recontextualized the story. Instead, the reveal of the killer fell flat because there was no previous connection to the character. There was no way I could have pieced together the string of deaths on my own, and by the end of the book the genre has shifted and the novel becomes a super hero origin story, setting us up for a trilogy (I think), which also left elements of the mystery unsolved. I wouldn’t teach this one, if for no other reason that the ending fails to satisfy. The motivations for the conspiracy remain unclear.

To back up a bit, Strangers focuses on Cole, a controversial childhood hero in his community Wounded Sky First Nation. At seven years old, his school erupted into flames. He rushed back into the building and, somehow, miraculously, he lifted a fallen wall off the ground, freeing two of his best friends. Tragically, the other children passed away. He was then swept away to Winnipeg, partially to protect him from the controversy: a fair number of people hate him because he didn’t save their loved ones, a fair number of people hate him for leaving and never reaching out. At the prompting of his old friend, he returns to Wounded Sky for a memorial, but there’s a catch. Not only does he seem to bring back a pandemic that kills people within twenty four hours, but it seems like every time Cole spends alone time with a friend, that friend ends up dead. Oh, there’s also a trickster coyote figure that is guiding Cole and forcing him to take action in secret, blackmailing him with a purgatorial ghost girl who died in the fire.

Part of my frustration with the novel is its implausibility. After one of Cole’s friends is shot and killed in his arms, the police let him roam free, which I can maybe forgive, but when Cole is the last person to see a second victim alive and is free, it seems totally implausible that police would not take him into custody. I can accept the magical realism element, but the police procedural elements give no good reason for Cole to be free. Also, towards the end of the book, Cole needs to donate his blood and a group of teenagers figures out how to do a transfusion, essentially—thank goodness a real doctor steps in, but it’s again pretty implausible.

Another issue I felt the book suffered from was a bloated cast of characters. The first fifty pages introduce a ton of characters—friends, family, community members. This would not be an issue if the conventions of a mystery novel were followed more closely. If we had a large cast of characters to suspect and deduce the true killer, it would add a fun dimension to the book. Instead, it feels like we just need more people to have conversations with—and those conversations are repetitive. At the risk of being an insensitive jerk, I was pretty irritated by Cole’s mopey attitude. He suffers from survivor’s guilt over the event at his elementary school and experiences doubt, guilt, shame, etc. I wanted him to just get over it. He did what he could to help—he saved two lives; he was seven years old, what does he or anyone expect him to do—save everyone? It’s reasonable to explore that survivor’s guilt for a bit, but we wallowed alongside him too much.

There are some moments when the characters have a nice connection, but there are some of the YA tropes that drive me crazy and feel nothing like the students in my room. The childhood friend that Cole is in love with is probably the best case for a sincere and authentic connection. Amongst the friends of the book, their personalities and dialogue just don’t quite register as being substantially different from one another (which is another factor in making the cast feel too bloated).

The book wasn’t all bad, but it did make me feel cold. By the end of the book, I was just waiting for it to come to a close. There were some fun action sequences, but they were really hindered by the crawl of the wallowing. Incidentally, there were the strange tonal shifts throughout the text. The subject matter is deeply serious but the omniscient coyote guide makes jokes throughout—and worse, outdated jokes that no teenager today will understand and that parents might find cute in their tongue-in-cheek way.

Anyway, it was worth trying out Strangers to keep the curriculum fresh and engaging, but sadly I don’t think this one is going to work out for my class.

Happy reading!

Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? by James Shapiro

  The punnily titled Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? is a historical critique of the author of plays like Hamlet, The Tempest, and Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare, one of if not the most influential writer in the English language has been subject to a number of conspiracy theories. For example, perhaps Chrisopher Marlowe wasn’t actually murdered and his death was all a cover-up that allowed him to be spirited away to write plays under the pseudonym Shakespeare. James Shapiro’s thesis: these conspiracies are bogus. Shakespeare existed and wrote the plays we attribute to him. I’m sure we’ve all heard some conspiracies that Shakespeare didn’t write his plays. I even remember that in our high school edition of Macbeth the marginalia suggested that Christopher Marlowe wrote Act 3, Scene 3, and that is why there is an extra murderer that had never been introduced previously. Bunk, Shapiro would say.

Shapiro dismantles a number of common “clues” for Shakespeare’s inauthenticity throughout the book. For example, there’s the common belief that Shakespeare was uneducated because there is no record of Shakespeare attending school. Shapiro suggests, though, that Elizabethan England was not keeping records of the sort, but in fact plenty of people were educated, even if the attendance register is lost to history. The same goes for the argument that Shakespeare couldn’t possibly be as worldly as he presents in his texts. How could he possibly know about life in Italy, for example, if he never even left England? Well, Shapiro argues, often playwrights worked for play houses and were hired to write. The play houses would have their own collections of books that their writers would read and draw from—not that books were inaccessible in Elizabethan England; Shapiro points to some stats of how many book dealers existed. 

Shapiro works through a number of specific theories for alternate identities for Shakespeare that emerged in the years following his death, dismantling each one. He points to records that we do have (like lawsuits that bear Shakespeare’s name), the errors in peoples’ assumptions about Elizabethan writerly culture, famous frauds, and so on. Shapiro documents a fraud where one man wrote a wealth of extra missives, poems, and plays bearing Shakespeare’s name trying to convince others of a different Shakespeare. Even famous authors like Henry James and Mark Twain were Shakespeare skeptics, referring to “the author of the Shakespeare plays” rather than Shakespeare himself. Another prominent theory was that Francis Bacon was the author of Shakespeare’s plays—but to what end? Why conceal his identity?

Perhaps most compelling is the undercurrent of Contested Will. Beyond an exploration of who Shakespeare really was, the book presents some reasons that people might buy into conspiracies. In some ways, it’s far more broadly applicable than we might anticipate from the outset. For example, Shakespeare is presented as a unique force; he’s essentially a divine being in the world of literature. Thus, at one point in history, we see the debate rise up to challenge Shakespeare, Shapiro suggests, alongside other forms of divinity worship. At another time, we see the pushes for and against individualism. Scholars examined the idea of Homer being multiple rather than a singular writer; by extension, people then examined the works of Shakespeare as collaborations between a number of unidentified people, again dismantling his singular importance. Alternatively, scholars could not accept that the plays are anything but the work of a singular genius, but that we have identified the wrong person and that we now need to pull someone out from obscurity. We can’t have a Shakespeare that is an upper class figure; we need a scrappy everyday hero. Essentially, Shapiro’s argument is that political, religious, and social issues are the driving force of conspiratorial thinking. I actually hoped Shapiro would put a finer point on it and bring everything into a distinct framework, but the intimation is enough as a starting place.

One of the main arguments against Shakespeare’s identity is that he is so hard to pin down and find documentation of in his time. Shapiro, though, argues against that line of thinking. He notes how the spelling variants make it more challenging to find definitive record of Shakespeare. There was Shak-spar, Shakespear, Shakspar, or other variants before language got standardized in its spelling, so we can’t find or maybe have destroyed records with variations in spelling. One argument against Shakespeare is that people in his time weren’t talking about him—but Shapiro points out that they were. There are references to him as an employee of theatre companies, for example. Sure, he did collaborate on some plays (and Shapiro names the actual collaborators, which is pretty cool), but that was part of the process. Stories were commissioned and workshopped and shifted for different venues. Essentially, Shakespeare was known to others and we do have record of the man and the actors that he worked with.

Shapiro goes into some analysis, for example, of how specific roles may be written for specific actors. There is textual evidence for the specific people who were cast in particular parts. Shapiro also corrects the record on at least some of the order of the plays, which a number of anti-Shakespeare conspiracists got completely wrong in tracking to track Shakespeare’s development as an author and to pair his plays with autobiographical moments of their preferred candidates. (Sidenote: is it appropriate to call these conspiracy theorists Shakespeare birthers? It’s the same phenomenon, sort of.)

One of the most compelling literary arguments Shapiro makes in the book is against biographical criticism. It was interesting to see how previous conspiracists read and misread the plays to match their theories of who Shakespeare was (Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, for example). They would match the characters with real world figures and ensure that each aligned. These biographical readings, Shapiro and other new critics would suggest, fail to do justice to the actual content or logic of the plays. There’s actually a compelling anecdote where Shapiro discusses Helen Keller’s literary career. She is of course known for her life story. What I did not know is that she wrote fiction, too, and Shapiro documents how Keller was frustrated by the fact that nobody was interested in her fiction because her life overshadowed her work. People longed for more autobiographical fiction. Shapiro shows the way in which our society became more invested in an individual talent and why that led to autobiographical criticism and, moreover, demanded a specific identity for Shakespeare.

The book was pretty illuminating. I think it could have been used a little bit more of a push to lock down the frameworks for conspiratorial thinking that Shapiro exposes through case studies. The case studies are effective for showing errors in thinking and gives Shapiro an opportunity to correct the record and challenge the gaps in our own knowledge about the era and about Shakespeare the man. I’m not an expert, but I am persuaded.

Happy reading!

Eating Salad Drunk edited by Gabe Henry

  Sometimes we just need something light. Eating Salad Drunk suits that purpose; it’s a collection of haiku poems by a smattering of comedians and edited by Gabe Henry. The book includes comedians like Mike Birbiglia, Maria Bamford, Colin Mochrie, Bob Odenkirk, Margaret Cho, and more. The haiku works well for comedians because in allows them to essentially share a bunch of one-liner jokes in 17 syllables. There are some great jokes and absurd moments, and some poems that teeter on the edge of actually expressing wisdom.

One thing that’s pretty neat is that the introduction to the book gives a brief history of the haiku form. My perception of haiku is that they are typically about the serenity of nature and the distillation of a profound feeling. Henry points out, though, that there’s a bawdy and bodily quality to a number of early haiku poems. One of the earliest haiku, Henry notes, is by Yamazaki Sōkan: “Even at the time / When my father lay dying / I still kept farting” (XVII). For a comedy book, teaching me something new about the genre is pretty cool.

As a collection, there’s some nice variety in the topics and approaches of the comedian-poets. The poems are grouped, sometimes loosely, under the categories of screen time, food, friends & family, modern romance, struggles, nature calls, entertainment, words of wisdom, and self love & loathing. Several of the comedian-poets have entries in multiple of the categories, and I’m curious how the collection might have looked different if it were arranged by comedian rather than by subject matter. I wonder if it would help to get a better grasp of each comedian’s “voice” or if it would push comedians into some unfamiliar territory in their work.

The book is fun and light. I don’t have much “deep” commentary for the poems, but I will share some of my favourites, which often seem to involve either wordplay or absurdity. The way that the poems subvert expectations are just the best. Without further ado, have a gander at some of my favourites from Eating Salad Drunk:

From Aparna Nancherla:

Got to the end of
The internet. Turns out I

Was dead the whole time. (25)

Framing the internet like a novel with a twist ending has done before (SimpsonsDidIt.gif), but it has a definite charm that the twist ending is solipsistic in nature and also has the double meaning that you were dead the whole time you were surfing.

From George Wallace, with a focus on wordplay:

I’ll eat a skirt steak
While wearing a pair of pants.
I don’t give a shit. (42)

Also in the wordplay file from Myq Kaplan, who gets several entries in the collection:

Cafeteria.

Café plus bacteria?
I will eat at home. (47)

Probably the food poem that got the biggest laugh-out-loud reaction from me due to its absurdity and playfulness:

Oh, Fruit by the Foot.
You flout the metric system.

In a tasty way. (53)

That piece by Jo Firestone and Mike Dicenzo is such a joyful spin. The word “flout” is just perfectly elevated for such a stupid little poem.

Some poems are rooted in the human experience and its own silliness and absurdity. There’s a fair amount that fails to land for me when discussing social media, but Liz Magee has a great joke here about our social bonds:

Happy birthday, friend!
Posted a pic where I look
Great and you look fine. (68)

That is a finely crafted, elegant joke that works for its concept but also the voice. I can just imagine the way a comedian might present the word “fine.”

Drawing on some of Henry’s observations on the lewdness of early haiku, there are a few relationship poems that are risqué but have that same kind of wordplay and cutting humour, as seen in the following poems by Jes Tom and Kelly Bachman respectively:

A “tight five” is a
Stand-up set, or a new name
For fisting. You choose. (93)

My ex eats ass now.
Somehow that hurts way more than
All of his success. (93)

Or even Myq Kaplan’s silly:

Necrophilia
Is not what I thought it was.
I like sex with necks. (96).

So ridiculous and absurd but for that reason irresistible.

Some of the poems are also a little bit sad or stand out as more traditionally poetic through, for example, anthropomorphism, as in Laura Silverman’s piece:

Three in the morning
Refrigerator’s humming.
Must not know the words. (57).

There’s something mournful about that, but also endearing that this poor fridge is presented in its ignorance of the words. Kyle Ayers also personifies Netflix in an odd way:

When I die, someone
Scroll through my Netflix for me.
It likes the scrolling. (24)

Similarly, there’s a funny but dark poem by Aparna Nancherla that goes as follows:

Accidentally

FaceTimed my doctor’s office.
The call was declined. (5)

Or the sad response to capitalism we see in Sierra Katow:

The dogs I follow
On Instagram have better
Lives than most of us. (7)

I imagine lots of people would find a number of poems in the collection relatable, especially with respect to office culture and dating culture. Kyle Ayers writes, for example,

“Per my last email”
Is just me being polite.
Fuckin REPLY NOW. (10)

And the disconnect in communication of situationships, for example, as presented by Karen Chee:

“Sorry, just saw this!”
He says, and I believe him
Because I want to. (10)

Overall, there are a lot of fun poems and silly jokes told in a precise and concise format. Not all of them land or resonate, but there are enough in here that elicit a chuckle to make the book a fun hour long venture.

And that’s my tight five. Happy reading!