So that's what

So that's what President Obama is reading. (I do so love his formal title. I hate formal titles as a rule, but referring to him by his first name just seems to lack occasion.) The obvious question then is, what about me? I'm now reading Garbo Laughs by Elizabeth Hay, from my stack of novels to get through before Baby is born. It's only the second book by Hay I've read, after Late Nights on Air which I so unsecretly loved. Her fiction is a bit disorienting, characters with such idiosyncratic traits that they're hard to get one's head around, the same way people are. The sort of characters you might misuse the word "random" for. I also finished reading Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons this week, after DGR's review. And I'm not writing much of anything-- I have fourteen submissions ready to send out as soon as I can muster up the energy (Saturday?), and I think I'm done until long post-Baby (which is different from "forever"). All I want to do these days is read, read, read, and thankfully I have plenty of material with which to accommodate that.

Toronto Sakura

Less Apparent Miracles

I've always been a believer, in that all will be well, and things happen for a reason, and in the everyday miracles apparent all around us. Which is a kind of faith, if not the religious kind, and I've never had to to look far for awe and wonder.

But for a while now, I've been struggling with a less-apparent miracle. I've been unable to believe in things I can't see, and though in some circles this might qualify me as sane, they're not the ones I've been travelling in lately. Everyone else I know has found it easy to comprehend that for the last thirty-six weeks, a baby has been budding inside me.

A baby: the most extraordinary ordinary occurrence to happen to nearly everybody. Which is why no one else is even fazed, but I can't believe it's happened to me.

I was supposed to believe initially because a blood test told me so. The test results were even evidence enough, for a few hours, but then doubt crept in: how could I be having a baby, and it be Friday afternoon, and I felt ordinary, and my house, and the street, and world were just as usual? Shouldn't the sky have looked different, the weather portentous, and wasn't I supposed to be emitting a glow? A baby was impossible.

Which was ridiculous. Because I very much wanted a baby, had planned for a baby. My husband and I knew we were ready, and we'd been thrilled to have our wish come true. But it was so unbelievable, and too simple-- to want so much, and then to get? Surely, there had to be a catch.

I felt like a fraud, arranging for a midwife, like I was just playing a part as I purchased a copy of What to Expect When You're Expecting. We told our close friends and family, who reacted with excitement, but moments when I'd let my excitement match theirs were few and far between.

I wasn't supposed to be excited anyway. The first trimester, I'd been warned repeatedly, was fraught with risk. My "baby" was the size of an apple seed. I'd heard so many stories of women suffering miscarriages that actually managing to be born seemed like a long-shot. The survival of my baby was as improbable as its existence.

It was very unromantic. I wanted to be pregnant like the women on TV, surreptitiously gathering nursery items, smiling with a secret, the kind of woman to whom labels like "over the moon" are assigned. But I was "out of my mind" instead-- conscious of every abdominal twinge, terrified of bleeding, adamant something was wrong if I ever woke up feeling good. And it was only when so convinced its wee life was imperiled that I could believe in the baby at all.

So I looked forward to my first ultrasound. Surely, I thought, the sight of the baby would make it real, though I was also nervous. Everyone I know who's ever gone in for a scan has been terrified of what the technician might find there. An ulcer, a tumour, a cyst or a monster, or the awful fact of absolutely nothing,.

But absolutely there was something, however blurry and undefined. We saw its pulsing heartbeat, and the squirming sprouts of arms and legs. It even looked like a baby, if you held your head back and squinted. And the baby was real, actual, or at least as believable as anything ever projected on a screen. Which wasn't so believable, once I'd thought about it. The baby on the screen was just as abstract as the one inside my head.

With the second trimester, however, things got better. Once my apple-seed baby had surpassed apple-size, and every week grew comparable to an even bigger piece of produce. Crossing the twelve week mark gave me permission to relax, and to imagine things might turn out all right. We could tell everybody we knew, and they were so convinced by the news, I felt silly not going along with it.

But still, it wasn't real. Which I thought would change when my belly started to grow, and when nothing changed, I thought, when it grew a little bigger. Or at the 19 week ultrasound, where our baby was definitely a baby, and we saw its tiny toes, its hand tucked under its chin, and how its whole body bounced up and down when I laughed. But then how could that be inside me, I wondered, looking down at my still and quiet-- albeit slightly burgeoning-- belly.

It would have to be the kicks, I decided. Though I wasn't sure-- I'd been wrong before, far more than I'd been right. Already in my pregnancy, we'd determined that I had abysmal intuition, and was about as in tune with my body as a passing stranger. But still, the kicks-- could anything be more definite?

Of course, they started off as flutters. Butterfly wings, breaths and whispers, so how could I be sure they weren't just in my mind? What if I wanted to feel them so badly, I'd imagined them? How could anything so wonderful really be true?

But it was. Just like the ultrasound images, bigger and stronger every time. And the gorgeous galloping stampede of its heartbeat, and how our baby had persisted in growing and thriving all the while.

Because the flutters turned into thumps, then kicks, our own little miracle doing the fox-trot on my ribs. With boots on. Even other people could feel it. And soon it became impossible not to believe in the baby anymore, as well as obvious the baby didn't care if we did. This baby, clearly, had plans of its own. Probably not believing in me either, or even the world, but determined to arrive here regardless.

Travel: The Poetry of Motion

I've really been enjoying Charlotte Ashley's literary blog Inklings this past while, and had fun contributing to this month's virtual book collection, themed Travel: The Poetry of Motion. And then winning first prize for my entry-- how exciting. Go to her post to find out what all was assembled.

Tea for... Eight?

I hosted an afternoon tea today for my friend Jennie, who is getting married in July. It was the first time I'd ever made tea WITH sandwiches, which turned out not to be true at all as Stuart made all the sandwiches. They were delicious! We had smoked salmon, cucumber cream cheese, and cheddar and chutney. For sweets, we had banana cake, chocolate cupcakes and fresh fruit. And of course, scones with strawberry jam and devonshire cream. Tea options were hot and iced, and the whole thing was delicious. I am pleased, and grateful for a friend who lends the occasion of her wedding as an excuse to fulfill my own tea fixation. It was a very lovely afternoon.

Road Trip to Don Mills

I am going to be totally honest-- I arrived with heightened expectations and they weren't entirely met. I'd heard so many good things about McNally Robinson Booksellers out west that I couldn't miss checking out their first Ontario location, way out in the Don Mills countryside. So we drove out there this morning, me and two bookish ladies, and my husband who couldn't remember why he'd signed up for the adventure. We arrived at the shopping mall, which was strange and confusing, with people on segways zipping about, and other people on stilts. The sun was bright and the sky was blue, and I was comfortable wearing a tank top-- a gorgeous day. We found the bookstore quickly, and hurried our way inside.

The space was great, the shop was crowded, I loved the light, and the trees, and two whole floors of books. It would have been nice, however, if staff hadn't responded to every question with a shrug and, "We've just opened," or if they'd had a copy of the book I'd come to buy, or if Stuart hadn't been convinced he was actually in a Chapters. I'm not really sure what I was expecting, but dancing elephants might have been involved, and they weren't there.

They did have Rebecca's book, however, right beside the dirty avocado book, much to our delight. Lots of other books from small presses too, and the children's section was wonderful, and we explored food books with great enthusiasm. I ended up getting The Story of a Marriage by Andrew Sean Greer, and Wheels on the Go for a friend of ours who's turning two. And afterwards we went out for a suburban type meal at a chain restaurant, which was tremendous fun in the land of parking lots and fountains.

The Spare Room by Helen Garner

Oh, first person narrators, ever so cunning and manipulative. How luring are their points of view, and how they sway us from the very first sentence, because after all, they're doing the telling. As Helen, the narrator of Helen Garner's novel The Spare Room begins, "First, in my spare room, I swivelled the bed on to a north-south axis. Isn't that supposed to align the sleeper with the planet's positive energy flow, or something?" Stepping away, we can see that she's taking great care to appear to take care, but she also has no idea what she's doing.

Helen is preparing her spare room for her friend Nicola's arrival. Nicola has been suffering from terminal cancer for a long time, flitting from one experimental treatment to another with no signs of improvement, and she's arriving in Melbourne now to stay with Helen for three weeks whilst undergoing another round of treatment at a clinic there.

At first, Helen is happy to host her old friend, and while certainly shocked by her decline and appalled by the side-effects of the treatment she receives, she is willing to go out of her way to be helpful, to release her inner-nurse. She makes soups, changes the sheets, transports Nicola to and from the clinic. Behind Nicola's back, however, she notes considerable frustrations, primarily with Nicola's inability to accept her fate. Helen remembers her own sister's death from cancer: "She accepted her death sentence quietly, without mutiny; perhaps, we thought in awe, she even welcomed it. She laid down her gun. She let us cherish her. We nursed her."

What Nicola requires of those around her, however, will not be so easy. What she demands of Helen, in addition to the nursing and the hosting that she seems to take for granted, is that Helen believe she will eventually recover, that the treatment will start working and by the middle of next week, she'll be rid of the cancer. Which Helen is unwilling to do or even just incapable of doing, the futility of Nicola's struggle staring her straight down in the face.

As the days go by, Helen becomes more and more frustrated by Nicola's forced insouciance, her smiles, her inability to face the truth. She is also exhausted by the effort of caring for her friend, and by the isolation of the caregiver role. She is soon unable to humour Nicola anymore, to accommodate her need for planetary alignment, and she breaks, forcing her friend to see the reality that this cancer is going to kill her.

It's a complicated climax, this moment, when we're relieved that Helen has finally out and said it, and yet it's discomforting to be feel our sympathy is with Helen, who has just proven herself to be an utter bully, who is behaving in ways most of us wouldn't like to admit we're capable of. It's disquieting to identify with a character acting in a way that is so unsympathetic, but she is the narrative voice, and she's so blunt and honest. It's perfectly understandable. You'll find yourself wanting to wring poor Nicola's neck.

This is a perfect novel. It's also quite short, but I've written this much, and I could go on and on (but I won't). Because there is substance, layers and layers of. At its root about friendship, which Garner refers to here as a "long conversation". As well as family, and belonging, and imposition, understanding, and proprietorship of each other and ourselves. Garner's narrator fascinating to consider, her motivations, what her words and actions reveal. This novel is quiet in its force, and enormous for the space it gives to ponder.

My fiction in Room

I am very happy to announce that my story "What Noise Can Carry" appears in issue 32.1 of Room Magazine, which is out now. Not sure if it's in the shops yet, but my copy appeared in the post today. The issue is gorgeous, and I was excited to see that it also contains work by Lorna Crozier and Patricia Young, as well as a review of Jennica Harper's What It Feels Like For a Girl. It is very nice to be a part of something so good.

Finite Time

I've written a post over at the Descant blog about reading with finite time. How does one choose what to fill that time with?

Further excitement

My new issue of The New Quarterly has finally arrived! Honestly, never has there ever been an issue of a lit. journal I've so wanted to devour-- Elizabeth Hay interviewed, Rebecca Rosenblum on Sassy, even Kim Jernigan's Editor's Letter is delightful. And speaking of Rosenblums, this particular one has been nominated for a National Magazine Award for her story "Linh Lai" (published in TNQ). I was also excited to see my favourite poet Jennica Harper up for a poetry award. Further excitement: Margaret Atwood's Adopt a Word to Create a Story story has been revealed. It's called "Persiflage in the Library" and it's very cute (read it here).

Short

Lately I've been short on bloggish thoughts, too busy, I suppose, shining light on and playing music to my lower abdomen, as well as lying face-down with my shoulders on the floor and my bottom in the air. And ever-seeking the next piece of cake, which is usually around the corner anyway. These things all take time. I've also been reading good books, finishing up a number of writing projects, sitting tall in straight-backed chairs, and taking far too many baths. With pleasure. There are good things going on though, as you can see by the "forthcoming" projects listed in my sidebar, and fun things will be occurring here in weeks to come (including a new interview, and coverage of a bookish road trip to take place this weekend). Now must go and run another bath. Thank you for your patience.

The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway

Certain novels might not immediately appeal to me, aren't exactly "my kind of book", but then upon hearing nothing about one but exemplary praise, I really can't help but read it. Which was the case with Steven Galloway's novel The Cellist of Sarajevo, nominated for the 2008 Scotiabank Giller Prize, finalist for the 2009 Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, a Globe & Mail Best Book, and praised by many book lovers I hold in esteem.

This book could be classified as historical fiction, if you consider the early 1990s history. Though "historical fiction" also reads as a kind of slight, and one that is not intended here. The label is a slight, if only because so many works in the genre do the "fiction" part of the equation so very badly. History is the point, the facts are, and the reader comes away quite gratified, feeling as though they could pass an exam at school.

But facts are not the point of fiction, and in particularly not the point are lessons to be learned. If you want a lesson, read a textbook, but we turn to fiction for something more nuanced than that, more complex, and not to come away with certainty. Certainty, anyway, is some kind of illusion.

I didn't come away from The Cellist of Sarajevo with an understanding of the conflict at its heart. I didn't get a sense of the politics involved, the history even, of who was good and who was bad. These aren't details I'd look for in a novel anyway, and Galloway has no desire to deal with them, or with with the perspective of the military commander who says, "I will tell you the reality of Sarajevo. There is us, and there is them. Everyone, and I mean everyone, falls into one of these two groups. I hope you know where you stand."

But as readers we aren't told where any of the characters stand, and that we can't even tell makes clear Galloway's point-- that such distinctions are meaningless. People are people, and the reality of their lives in a war zone is remarkable for reasons beyond which side their affinities lie. The quotidian details are what we take away here, and they're powerful in their general nature-- that these are the kind of lives being lived each day in places all over the world. The struggle of a man to cross the city and fetch water for his family, another man who has sent his family to safety and is attempting to get to work, the task given to a sniper called Arrow. She is to protect the cellist who has been playing the same adagio every day in honour of the 22 people killed below his window, hit by shelling while standing in a lineup for bread.

The stories of these people, of these individual lives, are what fiction is made for. To quietly and without great sensation (for this is daily life after all) demonstrate what such days and lives are like, the implications of living under terror-- to cross a street where you know that snipers are aimed, and whether or not you're hit, they've got a hold on you. Even when nothing happens, characters are seized by the knowledge that an explosion is always imminent. Such details as that all the women have grey hair now, because no more do they have access to dye, or what it is to see an overweight person, what that means when resources are so limited for everyone.

This novel is also the story of the streets, the story of a city ravaged by war and rendered unrecognizable. How the characters reconstruct the city in their memories, these places they've always known. The devastation obliterates lives, but not the lives of those still living, and it becomes these citizens' struggle to resist losing their humanity. Galloway shows the magnitude of this struggle, but also the power retained by those who succeed. That civilization is everywhere and forever always a work in progress.

It's Useful to Have a Duck by Isol

It's Useful to Have a Duck by Isol is one of the best things I've come across lately, and not just because ducks are my second-favourite animal (after elephants). Here is a book that is two stories in one, accordion-style, one half the story of a boy and his duck and the various ways he uses it. As a hat, to dry his ears, and after the bath is almost drained, the duck plugs up the hole. A familiar-enough tale, but then turn the book around to read It's Useful to Have a Boy, the same story but from the duck's perspective. This duck is not a hat, but uses the boy's head to see the view, he uses the boy's ear to wax his bill, and the little duck is not a plug, but is instead seated comfortably in his sleeping hole.

What a delightful book, whose simple drawings will appeal to children, whose story is playful nonsense, who takes such advantage of its bookish form to contort into something quite wonderful. These two mirror stories rendering the "playful nonsense" so much more than that, offering a lesson on perspective that seems miraculous dawning on the adult reader. A child probably would only catch this lesson in glimpses, but how remarkable is any book with depths still to be plumbed.

Any day now

For about seven months, people liked to tell me, "You don't look pregnant," which I found deeply irritating and kind of perplexing to address. I don't think I'd want to go back to that one, but neither am I too fond of the current comment, which is, "Any day now!" Because, well, no. Though perhaps in about forty days now, though probably more. My baby bump has ceased to be cute, and I am beginning to look into the mirror with considerable fright, and who knows what the effect will be forty days from now. I could also do with fewer strangers telling me I look "heavy" in the shower at the gym.

Nevertheless, I am excited. Our very good friends had a little girl two weeks ago, which served to make the connection clear, that pregnancy is a means to a miraculous end, for I often forget it's not an end in itself. And our baby is moving around all the time, so that I feel like I'm getting to know it. Though yesterday I also got to know that baby is lying sideways, so we have to do everything possible during the next two weeks to get that baby upside down. I vote for turning somersaults in the pool, and hope it does the trick.

The biggest news, however, is that the baby's blanket is done. I started knitting it back in November, before I could acknowledge the baby in any other way, out of fear that wanting too much was unlucky. It's only been very recently that I've been able to start preparing, and indeed now the baby's nursery is ready(ish). But in November, all I could do was knit, which made me feel that at least I was preparing in some way. The blanket coming together perfectly, with no mistakes, which is previously been unheard of in a project by me. The blanket is beautiful, so soft and warm, and I can't wait to meet the little person who will be wrapped inside it.

Arrival

On the new Drabble

Margaret Drabble's new "semi-memoir" The Pattern in the Carpet: A Personal History With Jigsaws is out in Britain now. I've ordered a copy, as the North American edition isn't out until the fall, and I'm not sure just how much time I'll have for reading then. Right now, you can listen to her reading from it on The Guardian Podcast. In reference to the book, Drabble on occupation and overcoming depression: "We all tackle it in our own ways. I have long been a believer in the therapeutic powers of nature, and had faith that a good, long walk outdoors would always do me good. It might not cure me, but it would do me good." She also claims to have quit writing fiction for fear of repeating herself, which is not so surprising if you examine her oeuvre, and how she has challenged the novel to be something different every time. Perhaps she thinks she's exhausted the possibilities? But reviews of the new book have been favourable. I liked this from The Telegraph: "What a puzzle: Margaret Drabble’s memoir cum history of the jigsaw cum paean to her rather dull aunt shouldn’t really work. But somehow, in the end, it seduces."

Incidentally, Drabble's feud with sister A.S. Byatt is reported to have stemmed from a dispute surrounding-- what else?-- a tea set.

Advice for Italian Boys by Anne Giardini

"There is a saying I like very much," explains a mentor to a young man in Anne Giardini's novel Advice For Italian Boys. "One that can be expressed two contradictory ways, but somewhat paradoxically both of them are abundantly true." The two expressions being "God is in the details" and "The devil is in the details," both of which are also abundantly true in relation to the novel.

For indeed, it is the details, each one singularly considered, exact and perfect, that render the prose so evocative-- the description of a man's testicles, for example, or the Italy the grandmother still sees in her dreams, the intricacies of barbering, the shape of a woman's body. But it is also such a focus on details that distracts from other matters at hand, such as plot or character. Details are not enough to grow these things organically, and so this novel reads patchily in parts.

Part of this problem, however, is deliberate and due to a protagonist who has not yet achieved "self-actualization". He is probably someone who wouldn't spend much time considering "self-actualization", except that he's recently enrolled in a continuing education psychology course. And for this protagonist-- Nicole Pavone who is in his early twenties, first-generation Canadian happily ensconced at home with his Italian parents, employed as a personal trainer at the local gym-- the world around him is a place comprising details and lacking a cohesive whole. In short, he's got some growing up to do.

The solution, he believes is to take advice, and fortunately he finds it aplenty. His Nonna's old Italian maxims are always close at hand, cryptic in their meaning, but also flexible enough to have wide relevance. He turns also to this two brothers, both called Enzo, who offer their respective takes on fraternal support. And while his clients at work turn to him for fitness advice, they're also willing to offer Nicolo their own bits of wisdom. So that in the end, he is receiving so much advice, he's as much abuzz as ever with total confusion.

Advice for Italian Boys was a read that held my attention, particularly by virtue of its wide perspective-- the glimpses we get into the minds of other characters, and the opportunity to see Nicolo from the outside. I appreciated Giardini's presentation of suburban Toronto, the ethnic enclaves on the northern fringes which are usually ignored in contemporary literature. Also her portrayal of an immigrant community whose cultural identity and status in a new land is not necessarily the paramount occasion of the novel.

This is a slow story, made up of moments instead of momentum, in that I mean nothing terribly dramatic ever happens. Which is certainly not a flaw, because the moments Giardini captures are done so with great acuity. She also performs curious tricks with chronology which don't seem ultimately realized, but they suggest there's more to this simple narrative than what at first meets the reader's eye.

Then let us drink a cup of tea

"The tea ritual: such a precise repetition of the same gestures and the same tastes; accession to simple, authentic and refined sensations, a license given to all, at little cost, to become aristocrats of taste, because tea is the beverage of the wealthy and of the poor; the tea ritual, therefore, has the extraordinary virtue of introducing into the absurdity of our lives an aperture of serene harmony. Yes, the world may aspire to vacuousness, lost souls mourn beauty, insignificance surrounds us. Then let us drink a cup of tea. Silence descends, one hears the wind outside, autumn leaves rustle and take flight, the cat sleeps in a warm pool of light. And, with each swallow, time is sublimed." --Muriel Barbery, trans. Alison Anderson, The Elegance of the Hedgehog

Easter Sunday

Even though we celebrate religious holidays in a secular fashion at our house, there was plenty going on this Easter Sunday. Springtime, first of all, with blue skies and sunshine. Tulips on the table, and a special Springtime cake. The ever-present squirms of our baby, who we're just weeks away from meeting. A brilliant dinner of delicious lamb and vegetables, and seeing family. The wonderful news of another new baby, to be joining our extended family in October. This whole weekend full of good friends, delightful celebrations, and the week-old baby we got to play with on Friday. (Indeed, our lives are babyful of late. Which is good practice.) And another day off tomorrow. Now reading (the gorgeous) The Elegance of the Hedgehog, and certainly this is life.

The Private Patient by P.D. James

Apart from the plot twists and the suspense, of course, one of the best parts about P.D. James' The Private Patient was its unabashed bookishness. That not only is Commander Adam Dalglish that unique combination of published poet/murder investigator, but every suspect he meets is assessed by the state of their library. Whether the books are carefully ordered with their heights fitting carefully into the shelves, or cluttered in piles about a room, or falling down where gaps in the collection have arisen. Character further established by literary references (or lack of), and self-conscious references to detective fiction.

This was my first "Adam Dalgleish Mystery", and I was pleased that my lack of background didn't undermine the reading experience. Though I could discern the basics-- Dalgliesh leads and elite team of murder investigators, his fiancee Emma is esconced at Cambridge and he keeps her apart from his working life, that he is growing wary of murder scenes, and perhaps his retirement is nigh?

But we don't meet Dalgliesh until a third of the way into the book, the initial chapters focussed on staff at Cheverell Manor, a private clinic for cosmetic surgery, and the eponymous patient, investigative journalist Rhoda Gradwyn. She's booked in for a routine operation, albeit not an easy one-- the removal of a conspicuous scar from her face. But the proceeding goes as expected, she is sure to recover, and then the morning after she is discovered strangled in her bed. Suspects a plenty-- her toy-boy who stands to inherit from her will, his cousins who live at Cheverell Manor and have their own stories to protect, anyone who might have it in for Mr. Chandler-Powell and his clinic (and private medicine?). Gradwyn's own assortment of enemies, people she might have exposed throughout her career, or perhaps any one of the clinic's staff whose alibis might be too convenient. (There being no butler, he was not a suspect).

I will admit that I found the beginning of the book a bit plodding, and thought that any book so literarily aware of itself, employing such an expansive vocabulary could well have taken better care to avoid expository dialogue in lieu of plot. But once Dalgliesh and his team's investigation began, I was hooked, surprised by twists and revelations, intrigued by the psychology shown here of detective work, and the dynamics of the police team. It was clear to me why James is cited as a master of crime fiction, why Dalgliesh has enjoyed such enduring popularity, and how disappointed will be readers if his career has really come to an end.

"On" for just two dollars

Today at my local Toronto Public Library Branch (big ups the Spadina Road massive!) I purchased the word "on" for a new short story by Margaret Atwood. This is part of the Adopt a Word to Create a Story fundraising drive ongoing at TPL branches throughout April. For $2 per word, the story will unfold and be revealed in full at each branch and online on April 22nd. What a fabulous initiative!

On loving the "humble" cupcake

While I like short stories a lot, I do spend a disproportionate amount of time trying to articulate exactly why this is. Perhaps because the form is under-bought and under-read (or merely under-marketed?), and because lately also there have been so many reasons to celebrate it. And perhaps further because I come up against a lot of people who flat out don't like short stories, so then I start to get a bit zealous about conversion.

I've been thinking about short stories even more than usual, ever since coming across Craig Boyko's cupcake metaphor. "[Liking novels over short stories is] like preferring chocolate cake to chocolate cupcakes. Aren't they the same thing?" I actually like cupcakes even more than I like short stories, which I don't bother spending time trying to articulate because it's obvious. But I do take issue with Boyko's suggestion that cakes and cupcakes are the same thing. Just like novels and short stories, I love cakes and cupcakes very much, but each in different ways. And I wonder if perhaps an exploration of why exactly I love cupcakes as I do could clarify my relationship with short fiction.

The usefulness of this metaphor occurred to me on Sunday morning as I realized that cupcakes aren't as dainty as they look. I was watching a small child trying to eat one at the time, which mainly consisted of said child licking frosting off the top. The cupcake was too big to fit in her mouth properly, and a smaller bite would send the cake into a mess of bits and crumbs. Further, how to get the paper peeled off? The cupcake was delectable to look at, but eating it would be a daunting task. The cake's delicacy does indeed end with the first bite, even for an adult mouth, and the crumbs would fall, anyone would long for the service of a fork instead of clumsy fingers, and would end up unaware of a spot of frosting on the nose.

It is intimidating to consider penetrating anything so pretty. Substance could well be all or nothing. The frosting might be the highlight, or even decorative sprinkles. What if the cake is too dense, or undercooked? Perhaps cupcakes are best admired from afar.

A slice of cake, of course, is a less troubling prospect. They're usually sloppier-looking affairs to begin with, and the damage is done as soon as a knife is pressed through its layers. (I hate cutting cake, the pressure, plus I have no eye for symmetry). You're handed a slab of slice, with a plate and fork even, the cake's strata submitted for examination. You don't like jam filling, for example? Well, just eat around it, and no one will be any the wiser. Cake is certainly a safer bet.

So why then do I love cupcakes as I do? Well, however intimidating, I do admire the prettiness, the containment, the same way as a child who once had a dollhouse, I get a kick out of all things minature. The whole cakey universe in a tiny paper wrapper. I also love the aesthetics of their collection, displayed on a pedestal or just on a special plate. That they can be assorted or near-identical, and what a different offering each grouping is.

I like the portion control very very much, but moreso I like that the portion control is just an illusion. I'd feel a bit guilty having a second slice of cake for example, but would think nothing of devouring three cupcakes in a row. Or four, if they were manageable (and I'd always find a way to manage). Unlike a whole cake, which is usually too much or too little, I like that a cupcake's very essence is that of being just enough. I like that you're never sure what you'll get inside it until you're through. Not knowing what to make of the entire thing until you're done.

The cupcake's littleness is really deceiving. How can anything that is "just enough" be little, particularly when you can have two? And they're bold cakes anyway, cupcakes are, on display, so photogenic. They're stylish, decorated with edible matching accessories, urban as you like in adorable store windows. But then they can be homey too, when rendered by a different kind of hand. Or cupcake brutalism? I can imagine it.

I suppose one more reason I now love cupcakes as I do is that I'm old enough to eat them properly. It's taken years of practice and figuring out to get that first bite quite right, and to learn to contain crumbs in my napkin or wrapper. I was once that little child facing a cupcake the size of my head, and that I am no longer means I've learned to have my cupcake and eat it too (or that I've at least learned how to have my cake and eat it afterwards). It also means that my head has grown, which is something to be pleased about after all this time.

Worry is the work

"In the years to follow, my midwifery practice taught me that for some women, worry is the work of pregnancy. In fact, an over-confident first time mom who thinks she has it all figured out worries me. I worry she will not be truly prepared for what awaits her."-- Pam England, Birthing from Within

Battered Soles by Paul Nicholas Mason

The protagonist of Paul Nicholas Mason's novel Battered Soles is a man called Paul Mason who is surprised to hear of a famous religious pilgrimage taken from the city of Peterborough to St. John's Anglican Church in Lakefield, a nearby village. "It didn't seem likely to me. I did not then expect the miraculous to reveal itself in a turf that was to some degree familiar."

But then miraculous revelation in familiar places is the jurisdiction of fiction in general, really, and Mason plays with this further by situating the familiar (which is himself, or someone like him) inside a story wholly imagined. Moreover, through such imagining, Mason has also managed to re-imagine Peterborough and Lakefield, rendering these seemingly ordinary locations (at least to those of us who've lived there) as places to be considered anew.

The fictional Paul Mason is familiar with Peterborough, because he'd attended university there at Trent in the 1970s. And he's intrigued by the idea of the pilgrimage, being someone who has "long felt drawn to religious questions, even if [he's] in short supply of doctrinal answers". The story that follows is Mason's account of his journey towards the blue-skinned Jesus sculpture in the basement of the St. John's church. The sculpture was created by a lesbian artist called Daz, who used to follow the pilgrimage route to her lover's home in Lakefield. After Daz is killed, struck down by a car on her bicycle, the church's caretaker cleaning around the statue suddenly finds his arthritis cured. Word of the miracle gets around, and the pilgrims begin arriving from around the world.

As might be expected by a novel whose title is a pun, the humour throughout is a bit goofy, the wisdom folksy. I frequently laughed out loud as I read (it occurs to me to note: there is no other way to laugh, is there?) and enjoyed traveling alongside Mason and the colourful characters he meets. The story as much a meditation on faith as the pilgrimage is meant to be, Mason's incidental asides providing Battered Soles with an additional great deal of charm. Faith itself meant in an ecumenical sense, as suggested by an Anglican pilgrimage towards any Jesus painted like a Hindi deity (with Baptists along the way). This becomes a story about people of all kinds. With no doctrinal answers, but indeed the questions open wide, underlining the very point: journey matters more than destination anyway.

Mini-Break, with frost on

Ah, so we realized why we'd been able to get such a good deal on our spring weekend getaway-- because where we were about to get away to could very well still be winter. The snow started falling not far up Highway 400, and we had to contend with roads variously icy or flooded as we made our way toward an old friend of mine to have lunch with her beautiful family. Definitely worth the peril though, as our reunion was glorious, her husband and baby were terrific, and they served a wonderful meal by the warmth of their wood stove. Also good was the jar of maple syrup we came away with, which they'd tapped from their trees.

From there, we proceeded to the resort where we were booked, got lost by the town of Windemere so I was very nearly late for my pre-natal massage at the resort spa. Because it was to be that kind of weekend, the spa I mean, not the tardiness (for we arrived in the nick of time). The bad weather was not afterwards a problem, for we had no desire to go outside. Not while there was a pool to be played in, and a delicious dinner to linger over. This morning I lazed in bed reading and laughing at Playing House by Patricia Pearson, then we were energized enough to make it to the hotel brunch, whose chief feature was a chocolate fountain, and the spread was thoroughly delicious, sumptuous and by today the sun was shining anyway. The snow was quickly melting as we left Muskoka behind us, brilliant skies and gorgeous rays along the road to home.

Delicate Edible Birds by Lauren Groff

Stunning, stunning, stunning, let me sing the praises of Delicate Edible Birds by Lauren Groff. I fell in love with her novel The Monsters of Templeton last year, but anything so extraordinary could well have been a trick of hype. By "anything so extraordinary", of course, I mean Groff's literary talent, and so it thrilled me as I read her short story collection to realize she's definitely credible, and her work is enduring.

The stories are remarkable, but just as much is their collection. And not simply because of the gorgeous cover design (whose theme of loveliness is continued through the book entire). I will say, however, that this is a book worth judging by its cover, for the reader will not be disappointed. The cover's bird motif appearing throughout the collection, joining these stories otherwise so disparate by style, narration, location, characterization. But the birds are there, and so is water, bodies of big and small, and swimmers, and poolside loungers, and drownings and rain. So that to ponder all these stories together after the fact is to draw surprising connections, new conclusions. Here are nine stories that belong together, but not in ways that one might suspect.

Lauren Groff is a storyteller in the old-fashioned sense. Her intention is not to cultivate realism, but rather atmosphere, fully steeped. Her narrators take on a nineteenth-century kind of omniscience, have a sweeping way about them, and the storytelling is really as much of the point as the story itself. Characters sometimes taking on fairytale proportions, particularly male ones who are devious and dastardly, which might be regarded as limited dimensionality, but I think it's just another kind of dimension altogether.

The nine stories collected here are long and developed with slow subtlety. "L. DeBard and Aliette" tells the story of a poolside romance between a determined polio victim and a poet against the background of the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic. That its ending is wandering yet still shocking shows its force is much more than a trick. "Majorette" traces the life of a baton-twirling girl fenced in by limitations thought to be hereditary, but then shows this is not the case. I loved "Blythe", which traces the story of a high-maintainence friendship, and the plight of the friend called on for saving time and time again. "Watershed" was a tragic romance dark and never saccharine. And while "Majorette" reminded me of Revolutionary Road, "Delicate Edible Birds" had something of Suite Francaise about it, and what kind of a span is that? Her tropical locations were also a wee bit Joan Didion.

Which is not to say that Lauren Groff is derivative, and I mean these references as compliments rather than explanations for. Because stunning, stunning, stunning, I'm still singing-- that all these works can come from one author, particularly one still young, is incredibly impressive. That the short story form is celebrated here with such deftness, and confidence, is terribly exciting. And the whole career Groff still has before her-- it's exciting to contemplate all that lies ahead for us to read.

Preferring chocolate cupcakes

Lovely that Shirley Hughes' Dogger has been reissued, though I hope my baby is content with an older edition, as I've been saving it all this time. On Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons, and it really is about time I read that book. Annabel Lyon's review of the new Mary Gaitskill collection is one of the most entertaining reviews I've read ever, as well as quite persuasive: "Short story fans like things short, so here's the skinny: Buy this book. Now, for the rest of you, the fat..." Craig Boyko on the short story, which I only read because of cupcakes in the headline, but I'm glad I did: "If stories do not sell, I guess it must be because people prefer to read novels. As someone who enjoys short stories, I find this preference odd. It's like preferring chocolate cake to chocolate cupcakes. Aren't they the same thing?" (They sort of are. Except that cupcakes are their own particular brand of amazing.)