Toronto Biennial of Art winding down

In addition to this being Black Friday, it is also the last weekend of the Toronto Biennial of Art.  I truly had meant to blog about this much sooner, but I guess better late than never.  (Actually, I had briefly considered signing up to volunteer for this, but life intervened as it always does.)

There has been a small exhibition of photos by Luis Jacob in Union Station since the beginning of the Biennial, but it took me a while to go out to some of the other exhibition sites (and I just never had any intention of going much beyond the urban core, like out to Mississauga).

Luis Jacob, Nathan Phillips Square, Toronto City Hall, 2017

I did make a bit of an effort to get out to MOCA to see the Age of You exhibition curated by Douglas Coupland.  This wasn't technically part of the Biennial (since it wasn't free), but it was reasonably thought provoking, even if the artistic element of the show was on the thin side.  This show seemed to be designed specifically for people with short attention spans, even more than Coupland's previous retrospective.)

This exhibit runs through Jan. 5, so there is still over a month left to see it.  One video installation by Shezad Dawood (actually three parts of the Leviathan series) were on view, though that stopped running in early November.  However, part 5 is still on view at the main Biennial Hub (259 Lakeshore Blvd East) through tomorrow.

It took me quite a while to get to the Biennial Hub, and in the end I tried to bike there.  I did make it in the end, but it felt incredibly dangerous, particularly with the heavy truck traffic on Lakeshore and the construction at the Biennial site itself!  I would not recommend trying to get their via bike (or really even by transit), but if you do attempt it, it is probably safer to stick to Queens Quay and the Martin Goodman Trail, and then cutting north on Bonnycastle.  Nonetheless, this felt like a terrible, terrible location for the hub of the Biennial.

I'll just post a few things I found of interest at the hub, and circle back around and caption them tonight.

Curtis Talwst Santiago, from the Infinity Series, 2012-2019

Shezad Dawood, The Trouble with Lichen 3, 2019

Luis Jacob, Regent Park Boulevard, 2018

Adrian Stimson, Guess who's coming to dinner?, 2019

At this point, I am debating whether to go out to Ontario Place to catch part of The Drowned World installation.  I probably will, since this is the last day (it doesn't run tomorrow), but I definitely find getting over there to be a chore.  I suppose I might take the GO Train one stop to Exhibition.  I already can't make the opening (J.G. Ballard reading from his novel The Drowned World) but I can make some of the intermediate and end sections if I decide I really want to make the effort.  I'll decide shortly.

Update: I did go to Ontario Place.  It was actually an enormous hassle, since the train doors didn't open at Exhibition!  And we were hijacked to Mimico and had to take an Uber to get back.  Believe me, I am going to take this up with many people at GO and Metrolinx on Monday!  I was in an incredibly foul mood by this point, but I decided to head over to Ontario Place anyway (across the seas of parking lots).  It was vaguely amusing to see the long lines to get into Cirque du Soleil's new show, Alegria, and then the lack of lines to get into the Cinesphere for The Drowned World.  That's not to say that there were not people there.  It was moderately full of people who had settled in for the long haul (5+ hours of various video pieces).  Unfortunately, I arrived just as a one-hour piece on saving seeds from ecological devastation started, and this just didn't interest me at all.  I think if I hadn't been waylaid by GO, it would have been more to my taste, and the pieces in the previous half hour looked a bit more interesting.  However, it was pretty clear that this was just not my day, so I turned around and left.  I actually would have taken the streetcar back, but I just missed one, and it was only a 4 minute wait for the next GO train, which did open its doors at Union Station at least.  I will ask the organizers if any of the video from The Drowned World will go on-line or if a DVD will be produced, but the likely answer is no.  So I have to say the way the Biennial wound down for me was fairly disappointing, and I probably won't fondly remember this event, even with the passage of time.  C'est la vie.

High-Pressure Weekend

There are some stories from the business section of the paper showing that Black Friday sales have come to Canada (whereas previously it had been more of a Boxing Day thing, i.e. discounting products only after the holiday rush).  While I will probably go downtown this weekend, I am going to avoid the Eaton Centre and pretty much all shopping districts.  That's not to say I am completely done with Xmas shopping, but I just can't be bothered, especially when the crowds are so large.  I'm also making a semi-conscious effort to reduce the amount of stuff in our lives, moving more to digital delivery as well as "sharing experiences" instead of consumer goods.  (That's not to say that the children are completely on board, though it is true they are much less interested in toys than they used to be.)

What is interesting to me is that in addition to Porter Airlines trying to get in on the Black Friday madness (and I may in the end end up booking a flight), quite a few theatres and musical organizations (like the TSO) are having Black Friday sales.  I probably won't add any more January concerts to an already very full month, but I was happy to take advantage of a sale for Lynn Nottage's Sweat at Canadian Stage.  I've had my eye on this play for a while, and I had held off buying tickets to see if a sale would come along.  I didn't see any sales at Mirvish that particularly interested me (at this point I'm probably only interested in catching Come From Away a second time).  While there are plays at Crow's Nest that I plan to check out next year, they weren't included in any promotions this weekend, though I'll take one more look tonight.

Anyway, it's an interesting strategy, and I'll try to remember next year that if there is something I want to see in the first quarter of the year, then there will likely be a Black Friday sale covering it.  Happy shopping...

Competing (4) Seasons

It's generally not that hard to see Vivaldi's The Four Seasons live.  It's such a popular piece that it pops up generally once a year somewhere in Toronto.  A less common (but still not uncommon pairing) is The Four Seasons and Piazzolla's The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires.  I saw that combo in Vancouver, but unfortunately didn't make it to a Toronto concert of the same, probably a year ago.

This week has the distinction of having two competing versions of Vivaldi's Four Seasons at two separate venues.  I have to admit, somewhat sheepishly, that I am going to both, so I should be able to make direct comparisons.  Fortunately, the rest of the programs are different!

As it happens, Daniel Hope came through with the Zurich Chamber Orchestra at Koerner Hall in Toronto last Sunday.  They played Vivaldi's Four Seasons for strings and harpsichord but accompanied by guitar or lute, depending on the "season."  That was an interesting twist that didn't overwhelm the rest of the performers.

They opened with a very fine Bach Concerto for Two Violins in D Minor, BWV 104.  By the end of the concert, they had earned (or at least performed) three encores.  No question there is a bit difference in Europe and North America towards the encore at a classical concert.  Generally, I find encores extremely rare, unless it is a European orchestra on tour here.  The first encore was the last movement of a different Vivaldi concerto, then Gershwin's I Got Rhythm! and finally Weill's September Song.  An interesting change of pace.  Sadly, if you didn't already go, you'll have to settle for listening to his recording of the piece with the Zurich Chamber Orchestra.

However, there are two dates remaining for the TSO's performance of Vivaldi's and Copland's Appalachian Spring: tonight and Thurs.  More details (and some limited tickets) here.  I'm going to the Thurs. performance, which I expect will be very nice as well.  Maybe the music will help clear up some of these early winter blahs, as we seem to have skipped most of autumn this year...

Edit: We saw Jonathan Crow lead the TSO last night.  It was a fine performance, but I am going to give the node to Daniel Hope, partly because I was intrigued by the guitar/lute accompaniment, but also the coughing was so out of control last night.  (I realize this is outside of the control of the musicians, but it is just a regular epidemic at Roy Thompson Hall.)  I did think the TSO did something a bit innovative with vibrato at the start of Winter, but it is a little hard to describe, so I won't try.

Wrapping Up Many Books

While I still feel like I am drowning in books most days (definitely exacerbated by a pressing need to clear out a lot of space in the basement!), I have been getting through books at a faster clip these days.  Surely part of that is due to being on transit more (than biking), but also that I am reading somewhat shorter books in the 200-300 page range.  I've been alternating William Maxwell and Dawn Powell novels from their respective Library of America volumes, and the earlier novels all top out at about 250-300 pages.

I am finding that a little Dawn Powell goes a long way.  I thought Turn, Magic Wheel was a real blast of fresh air, and there were some very amusing moments (particularly dinner parties that go wrong) in A Time to Be Born and The Locusts Have No King.  However, I liked the main characters less and less as the novels progressed.  I particularly had trouble maintaining any interest in Frederick, the male lead in Locusts, who makes a complete fool of himself over a poppet.  Of course this happens, particularly to over-intellectual people, but I definitely lost interest whenever he was pining away after Dodo.

I have about 30 pages left in Loren Eiseley's The Night Country.  While there are some interesting bits here as well, I don't really like how autobiographical these sketches are (nor the creeping in of his religious precepts).  I vastly preferred his articles that are more grounded in science, with the personal restricted to just a few minor asides.  That is not to say that many people wouldn't prefer The Night Country to The Invisible Pyramid or The Immense Journey, both of which I really liked, but this isn't really up my alley.  My general impression is that most of his books are more science-based, but that The Star Thrower (his final book) reverts back to the personal, so I'll probably want to make sure that isn't the book that I read last.  I'll probably want to end my journey through his work with The Unexpected Universe.

While I have a better understanding of what Toni Morrison was doing, after reading quite a few interviews (collected in Conversations), it doesn't mean that I actually like the work any better.  When I do like a Toni Morrison novel, such as Song of Solomon, I really like it, but the ones I don't care for as much (Sula, Tar Baby and Beloved), then I just don't care for them at all.  I finally abandoned Tar Baby after finding the plot (literally a reworking of the tar baby folk tale mixed in with Bodou Saved from Drowning) to be completely unbelievable.  I have about 40 pages left in Sula, and I figure I'll press on at this point.  I honestly don't know if I will reread Beloved, but perhaps I shall.  I probably should save Song of Solomon for last, just to make sure I end this journey on an upbeat note.

And with that, I need to get back to work.

Edit (11/22): I have made it through both works.  Now I'm launching into two relatively short novels: The Book of Eve by Constance Beresford-Howe and The Organ Builder by Robert Cohen.  This was Cohen's first novel, and it is one that caught my eye many, many years ago, as the cover reminded me a bit of a Robinson Davies' novel.

Obscure Author No More!

At least within Canada, Ian Williams, winner of the 2019 Giller Prize, will no longer simply be an obscure poet and novelist.  He will be a known commodity among the literati.  I thought his acceptance speech (embedded here) was touching.

I am not terribly likely to read his novel, Reproduction, though I will say the report from the Giller Prize jury ("It's a pointed and often playful plotting out of individual and shared stories in the close spaces of hospital rooms, garages, mansions and apartments, and a symphonic performance of resonant and dissonant voices...") does sound at least a little bit interesting.  Maybe I'll put it at the bottom of my TBR list and see how I am feeling about it in 2025.

Anyhow, best of luck to Mr Williams on writing a worthy follow-up!

Obscure author rescued from oblivion

I enjoyed this article in Slate about John M. Ford.  He was primarily a SF writer, who also occasionally wrote fantasy novels, and apparently was a big hit at conventions, as well as made a bit of a splash in the gaming community (pre-video games).  I have to admit I have never heard about him or read any of his works, but I am glad to hear than an arrangement has been made with his family to republish most of his novels and even bring out some unpublished work, including an unfinished novel called Aspects, which Neil Gaiman raved about. 

It has been a very long time since I have read SF extensively, not since my teens really, though there are a few authors or at least series that I reread from time to time (mostly Roger Zelazny, George Alec Effinger and Ian McDonald), but I think I will try to make time for The Dragon Waiting and then Aspects when they are published (or republished) by Tor, starting in the fall of 2020.

Trip to Hamilton

I don't make that many trips out to Hamilton, probably less than once a year.  My first trip to see the Cezanne's at the Art Gallery of Hamilton is probably still the best.  I generally find Hamilton a little depressing and more than a little disorganized.  I still smart a bit over the fact that I missed a pretty decent concert out there because I could not get any information on whether the box office would actually be open to sell same day tickets...

Today I made pretty decent time on the express bus to Hamilton and had a bit of time to kill before the AGH opened.  I found wandering downtown Hamilton was even more depressing on a Sunday, since an awful lot of shops were closed.

There is this large mall (Hamilton Place?) with an indoor farmer's market that I often visit.  Parts of it were completely closed off or permanently closed down and looked like a ghost town (the way so much of Buffalo does) but I did find an open food court with a decent fast food curry place (this is one area where Vancouver was better than Toronto, at least to date).  I was running a bit late by this point, so I skipped the trek over to the farmer's market.

The show at the AGH was ok, but not mind-blowing.  It was an exhibit on cartoonists from Canada, with a focus on independent cartoonists.  The most famous (to me) was Seth.  The catalogue is fairly reasonable at $25, but I didn't want to just pick it up (and I didn't have time to properly browse it).  At the moment, it still isn't in any of the local libraries, and apparently it won't be offered up on Amazon until mid April(!), so the best way to get one is to trek over to Hamilton.  (Though I will see if the AGO happens to have any on my next trip there.)  They had a smaller exhibit on some pieces they have added to the collection recently.  Probably the highlight was a Colville piece donated in 2014.

Alex Colville, Traveller, 1992

From my perspective, the pieces upstairs in the permanent collection were generally the best.  They had a reasonable mix of the Group of Seven (and Emily Carr) as well as the Painters Eleven.

Tom Thomson, The Birch Grove, Autumn, 1915-6

 

Tom Hodgson, Vertical Construction, 1957

It was 1 by the time I wrapped up, and I was starting to get a bit antsy about getting over to McMaster.  I think this probably is my first time going over to McMaster, though I've been to the Queens campus (in Kingston) a couple of times.  I needed to get there by 2 for a Kronos Quartet concert.

It looks like the 47 GO Bus goes out there, as well as several variants of the 5 bus (run by HSR).  I managed to get on a 5C, and after asking the driver if he was going to McMaster, settled in for the ride.  I kept checking my phone to make sure we were broadly in the right direction.  Now after I got to campus, I got a bit lost, but I finally found the place with about half an hour to spare.

There's no point in sugar coating it.  I didn't really care for the piece (Terry Riley's Sun Rings), as it was just too long (80 minutes) and frankly inane in many places.  I still admire the Kronos Quartet for their dedication to new music and really committing themselves to the piece, but this was a dud of a concert for me.  They didn't even do any of their often raucous encores.

I also find McMaster a pretty ugly campus and probably won't be back anytime soon.  (I was hoping to check out the McMaster Museum of Art, but it is never open on Sundays and not until noon on Saturdays, which really makes it a drag to get to, and basically something I will ignore in terms of regional cultural attractions.)

I was a bit stressed trying to figure out the bus route back, but I finally managed it, so if I have to go back to McMaster, the next time around will be simpler.  I did struggle a bit trying to figure out where the GO bus would pick me up (having not done this in well over a year), so I walked over to the GO bus terminal, where at least I would be assured of getting on the bus.  I was a little surprised that the next 16 leaving was a double-decker bus, but that was fine, and I had some extra space to myself on the upper deck.

So it was a moderately successful trip to Hamilton, though not one I will likely be repeating anytime soon.

Wall Falls Down

It looks like the Guardian jumped the gun a bit on its various features on the Berlin Wall (technically the 30th anniversary of the wall coming down is tomorrow).  I did like this piece focusing on German writers and their response to the fall of the wall.

I do remember watching the events (on TV) during my junior year of university.  I hadn't really expected the collapse of the Iron Curtain to be nearly as sudden or as far-reaching as it was.  I was correct in that this was hardly the "end of history" as Francis Fukuyama put it, in his stunningly wrong-headed assessment.

Many, many years later I had the opportunity to visit Berlin on a work trip.  I had to make the obligatory visit to Checkpoint Charlie.

 
I also picked up a very small fragment of the Berlin Wall from the Berlin Wall Museum. 

Obviously, it's possible that it's a fake, but, given it's provenance from the museum, odds are it's the real deal.

I likely won't do a whole lot to memorialize the fall tomorrow, though I am hoping to watch the movie Good Bye Berlin fairly soon, where an East Berlin woman emerges from a coma (after the fall of the wall); her family tries to hide the momentous events from her, to avoid her having a relapse from the shock.  It's supposed to be a good comedy, but I've never gotten through the whole movie.

No Hamlet

I'm sure I am just being an old fuddy-duddy, but I am quite disappointed in the casting of Hamlet at Stratford to the point that I won't go after all.  First off, I can't tell if they are going for a gender-bent Hamlet or just an extremely androgynous one, but either way it doesn't work for me.  Second, I have very strong doubts about the Othello-like vibe when casting Andre Sills as Hamlet's father yet then a white actor as Claudius, his brother.

They are already doing an unconventional take on Hamlet next season (Hamlet-911), so I don't see why they can't do a more traditional Hamlet in the Festival Theatre.  In any case, I won't be going, and I'll just take my son to a different production one of these days.  I guess that is enough ranting for one day.

Edit: I did go and see this, and I didn't like it at all, though at least they weren't playing Hamlet as a female character.  I only just realized that I had heard about this production in 2019, but it was pushed all the way to 2022 due to COVID!

SFYS - Shut Down in November

Well, I hadn't heard anything about the Sing-for-Your-Supper and whether my very tardy piece had been accepted or not, so I decided to go up to Tarragon anyway.  I figured I would leave at intermission if my piece hadn't been taken.  Well, it turns out that the event had been cancelled.  Back at home, my wife managed to find one Facebook posting that said November was cancelled (on fairly short notice I believe), though I still didn't find it in my searching, so there is no question their main Facebook page leaves a lot to be desired (and it wouldn't have been remiss to at least email me and tell me the theatre would be dark).  At any rate, the main person who reads the scripts is moving on (to Ottawa of all places) and is hoping to recruit someone else.  I don't really think I have the time to take that on, and even if I did, then I would no longer be able to have my pieces read at SFYS, so that definitely wouldn't work!  Maybe one of the actors has a bit more time and can pitch in.

In the short term, this means that I will probably pull my piece from consideration, tighten it up a bit more and add the coda.  Just last night I thought of a fairly saucy punchline, though it only works if enough people are in on the joke.  It runs "Just another American Juliette looking for her Canadian Romeo.  Except for the bloody ending, of course.  (Beat.)  I mean unless you're really into that kind of thing."

Almost any phrase can be given sexual connotations, so I think most people (with a moderately dirty mind) would get what she is talking about.  But just to underline the point, I added a definition of "bloody ending" to the Urban Dictionary, and we'll see if it spreads.  It's not my finest moment as a writer, but I thought it was funny enough.

I'll send the piece to Toronto Cold Reads instead, even though I have never had much success there.  Then I'll work on one or two more pieces for the Dec. meeting of SFYS.  One piece is about a man who can be guilted into just about anything, so he ends up with one homeless guy living in his living room and he'll probably have another before the piece ends.  This could be interesting, but I'm not quite sure how dark to go.  The other is a piece, inspired by Pinter's Betrayal, about the unravelling of an affair.  I hope to have both pieces ready in time, though that is more of an aspirational goal, given my recent history.

I very briefly considered entering the Fringe lottery, which closes on Nov 10.  If I won, this would definitely force me to finish the rewrites and extensions of my SF piece about a couple and their two AI units.  But I realized 1) I'm not entirely sure it will work as a full-length piece and 2) I'd like to travel this summer and I don't want to be responsible for whipping a troupe into shape for Fringe.  So I'll pass this year at least.  Maybe the following year I will finally have recovered enough to give it another go.

That's pretty much it.  I've been seeing a lot of good shows, and I'm going to see Trout Stanley at Factory this week (with good reviews so far, so fingers crossed), and I'll try to check out Night Watch most likely next week.  Some info here.  If I do go, it will probably be next week.

Under-the-Weather Weekend

I've been fighting off a cold or something these past two weeks, and I finally gave in on Sat.  (I'm sure it didn't help that I finally ran out of antihistamine tablets.)  I cancelled my plans for the day and mostly slept in.  Now it isn't that I did absolutely nothing on Sat.  I finished a playlet on a student that comes to live with her aunt and uncle to study at UT.  It probably won't get taken for SFYS, since it was appallingly late, and it is a bit too long.  Also, I decided I didn't like the ending, as it was too pat.  I'm going to add a 3-4 page coda that I think will liven it up a bit.  I should be able to get to that today.  I also went and got the groceries in the evening, but otherwise I tried to rest.  I even skipped the gym, so I'm feeling somewhat guilty about that.  Maybe it is just as well that my daughter's glasses didn't come in after all, even though at the time I was quite annoyed.

I'm feeling a bit better today and will try to get through some of my abandoned tasks today.  I probably will make it downtown for a while.  I'll likely take my daughter to Matty Eckler for a short pool session, and then I'll probably hit the gym after that.

One thing that is, mercifully, still on track is the installation of the downstairs bathroom.  It was framed on Thurs., then the drywall went up Friday and then yesterday they started prepping to do the painting and installation of the fixtures.

It looks like it will be a good-sized shower, which is pretty nice, though it will definitely take some getting use to in terms of getting in there, since there is a heating duct that runs right along side of it.  Also, it will be a tight squeeze to access the spare refrigerator, though I think over time we'll come to terms with the space.

The plan is to be finished with the construction on Friday, and I presume they will clean up the inside and outside spaces Friday and Saturday.  It will certainly be nice not having so much junk in the backyard, as it made it very challenging to put out the garbage, and I've pretty much given up on cycling for the time being.  (To be fair, I am so much more gun shy about riding in inclement weather that I had already unofficially stopped biking to work.)

The main issue after that will be to continue clearing out more of the boxes of storage and to figure out to do with essentially 5-6 boxes of books that are very, very low on my reading list.  There's only so much room in my Little Free Library after all... 

Well, I had better run if I am going to get anything done today.

13th Canadian Challenge - 5th Review - Amusement Park of Constant Sorrow

There is no question that I was drawn to this short novel by the title - Amusement Park of Constant Sorrow* by Jason Heroux.  I briefly debated combining this review with my discussion of Ionesco and the theatre of the absurd, but this novel is really a piece of surrealism (though the line between the two can certainly be thin).

Very early on we find that the narrator, Owen, used to be a dog, and that his father (oddly enough a human) is turning into a bicycle.  I'm not sure this was directly inspired by Bioy Casares's Asleep in the Sun, but there do seem to be a few similarities.  I think you'll know fairly quickly if this sounds intriguing or just silly.  (I tend to be very plot-oriented, and generally surrealism isn't that interesting to me, since it typically means stakes are necessarily low, since almost anything could happen at any time.)

What is a bit different about this is that there is a second plot strand about a company selling home security systems that comes by and installs a system in Owen and Lila's home, with a guarantee that they can cancel within 5 days.  Obviously, nothing could go awry...  Given that this is a much more naturalistic (and a somewhat common yet creepy) plot thread, it does seem to be a bit awkward to try to fit the two plots together, when in fact they are almost like chalk and cheese.

One thing I did like about the book is that there are six or so prose poems scattered throughout the novel.  (Heroux is a published poet as well as a novelist.)  A few of the poems comment directly on the novel, while others are more about the nature of transformation in a novel that features a lot of odd transformations.  In any event, it's a quick read (roughly an hour-long), so dive right in if you want to find out about some of the other transformations that occur throughout the novel.


* I typed "constant sorry" instead of "constant sorrow."  Perhaps I was trying to make this even more Canadian than it already is (with its name dropping No Frills and the double double from Tims).

13th Canadian Challenge - 4th Review - Frying Plantain

Frying Plantain by Zalika Reid-Benta was long-listed for the 2019 Giller Award, though it didn't make the short list.  Nonetheless, this is a fairly remarkable achievement because #1) this is actually a collection of short stories (which often get short shrift) and #2) this is the author's first published book.  However, it is true that this should rightly be considered a novel-in-stories.  One reviewer quipped that this really should be titled Lives of Black Girls and Women, and there are strong ties to Munro's classic novel-in-stories.

The stories focus on Kara, a young girl of Jamaican heritage as she grows up in Toronto.  The very first story "Pig Head" introduces her while she and her mother are staying with relatives in Jamaica.  She is viewed by her cousins as "soft," and her mother generally agrees with this assessment.  Viewing a severed pig head in the icebox is fairly traumatizing (though not as bad as watching her relatives kill chickens for soup), but she then uses the story to build up street cred at her school, back in Toronto.

Her mother, Eloise, had Kara when she was around 17, i.e. just a girl herself.  Kara's father is not present in the household, and Kara has very limited interactions with him.  Kara spends her time either with a group of school friends, mostly from the Caribbean, but also with her grandmother, Nana, and grandfather, George.

The relationship between Eloise and Kara's grandmother is incredibly tense.  They have very different outlooks on life, starting from Nana's attachment to her church and her devotion to house keeping.  Eloise and her mother get in a number of raging arguments during the various times that she and Kara have to move in with her mother.  In one instance, Nana throws Eloise out, and only lets them back for one week (while Eloise finds a new apartment) when Kara is asked to be the go-between.

Eloise is largely driven by a desire to improve her own lot -- and to make sure that her daughter doesn't make the same mistakes she did.  Incidentally, one of the reasons Eloise and Kara have to move back with Nana is that Eloise is a full-time grad student (in a PhD program* no less!).  Eloise does push Kara in school, and in fact relocates a few times to enroll Kara in "better" schools, with the result that she is cut off from her main group of friends, who are mostly second-generation immigrants from the Caribbean.

Minor SPOILER alert:

One refreshing aspect of this book is that, while Kara certainly struggles with math, she never completely ditches school in favour of her friends (at most skipping school a couple of times), and she graduates from high school with several offers from good universities.  Perhaps even more shocking (and in sharp contrast to Munro's Lives of Girls and Women), Kara does not throw her chance at university away, despite fooling around a bit with boys.  She only "goes the distance" with boys who use protection, unlike her mother...

Where Frying Plantain does seem similar to other immigrant narratives is that Kara never quite knows where she fits into Canadian culture.  Most of her friends, even after the move(s), are Caribbean.  On the other hand, Kara decides she wants to go into the humanities (media studies) rather than a more "practical" profession.  She does love her mother -- and her grandmother (in her own way) -- but she doesn't always see things the same way.  She is particularly aggravated by the way her grandfather cheats on Nana, and yet always has a home to come back to.  Kara doesn't want any part of these "country ways."  It's harder to say what the bonds between Eloise and Nana are, but they certainly seem frayed most of the time.  There doesn't seem to be any easy resolution to Kara's dilemmas (and the last stories are somewhat open-ended), but the reader generally supposes that she will go to university and probably ultimately see things more like her mother does. 


* I would say that this feels like a slight mis-step in the plot in the sense that the vast majority of people in Eloise's position (and certainly most immigrants) would pursue a professional degree or stop at a Master's degree.  PhDs actually have a negative earning potential for longer (than a Master's or most professional degrees), and in many cases individuals who stop at a Master's earn more than those with PhDs.  This is not true for Associate or Full professors, but the number of these slots has shriveled up since the 1990s; generally under 25% of PhD holders will become tenure-track professors (and in some fields it is more like 5%).  This article may actually be too rosy, and this piece from the Economist feels a bit more reflective of the reality.  This is a long digression, but I found it a very odd artistic choice to have Eloise pursue a PhD.

Fall Hits and Low-Key Halloween

It took a while, but we've finally gotten the fall leaves to turn.  There is an austere beauty in the plants that manage to stick it out into mid-autumn, though maybe austere isn't quite the right word for some of the brilliant colours we get.

The second photo is from my front yard.  In the lower right corner is a burning bush I put in last year.  It has frankly been a big disappointment in that the leaves don't turn bright red, but sort of a dark dusky purple.

Of course, it isn't too long after we get the leaves to turn that they all fall off the trees, and have to be swept/raked up.  In my case, I can put most of them in the back of the yard for composting.

As predicted, it was a fairly rainy Halloween last night.  (It rains most Halloweens, though last year was nice and dry.)  There were a few stretches between 6 and 7 where the rain slowed down to a light drizzle or even a misting, and a few parents brought their kids out, but then around 7 the rain came down pretty heavily again, and the trick-or-treating was effectively over.

My daughter wanted to go out, and she put on a cat costume, but got bored after a few houses.  So we came back in, and she handed out candy for a while.  We switched off the lights at 7:30.  I have some candy left over, but not a ridiculous pile.  (If so, I would have just taken it to work, but I don't think I'll bother.)

We don't put out a lot of decorations, but a couple of posters on the front of the house, and I recently bought some orange outdoor lights.

This year, for the first time in many years, I did carve a pumpkin, under the direction of my daughter.  She wanted it to look like the pumpkin was vomiting out its insides.  Mission accomplished, I think.

Then we set it outside on the bench, and the squirrels made it even a bit grosser.

All in all, a somewhat disappointing Halloween, but it could certainly have been worse.  Incredibly, it was snowing in Chicago* (the snow in our forecast fizzled out a day or two ago, though we'll probably get snow fairly soon).  In Montreal and other parts of Quebec, the heavy rain and winds led to the mayor asking parents to reschedule Halloween to Nov. 1!  I'm sure that went over well, and fortunately there was no rescheduling of Halloween in Toronto.

* I'm still sort of processing just how awful it must be to live in those parts of Chicago where gang-bangers will openly shoot across the street when there are kids around trick-or-treating.  I hope that this terrible event will be too much for some, and that the no-snitch code frays and someone turns them in.