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Archive for the ‘Magazines’ Category

Paul Theroux–“Incident in the Oriente” (Harper’s, July 2011)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Bob Mould, Harper's, Hüsker Dü, Paul Theroux, Short Story, Sugar, Threats, Yuck! on July 25, 2011| 1 Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: BOB MOULD-Sasquatch Festival, May 28, 2011 (2011).

I loved Hüsker Dü.  I loved Sugar (a tad less).  I loved Mould’s Workbook.  And then I kind of loss interest in the guy.  He recently wrote an autobiography, which I would consider reading, but musically, I assumed he was done.

So I wasn’t even that interested in listening to his set (shame on me).  This turns out to be a really cool set in which it’s just Bob and his electric guitar.  He plays a varied set of songs from throughout his career.  He plays some of his hits (“See a Little Light,” “Hoover Dam”) but mostly he plays interesting non-hits (“Chartered Trips” (!!), “I Apologize”).  (Is it possible that Grant Hart wrote all of Hüsker’s big hits?)

The most amazing thing about the set is Bob himself.  He sounds so cool and chilled out (even though I think he was like the very first opening act of the concert–which is a pretty shitty time slot).  He seems to be really happy playing (hearing him respond to a request with “I forgot how to play that one” is pretty darn funny.)  Of course, a little later when he says “What’s that?  I’m trying?” he almost sounds like Al Bundy.

But then, look at him, he’s an old man now.  And sure, he’s been playing music forever, so gosh, he’s got to be super old, right?  What?  He was born in 1960?  He’s nine years older than me?  Oh good grief.  So, wait the first Hüsker Dü album came out when he was 22?  He really crammed a lot of music into just a few years.  Not bad, Bob.

And yes, I’m fully invested in relistening to all the great music you’ve made now.  Thanks, Sasquatch.

[READ: July 13, 2011] “Incident in the Orient”

This very short story features a dead dog. I’m getting that out of the way since I know some people won’t read any further once they know that.

I rather liked the brevity of this story, how Theroux is able to cram a lot of information and a lot tension into just a couple of pages.  The story is also a strange little onion of a tale, with the narrator working for a man (Moses) who is a sort of mercenary construction boss.  The narrator gives a lot of insight into Moses, although he also admits that he doesn’t really know the man very well (how could anyone know him).

He has done work in various war-torn countries and has effectively built a crew out of a small group of devoted men, mingled with local help.  The most fascinating thing is that Moses is a short man with a lisp and yet he commands the respect of everyone who works for him.  He takes no shit, but he pays well and uses local materials (including tearing down materials from destroyed buildings if necessary).   (more…)

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Tessa Hadley–“Married Love” (New Yorker, October 8, 2007)

Posted in Judy Blume, Marriage Trouble, New Yorker, Short Story, Surf Punks, Tessa Hadley, Wavves on July 24, 2011| 1 Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: WAVVES-King of the Beach (2010).

I feel like I shouldn’t like Wavves.  There’s os much to dislike about them (or him,  I should say, since it’s almost entirely the product of one guy). He’s bratty, fans seem to dislike him (do a search for Wavves live), and in the first live show that I downloaded, he seemed a bit disdainful of the audience.

And yet, I really like this album. It’s fast and punky and reminds me of some of the best summer punk music from my high school days (Surf Punks anyone?).

So Williams plays all the instruments (with a few exceptions), and the sound is consistent through: a trebly guitar (the perfect sound for surf music, although he doesn’t play surf music at all).  Fast punky drums and William’s voice which is not so much whiny as bratty–the lyrics play out this bratty idea too:

bet you laugh right behind my back/I won’t ever die/I’ll go surfing in my mind/I’m not supposed to be a kid/but I’m an idiot/I’d say I’m sorry/but it wouldn’t mean shit

or

My, my own friends/Hate my guts/So what? Who gives a fuck?

(from “Green Eyes,” which sounds like a ballad but soon rocks out).

Of course, it’s not all just punky tracks, “When Will You Come” has the drums of a 50’s doo wop song (no one would mistake it for a doo-wop song, though) including his falsetto’d voice.  And “Baseball Cards” has a similar inspiration–although again, sounding nothing really like that style of music.  Even “Mickey Mouse” opens with what sounds like the music from “Da Doo Ron Ron” (indeed it is a sample from the song, but manipulated slightly).

“Convertible Balloon” sounds like a quirky Japanese pop confection.  And, “Post Acid” which is a punky bratty song has a wonderful part where the song stops and they make crazy grunting sounds which I like very much.

It’s not smooth summer music by any means, but it is fun and energizing.  Perfect punk beach soundtrack.

[READ: July 11, 2011] “Married Love”

This story had me fooled from the outset.

Recently we listened to Judy Blume’s Fudge-a-mania.  In that story Fudge, who is 5, says that he is going to marry Sheila Tubman, his big brother’s arch nemesis.  Everyone laughs, and we ultimately learn why he wants to marry her (I won’t spoil it).  In this Tessa Hadley story, Lottie, a nineteen year old girl (who looks about thirteen) announces that she is going to get married.  As in Fudge-a-mania, the family is bemused by the idea and laughs about it, until Lottie reveals that she is quite serious.

Things get even “funnier” when the family learns who she is planning to marry: Edgar Lennox, a former teacher who is forty-five years older than her and who is currently married.  Ha Ha Ha, says her family until, Oh, she is serious.

The story surprises even further when they go through with the wedding (about half way through the story). (more…)

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Five Dials Number 14 (4 November 2010)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Books about writers, Craig Taylor, Death, Five Dials, Lauren Simkin Berke, Maureen Freely, Orhan Pamuk, The Head and the Heart on July 23, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: THE HEAD AND THE HEART-Sasquatch Music Festival, May 28, 2011 (2011).

This is the fourth live recording from The Head and the Heart that NPR offers.  Not bad for a band with only one album out.  This set finds the band even more confident and relaxed (despite their genuine excitement at playing the festival).  The band sounds fantastic and I’ve really grown to appreciate the female harmonies on most of the songs now (I’ve not always liked them on every song).

This set has two as yet unrecorded songs in it (one of them was listed as untitled).  There’s some banter between the band and the fans (the band is nothing if not jovial) including a great story about how someone in the band went to Sasquatch the year before and swore he wouldn’t remove his backstage pass wrist band until The Head and The Heart band played Sasquatch.  I like to imagine there was ceremonial wrist band cutting ceremony on stage, but that is lost in the audio version.  Of course the story would be better if it was two or three years later, but it’s still a pretty good one. [See the Five Dials review below for a similar story!]

I found the sound quality of the show to be less than perfect.  The sounds are a bit muddied.  I don’t blame the band.  The Sasquatch venue may be beautiful (so many performers comment on it, I’d love to see the view) but I suspect that maybe the audio was less than stellar.

Nonetheless, The Head and the Heart continue to amaze in a live setting.

[READ: July 3, 3011] Five Dials Number 14

If Five Dials 13, The Festival Issue, was a double live CD, jam-packed with photos and stories and all kinds of wonderment, Five Dials Number 14 is an EP.  Even though it contains only one item, it’s more than a single, because the item is long and a lot is packed into it.  And that ends my metaphor.

One of the fun things about Five Dials is that it can be whatever length it wants to be. Many magazines offer double issues, but they never offer tiny issues afterwards.  And sometimes it’s nice to have a short issue that you can enjoy leisurely, without having to sift through filler.

So this issue consists of exactly two items: Craig Taylor’s introduction and the nobel prize acceptance speech by Orhan Pamuk. (more…)

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Julian Barnes–“Homage to Hemingway” (New Yorker, July 4, 2011)

Posted in Bjork, Bon Iver, Books about writers, Ernest Hemingway, Humiliation, Julian Barnes, Marriage Trouble, New Yorker, S. Carey, Short Story, Twin Peaks on July 22, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: S. CAREY-Live at Sasquatch Music Festival, May 29, 2011 (2011).

I learned about S. Carey through NPR.  S. Carey is the drummer for Bon Iver and he set out on his own playing these cool, atmospheric songs.  What I like best about them is that they feature the vibes.

The whole set has a cool, chilled out sound.  The vocals are slow and dream-like (I’m sure there are lyrics, but I don’t know them) and at times he sounds not unlike Dallas Green from City and Colour.

When Sean (he is the S.) Carey banters with the crowd, he’s very friendly and relaxed.  I especially like the anecdote about going to the Twin Peaks Cafe and hearing Audrey’s music from the show (which the band then plays).  The Twin Peaks sounds melds perfectly with their own sound, which should give you an idea of what the band sounds like.

The songs are about 4 or five minutes except for “Mothers” which tops out at over 8 minutes and actually gets pretty raucous by the end.  For this band it’s a wild song ending.  It’s a good set.  And the surprise cover of Björk’s “Unravel,” which melds perfectly with “All We Grow” is a nice treat.

I don’t know if I’d want to see them live (I like my shows a bit more uptempo) but it’s a great relaxing set.  Of course, having said that, the final track, “Leave” is the most conventional-sounding with a really catchy chorus and a somewhat faster pace.  It’s my favorite song of theirs.

[READ: July 13, 2011] “Homage to Hemingway”

Like the students in this story, I was initially put off by the title of this book because I have grown to dislike Hemingway (probably unfairly, more of a decades-long, knee-jerk reaction to him). But I’m glad I read it because of a couple of things.  One: it was a good story.  Two: it is actually an homage to one of Hemingway’s stories (called “Homage to Switzerland”) so it’s doubly meta-.

In “Homage to Switzerland,” there are three brief stories.  In each one an American man waits for a train in a Swiss station.  Each man follows the same basic trajectory in the story, meeting a waitress but having no real resolution.  Perhaps the men, even though they had different names, were maybe the same person.

Barnes’ story also has three parts, although it is pretty clear that the man is the same in each part, despite their different section titles.  In 1. The Novelist in the Countryside he helps students with their fiction (I rather like reading stories about fiction writing classes, as odd as that sounds). (more…)

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Alice Munro–“Gravel” (New Yorker, June 27, 2011)

Posted in Alice Munro, Boredom, Canadian Content, Marriage Trouble, New Yorker, Noël, Pleszyński, Maćkowiaka, Potty Umbrella, Short Story on July 21, 2011| 1 Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: POTTY UMBRELLA-4 Tracks on MySpace (2007).

The internet is a fascinating thing.  While looking up Basia Bulat, I stumbled upon a Polish music website.  That site featured a review of an album by Noël, Pleszyńskiego, Maćkowiaka.  It turns out that Artur Maćkowiak was also in a band called Potty Umbrella.  And Potty Umbrella have a MySpace page with 4 songs on it from their 2007 album Forte Furioso.  

Potty Umbrella is a (mostly) instrumental band that plays pretty great alternative/psychedelic/ jazzy rock.  I suppose they’re a jam band, although the Polish language SavageSaints blog (technically called … którędy pójdą dzicy święci) describes them as “New wave of Polish post-jazz.”

The songs are wonderful.  “Gone” opens with the waving guitar and delicate riffs of an Explosions in the Sky song.  But it soon shifts with the propulsive bass of a jazz song.  It’s a wonderful medley of the two styles.  And when the keyboards come over the top, it adds yet another layer of musical stew to this mix.

“Jet Lag” continues the manic fun with a 6 minute  (actually most  of the songs are 6 minute) blast of energy.  Crashing drums open a sinister spy-movie theme (with wicked-sounding guitar lines).  By the middle of the song, wah wah guitars and super fast keyboards have converted this into a cool jam.

The track “Dr. Pizdur” is wonderfully wild, with some great keyboard sounds over the top of the funky guitar/bass lineup.  And the live track “Nymph’s Song” (sung in rather forced English) rocks really hard.

Potty Umbrella will never have a big following in the States (although there are YouTube videos of them playing in Canada), but the underground fanclub can start right here.

[READ: June 24, 2011] “Gravel”

Readers here know that I love Alice Munro.  I think that she is one of the best short stories writers around.   Of course, if you know what other kinds of writers I like you might be surprised by this declaration–because I love florid prose.  But Alice Munro is the antithesis of that.  She writes succinct stories, with very little in the way of flourishes.  Sometimes they have action, but usual there’s very little and, like in this story, the action is not the point of the story.  And yet for all of that, the stories are quite powerful.

This is the story of a young girl (written from the point of view of the girl when she is an adult).  When her parents separated she, her mother and her older sister Caro moved to a trailer park (with their dog Blitzee).  The reason her parents separated is because her mother became pregnant.  And she told everyone that the baby was Neal’s.  Neal was an actor in the town’s summer theater troupe (he drifted from job to job but always had enough to get by).

Caro was a headstrong girl, but since this is her sister’s story we see Caro’s actions from her sister’s perspective.  On two occasions, Caro sneakily brought Blitzee to their old house (where their father still lived)–pretending that he had run back to the house.  The parents were amazed and perplexed at first, but caught on when it happened again so soon. (more…)

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Tessa Hadley–“The Swan” (New Yorker, February 19, 2007)

Posted in Basia Bulat, Drugs, Marriage Trouble, New Yorker, Noël, Pleszyński, Maćkowiaka, Short Story, Suicide, Tessa Hadley on July 20, 2011| 2 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: NOËL, PLESZYŃSKI, MAĆKOWIAK-“Salty Air” (2011).

While looking for videos of Basia Bulat, I stumbled upon a Polish music site.  The site featured a review of this album and a free stream of this song.

The album is a collaboration of artists Ann Noël, Grzegorza Pleszyńskiego and Artura Maćkowiaka (Ann Noël, Grzegorz Pleszynski and Artur Maćkowiak).  Their website explains the collaboration (in translated English obviously):

It is for the first time that Fluxus artist Ann Noël and a visual artist Grzegorz Pleszynski engage in a music venture. For Maćkowiak, a musician from Potty Umbrella and Something Like Elvis, this project has become an unprecedented way to go beyond rock band routines known for years.

Potty Umbrella?  Love it.

Anyhow, this is experimental improv music of the most fascinating kind. Especially since, “Ann and Grzegorz have never played music or any instrument.”  The site allows you to listen to all of the tracks.  “In Emmet’s Bag” is a spoken word piece in the spirit of Laurie Anderson (the spoken part is in English).  And “Hey Man!” is a pretty conventional guitar with spoken word piece.

But it’s this track, “Salty Air” that I keep coming back to.  It opens with some guitar waves. Then a simple repeated riff entrs the mix.  And after a minute or so, distorted, echoed vocals speak underneath the music.  I think it’s in English but that’s irrelevant because the repeating and echoing makes it almost incomprehensible.

It doesn’t evoke a mood so much as a kind of helplessness.  But it’s a beautiful helplessness.  Especially when the second voice comes in, sounding almost inhuman as it moans over the top of everything else.  It’s quite a track.

 You can hear this song (and others, and download the CD for $.50) at their site.

[READ: July 10, 2011] “The Swan”

“The Swan” was a wonderfully dark and confusing story.  I loved everything about it.  It opens with the very simple scene of David coming home from work and knowing something was wrong.  His wife Suzie is acting very strange, and where the hell is the car?  Suzie tells him that she was hit by a car and that her car was totalled.  Why didn’t she call him at work?  She didn’t think it was that big of a deal.

He doesn’t know what to think so he turns his anger towards his seventeen year old son (from his first marriage).  Jamie is upstairs in his room, smoking pot and more or less ignoring everything around him (a trait he has perfected).  When David finally breaks through to Jamie, he learns the truth–Suzie was hit by a swan.

The story unfolds a little more: Suzie imagined that the swan was David’s first wife, coming to give her a message.  David is more freaked out by this than Suzie seems to be.  He can’t understand why suddenly all these years later, she is so upset about his first wife (who died, before David met Suzie, by the way).  Suzie wants to know why David never talked about her (she didn’t want to know back then).  And then finally she winds up spending most of her time with a sketchy woman across town. (more…)

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John Banville–“Dining with the Tiger: Dublin’s Restaurant Bubble” (Harper’s, July 2011)

Posted in Basia Bulat, Food, Funky Web Sites, Funny (ha ha), Harper's, John Banville on July 19, 2011| 1 Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: BASIA BULAT-“The Shore” (2010).

I loved Basia Bulat’s “In the Night” which wa s fun, uptempo folk rocker.  “The Shore” is a hauntingly beautiful, wistful ballad.  “In the Night” featured the autoharp as its main instrument, but “The Shore” features the pianoette as its sole instrument (on this recording anyway, I haven’t heard it on the record).

Listenin to the song is great, a wonderful expereicen.  But once you watch her play it, the song is even more powerful.  This video in particular is enchnating–where is this beautiful open room?  How did she learn to play the pianoette?  What is that little hammer she’s using?  Is anyone not blown away the first time she hits a string for multiple notes and the song goes from simple to majestic?

And what do you suppose uwolnijmuzyke means?  I don’t know, but it’s a really cool music site from Poland.

Pretty good, huh?

[READ: July 13, 2011] Dining with the Tiger

I wasn’t going to talk about this “review” either.  But several things stood out for me:  John Banville!  It’s hard to pass on him.  I also seem to be talking a lot about food this week (what with Will Self, Jun’ichirō Tanizaki and Lucky Peach in general).  And because I have to wonder if my friend Lar knows of any of restaurants that Banville mentions (now that he is a landed, married gentleman and not the post-graduate guy who would take an American mate to an “American” diner on Grafton Street–which was lorryloads of fun, make no mistake).

So Banville gives a brief run through of the state of Irish restaurants circa the end of WWII–as in, there were none.  Then came the 1990s and the critical moment in Irish culture–the scandal of Bishop Eamon Casey and his unexpected son. The scandal seemed to rock the country, but mostly it made them let fall the shackles of conformity across the country.  Banville suggests that such a major event could have shaken a Catholic country to the core, but in Ireland, it seems to have just woken everyone up to the possibility of making money. (more…)

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Will Self–“Gastronomania” (Harper’s, July 2011)

Posted in Basia Bulat, Big Books, Book Reviews, Decadence, Essays, Ferran Adrià, Gabrielle Hamilton, Harper's, Le fantôme de la liberté, Lucky Peach, Luis Buñuel, Memoirs, Nathan Myhrvold, PJ Harvey, Spherification, Technology, Technology Review, Will Self on July 18, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: BASIA BULAT-“In the Night” (2008).

I recently came across Basia Bulat via NPR.  She played a Tiny Desk concert and I discovered that she had several other entries in the NPR canon.

Basia is Canadian (of Polish descent); she has a beautiful strong mid-range/throaty voice and a great sense of melody.  She also has a bit of a gimmick: she plays all kinds of instruments (guitar, piano, sax, etc) including some really weird and unexpected instruments: Zither, pianoette (!) and autoharp–a couple of years before PJ Harvey brought it back to the mainstream.

pianoette

“In the Night” is a wonderfully chipper poppy song.  And that autoharp gives it just a tinge of “huh?’ that makes it more than just a simple pop song.  The beat is fast and energetic, the harmonies are wonderful and the melody is top-notch.

I really like this song a lot, and the other snippets of songs that I’ve heard from her are equally wonderful.   I’ve even noticed that lately she’s been singing a song in Polish!

[READ: July 12, 2011] “Gastronomania”

I’m not going to go crazy reviewing all of the book reviews in Harper’s (that way lies madness), but occasionally an author I like writes a bit that I want to mention.  So Will Self, who I like but have not read a lot of, wrote this essay/book review about food.  He reviews three books, but what I especially liked about it was his introduction, which uses Luis Buñuel’s Le fantôme de la liberté [The Phantom of Liberty] as its starting point.  In the film (which I have not seen), the house’s dining room is actually a well…watch this clip:

It’s a wonderfully bizarre introduction to an essay about food.

It was unclear to me what made Will Self suitable to review three books about cooking.  And then (news to me) he revealed that he used to be a food critic (columns are collected in his book Junk Mail) and that Anton Ego in Ratatouille (yes that Ratatouille) bears “an uncanny, if not legally actionable” resemblance to him.

This essay was so much fun.  Self is as viciously negative about these books as he apparently was about food back in the day.  But he’s not dismissive of them as cookbooks per se, he’s more about trashing the current worship of food (and many other things too of course). (more…)

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Jun’ichirō Tanizaki–“The Gourmet Club” (Lucky Peach, No. 1: Ramen: Summer 2011)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Black Mountain, Food, Funny (strange), Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, Lucky Peach, Magic, McSweeney's, Neil Gaiman, Paul McCarthy, Short Story, Translation, Yuck! on July 17, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: BLACK MOUNTAIN-Live at Sasquatch, May 30, 2011 (2011).

The previous Black Mountain live show I downloaded from NPR was a real disappointment.  For me the major problem was Amanda Webber’s voice–she applied a really harsh vibrato to the end of every single line.  It was so pronounced it sounded almost like a stutter.  I found it very distracting.

She doesn’t do that here, which automatically makes this set 100 times better (she has a minor vibrato on a few places, which is totally fine).  This Sasquatch concert covers songs from all three of their albums, which really showcases the diversity they explore within their trippy, space-rock, metal sound.  It works like a (brief) greatest hits for the band.

And the band sounds comfortable and fresh in this live setting (the guitars are fantastic and the keyboards add a wonderful spacey feel to the mix).  The two tracks of “Wucan” and “Tyrants” is particularly amazing; it’s interesting that they play four songs from their middle album and only three from their most recent.

Regardless, this release has won back my faith in Black Mountain live.

[READ: July 13, 2011] “The Gourmet Club”

I’d never heard of Tanizaki before and I haven’t really read that much Japanese fiction.  This translation by Paul McCarthy was really fantastic, and I never felt like I was reading a translation.

When I started this story (the first fiction from Lucky Peach), I was concerned that it was going to be the same kind of story as Neil Gaiman’s “Sunbird” (I realize “Sunbird” was published much later than “The Gourmet Club” originally written in 1919), but I’m glad it didn’t.

Essentially, this story focuses on five Japanese men who live to eat.  They are Epicurean to the highest degree, eating only the best at least once a day and often to bursting.  They go through all of the restaurants in Japan, traveling across the island to find new foods.  But they soon reach the end of their new food options. (more…)

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Zsuzsi Gartner–All the Anxious Girls on Earth (1999)

Posted in Advice, All Songs Considered, Books about writers, Boredom, Canadian Content, Culture Shock, Death, Funny (ha ha), Ghosts, Gogol Bordello, Pranks, Short Story, The Pogues, The Walrus, Zsuzsi Gartner on July 14, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: GOGOL BORDELLO-Trans-Continental Hustle (2010).

When I first heard Gogol Bordello, they were touring for this album (thanks NPR).  Consequently, I knew this album pretty well when I bought it.  At first I felt that it didn’t have the vibrancy of the live show (how could it?).  But after putting it aside for a few weeks, when I re-listened, I found the album (produced by Rick Rubin) to be everything I expect from Gogol Bordello: loud, frenetic fun, a bit of mayhem, and some great tunes that sound like traditional gypsy songs, but which I assume are not.

While I was listening to the album, I kept thinking of The Pogues.  They don’t really sound anything alike but they have that same feel of punk mixed with traditional music.  For The Pogues, it’s Irish trad, and for GB it’s a gypsy sound–I’m not sure if it is attributable to any specific locale.  But they have a common ground in a kind of Spanish-based trad style.  From the Pogues, you get a song like “Fiesta” which is overtly Spanish.  From GB, you get songs like “My Companjera” or “Uma Menina Uma Cigana.”  Singer/ringleader Eugene Hutz has been living in Brazil, and he has really embraced the culture (and the accent).  He also sings in a kind of drunken tenor (his accent is probably more understandable than MacGowan’s drunken warble, but not always).

I’m led to understand that previous albums were a bit more high-throttle from start to finish.  This disc has a couple of ballads.  At first they seem to not work as well, but in truth they help to pace the album somewhat.

It’s obvious this band will not suit everyone’s tastes, but if you’re looking for some high energy punk with some ethnic flare, GB is your band (and if you like skinny guys with no shirts and big mustaches, GB is definitely your band.  It is entirely conceivable that Hutz does not know how to work a button).

[READ: June 20, 2011] All the Anxious Girls on Earth

I’ve really enjoyed Zsuzsi’s stories in recent issues of The Walrus.  So much so that I wanted to get a copy of her new book.  It wasn’t available anywhere in the States yet, so I went back and got her first collection of short stories.

This collection felt to me like a younger, less sophisticated version of Zsuzsi’s later works that I liked so much.  This is not to say that I didn’t like them.  I just wasn’t as blown as w.

“How to Survive in the Bush”
I had to read the opening to this story twice for some reason.  The second read made much more sense and I was able to follow what was going on (I think there were a few terms that I didn’t know–a 1941 Tiger Moth, East Kootenays–that were given context after a few pages.  It transpires that this is a story o a woman who has given up her life to move to the boonies with/for her husband.  The whole story is written in second person which while typically inviting, I found alienating.  It made the story harder to read for me, but once I got into the groove of it I found it very rewarding. (more…)

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