Cream of the crop

Old masters, first wives, Canadian values
and a looming honeybee crisis

by JULIET WATERS

“Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through the manhole covers stamped ‘Forged by Delaney Bros., Piscataway N.J.’”

I know this sounds like it must be the first sentence of the new Philip Roth novel. Surely, by now, you’d think Roth would have lost his groove. But it’s actually the winner of this year’s Bulwer-Lytton Fiction award for the worst opening line.

Meanwhile, Roth has just signed a seven-figure film deal for his new novel Indignation with the producer who won the Academy Award last year for No Country for Old Men. Just as well—it wouldn’t feel like a fall book season without him. While his last two novels may have concerned themselves a little much with the sexual frustrations of aging men, Indignation is told from the point of view of an 18-year-old negotiating life in a Midwestern college in the 1950s.

In some ways, Curtis Sittenfeld feels like Sarah Palin to Roth’s John McCain. Except for the fact that they’re not Republicans, Sittenfeld shares Roth’s ability to entertain with depressive, sexually driven characters, and she’s young enough to make a long career out of it. American Wife, which re-imagines the life of a thinly disguised Laura Bush, is currently stirring up controversy for some dirty librarian sex scenes, and a touch of first wife diarrhea. I enjoyed Prep, so I’m looking forward to finding out if there’s actually any reason to fuss about this.

DISTURBED AND ON THE ROAD

But first on my reading list is Miriam Toews’s The Flying Troutmans. Toews is in town this week to promote this follow-up to A Complicated Kindness. In it, the kind of aunt who just got dumped by her Parisian lover is suddenly forced to take care of the teenage children of her suicidal sister. Maybe a road trip with two disturbed wisecracking kids is not the best solution, but advance reviews suggest it will probably make for another fine novel.

Joseph Boyden will also be making a visit to Montreal this fall with his follow-up to Three Day Road. His new novel, Through Black Spruce, offers a more contemporary tale of Cree life, with young characters that give up the traditional lands for shopping malls, and the traditional ways for crystal meth.

In Canadian non-fiction, political philosopher John Ralston Saul takes a look at traditional Canadian values in A Fair Country: Telling Truths About Canada, and how far we ourselves seem to be deviating from the path of egalitarianism, negotiation and peace. I know I’m not the only one whose eyes glaze over at the thought of another Margaret Atwood novel. But I like her better as a public intellectual, so I’m kind of looking forward to hearing her take on debt, financial and the metaphorical, in Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth. I may also take a look at The Other Side of the Coin by David Orrell, which looks to be an interesting primer on alternative economics.

FROM NO ONE TO NOTORIOUS

Craig Silverman helps Montrealer Michael Calce tell the story of his rise to notorious teenage hacker in Mafiaboy. While Julie Couillard gets no help in telling the story of her rise, arguably, from biker chick to political playmate in My Story.

American non-fiction bestseller lists will have to make room for another Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success. As in Blink, Gladwell takes a good long look at the environment and how it shapes our cognitive skills for better or for worse.

But the most intriguing, and appropriate book of the season may be Fruitless Fall: The Collapse of the Honeybee and the Coming Agricultural Crisis. Rowan Jacobsen makes a chilling case for a crisis in the bee community brought on by global warming that will destroy crops for years to come. So enjoy this year’s harvest, while you still can.