Book Review: The Double Hook

The Double Hook by Sheila Watson

The Double Hook is a masterpiece of modernist Canadian fiction. Ostensibly set in 1930s British Columbia interior, it transcends those spatial and temporal limitations. The back cover describes it thusly as "men and women are caught upon the double hook of existence, unaware that the flight from danger and the search for glory are both part of the same journey. In Watson's compelling novel, cruelty and kindness, betrayal and faith, shape a pattern of enduring human significance.

In his afterword, F.T. Flahiff quotes Watson's mentor Frederick M. Salter as describing it as a book that will confound most readers (and reviewers) who gallop rather than read and whose pace courts bewilderment and frustration for readers confronted by its simultaneously spare and dense prose. As one of those readers who gallops (literally a gallop as I tend to walk while I read), I still recognize that there is something pure and perfect and so seminally Canadian about her work. Its characters are never truly defined as either native or European of ancestry yet somehow succeed at being applicable to both and the succinct appearances of Coyote adds both mythical and thematic resonance.

Still one reading keeps it pedestaled as something to be admired rather than loved. Rather it requires absolute attention and future readings over the quick clip of simple consumption. Absolutely recommended.

Book Review: World War Z

World War Z by Max Brooks

Brooks writes this, his second zombie book following The Zombie Survival Guide, as an oral history from the viewpoint of a representative from a UN Postwar commission. The war in postwar being "The Zombie War." This allows Brooks to apply a grand scale to his tale as we read the transcripts from this representative's interviews which provides us accounts in China, Tibet, Greece, Brazil, Barbados, Israel, Palestine, the US, Finland, Antarctica, India, Russia, Greenland, South Africa, Ireland, Ukraine, Canada, South Korea, Japan, Cuba, Australia, Chile, Siberia, and in Earth orbit.

Brooks adapts to the different perspectives with great aplomb, moving between doctors, different military experiences, politicians, refugees, and survivors of different cultures. Some standouts are the recurring segments with US Army infantryman Todd Wainio who provides an angle from the frontlines of the zombie war in the US, as well as downed fighter pilot Christina Eliopolis's account of sludging her way through a Louisiana swamp on her way to safety. The best segment though may be the detailing of South Africa's "Redeker Plan" by disgraced apartheid-era politician Paul Redeker and its use of acceptable losses.

I've never read a real oral history before (I wouldn't mind reading some Legs McNeil *hint*hint*), just fake ones (thank you, Mark Leyner). I imagine this is a pretty accurate rendition as I enjoyed the style and felt the details on a worldwide endemic made the novel. It may not be high literature, but it is excellent populist fiction that didn't insult my intelligence as well as quick read.

Word is that a World War Z movie is in the works. Although, what this book really begs for is an HBO Band of Brothers-style mini-series bookended by faux interviews with veterans of the zombie war. Word is bond.

Book Review: The Melancholy of Anatomy

The Melancholy of Anatomy by Shelley Jackson

The Melancholy of Anatomy is a collection of "Stories." The book divides the stories according to category: Choleric, Melancholic, Phlegmatic, and Sanguine. These obviously correspond to the four humors of Greco-Roman medicine, being yellow bile, black bile, phlegm, and blood, respectively. They also correspond to the Four Temperaments theory of modern psychology.

The stories contained within are:

• Blood

Choleric

• Egg
• Sperm
• Foetus

Melancholic

• Cancer
• Nerve
• Dildo

Phlegmatic

• Phlegm
• Hair
• Sleep

Sanguine

• Blood
• Milk
• Fat

I guess I've met one of my year's goals now. Getting pinged on google searches for dildo (probably around the 320, 670, 456th result).

The Melancholy of Anatomy concerns itself with elements of the body, but not in the traditional sense. Instead, these elements have been externalized. They are foreign elements which show up unexpectedly. This creates a diaspora of the in/out in all of the stories. All of this analysis makes the work sound more heady than it really is. Instead, Jackson of the school of postmodernism, has a playful hold of language and has ludic fun with our expectations and misconceptions. Well worth a read.

Short Pick: Foetus