Carrie Snyder's Hair Hat: A quickie review

So I've been a good Canada Reads Independently boy: not only did I buy Ray Robertson's Moody Food from my local bookstore this weekend, I also sat and read (in almost one sitting - I was about 20 pages from the end when the lovely A. wanted to watch a movie: the surprisingly delightful Julie & Julia, but of course I'm a sucker for anything starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams) Carrie Snyder's Hair Hat. As mentioned in a previous post, I cheated and ended up picking this book up from the library - going against my original plan of buying all the Canada Reads Independendly books - but I will poke around for it at my local secondhand shop. (I want to keep them in business too.)

What a wonderful work this is: whimsical, sad, profound, and it captures the not-so-ordinariness of many seemingly ordinary lives. The extraordinariness of ordinariness, in other words. It brings to mind (but just a mite) of Carol Shields: the characters themselves live, on the surface, these somewhat mundane lives, but there's such a richness behind the facade. Just one example: the character of Aunt Lucy, who we're introduced to in the first story, "Yellow Cherries." As narrated by young Francie, Lucy is largely faceless: she's efficient - taking care of Francie at night, making breakfast in the morning, pitting cherries - but she's also seemingly lacking personality. Yet, in "Comfort," which I think is the strongest story in the collection, when the same scenes play out from Lucy's narration/point of view, she reveals depth and sadness and regret. (The classic cliche, I suppose: still waters run deep.) Most of these characters are lonely, which probably explains why it spoke to me: my life is wonderful and full, but sometimes I tend to experience a profound sense of loneliness. It's always a nice confirmation knowing I'm not alone.

I was worried after reading the first couple of stories that the recurring character of the man with the hair hat would be overly "gimmicky" - especially after reading the jacket blurb: "Different to each of them, he makes perfect sense to them all. By turns a figure of forgiveness, of threat, even of love..."; ugh - it eventually played itself out and worked. (I wonder if the story "Chosen," in fact, should have been the final one in the book?)

What really stands out, however, is Snyder's prose. It's luminous and limpid. No trickery, no showing off, but clean, crystalline. Which has got me asking: Carrie, when are you going to publish your novel, as promised in the author blurb?! Well, it only said you were working on it. I guess with four kids, maybe finishing a novel isn't your top priority.

I doubt I'm going to "rank" the Canada Reads Independently books, but if I did, this would be an early favourite. (Note: I'm about 100 pages into Ray Robertson's Moody Food - so far it's good, but not great. The novel is, surprisingly, a mite sloppily written. But the story itself is engaging, so onward we go.)

In other news, I note the death of Robert B. Parker, he of Spenserfame. I was introduced to Parker's writing by my friend H., who during our last year of undergrad went through a detective and mystery writing phase. Many felt Parker was an heir to the writings of the acknowledged masters of the genre, Hammett and Chandler. The early Spenser books are wonderful: expert narrative, tautly written, and also fun as hell. While the later books are still good, something of the magic is missing. But it's a small quibble. Interestingly, Parker also wrote one of my favourite romantic novels of all time: Love and Glory. It's tough to find (outside of Amazon, of course), but well worth it grabbing if you see it secondhand. In his honour, I'm going to read this coming weekend a Spenser book that I bought at the Vic College sale in the fall: Ceremony. It's supposed to be one of the best.