The Anatomy of Edouard Beaupré, by Sarah Kathryn York, Coteau Books, May 2012, 206 pp.
If I were in any profession that worked with deceased people, I know I’d be thinking constantly of who the people were in life. What did they think about every day, what were their dreams, their sadnesses, their passions, their last thoughts? Whom did they love, who loved them? What did they do, where did they go? How did they navigate life?
So does the doctor from Montreal wonder, who in 1951 is working to solve the mystery of why the giant Edouard Beaupré, who stood over eight feet tall (and was still growing) when he died in 1904 in his early twenties, is now shrinking in death in spite of the fact that his tissues had already been dried and soaked in formaldehyde years before.
The more he spends time with Beaupré’s enigmatic body, the more the doctor finds himself wondering about and imagining who the giant might have been, and what his life was like.
An ironically small, compact book, the anatomy of Edouard Beaupré is reflected in the 206 pages (for the number of bones in the body) and divided into chapters named for body parts (liver, nose, fists, etc.). It’s a clever, self-aware book — a contradictory one, in a way, since the title and format focus on the giant’s physique, as did so many others before this, while the contents tell us what’s truly important — and packaged rather like a precious gift, which, really, it is: a tribute to the extraordinary man who once lived, and a tender treatment, finally, of the giant who was such a fascinating curiosity he was constantly exploited.
As the doctor wondered about Beaupré’s life, so too, obviously, did York, whose research is incorporated into an otherwise fictional account of young Edouard’s childhood. He dreams of becoming a cowpoke but his size eventually prevents him from being able to ride the horses. Instead, he can carry them. His strength and unusual size take him to cities where he appears instead as a circus performer and occasional strongman who wrestles others.
While the story is a tender imagining, the giant sympathetically and kindly portrayed (as facts confirm), more than anything, for me it was almost more sad, even rather depressing, than beautiful. Beaupré, while warm and handsome and perfectly proportioned, had the misfortune of being freakishly tall and thus unable to have a normal life. Where ideally a person’s height or any sort of difference would nevertheless be of lesser importance than their personality and heart, “normals” have either an aversion to or detached fascination with unusual people. Particularly in the 1800s and 1900s, the only way for unusual people to eke out a living was to be on display in a circus. One gets the sense that this is a tedious and demeaning occupation, often fraught with unpleasantries and unfair treatment.
The sense of Beaupré’s lack of belonging was so strong my heart was heavy while I read. He was taken advantage of by managers. He was lonely and dreamed of being home. And he was sickly, which led ultimately to his untimely death but also to his failure in being able to impressively or successfully demonstrate his strength and endurance. And in death, because his father was unable to pay to bring him home, his body was crudely displayed in shop windows for a time and then rather mercilessly opened and reopened, explored by curious and learning minds.
At the same time, York’s reimagining of country life, of Edouard’s mother’s experience, of the landscape, and also of city life during a fertile time of invention, is vivid. And when Edouard attends his sister’s wedding, we get a lovely glimpse of his sense of humour and desire to be happy as he dances home after miserably failed attempts to dance with a woman inside. York’s prose is spare and simply constructed, and her details evocative. I’ve marked several sentences I liked, this one in particular: “Words nipped his ears like bedlice.”
What I loved most about this book was that it reflected a kind of giving back: after his difficult, though brief, life, after Edouard’s unfulfilled desires, the indignities and misunderstandings, the focus on his body rather than his mind, heart, and soul, after the unkind jokes and medical probing — after all that, York has presented us with who Beaupré was and may have been aside from his size. It’s as though she’s righted wrongs, or at the very least offered a different (more important) way of seeing.
***
Thank you to Amber Goldie at Coteau Books for my copy of this book! This review was part of the Fictionista blog tour featuring Heather Birrell, Sarah Kathryn York, Alison Preston, Cassie Stocks, Margaret MacPherson, Barb Howard, and Arley McNeney.
Jasper Wolf, the protagonist of Ben Brooks’s fifth book Grow Up, is quite possibly the most authentic young adult voice I’ve read in ages. This is probably because Brooks is a mere nineteen years old and his character is seventeen. It’s this fact, actually, that makes me feel a few previous newspaper reviews of this novel—that to me smack of that most irritating adult smugness or prissiness some reviewers tend toward—are missing the point when they complain the story is too much sex, drugs (too many drugs, they all add in a chastising parental tone), and not much else. Well, yes. And no.
There’s a confusing focus on the surface level in these reviews, and I’m left wondering just how many actually spent enough time with the novel to give it a proper review. It seems to me they are intent on dismissing Grow Up. That’s a reviewer’s prerogative, of course, but isn’t the point of a review to try and look past the surface of a book? They say there isn’t anything, but I see more in this novel than just adolescent philandering.
So let me reiterate, in case you’re already convinced by the grown-up reviewers: Grow Up, as a thinking person can tell from the title and also the cover, is more than just sex and drugs and unimportant, meandering prose. It’s because of the author’s age that this is an authentic portrayal of some teens’ lives, but it’s because of the author’s uncanny smarts that it’s also a kind of social commentary. Honestly, I don’t think I’m reading too much into this. It’s there. Most striking in Grow Up is the honesty (which you’ll also find on the author’s blog), the unabashed (both shocking and refreshing) lack of shame or apology for a character who’s self-indulgent, privileged, narcissistic, and sometimes a total prick.
It’s very difficult to like or sympathize with a character (Jasper) who fantasizes about rape, will do anything for sex, and then actually rapes George Treely, the object of his obsession (he gives her drugs and then has sex with her), the same night he has intoxicated sex with his best friend in her vulnerable state of break-up. His reasoning is very…teenaged.
Is this okay? It seems a bit bad. Slightly unethical.
Slightly rapey, maybe.
I conduct a very brief moral trial in my head. I use the
characters from Animal Farm.Pig: I strongly object. This is hideous. Doing this would
be like pissing into a bone china Ming dynasty vase.
Dog: Objection, you are victimising the defendant.
Pig: Objection, only a victim can be victimised.
Rat: Grammatical confuzzlement!
Judge: Irrelevant.
Cow: What is?
Dog: She is pretty fit.
Pig: Very fit, actually.
Judge: Then go for it.
Jasper J. Wolf: Thanks, everyone.‘I love you, too,’ I say. …
I think it is probably obvious what comes next and
how superbly lovely it feels.
To top that off, he kicks a dog in the ribs, kills a cat (accidentally, sort of), and after having sex that he regrets with a girl from school, meanly sends her a fake doctor’s letter saying she’s pregnant, followed by an email he writes to cover his ass. He calls the police on his mother’s boyfriend because he’s convinced the man murdered his ex-wife. Also, he wants to screw his friend’s hot mother. Utterly odious sounding, isn’t he?
But there is more. There is something, in the midst of the teenaged immaturity, that’s heartbreaking and vulnerable and true, much like in real, live youth, and that’s what kept me reading. In general, it’s what keeps me from dismissing teens as complete idiots. Even while he is sometimes horrid, Jasper isn’t just some halfwit. While he doesn’t tend to think much or very logically before he acts, he does think afterward—albeit sometimes too late—and thankfully realize that it’s just not okay to do some things that seemed okay at first, like his tryst with Georgia. (“It looks like I may have raped her. I mean she wanted to but she probably didn’t want to want to. It was the drugs that made her want to. … Someone has left their clothes on the floor. I pull them on and quickly leave the room. I am escaping from the scene of the crime.”)
He’s sensitive and caring toward his best friend, Tenaya, who self-harms and is depressed after a breakup, and his tenderness toward her and worry for her is endearing. He’s introspective. Surrounded by the dysfunctional parental relationships of his friends, he loves and is concerned for his mother.
I find Mum sat on the steps leading up to the police
station doors. She is smoking a cigarette. I sit down next
to her.
‘Mum?’ I say.
‘Yes, Jasper.’
‘Cigarettes contain tar, which will make your lungs turn
black and eat themselves,’ I inform her.
‘Yes, Jasper,’ she says, crushing out the cigarette. ‘Thank
you.’
‘You shouldn’t take up smoking again. I know you are
stressed but cancer is more stressful, I expect.’
‘I know.’
‘Okay,’ I say, standing up. ‘Can we go home now?’
‘Yes, we can.’
Mum is angry at me for getting her husband arrested
but she still loves me because I am her son.
Also, Jasper makes copious cups of tea and listens to BBC Radio 4, and it’s hard for me to hate a teen who does those things. So Brooks has done a great job, then, tricksy as he may be, in creating a character who can cause you to make excuses for him.
Let me rephrase that. The positive traits Jasper possesses do not excuse him from his heinous actions, but they do keep you from completely hating his guts. He’s not redeemed so much as perhaps…understood in a way, as a teenager, that paradoxical, struggling fucked up creature whose mission during such turbulent years is to simply try and survive them. Brooks brings this across very well.
The title Grow Up—rather than “Growing Up,” for example—is significant, and I think it’s important to consider that perhaps Brooks’s intention isn’t simply to write about sex, drugs, and not much else, just a few weeks in the life of a British teen who’s got split parents and is studying his A levels. Granted, Brooks isn’t himself far removed from the contents, and this is certainly based on his own experiences. Granted, he has some developing to do as an author. But he’s not lacking in intelligence. This is not some whim of a novel. While there are hints of immaturity within, this is due more to his age showing rather than a lack of writerly skill. Yes, some similes are eye-rollers or perplexing, but others are imaginative and surprising. He has a way with words that makes me sincerely hope he doesn’t squander his talent. I want this young man to keep writing, and by god, that’s really saying something.
***
Grow Up is published by Anansi Press for their Anansi International imprint, May 2012, 272 pp.
Mad Hope, by Heather Birrell, Coach House, April 2012, 232 pages
I’ve always read good books. Because of the way I choose a book, I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve ever regretted a purchase. But I think, during my whole long reading life, never have I read such great books in succession since publishers found this blog a couple of years ago and began offering me review copies. I don’t know if it’s just that my appreciation has deepened through reviewing, or if the books I’m reading (tending to be by young Canadians) are more my thing than what I previously read, or if certain publishers are getting better at picking what they produce, or if writers are in general actually getting better, contrary to what many think.
Maybe it’s all of these things. Maybe it’s none, and I’m just very lucky. Whatever the reason, over the past couple of years, again and again I’ve read stories that cause me to marvel at them, not simply enjoy them.
No book is perfect, of course. But Heather Birrell’s latest, a collection of short stories called Mad Hope (published by Coach House), is so good, the writing so strong and skilled, I kept thinking, These stories are perfect.
The collection is divided into three parts (sweetly, simply, indicated by the number of frogs on the page). In each section and in each of the stories, there is death or loss, whether purposeful (murder, abortion) or not (miscarriage, drowning). But there are also the themes of birth and motherhood and family; children feature prominently, particularly babies both unborn and born. In fact, and I only just noticed this, the endpapers show a pattern of sperm (swimming upward and downward, respectively – or are they tadpoles? Ha!), as does the background on the back cover. The design of this book, by Coach House senior editor Alana Wilcox, is both gorgeous and significant.
An interesting tidbit, then, while we’re on the topic of frogs, because I wanted to know the meaning of them in this book, besides their significance in an excellent story called “Frogs” (about a teenage girl who is pregnant and asks her bio teacher [who's had an interestingly relevant history in Romania, who teaches his class respect for the frogs they dissect] if he’ll take her to an abortion clinic). Frogs all over the book and are addressed even in the epigraph. So:
Frog Meanings and Symbolism
When the frog jumps into your life it may indicate now is a time to find opportunities in transition. We see animal symbolism of transition with the frog in its unique growth cycle. The frog undergoes incredible transformations to reach the destination of full adulthood, and so do we as humans.
The frog understands what it is like to undergo some serious growing pains – and so it is a fantastic animal totem for teenagers as they sometimes struggle to find their place (in-betwix youth and adulthood) in society.
In many cultures the primary symbolic meaning of frogs deals with fertility. This is largely because these cultures observed Frogs laying enormous quantities of eggs, therefore making it a fertility symbol as well as a symbol of abundance.
In China the Frog is an emblem of Yin energy and thought of as good luck. Feng Shui practices recommend putting an image of a Frog in the east window of your home to encourage child birth and/or happy family life.
Frog energy is also considered to be a link between the living and the dead.
- Luck
- Purity
- Rebirth
- Renewal
- Fertility
- Healing
- Metamorphosis
- Transitions
- Dreaming
- Opportunity
- Intermediary
(emphasis in original)
This does quite fit the themes of Birrell’s book. In “BriannaSusannaAlana,” three sisters, six, ten, and nearly thirteen, deal with the fact that there’s been a murder in a brownstone near them. “My Friend Taisie” tells the story of a young man whose partner has just committed suicide. At present, the young man is avoiding having to deal with his grief by staying with his friend Taisie, who is pregnant and about to give birth to her second child. “Wanted Children,” one of my favourite stories even though I’m not sure I quite got the ending, is about a young couple who after a long time trying to conceive lose the baby through a miscarriage. They decide to get away from the pressure of feeling having a baby is what they must do, and travel to the Amazon basin and down the Cuyabeno River.
The story from which comes the title Mad Hope, called “Geraldine and Jerome,” was actually my least favourite, the one I found less believable somehow, but its message of hope, expressed by and living within a young, optimistic, and unlikely character, is significant, especially in light of the other stories. The overriding theme in part one is of youth and coming to terms with death and loss, but it ends on a hopeful note.
Part two contains three connected stories. In “Dominoes,” Maddie writes to her brother Jeremy, remembering her past with him, and her brother’s friend, Richie, and the murder he committed of a gay man. In “Bye Bye Flangle Nuts,” we meet Jeremy, whose girlfriend is practising makeup application on him. As his face is done, Jeremy remembers back to six months ago, when he found out from Maddie that his father was dead, something he’d sort of foreseen. He remembers his father, and in particular the jealousy he perceived in him when he was watching Jeremy present his school speech at the finals. And then in “Dingbat” we have Maddie’s perspective again, remembering too her father’s death but also her brother’s absence. In this story, there is a sense of loss surrounding all of Maddie’s family, including the dog.
The third and final section has three stories. The first, “No One Else Really Wants to Listen,” is written as a series of comments in a forum for pregnant women. This is brilliantly executed in form and in terms of character, and tells the story of a woman who is pregnant when she first goes on the forum but is about to lose her baby through miscarriage. While she worries about the possibility of this happening, she confesses to the others that in the past she was an escort for women going to an abortion clinic. As a blogger and blog reader, I particularly related to the types of comments and characters. Birrell really captures how strangers interact; there is a sense of abandon in anonymity, which allows one to be both bold and more intimate and honest than one might be with a “real life” friend.
In “Drowning Doesn’t Look Like Drowning,” a woman remembers her mother’s death by drowning while they were on a trip together, but also tells of her young son’s near drowning. And in “Impossible to Die in Your Dreams,” told from the perspectives of a grandmother, Eliza, and her granddaughter, Samantha, both at the granddaughter’s sister’s wedding, each remembers the past and looks with hope to new beginnings.
Writing these descriptions has made me feel like deleting them because of how they grossly oversimplify the stories and how they sound almost depressing. That’s my fault, because they’re not. There is such excellent humour in this book too! I tell you, you have to read the stories.
And the thing is, you don’t have to do much thinking to see the themes of death, loss, need, birth, sex, marriage, family, hope — they’re somewhat obvious and even a little repetitive, though dealt with in very individual, well-crafted stories. But while the themes would make for interesting discussion, while they indeed reflect the human experience and how we each try to navigate that experience, it’s Birrell’s even better execution of the finer points of writing — the excellent dialogue, the expertly crafted inner thoughts of characters, the original and highly effective way and often humorous way of putting things, and especially the details she pinpoints — these are what really make these stories as perfect as they are.
Birrell is brilliant at writing details, at situating us, at making us see a person as though they were right in front of us, at causing us to relate. The stories are peopled with characters so real, so poignantly human, that you can’t help but feel as though you might be intuitively observing these people in real life. In “Frogs” she describes a school so aptly I suddenly remembered my own high school. I knew exactly what she was talking about, both the quiet and the ruckus; I swear to god I smelled the halls.
Vasile was alone in the science office when Naadiya knocked. The two colleagues with whom he shared the space had sprinted out the door seconds after the bell rang. He understood it, the pressing desire to put distance between the overwhelming stimuli of the school and the shaky sanctity of the self. But minutes after dismissal, there was a new quiet in the school — a deflated sense of contentedness, as if the building had digested something, then belched up its essence. It was not like this of course on the main floor, near the drama and music wing, or in the basement gym, where rehearsals and practices went on, causing a ruckus with bleating trumpets and bouncing balls and proclamations of love and victory. Here on the second floor was a different story. A calmer, emptier story.
In these stories, people feel the threat of rain in their sinuses, days are of the sort when bad men choose to bury body parts, drivers wearily flip each other the bird or furiously shake their fists like thwarted revolutionaries, then fold themselves angrily and efficiently into eggplant-coloured SUVs. Men having their makeup done make a face “all bunchy and shit. Like a bulldog swallowing a wasp.” Women get tipsy at weddings and drunk pee in the bathroom so vividly your head spins with remembrance.
Smug polished stones cluster next to the sink beside a pile of dried rose petals resting in a shallow pewter dish, and in the mirror, Samantha’s own self, flushed from the wine and the dancing. The hairdo seems prepared to rally, but an anxious musk is mingling expertly with her perfume, clouding out from under her arms, between her legs … Inside the stall is safe and square, the lock slots into place as it should. She swings her skirt up and forward, gathers it in front and works her underwear down with one hand. Once seated, she relaxes into the pee, her panties pulled taut between her knees. Everything, her whole life, shrunk now, to this stall, which is every stall, every seat where she’s ever sat to pee. A room of one’s own and all the careful deliberation of the drunken: narrowed eyes, clasping fingers, the slow tear and the slower, conscientious wipe … Samantha … is experiencing some of the empty-headed euphoria that accompanies dizziness. Her gaze slides easily up the walls and to the ceiling, then back down again.
I remember.
Mad Hope is a collection of stories that have you experiencing others’ lives. They’re simultaneously echoes of your own humanity, so that you can relate, and like virtual reality, stopping just shy of literally walking in someone else’s shoes.
They say that art, particularly good art, imitates life. I’d say Heather Birrell goes beyond imitating it. She creates it.
***
Thank you to Evan Munday and Coach House Books for sending me Mad Hope for review! This review was part of the Fictionista blog tour featuring Heather Birrell, Sarah Kathryn York, Alison Preston, Cassie Stocks, Margaret MacPherson, Barb Howard, and Arley McNeney. I’ll be reviewing Sarah Kathryn York’s novel, The Anatomy of Edouard Beaupré, as well.
I’ve been freelance copyediting and proofreading for nine years, almost ten, now, and it’s taken me this long to realize what it’s really about. My past years of freelancing were fraught with doubt, financial insecurity, discouragement, and, frankly, panic. I’ve always been grateful for the work, but mostly I was focused on the unpredictability of the job and pay. Because of this, I was afraid to make the leap to full-time, even though it’s what I’ve always wanted (which I’ve only just truly discovered through therapy, believe it or not).
Over the last couple of years I’ve been really struggling with myself and trying to find where I fit. In all aspects of my life, I’ve been the black sheep, at home with my family, at school, no matter where I’ve worked. The book world is all I’ve managed to figure out about where I belong, but that world, in constant flux, is big and sometimes frightening. I’ve worked at a custom book publisher, a chain bookstore, an indie, and libraries, and while I was always surrounded by books, I never felt that definitive click I hear so much about.
It was while working for the publisher as a book project manager and copyeditor that I decided to try my hand at freelancing. That idea emerged from my strong disagreement about how copyediting and proofreading were defined and handled. (In a word, sloppily.)
After attending a writers’ conference in 2002, I landed my first job, with the University of Ottawa Press, and since then, all my work has come via word of mouth as well as blogging and social media. Now I edit everything from academic texts to zombie novels and beyond. It’s fun. Excellent publishers have introduced me to great writers. I’ve met so many wonderful people, I can’t count them all. I have a tendency to make friends pretty easily, but editors, publicists, and writers have become mostly my best. Now, as my workload grows through the supportive and encouraging recommendations of the people I’ve come to know and about whom I’m enthusiastic, I’m finding myself truly overwhelmed by the kindness, belief in me, genuine excitement, and wish to see me succeed and be part of myriad fantastic teams. My work is no longer work.
My goal as a freelancer is to help publishers and writers put out their best. I could never have predicted, though, that they in turn would help me become the person I’m meant to be. I know my job isn’t who I am. But it’s certainly spilling over into the rest of my life. Purpose feels pretty damn good.
Last night I announced on Twitter that I’m making the leap to full-time freelancing. It’s more exciting than scary now, because of the work that’s coming in, the people who believe in me, and because I’m finally seeing my own worth and where I truly belong. My high standards of work are paying off, yes, but it’s much more than that. It’s the people behind me who are really making a difference.
They say that self-confidence and esteem and happiness must come from within. But I say it certainly helps to have some of it come out of the backing of clients and friends and clients who become friends. Authors always say in their acknowledgments that they could never have produced their book alone, that without the work and cheerleading of others, the book in your hands would never have materialized.
It takes a village to make a child, the adage goes. For me, thinking on all my struggles over the past nine years, I say it takes superheroes.
Thank you so much to all those wonderful publishers, editors, writers, scholars, and friends who encourage me and trust me with their books, articles, PhDs, questions, and stories. Thank you to all my blog readers and other friends on Twitter and Facebook and in “real life” who cheer me on or challenge me.
You are all raising me to be everything I can and want to be as a professional: happy in contributing important work, confident in my decision to do it, and, most of all, great at what I do.
***
The title of this post is based on a book by Andrew Kaufman called All My Friends are Superheroes. Read it. He also wrote The Tiny Wife, which I loved.
Jen Campbell is a bookseller at the Ripping Yarns antiquarian bookshop in London, and the author of the hilarious and sometimes sobering collection of Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops, put out first in the UK by Constable & Robinson, and fabulously illustrated by Greg McLeod of the Brothers McLeod. The book has been very well received thus far, and initially rocketed to popularity thanks to Neil Gaiman. The official UK launch was on Thursday, April 5, and it will be available in North America later this year.
For my review, see yesterday’s post. Now I want to introduce you to Jen by having her answer a few questions.
Hi Jen! Lovely to have another bookseller on the blog. We’re a dying breed now, apparently! Well, and then that’s not entirely true, is it? Anyone who reads can be a bookseller, whether or not they work in a shop.
But you’ve worked in bookshops now for several years, and that’s in spite of the weirdest things people say! Here’s my first question for you:
What made you want to be a bookseller?
I love books. I love bookshops. I love recommending books to people. Basically, it just made sense, and it was nice to get paid for being in a bookshop, even though most of my wages do go back into bookshops in general, ha!
Oh, me too. I’ve always got a pile to buy. At first it was what I loved best about the job. What do you like best about working in a bookshop?
Recommending a book to a person and having them stop by a week later to say that they loved it. I work in an antiquarian bookshop now, so it’s great helping people track down books they loved when they were younger.
The best bookselling moment happened last week. A woman called to say she’d seen a book on our catalogue that she’d loved when she was younger, and she wanted to buy it to read to her children. So, she paid, and I posted the book off to her. Two days later she called, all excited, to say that she’d received the book and that we’d never guess what: the book was actually hers, ie the copy she’d owned when she was little. She’d opened it up to find, on the inside page, the gift inscription from her great aunt. Her mother had sold this book in a jumble sale FORTY years ago, half way across the country, and now she’s got it back. How wonderful is that?
Pretty freaking amazing!! I love when things like this happen. I mean, what are the chances! She was meant to have it back. What an exciting story! And this is why, partly, we continue to need bookshops.
So, speaking as an experienced bookseller, what is your view (in a nutshell) of the state of the bookselling industry today?
I think bookshops need support now more than ever. I think a lot of people need to take a step back and look at just how many people have to be paid for the production of just one book and realise that, hey, £7.99 ain’t so bad for that. I think that if a person likes bookshops then they need to support them. I don’t think we can take anything for granted. I don’t think that people should use bookshops as a browsing space for Amazon; I wish that people wouldn’t ask booksellers for advice and then buy books elsewhere. I get that times are tough and that we’re watching our pennies, but Amazon’s goals scare me. I don’t think they just want to rule the bookselling waters; they want to publish as well. For me, Amazon’s saying we don’t need a whole lot of the bookselling/publishing industry; they’re saying that we just need [Amazon], and I don’t think that’s true. I think if things continue the way they look to be going then we’re going to miss out on a whole load of lovely things. I think we’ll look back and think, ‘Oh, shit.’ Amazon and supermarkets don’t get authors to into schools, and encourage kids to read. They don’t do signings with your favourite writers, and chat to you about your day. I think a lot of us are waiting for other people to save the industry, and we can’t do that. I think we need to get on it, and I think we need to fight. Now.
Also, I think there should be an international Hug A Bookseller Day. Just putting it out there.
Er, I don’t know if I want to be hugged, but a kind, appreciative word would go a long way! And I agree: we need to be doing things now and not waiting for others to fix it instead. The situation now seems to be regret or even upset when a shop closes, but where were those people when the support was needed?
So tell us what a typical day at Ripping Yarns looks like for you, aside from helping customers.
I open up the bookshop, check orders, process them and package them up. I catalogue our stock. We’re in the process of putting all of our stock onto a database. That’s about 30,000 books and counting. At the moment we have about 6000 of those online [http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?sortby=0&vci=145891] so I’m describing and photographing those. Aside from helping customers who come in, people call up and I help them track down books – to do that I sometimes have to research them because they don’t know the titles/publisher/illustrators. We also negotiate buying books with people who come in/email/call up.
You’ve been published several times before, having written poetry and short stories. Has your experience in bookshops informed your creative writing, and I’m talking, of course, aside from Weird Things?
Bookselling and writing are two separate things for me. I’ve probably discovered new writers through bookselling (in fact, I know I have), and some of those will have, in turn, influenced my own writing, so I suppose there’s a link there :) Bookselling themes don’t tend to creep up in my other work, though.
Jennifer Campbell and Greg McLeod at WTCSIB launch, April 5, 2012
What or who encouraged you to compile Weird Things and find an agent for it?
Weird Things started out as blog posts. People on Twitter bounced the links to those posts around a lot, and Neil Gaiman mentioned them on his blog. I’d just got an agent for my fiction (Charlie Campbell, who works at Ed Victor). We were in the very early stages of discussing that when Hugh, who works at Constable and who also used to work at Ripping Yarns bookshop, approached me asking if I’d like to make the blog posts into a book. In fact, he called the bookshop to make sure I was there, and then was standing in front of me half an hour later. It all happened very quickly after that. It was crazy — in a very good way.
Are there plans for subsequent volumes?
One step at a time! (Though I would like that, very much.)
What have you found to be the general response to your book? Any favourite anecdotes of interactions with WTCSIB you’d love to share since the book’s been published in the UK?
It seems (touch wood) to have been very good! It’s really fun (and bizarre) selling the book in the bookshop. I’ve had customers re-enacting scenes from the book in French, German customers giggling over it and discussing scenes in German (which I obviously couldn’t understand). Someone picked up, turned to me and said, ‘Have you read this? Is it any good?’ 90% of the people who buy it from us don’t know I wrote it and didn’t come looking for the book, which is very encouraging. I owe Greg for the cover; it grabs people’s attention.
That it does. I think it’s very fitting!
Have you ever asked another bookseller something weird? If so, what was it?
If I have then I don’t remember. I’m going to hazard a guess that I probably have done, though!
What is the best thing about having published Weird Things?
I don’t think I can pinpoint one thing; it’s all been so much fun. I’m about to start doing events for the book, which I’m really looking forward to (those are listed down the left hand side of my blog). It’s all so exciting and new. I’ve wanted to be a writer and have a published book since I was eight years old, so it hasn’t really sunk in properly yet.
Have you noticed any positive effects of Weird Things on Ripping Yarns?
Absolutely! Since the initial the blog posts started doing the rounds, we’ve had a lot of people coming into the shop because of Weird Things — people nearby who didn’t know we were there before, and some stopping by when they’re on holiday in London, particularly American tourists, which is fantastic.
Thinking back to the beginning, when you got the idea for this, until now, how has this changed things for you?
It’s given me more confidence in myself, and given me that push to believe that things like this do happen — that a book of mine can get published. I’ve met such wonderful people during the process, too, whom I’d love to work with again. My first poetry collection is going to be published in the summer (it’s called ‘The Hungry Ghost Festival’ and will be published by The Rialto), and I’ve just started working on a novel [scary, scary!]. So, I plan to work very hard indeed and see what happens in the future.
You’ve had a really fantastic start, Jen, and I’m certain things will go well for you. I’m excited for you! All the very best in your endeavours! Thanks for visiting here (one day I hope to visit England again and meet you in person!), and my heartiest congrats on all your achievements thus far. Also, a big thank you for bringing this hilarious treasure into the book world. I can’t wait to buy it! You’ve given us booksellers a common thread here and made us unite even more in solidarity. But you’ve also brought much laughter. Nothing weird about that!
Blog tour dates:
- 5th April: Scott Pack, Me and My Big Mouth.
- 6th April: Vanessa Gebbie
- 7th April: Caroline Smailes
- 8th April: Tom Vowler, How to Write Another Novel
- 9th April Nicola Morgan, Help! I Need a Publisher!
- 10th April: Paper Aeroplanes
- 18th April: Tania Hershman, Tania Writes
- Nik Perring [date TBC]
Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops, Compiled by Jen Campbell: A Review (Also, a giveaway!)
2012
People say the darnedest things, don’t they? And what better place to learn this when you’re working in customer service. It’s cliché among booksellers to joke about that customer who asked for a book “that’s purple and about this thick and I think it was in the romance section…” Or the customer who said they’d read a book years ago and were looking for it again but couldn’t remember the author, title, or quite what it was about, just that it was a children’s book, and it was so good! Surely we must know it? I had one not too long ago who said she’d heard about a book on the radio a few months ago and it had soap in the title, but she didn’t know the title or the author or the radio program (after some sleuthing I found the book she wanted, called the Dirt on Clean: An Unsanitized History. I guess I can see where soap comes in…).
There was the one who asked if there are any books on how to get inside a woman’s head. There was the guy who asked for a book on how to build a crystal meth lab (“I’m not going to build one though, I swear!”), and the one who wanted a book with pictures of women’s breasts, because he wanted his girlfriend to get bigger boobs and to show her examples of what he liked. (In case this comes up for you, we found this: The Big Book of Breasts, published by Taschen, of course.)
There are those who question my intelligence, ask to speak to “someone older” (I’m 38 but I apparently sound and look too young to know what I’m talking about), or chastise me for not having read a certain book. And that’s on top of the many people who don’t find it at all strange to come in only to ask where the nearest second-hand bookshop is, or question why they can’t use their Chapters card in our shop, or tell me they’ll just go to Chapters rather than have me order a book for them, or, worse, ask me to help them find the title of a book so they order it online from Amazon.
Ah! But these are nothing compared to the doozies that Jen Campbell, manager of Ripping Yarns, an antiquarian bookshop in London, England, has compiled during her shifts and collected from other booksellers. The entertaining anecdotes read almost like jokes, each one as incredible as the next. They make you burst out laughing or groan in despair or drop your jaw with incredulity. The thing is, having worked in bookshops and libraries over the years, I can vouch for Jen’s credibility, as well as that of others who submitted to Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops. Believe it: people say the weirdest, also sometimes rudest, but also sometimes sweetest things to retail staff.
A few samples from the book:
Customer: Do you have any old knitting patterns?
Bookseller: We do, as it happens, yes. They’re over here.
Customer: And do you sell knitting needles?
Bookseller: No, I’m afraid not.
Customer: But I’ll need those when using the old knitting
patterns.
Bookseller: Well . . .
Customer: And do you sell wool?
Bookseller: No, just the knitting patterns and magazines.
Customer: You haven’t thought this through properly, have
you? How am I supposed to knit a scarf without knitting
needles and wool?
Bookseller: You’re going to have to buy those things from
another shop, I’m afraid.
Customer: It would be much better for me if I could buy
everything in one place.
Bookseller: Unfortunately we can’t stock everything relevant
to the books we have, otherwise we’d be full of gardening tools,
sewing machines, cooking ingredients and paint brushes.
Customer: What are you talking about? I don’t need any of
those things. I only need wool and knitting needles. I’m not
going to knit with a paintbrush!***
Customer: Hi, I’d like to return this book, please.
Bookseller: Certainly. Do you have the receipt?
Customer: Here.
Bookseller: Erm, you bought this book at Waterstone’s.
Customer: Yes.
Bookseller: . . . we’re not Waterstone’s.
Customer: But you’re a bookshop.
Bookseller: Yes, but we’re not Waterstone’s.
Customer: You’re all part of the same chain.
Bookseller: No, sorry, we’re an independent bookshop.
Customer: . . .
Bookseller: Put it this way, you wouldn’t buy clothes in
H&M and take them back to Zara, would you?
Customer: Well, no, because they’re different shops.
Bookseller: Exactly.
Customer: . . . I’d like to speak to your manager.***
Customer: I’m looking for a biography to read that’s really
interesting. Could you recommend one?
Bookseller: Sure. What books have you read and liked?
Customer: Well, I really loved Mein Kampf.
Bookseller: . . .
Customer: Loved is probably not the right word.
Bookseller: No. Probably not.
Customer: Liked is probably better. Yes. Liked. I liked it a lot.***
Customer: Do you have a copy of Nineteen Eighty Six?
Bookseller: Nineteen Eighty Six?
Customer: Yeah, Orwell.
Bookseller: Oh – Nineteen Eighty Four.
Customer: No, I’m sure it’s Nineteen Eighty Six; I’ve always
remembered it because it’s the year I was born.
Bookseller: . . .
The customer is always right, right? I’ve had a number of these sorts of requests, too.
To complement these gems are the whimsical illustrations by the inimitable Greg of the Brothers McLeod. They reinforce the comedic tone of this collection; if not for them, you might indeed find yourself sighing at times, as Neil Gaiman said, and despairing for humanity.
Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops is a bookseller’s handbook of sorts, a reminder that he or she is not alone, an invitation to laugh when things seem bleak, a place to stuff notes on the strange things asked or told. But though it is likely to be most knowingly appreciated by former and current booksellers, best of all, this book is for those who, quite simply, like to laugh and marvel at or even be appalled by people’s eccentricities and idiosyncrasies, like the two Germans who walked into Jen’s store in London, picked up a copy of the book each and sat on the floor to read and laugh while chattering to each other about it in German, or the two French people who decided to re-enact one of the passages.
WTCSIB would also make a great gift for those who love bookshops, who, while browsing the shelves or waiting in line to make a purchase, have perhaps overheard the interesting exchanges between staff and customer. I have had other customers in line or browsing near the cash raise an eyebrow at me or whisper sympathetically whenever they hear someone being…weird (or rude). One can’t ever say a bookshop is boring!
***
I don’t usually host giveaways on this blog, but I’m making an exception for this one! WTCSIB isn’t out in North America until later this year, to be released by Overlook Press, but if you’d like to win a copy of Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops, simply let me know in the comments. I’ll collect the names and have someone at the bookshop where I work draw a winner on April 30th. The winner will receive a notification by email and the book will be shipped directly to them.
To read a brief but interesting interview with Jen Campbell, visit here tomorrow!
Recently, fellow book blogger Shannon of Giraffe Days wrote a post called “On Writing Reviews, Or Whatever You Want to Call Them.” Apparently, there’s been renewed debate in the blogosphere on the topic of “‘bad’ book blogger/reviewer and author behaviour, and whether book bloggers/online reviewers actually write ‘real’ reviews at all.” I’ve heard of this issue before, and I’ve seen a few stories online about author responses to negative thoughts on their books, but I had no idea this had all been sparked again.
First, please have a read of Shannon’s post to get up to speed. The following will make more sense then. (She helpfully includes links to other posts and describes what’s been happening.)
Now. I’ll start off with a little disclaimer here. I’m about to talk about the ideal review, and that is not to say I believe I’m the ideal reviewer. I’m hoping I don’t sound like a contemptible prig in this post. I’m not perfect, of course, and I often wonder if I’m a fraud or justified in tacking on “A Review” on my post titles. But I do try my damndest to reflect in my reviews my own values and opinions of what constitutes a good review. I hope I succeed at least a little.
What follows may sound somewhat harsh, and that’s because I’m frustrated. One reason is this: of course this issue of what constitutes a “real” review and reviewer (in which is couched potentially “bad behaviour”) will never be resolved as long as readers write crap and authors get pissed and everyone becomes entangled in definitions and defensiveness. But I do think it all bears addressing: there is clearly an issue of validation regarding book bloggers. And perhaps more importantly, something needs to be said because there is actually a valid reason for authors to become upset. That’s not to say how they respond shouldn’t also be mature, but we are bloggers, and that’s what we’ll stay concerned with.
Here’s what I’ve always believed: Whether or not we consciously do it, we teach others how to treat and perceive us. If our reviews and status as book bloggers are being invalidated and questioned, we may want to start looking for the reason on our own turf.
So what makes a good review? Well, even if authors are truly writing garbage, the fair (I dare say even proper) way to convey this is not to add to the trash but to say why it’s garbage. And fair means to both our readers and the author. This also means in as intelligent a way as we can muster — not, for example, using our ignorance, poor reading skills, and prejudices as the reasons we dislike a story, as shown by the feedback in this article (yes, it’s about a film rather than a book, but the two are related, since the film did follow the book’s descriptions).
Also, and this is important, ego has no place in a review. I’ve read snarky negative reviews by both bloggers and newspaper and magazine writers. What these pieces often convey to me is a profound love of one’s own voice and a superiority and smugness that smacks of arrogance and lacks respect and consideration. And these are professionals (which may actually be the problem in some cases). Recently, I read three reviews for a manuscript I was working on that was already published in the UK last year but which a Canadian publisher is putting out in May. The reviews, all online and for prominent newspapers, were pretty much copies of each other, but more than that, worse, they all contained the same disgustingly self-satisfied, condescending tone with which they criticized the author, barely covered the book, and betrayed, to me, a gross ineptitude in being able to see the literature for what it is and put it in its context. Instead, they couldn’t wait to sound so fucking clever. I discredited these pieces not because I disagreed with them, though I did for the most part, but because ultimately there was little value to them.
There is nothing wrong with negative reviews by dissatisfied readers, of course. I totally get it. I become pretty indignant myself if I feel an author’s wasting my time and money. But if a person wants to write a negative review, it had better be for the right reasons and actually give me something to go on, perhaps especially if I’m the author. Otherwise, it too is wasting my time. A good reviewer doesn’t say, as Shannon mentioned, “I hate this book, it sucked and isn’t worth your time,” or “this was boring and not really about anything,” and end there. That is indeed not a review, as Stiefvater suggested. Like a good positive review that tells us why a book is worth reading, a good negative review tells us why, in the right context (that is, recognizing a book’s purpose and evaluating it on those terms), a book fails to deliver. A good reviewer says everything with tact and respect, not in a tone that feels triumphant at the last word.
Of course, this applies to all reviewers, not just bloggers. Yes, it’s less likely you’ll encounter a deficient review in the NYT. But the assumption going around that book bloggers in particular, and in general, aren’t real reviewers is a bit of a problem. We need to understand that this debate is not, or should not, be geared toward what group of people is doing the reviewing — or not reviewing, as the case may be. The real issue at hand, as I’ve mentioned, is the calibre of output, whether by book bloggers or newspaper or magazine writers.
Real reviews are not only New York Times Book Review-type pieces. You don’t need me to tell you that. It is only one kind of review. There are many different kinds of readers, and not all of them appreciate or desire a review of the academic sort. That’s where the book blogger comes in. Our point is to not be writing stuff like that included in the NYT, but rather to be infusing our conscientious considerations of what we’ve read with a little emotional feedback as well. That’s what separates us. That can even be what makes us great. We’re not writing theses, or literary criticism à la Harold Bloom—and on purpose; what we’re doing while backing up what we think of the book is also relating our experience reading it. We get our readers to relate. We get them emotionally involved. This is what many book buyers, particularly blog readers, want. In short, bloggers add a more personal touch, which is just as much desired by an author as a fair analysis.
Frankly, if an author prefers to have his or her book treated only by the NYT type of reviewer, it’s their prerogative. Who knows: that might be saying something about their own view of their work. But to discredit book bloggers as not really reviewers is an unfair assessment based on unfortunate generalization. Where this perception may come from is important, and addressed above — that is, from our shoddy reviewing. If we bloggers want to be taken seriously, if we want our treatments of books to be called reviews, we need to up the quality of what we put out. That doesn’t mean mini essays. But it doesn’t mean ranting rundowns, either. It simply means, as I said, being thoughtful and fair. Think of it this way: if the author wasted your time and you’re ticked about it, why would you do the same to your readers?
A while ago, Toronto author David Penhale read my review of Half-Blood Blues and emailed me to say I was writing in the spirit of John Updike’s guidelines for reviews. I’d never seen these guidelines before, so I followed the link and read them. There are only six. They are simple and right on the money. All we need do—if we want to be taken seriously, if we want to be counted as valuable, if we want to say our posts and articles are reviews—is follow them.
