What's Bred In The Bone

What'sBred In The Bone by Robertson Davies, 436 pages

"In this extraordinary fictional biography, the highly gifted Davies makes use of guardian angels to tell his remarkable tale. Francis Cornish endures a secretive childhood in a remote town, fascinating encounters with its embalmer, and time in prewar Oxford where he studied art and philosophy. He eventually discovers his superior artistic talents and the problem of finding his own unique style. Author Davies has produced a gripping story of artistic triumph and heroic deceit, told with deep insight into the worlds of art and international espionage. This work is tailor-made for the eloquence of narrator Frederick Davidson."  I liked this story.  It's a little quirky and parts are difficult to read but I also found it hard to put down.  I'm not sure that I want to read more by this author but I'm not sorry that I read this.  I would give this to people who like historical settings and who enjoy a good character study, which this basically is.

The Robber Bride

The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood.  466 pages

Three women become unlikely friends after each of them encounters Zenia, a smart, beautiful, and manipulative woman.   Entering their lives when they were in college, in the 1960s, and then over the next thirty years, she damages each of them.   Then, out of the blue, they are notified that she is dead. Or is she?

This is another one of Atwood's books that I have read several times because I enjoy it so much.  I enjoy revisiting the story, and the character, and even though I know what's going to happen, I enjoy the book each time I read it.    In this book, we have three different women: Tony, a university professor who focuses on the history of war, Roz, a top-level executive, and Charis, a woman who seems a bit stuck in her flower-child past.   Because each of them has a different kind of encounter with Zenia, it makes Zenia seem like a different women.   Roz, Tony and Charis all come from different backgrounds, but it is Zenia who binds them together, bringing out their different strengths.

I had just re-read Cat's Eye, and then grabbed The Robber Bride, which made me notice something I hadn't picked up on before.  Because both books have the same setting, and are in the same time period, more or less, there were some similarities.  Some of the observations by the characters felt a bit interchangeable between the two books, for example.

Cat's Eye

Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood.  446 pages.

This story focuses on Elaine Risley, a painter who, at the beginning of the story, returns to Toronto for a retrospective show of her art.  This retrospective brings up issues from her past, most notably a relationship with several girls in her childhood.

This is one of my favorite books by Margaret Atwood, and one which I have read several times.   Like some of her other books, the story focuses on women and their relationships with other women.  The storyline here moves back and forth in time, so we have Elaine's current-day perspective on her life, but then she'll go back in time to take the reader through her childhood.

One of the things I have always especially liked in this book is that there is a mix of emotions in the story.  There is some wry humor, and some sadder parts, and it all feels very realistic.  I find that her characters resonate with me, and combined with the author's beautiful writing, it's easy to get caught up in the story.   I like how Elaine reflects on her childhood, but especially focuses on one girl, Cordelia.  In the beginning, their relationship is skewed in one direction, but later, when they encounter each other again, in high school, the relationship skews the other way.   The focusing, and then re-focusing on this relationship, is interesting.

Elaine says, in the third paragraph of this book, "But I began then to think of time as having a shape, something you could see, like a series of liquid transparencies, one laid on top of another.  You don't look back along time but down through it, like water.  Sometimes this comes to the surface, sometimes that, sometimes nothing.  Nothing goes away."   This story is very much like that, where things in Elaine's past come back up to the surface.  How she interprets those events and people comes through in her art.

Atwood's descriptions of Elaine's paintings are some of my favorite parts of this book.  By now, after having read this book many times, I can see some of them quite clearly in my head (even though these paintings do not actually exist at all in the real world).   For example, the painting "Our Lady of Perpetual Help," where Mary is seen trudging on a winter's night, with bags of groceries.  Or, Elaine's painting of two men (former lovers of hers) who are painting a seated woman; one man's canvas looks like an idealized woman, and the other man's canvas is filled with swirls of color . . . and the seated woman, draped, has a head that is a sphere of bluish glass.  

Atwood's observations of women relating to each other, especially at different times in their lives, makes this an interesting, introspective kind of story.   Personally, I like to re-read this book, then The Robber Bride, and then The Handmaid's Tale and enjoy all three together.

The Madman Of Piney Woods

The Madman Of Piney Woods by Christopher Paul Curtis, 363 pages

This book is from the perspective of two boys; Benji, an African Canadian boy from Buxton and Red, and Irish Canadian boy from Chatham.  At the beginning, the two boys don’t know each other at all and the stories are simply about their separate lives.  We get to learn a lot about them.  Benji has a younger sister and brother who are extremely gifted at woodworking and he wants to be a writer and a journalist.  Red’s mother died when he was young and his grandmother, who had a hard life growing up and actually abuses Red somewhat, lives with him and his father.  Both boys are aware of the legend of the Madman of Piney Woods, although Red has a different name for him, and both boys have a healthy fear of him.  However, both of their lives change when they actually meet the man and each other.  This is a very good reality story for kids who like historical fiction.

The Wild Ways

The Wild Ways by Tanya Huff
295 Pages

This is a continuation of the Gale family saga.  The Gales are a family of magical humans and their background is very closely related to the Green Man mythology of Great Britain.  With a new family circle established in Calgary, Charlie Gale, the family's wild power, must find out what is upsetting the selkies while coming to terms with her powers.

A reader needs to have read the first novel of the series to understand the background and power dynamics of the Gale family.  While the book is entertaining, it is not as strong as the first.