The Boy In The Moon by Ian Brown ✔✔✔✔✔

If I were to record everything I either learned or deeply appreciated from this book, I'd be here all day trying to put my thoughts in order. First, let me say that the writing is wonderful - clear and concise but at the same time deeply moving without ever getting sentimental. Ian Brown is a Globe and Mail writer, and I've heard him talking about books on CBC as well. I first read about this story in the Globe when Ian wrote a Focus article on his son Walker, the boy in the moon.

Walker was born with a rare genetic mutation called "cardiofaciocutaneous syndrome" - he is globally delayed, cannot speak, will always be in diapers, and is constantly hurting himself. His father describes him: "Walker, my teacher, my sweet, sweet, lost and broken boy".

In someone else's hands, this could turn into a litany of how challenging and yet how significant this child is, and how the lives of his family are in constant turmoil, But Brown goes way beyond that, and this is what makes the book so exciting. He sets out on a journey to find other CFC children and their families to discover similarities between them and Walker, he turns to science - genetics - to find the answer to why Walker is so profoundly disabled, he journeys to France to visit Jean Vanier's L'Arche to live with disabled people to discover how Walker might be able to live and prosper after his parents die.

The L'Arche community is very interesting because, unlike many many other agencies, the disabled people themselves make up the community and the dynamic - there is no integration such as in our own schools here - they define their own world, rather than constantly trying to adapt themselves to a world they don't understand. I found this enlightening, because who says our "normal" is something to be admired or longed for when your "normal" is something else entirely?

When I mentioned this book to the two other people I know who read it, one said "What a sad life", but I couldn't see it that way. Yes, it was sad, but it was also life-changing and strengthening and I come out of it thinking what wonderful creatures we all are, with our various flaws and deficiencies, and how we continually enrich one another's lives, often with even being aware of it.

The High Road by Terry Fallis ✔✔✔✔

Our Book Club has just finished discussing The Best Laid Plans, Fallis' first book, which I have talk about elsewhere on this blog - May, 2011. Everyone enjoyed it so much that I thought the sequel, The High Road, would be a good segue, and it certainly was.

Angus has brought down the government in BLP, and now there's a campaign for the upcoming election, a few momentous trips in Baddeck I, Angus' hovercraft, a romance between Daniel and Lindsay, a visit from the US President and First Lady to Angus' home, all kinds of hi-jinks, and just a rollicking good story, well-crafted and a hoot to read.

I'd like to mention also that I invited our MP, Charlie Angus, to our book club meeting way back in September. He never replied, and I was disappointed in that. I didn't put any pressure on him, but it would have been nice if he'd even acknowledged my invitation! Mind you, the NDP doesn't contribute much to this story - it's more a Liberal/Conservative kind of thing.

Saints and Villains by Denise Giardina✔✔✔✔✔

I ordered this book after reading about it in a list of favorite historical fiction novels created by a book club in the U.S. and it stayed on the shelf for probably five years before picking it up to read two weeks ago. It wasn't that I didn't want to read it , but how I choose a book already on my shelf varies considerably. Since I've been reading non-fiction almost exclusively, I felt that historical fiction wasn't too far off the track, and this just caught my eye one day - and I knew it would be the next one I read.

The name Dietrich Bonhoeffer first became known to me when I was organist at a German Lutheran Church in London, Ontario during my years in university. The Pastor, Godfrey Oelsner, mentioned him often in his sermons, so I knew that he was a German theologian who had been imprisoned by the Nazis during WW II, and finally executed. I can't remember whether I read any of his Letters and Papers From Prison, but I was aware that he was a man of great faith and compassion, and was considered a martyr by the Lutheran Church.

This was an incredible book to read, and for me it was the first book I have ever read detailing the rise of Hitler, the overthrow of the German government, the resistance movement led many Germans, and the unfolding of the war from a German vantage point. It also depicts the confusion within the Church - those who sympathized with Hitler, and those who knew the only way to defeat him from within was to kill him. Bonhoeffer had to leave Germany at least twice because he so inflamed the hierarchy in the Church.

The most illuminating part was Bonhoeffer's time in prison leading up to his execution - the terrible conditions under which he was held in the beginning, then a relaxing of rules as time goes on, and it is at this point that he becomes truly a pastor as he ministers to other prisoners and becomes a friend to one of his guards.


A quote from Bonhoeffer: " God makes a convenient scapegoat. Or people always think God is absent when things are going bad for them. Things go better and God is back. Well, I want to live in a world as if there were no God. That is the only way God can truly be with any of us."

Lives Like Loaded Guns - Emily Dickinson and her Family's Feuds by Lyndall Gordon ✔✔✔✔

The author of this remarkable biography was interviewed on CBC the day before the book was released, and I was so intrigued by the title, plus the story of these feuds, that I wasted no time in purchasing the book. I only started reading it this past summer, in between several others I was enjoying, and I finally came back to it this week to finish it.

I'm not even certain the book can be described as a biography - I guess it's a literary biography of the Dickinson family and the other families who were involved - and in many ways it seems to operate more as a literary thriller. The title of the book, taken from one of Emily's 1789 poems, more than aptly describes the families and their feuds, and I often felt I was reading a novel. These were flesh and blood creatures for sure, including Emily - the typical view of her as a recluse in a white dress, shy and retiring, is not accurate. The recluse part is, to be sure, but not the rest of it.

I've chosen one of Lyndall Gordon's paragraphs to sum up the book:

"Emily Dickinson is now recognised as one of the greatest poets who ever lived, yet her life remains a mystery. She continues to be encased in claims put out by opposed camps fighting for possession of her greatness. These camps originated in the clash between Austin Dickinson ( Emily's brother) and his wife, who had been the poet's intimate and her keenest reader. Out of this feud, a lasting feud developed, and it was the opponents in this feud, their allies and warring descendants, who devised the image of the poet as her fame grew and endured. What began as a split over adultery turned into a feud over who was to own the poet: in the first instance, who was to have the right to publish her works; in the second, whose legend would imprint itself on the public mind."

Gordon has written other bios: Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot and Charlotte Bronte.