The Tiger's Wife

I mentioned last week in my post about John Vaillant's The Tiger that every so often this (assumably) unintentional trends arise in literature, and that last year's was exotic animals, and especially tigers. Although I didn't read any of the tiger books when they were first out, I still managed to read two back to back almost a year later. You would think this would be tiger overload (I would have thought that if I'd planned things better), but instead it turned out that reading the detailed nonfiction account first meant I entered the The Tiger's Wife with a wealth of knowledge (both on a practical, biological level and on the folk tale, mythology level) that allowed me to sink in to Téa Obreht's novel with a kind of backstory already in place.

The Tiger's Wife is set in an unnamed Balkan country in the years after the war. People are still adjusting to the new countries and the new borders that accompany them. The novel is not really about that, though, so much as that is the condition of life for the characters. The novel opens with a memory: a little girl is taken by her grandfather to the zoo, where they sit and watch the tiger roam the moat (the zoo is in an old citadel). The little girl is Natalia, who in the present day of the novel is a young doctor driving to a much poorer, neighbouring country with her best friend (also a doctor) to administer vaccines to children in an orphanage run by a priest. She is driving to the orphanage when she finds out her grandfather (who was also a doctor) has died in some out of the way town, and that his belongings were not returned with his body. Her grandfather, Natalia is quite sure, was going to find the deathless man; her grandmother insists he was on his way to help her with the orphanage. 

The Tiger

Given how long the process of writing, editing, and publishing a book is, it always surprises me when anything approaching a trend crops up. Certainly, trends like The Year of the Short Story are a little manufactured (not that that makes them bad), but what I'm talking about are books that come out with similar themes or central figures. Last year, for example, it seemed tigers (and other jungle animals) were the big thing. Strangely, at the time I didn't read any of the tiger books that came out, but in the space of three weeks recently read both the big ones pretty much back-to-back. I didn't plan it that way, but as it turned out I think I read them in the right order (if such a thing exists), and will therefore write about them in the same way. Up first, John Vaillant's non-fiction award-winner The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival.

I loved Vaillant's previous non-fiction book The Golden Spruce, so when The Tiger came out I was really excited to read it. The hardcover edition was, while beautiful, also enormous, so I ended up waiting for the softcover version, which offered the dual benefit of being much easier to carry around and also post-hype. The Tiger is set up as the story of a man-eating Siberian tiger and the men tasked with hunting and killing it. But, much like in The Golden Spruce, Vaillant uses that narrative arc to weave in a million smaller, farther-reaching details about Siberia, Russia, tigers, hunting and a number of things you didn't even realize you were interested in. 

A History of the World in 10½ Chapters

Maybe it's because I didn't grow up going to church, but religion in books fascinates me. I especially like the retelling of Bible stories, but again, I'm not sure why. It may be that I enjoy the subversiveness of taking something that is so well known, and hold so much meaning for so many people, and changing the context. Messing with those stories that are a not insubstantial part of our society's foundation seems almost dangerous in a strange way. Dangerous and brave – and important. In A History of the World in 10½ Chapters Julian Barnes starts with Noah's Arc and then tries to move forward, but is almost inevitably sucked back into that defining motif of danger, death, and large passenger ships.

It's hard to know quite how to classify A History of the World in 10½ Chapters. On the one hand, it works quite well as a short story cycle, with stories that work independently of one another, but when read together have an added oomph. It's also sort of like a book of essays, filled with philosophy, literary criticism and discussions of art. I'm not sure it's even uniformly fictional. There are, however, 10 and a half chapters – the "half chapter" is inserted between Chapters 8 and 9 – as the title suggests, so if you read chapter by chapter, maybe it doesn't really matter how you define it.

The book opens up with "The Stowaway" a story about an impostor to Noah's Ark. The cheeky little narrator is quite critical of the choices Noah makes with regards to which animals will be saved. Rather like a primitive form a eugenics, Noah simply decides not to allow any undesirable or pesky creature aboard. And he's rather a brute about it. But he doesn't check quite carefully enough, and a family of woodworms – of which the narrator is proudly a part – manage to sneak on board to ride out the deluge in relative peace. The woodworm actually manages to make its way into most of the chapters, bringing with it a suggestion of hidden decay.

Barnes then moves on to a chapter about terrorists who take over a cruise ship. He is an author unafraid to shock his audience, and the tension he builds in this chapter is unreal. The stakes become so high, so quickly, that you don't even notice you've been placed on a modern-day ark. Here, though, everything is inverted. The stowaway is not a quiet, unassuming insect, but an imminently threatening and truly undesirably presence. Similarly, the person in charge is not the tyrannical Noah of the previous story, but a cruise director who is just as unsure as the passengers. History is doomed to repeat itself, Barnes seems to be saying, but see how it changes things up just slightly?

This sort of wink to the absurdity of things gives the book a kind of strange humour, or at least throws you off kilter just enough to appreciate that Barnes is arming you with perspectives that will help you later, when you reach New Heaven, or wherever else. But absurdity and irony, as fun as they are, are useless tools unless you can escape them. Enter the half chapter. Just when Barnes has you so completely confused as to his purpose, he interrupts his own history to tell you about love, about his sleeping wife. And it doesn't even matter, really, whether it's the real Julian Barnes or the fictional one talking, because what he is saying is that there's a reason all the rest of it matters. There's a reason we should examine past events and find the woodworms before their damage is irreparable, and that reason is love. Oh, it sounds ridiculous and cliché here, but that half chapter is perfectly timed for maximum effect, and it is stunning.

A History of the World in 10½ Chapters is strange and unexpected and the chronology of events it presents – it is "a history," after all – is very unlikely, but it is also a book that asks you to think about things. It doesn't force you to, though; if you want to simply read each chapter and not delve more deeply into what is going on, you can do that. But, if you want to think about it, Barnes has offered up a book that will reward you for it. Because as weird and, sometimes, disorienting as this book is, it has something really interesting to say. And, best of all, it has an interesting way to say it.

A History of the World in 10½ Chapters
by Julian Barnes
First published in 1989 (cover image shown from Vintage International edition)

Come, Thou Tortoise

When I was a kid, I grew up with cats. We always had a cat (usually two) in the house, and we could never get any other animals (fish, birds, etc.) because it just wouldn't be fair to the cats. We lived too close to the road for a dog. There's something about having an animal in the house – one you look after and whose life you're invested in – that informs the way you grow up. In Jessica Grant's novel Come, Thou Tortoise, Audrey Flowers doesn't have conventional pets. Rather, she has a hand-me-down tortoise named Winnifred and a rescued white lab mouse named Wedge.

Audrey, Oddly, Flowers is living in Portland, Oregon, at the beginning of the novel. She cuts grass and does other general maintenance work, and lives with her tortoise Winnifred, who lives in a purple papier mâché castle that Audrey built after Cliff left. Cliff was the apartment's previous tenant. Cliff brought Audrey to Portland after they met in the Yelps – Alps (wordplay, both in meaning and sound, is a big part of Audrey's world) – and fell in love. Then Cliff left, and gave the tortoise to Audrey. Cliff received the tortoise in the same manner. Winnifred, as it turns out, has been passed down from tenant to tenant for years, undergoing name and status changes each time. Audrey and Winnifred are living relatively contentedly in Portland at the beginning of the novel, but then Audrey gets a phone call.

Her father is in a coma. He was hit by a Christmas tree that was hanging out the side of a pickup, and Audrey must steel herself to get on a plane and fly home to Newfoundland, leaving Winnifred with friends. Before Audrey disembarks in St. John's it's clear she is an unusual woman. Besides the language play, she manages to cause all kinds of trouble both on the plane and in the subsequent airport. Audrey is not a good flyer. It gets worse when she lands, sees her Uncle Thoby, and realizes that she is too late. It's Christmas and there's a provincial election in the works – her dad's two most favourite things – and he won't be around for either.

Audrey is a mess and Uncle Thoby is worse because in Audrey's refusal to deal with it, he has to handle everything. What follows is the most hilarious grief-stricken story I have ever read. Audrey's refusal to face reality is as devastating as the strange things she does to avoid it. Really, the more you get to know her, the more magnetic she becomes, which is certainly because of the care Grant put into her prose – not just the language she uses, but also the way she has structured her novel, from sections to the lack of quotation marks delineating her lively dialogue.

Sometimes odd characters come across as self-consciously different; as if the writer has picked each name and character detail specifically to craft quirky characters who do strange things. Come, Thou Tortoiseis filled with unusual people, but rather than having them seem disingenuous for it, the characters Grant has written are strange because their honesty allows you to see them for who they really are, and deep down, all people are pretty strange, they just know how to hide it.

It says a lot about the atmosphere of Audrey's childhood that she was never taught to put away her strange inner life when other people were around. It's this lack of self-consciousness that allows her to not only believe Wedge, her mouse, was stolen from her father's wake, but to actually go around looking for him and accusing possible suspects – as though life can be solved as easily as Clue, her favourite game. And then her Uncle Thoby goes missing. Well, he leaves without saying goodbye, and suddenly Audrey is alone in St. John's, in her father's old house, with no Wedge and no Winnifred.

But Grant doesn't let her characters, or her readers, give up in despair. Audrey is plucky, and when there's a mystery to work out, she is on the case. And that's one of the best things about Come, Thou Tortoise: it refuses to let you be sad for more than a moment, and instead offers up wonderful moments of insight and observation, coupled with a whimsical, word-play-filled, sense of humour. Add that to a movement between Audrey's present, Audrey's past, and scenes from Winnifred's perspective, and you have a novel that climbs into your head and won't let you think about anything else.Come, Thou Tortoiseis a novel about a lot of things – grief, family, secrets, love – but mostly it is about learning to accept change, and the wonder that is returning home.

Come, Thou Tortoise
by Jessica Grant
First published in 2009 (cover image shown from Vintage Canada edition)

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Every once in a while, I find an author who gets me excited about reading. That isn't to say I'm not excited about reading in a general way, all the time; rather, I mean that certain authors draw me into their work in such a way that makes me both want it to last for a long time and speed up so I can read something else they've written. It's very conflicting, but some authors get inside my head and make me want to read a whole lot of their stuff before moving on. Haruki Murakami was one of those authors for me (as well as for many others, I suspect) and his novel The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, although not the first of his I read, has maintained the biggest hold on me.

Murakami is a weird writer, let's get that out of the way. His writing combines elements of stark realism with really shadowy spiritual and psychological elements, as well as a clear interest in Japanese history, especially as it pertains to Manchuria. He also tends to have lots of characters. All of these elements combine in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle to create a strange, twisting, layered narrative that starts out with a lost cat.

Toru Okada and his wife Kumiko live in Tokyo. Toru is not working, because he has decided he'd rather not and they can afford it right now, so when their cat goes missing, it is his responsibility to look for it. The cat is named Noboru Wataya, after Kumiko's brother, whom neither of them like. Then, with very little explanation, Kumiko also goes missing. Or, rather, she leaves, because she says has been having an affair. With very little notice, Toru is without both his cat and his wife. Since he doesn't really have a place to start looking for his wife, Toru continues to search for the cat. Searching down the back alley, Toru meets May Kasahara, a teenage girl and pro-liar who isn't in school because she has chosen not to be. In a lesser writer's hands, the friendship between May and Toru would be fraught with inappropriate sexual tension, but as it is, Toru is too passive for that and May is too cynical. Mostly, they talk about death, and the missing cat, and Toru's missing wife.

Toru's passivity is a lynchpin in the novel, because none of the people he meets are people he has to seek out; everyone comes to him and then he follows their instructions, practically without question. He is kind of infuriating, really. Toru receives a lot of mail, often letter that continue stories he was partially told in person. One of these stories comes from Lieutenant Mamiya, about what happened to him when he was a soldier occupying Manchuria. It is a gruesome tale and results in him being tossed into a dry well in the middle of the dessert. After three days, he manages to get out, ends up in a Siberian labour camp and, eventually, makes his way back to Japan. It's a harrowing story and provokes a strange link between Toru's life and the history of Japan's occupation of China, which returns later when another character enters Toru's life.

There are really too many pieces of the novel to attempt a detailed explanation. Murakami writes rather like a someone knitting a sweater: all the pieces are so tightly pulled together, that each element ties into another, making it impossible to remove one thread on its own. In that way, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is like a well-crafted mystery novel – with strange characters and false endings – wherein knowing what happens at the end is meaningless until you understand everything that led up to that point.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is, in a lot of ways, a novel about loneliness and isolation. But it is also about finding a way out of that isolation into relationships and the wider world. Toru Okada, for all his annoying traits, is the perfect character to build this sort of novel around because he forces the reader to slow down and take in all the weird sights. In this novel, Murakami constructs a life so rich in its strange and mundane details that you can't help but sink into it, making it a great read for this time of year – one the one hand isolating you in your chair, on the other giving a novel you will want everyone to read, if only so you have people to talk about it with.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
by Haruki Murakami
First published in English in 1997 (cover image shown from Vintage edition)

Oryx and Crake

Raccoons make me nervous. Sure, they're cute from a distance, with their little black masks and that weird rattly sound they make when they shake their heads, but they also have fingers and I a kind of predatory fearlessness. I'm not saying my nervousness about raccoons affects my day-to-day life or anything, but it's there. There are all kinds of other animals that people have problems with, so many that you wouldn't think it was necessary to create new ones to make people uneasy. Margaret Atwood thought differently. In her novel Oryx and Crake Atwood presents a vision of the future in which technology isn't used to build fancy flying cars and hovering buildings, but strange hybrid animals and an entirely new race of "people." 

Often, with futuristic or science fiction novels, when the story begins the author orients the reader in the new world. Strange things are explained (at least somewhat) in concise, one- or two-sentence blips and by the end of the first chapter, you know most of the rules of this new place and time and can settle in and enjoy the story. Atwood does not do this. 

Oryx and Crake opens after some kind of natural disaster has ravaged the world. The only human left alive (that we, or he, know of) is Snowman, and he is not exactly the adventure hero type. He lives in a tree on a beach, teaches things to a group of "people" he calls the Crakers (human-like, but not human) and spends a lot of his time trying to keep his skin protected from the sun and drinking. We don't know what happened, it's not clear that he knows what happened, the world is a mess but still surprisingly recognizable.

Rather than offering up all the explanations at once, Atwood builds the story by alternating between Snowman's present and his memories of the past – when he was still called Jimmy. The picture is not a pretty one. Advances in science have spurred a kind of heyday for genetic engineers, but instead of splicing together different kinds of apple trees (like they do today) the geneticists of the future splice together animals. Hence rakunks (raccoon-skunks suitable as pets) and wolvogs (animals that look like friendly dogs, but are bred to be vicious and feral as wolves). But the genetic fun doesn't end there, Atwood also dreamed up ChickieNobs (chickens engineered to only grow one body part, such as a chicken growing twelve drumsticks, for the food industry) and Pigoons (pigs shaped like balloons that grow specific organs for hum transplant). 

In the safe world of Snowman's memories, all the bioengineered animals are confined to the various pharmaceutical or bioengineering compounds (highly prestigious gated communities with a specific corporate interest) but in his precarious present they are running wild. 

Snowman is a bit of a pathetic character, but he is generally good natured and as he takes you through his childhood memories, his friendship with Glen (who eventually becomes Crake) and what happens to them, the world unfolds. Not that it's a particularly nice world, with its bioengineering and incredibly vulgar and violent commodification of sex and poverty, but Snowman is so genuine that you can't help but understand his longing for it.

Atwood's story, though, is more than a simple apocalyptic cautionary tale. It is also a love story in a strange way, with Oryx at the centre of both Jimmy and Crake's lives. Oryx, the former child sex slave who Jimmy and Crake discover in an Internet video and become obsessed with – Jimmy openly and Crake secretly. For the "people" living near Snowman on the beach (who, of course, have been bioengineered), Oryx and Crake are like their gods – Crake because he created them and Oryx because she taught them. In this strange reality, Snowman is suddenly a prophet because he was a friend to these gods.

As novels go, Oryx and Crake is incredibly dense, in that it's packed with various storylines, events, political and biological suggestions and characters. I'm not sure that it's a novel you enjoy, exactly (because there are some quite disturbing scenes and suggestions), but it's an incredible piece of fiction and I can certainly say that I liked it very much. Perhaps what I liked most about Oryx and Crake is that it doesn't have that blinding sense of inevitability to it that so many science fiction stories do. Rather, Atwood offers her characters many chance to turn back, and even though they don't, we still can.

Oryx and Crake
by Margaret Atwood
First published in 2003 (cover image shown from Seal Books edition)

The Magician's Nephew

There's something about early August that makes me very nostalgic for my childhood pre-working summers, when this would have been just the mid-way point and not on the tail end. This is the time of year, more than any other (even Christmas), that makes me want to revisit kids' and YA novels. Last summer it was rereading the last two Harry Potter books over a three-day stretch; this year, I hunkered down and reread C.S. Lewis' The Magician's Nephew in an afternoon (I could have sworn it was a longer read).

Despite what the movies would have you think, The Magician's Nephew (not The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe) is the first book in Lewis' famous series. And it wasn't until rereading it that I finally saw how religious his books are. Certainly, I had heard about the religious aspects, but they didn't strike me as particularly extreme in the other stories. Generally speaking, religion was a much bigger deal during the time period the stories are set in (prior to WWI) so it always made sense to me that religious details would be incorporated.

Well, rereading The Magician's Nephew really casts a different light on the rest of the series. It isn't obviously more religious, I guess. The characters don't quote passages from the Bible or anything, and in some ways all the magic that Lewis conjures up is rather anti-Christian doctrine. But the last half of books makes it clear that The Magician's Nephew is decidedly Biblical, and is quite literally the Book of Genesis for the series. But I'll get to that in a minute.

The story is fairly simple. Digory and Polly are neighbours living in London. Digory has only recently arrived, though, and is staying with his aunt and uncle (brother and sister, not married couple) because his mother (their sister) is gravely ill and his father has gone to India to work. So, Digory is not at all happy with his situation, but he and Polly become friends and start exploring the attics of their rowhouses. Digory's Uncle Andrew fancies himself a magician, and at the first opportunity he gets, he tests out his magic on the two children. Uncle Andrew has created rings (yellow ones and green ones) that will take you to another world. He, of course, is too afraid to try them and instead tricks Polly into putting on a yellow one. She vanishes immediately, much to Uncle Andrew's delight and Digory's dismay, and Uncle Andrew persuades Digory to go after her because she doesn't have the green ring, which will supposedly bring her back. Digory heads off into the unknown and discovers the Wood Between Worlds. 

I love the structure Lewis constructed for his magical travel. The Wood Between Worlds is a beautiful forest, filled with little pools. Each pool is the entrance to another world, which is how the children discover that their green rings will take them to any world they desire (put them on, choose a pool and jump in) and the yellow rings will always return them to the Wood. Genius. Looking to have some fun before heading back to Uncle Andrew, they children go and explore a world that is dying. In it, they discover Charn, an ancient city filled with no one; that is, until Digory rings a bell and awakens the Emperess Jadis, who is also a witch and quite evil. By unhappy chance, the children accidentally bring Jadis back to London with them, where she wreaks havoc.

They decide they need to lose her somewhere, so they use their rings and take her back to the Wood and into a new pool. But this world is dark, and the children worry they've somehow stumbled upon a place that doesn't exist. Then they hear a song, low and lovely, and slowly light comes into the world, and then water and mountains and plants and trees and animals and all the other things that make up a world (sound familiar?). Of course, the singer is Aslan, the great lion, and he is creating Narnia. The story really becomes very Biblical at this point, and Digory even has to go pick an apple from a far-off and walled garden in a task that tests his faith and belief in Aslan. It's interesting to read, actually, because although it seems heavy-handed now, I'm sure I didn't notice any of the allusions as a child (of course, I was not a religious a child, but still).

The ending, which manages to explain The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, before that book has even come out, is perhaps the best example of foreshadowing I have ever read. Really, anyone looking to write a series should study Lewis' technique of subtly couching future details into otherwise relevant descriptions and explanations. In many ways, The Magician's Nephew is just an extended prologue to the rest of the stories; it works best when you know what's coming, which rewards rereaders who come back to books many years after first enjoying them. It's really a perfect little reread: it's quick, it's interesting, and it reminds you of just how wonderous and new stories felt when you were a kid – before images and ideas seemed familiar – and you could just get lost in the world of the story.

The Magician's Nephew
By C.S. Lewis
First published in 1955 (cover image shown from HarperTrophy edition)

The Sword in the Stone

Sometimes it just works out that you discover a great book because of a movie, and not the other way around. That is the case with T.H. White's The Sword in the Stone, which first made itself known to me (and, I'm sure many other people) through the Disney movie of the same name. But as good as that movie is (I love it as a kid), the book far surpasses it.

Generally, the story goes like this. Wart lives in Sir Ector's castle in the very ancient times of England when there were still valiant knights and dragons to fight and wizards and witches and Robin Hood (excuse me, Robin Wood – White clears history's name fumble quite nicely). Wart is not Sir Ector's son, though, that honour falls to Kay who is a couple of years older and despite all of his advantages, at least eight times more insecure. Anyway, Wart goes into the Forest Sauvage (old England has some suspiciously French names in White, which I suspect is a nod to the original Morte d'Arthur) and, after spending a rather harrowing night in the wild trying to retrieve a lost hawk, he stumbles upon Merlyn.

Of course, Merlyn knew he was coming because he ages backwards and because he's a magician. Wart and Merlyn head back to the castle and Merlyn becomes the boys' tutor. And, sure, he teaches them both all sorts of important things, but really he saves the best – and most cryptic – lessons for Wart. Merlyn, of course, knows that Wart is going to become King Arthur (his real name being Arthur) and he goes about preparing him for the job by turning him into various animals and letting him learn indirect lessons about valour and bravery and history.

The lessons are one of my favourite parts of the book. I like the way White has imagined the the different social codes and ingrained memories of the various animals. I also like that Wart isn't a natural as any of them. He has to learn to swim like a fish; he has to be taught how to fly; he is conscious of the way the shape of his body changes and White describes it all in a way that makes you think of how weird it would be to suddenly become a snake (or whatever). 

My other favourite part are the anachronisms. The story is full of them – because Merlyn a) ages backwards, and b) is not always very good at his spells, which means sometimes bowler hats end up in the 12th century – and the characters' reactions are perfect. Usually, they don't even notice because whatever is being mentioned or conjured is so foreign that they can't even begin to understand it. Merlyn, though, goes into fits over it, which is hilarious. Additionally, because the book was written in the '30s (prior to the outbreak of WWII), a lot of the anachronisms now seem really old fashioned, which adds another level of humour to the references.

Of all this, though, I'm not sure how much younger readers pick up. There are certainly points that are obviously funny and meant to make kids laugh, but there's a lot going on that would be so far over their heads that it can only have been written for their parents. It's a pretty quick read – certainly as face-paced as any thriller – and it's the sort of perfectly engaging book to bring on a picnic or something, during which you'll chuckle about something and the person you're with will want to know what's going on, so you'll have to explain to them something about a giant, at which point you'll realize that White has cleverly inserted a Hitler-Mussolini figure into the story who gets defeated before he does any real damage, and you'll wish that were really the case. And that's when it will strike you that, for all the lightness and the adventure, White's retelling of King Arthur's coming-of-age is also about England itself.

It's quite ingenious, really, how he buries that metaphor. And it works perfectly, elevating a children's story into something much greater and, in some ways, much sadder – but always gripping and almost always hilarious.

The Sword in the Stone
by T.H. White
First published in 1938 (cover image shown from Laurel Leaf edition)

The Dog Who Wouldn't Be

It's Canada Day, so I would be remiss if I didn't take the opportunity to recommend some Can Lit. There are lots of great options, but few contemporary (or, relatively contemporary) Canadian authors have captured Canada's many personalities, landscapes and humour like Farley Mowat. In The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be, Mowat chronicles his childhood – spread through Saskatoon, Toronto and small-town Ontario, with travels to the Pacific coast – and the many adventures he had with his dog Mutt.

Mowat, known best for his writings about the natural world, is hilarious when he writes about himself. I remember reading The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be as a kid and just laughing away; when I reread it this week the same thing happened. I couldn’t help myself. Mowat is so good at the set-up that you chuckle in anticipation of the jokes, catching the wry introspective side of them that children miss.

The memoir begins with the Mowat family’s move to Saskatoon in the middle of the Depression dustbowl. Mowat’s father Angus is a librarian and, upon arriving in the prairie city, is determined to be a bird hunter. Naturally, this means they need a bird dog to take hunting. After Angus enthusiastically pursues some very expensive dogs, Mowat’s mother takes matters into her own hands and buys a puppy for four cents from a boy trying to sell baby geese for ten cents apiece. Now that the family has a dog – much to little Farley’s delight – there’s no need for an expensive fancy one.

Mutt doesn’t take to hunting right away, but when he figures out his role he goes at it with gusto, to the point that he becomes famous for his retrieving. In fact, Mutt is singularly gifted at picking up new skills. Not only does he become an excellent hunting dog, but he trains himself to walk along the tops of the neighbourhood fences; learns how to climb up and down ladders; and manages to become an accomplished tree-climber (although tree-descending proves a skill he can’t quite master).

Although most of the anecdotal chapters revolve around Mutt, the details Mowat weaves into the story about the time period and the various places he lives introduces a narrative thread into what might otherwise be a collection of bedtime stories. Mowat is growing up with Mutt and his changing interests – almost always involving animals and natural history in some way – suggest the passage of time without being obvious about it.

Probably my favourite part of The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be, though, is Mowat’s portraits of his parents. They come across as being both very much of the time period and also unwittingly eccentric. It’s certainly not every family that adopts two great horned owls and then allows them to have the run of the house; nor who would let their young son be in possession of formaldehyde (for dissections, of course).

Mowat must have had an interesting time looking back at his parents and analyzing them from a character perspective when he wrote his memoir. There aren’t a lot of personal details, but it does seem clear that the three of them got along very well, and were all fiercely loyal to Mutt.

The Dog Who Wouldn't Be is a quick read, and the chapters are self-contained enough to be read one at a time, whenever you have a spare half hour or so. This makes it a great summer read (because even in the summer it can be hard to find hours of successive reading time), but also a book that can carry you through a year, or a road trip. Much like the many Canadian cliches, Mowat's memoir doesn't demand anything of you, but will have you laughing at his improbably memories if you give it a chance.

The Dog Who Wouldn't Be
by Farley Mowat
First published in 1957 (cover image shown from Bantam Books edition)

The Golden Compass

Novels with child protagonists that aren't specifically written for young children present a unique challenge. The child needs to be grown-up enough to capture the attention and interest of an older reader while simultaneously staying young enough to be believable. Lyra, in The Golden Compass certainly fits those parameters. To be honest, I'm not entirely sure what age group The Golden Compass is aimed at, but I'd guess Philip Pullman was going for a YA book that adults would equally enjoy.

Perhaps the most important, found details of the novel are these: it is set in a world that resembles ours, but is not ours (it opens in Oxford, England, but in a strange hybrid of "the olden days" and the future); all the people in this world have a personal daemon, in the shape of an animal, that is both connected to them and separate - essentially, the daemon reflects a person's true nature, and often the person and daemon consider themselves a "we" or an "us," rather than an "I."

So, Lyra is brought up at Oxford by the Scholars. She's about 11 when the story begins and spends most of her time playing with the children of the servants of Jordan College. Although she's never shown much interest in school, when she overhears her uncle, Lord Asriel, telling the explorers about his travels to the far North, and the Dust he observes there, and the city that's visible in the sky through the Northern Lights, her curiosity is piqued. Of course, no one will answer her questions, but when children start disappearing in her city (taken by "the Gobblers" of unknown origin) and her best friend goes missing, she gets distracted. Especially when the beautiful and enchanting Mrs. Coulter (whose daemon is a golden monkey) comes to the college and offers to take Lyra to London.

Before she leaves the college, though, the Master takes Lyra aside and gives her an alethiometer (a truth teller, shaped a bit like a compass) and tells her to keep it safely hidden from Mrs. Coulter. And then off she goes, into the glitzy world of London. Soon, though, the shine wears off and Lyra discovers that Mrs. Coulter is actually in charge of the Gobblers and therefore the disappearance of all the children. Lyra, being rather headstrong and also afraid, runs away.

There is too much in this story to summarize with any kind of brevity, but Lyra ends up heading North with a boatload of gyptians (who live on river boats in England) to find the missing children and (from Lyra's side) rescure Lord Asriel, who is imprisoned in the land of the armoured bears. She has figured out how to read the alethiometer, which means she can ask it questions and get honest answers, which proves invaluable on the voyage. After several twists and turns - which involves saving an armoured bear from captivity - Lyra gets to the Gobblers' station and discovers what they're doing. At the order of the Magesterium (the church), children are having their daemons cut from them. Most children die from this procedure.

In the world of the novel, it's a completely barbaric procedure. In theory, it's done to protect the children from Dust, which attaches itself to adults but not pre-pubescent children. The church sees Dust as original sin, and if children can be protected from it, they need never grow up. Cutting the daemons from these children is kind of like castration, only worse.

There is a great side-narrative in Svalbard, wherein Lyra returns Iorek Byrnison (the armoured bear) to his rightful place as king of the bears. But it's so intricately written that it would take me ages to pull it apart. However, once in Svalbard, Lyra hurries to find Lord Asriel - who she has learned is actually her father, with the evil Mrs. Coulter being her mother - and then discovers that the man she idolized may not be as good as she thought. He's as concerned about Dust as Mrs. Coulter, but instead of simply "protecting" children from it, he wants to destroy it at its source, to the complete dismay of Lyra.

This is the first novel in the His Dark Materials trilogy, so it ends with a suitable cliffhanger to encourage readers to pick up the next book in the series.

When it was originally published, and then again when it was made into a truly awful movie, The Golden Compass created a huge amount of controversy. It is pretty anti-organized religion, and especially the church's way of making unilateral decisions. But in that way, the novel seems to be more against the kind of power we allow our authorities to wield, because in the story, the church is both religion and, essentially, the ruling power.

It isn't a preachy book, though. Rather, it's an adventure story in the tradition of great adventure. Sure there's a moralistic tint (although, not in the usual way, since this is against the usual bearers of morals) and a large, complex enemy, but there's also fantastic characters and well-developed sub-plots. It isn't a difficult read, but it's enjoyable and rewarding nonetheless.

The Golden Compass may be set, for the most part, in the Arctic, but it has all the best ingredients of a summer read. It's fast-paced, absorbing and intelligent. And when you're finished it, Pullman has already provided you with two more books to follow up with.

The Golden Compass

by Philip Pullman

First published in 1995 (cover image shown from Yearling edition)

The Secret Garden

It's Earth Day, and of all the nature-y books out there (some of which I've written about), The Secret Garden is one that never fails to inspire. I don't know how she did it, but even as Frances Hodgson Burnett takes you into Mary's psychological world - and all the emotional intangibles that entails - she takes you outside so you can feel the dirt on your hands and under your nails, and the damp breeze on your cheeks.

Mary Lennox is a pretty well known literary heroine, I think. But then, her story fascinated me when I was younger (well, it still kind of does), so maybe I take it for granted that everyone knows all about her. Just in case, though. Mary was raised in India, where she was incredibly spoiled by the attention of her parents' servants. In all of children's literature, I think Mary is the only thin, blonde child who is described as ugly (as much in attitude as in appearance). Anyway, at the beginning of the story, everyone in Mary's life dies from cholera, virtually overnight. And that is how Mary comes to find herself at Misselthwaite Manor, staying with her uncle on the edge of the English moorland.

As I've already said, Mary was not a pretty child, and she had a terrible temper. After being waited on in India, she had a very hard time adjusting to life in a house where none of the servants were paid to dote on her. She barely saw her uncle (whose wife had died tragically come years before), so she was very much alone. After puttering around and throwing several tantrums, Mary gets bored with her old ways and sets out to something. The Manor has large gardens and Mary starts digging around. One day, a robin shows her a door in a wall, but the door is locked and after trying to get in for a few minutes, Mary gives up.

The outdoor activity is good for Mary and she starts to perk up. Martha, one of the younger servants, introduces Mary to her brother Dickon (who has a way with animals) and they become tentative friends. Mary shows Dickon the door in the wall and they decide to try and find a way in. Mary does some poking around in the house and finds a key, which proves to fit the lock. Mary and Dickon open the door to the secret garden (which is encased by high brick walls) and go in. After playing in there for a while they decide to look after it and start trying to restore garden to its obvious former splendour.

Meanwhile, in the house, Mary has been hearing strange wailing noises at night. After being woken up several nights in a row, she decides to follow the sounds and discovers that she has a cousin named Colin. Her Uncle, Mr. Craven, is a hunchback and his son is similarly disfigured. So Colin is kept confined, away from everyone, so no one can see his condition. Because he's lonely, Colin is prone to tantrums (much like Mary was upon arrival at Misselthwaite). But as Mary slowly befriends her cousin, drawing him out of his shell and eventually out into the garden, his health also improves.

Clearly, this story has a happy ending. Colin's health improves so much that he is actually able to walk up to his father, and Mary is pretty and has friends for first time. It's fairly predictable, but as far as classic children's stories go, the moral is much more interesting.

Burnett places a huge importance on the children's life outdoors. Neither Mary nor Colin really begin to improve until they start spending time outdoors, in the company of other children. And it isn't just their health that improves from the exercise and fresh air, but also their temperament and emotional well-being. Essentially, Burnett is extolling the benefits of spending time with the natural world and illustrating how important it is for people to stay in contact with the Earth.

It may be a book written for children, but The Secret Garden is almost more important for adults. Kids are always reminded to play outside (whether in the park or their backyard) but it seems the older we get the more time we stay indoors, which often as a negative affect on both our moods and our health. Reading The Secret Garden when I was a kid made me wish I could find a place like that to look after and revel in; now, it makes me want to build something like that - I would even settle for a window-box garden, at this point. Or, I guess, sitting outside and reading.

The Secret Garden

by Frances Hodgson Burnett

First published in 1911 (cover image shown from that edition)

Bluebeard, Revisited

When I was a kid (and I guess now too), my parents were big supporters of books. Pretty much any kind of book I wanted to read or be read, they were happy with, although I'm sure they steered my taste a little. At some point, though (I might have been 5), I got a box-set of Brothers Grimm fairy tales - there were four soft-cover illustrated books, I think, each with four stories in them. And like any kid who grew up with books instead of TV, I loved them. And so did my parents. Well, except the story of Bluebeard, the misogynist who murdered his wives and then kept their bodies stacked in a secret room. In the only act of censorship I have ever encountered on the part of my parents, my dad was so horrified by the story of Bluebeard that he threw that book into the recycle box and refused to even mention what the story was about for years.

So, although I had never actually read the story of Bluebeard, it took on this weird, mythic quality and I became very curious about it. Four years ago, I discovered (through a class) Angela Carter's book The Bloody Chamber. It's a book of short stories that reworks classic fairy tales (such as Little Read Riding Hood, Puss-in-Boots, Beauty and the Beast, etc.) so that the female lead is the one with the agency. Carter takes her heroines and, rather than making them a vessel through which the story and moral develop, makes them proper characters who think, feel, live, etc. The first story in this book, which is by far the longest, is called "The Bloody Chamber" and it's about Bluebeard.

Upon reading the story, I realized a couple of things. First, that the original Bluebeard fairy tale was incredibly violent; and second, that Bluebeard was essentially a psychopathic serial killer who tricked his wives into "allowing" themselves to be murdered. If you aren't familiar with the whole story (as I was not) it plays out like this:

Bluebeard marries some pretty young thing and takes her home to his castle. Things are good for a while and then Bluebeard has to go away (on business? it's never really explained) so he gives her his giant ring of keys and says that she can go into any room in the castle she wants, except the one this specific little key opens. Naturally, her curiosity is piqued and after a couple of days she decides to see what's in that room (he'll never know, right?). Well, in that room are all his previous wives, dead and hanging up. She's disgusted and terrified (naturally), and just as she tries to leave, he returns and kills her. That's the story, in a nutshell, although there are variations on how he discovers she's found his secret wife-stash. I guess the moral is obey your husband or something.

Anyway, Carter was clearly as fascinated by this rather disgusting story as I was. In her version, though, she gives some backstory to the young wife, as well as incredible description and detail about her short life in the castle. Carter's Bluebeard also defies the original story. He does not appear to be a viscous, hate-filled monster, despite the many violent and tortuous murders he has committed. When he discovers his wife has entered his secret room (the key was damaged in the lock), he is upset, but not merciful. He tells her to go bathe, put on a white dress; her fate, he says, will be decapitation.

But she is saved. Not by his supposed grief (he truly is a psychopath), but by her mother. They had spoken on the phone the previous day and she had sensed that something was wrong (the moral of this story might be: never underestimate your mother). So she came to her daughter's rescue, killing Bluebeard before he could swing his sword down on his wife's pretty neck. Although the ending is quite violent, it is also a happy one, in its own way. Celia (the wife who lived) inherited Bluebeard's enormous fortune and she and her mother and her lover live quite comfortably in his castle.

I won't say that I wish I had been allowed to read Bluebeard as a kid, because it really is the stuff nightmares are made of. And, even if you convince yourself that it's just a story, all you have to do is turn on the news to discover that it's a little too close to some realities to be coddled away. As a man with three daughters, I'm not sure my dad could have done anything but throw the story away and hope it never became part of our consciousness. But it did, because horrible things have a way of creeping in. But "The Bloody Chamber" is a reasonable antidote, although the sex might be a little to vividly described for it to ever become a children's story.

Carter has a way of putting words together that makes certain descriptions stick with you. This can be both good and bad. But her real gift is that of a life to previously passive, unanimated characters. Call it what you want, but Carter does an excellent job of both preserving the original stories and turning them completely around, which makes this book both interesting to read once and almost hypnotic to reread.

The Bloody Chamber

by Angela Carter

First published in 1979 (cover image shown from Penguin edition)

Not Wanted on the Voyage

Repurposing Biblical stories into complex and well imagined works of fiction is, I think, much harder than its sister-genre of retelling fairy tales. Harder because there are probably a lot more people who know the Bible story you're working with, and the backlash-potential is huge. But harder also because Bible stories are more about the moral than the story itself, so the characters exist simply to carry the reader (or listener) toward the moral. When scholars talk about the characters of the various Bible stories, they describe their lives through family trees, not personal details. This means that when someone, such as Timothy Findley, sets out to re-imagine a Bible story, they must remain true-ish to a story that has almost no details. Nonetheless, Not Wanted on the Voyage is a novel that speaks back to its source-material in every sentence.

And somehow, Findley does that while using a cat as his narrator. Mottyl belongs to Mrs. Noyes, wife of Dr. Noyes, who is more Biblically known as Noah. Biblical stories may not give the reteller much, but they do give them a story arc, which Findlay stays more or less true to: the is a novel about Noah, who builds the arc and then sails it for 40 days and 40 nights in the rain. Findlay cover the basic story elements - the animals going on two-by-two, Noah's family and their new role as populators of the Earth, etc. - but it's all the extra detail and background, and the world he creates that makes this book unforgettable.

Using a cat's perspective is kind of genius in this way, because a cat really can be omniscient (or close to it). Mottyl also has a life outside of the family compound, and is free to come and go as she pleases. She is also the confidant of Mrs. Noyes (it's amazing what people will tell their pets), so all the family gossip she misses is relayed to the reader that way.

Throughout the book, Findley kind of responds to pieces of the Genesis story, quoting short passages at the beginnings of chapters and then agreeing or disagreeing, based on the way his story unfolds. "Not wanted on the voyage" was a baggage label, used by the arc's human passengers (Dr. and Mrs. Noyes, their sons and their sons' wives) to indicate which articles they would like to still have after the flood. But it might just as well have been a label for all the people and animals not included on the arc's manifest. Mottyl was not wanted on the voyage (by Dr. Noyes, of course) but she slips in anyway, as cats are wont to do, so the story continues after the rain has picked up the ship.

Dr. Noyes is a tyrant - a fact that Findley reveals to the reader more and more plainly as the story progresses. He is also incredibly old, almost as old as Yaweh, and a drunk (possibly reasons for his brutishness, but not enough to excuse him of his actions). He abuses his wife (when he manages, she is quite a formidable woman) and his daughters in law. He murders his wife's singing sheep in a fit of rage and fire. He rapes his daughter in law with a foreign object in a scene I could hardly stand to read (if I'd held the book any farther away from my face, I would have dropped it). In short, Findley is not particularly kind to Noah (not that this iteration of the man deserves much kindness).

One of the most interesting details that Findley brings to the table, though, is why the flood happened at all. In a slight twist on the "real reason," Yaweh comes to visit (literally, visit) Noah and admits that he's horribly depressed. The people, he says, are not treating him well. To cheer him up, Noah shows him a magic trick: He places a penny under a bottle and fills the bottle with water; because of refraction the penny seems to have disappeared. Yaweh is delighted; all his problems can be solved with water because water makes things disappear.

It's small scenes such as this that make Not Wanted on the Voyage more than a retelling or recreation of a Bible story. Findley's attention to motives and consequences make the characters more than archetypes or simple names on the page. And even though you know the story line and how the tale will end, Findley's novel makes you doubt what you remember and forces you to re-experience the story through his, and Mottyl's, eyes.

Not Wanted on the Voyage

by Timothy Findley

First published in 1984 (cover image shown from Penguin Modern Classics edition)

Fantastic Mr. Fox

I have written about Roald Dahl and his books before, but the Wes Anderson adaptation of Dahl's Fantastic Mr. Fox is up for a few Oscars this weekend, and I'll take any chance I get to reminisce about all the hours I spent reading Roald Dahl as a kid.

Fantastic Mr. Fox is set in the English countryside where Mr. and Mrs. Fox live in a comfortable burrow with their kits. Their comfort is, in a large way, the result of Mr. Fox's prolific thievery. Not far from the hill the Foxes live under, three farmers - Boggis, Bunce and Bean - have large, sprawling farms that provide (unintentionally) lovely meals for Mr. Fox and his family.

But, paradise can't last forever and after a foiled heist that results in Mr. Fox's tail being shot off as he dives into his burrow, the farmers decide to exact some revenge. And so they set up a siege around the Foxes' burrow, intending to starve them out. But rather than give in, Mr. Fox decides to fight back the only way he knows how: to dig deeper into the hill in the hopes of eventually finding a way out. When the farmers discover Mr. Fox's tactics, they too decide to dig, first with shovels and then with bulldozers. Predictably, it doesn't take long for the hill to be reduced to a crater.

Under the hill, the Foxes keep digging. Eventually they run into a group of other burrowing animals who have also been caught in the siege: badgers, moles, rabbits, etc. All the animals are starving and intensely unhappy with the situation Mr. Fox has forced them into. But, he isn't fantastic for nothing, and after assembling all the animals for a feast, he and his children tunnel off in the direction of the farms.

With the three farmers well occupied by their digging siege, Mr. Fox is able to tunnel right up under their storerooms and simply pick and choose: a goose here, a duck there and apple cider all around. And so it all ends well, with the animals feasting underground and the farmers fuming above.

When you read Fantastic Mr. Fox as a kid, the appeal is the borderline-rude language and Mr. Fox's hilarious antics. Even reading now, it's hard not to laugh at Dahl's descriptions of the farmers. But now (and this may be my English degree talking), a lot of this story seems to be about habitat destruction - and I don't think that's too much of a stretch. Although the animals come out alright in the end, they do nearly starve because their home is being destroyed by humans.

In his memoirs (Boy and Going Solo) Dahl seems very nostalgic for a simpler time, when farms were local and open to the public and most digging was done by hand with a shovel. And for all the lightness of Fantastic Mr. Fox, I think a lot of that nostalgia seeps in.

And really, that's what makes Dahl worth revisiting years after you've left the target audience age. He was always able to write on more than one level. He knew what kind of language would appeal to kids and how to use it weave a story that would make kids laugh and their parents think (and laugh, too). If his stories were less complex (even the apparently simple ones) they would never have been so entertaining, and if they hadn't been so memorably enjoyable we would never have returned to them the way we continue to.

Fantastic Mr. Fox

by Roald Dahl

First published in 1970 (cover image shown from Knopf Books for Young Readers edition)

For more Dahl:

Roald Dahl Day

Danny the Champion of the World

Going Solo

Abel's Island

Castaways are usually rather romantic figures in literature. Whether along the lines of Robinson Crusoe or the Swiss Family Robinson, stories about shipwreck victims are always more about ingenuity and courage than about the characters themselves. In William Steig's Abel's Island, as courageous and ingenious as Abel is, he remains very cerebral and much of the story is about the emotional ups and downs he faces during his year alone on an island. It bears saying, too, that Abel is not a strapping sailor like Robinson Crusoe, but is a mouse unaccustomed to work of any sort.

Abel ends up on the island because, during an afternoon picnic with his wife Amanda, a hurricane blows through. They take shelter in a cave with a number of other animals, but when Amanda's scarf pulls loose and is caught by the wind, Abel chases after it. Soon he is caught up by the wind and the storm and is swept into a culvert where he manages to scramble onto a small board before the water level rises and the board and Abel are taken into the river.

The next day, Abel wakes up on his board in the upper branches of a cherry oak on an uninhabited island in the middle of the river. After trying to build several different kinds of boats (all of which are destroyed by the river's current) and attempting to sling a piece of homemade rope across the river (which he lacks the strength to do), Abel is forced to face facts. For the time being, he is stuck on the island.

Initially, he resents the island and the sort of prison it represents. He misses his wife and his family, but because he assumes they must be frantically worried about him, he comforts himself with thoughts of their search efforts. Abel is a rather upper-class mouse and, prior to his arrival on the island, had only ever watched animals work. But soon he discovers that to survive, he must start looking after himself.

He finds a rotten log to hollow out into a home, weaves mats for the floor and to serve as window covers and begins storing away nuts and seeds for the winter. In his leisure time, he uses clay he collects from the riverbank to build statues of his loved ones, as well as construct dishes for himself. He also makes little bowls to float down the river, holding notes asking for help.

But life doesn't just fall into place for Abel. There is an owl on the island that terrorizes him and, after one perilous encounter, he is forced to fight it off using his little penknife. It's after the owl attack and as winter sets in that Steig gives us a real look at Abel's mind. Being all alone makes him a little crazy, he starts chanting curses at owl feathers he finds, after months of silence he begins to talk to himself (including full-on arguments) and he talks to his statues as though they are real people.

But Abel makes it through the winter, even if only barely, and in the spring an old toad arrives on the island, out of breath after being caught up by the swollen and swiftly moving spring river. Abel and Gower become friends, and Abel is quite devastated when Gower, after two months, regains enough of his strength to leave the island. Alone again, Abel is almost resigned to life there when a drought sets in, lowering the water level in the river sufficiently for him to risk swimming across.

And so he escapes, almost exactly one year after arriving. But on his way home he is attacked by a cat, narrowly escaping up a tree. But of course, being the hero of a children's story, Abel survives and makes it home to his lovely Amanda, who is both delighted to see her scarf again and be reunited with her husband.

Abel's Island is a deceptively simple story. On the surface, it's about a mouse who finds himself a castaway, must survive for a year and then ends up back in his luxurious life. But below that, it's about what happens to us when we are alone. In many ways, what gets Abel through his time on the island is his routine and his belief that he will make it home again. But during the winter, when he's cold and more alone than ever, his thought that there is no other world and that winter will last forever are almost painfully realistic.

Steig, by using a mouse as his hero, tells a story about a man who's a bit lost in life. Abel doesn't have a vocation and, prior to arriving on the island, he didn't really have anything to keep him going except garden parties and satin cravats. When faced with his own mortality, he fights to survive, and although it may be a little cliché now, the importance of goals and skills are privileged in this story. As a messages for children go, that's a pretty good one. And maybe it's not such a bad reminder for adults either.

Abel’s Island
By William Steig
First published in 1976 by Farrar, Strauss and Giroux (cover image from that edition)

The Tailor of Gloucester

According to Beatrix Potter, during the night between Christmas Eve and Christmas morning, the animals can talk (perhaps the reason that so many Christmas stories feature talking animals). In her story The Tailor of Gloucester, the animals don't say too much, but they talk enough to help out the poor, hapless tailor experience his own kind of Christmas miracle.

The tailor of Gloucester is a poor, old man working very hard to make a coat of cherry-coloured embroidered silk for the Mayor of Gloucester's Christmas wedding. Four days before Christmas, the tailor has all 12 pieces for the coat and waistcoat cut and ready upon the table. Everything is in order for him to assemble his masterpiece (which he is hoping will bring him some fame and thus more orders) except one missing length of cherry-coloured twisted silk.

But the tailor is tired, and at the end of the day when he goes home he sends his cat Simkin to the store to buy some milk, bread and sausages for supper, and asks him to also fetch one skein of cherry-coloured twisted silk.

But while Simkin is out, the tailor hears little tapping noises coming from the sideboard. Curious, he goes over and notices several teacups all turned upside-down. Righting them, he frees a number of little mice (all appropriately dressed in little waistcoats and aprons). But when Simkin returns from the store and finds that the tailor has freed his super, he is angry and hides the twist in the teapot.

Then disaster strikes and the tailor gets sick from the worry of not having enough twist to finish the jacket and waistcoat or enough money to buy more. For three days and three nights he is bedridden while the lovely pieces of cherry-coloured silk lie ready for assembly on his worktable. But even in 19^th Century Gloucester, karma has a way of making things happen.

While the tailor is tossing and turning in a feverish nightmare of no more twist, the little brown mice of the city are hunkered down in his shop, needles in hand, to sew the Mayor’s wedding jacket and waistcoat. They work all night, singing mousey little songs to tease poor hungry Simkin who sits watching through the window.

But then the mice hit a snag—no more twist! Off they scamper, leaving Simkin alone in the window and the coat ad waistcoat nearly finished on the table.

Simkin slinks home, feeling very ashamed of himself and his hiding of the twist. He fishes it out of the teapot and presents it to the tailor, who is still weak from his illness. Convinced he will never be able to finish the jacket on time, the tailor heads to his shop on Christmas morning, and there, lying on his worktable are the coat and waistcoat, beautifully finished and embroidered, with a tiny note pinned to the last unfinished buttonhole that reads “no more twist.”

But the tailor has enough energy and twisted silk to finish the pair of garments for the Mayor, who is most pleased with them when he arrives to pick them up. Never before has he seen such tiny stitches or perfect little details, and he his thrilled with his wedding finery.

Of course, the tailor becomes famous and, although he doesn’t get rich, he certainly manages to rent more than just the kitchen he and Simkin were living in.

Reading stories on Christmas Eve has always been one of our Christmas traditions and my dad reads us The Tailor of Gloucester every year. It isn’t a story about Santa, or presents, or even religion really. But it is undoubtedly a Christmas story. The generosity of the little mice and the lesson they teach Simkin about manners (among other things) fall perfectly in line with the values we trumpet during the holidays.

Less profound, perhaps, is the invocation of the magic of Christmas Eve—when animals can talk and mice can sew—which is something worth holding onto.