Tag: Fiction

My Bookshelf

bookshelf

Books are complicated things.  They are like perfect lovers, hiding in plain view, keeping their secrets carefully between the covers.  When we speak of them, they hold our gaze with memories, but we never tell the whole story – do we?  We cautiously avoid those delicate evenings, getting to know each other; the stolen afternoons; the nights, together alone in the darkness, page after page until, exhausted, we sleep.  And those tiny lies and excuses we make to shut the world out when we simply can’t resist one more intimate embrace.  Our books are the sly smile we have when we think no one is looking, and they belong to us, just as we belong to them — sworn sacred to be faithful.

Last week my eBuddy CJ Hartwell went to her bookshelf and ….  She tells a better tale than I do, and you can read it here: Hartwell’s Books.  But she showed us her books and told us more than who they are.  It’s a fascinating idea to look through a few reflections to see ourselves because the truth is nothing reveals who we are quite as clearly as revealing the things we love.  So I went to my bookshelf and discovered — it was mostly ex-lovers — long kept and long remembered – from a time so young and strong I may never leave it.

Glory Road – Robert A Heinlein
I found this book in a used bookstore when the world and I still had a use for such things.  This is a love story, thinly disguised as science fiction.  I confess it took me a few years and few readings before I could appreciate that.

A World Lit Only By Fire – William Manchester
The history of medieval Europe without the hard-sleighing of scholarship.  I take this with me every time I go to Europe.  It’s not the Europe I see — but the one I imagine, cleverly peeking out of the stones and the streets.  Lost footsteps, echoing across the centuries.

A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
I grew up a prisoner of the vast North American prairie.  Ivan and I know what it’s like to be lost and alone in the inescapable wilderness, and we also understand that sometimes there is no glorious, indomitable human spirit.  Sometimes there is only survival.

History of England for Public Schools
My father’s textbook, circa 1930.  I still use it to keep those pesky Stuarts kings in line.

Tai Pan – James Clavell
This was a best-seller when I was a kid, so I read it.  Then I read King Rat; then I read Shogun; then I read Noble House, etc., etc.  I keep Tai Pan because it’s a better adventure than King Rat and not so long and involved as Shogun or Noble House.  Plus, back when I had visions of being a scholar, I thought “The Duality of Character in the Novels of James Clavell” would be a marvelous dissertation.

Shibumi – Trevanian
Nicholai Hel is a skilled assassin who has spent half a lifetime isolating himself from the madness of the modern world, but … it intrudes – it always intrudes.  So, the question remains: can we ever truly separate ourselves from the faceless somebodies who think they have a better idea for the world?  Probably not, but we can become such a badass nobody messes with us.

The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien
A wise person once said, “To believe in the heroic makes heroes.”  This is the third, fourth or even fifth copy of a book I won as a prize in grade school.  I keep it because I might be too old to believe in Tarzan, Treasure Island or Sanders of the River (Not!!!) but Bilbo Baggins is a good place to hide my hopeless belief in heroics.

Cabbage Town – Hugh Garner
This is a novel so out of print and out of fashion that you have to fight with Google to even find it.  It’s Canadian literature from before CanLit became a closed shop and people like me didn’t have to go to America and Great Britain to get published – but I’m not bitter.  It’s one of the reasons I’ve spent my life doing what I do.

And two extras:

Dutch-English/ English-Dutch Dictionary
I keep this handy for when Google Translate runs amok.

The Woman in the Window – WD Fyfe
Of course, I have my own book on my bookshelf.  D’uh!

 

Fiction …

For Some Reason

cohen

Of course I remember the night Leonard Cohen died.  It was cold and rainy and all the winds swept wet curtains over the streets.  We heard them.  The next morning, before we knew, we made love by mistake, soft, and sliding on the red rayon sheets, discount silk from Sears.  We went out for breakfast and ordered dessert, sucking the jubilees out of the cherries like bright-eyed vampires with harmless baby fangs.  Then we walked.  Yes, in the sunlight, but for some reason we didn’t notice.  Nora and Peter and Granger the hound found us in the window of  Bean To Denmark, drinking frothy coffee and lecturing the tourists through the glass.  But they didn’t tell us, so how could we know?  Instead, they told us funny stories and, innocent as kittens, we laughed too much, too often.

We found out later, from strangers, in the sober wooden light of a dim dinner when the maître’d said “Mr. and Mrs.,” in that way that you know somebody has died.  But we were very brave, finding our serious heads, because everyone was probably watching us.  Then we went home to play his music and open some wine.  And we listened, cold statues in the darkness, having our sadness like an unhappy inheritance, and heavily drinking our misunderstandings into arguments — until we cried.  Then, like no one you recognized, I asked you to dance and it was a waltz, candle-flickered and old, the stone-hard tears still on our cheeks.

In the morning, we packed our stuff in your suitcase and, dressed in black, we sat on the stairs, two mourning crows on an empty autumn stoop.

Time passed.  The taxi was yellow with a black roof.  You got in the back, and I walked away.  For some reason, I didn’t look back.

Yesterday, I went to our gravesite, like I always do this time of year.  It was bright and crisp, and I didn’t take the children — they’re getting too old.  Then I had a hot drink at that new place across the street while the yellow taxis prowled and paused at the traffic light.

Just so you know, I never wait long.  Later, for some reason, I hummed “I’m Your Man” to myself, all the way home.

Shameless Self Promotion

Cover final.jpgThe Woman In The Window is not about relationships.  It’s about the delicious ache in the bottom of your belly — that sweet primeval that won’t go away; the wolf of our emotions, hungry and hunting.  These eight tales are about people who have been living their lives cocooned in their accumulated habits, but suddenly, by chance or by choice, they travel beyond the reach of their familiar world.  Without the thin cloak of everyday life around them, they find themselves alone in the wilderness, trying to understand whether they are prey or predator.

In “The Last Romance Of Jasper Conrad,” Frances says to Jasper, “Just – just because I’m ordinary doesn’t mean I can’t have something more.  I look around and I see my life and …”  But Frances isn’t ordinary, and Jasper knows that.

In “The Dying of Daniel,” when Susan asks “… God, are we ever going to be normal?” Peter replies, “Normal?  Normal just happens…. There’s nothing you can do about it.”  But for Susan there is no normal, and there never has been.

“Ordinary,” “normal,” “average:” these are words we use to protect ourselves.  They keep our emotions, our imagination and our sensuality at bay.  However, as the characters in The Woman In The Window discover, in the sleepless soul of 4 o’clock in the morning, these words are meaningless.  The truth is, we are all only as ordinary as we require ourselves to be.

It case you haven’t already guessed, yes! I have finally published The Woman In The Window.  It’s now available at Amazon in paperback and as a Kindle eBook.

You can preview three of the stories here and see if the writing is to your taste.

And you can buy the book here

Or, if you prefer the Kindle version, you can get it here

(BTW, you don’t need a Kindle to read the digital version — just download the App.)

Anyway, I hope The Woman In The Window leaves you with something more than you had yesterday.