review | Matt W Cook

June 3, 2019

Review: What We See in The Smoke by Ben Berman Ghan

Part novel, part anthology, Ben Berman Ghan‘s What We See in The Smoke is an evocative and powerful read. Each chapter is a separate short story that can be read on its own, independent of the other chapters. Taken as a whole, they form a grand epic of humanity’s descent into the far future–through a Torontonian lens. Each section and story progressively moves further from the Toronto (and Earth) we know.

The sci-fi elements are both outlandish and belieavble. The tone is often dark and sometimes funny, and there’s always something at stake that hits at the heart.

The first section, “These Memories of Us,” covers the nearly familiar future. We see inter-connected people struggling against overbearing and implacable systems while tending to their own limitations and empowerments. “Planet 58” put us in the mind of people whose understanding of the wider world threatens to cut them off from the local one. “Time Loop Tango” dances with determinism in a way that pushes at its limits. “A Carnival World” jars the reader with 2nd person narration.

Aside: I heard a professor say it wasn’t possible to write convincingly in the 2nd person but obviously that prof had never read “A Carnival World” or the other 2nd person stories in this book or N.K. Jemisin.

The second section, “These Violent Machines,” stretch all the way to 2280. The first story, “Yum,” opens with an epitath from Moby Dick that sets a dark stage for the rest of the book.

“Cannibals? who is not a cannibal?”

While the stories are not (all) about cannibalism, they each introduce a dehumanising factor. “Darkly Dreaming” envisions a Toronto in which the controlling arm of the corporations reach deeper inside a person than we ever thought possible. “Re-Pilot” follows a job applicant trying to adjust to life on Mars. “The End of History” puts the reader in the front seat again, returning to the 2nd person to watch the end of the world as it comes.

As the stories fly further and further from out present-day point of view, Ghan keeps bringing us back to ourselves with relatably broken characters.

Finally, “An Uncertain and Distant World” takes us far from familiar earth, with mind-implants, teleporting art theives, robots on trial, and (my favourite) an ever-evolving race of beings waging eternal war on a hull breach. The settings and circumstances are believebly outlandish. The characters are tanglible and real.

What We See in The Smoke peels back painful and beautiful layers of humanity in a time when we are becoming more and more aware of the futures we are constructing for ourselves. These stories are engrossing and powerful. The prose is darkly comic and brightly sombre. This is a book for anyone who loves stories about Toronto, rocket ships, and the kinds of love that can survive apocalypse. Go buy it!

Buying Options:
Crowsnest Books
Chapters Indigo
Amazon

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November 20, 2018

Biblical Fiction: “Not Wanted on the Voyage” and “The Red Tent”

I’ll start reading any stories based on Bible stories. Ancient myths of all kinds are like fertile fields that grow new crops every time they’re sown. My favourites, so far, are Timothy Findley’s “Not Wanted on the Voyage” and Anita Diamant’s “The Red Tent.”

They’re completely different kinds of books.

“Not Wanted on the Voyage” is a deep and whimsical fantasy about Noah’s Ark.

“The Red Tent” is a stark and realistic portrayal of the life of Dinah, Jacob’s only daughter.

Both of them grabbed me deeply.

Meanwhile, I have given up on Gore Vidal’s “Live From Golgotha.” It’s funny, clever, and I just can’t bring myself to finish it. The premise is interesting: time travelers want to shoot the crucifixion for NBC. There’s wit and anachronisms everywhere. But I just don’t care.

I’m wondering what Findley and Diamant have that Vidal (in this book anyway) does not. Here are my thoughts:

All three are willing to turn the patriarchs on their heads, but Findley and Diamant make it serve the story. Noah and Yahweh are hugely problematic characters in “Not Wanted on the Voyage.” Diamant paints Jacob just as double-sided as the Bible. There is irreverence, but not for its own sake. The irreverence serves the story.
Findley and Diamant dig deep when the suffering comes. They refuse to shy away from the depths of human hurt–and human apathy. But Vidal’s light touch makes nearly everything that happens in the story light. And since it is light, it doesn’t matter.
Perhaps most importantly, Diamant and Findley make me CARE SO MUCH about the characters. Like, ruin your day kinda care. Meanwhile, I can’t bring myself to invest much in the people in “Live From Golgotha,” despite its very interesting premise.

So if you’re looking for some really good Biblical fiction, pick up Anita Diamant’s “The Red Tent” and Timothy Findley’s “Not Wanted on the Voyage.” Both are engrossing, gripping, and more than worth your time.

And if you want something that smacks like an irreverent Douglas Adams, “Live From Golgotha” might be for you.

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October 20, 2018

Christianly Book Review: Life at the End of Us Vs Them by Marcus Peter Rempel

images “The warnings I offer here do not come out of a superior religion but out of a failed religion“

Marcus Peter Rempel’s book, “Life at the End of Us vs Them,” is a seriously thought-provoking view of Christianity and its place in our “strange, endtime world.” Drawing on René Girard and Ivan Illich, Rempel presents a view of the Cross that necessarily undermines any power structure that would try to build on it.

The crucifixion of Christ, he argues, is not best seen as a judicial act of substitutionary atonement. Instead, it is something like God identifying with the most marginalized individuals, the most hated outcasts, the people who society crucifies. “It is by taking on the viewpoint of those it marginalizes that Cross-formed culture comes to be accurately mapped, and more justly remade” (13). Rempel takes this understanding, and applies it to his relationships with “those who are his other: women, queer folk, refugees, Muslims, atheists, and Indigenous people.”

Here’s what I like about this view of the Cross: it reminds you of everything at once. It reminds you that you are part of the system that crucifies innocents. At the same time, it offers to forgive you. And it bids you pick up your cross, and follow in that way of looking at the world–that the “least of these” is, somehow, the Christ. It shifts the view from Us-Them to I-Thou. Frankly, it reminds us that Jesus never meant to convert the world. Yes, he meant for his Way to go out into all the world, but not to colonize it. Not to become the oppressor.

The Cross will always glare accusingly at any system or person that tries to use it as a tool of oppression. It undermines all sacred violence. It perpetually strips the sacred cloth from the temple, showing it to be empty. The violence we thought we did in God’s name was actually against his own son. All persecution persecutes the Christ. Christianity as a religion, Rempel argues, has failed insofar as it has been complicit in violence.

At least, that’s how it could work. From what I read on the Internets, I don’t see a reconciliation between Church and the vulnerable anytime soon. If it’s possible, though, for follows of Christ to sit with the very marginalized instead of always being seen beside the oppression, this book gives clues on how it will be done.

I heartily recommend this book to people who want to take the Bible seriously and are troubled by the dissonance between Church and Christ. If you believe that substitutionary atonement is the only correct way of understanding the Cross, you will probably balk at a lot of what Rempel has to say. Consider, though, that both Scripture and Church have cast the Cross in different lights to glean fresh insights from that wonderful tragic event. Rempel offers a light that the Church today would do well to meditate on, even if she can’t swallow the whole thing.

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March 23, 2018

Christianly Book Review #3: The Bruised Reed by Richard Sibbes

Puritan writings are an acquired taste. I loved them while I was a Believer, and was growing an impressive library of Puritan Paperbacks. As my faith began to deconstruct, I went through a misguided minimalistic phase and purged nearly all my books. I regretted it almost immediately. Then I found Richard Sibbes’ The Bruised Reed in a thrift shop last year.

richard_sibbes Puritan spirituality is rigorous, promising great reward for those who walk the path and predicting serious trouble for those who won’t. The Bruised Reed is full of beautiful, comforting words. But there’s a lot I can’t resonate with anymore. Reading it was a bitter and beautiful reminder of the complex and rigorous spirituality I loved, devoted to “the constant progress of Christ’s gracious power, until he has set up an absolute government in us which shall prevail over all corruptions” (77).

If you’re a Believer, consider the Puritans. They had many of blind spots, and sometimes great ignorance. But nuggets of wisdom are almost everywhere you look, and the Puritans were keen on growing wisdom. Despite some serious problems (you’ll see them if you read them) the Puritans plowed a fertile field for spiritual gleanings.

This book speaks to me from the strangest place; in a form I love, Sibbes presents a path I cannot follow. I read it with a pen in hand (because that’s how you have to read the Puritans), so I’ll share a few lines that struck me, without comment or context.

Truth fears nothing so much as concealment, and desires nothing so much as clearly to be laid open to the view of all. (27)

Let men take heed of taking up Satan’s office, in misrepresenting the good actions of others. (32)

Men must not be too curious in prying into the weaknesses of others. …The strongest are readiest to bear with the infirmities of the weak. … The Holy Ghost is content to dwell in smoky, offensive souls. (33)

What is the gospel itself but a merciful moderation, in which Christ’s obedience is esteemed ours, and our sins laid upon him, wherein God, from being a judge, becomes our Father, pardoning our sins and accepting our obedience, though feeble and blemished? (36)

Under this gracious covenant, sincerity is perfection. (37)

It is better that the water should run somewhat muddily than not run at all. (42)

It is better to enjoy the benefit of light, though with smoke, than to be altogether in the dark. (49)

Sin against conscience is as a thief in the candle, which spoils our joy, and thereby weakens our strength. (61)

Again, remember this, that Christ rules us by a spirit of love, from a sense of his love, whereby his commandments are easy to us. He leads us by his free Spirit, a Spirit of liberty. His subjects are voluntaries. (81)

Those, therefore, that are enemies of knowledge help Satan and antichrist, whose kingdom, like Satan’s, is a kingdom of darkness. (85)

No wicked man can be a wise man. (90)

Love once kindled is strong as death. (97)

What the heart likes best, the mind studies most. (103)

It has been a successful way of corrupting the judgment, to begin by withdrawing love. (103)

See a flame in a spark, a tree in a seed. See great things in little beginnings. (124)

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February 19, 2018

Christianly Book Review #2: Intimacy With God by Thomas Keating

I spent a few years as a Cognitive Science major, mostly because it spoke to the kind of spirituality I used to pursue: very introspective and interested in mental/spiritual/emotional growth. I first heard about Thomas Keating’s book on Christian Centering Prayer, “Intimacy With God,” while doing a paper on the similarities and differences between meditative practises and prayer. This year of living christianly is a good opportunity to finally read it.

Here’s how Thomas Keating lays his prayer out:

Choose a sacred word as the symbol of your intention to consent to God’s presence and action within.
Sitting comfortably and with eyes closed, settle briefly and silently introduce the sacred word as the symbol of your consent to God’s presence and action within.
When you become away of thoughts, return ever so gently to the sacred word.
At the end of the prayer period, remain in silence with eyes closed for a couple of minutes (16).

The idea is to “gently establish an attitude of waiting upon the Lord with loving attentiveness” (43). I’ve found it to be a difficult practise to keep up, perhaps because it doesn’t have the same, er, cultural flavour as the evangelical disciplines I’m used to. Also, training intention is a different skill from training attention–one of the goals of mindfulness meditation. So while I think Christian Centering Prayer could be really useful for some people, it’s not super palatable for my evangelical tastes. Has anyone else tried it?

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November 16, 2017

Gods and Dogs: A Review of André Alexis’s Fifteen Dogs

I tend to start my judgment of a book on two points: how long it takes to finish reading, and the opening line. I read all 171 pages of Fifteen Dogs in two days, and its opening line is great: “One evening in Toronto, the gods Apollo and Hermes were at the Wheat Sheaf Tavern.” A crisp sentence that puts two of our favourite gods in Toronto’s oldest tavern sets the stage for an engrossing modern myth.

Apollo and Hermes have a friendly argument about whether or not humans are very special, as far as mortals go. Hermes thinks we are. Apollo not so much. In the course of the evening, after five Sleemans each, they make a bet.

Apollo wagers “that animals–any animal you chose–would be even more unhappy than humans are, if they had human intelligence.” Hermes takes the bet, “on condition that if, at the end of its life, even one of the creatures is happy, I win.” On the way home, walking down King Street, they pass a veterinarian clinic. The fifteen dogs staying overnight receive human intelligence, and quickly figure out how to open their cages and escape.

The story is enticing. Each of the fifteen dogs has to negotiate their relationship with the sudden intelligence they have been given. Like the classic myths, Fifteen Dogs can be dark and violent. For this reason I wouldn’t recommend the book to dog lovers per se. It’s an apologue (a moral fable with an animal cast), not one of those tender tales of human-animal bonding. Fifteen Dogs is probably best suited to people interested in Toronto, classical mythology, and those nagging existential questions of humanity.

Like any good fantasy novel, there are maps in the beginning. The setting is integral. The dogs leave the vet’s clinic as if through a portal and the Toronto they emerge into is charged with the fantastic. My apartment is just a couple blocks from High Park, where much of the story takes place. Walks downs Roncesvalles and along the beach will be different, having gotten a dog’s-eye view of it. Or rather, a dog’s-nose view, because some of the most evocative moments are olfactory scenes of the beach in summer and the park in spring. If you’re from Toronto, Fifteen Dogs might enrich your city. I mean, who wouldn’t want a drink where Hermes and Apollo frequent?

The gods are Greek, thus capricious, unpredictable, and often distant. They aren’t in the business of making everything alright in the end and don’t have a habit of saving people. The gods in Fifteen Dogs are the same ones who pestered Odysseus and brought down Troy. The novel may not be The Iliad, but it fits nicely in the lineage.

Some books tell a good story, some explore big ideas. Fifteen Dogs manages both. Despite the initiating wager, the real interest of the book is not the pros and cons of human intelligence. “Really, it was a matter of pure chance who died happy and who did not. Which is why, of course, [Apollo] and Hermes had bet on the outcome in the first place.” The bet sets up a more subtle philosophical discussion. Now, if you don’t care for philosophical discussion, don’t let that push you off. The story stands on its own and the philosophy doesn’t get in the way. But if you’re up for it, the dogs have to deal with questions like:

What happens when you recognize the cruelty in the activities you love?
What happens when you realize something you love cannot last?
What happens when you recognize the gulf between yours ideas and your actions?
What happens when you chance so much you can’t remember who the real you is?
And on it goes.

In short, Fifteen Dogs is about fifteen dogs who become humanly reasonable one night, and they handle it just as well and poorly as the rest of us do. But since they’re dogs and live in a very realistic Toronto, we are able to see the humanity in them a little clearer than we tend to see it in ourselves. The book grabbed my attention from the very beginning, and it held on until the end like I was a chew toy. It explores deep human truths without getting preachy and brings an authentic sense of Greek myth into a very local-feeling Toronto. I heartily recommend it to anyone who didn’t cry during Marley & Me.

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August 25, 2016

Something to watch with the kids: Kubo and the Two Strings

I was impressed with the humour and melancholy, and how they both fit so well together in a children’s movie that managed to get both the honest bitterness and sweetness of real life into a myth for our times.

Damn, that sounds good.

And it should, because it’s a beautiful movie. No, not a movie. I’d go so far as to call it a film. A film that accepts the starkest realities of loss and death, while still laughing once in a while and learning to live meaningfully without the things you wish you could keep.

Kubo is a one-eyed boy who takes care of his mother while earning a living storytelling in the marketplace. He’s good at stories, because he can make origami heroes and monsters fight when he plays his shamisen. Looks awesome. Everything is more or less great until he stays out too late one night and his scary aunts show up and try to steal his eye. From there, it’s myth-making at its finest.

Go watch it with your kids. Though there’s a scary skeleton or two, so be advised about that.

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August 7, 2013

Khaled Hosseini’s And the Mountains Echoed

Source: khaledhosseini.com

On a scale of 1 to 10, Khaled Hosseini’s third novel, And the Mountains Echoed, was Awesome-Sauce. Here’s why:

The story is a wild ride that touches you right down in the viscerals with serious love and pain.
It has all the right elements that made The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns Awesome-Sauce: enticing, complex characters, powerfully real settings and delightful prose.
Hosseini pushes himself to tell a wider story than he has before, giving us more characters to invest in and telling a broader story that rightly shows the ripples of consequence choices of love, hate and neglect make.
The characters are deep and real. The reader understands the ones who hurt and sees the flaws in the ones who love.
When I finished reading it, I felt like a slightly different person. The way you feel after an awesome meal or workout.

Read Khaled Hosseini’s, And the Mountains Echoed. Some people have found it difficult to follow the story because of the relatively larger cast of characters. I say to you, try harder. It’ll be worth it.

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August 3, 2012

Book Review: White Flour

On May 26, 2007, the Ku Klux Klan planned a march in Knoxville, Tennessee. Opponents tried to figure out a way to oppose their racist, hateful messages without stooping to hatred themselves. They decided to start a troop of clowns called the Coup Clutz Clowns who would intentionally misunderstand the Klan’s message and make gentle fun of it.

White Flour, by David LaMotte, tells that story in a picture book for children.

I was so excited when I first heard about this book. I get a tad upset when I see some of the banal books out there that people try to push on children. I swear if I see one more adaptation of Noah’s Ark I’m gonna snap. I mean, what ding-dong thought that a story of divine genocide would be good for kids just because of the cute handful of animals that made it through the watery apocalypse?

But finally we have a book for children that is not patronizing. A book that does not feel the need to dumb-down some of the most difficult dilemmas of life. A book that tells our kids a story that they really need to hear. The story of standing against violence and oppression without resorting to violence and oppression. The story of using laughter and joy to combat hatred and bigotry. The story of overcoming evil with good. The story that shows that you don’t need fire in order to fight fire.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

– Martin Luther King Jr.

White Flour is an important book and I recommend it highly. There are aspects of the story that parents will need to explain to their children, like what the KKK is all about and why it’s important to stand against messages of hate like theirs. It’s important to me that my children see examples of people standing up against evil in pure, non-violent, non-hateful ways. White Flour stands as a monument to a small group of people who found a Jesus-like way to push back the darkness of racism and hate. I treasure this book and hope you all grab yourself a copy.

And what would be the lesson of that shiny southern day?
Can we understand the message that the clowns sought to convey?
Seems that when you’re fighting hatred, hatred’s not the thing to use!
So here’s to those who march in in their big red floppy shoes!

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April 13, 2012

Review: The Pillars of the Earth

“The small boys came early to the hanging.”

My mother recommended this to me ages ago. I meant to read it. Really, mom, I did. But I forgot. I picked it up recently on a whim and did not remember a thing that my mom had said about it. And I’m really glad about that. Because if I had known what it was about, I probably would have left it alone.

The Pillars of the Earth is a historical fiction about cathedral building.

Erm… yay?

Let’s be honest, it sounds crazy-boring. Most churches are boring. Old churches are even more boring. Building old churches sounds so boring that I feel like poking my eye just to get a distraction. And on top of all that, the book is nearly a thousand pages long. Wow.

I’m so very glad that I had forgotten what the book was about.

The author, Ken Follett, grabs you by the throat in his first line. And he doesn’t let go until the book is ending. His story is huge and he gives you characters to love and hate by the handful. And then he puts those characters through the grinder. What else could you ask for in a novel?

In the end, the novel is about the inevitability of human suffering and the unbeatable human spirit that has been slowly, painfully, but assuredly making the world a better place.

There is something very special about the book that makes you care about something you have no interest in. I don’t care about building churches. Even big churches. But Tom Builder cared. Prior Philip cared. And since I cared about Tom Builder and Prior Philip, suddenly I cared about their big church.

The Pillars of the Earth is a great read. Its scope is huge, dealing every human struggle from intimate marital relationships to battles between kings and popes. Pick it up. You’ll love it. I swear.

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