41. The Land of Big Numbers by Te-Ping Chen

The Economist had a podcast series called The Prince that went deep into the background of China's Xi Jinping.  It was excellent and led me to their follow-up series on China called Drum Tower, which is also quite good though a bit meandering and judgemental at times.  I was tempted to subscribe but am already overwhelmed with podcast and print content.  They recommended this book as a really good and interesting snapshot into modern China.  I found it at half-price books.

This kind of fiction is just not for me.  Let me start off by saying that it is well-crafted and a couple of the stories were quite good.  It comes from what I call The New Yorker school of short fiction, which is stories where not much happens and end on an ambivalent note that is supposed to give you some kind of feeling which makes upper middle class people feel that they are clever.  I have not read enough of these kinds of stories to know if they all have to be mildly depressing but I think that is also generally expected, as happiness and things working out isn't considered deep by anxious grad students.  The stories in the Land of Big Numbers were all mildly depressing.  What was really damning, though, is that I didn't feel that I really got that much of a better understanding of modern China.  This felt very much like the western judgement of all the flaws of modern China: quaint villages with traditions destroyed for crass wealth and modernity, the controlling but bumbling state apparatus and so on.

China has issues for sure, but I am sure there is a lot of good stuff about life there and I would have much preferred at least one or two stories of what is the good life in China today.  This all felt like a western visitor who was steeped in daily life but didn't actually grow up in China and is approaching it (and the writing) with an a priori critique.  There are many moments of local life that are interesting and did give an excellent sense of the day-to-day.  Two stories, one about a new fruit that has almost magical properties and the other about people stuck in a subway platform, were really good.  But the rest kind of bummed me out.  The worst one was about a young Chinese-American nurse travelling around the Grand Canyon with her douchebag outdoorsy American long-term boyfriend.  Oh boo hoo your boyfriend may be cheating on you and doesn't listen but you'll probably marry him anyways. 

I should have known but I have a vague memory that it was suggested this book was vaguely science fiction or some stories set in the near future and that sucked me in.  Also, the slick trade dress seduced me.  It was a quick read, the prose being tight and flowing and I finished it while stuck in traffic trying to get on the Lions Gate Bridge, so I appreciate it for that, but otherwise just not my jam at all.

40. The Young in One Another's Arms by Jane Rule

I found this in the free box on Esplanade and just had to take it.  So many factors contributed to this decision:  classic 70s painted cover, Canadian lit and finally it takes place in Vancouver where we were heading for "vacation".  I was wary, believe me, I mean just look at the title.  I was hoping that the location and period trappings would maintain my interest if the narrative got too cloying.  Fortunately, it is not an overly sentimental read, though spent too much time in the main character's head constantly fretting.  Unfortunately, I suspect the author was American and though living in Canada, didn't really seem to either want to or was not able to give it any real Canadian or B.C. or Vancouver flavour.  I wonder if this was a deliberate choice to try and make the setting approachable to potential American readers, like so many films shot in Canada but pretending to be the U.S.

The story is about Ruth Wheeler a middle-aged woman who owns a large house that she manages as a boarding house.  Her daughter died in a car crash a few years earlier at the age of 22 and her husband is away most of the time working on road projects up north.  She is effectively a den mother for a disparate group of what I guess is supposed to be a representative range of the youth of the late 70s, including a draft dodger and a young military runaway.  The neighbourhood they live in has been slated for development, all the houses to be demolished.  Hers was purchased and the dilemma is what to do next.  She plans to move into a condo with her older mother-in-law (also a tenant) and Warren, the shoe salesman with some kind of mental disability that she knows she can't leave him on his own.  Much of the book is the dramas of the various members.  There is a love triangle, then a quadrangle.  The deserter gets arrested.  The husband comes back from time to time and is a chauvinist jerk, though mainly in rhetoric as he doesn't actually block Ruth from doing what she wants.  It's all semi-interesting, though I never felt a strong emotional connection to any of it, beyond admiration for Ruth and her mellow approach to her charges.  Later, a Black character arrives, an educated gay guy whose shtick is to parrot stepinfetchit language and parody the racism around him.  This portrayal is very 70s, though he ends up being a cool and interesting character, about as well fleshed out as the rest of them.  What I did enjoy about the book is that none of the drama was exaggerated or hyped up to create fake tension in the reader.  It just happens and that made most of it feels quite realistic and natural.  There was one false where she recounts a childhood memory where a neighbour smashes all her watermelons because she wanted to taste them before they were ready which just seemed utterly false.

As I read this book, it reinforced the simplistic yet somewhat truthful idea that one could argue that every book is a genre book, with specific conventions that appeal to specific demographics of readers.  The Young in One Another's Arms is ostensibly just a novel, but ultimately it feels targeted to a certain type of semi-progressive but ultimately bourgeois female.  Just as I take pleasure in reading about men preparing equipment and calculating the odds of climbing a snowy mountain pass, I suspect women want to read about other women's constant inner monologue on their changing emotional state in reaction to their past and current events.

I read about Jane Rule and she was indeed an expat and a significant voice of lesbian rights and fiction back in the day.  She spent most of her life with her partner on Galiano and sounds like she was quite a nice person.  I have expanded my CanLit knowledge!