I found myself awake at a ridiculous hour this morning and decided to get up instead of tossing and turning, to treat my insomnia as a gift rather than a curse and read something. But what to read? Zoe Dickinson’s chapbook, Intertidal: Poems From the Littoral Zone arrived yesterday. Why not that? I picked it up off the kitchen table, lay down on the living room sofa, and started to read.
I’m taking a creative-writing workshop for the next few weeks with Victoria poet Yvonne Blomer. Last week, at our first meeting, she shared one of Dickinson’s poems, “hope for the human race,” which amazed me. It imagines humans, not mosquitoes, as the true pests in the ecosystem, creatures that enable the pollination of orchids merely by accident. I had to know more. I contacted the publisher, who put me in touch with Dickinson, who sold me the very last copy of the chapbook. It made the journey from coastal B.C. to Regina in less than a week.
I suppose Intertidal is a chapbook because it’s short; it’s not one because of its production values. When I think of chapbooks, I think of something photocopied, stapled, very bare bones, like the ones I bought when I lived in Toronto 30 years ago, like the one I made out of my friend Peter Gould’s cartoons, which had a print run so small I didn’t even keep a copy. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with that aesthetic, but Intertidal is something else: shiny paper, full colour illustrations, perfect bound–it’s a book, full stop, just a short one.
And it’s remarkable. In a foreword, Dickinson explains what a “littoral zone” is: a coastal ecosystem that “ranges from the high tide mark to the subtidal area,” defined by the ability of sunlight to reach the sediments below the ocean. In this city, about as far from an ocean as you can get, Dickinson is describing something wondrous, exotic, and the creatures these poems consider–sea urchins, which don’t die of old age; bryozoans; nudibranchs–are beings I’ve never thought about. Some of the birds I recognize: gulls, of course, which are everywhere, and barn swallows, which nest under the bridge on Broad Street in the summer. But those are just the topics. The language, the curious arcing thoughts, are amazing. The poem about nudibranchs, for instance, describes this sea slug, which has no shell and absorbs poisons from its prey as a way to defend itself, as a “dubious dorid / shag rug, / moss landing aeolid,” and implores it to “teach me to be soft / and inexorable.” To be soft and inexorable–what a lesson to learn.
I love this chapbook; I’m looking forward to the appearance of Dickinson’s first full-length collection, which is forthcoming from Guernica Editions next year.
I love Raynor Winn’s 2018 memoir The Salt Path. I’ve taught it a couple of times, and my students have loved it, too. It tells a story about how going on a long walk–the 630-mile South West Coast Path, to be precise–saved Winn and her husband, Moth, from twin disasters: the loss of their home and Moth’s diagnosis of corticobasal degeneration, a fatal and incurable brain disease. It’s a wonderful book, full of luminous prose and a deep sense of connection to other people and the land. I can’t recommend it too highly.
The Wild Silence is Winn’s 2020 sequel to The Salt Path. It’s a different kind of memoir. While The Salt Path is focused on one experience (their walk takes two summers, but it’s still a single story), The Wild Silence recounts multiple events. As it begins, Moth is pursuing a university degree. His health is failing as the corticobasal degeneration slowly destroys his brain. Winn herself is stuck, going through an almost agoraphobic distaste for leaving their apartment or talking to other people, unable to find work, lost. A return home to sit with her dying mother only adds to her guilt and confusion. And her worry: she can see that Moth is getting worse, that without the daily walking that seemed to arrest the progress of his disease, he isn’t going to last. But of course that kind of walking is not possible for a full-time student. It’s hardly possible for anyone; making a living takes up most of our time, and frills, like going on long walks, are an unreachable privilege for all but a few. What to do?
Winn does a couple of things. One is writing The Salt Path as a gift to her husband, who is starting to forget the details of their experience on the South West Coast Path as the CBD progresses. The account of writing that memoir here makes it seem a little too easy, like one of montages in a film where some creative process–a band getting together, learning to play their instruments (hello, The Commitments)–is just too quick and painless. But what do I know? Maybe that’s how The Salt Path came about, without struggle, without any opened veins or bleeding, the difficulty Hemingway described as built into the writing process. Another is deciding to make friends. The social isolation she experiences at the start of the book is almost as toxic as Moth’s CBD, and when she starts to address it, she begins to heal.
When Moth and their two children read the manuscript, they urge Winn to find a publisher. Its appearance in print leads to new opportunities: rewilding a farm where the land has been abused, a long autumn hike with friends from the South West Coast Path across volcanoes in Iceland. Working outside, walking outside, is confirmed to be the best treatment for Moth’s illness. And we see indications that The Salt Path is becoming a success as The Wild Silence comes to an end. That’s no surprise; The Salt Path has sold more than a million copies. It was shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize and the Costa Book Awards, and it also won the first RSL Christopher Bland Prize; a feature film version starring Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs is coming out this spring. Of course, all of that’s still in the future as The Wild Silence concludes, but the hopeful signs are there.
The Wild Silence has been another big success, ending up on bestseller lists and being shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize, too, just like its predecessor. My advice: read The Salt Path first. If, after you’ve finished, you’re curious about what happens next, as you will almost certainly be, read The Wild Silence. There’s a third book, Landlines, which I’m planning to read this year, and a fourth is apparently going to appear this coming autumn, although the title has yet to be revealed. I love The Salt Path, and I like The Wild Silence; it’s not quite the achievement Winn’s debut is, but it’s still worthy of attention.
Before Christmas, Annabel Townsend asked me to act as a beta reader for her new book, Books and the City: Psychogeographical Wanderings Around Toronto’s Independent Bookstores. I know Annabel as the proprietor of the late, lamented Penny University Bookstore on 13th Avenue here in Regina, as well as Tuppenny Coffee and Books on Hamilton Street in the Warehouse District, which Google tells me continues on under new ownership. From her social media posts, I also know she’s an avid walker and cyclist. Her use of the word “psychogeographical” in the subtitle hooked me immediately, and of course I said yes. The next day, an advance review copy was in our mailbox. It took a while for the aftereffects of the fall semester to die down before I was able to turn to Books and the City, but I’m so happy I did.
There aren’t many books about walking in Canada that think about psychogeography, or at least that use the term in their titles. The exception is Shawn Micallef’s Stroll: Psychogeographic Walking Tours of Toronto. I have copies of both editions of that book, of course, although I have yet to read them. Maybe this year I’ll crack the new one, which just came out last year. Books and the City recalls a search, on foot and bicycle, for a copy of the first edition of Micallef’s book during several trips to Toronto, mostly to meet with publishers and other booksellers, in 2024. I admire the oddness of Townsend’s quest; I acquired my own copy of the first edition online, through Abebooks. I wish I’d had Townsend’s gumption. I rarely visit Toronto these days, though, and when I do I never have time for an extended exploration of that city. Maybe I’ll make a point of spending some quality pedestrian time there soon.
I lived in Toronto in the 1990s, and part of the pleasure of reading Books and the City for me was the palimpsest it laid over my memories of that place. Some of the bookstores Townsend visited existed back then: Book City, although Townsend only visits one location, which might be all that’s left; Caversham Booksellers on Harbord; A Different Booklist on Bathurst. At least, I think I recall A Different Booklist from 30 years ago. A quick look at Google Maps tells me it’s in a new building now, and it might not be the bookstore I remember at all. It’s part of a cultural centre, so it may in fact be an entirely different concern. On a brief trip to Toronto before the pandemic, though, I did buy something (I can’t remember what) at Ben McNally Books on Bay Street, and it was a beautiful space. It’s sad, but not surprising, that business has had to relocate twice in the past five years, given Toronto’s real-estate market. What is surprising, as Townsend notes, is that Ben McNally Books continues to exist at all.
Many of Townsend’s Toronto explorations took place during the winter, and the way climate change has affected that city is another shock. Instead of snow, Townsend cycled through pouring rain. That was not common three decades ago. Now, apparently, it’s Toronto’s default mode of winter precipitation. Toronto’s future, she tells us, is wet; climate modeling suggests its annual precipitation will double in the next 30 years. Despite the discomfort of getting soaked, and the long distances she walked and cycled, though, Townsend remains mostly upbeat—even though she struggles to find the copy of Stroll she’s looking for. (Spoiler alert: she does buy one, eventually, but the story of how she does is worth getting a copy of Books and the City and reading it for yourselves.)
Well, she does find a copy of Micallef’s book, relatively early in her travels, at A Different Booklist, but she doesn’t buy it; instead, she purchases a book entitled Welcome to Blackhurst—An Iconic Toronto Neighbourhood, published by A Different Publisher, part of the cultural centre that also operates A Different Bookstore. That decision isn’t surprising; Books and the City is published by Townsend’s own micropublisher, Pete’s Press. Of course she would support a publisher that’s connected to a bookstore. Before Penny University ceased operations, a delayed victim of the Covid-19 pandemic that had been kept going by a Canadian Emergency Business Account loan that proved impossible to pay back except by taking on a line of credit that was also impossible to repay, Townsend started Pete’s Press. I’m happy that small publisher carries on despite the demise of its retail parent.
Books and the City tells two stories: Penny University’s financial troubles and Townsend’s search for a copy of Stroll. As it does, she muses on the difficulties involved in running a bookstore these days, which are daunting. That massive online retailer—you know the one; I don’t want to type its name here, in case it brings me bad luck—has crushed so many independent bookstores. Her pilgrimage to Toronto’s bookstores gives us an opportunity to consider how miraculous it is that any independent bookstores exist at all. And, as Townsend acknowledges, Penny University didn’t have a chance; she opened it just days before the Covid-19 pandemic shut everything down. It wasn’t the only victim of the pandemic, and it might not be the last.
As I read Townsend’s book, I had just one quibble: psychogeography tends to be about walking that has no goal, and looking for a copy of Stroll isn’t quite an activity informed by chance—not a dérive or a drift, in other words. But she acknowledges that’s the case towards the end of the book: “My walk was not entirely aimless as I was following my list of bookstores, but it was at least spontaneous,” she writes, disarming my minor criticism. Moreover, Books and the City reflects not only on Toronto’s flux, its constant change, but also what it’s like to be a woman walking in a city. “I often equate the female experience of existing in public spaces to cycling on main roads,” she writes. “Like cyclists, we have every right to be there, but like cyclists we must be constantly vigilant and acutely aware of our surroundings at all times.” It’s a thoughtful analogy. While not everyone is “actively hostile” towards cyclists, or women, some are. And women end up being either too visible, attracting unwanted attention, or else invisible, not considered by urban planners. That’s true. But it’s also true, particularly in Regina, that pedestrians of any gender are at best an afterthought when it comes to the design of our city. That’s something that needs to change if we’re going to find a way to get out of our climate-destroying automobiles and navigate our surroundings in a different manner.
Buy this book when it appears. Townsend guides us through her psychogeographical pilgrimage in a thoughtful, engaging way.
Kim Fahner is a poet, an essayist, and a playwright. She’s also publishes book reviews on what seems to be a weekly basis! She teaches high school full time, too. I don’t know how she manages to be so productive.
The Donoghue Girl is Kim’s first novel. It’s a historical novel, set mostly around Sudbury (where Kim lives) between 1938 and 1940. It tells a story about a family, the Donoghues, who live above a general store in a village called Creighton Mine. That family has one son, Jack, and four daughters; as I began reading, I wondered which of those daughters was “the” Donoghue girl of the book’s title. That definite article got me curious. It doesn’t refer to Nellie, the daughter who is in a convent, preparing to take holy orders, because we never see her. It can’t suggest Maisie, because she’s a relatively minor character. It could be Ann, the oldest sister, who is the narrative focus of some of the early chapters, but she shares that position with Lizzie and an outsider to the family, Michael Power, who works at the nickel mine in the village. I’m not going to spoil anything here, but as the book continues, it becomes clear that the title refers to Lizzie. She’s the protagonist.
My questions about the novel’s title aren’t a criticism. They’re an example of how the book uses the phenomenon that the French literary critic Roland Barthes called “the hermeneutic code,” the aspect of narrative that generates questions that readers want answered, mysteries they want solved. Of course, the only way to answer those questions or solve those mysteries is to keep reading. The hermeneutic code propels us through the narrative; it keeps us engaged. And it’s hard at work in The Donoghue Girl. As I read, I kept asking myself: what’s going to happen next? Surprise followed surprise. Characters developed in ways that took me off guard. Events were unpredictable. It was all much like life itself–things happen we don’t anticipate. We know from the time period that war looms on the horizon, but it comes into the story in surprising ways. And while we might be expecting, or hoping for, a love story, that desire, and desire itself, becomes complicated as the story progresses.
One of the blurbs on the novel’s back cover refers to its consideration of “binding gender roles,” and that’s definitely one of The Donoghue Girl‘s main themes. The women in the story work within the limitations imposed on them, or struggle against those restrictions. In a different way, the men do, too. We learn about the trauma of one of the male characters, and the way that trauma shapes his surprising weaknesses. At least, that’s how I understood him. I could be wrong. His behaviour is unacceptable, yes, but Fahner is generous in showing us why he acts that way.
I’m trying not to give away any spoilers here, because Kim is a friend, and I want you to read her book. I thought the writing was lovely, something that doesn’t surprise me at all, given her poetry and essays. Take this paragraph from the middle of The Donoghue Girl as evidence:
Long after everyone else had gone in, turned from waving down the road, Lizzie stood there, solitary, her arms wrapped around her waist, as if to gather herself in so that she wouldn’t fall apart into a million pieces. Tears ran down her face, drying there in the late spring breeze, as she stood watching down the dirt road, until the bright glint of sunlight on the car’s back bumper sent a streak of silver across her eyes, until she knew he had moved away from her.
I wish I could write like that.
I’d say more about this book, but the morning is progressing, and I need to gather myself together for the day. I’m glad, though, that I couldn’t sleep last night, because I got up, lay on the living room sofa, and finished The Donoghue Girl. Right now, I’m willing to trade sleep for a good book. Sleep won’t come to me anyway, so I’d better make the best of things.
My walks these days are not that exciting: around Regina, running errands, going to work and back. I love them, but I’m not sure anyone wants to read about them.
But my friend Geoff Travers–he goes interesting places, and he writes about his adventures so the rest of us can experience them vicariously. He also posts photographs–lots of photographs!–to go along with his words.
He’s just about to head off for south-east Asia, and he’s planning to blog about that trip. You can find his first post about that experience here.
I should have known this already, but he writes that his favourite walk, of all the long walks he’s made, is the 88 Temple walk on the island of Shikoku in Japan. That’s on my bucket list, but whether I get there before bucket time arrives is anybody’s guess. Who knows? Maybe I’ll figure out a way to make that walk with Geoff somehow. You never know–it could happen!
You’ve probably heard of Sebastian Junger. He’s a filmmaker, journalist, and war correspondent, as well as the author of about a dozen books, including The Perfect Storm. A big deal, in other words. I heard him interviewed somewhere—on the CBC? on some podcast?—when In My Time of Dying: How I Came Face to Face With the Idea of an Afterlife came out last year, and I bought a copy for my partner, who is interested in things like near-death experiences, and who read his earlier book, Freedom, a while ago. I didn’t expect to read it myself. But it’s short, and I want to read more in 2025, so its length was going to help me reach that goal. Plus whenever I saw the book’s front cover, the old blues song Bob Dylan covered on his first LP way back when would run through my head, an instant earworm. Maybe, I thought, if I read In My Time of Dying, I won’t have to keep playing that song on Spotify.
That plan didn’t work; I can hear Bob’s youthful whine running through my brain as I type these words. But In My Time of Dying is a fascinating read. In the summer of 2020, Junger was with his wife and family at their isolated rural home when he experienced a pancreatic aneurysm. A weak artery burst, and he very nearly bled to death. He’d been having abdominal pain for months, but nobody knew that was the cause—or that it would almost kill him. As the doctors scrambled to save his life, Junger saw his late father come out of a dark pit in the operating-room floor. “My father exuded reassurance and seemed to be inviting me to go with him,” Junger recalls. “‘It’s okay, there’s nothing to be scared of,’ he sseemed to be saying. ‘Don’t fight it. I’ll take care of you.’” Junger was confused by this apparition. He didn’t want to have anything to do with the dead or with his father’s “grotesque” invitation. “‘Doctor, you’ve got to hurry,’” he remembers telling his doctor. “‘You’re losing me. I’m going right now.’”
In My Time of Dying tells the story of Junger’s miraculous recovery, the result of excellent medical care and sheer dumb luck. It wasn’t his first close call; in fact, I was surprised at how cavalierly he has treated his hold on life, risking it many times in search of a story or just taking foolish chances. Dudes do that, I guess. Maybe I’ve done the same in my own small, timid way. Junger’s memoir does more than just explain how he survived, though. It also explores what we know about such near-death experiences. Junger sifts through the literature on NDEs, as they’re called, thinking through the various explanations psychologists and other researchers offer for their existence. One possibility: as we are dying, n,n-dimethyltryptamine or DMT, a potent hallucinogen that’s produced endogenously in the brains of mammals, including ours, generates those experiences. Those who have used DMT report seeing bright lights and having a sensation of moving rapidly through space. The chemical protects cells from dying when there’s not enough oxygen or too much carbon dioxide, so its release in our last moments makes sense; our brain is trying to keep itself alive. But that’s not the only potential explanation; there are others, and Junger thinks carefully about them.
One of those possibilities is the idea that there’s an actual afterlife, that his father’s spirit literally appeared to Junger as he lay dying on that gurney. He explores (to the extent that anybody who isn’t a physicist can) quantum mechanics as a way of understanding the possibility, however remote, of an afterlife. Here Junger shows himself to be the son of his rationalistic scientist father and his mystical, New Agey mother. He doesn’t reach any firm conclusions, of course. How could he? Nobody knows what happens after we die, except the dead, and generally they don’t tell us much about their experience—except, perhaps, when they appear to us as we’re about to join them, something that’s surprisingly common.
The book ends with a story about Junger hiking with his father on a mountain in New Hampshire in late October when he was 16 or 17 years old. The older man begins to slide into hypothermia, and Junger keeps him going, feeding him hot soup until “he returned to being my father, and I returned to being his son.” They both survived. “I’m now much older than he was that night, and I finally understand how much my father must have trusted me on that trip, how much he must have loved me,” Junger tells us. “We’re all on the side of a mountain shocked by how fast it’s gotten dark; the only question is whether we’re with people we love or not. There is no other thing—no belief or religion or faith—there is just that. Just the knowledge that when we finally close our eyes, someone will be there to watch over us as we head out in to that great, soaring night.”
I really liked In My Time of Dying, although I know some folks might be put off by Junger’s hyper-masculine persona, and I intend to read some of his other books, starting, perhaps, with Freedom, which is on the bookshelves next to our bed. But probably not immediately. I’m not sure what I’m going to pick up next, but it’ll be by someone else, someone I haven’t just blogged about.
I don’t sleep that well. I used to sleep through the night–at least, that’s what I remember–but for the last few years, I’ve tended to wake up in the early hours of the morning and then find myself unable to fall asleep again. I’ve tried CBD, melatonin, going to bed early, going to bed late. Nothing has worked. So, when I heard Diane Macedo interviewed on Dan Harris’s podcast, 10% Happier last week as I was walking south to the Chapter’s-Indigo store in Regina, where I was planning to drink coffee before spending the rest of the day writing at the library branch in the mall next door, I thought I’d take a look at her book. I found it on the bargain shelves–a score for me, if not the publisher.
Macedo’s book covers a lot of ground, and it’s informed by her own struggles with shift work and a variety of sleep disturbances. It’s thorough, but also strangely repetitive, but as Macedo points out in the introduction, readers can just look at the chapters that relate to their own difficulties with sleeping, and leave the rest of the book alone. The first two sections provide an overview of different sleep-related issues, and what follows are chapters that discuss possible solutions to those issues.
I found The Sleep Fix useful. I know now that my sleep disturbances are related to something called “conditioned arousal”: my brain has learned that bed, especially at three a.m., is a place to worry and to run through things I want to write, rather than a place to sleep. Macedo suggests solutions: mindfulness apps, getting up and doing something fun until sleepiness returns, a practice called “constructive worrying,” journaling. I’ve tried mindfulness apps, and sometimes they can help me shift my attention away from spinning thoughts to my breathing, and I’m going to try her other suggestions, even though I hate the idea of getting out of bed in the cold darkness. I might also have some problems with thermal regulation, since I often wake up soaked in sweat, as if a fever just broke. Macedo has ideas about what to do with that problem, too, including wearing socks to bed, since cold extremities make our bodies generate more heat.
Maybe you have trouble sleeping. If so, you could do worse than spend $8 on The Sleep Fix.
I didn’t read enough last year. Too much work, too much anxiety about too much work, too tired to concentrate on anything when I got home from work. I bought books and stacked them in teetering piles that slumped and collapsed, but I didn’t open them.
I want to do better in 2025. Books are like food, and I’m hungry. I have a goal in mind, which I’m not going to share here because I know that this year is going to be as hard as the last one, and I’m pretty sure my reading goal is out of reach. It might not be, though, and even if I don’t accomplish that goal, I want to make the effort.
I’m off to a good start: I’ve finished a book, Ariel Gordon’s Fungal. It’s not just a book about mushrooms; it’s a book about approaching the world with enthusiasm and joy. Love, even. We could use more of those virtues right now.
This post is a celebration of two things: finishing my first book of 2025, and Ariel’s achievement with Fungal. I plan to keep posting about the books I read, so I can share them with you, and also brag a little about slowly getting closer to my secret goal.
