I love Canada. Perhaps it's because I just returned from it with a ton of books for CHEAP, and because I have great friends there, and a whole bunch of other things, but right now I love Canada for Clara Callan. It was a great read, with lesbian characters at the forefront, the lesbian character of note, Evelyn, talking openly in letters about her relationships with the recipients being totally okay with it(and the book takes place in the mid-1930s!). And, Evelyn is cool, she's a writer for radio shows and later film who dispenses advice with a hefty dose of sarcasm and wit. First I thought Canada was cool because I lived there, and then I thought it was cool because Marian Engel's The Bear won the GG in 1976 and it was a novel about a woman's sexual experience with a real wild bear. The Pulitzers are usually so much more demure, and though they offer up an American experience of sorts, it's more mainstream, I find. Canadians seem to push the envelope a little more. Kroetsch's The Studhorse Man is another example of a novel that was a little off-the-map that won. I mean seriously, in Kroetsch's The Seed Catalogue, a book of poetry written around the same time, he writes about fucking a pumpkin...Though Kroetsch is one of Canada's most famous writers, he is far from mainstream...but, I digress. Clara Callan. I got it for a present from Kate and Jean back when I think they were still in Toronto and I was still in culinary school. Kate raved about it, but I hadn't gotten a chance to read it until now...It was so beautifully done, reminding me in terms of its readability of Sandra Gulland's Josephine B. series. Wright's words are fabulous, and his title character reminded me a lot of myself. I liked how the title character was a big reader and into music, and I like how the author situated the characters in the literature and popular culture of the time...talking about the Andy Hardy movies, Gone with the Wind premiering both as a book and movie, the building of the radio business and its prominence in everyday life. I don't have any quotes that I liked because all the prose was so great(and because the one page I dog-eared I can't find now, the dog ear must not have held...)...I also must say though, that I'm surprised that I was able to finish this whilst on my "vacation," during which I also watched 4 movies in the theater! It helped that Chris made me eat dinner in his restaurant AND WAIT FOR HIM FOR ALMOST 4 HOURS, so I managed to plow through this 415 page tome then and finished it between two 1 1/2 hour(3 hours total) ferry rides. I've read a few more of the GG's than the Pulitzer, but I think I like the Canadian choices better overall. Though I still haven't read The Wars, The Tin Flute, and Anil's Ghost...so I may be whistling a different tune soon. I totally fell off the bandwagon today especially with the book purchasing, picking up 8 or 9(I lost count), but all but one have either won a Pulitzer or Governor General(the overwhelming # GG's that my library doesn't even have)so...you know, if I read only 7 more specific books from the GG list, I will have read everything that's won the GG in Canada from present day through 1983(that's Keren's birth year!!)...I still have a lot more to go, though...hmmm...GG's 25, Pulitzers 22...