So, I haven't had the time to write for a while, sadly enough...I've been behind in my reading, busy with the new job, Keren's bday, a wedding(yay!)and the thus necessary trip to Victoria. But in only about a week, I finished two books, both wonderful, both needed to be read for the project that this blog is dedicated to...I finished Richard Ford's The Sportswriter last week and today(only a few minutes ago actually) I finished Peter Behrens' The Law of Dreams. I realized last night, while at the tail end of Behrens' book(the 2006 winner of the Governor General), it's been a really long time since I've read a book by a woman (in 8 books as a matter of fact)! Though, the next one I read(pretty sure it will be March by Geraldine Brooks, the Pulitzer winner in 2006). The Sportswriter is the first in a trilogy by Richard Ford, the second book was the one that won the Pulitzer...I had to read The Sportswriter first, of course to know what the second one would be all about...Ford is an amazing writer, even about a topic that I wasn't sure I would be into...Middle-aged male angst, dreaminess, restlessness. What I thought at the time, though, and still do(though I have yet to read the second book), is that Ford's main character, Frank Bascombe, is like a male version of me in so many aspects...His dreaminess, lost in thought constantly, people watcher, impromptu person to whom one feels compelled to confess(a neighbor confesses his gay affair and then kills himself, directing his only correspondence to the outside world to Frank, though that kind of blows the end). Frank is constantly in self-reflection, self-meditation(ironically or not, similar to the character of Fergus in Behrens' novel), and his outlook, inspired mostly by his sheer loneliness(also something that Fergus shares) reminds me so much of my own thoughts...In both novels, I found so many human truths, put into words either through the thoughts or spoken words of the characters via the authors' tones. There was so much in Ford's book that was marvelous, though the last page was what was fabulous(and I'm excited to read the 2nd book, too)..."I walked out of the condos onto the flat lithesome beach this morning, and took a walk in my swimming trunks and no shirt on. And I thought that one natural effect of life is to cover you in a thin layer of...what? A film? A residue or skin of all the things you've done and been and said and erred at? I'm not sure. But you are under it, and for a long time, and only rarely do you know it, except that for some unexpected reason or opportunity you come out--for an hour or even for a moment--and you suddenly feel pretty good. And in that magical instant you realize how long it's been since you felt just that way. Have you been ill, you ask. Is life itself an illness or a syndrome? Who knows? We've all felt that way, I'm confident, since there's no way that I could feel what hundreds of millions of other citizens haven't. [paragraph break] Only suddenly, then, you are out of it--that film, that skin of life--as when you were a kid. And you think: this must've been the way it was once in my life, though you didn't know it then, and don't really even remember it--a feeling of wind on your cheeks and your arms, of being released, let loose, of being the light-floater. And since that is not how it has been for a long time, you want, this time, to make it last, this glistening one moment, this cool air, this new living, so that you can preserve a feeling of it, inasmuch as when it comes again it may just be too late. You may just be too old. And in truth, of course, this may be the last time that you will ever feel this way again(Ford 374-5)." And Behrens' book, oh my freakin' God, what a surprising joy, even though it was rough and full of a sad life that was a struggle for everyone...it's about one character in particular, Fergus, and his journey from the potato famine-stricken Ireland, to the bush of Canada, and of all the people he meets in between...Very much an Irish Odyssey. Behrens' book is compared to Ondaatje's work, which may be true due to a feeling of somewhat epic sweeping, but it's better than that, a more direct clear narrative. And, I'm not a big fan of Ondaatje...There is so much about horses, too, and their mistreatment, and I think too, that Behrens is drawing a parallel between the horse, wild, mistreated by society, looking for some kind of kindness, and Fergus himself, a boy who never lived in a room, only a shabbily built cabin on top of an Irish farmer's mountain(also, the horses that died so terribly in the building of English railways, reminded me with their human-like characteristics of Faulkner's horses in As I Lay Dying). It was great, and also full of good quotes, since the author, through the protagonist's thoughts, is constantly plagued by the thought of dreams and not being able to escape the past, or the dead...Two quotes I loved..."Stories always started this way, suddenly, and set within a strange world. Patience is required, to let the stories unroll. This is how people explain their lives" (Behrens 289). This was how I felt the book was, a bit slow to get started, but it unrolled into a vast experience, spanning 4 countries, two continents...And the last quote..."Is courage just the awareness that gestures, journeys, lives have intrinsic shape, and must, one way or another, be completed? That there is a path to be followed, literally to the death? Awareness is harsh but better than being unaware, never sensing a path. Better than a life of stunts, false starts, dead ends. Better than the irredeemable ugliness of the halfhearted. Better than feeling there is no shape to anything--there is. The world knows itself" (Behrens 356). This novel actually reminded me a bit of A Fine Balance in its sweeping nature, but dare I say it? I liked this just as well, maybe a tad better? Not as long, and I've always had a weird penchant for Irish literature...A story of how a man's journey leads him to Canada, not unlike so many others, I think...:) PPs-25, GGs-26.