Beyond the headlines of the economy come the much tougher stories.  The men trapped in the coal mines.  The cancer rates in coal mining community.  The oil drilling jobs with big pay, balanced by the big risk.  Sure, there are jobs and money to be had, but at what cost.  For an area with an economy based largely on natural resources, high paying blue collar jobs are too good to be true.  Ask a lobster fisherman out on the ocean in the middle of an Atlantic storm.  The ocean and the earth extract their own costs.

That’s a world that I, in many ways, left behind almost 15 years ago when I moved south to Boston and later to London.

Just over a year ago I walked into a bookstore in Guildford, England and was browsing through a display of Booker Prize nominated books.  I picked up one after another until I turned over February by Lisa Moore.

While I have only vague memories of the Ocean Ranger disaster, I do remember the inquiry and many other similar events in Atlantic Canada.  An oil rig that ‘couldn’t sink’ that sank in a bad Atlantic storm.  A crew lost in the bitter ocean.  Families left behind to rebuild their lives.

It was a disorienting moment to have all this flood my head in the middle of a bookstore in a genteel community on the other side of the world.

I put the book down and didn’t end up picking it up to read until a few months ago.  I was on vacation in Nova Scotia and it seemed like the right place to read a book like this.

I can’t say that February is the most uplifting book I’ve ever read, but given the subject that can hardly be expected.  Helen is a widow of the Ocean Ranger disaster.  She and her husband Cal lived a relatively normal Newfoundland life.  They married, had a family and faced the tough economic realities of the region.  When oil jobs came to town, the gamble proved alluring.  High pay for relatively unskilled work.  Sure it would be hard work, but when the weeks on the rig were done, Cal could be with his family.  Like so many others, Helen and Cal took the risk.

The book is set in the present, as Helen struggles with the realities of her children’s lives.  Her son John has gotten a woman pregnant and is bringing her home.  Helen flashes back through the years to everything that led up to Cal’s decision to go out on the Ocean Ranger and to her struggles to raise four children alone.  But mostly, she fixates on the night the Ocean Ranger went down.  In an attempt to somehow be with him in death, she lives and relives every detail of what she knows and imagines of that night.  The horror her husband lived and died in.

These moves back and forward through history are very disorienting as a reader, but give you a good understanding of the mental world Helen lives in.  A life of the ‘what ifs’ that could have prevented Cal from going on the rig.  A life of anger that she was left to deal with the aftermath.  A life almost frozen in time out in the cold Atlantic night.

As difficult as it was, emotionally, to read, I wanted to finish the book to try to get some closure on Helen’s life.  Her present (and past) had been so hard, I kept hoping for her future.

I’m sure there are many many women in Atlantic Canada who have lived this book.  Each of the disaster headlines has many families who continue to live the story long after the media departs.  I don’t pretend to know their struggles, but I can only imagine that Moore has done a very good job at bringing to life a character who had her life flung at her and did her best to sort it out.

Yet, it is hard to imagine two books on the same subject being more different.  In Sarah’s Key, the horrors on the Parisien internment of Jews is told through the eyes of an innocent 10 year old.  Overwhelmed and unprepared for the horrors the witnesses and unable to ever escape what she’s experienced.

The Glass Room is a very different book.  On the simplest level, it is the story of a house built in pre-war Czechoslavakia and all the different worlds that pass through in the next 60 years.

However, it is the story of the family that built and lived in it until the war begins that is the most fascinating.  A modern couple with a strong belief in the saving power of modernity.  A couple beyond interest in religion, with only a faith in progress, hire an architect to design a thoroughly modern house for them.  An architectural wonder, it gives the impression of being suspended in light.

That impression is marred by the approaching horrors of World War II.  You watch the events slowly unfolding through the eyes of these very worldly wise people.  Even if they don’t want to admit it to themselves, they sense where things are heading, particularly because Viktor is a Jew.  They have the financial means to pack up and catch a flight out at the last possible moment to an exile in Switzerland.

But far from the innocence of Sarah in Sarah’s Key, these characters have all the complexity of adults.  Their perfect looking home life is marred by betrayals.  In the end, their modern views cannot save them and they have to flee their perfect lives to watch the Germans overtake their country from the comfort of Switzerland.

Of course, there are far more characters than this in the novel.  Each one is well developed.  You don’t always understand the motivation of each of them, but I think that is natural when people are enveloped by such extraordinary circumstances where survival is so uncertain.

I really enjoyed this book.  It was well written and very engrossing.  It didn’t have the black and white quality of Sarah’s Key.  It’s written in only shades of grey (ironic, given it’s reliance on the pure white backdrop of the house).  The failures and compromises of people showing the failure of the modernity that was to save them.

The Glass Room is not for the ‘faint of morals’, but it is a very well written book that raises questions and introduces haunting characters.  It is not the epic tale of horror of Sarah’s Key, but a more subtle unfolding of continuing horrors of war through the eyes of those who slowly absorb the pain.

I had a very promising second interview on Tuesday for a job that looks quite good.  But, of course, it’s hard to tell in an interview what the job will really be like and what your colleagues will be like.

And so I’ve been sitting waiting for the phone to ring.  When it did, I got a surprise – an interview at another school.  Evidently the show must go on!

Stay tuned for the stunning conclusion of my job hunt!

I didn’t think On Canaan’s Side by Sebastian Barry would be the first casualty of this.  After all, it was nominated for prizes.  Sebastian Barry is supposed to be a great writer.  However, after three days of picking up the book without being able to remember the main character, the plot or what was happening in the last section I read, I got tired of forcing myself to read just a little more.  I was not enjoying the book and it didn’t seem to be improving.

This is not to say On Canaan’s Side is a bad book.  I just didn’t take to it and didn’t fancy forcing myself through a couple of pages a night for the foreseeable future to finish it.  I gave up after 40 pages, which should give a pretty good idea if I would enjoy it.

I’m sure there will be more books tossed aside during the year.  I’m also having trouble with my current non-fiction read.  Even good books don’t always appeal to everyone!

When I began reading I wondered if I had somehow started wrong.  Such a startling blow to have all the horror of the book explode on the first page.  And then to turn the page and re-read the same horror with a few more details added in.  And then each subsequent chapter with its own unfolding of the same horror.  To finally finish Part One and hope that somehow Part Two would go in a different direction, only to find that it only went deeper into the suffering of Kelly, the main character.  As Kelly goes through hallucinations on her way to death, you start to wonder which parts of the book are true, and which are her imagination playing tricks on you.

The basic plot of the book is uniquely un-unique in itself.  Pulled from the history books and much wondered events of the past, the plot mimic the facts known and details speculated from Senator Edward Kennedy’s accident on Chappaquiddick Island.  In the book the character is just called The Senator, but the details are unmistakable.

Black Water isn’t the kind of book that you enjoy.  The reader is worn down by the details of the suffering and in knowing that there is no hope of a different ending than the obvious.  However, Oates’ writing will keep you reading through the whole book.  It is paced beautifully and the prose is outstanding, even if the subject is difficult.

This is the first of Oates’ books that I have read and I’m looking forward to reading more.

I look for unexpected surgings of new life.

Around me in the people whom I know and love

I look for unopened gifts of promise.

Within me in the familiar sanctuary of my own soul

I look for shinings of the everlasting light.

Before me, around me, within me

I look for your life-giving mystery, O God,

before me, around me, within me.

~ Sounds of the Eternal: A Celtic Psalter

J. Philp Newell

Today I was catching up on some blog reading and Tall Skinny Kiwi did a great job of talking about the situation.  The US and UK churches are very different (in many of the same ways that the cultures of the two countries are different).

While many American church leaders see thousands of church attenders as the sign of success, some British say 40 is the highest number of church attenders that will still allow an acceptable working dynamic of interaction and intimacy with each other. Any more than 40, and people slip through the cracks or become mere spectators.

This is just one of the cultural differences that he fingers, but this specifically caught my attention because it’s one of the things that I’m struggling with in my US church right now.  I’ve gone from a Fresh Expressions environment to a fairly typical suburban church with the usual emphasis on pumping up the numbers.  And I feel like I’ve fallen through the cracks.  Not in my small group, of course.  In my small group there are a handful of people who notice what’s going on in my life and know some of my struggles.  But on a Sunday morning I feel no more connected than I do sitting in a movie theater.

For an American pastor to take a pot shot at the Church in another country because he feels it doesn’t live up to his country’s values (having nothing to do with Biblical values) rings false.  And dangerous.

I’m not sure if Hilderbrand could have written the book without the assistance of all of the Madoff headlines.  Did the wife know what was going on?  If not, why not?  If she suspected, why didn’t she follow up on her suspicions?

Despite the reader’s predisposition to hate her, the Meredith character is surprisingly likeable and easy to empathize with.  Connie (the widow character) is also likeable, if slightly one dimensional.

You certainly won’t strain any mental muscles reading this book, but it’s good at what it promises – offering a light, uplifting beach novel.  I enjoyed it, as I have several other of Hilderbrand’s novels.

Next?  Back to the stack of heavy books.

December came and it opened in a handful of theaters somewhere in the US and got very good reviews.  But there was no sign of it anywhere in my area.

Last Friday I was flipping through the local paper and there was a review and beside it an ad for its opening at the local art theater.  My brain began buzzing with possible plans to see it.  Those plans required working around lots of other plans and finding a time when I could borrow a car.

On Monday I finally did it.  I hopped in the car and headed across town.  Even in line for my ticket I somehow believed that they would sell out and I would be disappointed.

With my ticket firmly in hand I went to the concession area and bought a cup of tea – after all, this is a British movie – and went to find my seat in the theater.

I wasn’t disappointed in this movie.  It was well made.  Every shot had a purpose.  Every turn of the head had meaning.

It is most definitely a British film and you’ll be disappointed if you’re looking for an American spy thriller.  There are no car chases.  Nothing blowing up.  A few shots fires, but not many.  There is still plenty of violence, but it’s of a very different sort.

Gary Oldman is spectacular as the lead character, Smiley.  He is quiet and self-contained, never giving away the thoughts in his head.  The rest of the stellar British cast live up to that, giving their characters subtle life.

The cinematography and costuming/set decoration for the film are also outstanding.  You were pulled into this underground 1970s world.  Britain not yet fully emerged from the post-War era.  Still under a layer of fog, so to speak.

The settings were fascinating to me.  Around each corner seemed to be a building I recognized.  Each shot seemed to contain some very London-specific item.  I was homesick just watching.

I would love to say this was the best film of the year, but since in the past year I’ve seen only The Help and this movie, I’m not very qualified to comment.

If you love spy films, see this film for a more subtle approach.  If you love thrillers, watch this for a solid story that will leave you guessing (unless you’ve read the book).  If you love films set in London, you won’t be disappointed.

I’ll be watching it again, if only to be able to IMDB all the actors as they come on.  It seems at times like the entirety of the British acting scene is in the movie somewhere.