MISCONDUCT OF THE HEART
Cordelia’s Strube’s 11th novel hurtles out of the gate and never lets up. Anyone who has ever worked in a restaurant, especially a chain, will instantly recognize the barely managed chaos of the kitchen that Strube dramatizes. Misconduct of the Heart is narrated by kitchen manager Stevie; while she tries valiantly to keep things running on the job, she’s also dealing with so many serious personal issues that her days are filled with dashing from crisis to crisis.
As is typical of a Strube novel, everyone has grim problems. Stevie’s son, Pierce, is staying with his mother. Suffering PTSD after returning from a tour of duty in Afghanistan, Pierce has turned to alcohol and explodes in violent outbursts. Meanwhile, Stevie’s parents, Peggy and Reggie, both have dementia, and Stevie is trying to keep them afloat in their own house as there isn’t enough money to send them to a care home. Stevie’s staff at the restaurant, mostly immigrants, are underpaid and overworked, and Stevie does her best to protect them from the insanely incompetent restaurant manager and the district manager whose sole interest is following the corporate directive to maximize profits. Everyone is trapped in a vortex of need, something that is abundantly clear by the end of the first chapter.
Stevie has her own demons apart from attempting to deal with everyone else’s. She’s never been able to get over the circumstances of Pierce’s conception; the bond between mother and son is damaged from the get-go, but that doesn’t stop Stevie from trying to help him. Her coping skills have been honed by a childhood in the care of utterly useless parents. Stevie’s own numerous mistakes (including “playing musical fuckchairs and chain-drinking to steady the turbulence in my head”) have made her sympathetic to the screw-ups of others.
All the grief in this novel would be far too much to bear except that Strube has an absolute gift for humour. Stevie is smart, funny, and sensitive. She has an innate sense of justice and understands the mess the world is in. (When Pierce decides to sign up for the war, she calls it “George Junior’s cash-grab poppy war.”) And when a five-year-old girl – who may or may not be Stevie’s granddaughter – turns up, Stevie struggles through the emotional and practical challenges with aplomb. She is a remarkably engaging character.
Strube pulls no punches in dramatizing her characters or their situations, but given Stevie’s nature, it’s clear from the beginning that she isn’t going to give up, no matter how tired she is or how sick she is of hearing about her coworkers’ sexual escapades and heartaches and the corporation’s focus on the bottom line. She does become a mouthpiece at times for vast social problems, but that doesn’t detract from her essential humanity. You can’t help but root for her. (Candace Fertile, Quill & Quire)
As is typical of a Strube novel, everyone has grim problems. Stevie’s son, Pierce, is staying with his mother. Suffering PTSD after returning from a tour of duty in Afghanistan, Pierce has turned to alcohol and explodes in violent outbursts. Meanwhile, Stevie’s parents, Peggy and Reggie, both have dementia, and Stevie is trying to keep them afloat in their own house as there isn’t enough money to send them to a care home. Stevie’s staff at the restaurant, mostly immigrants, are underpaid and overworked, and Stevie does her best to protect them from the insanely incompetent restaurant manager and the district manager whose sole interest is following the corporate directive to maximize profits. Everyone is trapped in a vortex of need, something that is abundantly clear by the end of the first chapter.
Stevie has her own demons apart from attempting to deal with everyone else’s. She’s never been able to get over the circumstances of Pierce’s conception; the bond between mother and son is damaged from the get-go, but that doesn’t stop Stevie from trying to help him. Her coping skills have been honed by a childhood in the care of utterly useless parents. Stevie’s own numerous mistakes (including “playing musical fuckchairs and chain-drinking to steady the turbulence in my head”) have made her sympathetic to the screw-ups of others.
All the grief in this novel would be far too much to bear except that Strube has an absolute gift for humour. Stevie is smart, funny, and sensitive. She has an innate sense of justice and understands the mess the world is in. (When Pierce decides to sign up for the war, she calls it “George Junior’s cash-grab poppy war.”) And when a five-year-old girl – who may or may not be Stevie’s granddaughter – turns up, Stevie struggles through the emotional and practical challenges with aplomb. She is a remarkably engaging character.
Strube pulls no punches in dramatizing her characters or their situations, but given Stevie’s nature, it’s clear from the beginning that she isn’t going to give up, no matter how tired she is or how sick she is of hearing about her coworkers’ sexual escapades and heartaches and the corporation’s focus on the bottom line. She does become a mouthpiece at times for vast social problems, but that doesn’t detract from her essential humanity. You can’t help but root for her. (Candace Fertile, Quill & Quire)
From the moment we went into isolation, people were making jokes. I don’t mean they weren’t taking things seriously (although there was certainly some of that too.) I mean that people had an amazing ability to find the salve of humour in the horror of a global pandemic. Despite the surreal nature of our experience, despite being mostly stuck inside our homes struggling to find information, food, and toilet paper, we were buoyed by a light-hearted joke tossed between friends—even if those jokes weren’t actually told in person.
Shared videos on social media of people passing time by pillow fighting in backwards hoodies. Neighbours playing ping pong with each other from across their balconies. Messy-haired shut-ins mocking the fact that they switched out of their day pyjamas into their night pyjamas. People riffing daily on their own increasing stir crazy-ness.
When I think about it, the ability to have a laugh when things feel dire is one of my favourite human traits. I tend surround myself with people who have a real gift for dark humour—they know that groping for levity in tragedy is what keeps us from descending into total darkness. They know that almost every crisis, personal or wide-scale, can be endured via a joke or two. They know that an inappropriate chuckle has the power to break through an otherwise insurmountable amount of tension.They have gotten me through a lot of bleak days.
“We’re sharing a joke that no one else finds funny,” writes Cordelia Strube of this brand of humour in her new novel, Misconduct of the Heart. “We are the naughty kids at the back of the class, delighting in our shared naughtiness.”
I had intended to read Misconduct of the Heart while on a long overdue vacation, preferably in the sun, on a reclining chair, while clutching a can of beer. It seems silly—even distasteful—to complain about the fact that this never actually happened. Our family trip to Florida was cut short when the Prime Minister stepped up to his podium and urged Canadians abroad to return home as soon as possible. My family was lucky enough to find a flight within twenty-four hours of his announcement and, while seated amongst panicked airline passengers in masks and gloves, Misconduct of the Heart remained unopened in my luggage.
When I did get back to Toronto, buckling down for the required fourteen days of travel-related self-isolation, I could barely focus long enough to read a single page. As I worried about how we were going to get prescriptions, groceries, dog and cat food, I kept opening books and then abandoning them. I carried them from room to room, hoping they would somehow maintain my attention. What did get most of my attention was my phone, poisoning any chance of mental wellness with its relentless river of terrifying updates.
Even though I knew it would have been much healthier to even briefly escape into a novel, I couldn’t maintain focus long enough to get away from reality. I couldn’t stop myself from scrolling, clicking, and refreshing into oblivion. As one by one my favourite bookstores closed indefinitely, I couldn’t finish a chapter without at least a dozen self-imposed interruptions (and then a session of mentally punishing myself for said interruptions.)
Eventually I read a page here, and a page there, until I’d read a dozen. And then fifty. And then a hundred. I was grateful the book was there, even if I couldn’t give it the attention it deserved. It took me a full fourteen days of travel-related isolation to finish Misconduct of the Heart, in no way a comment on the book’s quality. Despite my pandemic-related personal reading failures, I was very glad and very grateful, in those difficult moments, to have a story of people surviving the worst by laughing their way through it by my side.
The cover copy of Misconduct of the Heart includes words like “hilarious” and “darkly humorous,” and claims it “will make you cheer.” It’s also a book about the unspeakable violence of war, PTSD, rape, abuse, neglect, poverty, racism, alcoholism, cancer, suicide, mental illness, and the exploitative nature of capitalism. It’s an onslaught of difficult issues and horrifying experiences, a depiction of damaged people who have lived through the worst, and who are punishing each other as a result. But it’s also a book that proves this kind of gruelling subject matter is not incongruous to laughter, and that suggests finding levity may be the only way to get through.
Stevie is a recovering alcoholic who lives with her veteran son, struggling under the weight of both his PTSD and her own. She is a survivor of gang rape, and her son—also an alcoholic—is unaware that is how she became pregnant with him. Stevie’s parents are mentally deteriorating, her gruelling kitchen job is in daily chaos and threatened by corporate “restructuring,” and her closest confidants face discrimination, violence, infidelity, and cancer, among other things. A blind geriatric dog ends up in her care, and a little girl who may or may not be her granddaughter, and may or may not have been abused, shows up on her doorstep; “She is so small, so mighty, so weary, so wise. She has remained her singular self due to sheer force of will, despite neglect, abandonment, burns."
And yet, with all of this, the book is darkly funny, even heartwarming. It is real, and raw, and jarring, and frenetic, and upsetting—but it is also about people being deeply loyal, and showing up for each other. It is about them loving one another despite not knowing how to love. It’s about them throwing up their hands and simply coping with what is directly in front of them in whatever way they can. It is about how mundane struggle and suffering can actually be, and how in the end all we can really do is move forward with our circumstances in the hope of something better.
“(A)ll the stuff between birth and death feels random. We thrash about trying to find a reason for it, a logic. Why? All the things that happen, or almost happen, or never happen, make us who we are.”
The human capacity to find joy in difficult times has been proven to me over and over again during the last few weeks. Even as the news got worse, the restrictions tighter, the timeline longer, and our fears heightened, there has been a great deal of gratitude, resilience, and reprieve found in laughter between loved ones. I’ve been grateful every time I’ve heard it, and welcomed the escape whenever it was my own.
Making people laugh during times like this is a gift, and it is one that Strube’s admirable Stevie has mastered. Even if that laughter is used as a way to deflect, or to look away, or to temporarily avoid the real work of healing from trauma, it’s unbelievably necessary in the space between. In Stevie’s case, laughter and keeping things light helps her arrive at the kind of love she didn’t know she was allowed to have, and keeps her and the people she cares about alive.
It’s true that certain human coping mechanisms may not be pretty, or sanctioned, or even “tasteful”—but if they bring people together and help them survive the worst, they can certainly be valuable. There is nothing funny about what we are all dealing with right now, but shared laughter may be the only way we’ll cope. (Stacey May Fowles, Open Book Toronto)
Shared videos on social media of people passing time by pillow fighting in backwards hoodies. Neighbours playing ping pong with each other from across their balconies. Messy-haired shut-ins mocking the fact that they switched out of their day pyjamas into their night pyjamas. People riffing daily on their own increasing stir crazy-ness.
When I think about it, the ability to have a laugh when things feel dire is one of my favourite human traits. I tend surround myself with people who have a real gift for dark humour—they know that groping for levity in tragedy is what keeps us from descending into total darkness. They know that almost every crisis, personal or wide-scale, can be endured via a joke or two. They know that an inappropriate chuckle has the power to break through an otherwise insurmountable amount of tension.They have gotten me through a lot of bleak days.
“We’re sharing a joke that no one else finds funny,” writes Cordelia Strube of this brand of humour in her new novel, Misconduct of the Heart. “We are the naughty kids at the back of the class, delighting in our shared naughtiness.”
I had intended to read Misconduct of the Heart while on a long overdue vacation, preferably in the sun, on a reclining chair, while clutching a can of beer. It seems silly—even distasteful—to complain about the fact that this never actually happened. Our family trip to Florida was cut short when the Prime Minister stepped up to his podium and urged Canadians abroad to return home as soon as possible. My family was lucky enough to find a flight within twenty-four hours of his announcement and, while seated amongst panicked airline passengers in masks and gloves, Misconduct of the Heart remained unopened in my luggage.
When I did get back to Toronto, buckling down for the required fourteen days of travel-related self-isolation, I could barely focus long enough to read a single page. As I worried about how we were going to get prescriptions, groceries, dog and cat food, I kept opening books and then abandoning them. I carried them from room to room, hoping they would somehow maintain my attention. What did get most of my attention was my phone, poisoning any chance of mental wellness with its relentless river of terrifying updates.
Even though I knew it would have been much healthier to even briefly escape into a novel, I couldn’t maintain focus long enough to get away from reality. I couldn’t stop myself from scrolling, clicking, and refreshing into oblivion. As one by one my favourite bookstores closed indefinitely, I couldn’t finish a chapter without at least a dozen self-imposed interruptions (and then a session of mentally punishing myself for said interruptions.)
Eventually I read a page here, and a page there, until I’d read a dozen. And then fifty. And then a hundred. I was grateful the book was there, even if I couldn’t give it the attention it deserved. It took me a full fourteen days of travel-related isolation to finish Misconduct of the Heart, in no way a comment on the book’s quality. Despite my pandemic-related personal reading failures, I was very glad and very grateful, in those difficult moments, to have a story of people surviving the worst by laughing their way through it by my side.
The cover copy of Misconduct of the Heart includes words like “hilarious” and “darkly humorous,” and claims it “will make you cheer.” It’s also a book about the unspeakable violence of war, PTSD, rape, abuse, neglect, poverty, racism, alcoholism, cancer, suicide, mental illness, and the exploitative nature of capitalism. It’s an onslaught of difficult issues and horrifying experiences, a depiction of damaged people who have lived through the worst, and who are punishing each other as a result. But it’s also a book that proves this kind of gruelling subject matter is not incongruous to laughter, and that suggests finding levity may be the only way to get through.
Stevie is a recovering alcoholic who lives with her veteran son, struggling under the weight of both his PTSD and her own. She is a survivor of gang rape, and her son—also an alcoholic—is unaware that is how she became pregnant with him. Stevie’s parents are mentally deteriorating, her gruelling kitchen job is in daily chaos and threatened by corporate “restructuring,” and her closest confidants face discrimination, violence, infidelity, and cancer, among other things. A blind geriatric dog ends up in her care, and a little girl who may or may not be her granddaughter, and may or may not have been abused, shows up on her doorstep; “She is so small, so mighty, so weary, so wise. She has remained her singular self due to sheer force of will, despite neglect, abandonment, burns."
And yet, with all of this, the book is darkly funny, even heartwarming. It is real, and raw, and jarring, and frenetic, and upsetting—but it is also about people being deeply loyal, and showing up for each other. It is about them loving one another despite not knowing how to love. It’s about them throwing up their hands and simply coping with what is directly in front of them in whatever way they can. It is about how mundane struggle and suffering can actually be, and how in the end all we can really do is move forward with our circumstances in the hope of something better.
“(A)ll the stuff between birth and death feels random. We thrash about trying to find a reason for it, a logic. Why? All the things that happen, or almost happen, or never happen, make us who we are.”
The human capacity to find joy in difficult times has been proven to me over and over again during the last few weeks. Even as the news got worse, the restrictions tighter, the timeline longer, and our fears heightened, there has been a great deal of gratitude, resilience, and reprieve found in laughter between loved ones. I’ve been grateful every time I’ve heard it, and welcomed the escape whenever it was my own.
Making people laugh during times like this is a gift, and it is one that Strube’s admirable Stevie has mastered. Even if that laughter is used as a way to deflect, or to look away, or to temporarily avoid the real work of healing from trauma, it’s unbelievably necessary in the space between. In Stevie’s case, laughter and keeping things light helps her arrive at the kind of love she didn’t know she was allowed to have, and keeps her and the people she cares about alive.
It’s true that certain human coping mechanisms may not be pretty, or sanctioned, or even “tasteful”—but if they bring people together and help them survive the worst, they can certainly be valuable. There is nothing funny about what we are all dealing with right now, but shared laughter may be the only way we’ll cope. (Stacey May Fowles, Open Book Toronto)
The proverbial glass is nowhere close to half-full in “Misconduct of the Heart.” An astringent and delightful but also harrowing and grim comedy built atop a solid block of despair, Cordelia Strube’s eleventh novel doesn’t exactly dwell on reasons for hope as it surveys suburban Toronto (aka “crappy Scarborough”) circa 2014.
An ex “chain-drinker” and former Walmart employee with a “lacklustre career in Lingerie” who now oversees a kitchen at a Chappy’s, a stingy chain restaurant, Strube’s narrator struggles to manage edicts (and emissaries) from Corporate alongside the assorted needs and infinite quirks of a multicultural (legal, illegal) restaurant staff, whom she affectionately calls “rejects.”
She wonders about her ability to experience love or contentment while wrangling with her nearly feral son, the “product of rape” by four men. He’s returned from Afghanistan with untreated PTSD, a thirst for beer and an infinite reserve of toxic emotions reserved for his mother. In her spare minutes she’s attuned to “mayhem,” news of environmental disasters and far-off atrocities committed in the name of truth, God or profit. (As for her name, here’s her jaded view: “Post-rape, in search of a new and improved me, I changed my last name to Tree. Only a nice, positive person could be called Stevie Tree.”)
The novel’s pleasures — such as they are — come from the telling. As introspective Stevie lurches from one disaster to another (all the while racking up debt on her cards) and adds to her tally of mistakes, she’s a marvel of wittily cantankerous observations of a benighted world.
From gloomy philosophizing (“Now I know life gets worse until one day you can’t remember how to use a fork”; “We plod through the detritus ignorant of each other’s suffering, wailing in operas nobody wants to hear”) to a funeral of an ex, a panicked freak-out inside a chicken costume, an unexpected grandmotherhood, a messy drunken relapse, tender attentions from a busboy named Gyorgi, incontinent parents, and a product called a Vagankle, Stevie gets through burdensome days, sure only to expect fresh hells with the following sunrise.
“Never underestimate the curative power of laughter,” Strube’s narrator reflects. Stevie happens to be consoling another woman by describing a recent regrettable encounter with a man. It’s not exactly “curative,” but it is relieving. And in “Misconduct of the Heart” it’s particularly welcome because there’s so much else to lament. (Brett Joseph Grubisic, Toronto Star)
An ex “chain-drinker” and former Walmart employee with a “lacklustre career in Lingerie” who now oversees a kitchen at a Chappy’s, a stingy chain restaurant, Strube’s narrator struggles to manage edicts (and emissaries) from Corporate alongside the assorted needs and infinite quirks of a multicultural (legal, illegal) restaurant staff, whom she affectionately calls “rejects.”
She wonders about her ability to experience love or contentment while wrangling with her nearly feral son, the “product of rape” by four men. He’s returned from Afghanistan with untreated PTSD, a thirst for beer and an infinite reserve of toxic emotions reserved for his mother. In her spare minutes she’s attuned to “mayhem,” news of environmental disasters and far-off atrocities committed in the name of truth, God or profit. (As for her name, here’s her jaded view: “Post-rape, in search of a new and improved me, I changed my last name to Tree. Only a nice, positive person could be called Stevie Tree.”)
The novel’s pleasures — such as they are — come from the telling. As introspective Stevie lurches from one disaster to another (all the while racking up debt on her cards) and adds to her tally of mistakes, she’s a marvel of wittily cantankerous observations of a benighted world.
From gloomy philosophizing (“Now I know life gets worse until one day you can’t remember how to use a fork”; “We plod through the detritus ignorant of each other’s suffering, wailing in operas nobody wants to hear”) to a funeral of an ex, a panicked freak-out inside a chicken costume, an unexpected grandmotherhood, a messy drunken relapse, tender attentions from a busboy named Gyorgi, incontinent parents, and a product called a Vagankle, Stevie gets through burdensome days, sure only to expect fresh hells with the following sunrise.
“Never underestimate the curative power of laughter,” Strube’s narrator reflects. Stevie happens to be consoling another woman by describing a recent regrettable encounter with a man. It’s not exactly “curative,” but it is relieving. And in “Misconduct of the Heart” it’s particularly welcome because there’s so much else to lament. (Brett Joseph Grubisic, Toronto Star)
Misconduct of the Heart could perhaps do with a warning label for readers: Proceed at your own risk; objects in the mirror are every bit as upsetting as they appear.
In her 11th novel, Canadian author Cordelia Strube lays bare much of the tragedy and ugliness of life in brutal images conveyed with brutal words in brutal detail. That she also succeeds in creating a story filled with poignancy and populated with characters who are deeply moving even as they are profoundly damaged, while at the same time putting together phrases and sentences that can prompt laughing aloud, is a feat that borders on the miraculous.
Stevie is a woman approaching early middle age. She’s a recovering (that word falls just short of demanding quotation marks) alcoholic and the kitchen manager of one of the underperforming branches of Chappy’s, a Canadian chain restaurant. Her staff is ethnically diverse and uniformly problematic, with many of them sharing far too many details of their degrading sex lives while at work. The scolding shadow of Corporate-with-a-capital-C looms during every shift.
Stevie has a son who is in the agonizing throes of PTSD after serving in Afghanistan. He is also the product of a gang rape, something Stevie has never told him. Add to that Stevie’s parents, who both suffer from dementia, and Stevie is clearly a textbook member of the sandwich generation, if the slices of bread in that sandwich are the rapidly tightening jaws of a vise.
Stevie goes to a creative writing class with women she describes as yoga moms. They write about their brilliant kids in their diaries for class. Stevie writes:
“I used to try to figure shit out, like why in a dream my apartment was full of seals. Or why I was gangbanged in a Ford Fiesta and tossed behind a dumpster with blood streaming down my legs.”
Stevie is the narrator of her story. The worldview she shares is, quite understandably, dire. Reflecting on her parents’ decline and on her mother having always told Stevie that she sees the bad in everything: “Now I know life gets worse until one day you can’t remember how to use a fork.”
In a fairly long novel that is often, not unpleasantly, dialogue heavy, Strube somehow manages to chart changes in Stevie and in those around her that make transformations from a truly grim beginning to the chance of redemption realistic and believable.
Stevie is nothing if not honest with herself and with the reader. She has no illusions that she was and is anything other than a terrible mother. When she comes home from the restaurant to find emergency vehicles outside her apartment building, the possibility that they could be there because her son has died doesn’t register a blip of regret:
“It is not a tragedy. It is for the best. No more vomit, no more fights, no more beers and DTs, no dishes to clean but my own.”
But it is not her son who has died, it is one of her neighbors. And he leaves behind an old, blind dog. Who somehow ends up in Stevie’s “care” (no way to avoid quotation marks around that one).
But this same woman who inspires great concern for that poor hound’s safety gives burritos to homeless people who come in the restaurant. And she is the same woman who can be a listening, supportive friend to one of the yoga moms who has cancer and whose husband is cheating on her.
And as if an orphaned dog isn’t enough to break a heart and turn a life around, an essentially orphaned child shows up when a woman drops off little Trudy, who is the daughter Stevie’s son Pierce didn’t know he had.
Yup, Stevie is a grandma. And it turns out she’s a rather good and patient one at that.
Moments of grace and kindness spring from what seems at first like completely barren earth. The old dog howls when Trudy sobs for her missing mother, and then the little girl comforts the old dog in his sorrow for her. The aunt of one of Stevie’s co-workers is a wise, warm, welcoming pip of a character. And another co-worker, himself a product of a gang rape, is a source of affection and comfort not just for Trudy but also for Stevie. Many of the moments of dark humor come from Stevie herself, who goes to the staff Halloween party at the restaurant dressed as Joseph Stalin.
Yes, as with all creative endeavors, there can be misfires. On a trip to the dog park, the reader is informed that one of the dogs is carrying a bloodied sanitary napkin in his mouth. The question of why the reader needs to know this remains unanswered, since this piece of information seems to do nothing to advance the narrative or to elucidate anyone’s character (other than that, perhaps, of the specific dog in question).
But as with all worthwhile creative endeavors, any issues become secondary at most to a tale worth telling that is well told. In Misconduct of the Heart, Cordelia Strube achieves a transcendence in the person of her protagonist that speaks to hope in the worst of times, and this is forever worthwhile. As Stevie writes to her son:
“The future, in my world, as always been obscure. I have come to appreciate its darkness. To see far ahead—to know exactly what is to happen—robs us of unexpected sparks.” (Heidi Mastrogiovanni, New York Journal of Books)
In her 11th novel, Canadian author Cordelia Strube lays bare much of the tragedy and ugliness of life in brutal images conveyed with brutal words in brutal detail. That she also succeeds in creating a story filled with poignancy and populated with characters who are deeply moving even as they are profoundly damaged, while at the same time putting together phrases and sentences that can prompt laughing aloud, is a feat that borders on the miraculous.
Stevie is a woman approaching early middle age. She’s a recovering (that word falls just short of demanding quotation marks) alcoholic and the kitchen manager of one of the underperforming branches of Chappy’s, a Canadian chain restaurant. Her staff is ethnically diverse and uniformly problematic, with many of them sharing far too many details of their degrading sex lives while at work. The scolding shadow of Corporate-with-a-capital-C looms during every shift.
Stevie has a son who is in the agonizing throes of PTSD after serving in Afghanistan. He is also the product of a gang rape, something Stevie has never told him. Add to that Stevie’s parents, who both suffer from dementia, and Stevie is clearly a textbook member of the sandwich generation, if the slices of bread in that sandwich are the rapidly tightening jaws of a vise.
Stevie goes to a creative writing class with women she describes as yoga moms. They write about their brilliant kids in their diaries for class. Stevie writes:
“I used to try to figure shit out, like why in a dream my apartment was full of seals. Or why I was gangbanged in a Ford Fiesta and tossed behind a dumpster with blood streaming down my legs.”
Stevie is the narrator of her story. The worldview she shares is, quite understandably, dire. Reflecting on her parents’ decline and on her mother having always told Stevie that she sees the bad in everything: “Now I know life gets worse until one day you can’t remember how to use a fork.”
In a fairly long novel that is often, not unpleasantly, dialogue heavy, Strube somehow manages to chart changes in Stevie and in those around her that make transformations from a truly grim beginning to the chance of redemption realistic and believable.
Stevie is nothing if not honest with herself and with the reader. She has no illusions that she was and is anything other than a terrible mother. When she comes home from the restaurant to find emergency vehicles outside her apartment building, the possibility that they could be there because her son has died doesn’t register a blip of regret:
“It is not a tragedy. It is for the best. No more vomit, no more fights, no more beers and DTs, no dishes to clean but my own.”
But it is not her son who has died, it is one of her neighbors. And he leaves behind an old, blind dog. Who somehow ends up in Stevie’s “care” (no way to avoid quotation marks around that one).
But this same woman who inspires great concern for that poor hound’s safety gives burritos to homeless people who come in the restaurant. And she is the same woman who can be a listening, supportive friend to one of the yoga moms who has cancer and whose husband is cheating on her.
And as if an orphaned dog isn’t enough to break a heart and turn a life around, an essentially orphaned child shows up when a woman drops off little Trudy, who is the daughter Stevie’s son Pierce didn’t know he had.
Yup, Stevie is a grandma. And it turns out she’s a rather good and patient one at that.
Moments of grace and kindness spring from what seems at first like completely barren earth. The old dog howls when Trudy sobs for her missing mother, and then the little girl comforts the old dog in his sorrow for her. The aunt of one of Stevie’s co-workers is a wise, warm, welcoming pip of a character. And another co-worker, himself a product of a gang rape, is a source of affection and comfort not just for Trudy but also for Stevie. Many of the moments of dark humor come from Stevie herself, who goes to the staff Halloween party at the restaurant dressed as Joseph Stalin.
Yes, as with all creative endeavors, there can be misfires. On a trip to the dog park, the reader is informed that one of the dogs is carrying a bloodied sanitary napkin in his mouth. The question of why the reader needs to know this remains unanswered, since this piece of information seems to do nothing to advance the narrative or to elucidate anyone’s character (other than that, perhaps, of the specific dog in question).
But as with all worthwhile creative endeavors, any issues become secondary at most to a tale worth telling that is well told. In Misconduct of the Heart, Cordelia Strube achieves a transcendence in the person of her protagonist that speaks to hope in the worst of times, and this is forever worthwhile. As Stevie writes to her son:
“The future, in my world, as always been obscure. I have come to appreciate its darkness. To see far ahead—to know exactly what is to happen—robs us of unexpected sparks.” (Heidi Mastrogiovanni, New York Journal of Books)
In this novel of one woman’s daily travails, Strube (On the Shores of Darkness, There Is Light, 2016, etc.) offers a Canadian perspective on a range of contemporary issues, from immigration to PTSD to corporate greed to rape.
“Inactive alcoholic” Stevie is kitchen manager at a Toronto chain restaurant where she fights daily to maintain quality despite increasing corporate demands that her location cut corners. Chappy’s is a richly drawn, darkly comic world filled with the clashing cultures of a mostly immigrant staff, an incompetent boss whose ego Stevie adroitly manipulates, and frequent equipment problems. But the chaos also yields camaraderie, and Stevie feels more relaxed at work than in her own apartment, which she shares with her 23-year-old son, Pierce. He has returned from Afghanistan psychologically damaged, but their relationship has always been troubled. Pierce remembers a childhood in which Stevie mostly avoided her parental responsibilities and sometimes physically mistreated him. All true, Stevie acknowledges, but she has never told him the darker truth: Pierce was the product of a gang rape when Stevie was a young teen, a memory she spent her remaining adolescence and early adulthood escaping in self-destructive behaviors involving alcohol and sex. Even now, anxiously fretting over Pierce’s fragile state, she cannot admit feeling maternal love. A prickly, self-aware narrator, Stevie is a woman who, despite being liked by others, eschews emotional involvement. Then two people enter Stevie’s life: Gyorgi, a busboy from Eastern Europe around Pierce’s age who has always known he was the product of rape yet maintains a loving relationship with his Roma mother; and 4-year-old Trudy, whose drugged-out mother abandons her at Stevie’s parents’ doorstep with a note implying Pierce is her father. There may be more melodrama than necessary, but even as intimacy and affection slip into Stevie’s life, the gritty narration holds sentimentality at bay.
Forget Canadian “niceness”; Strube’s angry, hard-boiled characters confront the same ugly problems found below the 48th parallel. (Kirkus Reviews)
“Inactive alcoholic” Stevie is kitchen manager at a Toronto chain restaurant where she fights daily to maintain quality despite increasing corporate demands that her location cut corners. Chappy’s is a richly drawn, darkly comic world filled with the clashing cultures of a mostly immigrant staff, an incompetent boss whose ego Stevie adroitly manipulates, and frequent equipment problems. But the chaos also yields camaraderie, and Stevie feels more relaxed at work than in her own apartment, which she shares with her 23-year-old son, Pierce. He has returned from Afghanistan psychologically damaged, but their relationship has always been troubled. Pierce remembers a childhood in which Stevie mostly avoided her parental responsibilities and sometimes physically mistreated him. All true, Stevie acknowledges, but she has never told him the darker truth: Pierce was the product of a gang rape when Stevie was a young teen, a memory she spent her remaining adolescence and early adulthood escaping in self-destructive behaviors involving alcohol and sex. Even now, anxiously fretting over Pierce’s fragile state, she cannot admit feeling maternal love. A prickly, self-aware narrator, Stevie is a woman who, despite being liked by others, eschews emotional involvement. Then two people enter Stevie’s life: Gyorgi, a busboy from Eastern Europe around Pierce’s age who has always known he was the product of rape yet maintains a loving relationship with his Roma mother; and 4-year-old Trudy, whose drugged-out mother abandons her at Stevie’s parents’ doorstep with a note implying Pierce is her father. There may be more melodrama than necessary, but even as intimacy and affection slip into Stevie’s life, the gritty narration holds sentimentality at bay.
Forget Canadian “niceness”; Strube’s angry, hard-boiled characters confront the same ugly problems found below the 48th parallel. (Kirkus Reviews)
On the surface, two recent works of fiction present vastly different views of the world, with one, a novel, depicting lives shaped by trauma and the other, a collection of short stories, tracing the fault lines that can run through seemingly ordinary lives. Yet both pose the same question: How do we thrive when our internal lives — our hidden and ongoing griefs, addictions, and pains — persist, despite our best efforts at happiness?
Cordelia Strube, the author of ten previous novels, including Lemon, nominated for the 2010 Giller Prize, and On the Shores of Darkness, There Is Light, which won the City of Toronto Book Award in 2016, is known for exploring dark subject matter with a keen sense of comedy. With Misconduct of the Heart, she again balances the light with the dark as she follows characters with diminished capacities to live well — or even to live without chronic fear. With moments of blistering humour, Strube delineates the enduring effects of violence, in the many forms it can take.
Much of the new novel focuses on Stevie, the harried kitchen manager at Chappy’s Restaurant in Scarborough, who must contend, amid general mayhem, with her own scars and the wounds of those around her. Central to the story is her relationship with her prickly son, Pierce, an Afghanistan veteran in the grip of PTSD. At the outset, Stevie provides him shelter. As the novel unfolds, we learn that Stevie also suffers from PTSD, having been gang-raped when she was fourteen — a rape that led to Pierce’s birth.
Strube portrays their evolving relationship, from highly volatile to almost tender, with painful complexity. Stevie, all but emotionally destroyed after the rape, medicated herself with alcohol, leaving Pierce to be raised by her clueless parents and showing up only when she needed cash. Early on, Stevie reflects, “Nobody loves me and I don’t love anybody.” Having survived his own war, Pierce also seeks solace in alcohol. Stevie, now recovering from her addiction, initially enables Pierce by “doing the beer run, empathizing with his need for anaesthesia.” And she sometimes recoils from her son, seeing her rapists in his looks and gestures: “His hands, tearing apart a dinner roll, creep me out, hands I never touch but can feel.” Nonetheless, she endures his violent outbursts and lies to him about his origins.
Strube skillfully details Pierce’s heartbreaking condition. Each evening, he goes on “autopilot” and “arranges the bottles in the windows, barricades the door with the easy chair and, all night long, does perimeter checks.” On the day he finally agrees to earn his own money — by wearing a promotional rooster costume at Chappy’s — he asks a fellow ex-soldier to hide nearby and provide cover while he passes out flyers. When a child taunts him by throwing stones and trying to light his rooster tail on fire, Pierce falls to the ground to put out the non-existent flames — a seemingly outsized reaction until the reader learns that Pierce knew of children in Afghanistan who sometimes threw bombs at convoys.
Ultimately, through Stevie and Pierce’s chaotic and troubled relationship, Strube shows how trauma, whether experienced around the world or much closer to home, can frustrate one’s ability to achieve peace. The “crappy Scarborough triplex” that they share is a place of imagined conflicts and real danger. In addition to her son’s blow‑ups, Stevie must contend with her Bosnian neighbour, who harbours her own secret tragedy and gives Pierce alcohol in exchange for sex.
Stevie’s financial and emotional precariousness at home is underscored by the corporate landscape around her. Carol, Chappy’s vice-president of innovation, installs hidden cameras to capture the staff’s “poor execution,” threatens to dock pay if anyone is caught standing still, and plans to “cap hours to avoid paying benefits.” The VP’s callousness is exacerbated by the fact that many of Chappy’s employees are as damaged as Pierce, brutalized or cruelly discarded by society. These are people who exist on the periphery, unable to secure a meagre stability, let alone affluence. For them, there are no safe places.
While the main storyline tracks Stevie and Pierce, subplots amplify the larger themes in ways that make the novel an almost irresistible read. One of the most compelling diversions involves Stevie’s parents, Reggie and Peggy, who are declining rapidly into dementia. Stevie must parent them, although they never really parented her. Another is about Bob, Stevie’s manager at Chappy’s, who becomes obsessed with qigong, a Chinese system of physical and breathing exercises, in order to cope with the pressure to lay off staff. And then there is Conquer, the head cook and a “piercingly blue-eyed” Viking who lives in a boat in his aunt’s driveway (it’s here that Stevie finds occasional safe harbour). Finally, there is Stevie’s cautious intimacy with Gyorgi, a busboy from Slovakia. Strube brings her many characters and their stories to flawed and poignant life. Each is memorable. (Kelli Deeth, Literary Review of Canada)
Cordelia Strube, the author of ten previous novels, including Lemon, nominated for the 2010 Giller Prize, and On the Shores of Darkness, There Is Light, which won the City of Toronto Book Award in 2016, is known for exploring dark subject matter with a keen sense of comedy. With Misconduct of the Heart, she again balances the light with the dark as she follows characters with diminished capacities to live well — or even to live without chronic fear. With moments of blistering humour, Strube delineates the enduring effects of violence, in the many forms it can take.
Much of the new novel focuses on Stevie, the harried kitchen manager at Chappy’s Restaurant in Scarborough, who must contend, amid general mayhem, with her own scars and the wounds of those around her. Central to the story is her relationship with her prickly son, Pierce, an Afghanistan veteran in the grip of PTSD. At the outset, Stevie provides him shelter. As the novel unfolds, we learn that Stevie also suffers from PTSD, having been gang-raped when she was fourteen — a rape that led to Pierce’s birth.
Strube portrays their evolving relationship, from highly volatile to almost tender, with painful complexity. Stevie, all but emotionally destroyed after the rape, medicated herself with alcohol, leaving Pierce to be raised by her clueless parents and showing up only when she needed cash. Early on, Stevie reflects, “Nobody loves me and I don’t love anybody.” Having survived his own war, Pierce also seeks solace in alcohol. Stevie, now recovering from her addiction, initially enables Pierce by “doing the beer run, empathizing with his need for anaesthesia.” And she sometimes recoils from her son, seeing her rapists in his looks and gestures: “His hands, tearing apart a dinner roll, creep me out, hands I never touch but can feel.” Nonetheless, she endures his violent outbursts and lies to him about his origins.
Strube skillfully details Pierce’s heartbreaking condition. Each evening, he goes on “autopilot” and “arranges the bottles in the windows, barricades the door with the easy chair and, all night long, does perimeter checks.” On the day he finally agrees to earn his own money — by wearing a promotional rooster costume at Chappy’s — he asks a fellow ex-soldier to hide nearby and provide cover while he passes out flyers. When a child taunts him by throwing stones and trying to light his rooster tail on fire, Pierce falls to the ground to put out the non-existent flames — a seemingly outsized reaction until the reader learns that Pierce knew of children in Afghanistan who sometimes threw bombs at convoys.
Ultimately, through Stevie and Pierce’s chaotic and troubled relationship, Strube shows how trauma, whether experienced around the world or much closer to home, can frustrate one’s ability to achieve peace. The “crappy Scarborough triplex” that they share is a place of imagined conflicts and real danger. In addition to her son’s blow‑ups, Stevie must contend with her Bosnian neighbour, who harbours her own secret tragedy and gives Pierce alcohol in exchange for sex.
Stevie’s financial and emotional precariousness at home is underscored by the corporate landscape around her. Carol, Chappy’s vice-president of innovation, installs hidden cameras to capture the staff’s “poor execution,” threatens to dock pay if anyone is caught standing still, and plans to “cap hours to avoid paying benefits.” The VP’s callousness is exacerbated by the fact that many of Chappy’s employees are as damaged as Pierce, brutalized or cruelly discarded by society. These are people who exist on the periphery, unable to secure a meagre stability, let alone affluence. For them, there are no safe places.
While the main storyline tracks Stevie and Pierce, subplots amplify the larger themes in ways that make the novel an almost irresistible read. One of the most compelling diversions involves Stevie’s parents, Reggie and Peggy, who are declining rapidly into dementia. Stevie must parent them, although they never really parented her. Another is about Bob, Stevie’s manager at Chappy’s, who becomes obsessed with qigong, a Chinese system of physical and breathing exercises, in order to cope with the pressure to lay off staff. And then there is Conquer, the head cook and a “piercingly blue-eyed” Viking who lives in a boat in his aunt’s driveway (it’s here that Stevie finds occasional safe harbour). Finally, there is Stevie’s cautious intimacy with Gyorgi, a busboy from Slovakia. Strube brings her many characters and their stories to flawed and poignant life. Each is memorable. (Kelli Deeth, Literary Review of Canada)
ALEX & ZEE
...is the story of Alex, a practical, strong-minded, willful social worker in her mid-30's who no longer believes in the efficacy of her work, and of Zee, her 43-year-old lover, a former lawyer who gave up his work some months ago and has settled agreeably into quasi-catatonia. Despair, inertia, and self-loathing are all at war for Zee's soul and Zee, impassive, has long since ceded to the battle - to which enemy, he doesn't care... A quietly remarkable first novel... the success of Alex & Zee hinges on that most old-fashioned of concepts, character.
(Kathleen Byrne, Quill & Quire)
... the feel-bad novel of the year... quite simply, this is a bitterly funny, dark romance between Zee, who's quit his job as a government lawyer to sit around in parks, and his ex-girlfriend Alex, a social worker who still wants to leave "a mark on the world. A big bruise" ... flawless structure, perfectly tuned dialogue and dozens of brilliant cameo appearances by a huge cast of supporting minor characters.
(Juliet Waters, The Montreal Mirror)
Strube tells the story in short, episodic chapters, alternating between the worlds of Alex and Zee. Its edgy narrative voice and quick, stylized episodes give the novel a breezy quality, all the while traversing a landscape of angst and disharmony... we are firmly planted in the present, and there's a smell of Prozac in the air... Often witty and pointedly observant in the face of pain and absurdity...
(Bernadine Connelly, Newsday)
I admire Strube's effort to look honestly at the contemporary world, the loss of trust between the sexes, human self-hatred, selfishness, the painful search for new goals. But somehow what stirred me most in the novel was its technique and its sharp glimpses of life in the city.
(John Steffler, Books in Canada)
...it [Alex & Zee] delineates an urban world that's edgy and anxious, full of characters who are beginning to waken from youthful optimism into irritability and full-blown desperation.
(Steven Smith, Venue)
Alex & Zee marks the arrival of an exciting new voice in fiction. Cordelia Strube homes in on contemporary life and relationships with uncompromising precision and unfailing wit.
(Nino Ricci)
Wonderfully precise dialogue and descriptive passages weave their magic without any pyrotechnics or laboured imagery. Strube's assured prose creates a teeming, ordinary world that is utterly fascinating.
(The Halifax Daily News)
Strube deftly navigates around the human heart in a way reminiscent of Carol Shields. The writing is so effortlessly accomplished that it makes one wonder where Cordelia Strube sprang from.
(Maureen McCallum Garvie, Books in Canada)
Strube's sure way with words, her mordant punchlines and equally sharp assessments of urban life on the edge of normal make this familiar story a compulsive read. And even though you know she's never going to make it easy for them, you can't help hoping for Alex and Zee.
(Sheree-Lee Olson, The Globe & Mail)
Cordelia Strube's Alex & Zee is one of the most compelling novels I've read in recent years... It's a funny, poignant, realistic tale with many shocks of recognition, told with such professional skill that it's hard to believe this is a first novel... The pacing of this book reminds me of Stanislavsky's 'units' or the modern theatrical 'beat.' Strube builds dramatic tension through scenes of dialogue and narrative till we yearn for the relief of a denouement.
(Bill Schermbrucker, Event)
Crisp, edgy, wincingly real. This is an exciting new talent.
(Leona Gom, Books in Canada)
A first novel that my ex-girlfriend won't return, but highly recommends.
(Rob McLennan, Ottawa Xpress)
(Kathleen Byrne, Quill & Quire)
... the feel-bad novel of the year... quite simply, this is a bitterly funny, dark romance between Zee, who's quit his job as a government lawyer to sit around in parks, and his ex-girlfriend Alex, a social worker who still wants to leave "a mark on the world. A big bruise" ... flawless structure, perfectly tuned dialogue and dozens of brilliant cameo appearances by a huge cast of supporting minor characters.
(Juliet Waters, The Montreal Mirror)
Strube tells the story in short, episodic chapters, alternating between the worlds of Alex and Zee. Its edgy narrative voice and quick, stylized episodes give the novel a breezy quality, all the while traversing a landscape of angst and disharmony... we are firmly planted in the present, and there's a smell of Prozac in the air... Often witty and pointedly observant in the face of pain and absurdity...
(Bernadine Connelly, Newsday)
I admire Strube's effort to look honestly at the contemporary world, the loss of trust between the sexes, human self-hatred, selfishness, the painful search for new goals. But somehow what stirred me most in the novel was its technique and its sharp glimpses of life in the city.
(John Steffler, Books in Canada)
...it [Alex & Zee] delineates an urban world that's edgy and anxious, full of characters who are beginning to waken from youthful optimism into irritability and full-blown desperation.
(Steven Smith, Venue)
Alex & Zee marks the arrival of an exciting new voice in fiction. Cordelia Strube homes in on contemporary life and relationships with uncompromising precision and unfailing wit.
(Nino Ricci)
Wonderfully precise dialogue and descriptive passages weave their magic without any pyrotechnics or laboured imagery. Strube's assured prose creates a teeming, ordinary world that is utterly fascinating.
(The Halifax Daily News)
Strube deftly navigates around the human heart in a way reminiscent of Carol Shields. The writing is so effortlessly accomplished that it makes one wonder where Cordelia Strube sprang from.
(Maureen McCallum Garvie, Books in Canada)
Strube's sure way with words, her mordant punchlines and equally sharp assessments of urban life on the edge of normal make this familiar story a compulsive read. And even though you know she's never going to make it easy for them, you can't help hoping for Alex and Zee.
(Sheree-Lee Olson, The Globe & Mail)
Cordelia Strube's Alex & Zee is one of the most compelling novels I've read in recent years... It's a funny, poignant, realistic tale with many shocks of recognition, told with such professional skill that it's hard to believe this is a first novel... The pacing of this book reminds me of Stanislavsky's 'units' or the modern theatrical 'beat.' Strube builds dramatic tension through scenes of dialogue and narrative till we yearn for the relief of a denouement.
(Bill Schermbrucker, Event)
Crisp, edgy, wincingly real. This is an exciting new talent.
(Leona Gom, Books in Canada)
A first novel that my ex-girlfriend won't return, but highly recommends.
(Rob McLennan, Ottawa Xpress)
MILTON'S ELEMENTS
Before the novel opens, Milton and Judith's 3-year-old daughter Ariel has died accidentally, crushed by a television set. Milton's wife is on his case to express his feelings about Ariel's death. This is something Milton wants no part of since what he really feels is the barely repressed desire to kill someone: "Lately, more and more layers seem to be forming between himself and the world: insulation. He has no problem with this." Already strained by grief and guilt, Milton's marriage collapses when he strikes his wife in a rage. So much for the truth of one's feelings. Exit wife. Enter original family - his mother, two sisters, a brother and two teenage nephews - who gradually move into Milton's house, bringing heart disease, AIDS, alcoholism, blindness, glue-sniffing, compulsive lying, incest, juvenile delinquency, abuse, guilt, prostitution and a gun - which, once planted, must go off... She tells a loopy story in clear, unadorned prose and with gentle irony. Despairing Milton is given just enough hope to keep him going and to make us care deeply about whether he gets there. Anyone comfortable with laughing in the dark will be, too. (Julie Bruck, Montreal Gazette)
The fate of those family members is accompanied by horrific stories of animals who die horrible and unlucky deaths - the animals and the humans are all like deer frozen in the headlights. As Milton slowly and painfully unlocks his heart and consciousness, so do we. As readers - only slightly distanced from the over-the-top mayhem of Strube's characters - we are walked through contempt, aversion, recognition and then, finally, hope. It's a momentous journey.
(Halifax Daily News)
Because of the novel's off-kilter mix of tones, it's very memorable. It tends to resonate in the mind some time after reading it. This is due in part to the excellent dialogue. These lower-class characters speak in true voices, with their obsessions with power, grievances, and blame... Strube is a master of articulating for the inarticulate.
(David Mazerolle, Quill & Quire)
... [Strube] describes Milton's absurd predicament in smart, eccentric prose... And yet, while we wince at Milton's blunders, we applaud his limping progress toward a true connection with others and a hard-won faith in his own capabilities.
(Catherine Park, The New York Times Book Review)
There are not many writers around who can write as precisely or vividly about modern life as Cordelia Strube... she investigates complexities of character that evolve when a person finds herself trapped by circumstance. She can conjure up a picture of contemporary society in a few finely tuned sentences... Strube brilliantly takes us through the process of his [Milton's] emotional renewal without writing an overly bitter or depressing book... the effect of this novel is uplifting... a simple story about how even the most miserable of creatures can transcend a Kafkaesque situation.
(Donna Lypchuk, Eye Magazine, Toronto)
He [Milton] has been stunned by the death of Ariel, whom he sees now was the confirmation of his existence. "It's not fair that he didn't know that her little body contained his life, that there was no point to anything without her. If he'd known, he would have been more careful. He should have been more careful. He shouldn't have let her out of his sight." Once she is dead, nothing else can cause such pain. But talk is cheap. People talk a lot and don't say much that's important or even interesting. He doesn't see the point. What goes on inside his head is something else, though, a running commentary of truthfulness and doubt. The dissonance between what's spoken aloud by Milton and the people in his life, and his unsaid thoughts, fuel the novel's dark, brilliant comedy... There's a lot more death in the novel, more destructiveness, some acts of sweetness and a dash of redemption, as well... and Milton and his dire relations are delicious creatures.
(Joan Barfoot, London Free Press)
His sister Connie is a drug addict who degrades herself and boasts bitterly about her traumas. His brother Leonard, once selfish and mean, is humbled by the ravages of AIDS. His sick mother, Mare, is so odious that during her second by-pass operation, "even the nurses hated her." His older sister, Mandy, is a welfare mom with two boys and a fear that she'll hit their mother because "she swatted us around so much it just feels natural." One by one they move into Milton's house and put him through a hell that forces him to live outside his head... It [the book] has marvellous dialogue and biting insights that will stay with you for a long time. Strube's ironic portrayal of a tragic family is one of the best and certainly the funniest novel I've read this year.
(Catherine Austin, Ottawa Citizen)
... If there's any one point to Strube's body of work... it's that the children shall save us. Maybe. In Milton's Elements, Milton's tiny daughter Ariel is crushed by pulling a TV onto herself. Milton remembers watching her intently colouring and thinking about how he didn't want her to be like him. "He didn't think he could stand for her to learn what he had learned, to watch the blue eyes harden and the tiny shoulders hunch against the onslaught of human ignorance..."
(Zsuzsi Gartner, Quill & Quire)
Although... Strube zeroes in on the stand-off (it's too enervated to be called a war) between men and women, I think she is actually sneaking up on a subject that is broader and deeper. The quotation from Paradise Lost at the beginning of the book - "Our torments also may in length of time become our elements" - not only helps to decode its title, but also its theme. Strube's isolated, defensive men and biologically driven women personify the unending struggle between giving up or forging on under life's crushing blows. Milton's Elements is a dark, sardonic demonstration that eventually everyone, male or female, must either adapt or die.
(Anne Denoon, Books in Canada)
It's that chance for redemption and Strube's well-paced and bang-on descriptions of Milton's ride on the treadmill of despair that keep this quirky narrative moving.
(Linda Quattrin, Winnipeg Free Press)
...Strube is unto the breach once again with Milton's Elements, an excruciating life that would give Job cause for a bit of a grin... With an acknowledged talent for characterizations and a fearlessness about attacking thoroughly unpleasant and depressing situations head on, face-guard up, Cordelia Strube is someone worth taking a look at.
(Bert Archer, The Bloomsbury Review)
Strube has a rare talent for painting beautiful losers and for making you love characters who in real life would be unbearable.
(Juliet Waters, Montreal Mirror)
...an incredibly funny, black comedy about some dysfunctional and very mixed up people who, nonetheless, managed to totally enrapture me with the tragedy and the comedy...
(Paul Stuewe, Arts Tonight, CBC Radio)
The fate of those family members is accompanied by horrific stories of animals who die horrible and unlucky deaths - the animals and the humans are all like deer frozen in the headlights. As Milton slowly and painfully unlocks his heart and consciousness, so do we. As readers - only slightly distanced from the over-the-top mayhem of Strube's characters - we are walked through contempt, aversion, recognition and then, finally, hope. It's a momentous journey.
(Halifax Daily News)
Because of the novel's off-kilter mix of tones, it's very memorable. It tends to resonate in the mind some time after reading it. This is due in part to the excellent dialogue. These lower-class characters speak in true voices, with their obsessions with power, grievances, and blame... Strube is a master of articulating for the inarticulate.
(David Mazerolle, Quill & Quire)
... [Strube] describes Milton's absurd predicament in smart, eccentric prose... And yet, while we wince at Milton's blunders, we applaud his limping progress toward a true connection with others and a hard-won faith in his own capabilities.
(Catherine Park, The New York Times Book Review)
There are not many writers around who can write as precisely or vividly about modern life as Cordelia Strube... she investigates complexities of character that evolve when a person finds herself trapped by circumstance. She can conjure up a picture of contemporary society in a few finely tuned sentences... Strube brilliantly takes us through the process of his [Milton's] emotional renewal without writing an overly bitter or depressing book... the effect of this novel is uplifting... a simple story about how even the most miserable of creatures can transcend a Kafkaesque situation.
(Donna Lypchuk, Eye Magazine, Toronto)
He [Milton] has been stunned by the death of Ariel, whom he sees now was the confirmation of his existence. "It's not fair that he didn't know that her little body contained his life, that there was no point to anything without her. If he'd known, he would have been more careful. He should have been more careful. He shouldn't have let her out of his sight." Once she is dead, nothing else can cause such pain. But talk is cheap. People talk a lot and don't say much that's important or even interesting. He doesn't see the point. What goes on inside his head is something else, though, a running commentary of truthfulness and doubt. The dissonance between what's spoken aloud by Milton and the people in his life, and his unsaid thoughts, fuel the novel's dark, brilliant comedy... There's a lot more death in the novel, more destructiveness, some acts of sweetness and a dash of redemption, as well... and Milton and his dire relations are delicious creatures.
(Joan Barfoot, London Free Press)
His sister Connie is a drug addict who degrades herself and boasts bitterly about her traumas. His brother Leonard, once selfish and mean, is humbled by the ravages of AIDS. His sick mother, Mare, is so odious that during her second by-pass operation, "even the nurses hated her." His older sister, Mandy, is a welfare mom with two boys and a fear that she'll hit their mother because "she swatted us around so much it just feels natural." One by one they move into Milton's house and put him through a hell that forces him to live outside his head... It [the book] has marvellous dialogue and biting insights that will stay with you for a long time. Strube's ironic portrayal of a tragic family is one of the best and certainly the funniest novel I've read this year.
(Catherine Austin, Ottawa Citizen)
... If there's any one point to Strube's body of work... it's that the children shall save us. Maybe. In Milton's Elements, Milton's tiny daughter Ariel is crushed by pulling a TV onto herself. Milton remembers watching her intently colouring and thinking about how he didn't want her to be like him. "He didn't think he could stand for her to learn what he had learned, to watch the blue eyes harden and the tiny shoulders hunch against the onslaught of human ignorance..."
(Zsuzsi Gartner, Quill & Quire)
Although... Strube zeroes in on the stand-off (it's too enervated to be called a war) between men and women, I think she is actually sneaking up on a subject that is broader and deeper. The quotation from Paradise Lost at the beginning of the book - "Our torments also may in length of time become our elements" - not only helps to decode its title, but also its theme. Strube's isolated, defensive men and biologically driven women personify the unending struggle between giving up or forging on under life's crushing blows. Milton's Elements is a dark, sardonic demonstration that eventually everyone, male or female, must either adapt or die.
(Anne Denoon, Books in Canada)
It's that chance for redemption and Strube's well-paced and bang-on descriptions of Milton's ride on the treadmill of despair that keep this quirky narrative moving.
(Linda Quattrin, Winnipeg Free Press)
...Strube is unto the breach once again with Milton's Elements, an excruciating life that would give Job cause for a bit of a grin... With an acknowledged talent for characterizations and a fearlessness about attacking thoroughly unpleasant and depressing situations head on, face-guard up, Cordelia Strube is someone worth taking a look at.
(Bert Archer, The Bloomsbury Review)
Strube has a rare talent for painting beautiful losers and for making you love characters who in real life would be unbearable.
(Juliet Waters, Montreal Mirror)
...an incredibly funny, black comedy about some dysfunctional and very mixed up people who, nonetheless, managed to totally enrapture me with the tragedy and the comedy...
(Paul Stuewe, Arts Tonight, CBC Radio)
TEACHING PIGS TO SING
Toronto writer Cordelia Strube, in her third novel in as many years, has once again turned her dyspeptic gaze on the problems of the post-middle class - people who 20 years ago would have had spouses, houses and permanent careers, but now work freelance and raise their children alone. (Sheree-Lee Olson, The Globe & Mail)
...Strube displays a keen knowledge of life on Parent Planet. Her tale of Rita's struggle to raise 6-year-old Max by herself is a twisted, gritty story of mother love, with a fiercely feminist message. It's far from the kind of middle-class novel of domestic dysfunction written by Ann Tyler or Carol Shields... A veteran playwright, Strube relies on a stream of dramatic vignettes to reveal Rita's personality. The bare-knuckled prose, reminiscent of early Margaret Atwood novels, is entirely free of metaphor or lyricism.
(Keith Nickson, The Toronto Star)
Surrounding her [Rita] in unsupporting roles are a sister with marital problems of her own, brothers-in-law who insist on remaining close, a distant boyfriend, an ultra-religious brother dying in a hospital, schizophrenic mother and an embittered father whose only passion is playing the lottery.
(Rob McLennan, Ottawa X Press)
At it's heart, this is a beautiful and subtle love story, about the love between a mother and son. Strube captures the complex emotional relationship between Rita and Max with a rare combination of grace and passion. There's no sentimentality here. Strube is brave enough and sensitive enough to capture all the ambivalence, frustration, and claustrophobia Rita experiences in her life as a single mother. At the same time, she does an exquisite job of sketching the odd, tender moments that define the life of this unusual "couple".
(Paula Simons, Edmonton Journal)
In Pigs, nominated for a Governor-General's Award for fiction, the characters confront the full menu of modern disease - single motherhood, a brother's suicide, a sister's marital discord, a son's sexual abuse, a mother's case of Alzheimer's, random craziness.
(Michael Posner, The Globe & Mail)
...an engaging summary of the tribulations facing a single mother coping as best she can with each fresh crisis... Strube offers straightforward observations about the postmodern, technologized body. It weeps; it excretes; it itches; it sleeps; it gets anesthetized; it recovers; it experiences trauma; it heals; it does not heal. Rita "hates feeling out of control of her body," and wants to take control of her body again. But the novel shows us that our bodies are not entirely our own. It's a bit of a lie to think that we are their sole possessors. Doctors, lovers, sisters, fathers, scientists and strangers - like a man on a bench who violently wrenches Rita's nipple for no good reason - insist on having some dominion over our bodily selves. (Allan Hepburn, The Financial Post)
Rita's obsessive concern for her son as the only precious thing in her life rings utterly true... One of the rules of motherhood is that you never let your children give up hope, even if you have. Writing requires a similar act of faith, and Cordelia Strube is too good at it to let her readers give up either.
(Sheree-Lee Olson, The Globe & Mail)
...Strube displays a keen knowledge of life on Parent Planet. Her tale of Rita's struggle to raise 6-year-old Max by herself is a twisted, gritty story of mother love, with a fiercely feminist message. It's far from the kind of middle-class novel of domestic dysfunction written by Ann Tyler or Carol Shields... A veteran playwright, Strube relies on a stream of dramatic vignettes to reveal Rita's personality. The bare-knuckled prose, reminiscent of early Margaret Atwood novels, is entirely free of metaphor or lyricism.
(Keith Nickson, The Toronto Star)
Surrounding her [Rita] in unsupporting roles are a sister with marital problems of her own, brothers-in-law who insist on remaining close, a distant boyfriend, an ultra-religious brother dying in a hospital, schizophrenic mother and an embittered father whose only passion is playing the lottery.
(Rob McLennan, Ottawa X Press)
At it's heart, this is a beautiful and subtle love story, about the love between a mother and son. Strube captures the complex emotional relationship between Rita and Max with a rare combination of grace and passion. There's no sentimentality here. Strube is brave enough and sensitive enough to capture all the ambivalence, frustration, and claustrophobia Rita experiences in her life as a single mother. At the same time, she does an exquisite job of sketching the odd, tender moments that define the life of this unusual "couple".
(Paula Simons, Edmonton Journal)
In Pigs, nominated for a Governor-General's Award for fiction, the characters confront the full menu of modern disease - single motherhood, a brother's suicide, a sister's marital discord, a son's sexual abuse, a mother's case of Alzheimer's, random craziness.
(Michael Posner, The Globe & Mail)
...an engaging summary of the tribulations facing a single mother coping as best she can with each fresh crisis... Strube offers straightforward observations about the postmodern, technologized body. It weeps; it excretes; it itches; it sleeps; it gets anesthetized; it recovers; it experiences trauma; it heals; it does not heal. Rita "hates feeling out of control of her body," and wants to take control of her body again. But the novel shows us that our bodies are not entirely our own. It's a bit of a lie to think that we are their sole possessors. Doctors, lovers, sisters, fathers, scientists and strangers - like a man on a bench who violently wrenches Rita's nipple for no good reason - insist on having some dominion over our bodily selves. (Allan Hepburn, The Financial Post)
Rita's obsessive concern for her son as the only precious thing in her life rings utterly true... One of the rules of motherhood is that you never let your children give up hope, even if you have. Writing requires a similar act of faith, and Cordelia Strube is too good at it to let her readers give up either.
(Sheree-Lee Olson, The Globe & Mail)
DR. KALBFLEISCH & THE CHICKEN RESTAURANT
In Kalbfleisch , the protagonist's life unravels after he tracks down his long-lost brother, who turns out to a complete sociopath. All of this is delivered in unembellished prose and spare, almost cryptic dialogue; it's a world pared down to bare essentials.
(Michael Posner, The Globe & Mail)
As Raymond himself sees it (with some exaggeration), he's faced with "a broken marriage, a sociopathic twin brother, an alcoholic adoptive father, a demented adoptive mother and a bald biological one." Nevertheless, the book's very funny. Strube's comic sense is like a perfectly mixed martini: exceedingly dry and potent. Many of the scenes in the chicken restaurant, where Raymond deals with equipment breakdowns, the demands of his boss Dr. Kalbfleisch, and the antics of his staff, are hilarious.
(Barbara Carey, The Toronto Star)
These blood relatives turn out to be the family from hell. Gloria, an odd but feisty survivor of physical and sexual abuse, believes the twins' father may have been a man who raped her. His two-half sisters are in various stages of neurosis while his twin brother Dwayne is a hard-drinking, foul-mouthed sociopathic welfare bum who takes to stalking Raymond's ex-wife. (Carol Goodwin, Kitchener-Waterloo Record)
...Raymond lies on his ex-wife's couch trying to think about what's important in life, while out back a neighbour swings naked from a tree singing "You Are My Sunshine": "What is essential to the planet; animals, plants, trees? Certainly not humans... there can be no doubt humans were a mistake: a waste of space. Maybe, after creating man, God had a nervous breakdown. Which explains why earth has gone to hell."
(Zsuzsi Gartner, Quill & Quire)
Yet Raymond keeps his eye desperately on the light at the tunnel's end, finding wonder at some of the similarities he bears, besides looks, to his brother. His entrapment in his longed-for family is a wake-up call to take charge of his life. And gradually he does, helped by the unexpectedly firm hand-clasp of a tiny premature child in an incubator, the son of his restaurant dishwasher. The infant looks straight into Raymond's eyes and seems to say "you must go on." The reader's heart leaps, for Strube's novel achieves that marvel, instilling a belief that despite everything, there is a reason for living. (Carol Goodwin, Kitchener-Waterloo Record)
(Michael Posner, The Globe & Mail)
As Raymond himself sees it (with some exaggeration), he's faced with "a broken marriage, a sociopathic twin brother, an alcoholic adoptive father, a demented adoptive mother and a bald biological one." Nevertheless, the book's very funny. Strube's comic sense is like a perfectly mixed martini: exceedingly dry and potent. Many of the scenes in the chicken restaurant, where Raymond deals with equipment breakdowns, the demands of his boss Dr. Kalbfleisch, and the antics of his staff, are hilarious.
(Barbara Carey, The Toronto Star)
These blood relatives turn out to be the family from hell. Gloria, an odd but feisty survivor of physical and sexual abuse, believes the twins' father may have been a man who raped her. His two-half sisters are in various stages of neurosis while his twin brother Dwayne is a hard-drinking, foul-mouthed sociopathic welfare bum who takes to stalking Raymond's ex-wife. (Carol Goodwin, Kitchener-Waterloo Record)
...Raymond lies on his ex-wife's couch trying to think about what's important in life, while out back a neighbour swings naked from a tree singing "You Are My Sunshine": "What is essential to the planet; animals, plants, trees? Certainly not humans... there can be no doubt humans were a mistake: a waste of space. Maybe, after creating man, God had a nervous breakdown. Which explains why earth has gone to hell."
(Zsuzsi Gartner, Quill & Quire)
Yet Raymond keeps his eye desperately on the light at the tunnel's end, finding wonder at some of the similarities he bears, besides looks, to his brother. His entrapment in his longed-for family is a wake-up call to take charge of his life. And gradually he does, helped by the unexpectedly firm hand-clasp of a tiny premature child in an incubator, the son of his restaurant dishwasher. The infant looks straight into Raymond's eyes and seems to say "you must go on." The reader's heart leaps, for Strube's novel achieves that marvel, instilling a belief that despite everything, there is a reason for living. (Carol Goodwin, Kitchener-Waterloo Record)
THE BARKING DOG
Strube has a powerful way of dragging the reader right into her characters’ head. What is particularly impressive about this skill in The Barking Dog is that we desperately do not want to experience what Greer experiences, yet the story is told with such humour and suspense that it’s hard to put down... Urgent rather than erudite, hyper-realist rather than lyrical, The Barking Dog is a plea for awareness. The carnage that is Greer's life exists just around the corner, and we are Greer, living in the repulsive middle of a dangerous social and environmental soup of human construction. The Barking Dog is a rare achievement, unstintingly honest, hilarious and dreadful delight.
(Beverly Daurio, The Globe & Mail)
As usual in Strube’s work, the characterization is lively and the snappy writing is full of caustic zingers on contemporary urban life and the absurdities of pop culture, especially television and advertising... The Barking Dog confronts and affronts... but it’s not easy to forget...
(Barbara Carey, The Toronto Star)
...Strube peels back the fast-food, tabloid cynicism that shrink-wraps urban life and show us the dark matter beneath ... a compelling ride... the novel acquires a depth of horror reminiscent of Greek tragedy, with the Pentlands as a kind of kooky, spooky House of Atreus, complete with doomed prince Sam, deathless Sibyl, crazy avenging furies and cancer as implacable foe and fate. Newspapers , magazines, TV and radio with their incessant stories of rape, murder, and ritual child abuse, play the Chorus.
(Annabel Lyon, The National Post)
A novel is more than an argument, if it’s a good one, and this one is. It’s an engaging and genuinely affecting narrative. Greer Pentland is perhaps Strube’s most sympathetic protagonist, a stubborn cynic who’s hard on herself but soft and warm as custard to the bruised people around her.
(Anne Flemming, The Vancouver Sun)
The Barking Dog absolutely must go down in the canons of literature as a great tragedy. There is more truth in this novel than in so many others, not truth with a capital “T” but the kind of truth that would make a lot of miserable folks comfortable and a lot of comfortable folks less miserable, when their luck eventually catches up with them.
(Curtis Gloade, The Kitchener-Waterloo Record)
Her portraits of characters caught in urban angst are riddled with laugh-out loud humour... Strube’s rueful insistence on contemplating human darkness is tempered by a certain wistfulness, a yearning for something finer, a flicker of hope that is never quite extinguished... a book that crackles with anger, righteousness and a strange kind of passion for living. Strube’s mandate has always been to unsettle, not merely entertain, and in The Barking Dog she has succeeded admirably.
(The Edmonton Journal)
...a classically tragic plot that shatters under the weight of its cathartic climax...
(Peter Dickinson, The Georgia Straight)
The beauty of Strube’s novel is that she has made what could be a relentlessly depressing story... into a wonderfully uplifting, humourous account of a woman who keeps on going in spite of it all.
(Bill MacLean, Beach Metro News)
The Barking Dog examines the social fibre of our society and all its dark sides in a funny, upbeat way through characters that are so real they seem tangible, especially the main character who exudes strength, humour and a refreshing sense of humanity.
(Carol Baldwin, The Oakville Beaver)
(Beverly Daurio, The Globe & Mail)
As usual in Strube’s work, the characterization is lively and the snappy writing is full of caustic zingers on contemporary urban life and the absurdities of pop culture, especially television and advertising... The Barking Dog confronts and affronts... but it’s not easy to forget...
(Barbara Carey, The Toronto Star)
...Strube peels back the fast-food, tabloid cynicism that shrink-wraps urban life and show us the dark matter beneath ... a compelling ride... the novel acquires a depth of horror reminiscent of Greek tragedy, with the Pentlands as a kind of kooky, spooky House of Atreus, complete with doomed prince Sam, deathless Sibyl, crazy avenging furies and cancer as implacable foe and fate. Newspapers , magazines, TV and radio with their incessant stories of rape, murder, and ritual child abuse, play the Chorus.
(Annabel Lyon, The National Post)
A novel is more than an argument, if it’s a good one, and this one is. It’s an engaging and genuinely affecting narrative. Greer Pentland is perhaps Strube’s most sympathetic protagonist, a stubborn cynic who’s hard on herself but soft and warm as custard to the bruised people around her.
(Anne Flemming, The Vancouver Sun)
The Barking Dog absolutely must go down in the canons of literature as a great tragedy. There is more truth in this novel than in so many others, not truth with a capital “T” but the kind of truth that would make a lot of miserable folks comfortable and a lot of comfortable folks less miserable, when their luck eventually catches up with them.
(Curtis Gloade, The Kitchener-Waterloo Record)
Her portraits of characters caught in urban angst are riddled with laugh-out loud humour... Strube’s rueful insistence on contemplating human darkness is tempered by a certain wistfulness, a yearning for something finer, a flicker of hope that is never quite extinguished... a book that crackles with anger, righteousness and a strange kind of passion for living. Strube’s mandate has always been to unsettle, not merely entertain, and in The Barking Dog she has succeeded admirably.
(The Edmonton Journal)
...a classically tragic plot that shatters under the weight of its cathartic climax...
(Peter Dickinson, The Georgia Straight)
The beauty of Strube’s novel is that she has made what could be a relentlessly depressing story... into a wonderfully uplifting, humourous account of a woman who keeps on going in spite of it all.
(Bill MacLean, Beach Metro News)
The Barking Dog examines the social fibre of our society and all its dark sides in a funny, upbeat way through characters that are so real they seem tangible, especially the main character who exudes strength, humour and a refreshing sense of humanity.
(Carol Baldwin, The Oakville Beaver)
BLIND NIGHT
...a heart-wrenching and daring subplot that leaves the reader shuddering... Strube knows very well those on the edge often have superior insight into what makes people tick.
(National Post)
A terrific book.. mordantly funny... highly amped... radiating anger about the state of the planet... there is a delicious hopelessness in the book which reminded me of Martin Amis books, particularly London Fields ... there is a cataclysmic feeling about it.
(Daniel Richler, Richler Ink)
Add to the mix a sex-obsessed, waitress-devouring ex-lover and McKenna’s abusive father... and the result is preordained magic.. some of the funniest scenes I have read in recent years... captured in wonderful detail by Cordelia Strube in a novel that steals your heart.
(Owen Sound Sun Times)
Cordelia Strube’s latest is a bright, bold slalom - so welcome... McKenna’s humour and the colourful characters in orbit serve as the salt and starch that make the pages turn themselves.
(The Toronto Star)
Yes, it is very funny... but it’s also painfully moving, a broken, glass-sharp tale of mother love... That Strube can take the undercurrent of rage that fuels this Hieronymus Bosch-like litany of horrors and craft a conclusion that is both believable and hopeful is a remarkable literary feat.
(MacLean’s)
... as with all her other novels, she picks diamonds out of the ashes... a blackly comic drama, the latest in a long line of very dark, exceedingly well-written... angry novels.
(The Globe & Mail)
This smart, sometimes disturbing story is dripping with drama... but Strube’s dry humour makes the intensity bearable, and she creates characters whose desperation always makes sense... Powerful, funny and moving.
(NOW Magazine)
Cordelia Strube has made a career of writing dark humour... She is a remarkable writer... Few can combine funny and sad in the same sentence.
(London Free Press)
I loved it. It’s dark and witty and urban and gritty, extremely funny and very insightful. It’s a great read. This is a great, great novel.
(Fine Print)
Most writers can either create great characters or propulsive plots: Strube nails both, with gusto, and then does her best to save the planet along the way.
(Ottawa Citizen)
(National Post)
A terrific book.. mordantly funny... highly amped... radiating anger about the state of the planet... there is a delicious hopelessness in the book which reminded me of Martin Amis books, particularly London Fields ... there is a cataclysmic feeling about it.
(Daniel Richler, Richler Ink)
Add to the mix a sex-obsessed, waitress-devouring ex-lover and McKenna’s abusive father... and the result is preordained magic.. some of the funniest scenes I have read in recent years... captured in wonderful detail by Cordelia Strube in a novel that steals your heart.
(Owen Sound Sun Times)
Cordelia Strube’s latest is a bright, bold slalom - so welcome... McKenna’s humour and the colourful characters in orbit serve as the salt and starch that make the pages turn themselves.
(The Toronto Star)
Yes, it is very funny... but it’s also painfully moving, a broken, glass-sharp tale of mother love... That Strube can take the undercurrent of rage that fuels this Hieronymus Bosch-like litany of horrors and craft a conclusion that is both believable and hopeful is a remarkable literary feat.
(MacLean’s)
... as with all her other novels, she picks diamonds out of the ashes... a blackly comic drama, the latest in a long line of very dark, exceedingly well-written... angry novels.
(The Globe & Mail)
This smart, sometimes disturbing story is dripping with drama... but Strube’s dry humour makes the intensity bearable, and she creates characters whose desperation always makes sense... Powerful, funny and moving.
(NOW Magazine)
Cordelia Strube has made a career of writing dark humour... She is a remarkable writer... Few can combine funny and sad in the same sentence.
(London Free Press)
I loved it. It’s dark and witty and urban and gritty, extremely funny and very insightful. It’s a great read. This is a great, great novel.
(Fine Print)
Most writers can either create great characters or propulsive plots: Strube nails both, with gusto, and then does her best to save the planet along the way.
(Ottawa Citizen)
PLANET REESE
When Cordelia Strube trains her gimlet eye on the human condition, all system are on Code Red. Planet Reese lays contomporary North American life ― with its call centres, fast-food outlets, media reports of domestic atrocities, divorce lawyers, toxic fumes, and general lack of civility ― bare-naked and squirming. But on Reese’s way to hell, there’s still Fred & Ginger tripping the light fantastic, the endless search for the perfect mattress and cheap but comfortable shoes, and the small, warm hand of his daughter. It’s Dante meets Doug Coupland, by way of Woody Allen. In other words, dark and funny and relevant ― vintage Strube.”
(Zsuzsi Gartner)
Cordelia Strube has written a long howl by turns anguished and hilarious. Hugely entertaining and thought-provoking, Planet Reese tilts off orbits, careening though a universe of pathos and folly.
(Paul Quarrington)
... Strube has genuine insights to offer into the frequently destructive ways that human beings interact, and there are moments in the book when, employing her dramatist’s ear for dialogue, she lets us get to know the flawed souls who populate Reese’s planet, and become involved in their fictional lives... Taking the satirist’s role of society’s burr seriously, she [Strube] is the activist Reese has lost the will to be. This novel is her shout of protest, and she will be heard.
(Trevor Cole, Globe & Mail)
... Strube once again leavens the heavy, sometimes poisonous atmosphere with her usual black humour... Strube’s characters, as always, are a delight – a couple talk to their cats in baby talk, Reese’s boss is a comic horndog, his drinking buddies serve a funhouse mirror for Reese’s martial problems, and his upstairs neighbour Katrina is good foil.
(Ryan Biggs, Toronto Star)
Cordelia Strube is mercilessly proficient at portraying human folly. Planet Reese, like Blind Night before it, is both immensely depressing and darkly funny.
(Georgia Straight)
Strube has always had a talent for creating depressed characters that manage, somehow, to come off as significantly saner than any of the more “functional” characters. What allows her to get away with these morose, introspective anti-heroes is her equal talent for black comedy.
(Juliet Waters, Montreal Mirror)
Embedded here is deep satire, but this is not a simple send-up of political correctness... This is a very funny book, but it has an underlying sadness that ultimately eclipses its absurdities.
(Susan Cole, Now Magazine)
Susan G. Cole’s Top 10 Books [2007]: Unappreciated Strube’s story of a guy turning into one big pain in the ass as he senses the earth going to hell finds that elusive fine line between tragic and comic. Very smart.
(Susan Cole, Now Magazine)
...Strube’s fondness for her put-upon characters is such that Planet Reese remains entertaining even as Reese digs himself a psychological hole so deep he cannot competently function in life.
(Corey Redekop, Winnipeg Free Press)
Planet Reese is a magnificent read. It will infuriate you, depress you, and sometimes move you to tears. Strube has done a masterly job of rendering – so honestly and tenderly – a life so real that you’re tempted to call her and ask for his phone number – if only to shake him out of his misery and tell him to ‘buck up’!
(Bill Maclean, Beach Metro News)
(Zsuzsi Gartner)
Cordelia Strube has written a long howl by turns anguished and hilarious. Hugely entertaining and thought-provoking, Planet Reese tilts off orbits, careening though a universe of pathos and folly.
(Paul Quarrington)
... Strube has genuine insights to offer into the frequently destructive ways that human beings interact, and there are moments in the book when, employing her dramatist’s ear for dialogue, she lets us get to know the flawed souls who populate Reese’s planet, and become involved in their fictional lives... Taking the satirist’s role of society’s burr seriously, she [Strube] is the activist Reese has lost the will to be. This novel is her shout of protest, and she will be heard.
(Trevor Cole, Globe & Mail)
... Strube once again leavens the heavy, sometimes poisonous atmosphere with her usual black humour... Strube’s characters, as always, are a delight – a couple talk to their cats in baby talk, Reese’s boss is a comic horndog, his drinking buddies serve a funhouse mirror for Reese’s martial problems, and his upstairs neighbour Katrina is good foil.
(Ryan Biggs, Toronto Star)
Cordelia Strube is mercilessly proficient at portraying human folly. Planet Reese, like Blind Night before it, is both immensely depressing and darkly funny.
(Georgia Straight)
Strube has always had a talent for creating depressed characters that manage, somehow, to come off as significantly saner than any of the more “functional” characters. What allows her to get away with these morose, introspective anti-heroes is her equal talent for black comedy.
(Juliet Waters, Montreal Mirror)
Embedded here is deep satire, but this is not a simple send-up of political correctness... This is a very funny book, but it has an underlying sadness that ultimately eclipses its absurdities.
(Susan Cole, Now Magazine)
Susan G. Cole’s Top 10 Books [2007]: Unappreciated Strube’s story of a guy turning into one big pain in the ass as he senses the earth going to hell finds that elusive fine line between tragic and comic. Very smart.
(Susan Cole, Now Magazine)
...Strube’s fondness for her put-upon characters is such that Planet Reese remains entertaining even as Reese digs himself a psychological hole so deep he cannot competently function in life.
(Corey Redekop, Winnipeg Free Press)
Planet Reese is a magnificent read. It will infuriate you, depress you, and sometimes move you to tears. Strube has done a masterly job of rendering – so honestly and tenderly – a life so real that you’re tempted to call her and ask for his phone number – if only to shake him out of his misery and tell him to ‘buck up’!
(Bill Maclean, Beach Metro News)
LEMON
You won't find Toronto novelist Cordelia Strube's latest fiction listed in the glossy big-publisher catalogues or ascending the bestseller lists. Yet she's Canada's best bet to succeed Alice Munro. When I first read her fifth novel, The Barking Dog, I was initially dismayed by Strube's misanthropic themes and piercing prose. Yet her caustic observations, realistic characters and antic story-lines kept me enthralled. The same can be said for her latest effort, Lemon... As with Munro's Lives of Girls and Women and Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, a disillusioned teenager makes a perfect 21st century mouthpiece. Strube's purse-lipped protagonist, Lemon, also assumes the role of first-person narrator. She's wise beyond her years as she impatiently juggles three eccentric mothers, a deadbeat dad and two silly friends. Lemon is also a voracious reader who volunteers in the children's cancer ward yet refuses to succumb to false optimism. As an independent thinker, Lemon isn't obsessed with boys, parties, peer pressure or ham-fisted texting. She prefers the more civilized company of 18th century heroines such as the doomed, eponymous Clarissa. The clues to this multi-layered narrative lie in Lemon's erudite reading list. Like Clarissa author Samuel Richardson, who published that novel in 1748, Cordelia Strube is a moralist. For the alert reader, this means we are expected to dutifully wade through some "sick topics," as Lemon's friends dub them... This perceptive narrator is an equal-opportunity misanthrope. Strube's opinionated heroine is an updated version of Munro's spunky Del Jordan. Lemon is the illegitimate spawn of earnest Green Party leader Elizabeth May and vicious comedian Don Rickles... Like many teens before her, Lemon has fallen between the cracks. She's frustrated by her lowly status and the deceitful conduct of her vacuous and hostile peers. She's a spiritual orphan in a society peopled by indifferent, sick or clueless adults, bullies, rapists and sociopathic girls who maim from the sidelines. Despite all of this social opposition, the shunned Lemon, dubbed a "lesbo" by her cruel peers, manages to navigate and survive the humiliating and turbulent endurance test of adolescence with grace and courage. Strube's strobe-light realism does not suffer fools nor spare her readers. Yet Strube is such a polished storyteller, Lemon's astringent character captivates and charms. This acid-tongued coming-of-age story holds up well. Read Lemon. Then leave it lying about for your sullen teen to "discover".
(Patricia Dawn Robertson, Toronto Star)
Strube's humour-laden prose and uncompromising commitment to her narrator's bleak worldview add depth and complexity to what might otherwise have been a predictable coming-of-age narrative ... Lemon demonstrates Strube's skillful handling of the mechanics of plot ... Strube does not shy away from brutal and unsettling violence, as well as frank and brave depictions of inter-generational sexuality.
(Shwany Syms, Quill & Quire)
Readers, take note. This tasty novel is neither about a food, nor a flavouring. In fact, Limone, a.k.a Lemon, is the moniker of its smart-mouthed, world-weary Toronto 16-year-old protagonist... history-obsessed Lemon eschews sex, drugs, booze and cigarettes, railing instead against the injustices of the world rather than the confines of her religion... Written in the irreverent, X-rated voice of the heroine, the first person linear narrative is a cross between the cynicism of The Catcher in the Rye and the sardonic humour in Winnipegger Daria Salamon's novel The Prairie Bridesmaid. Lemon has opinions on just about everything, and she's not afraid to express them. 'My real mother is in my heart,' she says. 'In my head she's that girl who gave birth in the can at Walmart and left the baby in the toilet bowl. Gives new meaning to the phrase shop till you drop.' Strube excels at depicting Lemon as a multi-layered character by allowing us to see her in a variety of settings - at home, school, her friend's house, on the job at Dairy Dream and at the hospital where she volunteers. Not only is Lemon compassionate to the young cancer patients she visits, but she maintains her individuality at all costs, even at the expense of being unpopular. And often her outspokenness demonstrates a wisdom beyond her years. 'Unless you're a super-brain or gorgeous, you're going to end up in some bottom feeder job at some corporation that's going to restructure every time you take a crap,' she says. 'If you make it through the first cuts, you might as well chain yourself to your cubicle because they're going to want your soul.' Throughout the novel, Lemon gives us her unique take on historical figures such as Genghis Khan, Henry VIII, Joseph Stalin and Marie Antoinette. She also comments on books like Jane Eyre, The Great Gatsby, Lady Chatterley's Lover and Anna Karenina... To her credit, Strube resists sugar-coating the novel. It's an engrossing window into the mind of a bright but troubled teen.
(Bev Sandell Greenberg, Winnipeg Free Press)
On matters of importance, the world doesn’t give much of an ear to the opinions of teenage girls. But Lemon, the cynical, wry, and world-weary heroine of the new Cordelia Strube novel that bears her name, deserves to be heard. Working at the mall, she scoops ice cream for ungrateful, oversexed, and stupid strangers. Volunteering at the hospital, she helps soothe the sores and fears of dying children, telling them they will live long, happy lives, and feeling the guilt behind her lie. Hiding in the shadows, she watches the beatings and blow jobs and drug use of high school. And while she should be safe at home, she instead ends up reassuring the broken and anxious adults around her, helping them through their self-indulgent pain while somehow remaining numb to her own. Lemon’s world is unfair, diseased, and violent, and only she, a teenage girl whom no one listens to, is equipped to deal with it. Her astute, unsettling observations (“‘Sorry’ is one of those meaningless words people toss around before they kick you in the head again”; “You have to wonder how many other dreams will turn rancid once you’re up close to them”) focus on the kinds of things adults have either forgiven or forgotten. What emerges is a stark picture of cruelty and beauty made up of the details grown-ups often ignore. With Lemon, Strube proves that striking intelligence comes from the mouths of babes; gems of wisdom litter each page, offering insight on everything from historical atrocities to everyday, mind-numbing malaise. While one could say that the novel is light on plot, to do so would be to miss the point: Strube lets the reader crawl inside the head of a girl who sees the world with more clarity than any adult. And the book is better for it.
(Stacey May Fowles, The Walrus)
The eponymous teenage hero of Strube's new novel is surrounded by no-good kids who live off a steady diet of mediocre sex, mediocre drugs and really exceptional violence. Unimpressed, Lemon retreats into her own mind; lucky for us, it's filled with wry and shrewd observations about the agony of growing up.
(Danielle Groen, Chatelaine)
Over the years I have devoured each new Strube novel, beginning with Alex & Zee (short-listed for the W. H. Smith/Books in Canada First Novel Award) and ending with Planet Reese, also nominated for a literary award. Each has featured enough realistic characters and acid-tongued prose to keep me coming back for more. But I wasn’t quite prepared for Lemon, a teenager with not one but three mothers, a father few could love, several boy-struck friends, and Vaughn, an environmentalist who spends his time in trees, protecting them. Lemon, whose battles with teachers and counselors are epic, also volunteers in a cancer ward for children where she bonds with the patients... Adolescence is a condition that some do not survive. Not Lemon. In Strube’s wonderfully disturbing new novel, Lemon battles her way through, surviving coming-of-age with wisdom beyond her years. Do you have a difficult teen or were your high school years an agony? You might find comfort in Lemon.
(Andrew Armitage, Owen Sound Sun Times)
Lemon has a bad feeling about the planet and a bad attitude to match ... In [The Catcher in the Rye], Holden Caulfield, the alienated teenage hero, prevents children from falling into bleak and frightening adulthood. Lemon might be seen as a contemporary, female version of the Holden figure. The novels share many details of plot and theme, including the spectre of death ... this novel might be described as a long, agonizing howl against humanity – a soundtrack for Edvard Munch's painting The Scream, except that here and there some humour seeps through ... there's a good deal of cheeky wit.
(Donna Bailey Nurse, Globe and Mail)
It's a Canadian novel, no, make that an un-Canadian novel, about an acidic-smart teenage girl called Lemon who has an impossible life. It's a modern Who Has Seen the Wind? Here's Lemon on Anna Karenina: “Talk about a woman pining for some guy. I like the atmosphere, though, all those samovars, sleighs and furs. Reading dead Russians always makes you glad you've got central heating. Anyway, it's pretty obvious judging from what old Vronsky does to Kitty that the putz has zip moral fibre.” She thinks in this river of jumbly, chunky thoughts. I love the prose, I love Lemon, I love Strube. Canadian life isn't Lemony enough.
(Heather Mallick, Toronto Star)
Master (mistress?) novelist Strube’s Lemon is [a] strongly realized and engaging[…]protagonist/first-person narrator. She lives with her stepmother, was almost killed by her adoptive mother, and is suspicious of her birth mother’s wish to meet. The adults in Lemon’s world, including a cross-dressing History teacher and a “comfortably clueless” librarian, seem to have little to offer. The book opens with the stabbing of her vice-principal stepmother by a student, revealing the micro-macro theme: High-school life may be a crock, but it is as dangerous as a war zone. The book develops by a series of juxtapositions: real vs. literary, local vs. far away. Parallels between genocide and high-school life are not over the top. Nastiness occurs not only in third world countries. Close to home, a friend’s mother, ill, struggles with maintaining employment and vital health benefits. Lemon’s paid employment at Dairy Dream offers a cheeky look at retail…but her volunteer employment at a hospital, where, nurturing, she befriends cancer kids, makes one want to cry at life’s injustices. Vulnerable, Lemon wishes to seek redemption through reading, but it is not enough. She reads Clarissa, The Great Gatsby, Jane Eyre, several plays by Shakespeare, and more. She perceptively reduces all of the classics to tales about pining women. Of Shakespeare, “I can’t stand all this love-at-first-sight bilge, couples obsessing over each other before they’ve even had a conversation. People are always blaming Hollywood for our screwed-up perceptions of romance, but as far as I’m concerned, it started with Shakespeare.” History, like literature, is similarly (and amusingly) cut down to size. During English class discussions, shocking comments by the sexually abusive jocks and party girls reveal the brutality of high-school life, in which a lock-down is understated, and gang date rape is planned as party entertainment. The book exposes such sordid issues as suicide, the holocaust, violence, the degradation of women, and fakery. Lemon wishes for “an advertising campaign that makes killing a sign of weakness…that makes not killing sexy…” Her stepmother deplores Lemon’s penchant for “Sick Topics” (as might the reader), but they are so rife, Lemon cannot but continue thinking of them. She shows her compassion and humanity in not sloughing them aside. [...] the ending’s hopefulness does not seem out of place. The book, depicting almost nihilistic events, is big-hearted and funny because of its narrator, whose voice and vision are cynical, poignant, piercing, mordantly funny. “Low self-esteem is a term used to excuse rudeness, laziness, meanness.” This is black humour at its best. Lemon herself should be on her stepmother’s shelf of Extraordinary Women.
(Crystal Hurdle, Canadian Literature)
(Patricia Dawn Robertson, Toronto Star)
Strube's humour-laden prose and uncompromising commitment to her narrator's bleak worldview add depth and complexity to what might otherwise have been a predictable coming-of-age narrative ... Lemon demonstrates Strube's skillful handling of the mechanics of plot ... Strube does not shy away from brutal and unsettling violence, as well as frank and brave depictions of inter-generational sexuality.
(Shwany Syms, Quill & Quire)
Readers, take note. This tasty novel is neither about a food, nor a flavouring. In fact, Limone, a.k.a Lemon, is the moniker of its smart-mouthed, world-weary Toronto 16-year-old protagonist... history-obsessed Lemon eschews sex, drugs, booze and cigarettes, railing instead against the injustices of the world rather than the confines of her religion... Written in the irreverent, X-rated voice of the heroine, the first person linear narrative is a cross between the cynicism of The Catcher in the Rye and the sardonic humour in Winnipegger Daria Salamon's novel The Prairie Bridesmaid. Lemon has opinions on just about everything, and she's not afraid to express them. 'My real mother is in my heart,' she says. 'In my head she's that girl who gave birth in the can at Walmart and left the baby in the toilet bowl. Gives new meaning to the phrase shop till you drop.' Strube excels at depicting Lemon as a multi-layered character by allowing us to see her in a variety of settings - at home, school, her friend's house, on the job at Dairy Dream and at the hospital where she volunteers. Not only is Lemon compassionate to the young cancer patients she visits, but she maintains her individuality at all costs, even at the expense of being unpopular. And often her outspokenness demonstrates a wisdom beyond her years. 'Unless you're a super-brain or gorgeous, you're going to end up in some bottom feeder job at some corporation that's going to restructure every time you take a crap,' she says. 'If you make it through the first cuts, you might as well chain yourself to your cubicle because they're going to want your soul.' Throughout the novel, Lemon gives us her unique take on historical figures such as Genghis Khan, Henry VIII, Joseph Stalin and Marie Antoinette. She also comments on books like Jane Eyre, The Great Gatsby, Lady Chatterley's Lover and Anna Karenina... To her credit, Strube resists sugar-coating the novel. It's an engrossing window into the mind of a bright but troubled teen.
(Bev Sandell Greenberg, Winnipeg Free Press)
On matters of importance, the world doesn’t give much of an ear to the opinions of teenage girls. But Lemon, the cynical, wry, and world-weary heroine of the new Cordelia Strube novel that bears her name, deserves to be heard. Working at the mall, she scoops ice cream for ungrateful, oversexed, and stupid strangers. Volunteering at the hospital, she helps soothe the sores and fears of dying children, telling them they will live long, happy lives, and feeling the guilt behind her lie. Hiding in the shadows, she watches the beatings and blow jobs and drug use of high school. And while she should be safe at home, she instead ends up reassuring the broken and anxious adults around her, helping them through their self-indulgent pain while somehow remaining numb to her own. Lemon’s world is unfair, diseased, and violent, and only she, a teenage girl whom no one listens to, is equipped to deal with it. Her astute, unsettling observations (“‘Sorry’ is one of those meaningless words people toss around before they kick you in the head again”; “You have to wonder how many other dreams will turn rancid once you’re up close to them”) focus on the kinds of things adults have either forgiven or forgotten. What emerges is a stark picture of cruelty and beauty made up of the details grown-ups often ignore. With Lemon, Strube proves that striking intelligence comes from the mouths of babes; gems of wisdom litter each page, offering insight on everything from historical atrocities to everyday, mind-numbing malaise. While one could say that the novel is light on plot, to do so would be to miss the point: Strube lets the reader crawl inside the head of a girl who sees the world with more clarity than any adult. And the book is better for it.
(Stacey May Fowles, The Walrus)
The eponymous teenage hero of Strube's new novel is surrounded by no-good kids who live off a steady diet of mediocre sex, mediocre drugs and really exceptional violence. Unimpressed, Lemon retreats into her own mind; lucky for us, it's filled with wry and shrewd observations about the agony of growing up.
(Danielle Groen, Chatelaine)
Over the years I have devoured each new Strube novel, beginning with Alex & Zee (short-listed for the W. H. Smith/Books in Canada First Novel Award) and ending with Planet Reese, also nominated for a literary award. Each has featured enough realistic characters and acid-tongued prose to keep me coming back for more. But I wasn’t quite prepared for Lemon, a teenager with not one but three mothers, a father few could love, several boy-struck friends, and Vaughn, an environmentalist who spends his time in trees, protecting them. Lemon, whose battles with teachers and counselors are epic, also volunteers in a cancer ward for children where she bonds with the patients... Adolescence is a condition that some do not survive. Not Lemon. In Strube’s wonderfully disturbing new novel, Lemon battles her way through, surviving coming-of-age with wisdom beyond her years. Do you have a difficult teen or were your high school years an agony? You might find comfort in Lemon.
(Andrew Armitage, Owen Sound Sun Times)
Lemon has a bad feeling about the planet and a bad attitude to match ... In [The Catcher in the Rye], Holden Caulfield, the alienated teenage hero, prevents children from falling into bleak and frightening adulthood. Lemon might be seen as a contemporary, female version of the Holden figure. The novels share many details of plot and theme, including the spectre of death ... this novel might be described as a long, agonizing howl against humanity – a soundtrack for Edvard Munch's painting The Scream, except that here and there some humour seeps through ... there's a good deal of cheeky wit.
(Donna Bailey Nurse, Globe and Mail)
It's a Canadian novel, no, make that an un-Canadian novel, about an acidic-smart teenage girl called Lemon who has an impossible life. It's a modern Who Has Seen the Wind? Here's Lemon on Anna Karenina: “Talk about a woman pining for some guy. I like the atmosphere, though, all those samovars, sleighs and furs. Reading dead Russians always makes you glad you've got central heating. Anyway, it's pretty obvious judging from what old Vronsky does to Kitty that the putz has zip moral fibre.” She thinks in this river of jumbly, chunky thoughts. I love the prose, I love Lemon, I love Strube. Canadian life isn't Lemony enough.
(Heather Mallick, Toronto Star)
Master (mistress?) novelist Strube’s Lemon is [a] strongly realized and engaging[…]protagonist/first-person narrator. She lives with her stepmother, was almost killed by her adoptive mother, and is suspicious of her birth mother’s wish to meet. The adults in Lemon’s world, including a cross-dressing History teacher and a “comfortably clueless” librarian, seem to have little to offer. The book opens with the stabbing of her vice-principal stepmother by a student, revealing the micro-macro theme: High-school life may be a crock, but it is as dangerous as a war zone. The book develops by a series of juxtapositions: real vs. literary, local vs. far away. Parallels between genocide and high-school life are not over the top. Nastiness occurs not only in third world countries. Close to home, a friend’s mother, ill, struggles with maintaining employment and vital health benefits. Lemon’s paid employment at Dairy Dream offers a cheeky look at retail…but her volunteer employment at a hospital, where, nurturing, she befriends cancer kids, makes one want to cry at life’s injustices. Vulnerable, Lemon wishes to seek redemption through reading, but it is not enough. She reads Clarissa, The Great Gatsby, Jane Eyre, several plays by Shakespeare, and more. She perceptively reduces all of the classics to tales about pining women. Of Shakespeare, “I can’t stand all this love-at-first-sight bilge, couples obsessing over each other before they’ve even had a conversation. People are always blaming Hollywood for our screwed-up perceptions of romance, but as far as I’m concerned, it started with Shakespeare.” History, like literature, is similarly (and amusingly) cut down to size. During English class discussions, shocking comments by the sexually abusive jocks and party girls reveal the brutality of high-school life, in which a lock-down is understated, and gang date rape is planned as party entertainment. The book exposes such sordid issues as suicide, the holocaust, violence, the degradation of women, and fakery. Lemon wishes for “an advertising campaign that makes killing a sign of weakness…that makes not killing sexy…” Her stepmother deplores Lemon’s penchant for “Sick Topics” (as might the reader), but they are so rife, Lemon cannot but continue thinking of them. She shows her compassion and humanity in not sloughing them aside. [...] the ending’s hopefulness does not seem out of place. The book, depicting almost nihilistic events, is big-hearted and funny because of its narrator, whose voice and vision are cynical, poignant, piercing, mordantly funny. “Low self-esteem is a term used to excuse rudeness, laziness, meanness.” This is black humour at its best. Lemon herself should be on her stepmother’s shelf of Extraordinary Women.
(Crystal Hurdle, Canadian Literature)
MILOSZ
Milosz is... Cordelia Strube's ninth novel… she's developed a comfortable rhythm working with all of her signature elements: witty, rapid-fire dialogue that plays against the background noise of overheard conversations, a messy ball-of-yarn plot, mordant observations on contemporary life, and a cast of likable if flawed characters… Milosz is all about love, but not the kind of love that drives a romantic-comedy plot. Rather, love is seen as a cross that everyone has to bear… A theme like this could quickly lead to an overload of sentiment, but Strube is aware of the danger and prophylactically sends up the language of therapy-speak by way of a muscular Cuban boy toy who offers useless relationship advice and pop-spiritual platitudes… she also continues to demonstrate a real knack for creating complex, real characters whose lives come undone in funny ways without being mocking or superficial toward them. It's a sad smile that accompanies her description of junk removers clearing out the wreckage of homes that have gone into default ("lives lost to landfill"), or the running gag about how no one knows what the meds they are on are actually supposed to do.
(Alex Good, Toronto Star)
Milo is 37 years old and hates everything. He hates his father, a bitter widower who has mysteriously disappeared. He hates his co-workers in the junk removal business, both of whom have moved into his house. He even hates his acting career since he lost his skills while method-acting his way through a production of Waiting for Godot. Milosz… about one man learning… to accept the chaos of his life…begins slowly, with several chapters of hurt people hurting people… but gradually the underlying trauma behind Milo’s bitterness is revealed. Only once he understands the origins of his terrible feelings can Milo figure out how to go about dealing with them. With Milosz, Strube makes it clear that empathy and community can help heal some emotional scars. Although Milo tries to hold on to his hurt for as long as possible, by the end of the novel he finally begins the process of letting go of his resentments.
(Jeff Miller, Cult MTL)
...what's...surprising about Milosz, given the temperament of its protagonist, is that it's not a nihilistic book. It doesn't hate or distrust humanity as a whole. I wouldn't even call it pessimistic. On the contrary, the world Strube has built around her protagonist Milo is really just complicated, bogged down with real-world messiness and an oscillating moral compass.
Milosz is littered with… dysfunctional kin-ships: resentful sons, mothers at wits' end, and even the odd soul struggling to find a way to patch things up. What elevates this material to another level is how deftly Strube stacks character upon character, subplot upon sub-plot, until the reader is suddenly part of a far larger operation than the scant few pages under their left thumb would suggest possible. Call it a funny novel with unexpected pockets of grief, or a sad novel with a surprising number of good jokes. Either way, the combination is potent; in genetics they call this sort of thing hybrid vigour.
(Michael Hingston, Edmonton Journal)
At its heart, which is huge, Milosz is about progeny, about what tethers us to the world and to each other. Milosz is Strube’s ninth novel and fits neatly into her oeuvre, a darkly comedic story of misfits in an ugly world. ...Milosz is a novel as plotless as its protagonist’s life… but is held together by powerful undercurrents. Milo is desperately longing for human connection, despite his impulse to push others away and just surrender to the apparent emptiness of existence. Whenever the story gets too heavy, the half-naked Cuban appears to make pronouncements such as, “After my mother died, my father humped my cousin.” Further levity is offered by the suggestion of hope in the darkness. What matters, is people, and how we belong to one another. That life goes on and on is a promise as much as a curse.
(Kerry Clare, National Post)
While Milosz also reflects the author’s thorough awareness of chilling news headlines, the lengthy dark corridors of history, and the confounding and ongoing ability of our species to produce greater harm than good, its comic foundation provides a manic levity in the form of farcical set pieces and a tentative optimism signalled by—gasp!—a heartfelt wedding in the final chapters. Rest assured, though, celebrants talking about human trafficking, sexual assault, and death at that wedding provide ample testimony that Strube’s ninth novel is scarcely ready material for a laugh track-punctuated prime time sitcom. Strube’s distinctive verbal dexterity and impressive talent… keeps Milosz moving along at breakneck speed. The novel’s busy screwball plot lines... And her reflexive pessimism— “Nothing about humans is eternal,” Milos says, “Except, of course, their stupidity. Einstein called it infinite”—butts uncomfortably against the generic conventions of comedy… Milo, though, commands full attention. Since in his view “problems cling like barnacles” and “experience burns you, covers you in scars so thick you can hardly move,” when Strube grants him a small aperture for contentment, it’s difficult not to cheer.
(Brett Josef Grubisic, The Winnipeg Review)
(Alex Good, Toronto Star)
Milo is 37 years old and hates everything. He hates his father, a bitter widower who has mysteriously disappeared. He hates his co-workers in the junk removal business, both of whom have moved into his house. He even hates his acting career since he lost his skills while method-acting his way through a production of Waiting for Godot. Milosz… about one man learning… to accept the chaos of his life…begins slowly, with several chapters of hurt people hurting people… but gradually the underlying trauma behind Milo’s bitterness is revealed. Only once he understands the origins of his terrible feelings can Milo figure out how to go about dealing with them. With Milosz, Strube makes it clear that empathy and community can help heal some emotional scars. Although Milo tries to hold on to his hurt for as long as possible, by the end of the novel he finally begins the process of letting go of his resentments.
(Jeff Miller, Cult MTL)
...what's...surprising about Milosz, given the temperament of its protagonist, is that it's not a nihilistic book. It doesn't hate or distrust humanity as a whole. I wouldn't even call it pessimistic. On the contrary, the world Strube has built around her protagonist Milo is really just complicated, bogged down with real-world messiness and an oscillating moral compass.
Milosz is littered with… dysfunctional kin-ships: resentful sons, mothers at wits' end, and even the odd soul struggling to find a way to patch things up. What elevates this material to another level is how deftly Strube stacks character upon character, subplot upon sub-plot, until the reader is suddenly part of a far larger operation than the scant few pages under their left thumb would suggest possible. Call it a funny novel with unexpected pockets of grief, or a sad novel with a surprising number of good jokes. Either way, the combination is potent; in genetics they call this sort of thing hybrid vigour.
(Michael Hingston, Edmonton Journal)
At its heart, which is huge, Milosz is about progeny, about what tethers us to the world and to each other. Milosz is Strube’s ninth novel and fits neatly into her oeuvre, a darkly comedic story of misfits in an ugly world. ...Milosz is a novel as plotless as its protagonist’s life… but is held together by powerful undercurrents. Milo is desperately longing for human connection, despite his impulse to push others away and just surrender to the apparent emptiness of existence. Whenever the story gets too heavy, the half-naked Cuban appears to make pronouncements such as, “After my mother died, my father humped my cousin.” Further levity is offered by the suggestion of hope in the darkness. What matters, is people, and how we belong to one another. That life goes on and on is a promise as much as a curse.
(Kerry Clare, National Post)
While Milosz also reflects the author’s thorough awareness of chilling news headlines, the lengthy dark corridors of history, and the confounding and ongoing ability of our species to produce greater harm than good, its comic foundation provides a manic levity in the form of farcical set pieces and a tentative optimism signalled by—gasp!—a heartfelt wedding in the final chapters. Rest assured, though, celebrants talking about human trafficking, sexual assault, and death at that wedding provide ample testimony that Strube’s ninth novel is scarcely ready material for a laugh track-punctuated prime time sitcom. Strube’s distinctive verbal dexterity and impressive talent… keeps Milosz moving along at breakneck speed. The novel’s busy screwball plot lines... And her reflexive pessimism— “Nothing about humans is eternal,” Milos says, “Except, of course, their stupidity. Einstein called it infinite”—butts uncomfortably against the generic conventions of comedy… Milo, though, commands full attention. Since in his view “problems cling like barnacles” and “experience burns you, covers you in scars so thick you can hardly move,” when Strube grants him a small aperture for contentment, it’s difficult not to cheer.
(Brett Josef Grubisic, The Winnipeg Review)
ON THE SHORES OF DARKNESS, THERE IS LIGHT
Eleven-year-old Harriet is struggling, and she’s not even aware of just how much. The main character in Toronto writer Cordelia Strube’s powerful new novel On the Shores of Darkness, There Is Light, Harriet is dealing with enough to incapacitate most people. She has divorced parents, each in a new relationship, each with accompanying issues. Gennedy, “the only criminal lawyer in history that’s broke,” lives surreptitiously with Harriet’s mother, Harriet, and her brother, at the Shangrila apartments, while her cycling-obsessed father has a younger girlfriend, Uma, who is determined to get pregnant, by whatever means necessary. Aside from the worldly-seeming Darcy, who is a year older and lives in the same building, Harriet is alienated from most of her peers, and spends much of her time alone, feeling unloved, watching her mother’s affection and attention going to her younger brother Irwin, who suffers from hydrocephalus and requires near constant care. In response, Harriet pours herself into her art projects, scavenging materials from dumpsters, and runs errands for the aging Shangrila residents to fund her dream of fleeing to Algonquin Park in the footsteps of her idol, Tom Thomson. She also dreams of a world without her brother, a better life and wonders how she could make that happen. Harriet is a richly complicated character, at the centre of a similarly complicated novel. Strube, whose novel Lemon was long-listed for the Giller Prize in 2010, deftly captures the complications and complexities of contemporary families. One of Harriet’s closest relationships, for example, is with her Gran. It’s complicated by her Gran’s estrangement from Harriet’s mother and the limitations of age which have Harriet acting as a caregiver when she visits, witnessing her grandmother’s decline. Traditional family structures are largely absent, with Strube tracing the ad hoc nature of relationships between parents, children, lovers and siblings with a keen eye, an empathic care, and what seems like a genuine curiosity. There are no paragons here, no authority figures, and the characters, including Harriet, may not always be likable, but by revealing them in their contradictions and at their worst, Strube creates an entire world of love and loss, humour and heartbreak. On the Shores of Darkness, There Is Light is a novel which defies easy categorization and one which surprises at every turn. One can see traces of writers such as John Green (The Fault In Our Stars) in the way Strube approaches her storytelling, but the writing, on a line-by-line basis, serves as a reminder that Strube is one of Canada’s more expressive and creative prose stylists. It is, at heart, a uniquely intimate exploration of the perilous fragility of the human body, and the indomitable strength of the human soul. (Robert Wiersema, The Toronto Star)
Smart and sassy girls are the focus of Cordelia Strube’s latest novel, a masterful blend of comedy and tragedy that delves into contemporary family life. At the heart of the book is 11-year-old Harriet, who tries to cope with the ineffectual adults around her by channelling her considerable energy into creating art and earning money to run away. Harriet wants to follow in the footsteps of her idol, Tom Thomson, by fleeing to Algonquin Park to paint the fall colours. The novel opens in the summer; Harriet’s plan is to get away in October. She does a variety of chores for the many seniors of the Shangrila, the low-income apartment building in Toronto where she lives with her mother, Lynne, Lynne’s partner, Gennedy, and Harriet’s seriously ill little brother, Irwin, who suffers from hydrocephalus. Trent, Lynne’s ex-husband and the father of her children, is in a new relationship with Uma, a graduate student in women’s studies who is desperate to get pregnant. Trent is immature and selfish almost beyond belief, but Strube manages to make him both feckless and utterly believable. He could not deal with his son’s health problems and left; apart from funding Uma’s fertility treatments and ejaculating into a cup when required, the only thing he seems to care about is cycling. Lynne and Gennedy are focused on Irwin, who spends much time in the hospital undergoing countless surgeries and needs to be monitored constantly for seizures. Gennedy is committed to Lynne, but is a bit of a financial leech, despite being a criminal lawyer. Harriet cannot stand Gennedy, and resents Irwin while also loving him. Irwin, for his part, adores his big sister. Strube has keen insight into the minds of young people. The novel’s third-person narration is dominated by their perspectives – richly complex and thoughtful, while also quite cognizant of the fact that they are children and the adults in charge of them appear hopeless. This narrative strategy works wonderfully, and Strube’s experience as a playwright shines in the dialogue of every single character. Strube has a genius for revealing the layers of conflicting feelings to which human beings are often subject. She also has a gift for seeing the humanity in all her characters – even Trent, though it is easy to agree when Lynne calls him an asshole. The tapestry of humanity that Strube presents is richly detailed and profoundly moving. The novel explores the notion of family through many iterations, with the conventional nuclear family appearing only rarely. Harriet’s new (and only) friend, Darcy, a 12-year-old with an astonishingly foul mouth, lives with her mother, Nina; her father, Buck, tries to reunite with his family while also continuing his relentless quest for sex with, well, almost any woman. Also living in the Shangrila is a young wife and mother whose husband regularly beats her up. And then there are the seniors. Harriet earns a tidy little income running errands for them to the neighborhood store or farther afield to the Shoppers Drug Mart. She is an exceptionally resourceful girl – she charges a quarter for each excursion – but is not above dumpster diving for art supplies when necessary. (As someone who scavenged garbage cans in back alleys as a kid, I feel a deep kinship with Harriet.) We also get to know Mr. Hung, who owns the local convenience store. The sad irony of Harriet’s life is that even though she is surrounded by people with whom she is able to connect, she remains appallingly lonely. The novel offers some suggestions as to how her situation could be mitigated, but Strube is careful to shy away from easy solutions. In life, there simply aren’t any. Suffering is an inescapable part of living, the novel recognizes, and people suffer in countless ways. Irwin and the abused wife suffer physically, but all the novel’s characters are prey to emotional suffering, and Strube’s narrative deftly illustrates the various ways in which emotional pain can be much worse than the physical kind. Strube takes her title from John Keats’s sonnet “To Homer,” which opens the novel. The poem refers to Homer’s blindness, and one of the central themes in this book is the necessity of seeing and understanding, and the recognition that this process can be painful. Reading this novel is painful at times, but there is also a great deal of light. (Candace Fertile, starred review in Quill & Quire)
Harriet is an artist and an entrepreneur, destined for greatness if she could just free herself from the Shangrila—the rundown Toronto apartment complex where she lives. She spends her days dumpster diving for found-object art supplies and running errands for the elderly in her building, saving for her escape to the wilderness of Algonquin Park, where she wants to live and work in isolation, as the famous painter Tom Thomson did. She’s sick of being the only adult in her family, having to deal with her mom’s broke lawyer boyfriend and her younger brother’s hydrocephalus, withstanding all the chaos and noise, and being criticized and told she lacks compassion. It would be a lot for anyone to cope with, and Harriet is only 11. Strube, whose previous works (Lemon) have been nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and other awards in Canada, captures a madcap sense of momentum and consequence that never falters or overwhelms. Each character is part of Strube’s deliberately constructed card tower, the building of which, as readers anticipate its eventual fall, provides the narrative with a tremendous amount of strength and personality. And though Strube imbues most interactions with some degree of comedy and sarcasm, the novel never lacks empathy. Its unexpected turn partway through is suitably wrenching, and the novel’s second half, decidedly different in tone and voice, becomes a beautiful echo of its first. Highly recommended. (Starred review in Publishers Weekly)
To use a clichéd turn of phrase (the very sort Strube advises against in her recent writing instructional book Exhilarating Prose, written with Barry Healey), On the Shores of Darkness, There is Light is a heartbreakingly funny book. Harriet, whose family and neighbours mostly call Harry, is an 11-year-old artist with a plan to escape her family and life in the Shangrila, a shabby apartment tower filled with seniors and single mothers. Harry’s brother Irwin is plagued with numerous maladies, and the stress of his health has driven their parents apart. She professes dislike toward Irwin, though her actions speak otherwise. Neither Harry’s mother nor her mother’s boyfriend appreciate her art, and so she saves every dollar she earns running errands for her elder neighbours, dreaming of running away to a life in the woods in Algonquin Park, left alone to paint. Complicating those plans are a wide cast of characters, many familiar enough to prompt a smile of recognition, while avoiding slipping too far into stereotype as to become caricatures. There’s the detached father, devoid of deep emotion and seemingly more concerned about his bicycle than his daughter; slightly older friend and neighbour Darcy, who would appear to know much more about the world, including boys, than Harriet; and the wide cast of mostly senior citizen neighbours who offer a constant running commentary on Harry and her world. It’s not easy to write from the point of view of children. Write them too smart and they become inhuman plot devices wise beyond their years. Make them too naive, and they’re unfitting characters to propel a story line. Harry, I will admit, won me over – her wry observations mixed with the naivete of her age pulled me into the world of this young outcast. Maybe youth is the perfect weapon to bypass a journalist’s inherent cynicism? No matter the reason, the entertaining spectacle of Harry and her family was distracting enough that what should have been a predictable story completely caught this reviewer off-guard. The left-turn of the second act could have easily ventured into melodrama, but Strube keeps the story on-track, steering what could have been a highly improbable finish into what feels like the only way this book could have possibly ended. Touching and cynical, deeply sad and very funny, On the Shores of Darkness, There is Light is the work of an author in full command of her art. If On the Shores is not on awards shortlists this fall, it will be both a surprise and a grievous error. And if Harry and Irwin don’t break your heart, you may want to check for signs of a pulse. (John Muldoon, Beach Metro News)
“I fell in love with Harriet from the first chapter. She has the most unique way of looking at the world and the book is nearly laugh-out-loud funny at parts, but in the most morbid of ways. I was so moved by Harriet’s story and, even as my heart was breaking, I was so delighted to get to ‘meet’ her brother Irwin. This is a must read for me this year.” (Insomniac Bibliophile)
“This is one of the BEST books I have read in a very long time. . . This is one of those rare books that works much humour and lightheartedness into some really heavy subject matter in a completely appropriate and realistic way. Bravo, Cordelia Strube!” (Lit. Wit. Wine & Dine.)
“Dark, funny, crushingly sad, and breathtakingly hopeful.” (Becca in Halifax)
“Strube masterfully breathes life into her dynamic characters, allowing us to feel love, hate, and confusion with them. . . Thought-provoking and emotional, this novel is a must-read.” (Sad Hat Diaries)
“The novel turns, subtly and heartbreakingly, on questions of hardship, parenting, love, and resilience. I was not prepared for how hard this book would hit me. . . This book is one of the most human stories I've ever read.” (A Bookish Type)
“Harriet, in On the Shores of Darkness There Is Light, is a many-splendored, singular creation, and the novel goes and goes and never falters.” (Pickle Me This)
“Quietly elegiac and despairing, the novel keeps true to Strube’s singular vision.” (Maclean’s)
“I have seldom seen such a beautiful book with so many unlikable characters.” (Book-Stuffed Blog)
"Fantastic." (The Lost Bookmark)
“In some parts it’s funny, other parts poetic, others tragic. All of it very realistic.” (A Novel Haul)
“Strube is the dark horse favourite to succeed Alice Munro as a chronicler of melancholy stories about young girls. Her new heroine, Harriet, is a precocious artist who runs errands for seniors in her ramshackle apartment building, hoping to save enough money to run away to Algonquin Park.” (Toronto Life)
“I would recommend On the Shores of Darkness, There Is Light to anyone who craves a good story full of emotion. . . I give this story a solid 4 out of 5 stars because I loved it and I know you will, too.” (Nimrod Street)
“Strube’s true talent, which was as readily on display in her last novel, 2012’s Milosz, is for layering characters and situations and subplots on top of each other, one by one, until the entire Shangrila apartment building buzzes like a beehive.” (Globe and Mail)
The title of author Cordelia Strube’s new fiction novel, On the Shores of Darkness, There is Light, may seem slightly cliché with the light vs. dark dichotomy, but the contents of the novel are most definitely integral. “There is a budding morrow in midnight,” a line from John Keats’ poem, “To Homer,” a poem Strube quotes in the first pages, is a bit more on the nose in describing the tone of the novel. Midnight is the darkest time of night and this darkness can be deeply unsettling, but midnight is also the beginning of a new day; from the depths of despair a new hope is born. This ability to see light in dreadful scenarios is a gift Strube possesses. Her characters ache as they carry complex burdens, but there is always a comedic moment, a line that makes you laugh because it is so relatable. One thing I assure, you will fall in love with little Harriet and Irwin, the main characters of this bittersweet tale. Harriet is a deeply intelligent, lively and talented, eleven-year old artist who is misunderstood by the often irresponsible and distracted adults in her life. Harriet’s younger brother Irwin, loves Harriet but, due to his condition of hydrocephalus (fluid in the brain), takes up all of their mother’s time and attention. This leaves Harriet to a stepfather she loathes, a largely absentee biological father and an equally self-absorbed stepmother. In the Shangrila, a lower-income housing apartment building in Toronto, where Harriet and her family live, it is the seniors, the neighbours and Mr. Hung who provide Harriet with guidance. This fictional building is an ecosystem. Readers will find it simple to imagine the occupiers of the building turning about in their cycles even when they are not in the story or are only in the background. The seniors often act as a chorus of comic relief or add to the tragedy of Harriet’s day-to-day life. Harriet puts up with them since they are a source of income for her. Each errand for them has a price tag and Harriet is collecting, for her escape to Algonquin Park. Harriet buzzes on the inside with life, with action, with wanting to wear, or immerse herself in, the beauty of life and is someone who challenges the unspoken and spoken truths she encounters. This inner strength Harriet possesses begins to crumble underneath the mistakes of the adults in her life. For those who do not understand her, her strengths are assumed to be attempts at rebellion; in actuality, she navigates the world differently than most children. While, Irwin is in and out of the hospital but rather than grow weary of the world, he is excited about everything and has a strong moral character – always able to empathize or sympathize with others’ misfortune. The mistakes made by the adults with Harriet and Irwin eventually adds up, leaving a dark cloud over the children’s lives. Strube’s playwright experience is easily seen in this dialogue-heavy novel. The characters shine most when they open (or choose not to open) their mouths. Not far into the novel, I felt like I could sit back and let Strube take the conversations to: commentary about Toronto, about our moment in history, gossip about the other seniors, or whatever she felt needed to be said. It is not just the dialogue that delivers. In select sections of the novel, Strube deftly melds scenes together – i.e. ones happening in the future or past with one happening in the present – without confusion. It is unsettling, having time manipulated, or warped, in this way, but this time melding only serves depth to the narrative. I found myself flipping through the pages faster in these moments, wondering how else the author may unsettle the comfortable relationship I’d fallen into with the characters. A quiet, but incessant tension runs throughout the novel, the opening scene being the perfect example of impending doom. In this scene, Harriet runs to her mother and stepfather to let them know she’s seen a baby locked in a car on this humid day, but her mother and stepfather don’t listen to her and the reader begins to worry the baby may die. Harriet refuses to let her voice be silenced, she screams out, “There’s a baby stuck in a car!” twice before the baby’s father runs off to the rescue. The lack of attention paid to Harriet is immediately jarring, especially when it becomes clear Harriet has done nothing to deserve such treatment except be an eleven-year-old girl. The heart of this novel is always clear: Strube presents us with strong characters in fully formed environments and never let’s opportunities to add more richness go by. Each scene is subtly beautiful in its own right but if you dig just a little there are many levels of complexity to explore. The narrative opens up space for discussion on issues such as the lack of affordable day care and programs for youth in Canada, the treatment of the elderly by our institutions, the way modern parents view their children and interact with them and the role technology plays in raising children. Both the children and the seniors of the story are isolated from the adults, often excluded because they require too much patience and time. Prioritizing after reading this novel will become easier; sincerely paying attention to loved ones is of the utmost importance. Tip: I read the novel over a few days and forgot something that could have saved me some heartache. Pay special attention to how the book is divided. The first section of the book is titled, “Before.” This way you may be slightly more prepared for when the, “After,” or the second half of the novel, hits. (Nikolina Likarevic, Word on the Street)
Smart and sassy girls are the focus of Cordelia Strube’s latest novel, a masterful blend of comedy and tragedy that delves into contemporary family life. At the heart of the book is 11-year-old Harriet, who tries to cope with the ineffectual adults around her by channelling her considerable energy into creating art and earning money to run away. Harriet wants to follow in the footsteps of her idol, Tom Thomson, by fleeing to Algonquin Park to paint the fall colours. The novel opens in the summer; Harriet’s plan is to get away in October. She does a variety of chores for the many seniors of the Shangrila, the low-income apartment building in Toronto where she lives with her mother, Lynne, Lynne’s partner, Gennedy, and Harriet’s seriously ill little brother, Irwin, who suffers from hydrocephalus. Trent, Lynne’s ex-husband and the father of her children, is in a new relationship with Uma, a graduate student in women’s studies who is desperate to get pregnant. Trent is immature and selfish almost beyond belief, but Strube manages to make him both feckless and utterly believable. He could not deal with his son’s health problems and left; apart from funding Uma’s fertility treatments and ejaculating into a cup when required, the only thing he seems to care about is cycling. Lynne and Gennedy are focused on Irwin, who spends much time in the hospital undergoing countless surgeries and needs to be monitored constantly for seizures. Gennedy is committed to Lynne, but is a bit of a financial leech, despite being a criminal lawyer. Harriet cannot stand Gennedy, and resents Irwin while also loving him. Irwin, for his part, adores his big sister. Strube has keen insight into the minds of young people. The novel’s third-person narration is dominated by their perspectives – richly complex and thoughtful, while also quite cognizant of the fact that they are children and the adults in charge of them appear hopeless. This narrative strategy works wonderfully, and Strube’s experience as a playwright shines in the dialogue of every single character. Strube has a genius for revealing the layers of conflicting feelings to which human beings are often subject. She also has a gift for seeing the humanity in all her characters – even Trent, though it is easy to agree when Lynne calls him an asshole. The tapestry of humanity that Strube presents is richly detailed and profoundly moving. The novel explores the notion of family through many iterations, with the conventional nuclear family appearing only rarely. Harriet’s new (and only) friend, Darcy, a 12-year-old with an astonishingly foul mouth, lives with her mother, Nina; her father, Buck, tries to reunite with his family while also continuing his relentless quest for sex with, well, almost any woman. Also living in the Shangrila is a young wife and mother whose husband regularly beats her up. And then there are the seniors. Harriet earns a tidy little income running errands for them to the neighborhood store or farther afield to the Shoppers Drug Mart. She is an exceptionally resourceful girl – she charges a quarter for each excursion – but is not above dumpster diving for art supplies when necessary. (As someone who scavenged garbage cans in back alleys as a kid, I feel a deep kinship with Harriet.) We also get to know Mr. Hung, who owns the local convenience store. The sad irony of Harriet’s life is that even though she is surrounded by people with whom she is able to connect, she remains appallingly lonely. The novel offers some suggestions as to how her situation could be mitigated, but Strube is careful to shy away from easy solutions. In life, there simply aren’t any. Suffering is an inescapable part of living, the novel recognizes, and people suffer in countless ways. Irwin and the abused wife suffer physically, but all the novel’s characters are prey to emotional suffering, and Strube’s narrative deftly illustrates the various ways in which emotional pain can be much worse than the physical kind. Strube takes her title from John Keats’s sonnet “To Homer,” which opens the novel. The poem refers to Homer’s blindness, and one of the central themes in this book is the necessity of seeing and understanding, and the recognition that this process can be painful. Reading this novel is painful at times, but there is also a great deal of light. (Candace Fertile, starred review in Quill & Quire)
Harriet is an artist and an entrepreneur, destined for greatness if she could just free herself from the Shangrila—the rundown Toronto apartment complex where she lives. She spends her days dumpster diving for found-object art supplies and running errands for the elderly in her building, saving for her escape to the wilderness of Algonquin Park, where she wants to live and work in isolation, as the famous painter Tom Thomson did. She’s sick of being the only adult in her family, having to deal with her mom’s broke lawyer boyfriend and her younger brother’s hydrocephalus, withstanding all the chaos and noise, and being criticized and told she lacks compassion. It would be a lot for anyone to cope with, and Harriet is only 11. Strube, whose previous works (Lemon) have been nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and other awards in Canada, captures a madcap sense of momentum and consequence that never falters or overwhelms. Each character is part of Strube’s deliberately constructed card tower, the building of which, as readers anticipate its eventual fall, provides the narrative with a tremendous amount of strength and personality. And though Strube imbues most interactions with some degree of comedy and sarcasm, the novel never lacks empathy. Its unexpected turn partway through is suitably wrenching, and the novel’s second half, decidedly different in tone and voice, becomes a beautiful echo of its first. Highly recommended. (Starred review in Publishers Weekly)
To use a clichéd turn of phrase (the very sort Strube advises against in her recent writing instructional book Exhilarating Prose, written with Barry Healey), On the Shores of Darkness, There is Light is a heartbreakingly funny book. Harriet, whose family and neighbours mostly call Harry, is an 11-year-old artist with a plan to escape her family and life in the Shangrila, a shabby apartment tower filled with seniors and single mothers. Harry’s brother Irwin is plagued with numerous maladies, and the stress of his health has driven their parents apart. She professes dislike toward Irwin, though her actions speak otherwise. Neither Harry’s mother nor her mother’s boyfriend appreciate her art, and so she saves every dollar she earns running errands for her elder neighbours, dreaming of running away to a life in the woods in Algonquin Park, left alone to paint. Complicating those plans are a wide cast of characters, many familiar enough to prompt a smile of recognition, while avoiding slipping too far into stereotype as to become caricatures. There’s the detached father, devoid of deep emotion and seemingly more concerned about his bicycle than his daughter; slightly older friend and neighbour Darcy, who would appear to know much more about the world, including boys, than Harriet; and the wide cast of mostly senior citizen neighbours who offer a constant running commentary on Harry and her world. It’s not easy to write from the point of view of children. Write them too smart and they become inhuman plot devices wise beyond their years. Make them too naive, and they’re unfitting characters to propel a story line. Harry, I will admit, won me over – her wry observations mixed with the naivete of her age pulled me into the world of this young outcast. Maybe youth is the perfect weapon to bypass a journalist’s inherent cynicism? No matter the reason, the entertaining spectacle of Harry and her family was distracting enough that what should have been a predictable story completely caught this reviewer off-guard. The left-turn of the second act could have easily ventured into melodrama, but Strube keeps the story on-track, steering what could have been a highly improbable finish into what feels like the only way this book could have possibly ended. Touching and cynical, deeply sad and very funny, On the Shores of Darkness, There is Light is the work of an author in full command of her art. If On the Shores is not on awards shortlists this fall, it will be both a surprise and a grievous error. And if Harry and Irwin don’t break your heart, you may want to check for signs of a pulse. (John Muldoon, Beach Metro News)
“I fell in love with Harriet from the first chapter. She has the most unique way of looking at the world and the book is nearly laugh-out-loud funny at parts, but in the most morbid of ways. I was so moved by Harriet’s story and, even as my heart was breaking, I was so delighted to get to ‘meet’ her brother Irwin. This is a must read for me this year.” (Insomniac Bibliophile)
“This is one of the BEST books I have read in a very long time. . . This is one of those rare books that works much humour and lightheartedness into some really heavy subject matter in a completely appropriate and realistic way. Bravo, Cordelia Strube!” (Lit. Wit. Wine & Dine.)
“Dark, funny, crushingly sad, and breathtakingly hopeful.” (Becca in Halifax)
“Strube masterfully breathes life into her dynamic characters, allowing us to feel love, hate, and confusion with them. . . Thought-provoking and emotional, this novel is a must-read.” (Sad Hat Diaries)
“The novel turns, subtly and heartbreakingly, on questions of hardship, parenting, love, and resilience. I was not prepared for how hard this book would hit me. . . This book is one of the most human stories I've ever read.” (A Bookish Type)
“Harriet, in On the Shores of Darkness There Is Light, is a many-splendored, singular creation, and the novel goes and goes and never falters.” (Pickle Me This)
“Quietly elegiac and despairing, the novel keeps true to Strube’s singular vision.” (Maclean’s)
“I have seldom seen such a beautiful book with so many unlikable characters.” (Book-Stuffed Blog)
"Fantastic." (The Lost Bookmark)
“In some parts it’s funny, other parts poetic, others tragic. All of it very realistic.” (A Novel Haul)
“Strube is the dark horse favourite to succeed Alice Munro as a chronicler of melancholy stories about young girls. Her new heroine, Harriet, is a precocious artist who runs errands for seniors in her ramshackle apartment building, hoping to save enough money to run away to Algonquin Park.” (Toronto Life)
“I would recommend On the Shores of Darkness, There Is Light to anyone who craves a good story full of emotion. . . I give this story a solid 4 out of 5 stars because I loved it and I know you will, too.” (Nimrod Street)
“Strube’s true talent, which was as readily on display in her last novel, 2012’s Milosz, is for layering characters and situations and subplots on top of each other, one by one, until the entire Shangrila apartment building buzzes like a beehive.” (Globe and Mail)
The title of author Cordelia Strube’s new fiction novel, On the Shores of Darkness, There is Light, may seem slightly cliché with the light vs. dark dichotomy, but the contents of the novel are most definitely integral. “There is a budding morrow in midnight,” a line from John Keats’ poem, “To Homer,” a poem Strube quotes in the first pages, is a bit more on the nose in describing the tone of the novel. Midnight is the darkest time of night and this darkness can be deeply unsettling, but midnight is also the beginning of a new day; from the depths of despair a new hope is born. This ability to see light in dreadful scenarios is a gift Strube possesses. Her characters ache as they carry complex burdens, but there is always a comedic moment, a line that makes you laugh because it is so relatable. One thing I assure, you will fall in love with little Harriet and Irwin, the main characters of this bittersweet tale. Harriet is a deeply intelligent, lively and talented, eleven-year old artist who is misunderstood by the often irresponsible and distracted adults in her life. Harriet’s younger brother Irwin, loves Harriet but, due to his condition of hydrocephalus (fluid in the brain), takes up all of their mother’s time and attention. This leaves Harriet to a stepfather she loathes, a largely absentee biological father and an equally self-absorbed stepmother. In the Shangrila, a lower-income housing apartment building in Toronto, where Harriet and her family live, it is the seniors, the neighbours and Mr. Hung who provide Harriet with guidance. This fictional building is an ecosystem. Readers will find it simple to imagine the occupiers of the building turning about in their cycles even when they are not in the story or are only in the background. The seniors often act as a chorus of comic relief or add to the tragedy of Harriet’s day-to-day life. Harriet puts up with them since they are a source of income for her. Each errand for them has a price tag and Harriet is collecting, for her escape to Algonquin Park. Harriet buzzes on the inside with life, with action, with wanting to wear, or immerse herself in, the beauty of life and is someone who challenges the unspoken and spoken truths she encounters. This inner strength Harriet possesses begins to crumble underneath the mistakes of the adults in her life. For those who do not understand her, her strengths are assumed to be attempts at rebellion; in actuality, she navigates the world differently than most children. While, Irwin is in and out of the hospital but rather than grow weary of the world, he is excited about everything and has a strong moral character – always able to empathize or sympathize with others’ misfortune. The mistakes made by the adults with Harriet and Irwin eventually adds up, leaving a dark cloud over the children’s lives. Strube’s playwright experience is easily seen in this dialogue-heavy novel. The characters shine most when they open (or choose not to open) their mouths. Not far into the novel, I felt like I could sit back and let Strube take the conversations to: commentary about Toronto, about our moment in history, gossip about the other seniors, or whatever she felt needed to be said. It is not just the dialogue that delivers. In select sections of the novel, Strube deftly melds scenes together – i.e. ones happening in the future or past with one happening in the present – without confusion. It is unsettling, having time manipulated, or warped, in this way, but this time melding only serves depth to the narrative. I found myself flipping through the pages faster in these moments, wondering how else the author may unsettle the comfortable relationship I’d fallen into with the characters. A quiet, but incessant tension runs throughout the novel, the opening scene being the perfect example of impending doom. In this scene, Harriet runs to her mother and stepfather to let them know she’s seen a baby locked in a car on this humid day, but her mother and stepfather don’t listen to her and the reader begins to worry the baby may die. Harriet refuses to let her voice be silenced, she screams out, “There’s a baby stuck in a car!” twice before the baby’s father runs off to the rescue. The lack of attention paid to Harriet is immediately jarring, especially when it becomes clear Harriet has done nothing to deserve such treatment except be an eleven-year-old girl. The heart of this novel is always clear: Strube presents us with strong characters in fully formed environments and never let’s opportunities to add more richness go by. Each scene is subtly beautiful in its own right but if you dig just a little there are many levels of complexity to explore. The narrative opens up space for discussion on issues such as the lack of affordable day care and programs for youth in Canada, the treatment of the elderly by our institutions, the way modern parents view their children and interact with them and the role technology plays in raising children. Both the children and the seniors of the story are isolated from the adults, often excluded because they require too much patience and time. Prioritizing after reading this novel will become easier; sincerely paying attention to loved ones is of the utmost importance. Tip: I read the novel over a few days and forgot something that could have saved me some heartache. Pay special attention to how the book is divided. The first section of the book is titled, “Before.” This way you may be slightly more prepared for when the, “After,” or the second half of the novel, hits. (Nikolina Likarevic, Word on the Street)