Tish Cohen, Musharraf Ali Farooqi and Patrick Lane
Tuesday, September 30, 2008 @ 7:30pm
Hart House Library
7 Hart House Circle
Free
Rachel Berman wants everything to be perfect. As an overprotective, single mother of two, she is acutely aware of the statistical dangers lurking around every corner–which makes her snap decision to aid a stranded motorist wholly uncharacteristic. Leonard Bean is broken down on the highway with Olivia, his rodent-obsessed, relentlessly curious, learning disabled 10-year-old daughter. To the chagrin of Rachel’s children, who are about to be linked to the most mocked girl in school, Rachel and Len begin dating. And when her father receives terrible news, little Olivia needs a hero more than ever.
But the world refuses to be predictable. When personal crisis profoundly alters Rachel’s relationship with a very wild, very special little girl, this perfectionist mother finds herself drawn into a mystery from her past and toward a new appreciation for her own children’s imperfect lives. Inside Out Girl shows that no matter how much our world can crumble around us, it is our strength that defines us. The challenges we face only enrich our lives and teach us lessons that will last a lifetime.
Tish Cohen, a 2008 finalist for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for her debut novel, Town House (currently in development as a feature film with Fox 2000 and John Carney, the award-winning, critically acclaimed director of Once), has delivered yet again with her second book for adults, the touching story Inside Out Girl.
“One day when she looked at the portrait, she considered how blessed she had been in life. She contemplated her good fortune in finding an upright man like Akbar Ahmad as her life partner and felt grateful for his bounteous legacy, which released her from all financial cares. Akbar Ahmad looked back at her, his face cast in an expression of long suffering. Mona’s eyes welled up with tears.”–from The Story of a Widow
After the death of her husband Akbar Ahmad, Mona finds herself settling ambivalently into a new life. But the calm rhythm of her days–gardening, cooking, time with her neighbours and family in Karachi–is upset by the appearance of Salamat Ali, the new tenant in her friend Mrs. Baig’s house. Vivacious, friendly, and at times almost impertinent, Salamat Ali is both a breath of fresh air and a disconcerting new presence in Mona’s life, and their awkward meetings always seem to end in embarrassment or misunderstanding. When Salamat Ali, encouraged by Mrs. Baig, presents Mona with a marriage proposal, she is forced to consider what kind of future she wishes to make for herself–and what her past with Akbar Ahmad really means.
The possibility of Mona marrying Salamat Ali shocks her grown daughters Tanya and Amber, and scandalizes her extended family, according to whom Mona’s happiness comes second to what people say about widows who remarry. As Mona negotiates the complex web of tradition-bound in-laws and gossiping, interfering relatives, she finds Salamat Ali waking her to the pleasures of life that thirty years with her dour first husband all but smothered. But if Salamat Ali helps her discover something essential, he also exposes her to new risks, and new dangers.
The Story of a Widow is a beautifully observant novel, one that pays careful attention to the delicate movements of the heart in romantic and family life. But it is equally concerned with the mores of a society in which traditional roles both support and constrain men and–particularly–women. Gently humorous and profoundly perceptive, The Story of a Widow is the moving tale of a woman’s discovery of her voice, and herself.
Musharraf Ali Farooqi is an author and translator. His critically acclaimed translation of the Indo-Islamic epic, The Adventures of Amir Hamza, was published by the Modern Library in 2007. He has also translated the works of contemporary Urdu poet Afzal Ahmed Syed. He is also the author of the children’s picture book The Cobbler’s Holiday or Why Ants Don’t Wear Shoes. He is currently writing a novel set in the early years after Pakistan’s creation, and translating the Urdu classic, Hoshruba–The Land and The Tilism, considered the greatest magical fantasy of the Indo-Islamic world. Author photo by Nina Subin.
One of the most powerful, gripping works of fiction to come out of Canada, Red Dog, Red Dog is Patrick Lane’s virtuoso debut novel.
An epic novel of unrequited dreams and forestalled lives, Red Dog, Red Dog is set in the mid-1950s, in a small town in the interior of B.C. in the unnamed Okanagan Valley. The novel focuses on the Stark family, centring on brothers Eddy and Tom, who are bound together by family loyalty and inarticulate love.
There is Tom and Eddy’s father, Elmer Stark, a violent man with a troubled past, and Lillian, who married as a girl to escape life on the farm with her widowed mother, and now retreats into her own isolation. Unrepentant, bitter, older brother Eddy speeds freely along, his desperate path fuelled by drugs and weapons, while Tom, a loner, attempts to conceal their secrets and protect what remains of the family. Eventually, an unspeakable crime causes him to come face to face with something traumatic that has lain hidden in him since he was a boy. Narrated in part by one of the dead infant daughters Elmer has buried, the story unfolds gradually, as it weaves in family stories that reach back to the depression days and the harsh life of settlers in the 1880s West.
This is also a novel about a small community of people, about complicated loyalties, about betrayals and shifts of power. Filled with moments of harrowing violence and breathtaking description, of shattering truths and deep humanity, Red Dog, Red Dog is about the legacies of the past and the possibilities of forgiveness and redemption. With this astonishing novel, one of Canada’s best poets propels himself into the forefront of our finest novelists.
Patrick Lane is the author of 21 books of poetry, and has received many awards for his writing, including the Governor General’s Award for Poetry (1979), the Canadian Authors Association Award for Poetry (1988), and two National Magazine Awards. Author photo by Diana Nethercott.
THE WORLD IN SIX SONGS: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature
Tuesday, September 16, 2008 @ 4-6pm
Walter Hall
80 Queen’s Park
(Edward Johnson Building, basement)
Free
A lecture with performances
by voice pedagogy majors at the University of
Toronto.
From the author of This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession, Daniel Levitin’s new book showcases his daring theory of “six songs,” illuminating how the brain evolved to play and listen to music in six fundamental forms— for knowledge, friendship, ceremony, joy, comfort, and love. Levitin shows how music and dance enabled the social bonding and friendship necessary for human culture and society to evolve. Blending cutting-edge scientific findings with his own sometimes hilarious experiences as a musician and music-industry professional, Levitin’s sweeping study also incorporates wisdom gleaned from interviews with icons ranging from Sting and Paul Simon to Joni Mitchell, Willie Nelson, and David Byrne. The result is a brilliant revelation of the prehistoric yet elegant systems at play when we sing and dance at a wedding or cheer at a concert—or tune out quietly with an iPod.
Daniel J. Levitin runs the Levitin Laboratory for Musical Perception, Cognition, and Expertise at McGill University, where he holds the Bell Chair in the Psychology of Electronic Communications. Before becoming a neuroscientist, he was a record producer with gold records to his credit and professional musician. He has published extensively in scientific journals and music trade magazines such as Grammy and Billboard.
WHAT IS AMERICA? A Short History of the New World Order, by Ronald Wright
Thursday, September 4, 2008 @ 7:30pm
Innis Town Hall
2 Sussex Ave.
Tickets $5 available via phone (416) 640-5836 and in-store at the Refund’s Desk.
A lecture, Q & A and signing.
From the award-winning, #1 bestselling author of A Short History of Progress, comes another surprising, thought-provoking and essential book.
The USA is now the world’s lone superpower, whose deeds could make or break this century. For better and worse, America has Americanized the planet. How did a marginal frontier society, in a mere two centuries, become the de facto ruler of the world? Why do America’s great achievements in democracy, prosperity and civil rights now seem threatened by forces within itself?
Ronald Wright, author of the bestselling A Short History of Progress, asks these and other critical questions about a superpower whose fate now seems to lie in the balance. Brimming with insight into history and human behaviour, and written in Wright’s captivating style, What Is America? is a fresh, passionate look at the world’s most influential nation. It will reframe the debate about the USA, and about ourselves.
Photo courtesy of Neil Graham.
Ronald Wright is an award-winning novelist, historian and essayist. His first novel, A Scientific Romance, was a Globe & Mail, Sunday Times and New York Times Book of the Year. His non-fiction includes the #1 bestsellers Stolen Continents and the 2004 Massey Lecture, A Short History of Progress, which won the CBA Libris Award for Non-Fiction Book of the Year and has been published worldwide.
