Canadian Authors Featured: Mowat, Sakamoto, Atwood

But first, the last! Ruth digitized this month's spinning globe, and lo and behold, the World Reader's group has a month to research authors from....drum roll... heightened suspense...lights full up... BRAZIL! Our next meeting will be at Great Pacific at 6:30, Thursday, April 26.




Brian read a wryly humorous excerpt from Farley Mowat’s 1979 autobiographical tome “And No Birds Sang”. At age 18, as Canada entered the war against fascism, Mowat, then a boyish wisp of a fellow, and son of a WWI officer, tried to enter the army, but was turned away due to his youthful appearance. A year later he was accepted, and endured the rigorous, verging on sadistic treatment that men often experienced in combat training. Shipped to the London area to supervise 20 men, whose positions ranged from scout, sniper, and intelligence sections, he found time to indulge himself in his lifetime interest, bird watching. The reading ended with the author persevering the badgering of senior officer Major O’Brian- Bennett, who berated the author’s mustache, pathetically self described as “…the few yellow hairs that could only be seen in a strong light.” In the end, Mowat cited an arcane Army regulation that supported the retention of his wimpy growth.
This is one of the few of Mowat’s 20 plus books whose story is not built around his love of animals, and it is a great read.

“The Electrical Field”, a first novel by Toronto native Kerri Sakamoto, takes place in the suburban Ontario area. Set in the 1950’s, Michele told the group that the tale is “…an interplay between Japanese culture and ours”.
"The Electrical Field" is the …”winner of the Commonwealth Prize for First Fiction, finalist for the Canadian Governor General Award, the Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award, and the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize: a rare and haunting debut about memory and murder, the unusual friendship between an aging Japanese-Canadian woman and a young girl desperate to uncover the truth.”

“The Handmaid’s Tale”, by Margaret Atwood
Rather than quote the entire text, this time Bill shared the rather convoluted story of, well, it's probably best to write something (reasonably) succinct here, so..."In a startling departure from her previous novels ( Lady Oracle , Surfacing ), respected Canadian poet and novelist Atwood presents here a fable of the near future. In the Republic of Gilead, formerly the United States, far-right Schlafly/Falwell-type ideals have been carried to extremes in the monotheocratic government. The resulting society is a feminist's nightmare: women are strictly controlled, unable to have jobs or money and assigned to various classes: the chaste, childless Wives; the housekeeping Marthas; and the reproductive Handmaids, who turn their offspring over to the "morally fit" Wives. The tale is told by Offred (read: "of Fred"), a Handmaid who recalls the past and tells how the chilling society came to be. This powerful, memorable novel is highly recommended for most libraries." (From Amazon.com)

More on this novel at Wikipedia


At left, "Readers", l. to r., Michele, Bill, and Ruth excitedly take turns pointing at the globe and shouting "Eureka!" in the apparent darkness of Great Pacific. Brian ran home to look up and practice his new favorite word, "dystopian".