Sunday, April 28, 2013

Critique - "The Imposter Bride" by Nancy Richler

The Imposter Bride by Nancy Richter documents the life of a young Polish woman who steals a dead woman’s ID during the Second World War and uses it to come to Canada as a mail-order bride of sorts. In Montreal, Lily marries her betrothed’s brother, has a child and flees, leaving the child behind. As fate would have it, she meets Lily’s real cousin, whose daughter marries the man Lily was originally supposed to marry. The story is primarily told from two points of view, that of Lily and of her daughter Ruth. Lily’s story reveals a woman who feels guilty for having stolen a dead woman’s identity and who is so scared of being found out as an imposter she must flee. Ruth grows from a child to a woman with children of her own as the book unfolds, wondering the whole time why her mother left.

Nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, The Imposter Bride is told from third person omniscient point of view, which I found confusing. Chapters either tell Lily’s tale or Ruth’s and I would have a better feel for each of these potentially amazing women if their stories were exclusively told. In one paragraph I’m given Ruth’s thoughts, in the next, her grandmother’s, and I felt jarred at the shift, having to re-read sections as a result. The climax is told, rather than shown, quickly wrapping up most character’s lives in a single chapter and with little emotion. Maybe this is why I found it hard to identify with any of the characters.

At times, the writing is amazing. I feel the tension between strangers Lily and Nathan, especially on their wedding day, and the mystery of imposter Lily’s life drives the reader forward. Though I didn’t like the objective telling of the climax, I found this and the prologue the best parts of the novel as well as the most satisfying, but as I’ve said, lacking the emotion that helps me care when someone dies or achieves the closure for which she’s searched her entire life.

Richler overextends the plot as well, telling the story of Lily—both the real one and the imposter—and Nathan, his brother Sol and his wife, Elka, and children, Ruth and her friends and husband and children, and of grandparents Bella and Ida. There is a journal belonging to the real Lily, with which Ruth is nearly obsessed that haunts her childhood because it’s written in Yiddish and no one is willing to read it to her, and the stones that her mother randomly sends her on birthdays and the meaning Ruth makes of them. Richler also tells about Lily’s life after she leaves Nathan and Ruth, leaving the reader with too little information about too much and no specific detail about any of the characters and what motivates them beyond Ida’s exposing Lily for the fraud she is and Ruth’s obsession with the minutia—either real or perceived—of her mother’s life.

Though Jewish, I tend to stay away from novels simply for their Jewish content as there is no guarantee a connection will be made between reader and protagonist beyond religious upbringing. I made an exception this time because of the first chapter which so poignantly sets up the relationships between Lily and Nathan and his brother Sol and the diamond-cutter’s daughter, Elka, but came close to closing it for good so many times for lack of that connection.

The Imposter Bride is well-written and has the potential for a great story behind the premise and wonderful voice, but something is lost in the telling of it, as the story jumps back and forth in time and in and out of too many characters’ minds.

About the Author
Elise Abram, English teacher and former archaeologist, has been writing for as long as she can remember, but it wasn’t until she was asked to teach Writer’s Craft in 2001 that she began to write seriously. Her first novel, THE GUARDIAN was partially published as a Twitter novel a few summers back (and may be accessed at @RKLOGYprof). Nearly ten years after its inception Abram decided it was time to stop shopping around with traditional publication houses and publish PHASE SHIFT on her own.

Download PHASE SHIFT for the price of a tweet. Visit http://www.eliseabram.com, click on the button, tweet or Facebook about my novel and download it for FREE!

Sunday, April 21, 2013

Inconsistencies I have known.


graphic from:http://escapepod.org/2013/04/02/
tv-review-orphan-black/
Consistency.

It’s something writers strive for in their work, especially with respect to setting and character descriptions. For many, an error in consistency can break the narrative flow, reminding the reader s/he is immersed in a construct of reality and not the real thing.

On film, errors in consistency are typically referred to as bloopers. And though they can be fun to spot, if you’re like me, and the gaffes are serious enough, they can also be maddening. Minor consistency problems are artifacts of the way television and movies are filmed, a result of the final product being an amalgam of various takes and camera angles. This is the shirt that mysteriously buttons and unbuttons or the strand of hair that magically tucks and untucks itself from behind an actress’ ear as the scene plays out. In a recent episode of Cult, it was the level of water in Skye’s bottle that randomly rises and falls.

Errors like these are more amusing than annoying. The inconsistencies prompting me to write this blog are much more serious than that. The ones I’m talking about are due to errors in the writing and/or interpretation of the script, errors that should have been caught and edited out long before production began. Take, for example, the Once Upon A Time episode in which Mr. Gold/Rumplestiltskin is led to believe August is his son. This correlates with an hour of my yelling at the screen that August couldn’t possibility be Baelfire because August has blue eyes and Bae has brown. And while it turned out August wasn’t Bae, I don’t know how I noticed this and the boy’s own father didn’t.

Another issue arose watching this week’s Hannibal. The police assert that their murderer was killing girls of the same age, height, weight and with the same hair and eye colour as his daughter. They show a series of victim photos, and I swear the last girl has brown eyes. Trouble is, when they show the daughter in the next scene, her eyes are decidedly blue.

Perhaps the biggest gaffe I’ve noticed was in this week’s Orphan Black. I remember being told via subtitle in the premiere episode that the story takes place in New York. Wikipedia observes the police used NYPD coffee mugs and drove NYPD cars in that episode. But this week they drove to a building I recognize as being on the U of T campus driving cars with Ontario plates. To make matters worse, Sarah/Beth drove through Chinatown to get to a Kensington Avenue address and walked into The Waverly Hotel (it said so on the door as she entered). While I love that shows (like Rookie Blue or Bomb Girls) use Toronto as a backdrop for stories told in Toronto, I need a show to pick a location and stick to it so that I forget I’m watching a construct and not actual people’s lives.

In other words, do the viewers a favour and make the effort to remain consistent.

About the Author
Elise Abram, English teacher and former archaeologist, has been writing for as long as she can remember, but it wasn’t until she was asked to teach Writer’s Craft in 2001 that she began to write seriously. Her first novel, THE GUARDIAN was partially published as a Twitter novel a few summers back (and may be accessed at @RKLOGYprof). Nearly ten years after its inception Abram decided it was time to stop shopping around with traditional publication houses and publish PHASE SHIFT on her own.

Download PHASE SHIFT for the price of a tweet. Visit http://www.eliseabram.com, click on the button, tweet or Facebook about my novel and download it for FREE!

Thursday, April 18, 2013

Can "Defiance" Defy the Odds?

graphic from:http://www.slashgear.com/defiance-
is-both-a-tv-show-and-a-video-game-08276908/#entrycontent
Defiance premiered on Showcase Monday night, to lukewarm reviews. I, on the other hand, rather liked the show, and will be watching further episodes. Defiance takes place 33 years after Earth is invaded by an alien ship, called The Ark, transporting seven different types of sentient beings from the same solar system. They arrive on Earth, terraform it to their liking, and now the aliens and humans are trying to co-exist in the dystopia. Defiance is the town that rose up from the ashes of St. Louis.

Julie Benz is terrific as Mayor Amanda Rosewater. She plays her with a maturity that haven’t yet seen in her other roles. Grant Bowler is Joshua Nolan, a scavenger who makes his living collecting and selling the remains of The Ark as they fall to Earth (a phenomenon known as Arkfall). He arrives in Defiance and gets into trouble defending a boy accused of murder. He gets out of trouble by agreeing to find the real murderer and winds up staying on as sheriff of the town.

Defiance may suffer from a case of trying to do too much too soon. I don’t think I’ll ever learn all of the alien species (collectively known as The Voltans), and the soap-opera style subplots pile up until the last minutes of the two hour episode. In spite of the premise’s predictability (for example, I knew Nolan would become sheriff the moment the current sheriff is killed), and inconsistencies (Why terraform a planet to rid it of its greenery when it is the greenery of the planet that makes it desireable?) I enjoyed the show due to its nod to Shakespearean archetypes. I loved the Romeo and Juliet vibe going on between the son of the Tarr family and daughter of the McCawley clan. Just as entertaining is the scene between Datak and Stahma Tarr in the tub. Upset that his son will marry a human, Datak rants that his wife will spoil his bath if she continues to talk about his son’s choice for a mate. That’s when Stahma channels her inner Lady Macbeth and convinces Datak that if the children marry and something were to happen to the girl’s father and brother, then their family would stand to inherit the McCawley business and eventually control most industry in the town. The implication is that Datak will have something to do with the death of the male McCawleys. Later, when Datak is disgusted by his son’s conformation to the human custom of giving the McCawley girl a ring as a promise to wed, Stahma calms him by suggesting the mere fact the children are engaged will be enough to prompt Papa McCawley’s demise.

Defiance is unique in that quite a bit of money and planning has went into the simultaneous release of the show and video game and (according to online sources) the hope is that watching the series will unlock hints for the game and playing the game will further endear viewers to the characters. While I won’t be playing the game any time soon (that’s just not my thing), I am looking forward to next Monday’s episode, especially in light of the cliff-hanger posed by the episode’s final moments in which former Mayor Nicky Riordan, played with sinister flare by Finnoula Flanagan, hints that there is something subversive about to happen in the near future that will change life on the planet as they know it.

I will definitely be watching; will you?

About the Author
Elise Abram, English teacher and former archaeologist, has been writing for as long as she can remember, but it wasn’t until she was asked to teach Writer’s Craft in 2001 that she began to write seriously. Her first novel, THE GUARDIAN was partially published as a Twitter novel a few summers back (and may be accessed at @RKLOGYprof). Nearly ten years after its inception Abram decided it was time to stop shopping around with traditional publication houses and publish PHASE SHIFT on her own.

Download PHASE SHIFT for the price of a tweet. Visit http://www.eliseabram.com, click on the button, tweet or Facebook about my novel and download it for FREE!

Thursday, April 11, 2013

A Farewell to "Cult"

Graphic from http://en.wikipedia.org
/wiki/Cult_(TV_series)
What’s this I hear? Cult has been cancelled and the remaining episodes will not be aired? And I was just beginning to have an inkling as to where this series may be going.

Cult is, in many ways, superior to the other cult-oriented show, The Following, in that there seems to be an overall design motivating the characters. Jeff Sefton is a reporter searching for his brother who disappeared shortly after solving a puzzle whose clues are hidden in a television show called “Cult”. He is assisted by show researcher, Skye Yarrow, who is investigating the disappearance of her father who has ties to the show’s mysterious, never-seen-in-public writer. Last week’s episode saw Skye nearly die after being slipped a drug, similar to the one the members of the cult on the show take as a part of their religious ritual. In a prolonged dream/near-death-experience, Skye sees Roger Reeves (played with extreme creepiness by Robert Knepper) who begs her to stay with him—which would equate to her giving up her death-bed fight. To persuade her, he allows her to see her father which only serves as an indication to Skye that what she sees is not real. Meanwhile, in reality, Jeff searches for a sample of the drug that felled Skye so doctors can synthesize an antidote. He breaks into Detective Sakelik’s house and takes the tabs from her freezer. At the end of the episode, Skye is cured and Jeff is punished for his hubris when his colleague turns up dead for his role in helping steal Sakelik’s hidden stash.

Though an interesting premise, Cult tries to take on too much. Events on the television show unfold out of sequence (Kelly Collins is an ex-cult member turned cop who wants to take Reeves down in one episode, and marries him in the past (I think) in the next). On top of this there is a real-life cult devoted to interpreting and exposing the sub-text of the television show. Sakelik lurks in the background waiting to pounce on Jeff and Skye whenever they get close to figuring out the cult’s secret, though her connection to the cult is ambiguous. While I like the duality of the actors having both television and real-life personas, and the notion of a secret society based on the sub-text of a television show, the characters seeking out the truth behind the disappeared uber-fans find things out too slowly, which may have contributed to the show’s downfall.

The other cult-based show, The Following, is so quick-paced it is, at times, dizzying. James Purefoy plays Dr. Joe Carroll with smarmy sophistication. An English professor and author, he is obsessed with the horrific elements present in the writings of Edgar Allen Poe. Kevin Bacon plays Ryan Hardy, the former FBI agent responsible for putting Carroll behind bars and subsequently having an affair with his wife. The story shadows Carroll’s followers as they murder to show their devotion, goaded to action by clues in Poe’s writing. The main storyline centres on Carroll’s desire to write the next best-seller and reconstruct his fractured family, and Hardy’s quest to keep Carroll behind bars and then to return him to prison after he escapes. Each week showcases gross brutality and gratuitous murder aplenty, with little ulterior motive. The Following makes me squirm because I don’t understand what about Carroll could turn everyday people into remorseless killers.

As with the fictional “Cult”, the real-life Cult relies on its viewers’ ability to read between the lines to find meaning in the story; The Following lays it all out for its viewers, who are left wondering if there is method to Carroll’s madness. I am disappointed Cult was cancelled, even more so after hearing the final episodes will not be aired. In addition to lamenting the cancellation of the show, I mourn popular culture’s favouritism of the simple and graphic over the subtle and cerebral.

About the AuthorElise Abram, English teacher and former archaeologist, has been writing for as long as she can remember, but it wasn’t until she was asked to teach Writer’s Craft in 2001 that she began to write seriously. Her first novel, THE GUARDIAN was partially published as a Twitter novel a few summers back (and may be accessed at @RKLOGYprof). Nearly ten years after its inception Abram decided it was time to stop shopping around with traditional publication houses and publish PHASE SHIFT on her own.

Download PHASE SHIFT for the price of a tweet. Visit http://www.eliseabram.com, click on the button, tweet or Facebook about my novel and download it for FREE!

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Being Human Send-off


Graphic from: http://www.bigdamngeeks.com/
wp-content/uploads/2011/04/being-human-1.jpg
I hate this bittersweet time of year, the time when all my favourite television shows come to a climax and leave me hanging. This week I watched this season’s culminating episode of Being Human, a show about a vampire, a pair of werewolves and a ghost trying to subvert their supernatural sides and…well…be human. This season saw a vampire virus, Aiden siring a son, Sally’s transformation from shredded, limbo-confined ghost to flesh-eating zombie and back to ghost, and Josh’s journey from were to human and back to were. There was a lot of murder and mayhem and sex and a marriage, but no matter the excitement level of each episode (which was stuck in high gear for the duration), it never reached the high of the season finale.

This week’s episode saw Aidan form an unholy alliance with Blake to compel Kat to forget seeing Sally’s rotting corpse in her room; Sally’s return to ghostdom while linked to Donna the Souleater’s spirit; and Josh’s seeming inability to return to (for lack of a better phrase) being human after turning, following being bit by a full-blooded were. To make matters worse, a woman has shown up that looks eerily like Aidan’s long dead wife, there’s a mutated baby vamp on the loose that Aidan suggested to Josh he’d killed, and Werejosh is about to pounce on Humannora.

On the up side, I’m satisfied. This ending promised no fewer cliffhangers than any other episode this season. On the downside, I have to wait the better part of a year before I am able to ride the Being Human roller coaster again. Being Human is one of the better sci-fi shows featuring supes out there today. It lacks the soap of Vampire Diaries, and True Blood’s gratuitous sex and violence. The characters develop every season, and the relationships are believable, which can be attributed to the chemistry of the cast and the skill of the writing. Knowing the British production has been cancelled makes me all the more grateful that this was only the season—and not the series—finale.

To my dear friends Aidan, Josh, Sally and Nora: have a great summer, and try not to eat too many actual humans while on hiatus.

About the AuthorElise Abram, English teacher and former archaeologist, has been writing for as long as she can remember, but it wasn’t until she was asked to teach Writer’s Craft in 2001 that she began to write seriously. Her first novel, THE GUARDIAN was partially published as a Twitter novel a few summers back (and may be accessed at @RKLOGYprof). Nearly ten years after its inception Abram decided it was time to stop shopping around with traditional publication houses and publish PHASE SHIFT on her own.

Download PHASE SHIFT for the price of a tweet. Visit http://www.eliseabram.com, click on the button, tweet or Facebook about my novel and download it for FREE!

Graphic from:http://www.bigdamngeeks.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/being-human-1.jpg