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It’s easy to look back at decades past with rose tinted glasses. In Dangerous Memory, politician, author and musician Charlie Angus dares to take off the shades for a clear eyed look. Political decisions made during this era, notably Free Trade, have everything to do with issues of the day; the 80s were a time when the common good, the environment and economy were looted. The rich got richer and life got a lot harder for the rest of us.
Angus quit school as an idealistic 18 year old and formed a punk band with Andrew Cash in Toronto. Both would later pursue politics: Cash as an MP for the Davenport riding in Toronto, Angus as an MP for the riding of Timmins-James Bay, since winning the 2004 election.
This book is a fun read, despite including a narrative of the times (the AIDS epidemic, the Chernobyl disaster, American interference in Latin America, the fight against South African apartheid) and the righteous fury it provokes (this book could well launch careers in public service). During a time of high inflation, with rapidly rising housing costs, homelessness, growing unemployment, and reduction in the supports available for those with mental health issues, Angus explains how the 80s were still a time of creativity, resistance, and hope, and how we can still take action to create a better world.
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An amoral ex-FBI agent now working as a freelance corporate spy and fixer infiltrates a subversive environmental collective in rural France.
Mars Room and Flamethrowers author Kushner’s charm is in her writing style, and the observations made by the first person narrators in her books (although it should be added that her story choices are always interesting, and she’s great at creating memorable characters). Her most accessible work yet; this is truly a break-out work.
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Lost in Austin: The Evolution of an American City by Alex Hannaford
UK journalist passed through Austin and was charmed to the degree that he soon moved there. The city delivered on multiple fronts: a vibrant arts scene, great cheap food, low cost of living and a real sense of community. That Austin has since vanished, swallowed up by rapid urbanization and the effects of gentrification. As a transplanted Brit and a journo at that, who marries and begins to raise a family there, Hannaford has a great outsider’s perspective and the ability to research and express it. You may have never been to Austin nor have any intention on going, so why care? Because what’s happened in Austin has and is happening all over Canada as well; there are lessons to learn here.
Also, I’ve been reading books about urban planning, urbanization, and cities for years: this is the first one with a chapter dedicated to climate change, both in the present, recent past and near future. What was heaven ten years ago is often closer to “the other place” now. (Just think of the fires, floods and heatwaves in BC in the last five years, or the flooding from Hurricane Helene that turned Asheville into an island last week and wiped out much of the idyllic mountain towns of Western North Carolina.)
While this book focuses on Austin, there’s a strong likelihood most readers will strongly relate to this book thanks to what’s currently happening in their own communities. An entertaining read, despite the issues it confronts.
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This book is a poetic, haunting keening for the loss of the author’s son, who died from an unexpected seizure in his early 20s. Most of Fuller’s career has dealt with her family, in wildly entertaining memoirs about growing up in South Africa (Don’t Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight). If ever there was a memoir she didn’t want to write…
Inconsolable, Fuller doesn’t know what to do with herself after the loss, and travels up and down the Rocky Mountains making stops at a silent meditation retreat in Alberta, a grief sanctuary in New Mexico, and lives in a shepherd’s wagon in Wyoming, trying to process what’s happened. While the subject and emotions expressed here can be very painful to read, Fuller’s beautiful writing enfolds one and carries you along. It hurts, but feels necessary somehow, like a conversation or the journal of a close friend. Beautiful and profound.
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The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook by Hampton Sides
The PW review of the latest from the author of On Desperate Ground struck me as hyperbolic: “propulsive account,” “exquisitely crafted and novelistic portrait of the mercurial captain enthralls” at first glance. Having since read the book, I’d venture it falls short of the praise it deserves.
A lot of credit goes towards tackling a subject that means confronting the consequences of imperialism, without kowtowing to cancel culture reflexes (the forward itself is a master class of acknowledging current sentiments regarding Cook, and explaining the author’s approach to him). This is novelistic history writing at its finest, about a monumental, if divisive, figure.
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Lazarus Man: A Novel by Richard Price
Set in 2008 Harlem, this novel by the author of Clockers and Lush Life revolves around the collapse of a tenement, and the lives of a group of characters impacted by the disaster.
While usually thought of as a crime writer (also as a screenwriter for shows including The Wire, The Deuce and The Night Of) Price it might be more accurate to say that Price uses the genre to cloak explorations of serious social issues. An ability to write pitch perfect natural dialogue tends to lull the reader into the story as though it’s unfolding around one. I’ve been a fan since 1974 when Price published his first book, The Wanderers, which blew my mind as I hadn’t realized until then that there were books written in the way people actually speak, confronting real life everyday concerns. He’s only gotten better.
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