Caucasian woman with blonde hair, wearing white and black sleeveless top, and black pants. First reader of the last set, she crosses the stage to a mic under a still dark night and addresses the Scream survivors still planted on the grass, ready to listen.
The Night is a Mouth, Lisa Foad (Exile Editions)
Page 82:
“Right, right. But listen, Gold. If you ever find yourself sitting in a city made of hunger, cut its heart out or it’ll eat yours. No joke. And Gold, if you talk to your mother, tell her I love her. Tell her that I didn’t do anything wrong. And tell her that if I did, it’s partly her fault. Because we’re a team.”
“Dad—”
“Okay, okay. Bye, darling.”
Seconds later, the phone rings. Sure enough, it’s Gold’s mom.
“Gold, it’s your mother.”
“My mother’s dead.”
The woman sitting two rows down leans forward, her chin in her hands, her chin on her knees. She strokes her shoe laces, tracing them past each eyelet to the end of their road, her fingers perilously edging over the tip of her sneakers. The man beside her reaches over, places his forearm lazily across her shoulder, his finger just able to twirl the longest strand of her curly hair around his index finger. He tugs gently; she likes the tingle. He kisses her clothed shoulder, and she sits back into his shoulder. Breezy readings come but once a year.
~~~
June’s Book Madam book choices revealed! What did I pick for this month’s winners? Watch below to find out!
Caucasian male, mid-forties, wearing brown t-shirt, khakis, with black bag and red bike helmet.
Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned, Wells Tower (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Page 95:
A flock of geese rose from the far side of the lake and drifted into a spotty boomerang formation overhead. Barry hoisted Marie up so she could see over the car. One arm slid across her shoulders, the other caught her in the crook of her knees, and he propped my daughter on his stomach in a way that showed he’d held her like this many times before.
Night. Picnic blanket. Full moon.
Romana: Did you know a boomerang works just the same in space as it does on earth?
Noveline: Shhh.
See you Monday, January 5, 2009 with fresh entries! Happy Holidays!
(Originally published October 7, 2008)
Spadina streetcar
Caucasian female, mid 20s, with short blond hair and black-framed glasses, wearing skinny jeans, pink striped T-shirt, and green cargo jacket.
The Withdrawal Method, Pasha Malla (House of Anansi Press)
Page 87:
In The Human Body we learned a little about all the tubes you’ve got inside you—Fallopian tubes and whatever, all those tubes like canals and rivers carrying stuff back and forth around your vagina, or wang—depending on what you’ve got. And right then, right when I’m thinking that—I swear—the clouds break up a bit and even though she’s gone so tiny Mom the moon comes smiling down into the water at the bottom of the hole, lighting the puddle up silver.
The muted voice offers gentle guidance from behind an inch of hollow door, all that separates this embarrassing and gymnastic feat from the perfumed cheek of the woman who bore her. She sits defeated on the toilet, applicator in hand, and calls her mother in.
Caucasian woman, late 20s, with long brown hair tied back in a neat ponytail, wearing broad purple frames, a long red wool coat and a green and red flecked angora scarf. She cracks the spine a few times and begins, using the gift tag as her bookmark.
The Whole Story and Other Stories, Ali Smith (Hamish Hamilton)
Page 1:
There was a man dwelt by a churchyard.Well, no, okay, it wasn’t always a man; in this particular case it was a woman. There was a woman dwelt by a churchyard.
Though, to be honest, nobody really uses that word nowadays. Everybody says cemetery. And nobody says dwelt any more. In other words:
When she gets to page three, she’ll find a confession of love scribbled into the spine. It won’t be from the young man who gifted her the book, it was bought second-hand. Still, she’ll think, People just don’t use words like this anymore. She’ll stand. She’ll look down the platform, both ways. She’ll look at the sky, blank. She’ll draw her purse strap over her shoulder and think, Think, think, think. She’ll head toward the stairs and stop, halted, on the first step. She’ll bounce on the balls of her feet, and look back at the platform.
She knows he’s only home for the holidays.
But when they’d emerged from the pub a fog had rolled in so thick that he’d taken her arm and guided her away from the curb like it was cliff. They’d walked through the emptying streets, her arms circled around his, childhood friends falling into the other’s step, their short breaths pulled into the dense blanket that enclosed them. We could scream all our secrets and no one would hear them, she’d said. I’ve only the one, he’d replied, giving her waist a gentle squeeze.
A blast of air from the incoming train will catch her ponytail in a swirl. She’ll glance up the stairs, adjust her purse strap again, and place her hand on the railing.
Caucasian male, early 30s, with short blonde hair, wearing glasses, jeans, white dress shirt, red fleece jacket, and black tuque.
The Broken Record Technique, Lee Henderson (Penguin)
Page 105:
He took a break. Something about the way his lungs burned suggested now was a good time for a rest. On a bench he sat and unfastened his leg and laid it down beside him, grabbed a white towel from a shelf and wiped his nub and then the rim of the prosthesis. A man known as Baby sat next to Gene’s leg.
They say the trick is to start exercising during the holidays. He rotates his ankle and wonders if his basketball sneakers would hold up on the pavement. He sticks out his bottom lip. He’s glad he has both legs. His eyes widen and he catches himself in a laugh. He didn’t mean it that way. Of course, he’s grateful. For that alone, he really should start jogging. He rotates his ankle again and looks out the window. If only it wasn’t so bloody cold.
Caucasian woman, 30s, with brown curly hair, wearing black jeans, black Converse, black parka, and burnt orange scarf.
Simple Recipes, Madeleine Thien (McClelland and Stewart)
Page 167:
While I lounged in bed, my father brought me Eggo waffles, a glass of milk, and one tablet of Aspirin crushed soft as sand. Then he called my grade-one teacher to tell her I was sick again. Instead of school, he would take me with him to the furniture store.
Her family bought their land early, the odour from the cemetery offset by their outdoor pool and four car garage. At first, she walked to the main road, past the mourners and old women picking crab grass from their husband’s graves. Her father waited in his idling Cadillac, tapping his watch, they were going to be late. She left the family business the summer after high school, the year the shops started opening on Sundays.
