The M Word has arrived!

My copy of The M Word arrived earlier this week. I was getting pouty because according to social media, all the other contributors had received their copies the previous week. (Yes, Canada is a large country, but I'm fairly impatient when it comes to mail regardless.)

I've decided that I'm not going to read it cover-to-cover, but flip around and read what speaks to me. I'm reading another collection of essays right now, so I'm going to go back and forth between both books as not to burn myself out on motherhood. So far, I've read the essays of Heather Birrell and Carrie Snyder, both of which are excellent. I really wish our country was smaller, as I'd love to sit down with these two women over beers one night and talk about their essays. So much of what they wrote spoke to me, seemed similar to my own experiences. I hope their contributions are an indication to the quality of the rest of the anthology, because if so, it promises to be stellar.

If you're on GoodReads and would like to enter the draw for your own copy, follow the links.

Mad Hope

I finished reading Heather Birrell's Mad Hope earlier this week and loved it. As I was reading it, I'd come across passages and think, oh, that'd be a good one to excerpt and then I'd continue on without making note of these. The truth is, there are too many good parts to excerpt, that I'm doing what I rarely do on this blog and write about the book itself.

Mad Hope was a slow burn for me. I don't know if it's because life got in the way of finishing the opening story in a timely matter and therefore coloured those first stories, or it's because the later stories sung to me in a way that those first few didn't, but I am so glad that I kept reading.

In October, I saw Heather Birrell read at the Vancouver International Writers Fest. I was there to see my friend John Vigna, but was pleasantly surprised to hear her read. When I reached the section that she read from, I was excited. Despite the many praises her book has rightly acquired, it was hearing her read that made me want to buy the book. She's a fine, wry reader. A true pleasure. At the reading, I didn't realize how complex that section was in the book and I loved it even more reading it. It did make wish she had a novel I could read next, though.

When I read "No One Else Really Wants to Listen" I had to put the book down beside me every page or so. I didn't want to walk away from it, I needed to read it in one sitting, but I also knew I needed to savour it. That I was only going to have the experience of reading it first the one time and I wanted to enjoy it, take it in as much as possible. I don't do that often with fiction. This story was a discovery, a beautifully uncomfortable mirror held to my life. I know I'm going to carry some of those characters with me for a long, long time.

There is so much in Mad Hope that is great, how deftly Birrell navigates relationships--the comfortable and uncomfortable; the fleeting and the life-long; the ugly and the beautiful. I especially loved how she writes about children and parenthood. This may sound strange, but I feel like I trust her completely.

If you've read the book, I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. If you want to read more about Birrell, I recommend this interview with Kerry Clare over at Pickle Me This.