The Way I Feel by Susan White (Acorn Press)

The Way I Feel is Susan White’s thirteenth book (8 YA and 5 adult), and this is the first one I’ve read.

The premise of The Way I Feel is what made me pick up this book. It’s about a middle-aged woman who suddenly packs up and leaves her life in the middle of the night. She leaves her forty-year marriage and her four grown children and has no idea where’s she’s going to go. Who doesn’t wonder what that might be like? This book offers the reader a vicarious experience that might help scratch that itch. It also offers some practical considerations for anyone who might be more seriously thinking about doing it. It’s not easy to lose yourself these days, so you would have to be okay with letting your phone die (or getting rid of it altogether). You would need a source of untraceable money, like cash or your own bank account. Ginny took the camping trailer with her, which helped with expenses.

White has written from many perspectives throughout the book, some of them just short one-page snippets. I especially liked hearing from Ginny’s children – their thoughts on Ginny’s disappearance as well as bits and pieces from the past that help give a more complete picture of the family. Most of the story is told by Ginny, the woman who has left her life–under which her real self has been buried for 40 years–in the hopes of finding herself again. Will she manage it? And what will she discover along the way?

I have no idea where I am going. But I am going.

Roar by Shelley Thompson (Nimbus Publishing)

I was impressed with this debut novel about a trans woman and her family from small town Nova Scotia. Small towns and rural places anywhere are not the ideal places to be if your aim is to blend in. So, at the age of 17, Dawn felt she had to leave. She was being bullied at school, but most importantly, she knew her father–John Andrew–was not happy with her. So she disappeared from their lives for 5 years, and when she came back she was more herself than she had ever been. But she was also terrified by what her family’s judgment might be about who she was.

Dawn was still close to her mother Miranda. Which made it even tougher for her when Miranda died. Dawn wondered if she would have any family left. Things were not off to the best start when she arrived home for Miranda’s funeral. Dawn’s sister Tammy was so surprised to see her transition, and had been harbouring a lot of anger about her disappearance years before, that she said all the wrong things. John Andrew didn’t say anything at all. The only one who treated her like a human was Tammy’s fiance–Byron–who didn’t even realize what was going on.

Byron turned out to be an important part of the MacInnes family’s path to reconnecting. Tammy was quick to come around, but still had to work on her snappy comments. John Andrew took longer; he spent a lot of time watching Dawn reunite with Tammy, cope with gossip, interact with Byron and a couple of other friends in the community, hold her own in tough situations, and, ultimately, demonstrate to John Andrew that she was still herself, who she’d always been, and that she longed for John Andrew to recognize her and love her like he always had.

“I know disapproval, day after day, can near ’nuff break someone.”

Well written, timely, and told with so much heart, it wasn’t surprising to learn that Roar was inspired by events in the author’s own life. Highly recommended.

The book grew out of Shelley Thompson’s first film – Dawn, her Dad & the Tractor – which went on to win the 2022 Nova Scotia Masterworks Award.

Secret Sex, edited by Russell Smith (Dundurn Press)

I could not resist this book – not because of its erotic stories, but because of the literary puzzle inside its pages. Each story is written by a different Canadian author, all listed in the book, but the reader does not know which author wrote which story. My main goal in reading this book was to see if I could match them up; I believe I have failed miserably. But I had fun trying!

Russell Smith came up with the idea of this book to provide an opportunity for writers to write a sex scene without the worry of parents or ex-partners or anyone else reading it and knowing it was theirs. Furthermore, they could write it without worrying about criticism or being in the running for the Bad Sex in Fiction Award. There are many reasons why a writer might shy away from writing about sex in their novels, despite the fact that it happens everywhere all the time.

Smith points out that writing successfully about sex in English is hard to do. “When describing body parts, one must choose between the correct word–which can sound clinical, as if one is reading a medical textbook–and a slang word, which almost sounds more crass than the rest of the language one’s character is using.”

Wide-ranging in style and voice, Smith makes a point not to call this collection erotica. “Erotica suggests that the pieces are written primarily in an attempt to arouse. I would be surprised if you felt no arousal on reading some of these, but that is not their point. These are pieces about sex good and bad, about its disappointment as well as its ecstasies.”

And, in case you were wondering, one scene takes place in a canoe.

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