Book Review: The Heart Goes Last

fiction by Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood is well known for her dystopian worlds and in this one the novelist peers owl-eyed at coupledom. There is much to recommend about The Heart Goes Last but it’s not one of her best works—and saying so makes me feel like some wrathful CanLit god might come hurling down from the sky and smite me upon my foolish head.

The narrative structure and plot are constrained within a hetero-binary and the story plods along between its lead characters, Stan and Charmaine; the result is a slow-footed one-two-him-her rhythm, back and forth, back and forth, until it feels less like a masterful hypnosis and more like the result of an insufficient editorial process.

Plot complications come in late and though they somewhat expand, complicate and provide levels of narrative, the complications are kept in service to the couple and their complicated, unrequited, imperiled love. Frankly, I just didn’t care about them. So there, I’ve said it, and my foolish head is still attached to my shoulders.

Book Review: Between You and Me, Confessions of a Comma Queen

non-fiction by Mary Norris 

A fun, informative read for the writer dweebs, written by New York Times copy editor Mary Norris who’s spent 30 years in the trenches of the English language. If, like me, your brain falls into a coma when the rules of grammar are described, this book is an antidote. You’ll learn that somewhere along the way we all became worried about sounding like uneducated boors and adopted the You and I reflex. But here’s the lowdown: that is incorrect, it’s perfectly correct to say You and me. Norris’s helpful rule: “Maybe it would help if people practiced, like singers vocalizing: Between you and mi-mi-mi-mi-mi.”