Category: Nonfiction
The Secret Lives of Sgt. John Wilson by Lois Simmie
(Cover picture courtesy of Goodreads.)
John Wilson came to Canada from Scotland in 1912, leaving his wife and family with the promise to return in a year. In 1914 he joined the Mounties, and while stationed in Saskatchewan village, he caught TB and fell hopelessly in love with the young woman who took care of him. He would do anything for her, anything at all.
Winner of the 1995 Arthur Ellis Award for Non-Fiction, The Secret Lives of Sgt. John Wilson is played out against a backdrop of catastrophic events; World War I, economic depression, the TB and Spanish Flu epidemics. It is the riveting account of a mounted policeman and the women who loved him.
I initially picked up this book because it was semi-local. (When you’re in Saskatchewan, any fiction vaguely mentioning your province is ‘local’, no matter how far away the story plays out from where you actually are.) I like true crime books, even if I don’t necessarily always review them. But this one I had to review.
Now, the main problem with The Secret Lives of Sgt. John Wilson is that it tries so hard to be both a novel and a nonfiction account of a cold-blooded murder. In the end, it works as neither. In some respects, this has to be a fictional novel because (despite the award for nonfiction!) Lois Simmie really does insert her own flair into it and speculates highly on what John Wilson was feeling at the time. This is without backing it up with evidence like testimony from his trial or something similar, mind you.
And that’s why, despite the award, I also don’t consider this to be nonfiction. This is more of that hybrid genre, creative nonfiction. Normally the genre of something wouldn’t matter to me at all except for the fact that this book works as neither fiction or nonfiction for me. As fiction, it’s boring and as nonfiction it’s not exactly strictly true to the facts the way you see with other true crime.
Enough of my griping about categorization, though. It’s not all that relevant when a short read like this (something like 200 pages) was threatening to put me to sleep. As I said, part of it was the fact that Lois Simmie included almost verbatim the letters of Polly Wilson’s relatives, who had sent them to so many different policeman it made my head spin. Frankly, the first part of the book leading up to the murder was boring as well. There was too much focus on mundane events whereas the murder itself barely had any page time at all.
It shouldn’t have been because it really had the potential to let us watch John Wilson’s slow descent into madness and murder, but it was because Lois Simmie has a very dry writing style. It’s like she’s writing a textbook for schoolchildren, not an actual book (be it nonfiction or fiction). Even nonfiction writers can insert their own flair as long as they’re not playing with the facts, just like Toby Wilkinson in his book The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt. He was very factual and backed up his speculations with evidence, but he also added in his own commentary of events on occasion in very cynical one-liners. He also wrote in such a way that his audience was engaged whereas Simmie doesn’t seem to care whether anyone is interested in her book by the second half.
I had been interested in this murder case, having never heard of it before, which is why I picked up this book. However, had I known it was going to be such a dull affair as this, I never would have wasted my time with it. I can’t honestly recommend it.
I give this book 1/5 stars.
The Bite of the Mango by Mariatu Kamara with Susan McClelland
(Cover picture courtesy of Open Book Toronto.)
As a child in a small rural village in Sierra Leone, Mariatu Kamara lived peacefully surrounded by family and friends. Rumors of rebel attacks were no more than a distant worry.
But when 12-year-old Mariatu set out for a neighboring village, she never arrived. Heavily armed rebel soldiers, many no older than children themselves, attacked and tortured Mariatu. During this brutal act of senseless violence they cut off both her hands.
Stumbling through the countryside, Mariatu miraculously survived. The sweet taste of a mango, her first food after the attack, reaffirmed her desire to live, but the challenge of clutching the fruit in her bloodied arms reinforced the grim new reality that stood before her. With no parents or living adult to support her and living in a refugee camp, she turned to begging in the streets of Freetown.
In this gripping and heartbreaking true story, Mariatu shares with readers the details of the brutal attack, its aftermath and her eventual arrival in Toronto. There she began to pull together the pieces of her broken life with courage, astonishing resilience and hope.
Just how does one review a book like this? The Bite of the Mango is probably one of the hardest books to review that I’ve ever read, so please pardon the fact that I may be a little incoherent at times.
I can’t honestly find anything wrong with this book (other than the horrifying fact it’s true). Mariatu Kamara is a very brave young woman for telling her story with such brutal, unflinching honesty. Yes, I felt the style was a little too simplistic for my liking but that hardly had an effect on my reading experience. Sometimes simple is better and I think this was the case with The Bite of the Mango.
The one thing I would have liked more of was background about the civil war. I understand that Mariatu Kamara had essentially no knowledge of the war at the time, but it would have been nice to hear her thoughts on it as she told the story. I don’t mean that she should have gone off on a tangent, but maybe some reflections on the war with what she knows now would have been helpful.
Unfortunately, the civil war in Sierra Leone is not well known in the Western world, particularly for young people. The only reason I even knew of it before picking up this book was because I met a young woman my own age who had lived in a Liberian refugee camp around the same time. So yes, a little more background would have been nice. Was the whole narrative confusing without it? No and maybe it’s just my natural curiosity that would have liked more information.
Really, what else can I say? If you like memoirs, history or even just well-written nonfiction in general, I’d highly recommend The Bite of the Mango. You won’t regret picking it up.
I give this book 5/5 stars.
Living with Your Body and Other Things You Hate by Emily Sandoz and Troy DuFrene
(Cover picture courtesy of Target.)
Let’s be honest: most people are unhappy with at least some aspect of their physical appearance. Just think of all the money we spend each year trying to improve our looks! But if worrying about your appearance is getting in the way of living, maybe it’s time to start thinking about body image in a completely new way.
Based in proven-effective acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), Living with Your Body and Other Things You Hate offers a unique approach to addressing your struggle with body image. In this book, you will not be told that your self-perceptions are wrong, that your thoughts are irrational, or that your feelings are misguided. Instead, you will learn to live with the reality that these often painful thoughts and beliefs about yourself will arise from time to time, and that what is really important is accepting these distressing thoughts without allowing them to dominate your life.
You know what it’s like to constantly be checking the mirror, to avoid certain social situations where your body may be exposed, or to gaze longingly at a fashion model in a magazine and think, “Why can’t I be her?” But what you may not know is that people who struggle with negative body image are at an increased risk for depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and low self-esteem. Body image problems can even lead to major financial issues. By focusing on your appearance and little else, you are hurting yourself in more ways than one.
If you are ready to find a purpose in life that is more important than the pain you feel about your appearance, this book provides a truthful, powerful resource.
*Possible body image related triggers*
[Full disclosure: I received a free ebook through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.]
I’ll be honest with you guys: this was one of the hardest books I’ve ever had to read. I picked it up on NetGalley with the intention of reading it and keeping my thoughts to myself because like a lot of people, I’ve struggled with my body image for a long time. However I felt I had to share my thoughts on the book.
While I don’t necessarily think this book is for everyone, it certainly helped me. It taught me how your attention span can either be scattered or stuck and that being stuck on your appearance can affect your whole life in ways you’ve never really noticed. It taught me how to accept my appearance and not be repulsed by the areas of my body that I hate. In truth, it taught me so much more than that but those are the main areas that I felt are important if you want to decide to buy the book or not.
What makes this book effective is that after every little section there’s an activity you can choose to do to help you in your body image journey. There’s audio tapes you can download to go along with these exercises and if you’re serious about the book I’d highly recommend using them. Yes, some of these exercises are going to bring up painful memories. Yet some of them will bring up a time way back when you were a child that wasn’t concerned with your body image. It’ll teach you how to accept that sometimes you’ll feel badly about your body and that those thoughts are okay as long as you stop letting them run your life.
Really, there’s not much more I can say. Living with Your Body and Other Things You Hate is one of the more effective self-help books I’ve personally read and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with giving it a try. It worked for me but it might not work for everyone.
I give this book 5/5 stars.
Improbable Women by William Woods Cotterman
(Cover picture courtesy of Syracuse University Press.)
Zenobia was the third-century Syrian queen who rebelled against Roman rule. Before Emperor Aurelian prevailed against her forces, she had seized almost one-third of the Roman Empire. Today, her legend attracts thousands of visitors to her capital, Palmyra, one of the great ruined cities of the ancient world.
In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, during the time of Ottoman rule, travel to the Middle East was almost impossible for Westerners. That did not stop five daring women from abandoning their conventional lives and venturing into the heart of this inhospitable region. Improbable Women explores the lives of Hester Stanhope, Jane Digby, Isabel Burton, Gertrude Bell, and Freya Stark, narrating the story of each woman’s pilgrimage to Palmyra to pay homage to the warrior queen. Although the women lived in different time periods, ranging from the eighteenth century to the mid–twentieth century, they all came from middle to upper-class British backgrounds and overcame great societal pressures to pursue their independence.
Cotterman situates their lives against a backdrop of the Middle Eastern history that was the setting for their adventures. Divided into six sections, one devoted to Zenobia and one focused on each of the five women, Improbable Women is a fascinating glimpse into the experiences and characters of these intelligent, open-minded, and free-spirited explorers.
[Full disclosure: I received a free ebook through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.]
As someone who personally admires Zenobia, I knew I just had to pick up Improbable Women. A biography of one of my favourite heroines as well as five other incredible women? How could could I not read it?
I was slightly disappointed in the level of detail in the biographies, but I’m fully aware that including enough details to satisfy me would have meant a separate book for each woman. If you haven’t heard anything about these women the information could be a little overwhelming at first, but William Woods Cotterman has a great writing style to help you along. It’s actually easier to read Improbable Women if you read one biography and then pause to reflect before going onto the next one, but it’s not a requirement.
Improbable Women was actually broken up into logical segments which seems to be rare in the nonfiction books I’ve read through NetGalley. Each section is clearly labelled and the order the biographies are in actually make sense. Some of the women profiled in here were inspired by other women in the book, so I liked how that was mentioned and the similarities between each the two were pointed out. At the same time, readers are never spoken down to when these similarities are drawn.
Overall, Improbable Women is a great read for anyone who loves reading about women who were ahead of their time. Every single woman in this collection of biographies from Zenobia to Freya Stark was ahead of her time and lived a fascinating life. Some were more interesting than others, but that’s a matter of personal preference than anything. I would highly recommend Improbable Women to people who love history when it comes out on October 15 or 16 (it says 15 on Goodreads, 16 on NetGalley) of this year.
I give this book 5/5 stars.
Bullying Under Attack by Various Authors
(Cover picture courtesy of Teen Ink’s Facebook page.)
WORDS ARE POWERFUL- they can inflict damage and they can heal. In this anthology of first-person accounts written by teenagers for both their peers and adults, words transform pain into hope and the possibility for change.
Bullying Under Attack is an eye-opening anthology of all three players in the bullying cycle. These conversational essays on life as the bullied, the bully, and the bystander provide insight and inspiration for change. Rather than offer a cumbersome psychological breakdown, this graceful and hard-hitting book places the reader firmly in the shoes of all involved.
The stories written by The Bullied explain the subtleties and agony of harassment, helping readers understand that there is more to unkind words and behavior than “just joking around.” Although many of these teens have suffered through harassment by their peers, their essays are both empowering and inspiring. By exploring the essays by The Bullies, readers will discover that the bullies are often times incorrectly labled as bad kids, but many are simply trying to fit in, despite their own insecurities and fears. While these bullies may still have their own seemingly insurmountable obstacles at home, they share their experiences and insights hoping to manage and reforming other bullies. The section voiced by The Bystander shares tales of those who have regrettably watched and those who have stepped up to help others. Here, readers will find the inspiration to speak out rather than just standing by while others are emotionally harmed.
Whether due to race, weight, or jealousy, there are a myriad of reasons WHY. Included in this startling compendium of personal stories that convey the complexity and nuances of what it means to be bullied, are stories of regret, promises, and encouragement that will help readers find solace during their teen years and show them how—as adults—their words and actions can provide strength and reassurance to others experiencing all aspects of bullying. Ultimately, they will learn to find their voices in order to break the cycle for good.
[Full disclosure: I received a free ebook through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.]
You know, I’ve read a lot about bullying and why kids do it, the stories of victims, etc. And although Bullying Under Attack is being touted as eye-opening, it isn’t anything new. Truly, I admire all of the teens in this anthology for writing about their experiences in a generally coherent manner, but in truth they don’t really have any ground-breaking wisdom to share about the topic of bullying. If you haven’t read any first person accounts of bullying this will probably be an eye-opener for you, but other than that this is pretty much what everyone is saying.
With that said, Bullying Under Attack is still a good book. It was well edited and generally well written by the teens who contributed. Some writers had excellent mature voices whereas others gave away their young age right away. And you know what? That’s okay. This is an anthology essentially by teens for teens. If it stops even one teen from bullying another or one person from standing by and just letting bullying happen, I’ll be happy.
The formatting of my NetGalley copy sucked, to be perfectly blunt. Yet I’m reasonably sure that the real Kindle copy of the anthology will be much better formatted. It was not the easiest to read at times, but the teens involved in this got their points across with sometimes extremely blunt honesty. The only thing I can really criticize is that there should have been a better balance of the three types of writers (bullies, victims, bystanders).
I give this book 4/5 stars.