Staff Pick - Adeline by Norah Vincent

Fans of Virginia Woolf may not love this book, but readers of literary fiction who are compelled by the exploration of a troubled and complex psyche will certainly find much to explore in Norah Vincent's Adeline: a novel of Virginia Woolf.

Adeline, Woolf's never used first name, manifested her teenage self to Virginia as a child frozen in a time before Viriginia suffered sexual abuse at the hands of her step brother. Adeline appeared to her during times of stress or crisis and beckoned her toward to her ultimate suicide. Covering the years from June 1925 to her death in March 1941, this novel delves into the workings of Virginia Woolf's mind through her conversations with her husband, sister, friends and Adeline. Readers who have a working knowledge of Woolf's life and her circle of friends may be in a position to appreciate what Vincent is trying to express with this novel and can form an opinion of this version of Virginia Woolf - one which might be seen as mystical and introspective, or self-absorbed and harsh - or perhaps both.

This novel is densely written and lyrical with otherworldly elements. Despite its melancholy tone and the reader's knowledge that this will certainly end sadly, Adeline is an engaging, character driven novel.

Arthur and George by Julian Barnes and Other Fictionalized Authors

Writers pay homage to the authors who inspired and entertained them by including them in their very own novels. Get a little insight (in most cases!) into some of these classic authors from these suggestions.

Arthur and George by Julian Barnes features Arthur Conan Doyle and a true story involving a wrongfully accused man. Conan Doyle's family life is central to this richly detailed biographical novel.

Vanessa and Virginia by Susan Sellars imagines the complex relationship that existed between artist Vanessa Bell and her sister, writer Virginia Woolf. It follows their lives from a childhood clouded by loss to adulthood as women forging their artistic careers in post-Victorian England.

Not Quite Dead by John MacLachlan Gray is a two-for featuring both Edgar Allan Poe and Charles Dickens. Irish stowaway Devlin finds Dickens' manuscript aboard a cargo ship sailing from Liverpool to the United States. Meanwhile Dickens and Poe find themselves to be uncomfortable roommates as Poe has faked his own death to avoid the Irish Mob.

Peril at Somner House by Joanne Challis is a murder mystery featuring writer Daphne Du Maurier. Young Du Maurier, not yet a writer, investigates the murder of Lord Max Trevelyan. This is a leisurely paced mystery rich in the atmospheric detail of Cornwall in the early twentieth century.

Another mystery, Angel with Two Faces by Nicola Upson, features Josephine Tey. Again in Cornwall (apparently a dangerous spot) Tey and a close friend, who is also a Scotland Yard Inspector, investigates a death that most believe at first to be an accident.

Jane Austen has been a popular choice (target?). In Jane Goes Batty by Michael Thomas Ford, Jane was apparently taught to be a vampire by her former lover Lord Byron - who knew? She is trying desperately to keep her identity a secret and somehow an undead Bronte becomes involved. A serious and complex work of literature - just kidding! - silly and fun.


Emily's Ghost by Denise Giardina features Emily Bronte who lived out her short life in Yorkshire in the early nineteenth century. Giardina speculates on the relationship that might have existed between Emily and curate William Weightman. A biographical, historical and romantic novel rolled into one.


The Tale of Applebeck Orchard: the cottage tales of Beatrix Potter by Susan Wittig Albert is the latest installment in this whimsical mystery series featuring talking animals who would live perfectly in Beatrix Potter's world. Three cats and a dog visit a ferret to find out why mean old farmer Harmsworth has barricaded their pathway through his Orchard. Miss Potter herself is on the case.

Staff Pick - Arctic Summer by Damon Galgut

I count E.M. Forster to be one of my favourite writers and he is one of the few whose work I will re-read over time. So, for this reason I was excited to pick up Arctic Summer by Damon Galgut. Arctic Summer is a fictionalized biography of Forster during that period of time when he finished his highly successful Howards End and the 10 year gap before his greatest work, A Passage to India, was published.

Forster presented to the world an image of a prim gentleman, an intellectual who spent his life in the company of his mother and his aunts. His early novels - A Room with a View, Where Angels Fear to Tread - rebelled against societal conventions and the limits put on relationships. As a gay man, at that point in history, he was unable to, not only explore openly, but also to write openly about the kind of relationship he wished to pursue. During this time Forster began a novel, Arctic Summer, which he was to abandon. By an arctic summer, he was referring to a long cold day in which there was time to do things. This describes well this decade in which he struggled creatively and personally.

Sadly, love for him was not possible for him at home, so he, like many others, went abroad, with his travels taking him to Egypt and India. Forster had an unrequited love affair with Syed Ross Masood, who encouraged him to travel to India and write about his country. During the war Forster had a non-combat role in Alexandria where he had a relationship Mohammad el Adl, a tram conducter, a relationship that continued over time to be affectionate despite their differences in race, income and class. Forster grew more reckless and during a second trip to India as a private secretary to the Maharaja of Dewas, he began an unsettling and unequal relationship with the Maharaja's barber that eventually came to a violent conclusion, which left Forster deeply disturbed.

Forster's journeys were the paths to discovery both personal and creative, as he attempted in that decade to forge affectionate and sexual relationships and to break free himself from the forces that were stifling him creatively allowing him to complete his greatest masterpiece.

Staff Pick - Mrs. Hemingway by Naomi Wood

Naomi Wood has written a captivating novel about Hemingway and the women who adored him.

The novel Mrs. Hemingway is based on the lives of Ernest Hemingway and his four wives, Hadley Richardson, Pauline Pfeiffer (“Fife’’), Martha Gellhorn, and Mary Welsh.

Woods uses the third-person narration to show the perspectives of all four women. Each of Ernest's four wives has a voice. The novel is divided into four parts: each from the perspective of a different wife: Hadley, Fife, Martha and Mary tell their own story. Fife's story is my favourite. She was married to Ernest Hemingway for twelve years and they had two sons. Fife has the greatest lines about love and loss: “What a pull he has! What magnetism! Women jump off balconies and follow him into wars. Women turn their eyes from an affair, because a marriage of three is better than a woman alone”.

I found it interesting how at first the mistress was the enemy and then in the next chapter I felt bad for her because now she was the next wife.

The settings, the Antibes and Paris, Cuba and Key West, come alive and the characters are realistic: you see Ernest Hemingway not only as a mystical, larger-than-life personality but as a real man.

‘When I ask Naomi Wood what Ernest Hemingway would make of her new novel, Mrs Hemingway, quick as a flash she replies: “Oh my! He would be a) rolling in his grave and then b) he’d grab his shotgun and come and hunt me down. Oh yes, he would have absolutely hated it.” – from Historical Novels Review.

It was a very interesting read. Now I want to read The Paris Wife, reread several Hemingway’s works, and, especially, A Movable Feast.

Staff Pick - Black Venus by James MacManus

Bohemian Paris in the mid nineteenth century is the setting for James MacManus' historical novel Black Venus (M) which explores Charles Baudelaire's relationship with Haitian singer Jeanne Duval. Duval was born in Haiti, child of a slave and a French plantation owner who fled the island after the revolution. Jeanne Duval clung to her French roots, making it her live long quest to find her father, confident that he was a kindly man who would take interest in her. She used her singing ability as a means to escape Haiti and made her way to Paris where she came to the attention of poet Charles Baudelaire.

James MacManus

Baudelaire became instantly enraptured with Jeanne Duval and she was to inspire his poetry for the next twenty years. Theirs was a passionate but tumultuous relationship marred by addiction, illness and poverty. Central to MacManus' story is the 1857 obscenity trial in which Baudelaire defends his most famous work - Les fleurs du mal. Baudelaire is trapped between two women - his mother who has economic control of his life and demands that he make safe and conventional choices and his mistress. MacManus paints a more sympathetic portrait of Duval, who is often portrayed as grasping and destructive. His Duval, while certainly demanding of clothes and creature comforts and controlling Baudelaire sexually and with opium, is also a woman who had been cast out into a cruel world with only her wits and her body for survival.

Black Venus is a dark story, evocative of the gritty world occupied by artists and poets in nineteenth century Paris. Another is Robin Oliveira's I Always Loved You (M).

" A novel of the romance of Mary Cassatt and Edgar Degas from the author of My Name Is Mary Sutter The young Mary Cassatt never thought moving to Paris after the Civil War to be an artist was going to be easy. But when, after a decade of work, her submission to the Paris Salon is rejected, Mary's determination wavers. Her father begs her to return to Philadelphia to find a husband before it's too late. Her sister is falling mysteriously ill. Worse, Mary is beginning to doubt herself. Then one evening a friend introduces her to Edgar Degas and her life changes forever." publisher

Jeanne Duval is also a character is Nalo Hopkinson's The Salt Roads (M).

 "When three Caribbean slave women gather one night to bury a stillborn baby, their collected mournings braid into a powerful calling, and a deity is born. So begins the epic journey of a spirit who, in a desperate bid to discover her own nature and identity, defies the limitations of time and place to inhabit the minds of living women throughout history. From Jeanne Duval, the seductive black mistress of 19th-century bohemian poet Charles Baudelaire, to a Nubian prostitute on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 300 A.D., the spirit gathers the power and the wisdom of the ages, only to come full circle on the island of St. Dominque. There, she is reunited with the very women who gave her life, and who still struggle to survive under the tyranny of brutal masters." Discover

Staff Pick - The Aviator's Wife by Melanie Benjamin

Anne Morrow was raised in the shadow of her beautiful older sister, coached from an early age that she was to be the dutiful daughter. Imagine her amazement that it was she, rather than pretty Elizabeth, who captured the attention of handsome aviator and national hero Charles Lindbergh. In The Aviator's Wife, Melanie Benjamin (M) creates a fictionalized biography, or, as she says in the Author's Note she "imagines the emotional truths" behind the Lindbergh's marriage.

Charles Lindbergh chose Anne Morrow to be not only his wife, but also his crew. He tested her mettle in early flights and she proved herself when she was exhilarated by a mechanical failure rather than panicked. Lindbergh chose her, an ambassador's daughter, for her intelligence, her sensibility and the purity of her line. Anne looked at her siblings with their mental and physical weaknesses and was uncomfortable but was also too enamoured of Lindbergh to speak up. So Anne learned to fly, navigate, and manage their domestic affairs from a cockpit. She went instantly from teenager to celebrity, then from mother to tragic figure. The kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh Jr had and profound and lasting effect on Anne, and her controlling husband forbid expressions of grief and insisted that it never be mentioned again. She went on to have five more children, give reluctant public support to her husband's pro-Nazi and antisemitic beliefs, and eventually become a bestselling author in her own right.

Melanie Benjamin
(c)Todd Rennels

This is a tricky piece of writing to accomplish in a first person narrative style, a mere decade after the subject's death. It's important to remember while reading that this is indeed fictionalized - Benjamin has created incidents that never actually happened and imagines emotions to which Anne Morrow Lindbergh never gave public expression. Her novel brings to life the complicated marriage of two complex and layered people. Lindbergh was a man who rose to great heights, figuratively and literally, and disappointed so many with his politics. Anne Morrow Lindbergh blindly obeyed her husband, and as a result accomplished feats no other woman had attempted while also betraying dear friends and herself.

Benjamin has created characters rich and absorbing enough, in my mind, to forgive any poetic license and has accomplished the task she set out for herself, and that is to inspire the reader to discover more about this fascinating woman.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh: her life  (M)
Susan Hertog

"Susan Hertog pierces the public image of Anne and Charles to reveal their story from inside the marriage and gives us a true understanding of the author of the bestselling classic Gift from the Sea. Hertog plumbs the depths of Anne's search for her own identity and vision as she struggles to remain faithful to her marriage and to motherhood. This is the story not only of a brilliant writer but also the anatomy of a marriage, the journey of a young bride who overcame the pressures of fame, personal tragedy, and social constraint to find answers that continue to illuminate the lives of women today." publisher

Staff Pick - The Age of Desire by Jennie Fields

Jennie Field's Age of Desire (M) re-imagines the life of Edith Wharton in the first decade of the twentieth century when she had come into her own as a writer whose novel House of Mirth (M) had achieved great success and was less that twenty years away from becoming the first woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature for her novel Age of Innocence. (M)

Wharton was born to a wealthy and well-connected New York family who had planned her life as a socialite rather than as a writer and an intellectual. She made an unfortunate marriage to Teddy Wharton who, in addition to being most likely bi-polar, was far more suited to the life of a country squire than to cerebral debate in Parisian drawing rooms. Theirs was a sexless and disastrous marriage. In her forties, Wharton was to have her passionate nature awakened by journalist Morton Fullerton, and as their affair progressed, Teddy would slip deeper into illness and madness.

The actual Edith Wharton was an intensely private person and didn't speak or write of her marriage or her affair during her lifetime. Wharton's and Fullerton's affair was graphically described in Age of Desire in a way that you could imagine to be intrusive for the reticent Wharton. This novel's strength, in my opinion, is in the character Anna Bahlmann. Anna was Wharton's companion from a teenager to Anna's death in 1916. Their relationship began as governess and pupil with Anna teaching young Edith German language and literature. As Wharton grew into her fame, Anna's role evolved into literary secretary and companion. Half of the story is told from Anna 's perspective and illuminates the inherent difficulty and inevitable hurt feelings with the servant / employer / friend relationship. As Edith's and Fullerton's relationship develops, Anna discovers a late-life friendship of her own which is the first to challenge her unwavering loyalty to her employer.

In 2009 the correspondence between Edith Wharton and Anna Bahlmann came to light for the first time and were then published as My Dear Governess: the letters of Edith Wharton to Anna Bahlmann (M)  in 1912. It would be interesting to find out how much of her life was imagined. "An exciting archive came to auction in 2009: the papers and personal effects of Anna Catherine Bahlmann (1849–1916), a governess and companion to several prominent American families. Among the collection were one hundred thirty-five letters from her most famous pupil, Edith Newbold Jones, later the great American novelist Edith Wharton. Remarkably, until now, just three letters from Wharton’s childhood and early adulthood were thought to survive. Bahlmann, who would become Wharton’s literary secretary and confidante, emerges in the letters as a seminal influence, closely guiding her precocious young student’s readings, translations, and personal writing. Taken together, these letters, written over the course of forty-two years, provide a deeply affecting portrait of mutual loyalty and influence between two women from different social classes." publisher

For another story of women's friendship that crosses social barriers try Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker (M) by Jennifer Chiaverini. "a stunning account of the friendship that blossomed between Mary Todd Lincoln and her seamstress, Elizabeth “Lizzie” Keckley, a former slave who gained her professional reputation in Washington, D.C. by outfitting the city’s elite. Keckley made history by sewing for First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln within the White House, a trusted witness to many private moments between the President and his wife, two of the most compelling figures in American history." publisher

The women behind the words

I have finally gotten around to reading Z: a novel of Zelda Fitzgerald which has made me curious about other writer’s spouses. There are biographies about the writers themselves but very few on the wives behind the words. Because of this I explored their fictional worlds to come up with some interesting theories.

Z: a novel of Zelda Fitzgerald (M) by Therese Anne Fowler has been written about in length in April 22nd edition of this blog. To quickly summarize, this novel is the tale of Zelda Fitzgerald starting with her courtship and marriage to writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. I always wondered about Zelda and this novel helps flesh out the little knowledge I had. She and Scott were the epitome of a “Jazz Age” with their drinking, partying and madcap lifestyle that placed them in Paris with the literary elite of the time. Reading this novel makes me wonder even more who the “real” Zelda was – the girl from Montgomery or the public persona of the famous couple. You have to wonder if her own talent would have shone through if she had not been overshadowed by her famous husband. There is a particular section in the novel that sums it up nicely :

“Before their reign….there’d been little glamour in the literary world. To be a writer then was to be a drab little mole who thought big thoughts and methodically committed them to paper, hoping for publication but not courting it……some of their influence (the Fitzgerald group) would grow from design…the publicity game… a game he’d conjured, almost and wanted the two of us to play…some grew from our giddy laughter…from the singing…from the dancing….Just then, though, that influential little group was still a bunch a young men…along with me, a very young woman who hadn’t known there would be this kind of carnival…but was game enough to give it a try.”

The Paris Wife (M) by Paula McLain is a novel about the “bad” boy of literature – Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway went on to marry four times and have numerous affairs but The Paris Wife is about his first wife, Hadley Richardson Hemingway. An older woman (29 to his 21) Hadley was an accomplished pianist when they met. A whirlwind courtship and wedding followed their meeting in Chicago in 1920. Hemingway used her as his sounding board for his writing. It is when the couple move to Paris they become the golden couple in the company of a living and volatile group. This group of bohemians included F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound and James Joyce. Oh, to be a bug on the wall at some of those encounters! Their marriage turns sour after Hadley loses a valise of Hemingway’s early drafts and papers on a train and it was stolen. At that point Pauline Pfeiffer worms her way into their life. Hey, if you are in bed with your husband and a naked woman joins you …..Well read this novel to find out what happens next.

The Raven’s Bride (M) by Lenore Hart is a book I may have picked up due to the latest tv series, The Following. Because of this series I have re-introduced myself the world of Edgar Allen Poe. I always found Poe fascinating and this novel gives a slightly different view of him. Virginia “Sissy” Clemm was only eight years old when she met her thirteen year older cousin, Edgar Allen Poe. She was so taken with him she pictured him as the perfect husband in her childhood games. It is when she turns thirteen that Eddy proposes. It is when she falls ill that Poe is driven to madness and his greatest writing. Poe’s life would be perfect for a soap opera, or I suppose a reality tv show. An 27 year old man seducing his very young thirteen year old cousin which results in a taboo marriage, poverty, alleged drug and alcohol addiction, mental illness and she gave up a promising career for him then dies and his life goes further downhill…….Well, each of these issues could be a full plot of a novel.

And now for something completely different, a husband overshadowed by his wife. Written by a mistress of the husband, Emma Tennant, Sylvia and Ted (M) presents a very unusual story. After all, your own personal encounters with a person will colour your opinions. Tennant’s treatment of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes is a mixture of fact and fiction according to the author. Tennant focuses mostly on the time of Sylvia’s death. Tennant claims that she carefully gathered nuggets of information over the years from several close friends of the couple. The trouble with this is Tennant’s attitude is intentionally subversive. A lot has been written about Sylvia Plath and is a favorite of feminists and weepy teenagers all over. It is her depression and subsequent suicide at the age of 30 that seems to garner the most attention. While Hughes did become famous in his own right for his poetry, he is viewed as a villain in some circles. It was his affair with Assia Weivill that caused Ted and Sylvia’s separation. Suicide followed Ted with the suicide of Wevill six years after Sylvia’s and their son’s suicide in 2009. It is always interesting to speculate on the who, what, where and why of a tragic event and Tennant helps fill in the blanks for this famous couple.

So for those who enjoy historical and/or biographical fiction the above books may be a good starting point for you.

Staff Pick - Z: a novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Anne Fowler

Fans of Paula McLain's The Paris Wife (M) will definitely want to pick up Z: a novel of Zelda Fitzgerald (M) by Therese Anne Fowler which imagines the life of Zelda Fitzgerald through her own thoughts and words.

Zelda Sayre, a well to do southern girl growing up in the turn of the century, meets and marries dashing F. Scott Fitzgerald.They were a golden couple in the literary world of the 1920s carefully marketing their image and proud of being trendsetters. If they were alive today, their public appearances would probably be managed by a public relations agency. Their excessive drinking and escapades took an enormous toll both of them physically, emotionally and artistically.

Therese Fowler

Fitzgerald struggled to write and be a commercial success in his lifetime. He had a complicated friendship with Ernest Hemingway that jeopardized his marriage. He had an intense need for Zelda, while simultaneously blaming her for his failures. Fitzgerald exposed Zelda to a world of writers, artists and dancers which she would have been unlikely to have experienced had she remained in Alabama and grown into a society matron. This world awakened in her an awareness of her own diverse talents as a writer, a painter and especially as a dancer. Fitzgerald was threatened by her success demanding that he remain the center of her attention.

Hers was a life of restraints. The youngest by far of all her siblings, she had more freedom than they, but her young life was still controlled by both her parents and by the strictures of southern society. She was restrained in her marriage. She had no control, or knowledge of really, their finances or where they might live or what she might do. When she published her stories they were under both her's and Fitzgerald's names ostensibly to ensure their financial success. Literary historians have debated whether Fitzgerald treated Zelda cruelly or whether Zelda's excessive behavior and mental illness were an emotional and creative drain on Fitzgerald. Fowler presents a picture of Zelda as a woman who though deeply in love, was worn down by the constraints of society, demands of her husband, her own mental illness and maltreatment at the hands of psychiatrists.

If you enjoy fictional biographies you might also wish to try Loving Frank (M) by Nancy Horan. "In this ambitious debut novel, fact and fiction blend together brilliantly. While scholars have largely relegated Mamah to a footnote in the life of America’s greatest architect, author Nancy Horan gives full weight to their dramatic love story and illuminates Cheney’s profound influence on Wright.  Drawing on years of research, Horan weaves little-known facts into a compelling narrative, vividly portraying the conflicts and struggles of a woman forced to choose between the roles of mother, wife, lover, and intellectual. Horan’s Mamah is a woman seeking to find her own place, her own creative calling in the world. Mamah’s is an unforgettable journey marked by choices that reshape her notions of love and responsibility, leading inexorably ultimately lead to this novel’s stunning conclusion. Elegantly written and remarkably rich in detail, Loving Frank is a fitting tribute to a courageous woman, a national icon, and their timeless love story." publisher

Inspiring Artists

I have no artistic talent. I admit it. I am not crafty. I can't take a picture without the people having red eyes. I can't play an instrument nor even hum a song in a tune. So I am envious of people who can. I pass by paintings all the time here at Alderney Gate, whether they are hanging on the library walls, at the Pedway Gallery or the Craig Gallery. I love to see the images and colours. While I would find reading instructional books on art to be like watching paint dry (I know, a bad pun!) I enjoyed reading the fictional accounts of the following artists:

I love the title of the novel Lust for Life (M) by Irving Stone. "Lust for life" ...it is invigorating, being passionate about everything. And that can aptly describe this beautiful book. This novelization about Vincent Van Gogh is well researched. Stone gives an excellent description of the landscape and people who influenced Vincent, especially Van Gogh’s relationship with his brother Theo. For those unfamiliar with Van Gogh, he was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter, most notable for emotional works of rough beauty and bold colour. He produced more than 21,000 works of art. Most notably his self portraits, Sunflowers and Starry Nights. Van Gogh paintings are among the world's most expensive ever sold, with "The Portrait of Dr. Gachet" selling for over $100 million!

A contemporary of Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin is best known for his paintings of Tahitian native women. This French post impressionist was an important figure in the Symbolist movement of the early 1900's. Mario Varqus Llosa present a portrait of Gaugin’s life in The Way to Paradise (M). This novel is actually a double biography, alternating chapters between Gauguin and his grandmother Flora Tristan, one of the founders of feminism. The contrasts and similarities between the two lives make for a very interesting read.

Girl with a Pearl Earring (M) by Tracy Chevalier is less the story of Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer than the inspiration of his masterpiece "Girl with a Pearl Earring"(or as it is sometimes referred to, "the Mona Lisa of the North"). Very little is know about Vermeer, who did not make a living from his painting, as there are only 35 paintings know to exist. The novel tells the story of Griet, a 16 year old Dutch girl who becomes a maid for the Vermeer family. She becomes an inspiration for the painter, which draws the jealousy of both his wife and the rest of the staff. As USA Today states "Chevalier's imagination adds life to an already brilliant painting in this elegantly developed and beautifully written novel."

I wanted to end this blog with a Canadian artist, Tom Thomson. Thomson was an influential Canadian artist, one who inspired the group of painters who later would be known as the Group of Seven. Ontario newspaper columnist Roy MacGregor wrote Canoe Lake (M), a fictional account about Thomson. This novel was originally published as Shorelines. Thomson disappeared during a canoe trip on Canoe Lake in Algonquin Park of July 8, 1917 and his body was discovered eight days later. In the later edition MacGregor reveals that he is the great nephew of Winnie Trainor, a woman Thomson was engaged to, and who was reported pregnant at the time of Thomson's death. This personal touch makes the story just a little bit more interesting in my mind.

For years after Thompson's death there was a lingering controversy about where his body was actually buried. In 1970 Judge William Little published The Tom Thomson Mystery (M), about the digging up Thomson's original grave site in 1956. Medical investigators at the time determined that the body was that of an unknown aboriginal man. MacGregor has refuted the 1956 evidence and with new information revealed in 2009, concluded that the body was actually Thomson*.

For further reading, checkout MacGregor's 2010 Northern Light: the enduring mystery of TomThmson and the woman who loved him (M). So even after death Thomson presented a mystery for the world. What is not mysterious is the influence he has had on Canada and it's art world.

Whether you are a doer or admirer of the arts, I hope that these books will inspire you to examine these artists' works just a little bit closer.

True Fictional Biographies

“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; truth isn’t” - Mark Twain

I know, I know that the heading for this blog doesn’t make a lot of sense. But the following novels are fictional accounts of factual occurrences and real lives. Believe it or not! I had always thought that the first rule in writing was to write what you know, therefore all books could be “biographical”. But the following authors took this concept a step further; judge for yourself.

Color Me Butterfly: a novel inspired by one family's journey from tragedy to triumph (M) is an award-winning novel by L.Y. Marlow. Marlow is the third generation of her family to experience domestic violence. In this novel she presents the story of four generations of a family, with over 60 years of abuse! At the end of WWII, Eloise Bingham follows her husband Isaac away from her family and friends to another town. In doing so she separates herself from anyone who could help her when Isaac turns violent. Her children and grandchildren follow the same path that she did. It is takes a life altering tragedy to force the women to break free from the cycle of abuse. This novel could open up a huge conversation for a book-club or just among friends; well worth the read.

Cathy Glass (M) is the pseudonym of a woman who is a foster mother. It is this experience that has provided her with material for both fiction and non-fictional materials. The Girl in the Mirror and Run, Mummy, Run are based on some of the experiences her foster children have experienced (thus the pseudonym to protect the innocent).

With Run, Mummy, Run (M), Glass presents the horrific tale of spousal abuse. Aisha meets the perfect man, handsome, successful, charming, the man of her dreams. These dreams turn into nightmare when she returns home with their newborn baby. How she escapes from her abuser will have your heart racing and your fingers flying as you turn page after page.

The Girl in the Mirror (M) is another heart wrenching tale, involving the abuse of a child. Mandy has not visited her grandfather for many years. He is now dying and she returns to say her good-byes. While at the house she has had many great time she starts to remember why her precious visits where brought to an end. Sometimes it is the living who suffer more than the dying. As Fantastic Fiction states : " ....is a gripping story of a young woman who tries to piece together her past and uncovers a dreadful family secret that has been buried and forgotten."

Between Shades of Gray (M) by Ruta Sepetys is a different tale of World War II. The public have many tales about Hitler and the Nazis, but this among the few stories that deals with the horrors committed by Stalin. In her author notes Sepetys explains that in 1939 Stalin occupied the Baltic States. The enemies of the state were either sent to Siberia into slavery, sent to prisons or even murdered. The author creates the story of Lina, a 15 year old child artist. Like the Jews, Lina finds herself packed in a train heading for the Soviet Union. It is difficult to realize now that it was the Americans who were helping the Russians strip people of their basic human rights. Even after the war Lithuanians returned to their homes to find them occupied by Soviets. This novel reminds people that the horrors of WWII were not just felt by the Jews, but also by intellectuals, gypsies, homosexual and even Christians. As Remembrance day approaches let us remember to never forget!

Yummy, the Last Days of a Southside Shorty (M) by G. Neri follows the life and death of Robert “Yummy” Sandifer. In August of 1994, eleven year old Yummy tries to impress the members of the Black Disciples by firing a gun at a group of rival Chicago gang members. Instead of hitting his target he accidentally kills a neighbourhood girl, Shavon Dean. The police searched for Yummy for three days before finding his dead body by the railway tracks, killed by the very gang members he meant to impress. These deaths made such an impact that Yummy appeared on the cover of Time Magazine. The fictional novelization of his story is told from the point of view of a neighbourhood boy, Roger. He is the one who tries to find out the answer to the difficult question: was Yummy a victim or a killer, or both?

So there you have it, some true stories that have been fictionalized. Hopefully, if you should write a novel about your life it will be more of a comedy or romance; not a drama! I started this blog with a quote so I will end it that way also.

“For truth is always strange; stranger than fiction” - Lord Bryon