I had an assignment in a high school literature class once, to name the books that had had a real and profound impact on my life. It was so much harder than I had anticipated to come up with a list. But when I stop and reflect, I realize that what I read has shaped who I am in more ways than I can count. The following are the books that have played a major role in shaping who I am today.
Fantastic Mr Fox, Roald Dahl
Fantastic Mr Fox wasn’t the first chapter book I read (that title goes to The Twits by the same author), but it was the one I read too many times to count. At one point I had the whole thing, line for line, quite literally committed to memory. Roald Dahl is the reason why I’m a reader.
South of Forgiveness, Thordis Elva and Tom Stranger
This book landed in my lap at precisely the time I needed it. Thordis gave a voice to my tumult of feelings when I was 20 years old and brimming with anger, and in the next breath reasoned with me. This book is about sexual assault. It’s about a man and a woman who, nearly twenty years later, reconciled with one another so that they could both move forward with their lives. Her from the anger that had held her back, and him from the guilt that had kept him running from the truth.
This book is not without controversy. It’s critically acclaimed and it’s repudiated for the sole reason that it gave a rapist a voice and a platform. But that’s not the point, and Thordis will tell you that in interviews again and again. It’s about forgiveness. I’ve learned that it’s a misunderstood word. Not everybody knows what it means, but Thordis and Tom do their best to explain its importance. Forgiveness isn’t about ratifying someone’s actions. It’s about acknowledging them and moving to a place beyond anger as a way of releasing oneself from the burden of it.
Cleopatra Daughter of the Nile, Kristiana Gregory
I enjoyed the Dear America Diaries as much as the next pre-teen girl did in my day, but this one stuck with me. In this fictional diary of a young Cleopatra, her two elder sisters piqued my attention with their antics. But by the end, more than anything else I was burning to know what happened to her younger sister, Arsinoe, who played virtually no role in the story. Did she marry a foreign prince and lead an uneventful life? Or did she stir up as much trouble as her sisters did? I flipped to the historical note at the back and discovered that Julius Caesar paraded her through Rome in chains. Then, on Cleopatra’s orders, Mark Antony murdered her on the steps of the Temple of Artemis.
That was quite possibly the first time I experienced heartbreak. I’ve always felt that Arsinoe deserves more attention in the grand scheme of history. And that was why I started writing when I was 16. I have spent almost a decade of my life trying to tell Arsinoe’s story, and I wouldn’t even be aware of her existence if it weren’t for Gregory, which is why this one makes my list.
A House in the Sky, Amanda Lindhout and Sara Corbett
Amanda Lindhout went out into the world as a 19-year-old thirsting for adventure. She carved out a fledgling career as a reporter and travelled to some of the world’s most dangerous places. In 2008 she travelled to Somalia with an ex-boyfriend, an Australian photojournalist, named Nigel. Days later they were abducted. They spent over a year languishing in captivity. Amanda was chained to her mattress and kicked in the stomach every time she rolled over. At home in Canada, her family faced charges of funding a terrorist organization when they tried to raise money to secure her release.
I read Amanda’s story in the summer of 2017. At the same time, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was embroiled in his own scandal for paying Omar Khadr a $10 million settlement as a way of apologizing for letting him suffer in captivity in Guantanamo Bay. A lot of people were angry when the news broke. (Khadr was captured by American troops during a raid on an Al-Quaeda base in Afghanistan in 2002.) All the news did, for me anyway, was emphasize that not all Canadians are equal. There is no fairness in this world when the government will intercede on the behalf of one Canadian, but let an innocent like Amanda suffer such torment at the hands of her captors. Amanda’s spirit and determination to survive her ordeal shone through in her writing.
Mukiwa, Peter Godwin
Mukiwa read rather a lot like my dad’s own stories of growing up under the fiery glow of African skies. Peter Godwin grew up in Rhodesia and at the tender age of six, he witnessed guerillas murder his neighbour. Before his boyhood was over, his innocence was shattered and he watched Rhodesia delve into bloody civil conflict. Conscripted to fight as a young man for the white minority that was clinging to power, he despaired. He witnessed further atrocities committed by Robert Mugabe’s government when the new state of Zimbabwe rose from Rhodesia’s ashes.
The image of the bloody rebirth of a nation through Godwin’s eyes was sobering. He finally put into words what my parents had tried for so long to describe to me about the chaos that reigned in South Africa, too. His narrative is an important one in the story of Africa’s rebirth, but one that’s often excluded.
A Harvest of Thorns, Corban Addison
My dad’s stepsister recommended this story to me after I wrote an article for Vancouver magazine about the fast fashion industry. Ever since, the thought of buying new clothes just to be trendy leaves me with a pit in my stomach. I hardly ever buy new clothes anymore. But when I do, I try to pay attention to where they come from. Addison’s story about abused garment workers was thought-provoking and well-researched, with all of the trappings that make an excellent work of fiction.
The Pillars of the Earth, Ken Follett
It took me a while to swallow my apprehensions and dive into this epic about the construction of a gothic cathedral in twelfth-century England by a writer known for popular spy thrillers. But The Pillars of the Earth is the best case I can make for not judging a book by its cover.
Follett is a masterful storyteller and there is a reason why this is his bestseller, even 30 years after it was first published. The Pillars of the Earth ties together themes of love and loyalty, ambition, war and peace, betrayal, death and religious devotion. The characters were either fiercely compelling or utterly loathsome. Good things happened to bad people and bad things happened to good people, and the monstrous injustice of twelfth-century life really made me wonder how people carried on in their day-to-day.
But out of the entire cast, I cheered for Aliena every time she picked herself up off the ground. Her strength and resilience kept me hanging on to the story page after page. It was hope. I clung to hope that Aliena would triumph against her tormentors and I knew that was the major theme of the entire book. Above all else, The Pillars of the Earth is a story about hope. It is a triumph of the human spirit that flies in the face of catastrophic loss, and the book I cite most often when I make a case for the art of storytelling.
Had It Coming, Robyn Doolittle
In my five years spent working in the industry, Robyn Doolittle’s Unfounded series was perhaps one of the only pieces of journalism I can say unabashedly puts the entire Canadian justice system on the stand before the court of public opinion and truly gives an equal-sided account. Doolittle was everything I wanted to be when I was 20 years old. The way she wrote Unfounded informed how I approached reporting for the rest of my stint as a journalist. Had It Coming was a magnanimous follow-up that bolstered my respect for her.
Alias Grace, Margaret Atwood
Inspired by Susanna Moodie’s Life in the Clearing and based on the real-life trial of a 16-year-old girl working as a chambermaid in Upper Canada in the 1840s, Alias Grace is the story of Grace Marks. Charged with the murder of her employer, Mr Thomas Kinnear, and his housekeeper Nancy, Grace is an extraordinarily complex character with light and dark in her. While the stablehand, James McDermott, hung for the crime, Grace’s sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.
Alias Grace opens on Dr Simon Jordan visiting Grace in prison 10 years after the murders. Atwood reconciles the mild-mannered girl who tells Dr Jordan her story over her needlework with the character that her co-conspirator, James McDermott, claimed goaded him into committing the grisly murders before gleefully finishing off poor Nancy herself. Grace is a gentle soul, but her innocent nature made her an easy target for those who were keen to believe the worst of her. McDermott dragged her moral character through the mud in order to save himself. Even Jamie, the young lad who was so stricken by Grace’s sweet temperament, testified against her after hearing McDermott’s slander.
Atwood examines Victorian notions of propriety and criminality. The public is loathe to believe in a girl’s guilt. But a woman, especially a licentious one, receives no such luxury.