Gail Bowen

I don’t fly.  A few years ago, my adaptation of Peter Pan was being produced in eastern Canada and the icing on the cheesecake of the contract was two airline tickets so we could come to London for opening night. I was forced to explain to the kind and forgiving General Manager that, while Peter Pan may fly, Gail Bowen doesn’t. The GM helped us trade our airline tickets for train tickets, and everyone was happy.

Some time I’ll write a blog on our train travels, but this blog is about one specific train trip our family will be taking in early May.  Last year when our son-in-law and our grandson, Ben, drove Ted and me to the train station for my two month stint as Writer in Residence at the Toronto Reference Library, Ben was fascinated by the train. He loved the littleness of everything – the little sink, the little toilet; the way the beds would fold out of the wall. I promised Ben that his grand-dad and I would take him, his siblings; his cousin, Peyton and the new cousin who was arriving in July on a train trip when he was a little older.

Well we’re all a little older now, and when the Canadian Mennonite University in Winnipeg invited me to do a reading on May 10th, I thought this was a great chance for the kids to log some train time.  So Ted and I, our daughter Hildy, her husband Brett and their three kids and our son Max, his wife Carrie and their two kids are all going to Winnipeg.  That’s Part I of the Blog.

 Part II deals with the fact that while I’m in Winnipeg, I’m signing books at McNally Robinson on Saturday afternoon, May 8^th between 2:00 and 4:00.  In order to stir up interest, McNally’s asked me to contribute to an online feature in which writers give recommendations based on the books that have recently been or are currently on their night-tables.  Here’s my contribution:

 For over thirty years, I led three lives: I was first, a wife, parent and grandparent; second, an academic, and third, a writer.  By the time I’d finished with “Walter, the Farting Dog” (a book which, as the owner of a farting dog, I highly recommend); reviewed whatever was new, hot and student-friendly in Canadian lit and met my own writing deadlines, I didn’t have much time to read the way I read when I was a kid – with passion and without plan. 

Two years ago, I retired from university teaching. Since then, I’ve been making up for lost time. Here are some books that I’ve read and loved within the last month.

 “The Inner Voice”, the autobiography of the brilliant, beautiful and very wise Renee Fleming, is short on titillating anecdotes about the extravagant world of opera and long on frank and intimate advice about how to channel our passions so they drive our careers and enrich our lives.  Brava! 

 The power of “Making Toast”, New Yorker writer Roger Rosenblatt’s unsentimental account of how he, his wife, his son-in-law and three of his grandchildren rebuilt their lives after the sudden and inexplicable death of Rosenblatt’s 38 year old daughter, Amy, can be expressed in a single exchange between Rosenblatt (whom his grandchildren called ‘Boppo’) and his oldest grandson. The prodigiously talented and loving Amy has died on her treadmill. Rosenblatt and his wife drive hundreds of miles to do what they can.  Rosenblatt’s grandson asks: “How long are you staying, Boppo?”  “Forever,” Rosenblatt replies.

A friend who writes for television in Toronto recommended Ann Patchett’s “Truth and Beauty” a year ago. The book is an account of the relationship between two female writers. It’s stunning.  My husband and I now own the complete Ann Patchett oeuvre. Patchett’s books pass between our night-tables constantly.  Her best book is “Bel Canto”, but all her books are magic.

The book I’m excited about reading next is Drew Hayden Taylor’s “Motorcycles and Sweetgrass”.  As someone who taught at First Nations University, I know how significant clever and honest accounts of First Nations’ life can be for us all. Please do, pick this one up.