…two books. One I started at Pearson Airport, and finished on the plane trip to London. The other I started at Gatwick Airport, and finished on the plane trip to Toronto. Both are poles apart in terms of story and writing style, but both were worthy of my attention.
Written by Miriam Toews
This is the story of Nomi, a teenage girl growing up in a small Mennonite town, during the 70s and 80s. Her free spirited mother and older sister have already abandoned her and her gentle, geeky father, having had enough of their smothering, conservative environment. The rest of the book uses flashbacks inter-cut with present day observations about herself, her family, the town, its population, and the tourists, who offer glimpses of what the outside world might be like. Nomi desperately wishes to leave…yet she wonders if she would be able to make something of herself in the outside world…
This winner of the 2004 Governor-General’s award is one of those books I’d point to if anyone asked me to describe a single, archetypal example of a Canadian novel. It’s witty, wry, self-effacing, funny, heartbreaking, tragic, pointed…struggling within the twilight zone between the stuffy, rural quiet of the old Canada, and the unforgiving, electric pace of the newer, urban Canada. Timothy Findley and Margaret Atwood are masters of this type of storytelling, and they are convincingly joined by Miriam Toews. A Complicated Kindness will make you laugh, cry, and think unexpected thoughts…which pretty much sums up all satisfying reads.
Written by Robert Harris
Based in part on the codebreaking saga of Bletchley Park in World War II, the novel is the story of Tom Jericho: a genius mathematician, recruited by none other than Alan Turing himself, to work with some of the finest minds in Britain to try and crack the sadistic Nazi cyphers, which could lead to a breakthrough in the war. Although successful, a nervous collapse forces Jericho away from Bletchley for some much needed rest. However, events conspire to bring him back once more…but is he up to the job? To complicate matters further, there may be a spy working inside Bletchley Park…
It’s a taut, gripping, thrilling story, with long moments of contemplation in between. At times, the explanations of the mathematics and electronics behind the Enigma cyphers border on white noise, but paradoxically, this leads to even greater insight into how insidiously complicated the cyphers truly are…and how powerfully they batter at Jericho’s mental & emotional defences.
The novel is also successful at exposing the cliches of the stiff-upper-lip British attitude, even as it is side-swiped in the glare of American technical superiority…and the threat that they will take over the operations at Bletchley. The novel revels in exposing what lies under the facades of the men and women at Bletchley, stripping off the masks of genteel British civility, and offering devastating glimpses of what people are truly feeling: weariness, jealousy, and fear.
But what truly made me fall in love with the novel were the evocative descriptions of Bletchely Park and Cambridge — descriptions that resonated within me, as I had spent a day exploring both of these locations, and understood both the physical and emotional impact of both of these towns on Tom Jericho.
This is history from WWII that is terribly under-appreciated. If more people read Enigma, they would understand just how important — and how valuable — Bletchley Park was to the Allied victory in the war. It’s a book that grabs you by the throat, and refuses to let you put it down. Had Dan Brown wanted to make The DaVinci Code a readable novel, where the history and drama are seamlessly interwoven, he should have taken hints from Robert Harris!
