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SLUG TOSSING

Name: SLUG TOSSING
Author: Meg DesCamp
ISBN: 1-57061-044-4

AND OTHER ADVENTURES OF A RELUCTANT GARDENER

by Meg DesCamp ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1998

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The education of a gardener, ultimately about as interesting as watching grass grow, from freelancer DesCamp. Before she moved with her husband into their Portland, Ore., home, the very idea of getting dirt under her nails was appalling to DesCamp. Her family were inveterate gardeners, and DesCamp just didn’t get it: Plants were plants, why the obsession? But her yard was a shambles, and slowly, grudgingly, she caught the bug, literally and figuratively. Her husband had sod laid on the back 40; she sowed her own grass in the front. She became versed in the ways of mushroom compost, steer manure, peat moss (“Peat moss. What the hell is peat moss?”). She learned a thing or two about the weather coming off the Pacific, and more than she ever wanted to know about the great gray garden slug, that prolific slimeball, which she plucked from the plants and hurled onto the street fronting her house. Admirably, she stays true to her sense of the organic—“I’m not a granola head with a different Guatemalan string bag for every social occasion . . . but I do think it’s important to leave the earth a little better, rather than a little worse, from my gardening efforts.” So she turns ladybugs loose on the aphids rather than a dose of metaldehyde, and composts, much to the appreciation of the local raccoon population. Unfortunately, there’s too much tedious everyday detail in this story: too many trips to the garden shop, too many garden books plowed through. Nor does DesCamp ever ruminate on the reasons—philosophical, physical, aesthetic—behind her conversion. What motivated this reluctant tiller of the soil, why are her nails now caked with mud? As her husband said to the pricey arborist, “We’ll get back to you on that.”

Pub Date: April 1, 1998

ISBN: 1-57061-044-4

Page Count: 208

Publisher: Sasquatch

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1998

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

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SECOND LIFE, SECOND CHANCE!

A TEACHER'S CHRONICLE OF DESPAIR, RECOVERY AND TRIUMPH

by Anthony Aquan-Assee ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

There are many universal, compelling issues left unexplored, but Aquan-Assee’s recovery and construction of the narrative...

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A slightly out-of-focus, harrowing account of recovery from what a doctor called â€œhorrific” injuries sustained in a 1997 Toronto motorcycle wreck.

Describing in the third person the days of his long coma, he notes the efforts of his family and friends to remain with him 24/7, attempting to keep him mentally and physically stimulated. Aquan-Assee then downshifts into a slow-motion first person account of his own frustrating efforts to regain physical and mental focus, fighting back memory loss and struggling to remember people’s names from one second to the next. Neither angle is entirely satisfactory to particularize what surely was a long and arduous battle by the 29-year-old to pull himself back, often by the fingernails, into a world in which he felt increasingly out of touch. For instance, he slides past crucial moments when doctors encouraged his family to â€œpull the plug,” and their subsequent refusal to do so, even when his life signs were little more than flickers. It would have been helpful to know the thoughts and emotions of his parents and siblings at those precious turning points, as well as the doctors’ reactions to his subsequent recovery–a feat admirably accomplished in spite of their negative proclamations regarding the prospects for his â€œquality of life.” These are the hot-button issues crying out for greater attention throughout. But Aquan-Assee’s focus remains narrow, limiting the potential audience.

There are many universal, compelling issues left unexplored, but Aquan-Assee’s recovery and construction of the narrative are triumph enough.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: 0-973-2782-0-X

Page Count: -

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

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BABA

A RETURN TO CHINA UPON MY FATHER'S SHOULDERS

by Belle Yang ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1994

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With poetic prose and vivid watercolors, Yang has created a rich portrait of life in China during the 1930s and '40s. Yang chronicles her Baba's (or Daddy's) boyhood and adolescence in 20 tales, each preceded by a watercolor. Baba was the fourth son in the eighth generation of the wealthy House of Yang, and his landscape teems with physical and spiritual dangers. He's threatened by torrential rains, ravenous wolves, red-bearded bandits, famines, demons, Japanese bombs, Russian troops, Communists, Nationalists, even an arranged marriage. When Baba is six, his family is forced out of their Manchurian homeland after the Japanese invasion. They move to China proper, then return five years later when Baba's father loses his job with a mining company. They live under the protective patronage of the family Patriarch until a bloody tug-of-war between followers of Mao and Chiang Kai- shek rends the family and country apart. Ancient legends, political upheavals, and religious ceremonies define Baba's youth. Storytellers teach him about gods and demons, prodigal sons, and the ghosts of the improperly buried. Their wisdom then plays out in his own life as Baba witnesses the goddess of Mercy protect his mother from marauding invaders; the troubled ways of one of his older brothers; and a 49-day funeral ceremony ensuring his great- great-grandfather safe passage to Heaven. Yang's prose feels ancient and foreign; for instance, she describes the effects of the first Japanese bombs: ``The glass windowpanes inhaled and exhaled, but the paper panes heaved a sigh and suddenly gave way, cracking like white porcelain.'' The tension between ancient rituals and modern reality elevates these tales from the merely beautiful into an astonishing personal vision, and a unique portrait emerges of a culture straddling thousands of years. Yang's work is like a lovely painted scroll swimming with wild souls, beasts, birds, flowers, day and night sky, tragedy, and hope.