Thought Train to Pusan

CBR11 Bingo Square: Rainbow Flag Truth be told, for the Rainbow Flag square I was hoping to read Home at the End of the World by Michael Cunningham (is the movie adaptation with Colin Farrell worth watching? I didn’t know this existed and well, Mr. Farrell is a big draw for me, I must admit), but sadly our local library didn’t have that novel. However, they DID have By Nightfall , and no matter the subject, Michael Cunningham is still LGBT+, and I DO have a strange thing for stories about a long-established relationship dynamic being shifted by the introduction of someone new(ish?) to the mix, which is what the synopsis hinted at here. So why not? The focus of this story is on Peter, a mid-forties art dealer who lives a comfortable (if slightly detached) life with his wife Rebecca in New York, and with a somewhat estranged daughter across the country. However, when Rebecca’s younger brother, Ethan (called “Mizzy” as a nickname meaning Mistake, as he was bor...

CBR11 Bingo: Own Voices Written by Eden Robinson, an Aboriginal Canadian Author of the Haisla and Heiltsuk First Nations, I though Son of a Trickster would definitely fit the Own Voices Bingo square as it is a coming-of-age novel centered on an Aboriginal teenager in Kitimat, British Columbia, which leans solidly into some of the Haisla culture and beliefs, particularly those surrounding the trickster figure, Wee’jit. Our focus in this novel is a teenager Jared as he navigates the usual teenage social scene and dramas, but with a whole load of other baggage as well: this comes in the form of a broken home and living with an unstable mother and her boyfriend in poverty, selling pot cookies on the side to help out a semi-estranged father and his new step-daughter, drug use and alcoholism, and the violence that can come with a whole storm of problems. Oh, and that’s not to mention that his one grandmother thinks he is a trickster spirit, and she may in fact be...

CBR11 Bingo: Illustrated Picked up on a whim, this graphic novel features all black-and-white illustrations, which are simple but expressive, but the story itself was a bit fleeting to me. Split between the past and present, Mercury follows the journey of a teenage girl in Nova Scotia named Tara. She is currently living with her aunt, uncle, and cousin in her home town, after her mother is working in another province. After Tara and her mother’s house burned down a few years ago, she has been homeschooled, and now is the time that she finally returns and is wondering how she can fit in while also be true to herself and her roots. This story is however peppered with blasts to the past, with Tara’s ancestors living on a farm that is now being coveted by a seedy prospector, as it appears it may be a suitable place for a gold mine. This prospector also, of course, catches the eye of the family daughter Josey, who is the main character in these past sections. But as...