SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 6TH, 2008 THE CAPE BRETON
POST
Crewe’s new novel Ava Comes Home a perfect
blend of laughs, tears
KEN CHISHOLM
The Cape Breton Post
Hollywood tongues are wagging over Oscar-winning starlet Ava
Harris’s sudden departure from Tinseltown’s red carpets.
Her favourite arm candy, studly Hayden Judd, is desolate.
The bizarre buzz is Ava privately jetted to the frozen Canadian
north to some berg called Glace Bay (sounds positively glacial,
non?) to comfort her dying mom.
OK, I’ll end my attempt at E-talk right there, but you get the
idea. The heroine of Lesley Crewe’s new novel, Ava Comes Home
(Vagrant Press), leaves Hollywood behind when, after a 10-year
absence, a family emergency plops her in Cape Breton.
Besides reconciling with her terminally ill mother — and
numerous siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles — Ava, born Libby
MacKinnon, must confront the dark, searingly painful secret that
tore her from Seamus, the only man she ever loved.
Crewe, who grew up in Montreal and now lives and writes in
Homeville, Cape Breton, writes forcefully, full of local detail
— everything from the Tasty Treat to Jacobson’s make an
appearance — and with great psychological insight.
She also expertly manages a page-turning blend of down-home
comedy and heart-breaking romance.
The comedy rises from the culture clash of Ava’s “entourage”
(assistant and best bud, Lola, and stylists Harold and Maurice),
unused to genuinely decent, honest folk like Libby’s family, who
insist on feeding them colossal amounts of delicious home
cooking.
The secret keeping Libby/Ava and Seamus apart propels the novel
and, despite the evidence cannily put in plain sight, I never
guessed it.
And when revealed, it actually raised the emotional stakes to a
point where I thought they could not be resolved.
But then Crewe brilliantly stages a dramatic climax that . . .
well, read the book.
Crewe says she chose Hollywood as a setting to put her main
character as far away from her Cape Breton home as possible and
in a business where a long absence seemed plausible.
Like her other two novels, Relative Happiness and Shoot Me,
Crewe says comedy and dark emotions go hand in hand because
“that’s what life is like.
“I’m writing about families,” she says. “And families are about
laughter and tears.”
To promote her new novel, Crewe will travel across most of
Canada.
But she starts in Glace Bay with the official launch Sept. 25,
at 7 p.m. at the Old Town Hall on McKeen Street.
And being Cape Breton, there will be no red carpet, but there
will be tea and lunch served.
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Rebecca Wigod, The Vancouver Sun
Published: Friday, March 30, 2007
VANCOUVER — The protagonist in Lesley Crewe’s first novel is
easy to like. Lexie Ivy is a plus-size woman who lives in Glace
Bay, N.S., with her plus-size cat, Sophie. She works at the
library, acts in plays, hooks rugs, enjoys a glass of wine and
drives a van named Betsy.
In the course of a brilliantly successful makeover, she banishes
figure-hiding “tablecloth” dresses from her wardrobe. And,
despite being envious of her three slim, pretty sisters, she
doesn’t do too badly in the romance department.
Crewe said that “Lexie is pretty much me.” Which makes Relative
Happiness “about as close to autobiographical as you’re gonna
get.”
Since the book came out in 2005, Crewe has solidified her status
as an author. Last year, Vagrant published Shoot Me. It’s a
lighthearted farce about an elderly anthropologist named Hildy
who comes home to Halifax to die, moving into her great-niece
Elsie’s rambunctious household. Unseemly scrambling occurs when
she announces she has hidden “treasure” in the comfy old house
and it’s there for the finding.
“I love Aunt Hildy,” said Crewe, 51. “I’ve met a few of these
old dolls in my time.”
The author grew up in Montreal and moved to Cape Breton Island
about 30 years ago. She and her husband, John, love country
living.
In 2000, after submitting an article to the Cape Bretoner
magazine, she was offered a column. She took up the challenge,
and Home Fires — a series of funny takes on family life —
appeared until the magazine’s demise in 2005.
Formerly a stay-at-home mother, Crewe was delighted to see what
she could do with words.
“One day in 2003, I just sat down at the computer. I didn’t
intend to write a book, but two months later (Relative
Happiness) was done. That’s how I do it: 18-hour days for two
months.”
Crewe grew up reading Rosamunde Pilcher and Maeve Binchy.
She doesn’t categorize her work with that of Alistair MacLeod,
Ann-Marie MacDonald, Donna Morrissey and other big-name Maritime
authors. She notes that “a lot of Cape Breton books are full of
angst and hard times.”
Hers are warm and upbeat. They’re about mothers and daughters,
girlfriends and colleagues — and a place where people are close
to the land and the ocean, drink endless cups of tea and put on
plays when they need to raise money.
Crewe has completed a third and fourth manuscript and is writing
a fifth.
rwigod@png.canwest.com
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Comedy and
tragedy
Shoot Me combines both in hilarious, intelligent tale
By BRUCE ERSKINE
Shoot Me, the second novel by Cape Breton
writer Lesley Crewe, doesn’t suffer from the dreaded sophomore
jinx.
Following on the heels of her critically
acclaimed debut novel, Relative Happiness, Shoot Me is an
assured and often hilarious piece of writing that details the
frantic lives of the Brooks family of Halifax.
Set in a large, rambling home in the
city’s south end, the novel centres on social worker Elsie
Brooks, a long-suffering enabler who has to contend with her
strong but mixed feelings for her estranged plumber husband,
Graham, who still lives in her basement and has started dating
again; the growing pains of her two very different daughters,
psychology student Lily and hairdresser Dahlia and their
respective boyfriends, Eli and Slater; and her sisters: Faith, a
would-be writer who lives in Elsie’s attic, and Juliet, a social
climber with a penchant for cosmetic surgery who prefers the
company of her lap dog, Kiwi, to that of her doormat husband,
Robert.
Elsie’s already tumultuous life is thrown
into complete disarray by the unexpected arrival of her
91-year-old Aunt Hildy, an eccentric archeologist who announces
in a surprise letter from Africa that she is coming home to die.
Hildy does indeed die at home, but not in
circumstances that anyone could have predicted, which sets
various family members — except Elsie — off on a fevered search
for a treasure that the old woman has told them is hidden
somewhere in the house.
Crewe, a Montreal native who has lived in
Cape Breton for almost 25 years, said in a recent interview that
Shoot Me differs from her first novel, which was set in Cape
Breton, in that it is much less personal.
"It was a lot of fun to write. It was
silly and enjoyable and I had a great time doing it," she said.
"Relative Happiness was a more personal book with issues I
needed to resolve within myself. Shoot Me was a picnic in
comparison!"
She said that Shoot Me doesn’t take itself
as seriously as Relative Happiness did.
"It’s more of a romp," she said.
"Hopefully even the title (which is taken from a pivotal line in
the book) is an indication that there’s not going to be anything
too depressing within the pages."
Still, the novel does have its more
serious moments, particularly as it reveals Hildy’s troubled
past and the reasons behind the strange and surprising life she
has led, moments that Crewe does an effective job of blending
with the somewhat broad, at times farcical, situation comedy
that is the book’s chief narrative line.
Crewe, whose prose is both fluid and
accessible, says that the combination of comedy and tragedy is
for her simply a reflection of life.
"Since life is never a flat line, it’s
easy for me to combine comedy with tragedy because that’s how we
live our lives every day. There’s always something to cry over
and then laugh about even as we’re crying," she said. "I balance
the two by always leaving the reader hopeful. That relief is in
sight, if you just hang on for another page. I don’t wallow in
grief and I don’t muck about in foolishness for too long."
Crewe says she hopes readers recognize
themselves in the situations and characters that populate her
books.
"At one point in Shoot Me, Aunt Hildy asks
her niece if an ordinary life has less value than an exciting
one. Most of us think we live ordinary lives, and yet every day
we accomplish extraordinary things. But we never give ourselves
enough credit," she said.
"To me, an extraordinary thing is to see a
young guy standing by the side of the road with a cardboard sign
trying to entice motorists to come and have their car washed for
five bucks to raise money for cystic fibrosis. Even though no
one is stopping, he’s out there waving his hands anyway.
"I’d like to have people see themselves as
I see them and feel good about themselves when they finally do."
In lesser hands, Shoot Me might come
across as simply a light and somewhat sentimental entertainment.
But while it is undoubtedly entertaining, and at times a little
sentimental, the novel also possesses an intelligence and
emotional depth that reverberates long after you’ve stopped
laughing.
Lesley Crewe, who is also a very
entertaining reader, will read from Shoot Me at the New Glasgow
Public Library program room on Oct. 11 at 7 p.m and at the the
Halifax Public Library on Spring Garden Road on Oct. 12 at 7
p.m. Admission is free and open to the public.
Bruce Erskine, a Herald business reporter,
is a freelance book reviewer.
Shoot Me
by Lesley Crewe
(Vagrant Press, 309 pages, $19.95)
ABT - Atlantic Books
Today
Holiday 2006. No. 53
Review of SHOOT ME
by Julie Bergwerff
While Lesley Crewe isn't likely to be
accused of writing a deep, philosophical novel, clearly that
wasn't her intention. Her latest book, Shoot Me, is
a light, humourous soap opera set in Halifax's South End.
Think Desperate Housewives meets Murder She
Wrote.
Living in a rambling old house on
Cambridge Street, Elsie Brooks is the glue that holds her
wacky extended family together. One sister, Faith, is the
wannabe writer holed up in Elsie's attic struggling to
revise "It was a dark and storm night." The other sister,
Juliet, lives in Clayton Park suburbia contemplating a life
without pedicures as her husband's shady business deals
unravel.
Elsie's daughters, Dahlia and Lily,
are your typical live-at-home twenty-somethings (floral
motif notwithstanding). Dahlia works as a hairdresser at the
Mic Mac Mall with her hunky massage therapist boyfriend and
Lily is studying to be a shrink. She doesn't have to stray
far from home for her material. To top it all off, the
not-quite-ex-husband lives in the basement and the nosy
next-door neighbour (aptly named Mrs. Noseworthy) watches it
all unfold, with a helping hand here and there.
The novel opens with Aunt Hildy, the
feisty ninety-one-year-old archaeologist and black sheep of
the family, deciding to return home from Africa to die. And
by home, she means her childhood bedroom. The rest of the
house's inhabitants are understandably less than thrilled,
but the possibility of an inheritance keeps them on their
toes. In no time, Aunt Hildy turns the house upside-down
with a wildly farcical treasure hunt and when she winds up
murdered in her bedroom, the stage is set for a rousing game
of real-life Clue.
Few writers could pull off this kind
of humour and make it out the other side with their
credibility intact. Crewe does it. Shoot Me may not
be deep, philosophical literature, but it's an entertaining,
fun read with a quirky cast of characters that will wander
through your memory long after you put the book down.
Readers who enjoyed her first novel, Relative Happiness,
will not be disappointed.
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From the Chronicle Herald - Halifax, Nova Scotia -
Sunday December 11, 2005
Rookie writes with raw power
By DAVID PITT
If this novel were written by someone less
talented than Crewe, I'd say it was a book that doesn't know what it
wants to be. But Crewe knows exactly what she's doing.
Relative Happiness begins like pretty much every "chicklit"
novel you've ever seen.
Thirty-year-old Lexie has a handful of self-image
problems, none of which, if you listen to her friends, are as disastrous
as she seems to think they are. She works at the library, volunteers
with the local theatre company, and she'd dearly love to meet a good
man. She's a Cape Breton Bridget Jones, in other words.
Mere moments into the story, a good man appears:
Adrian, off-Broadway actor and globetrotter, who's somehow managed to
fetch up in Glace Bay. He's got nowhere to stay, Lexie's got this house
all to herself (and her enormous cat), and what you expect to happen is
exactly what does happen.
It isn't long, though, before her roommate does
something that reveals him to be not such a good man at all. Let's just
say that not only Lexie, but the enormous cat, too, are appalled and
somewhat revolted. Lexie is plunged into despair, of course, and her
friends try to restore her spirits by whisking her off for a week's
holiday.
Naturally, Lexie almost immediately meets another
man: Joss, a burly Greek god of a fellow who makes her swoon. Several
things happen after that, but I'm not going to tell you about them. I'm
going to tell you about the most remarkable thing about the novel,
instead, which is this: somewhere about halfway through, and so subtly
that you don't even know it's happening, the novel stops being "chicklit"
and becomes a story of great emotional depth.
There is no "aha!" moment, no place where you can
stab your finger at the book and say this is where everything shifted.
But everything does shift, and Lexie gives up being Bridget Jones and
becomes a flesh-and-blood woman. The novel retains its delightful sense
of humour, but now there are also moments of real drama, moments so full
of emotion that you'd have to be as cold as a Cape Breton winter not to
be affected by them.
This is Crewe's first novel, and quite frankly I'm
astonished to know that.
Her graceful prose (I haven't even told you how
well written this novel is, how its characters walk right off the page),
and her ability to turn a familiar story into something with such raw
dramatic power, are skills that many veteran novelists have yet to
develop.
Relative Happiness is a genuine pleasure to read.
Between the Covers
Aloft's picks for the best new Canadian books, coast to coast
By Mary Jane Copps Relative Happiness (Lesley Crewe,
2005; Vagrant Press, Halifax, Nova Scotia)
You want
Lexie Ivy as your best friend. Smart, Generous, funny and loyal, it is
for her relatives and friends that Lexie strives to deliver happiness.
As for herself, at 30 she has come to believe that she will only ever be
relatively happy. She couldn't be more wrong.
Relative
Happiness is "chic lit," Canadian style. Against the background of Cape
Breton's windy beaches, author Lesley Crewe delivers real people living
real lives. In her debut novel, strong women find unconventional ways to
deal with life's struggles, sorrows and triumphs--even within the
intimacy and intrusiveness of a small community. Lexie's adventurous
journey to confidence, self-knowledge and love make this book a non-stop
read.
Born in
Montreal, Crewe has lived in Homeville, Cape Breton for almost 25 years.
Her crisp narrative maintains an enticing rhythm throughout, leaving the
reader wanting more--both more about Lexie and more from Crewe. We give
her our highest kudo: we couldn't put the book down.
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