A Boy From Away Comes Home

Well, here I am back on PEI, sick in bed but happy to be home. My second week in Montreal was filled with family enjoyment and some professional disappointments and triumphs.  There really was only one disappointment and the finger of blame points right at me. The next time I book a reading I will make sure to check the calendar more closely to make sure some other event, such as Mother's Day, will not be occurring!

Such was the case for my Ottawa reading at Collected Works.  It was a cold and windy day when my sister and I arrived in our nation's capitol and we weren't exactly sure where we were going, so we took a bus from the train station and got off where we thought we were supposed to.  But after walking around for a good twenty minutes it was clear that we were lost. Spotting a police cruiser in a parking lot, I went and asked for directions. The cop checked his computer, saw that we were actually not too far from the book store and told us to hop in the back.  Even though there was next to no leg room (due to a large metal casing), my first ride in a police car was definitely a high point of this trip. 

Collected Works is a cozy community-supported bookstore.  They had set up chairs and a podium in their back space.  Alas, had the podium been an omelet station I might have enticed a few Mother's Day brunchers to come hear me read.  As it is, my cousin Florence and her two daughters showed up.  I hadn't seen Florence in years and had never met her daughters, so my initial disappointment was easily assuaged by this familial reunion.  After thirty minutes passed and it was clear the reading was a bust, my sister and I decided to cut our losses by going to the National Gallery, which we enjoyed immensely, before catching the train back to Montreal.  My sister is an avid amateur photographer and loved taking pictures of Moshe Safdie's architecture, as well as seeing the Karsh portraits.  Her favourite (and mine) was the photo of Peter Lorre.

The next afternoon was my interview with a journalist from The Link, Concordia University's student newspaper.  It was a warm and sunny day and I met Pascale Licinio at Cafe Santropol. We sat on the outside patio, where she set up a recorder and proceeded to ask thoughtful and intelligent questions.  It was obvious she had read the book (and liked it, thankfully) and I felt very comfortable chatting with her about my work.  The interview will be published in their June edition.

On Wednesday I read at the Visual Arts Centre.  As with my launch at Casa del Popolo a week earlier, this reading was attended by some of my cousins and one friend who I hadn't seen in years.  It was a long evening with six readers and a jazz trio.  I was the penultimate reader and I must say I think it was one of my better performances.  I read "Smoke And Mirrors", a first-person account of a struggling actress' experience as a stripper, so already the audience had their work cut out for them suspending their disbelief.  But they quickly got into it and laughed at all the right moments.

Before I started, I mentioned that the last time I read in Montreal was when I used to go to open mics at the Vehicule Gallery back in the late seventies. Two women immediately began to laugh and one said I didn't look old enough (bless her cotton socks!).  After the reading a woman came up to me to ask about a character mentioned in the story, a dance teacher named Madame Voronov, and asked if she was modeled on a woman of the same name who had taught at the National Theatre School. I was astonished as she indeed had been modeled on the real teacher, who had given this woman's daughter dancing lessons.  If that weren't enough, the woman's husband was a childhood friend of PEI's poet-laureate, David Helwig.

Thursday marked my very first television interview for the show Focus Montreal, hosted by Montreal news anchor Jamie Orchard at Global Quebec. I had asked my publisher to send Jamie an advance copy of Fatted Calf Blues, but had stupidly supplied them with a wrong address, so she never got to read it before the interview.  But she did read all the on-line info and blurbs, so we proceeded from there.

The interview lasted around six minutes.  I have to say I am not at my most comfortable in a studio environment.  First of all, when you walk in the entire back wall is a screen, enigmatically colored a retina-scarring green. The place looked like in was painted with plutonium.  The interview went along pleasantly enough, and though I tried to speak directly to Jamie, my peripheral vision kept seeing images - such as my face or the book cover - on the monitor.  The following Saturday I watched the interview with my sister, cousins and aunt and uncle. To me, I looked every inch uncomfortable as I had felt, but of course everyone assured me that I had done well.  Isn't that what family is for?  I couldn't ask for a better one.

So the Montreal leg of this promotional tour is behind me.  I sold a little less than half of the books I had brought with me, so I can't complain too much. Photos from the readings can be viewed at the Fatted Calf Blues group page on Facebook where you can also see the promotional video of me reading my story, "Elephant Rock."  Or just go straight to Youtube. 

Now I have a little less than two weeks before I'm off to Toronto.  There I can look forward to two readings in one day, the Jewish Literary Festival in Hamilton,  my Toronto launch, as well as meeting my agent and dinner with various friends.  In the meantime, I plan to do some sorely needed work on my novel-in-progress.  So I'll talk to you next when I'm in the Big Smoke.