Book 3: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Agatha Christie

Dear Mr. Martel,

This will be a brief dispatch, as it is late, and I am tired, and need my sleep for I am in the throes of travel preparation. My family and I are heading east on Wednesday, and for some reason, traveling with three children requires large reserves of energy and patience. I am gearing up.

I wanted to let you know that I have read The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. It is the first Agatha Christie that I've read, although I did perform in a theatrical adaptation of And Then There Were None (en français!) in grade 10, and saw The Mousetrap in Toronto many years ago. My paternal grandmother was a big fan, and I remember the mysteries all lined up on a bookshelf along the stairs. I have never been much of a detective novel reader, but this is the second one I've read recently - the last novel I read before embarking on this project was The Sweetness at The Bottom of the Pie, by Alan Bradley. (Another very enjoyable read). My only complaint about this book has nothing to do with Agatha, and everything to do with the publisher at Berkley Books who allowed the following to be printed on the back cover: "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was championed by Dorothy L. Sayers who said, "Christie fooled you [all]... It's the reader's business to suspect everyone." (There - you said no-one refers to her as "Christie", but apparently Dorothy L Sayers did.) Don't you think that rather gives it away? Of course I started suspecting the least obvious character after reading that. It didn't really ruin it for me - I just like to complain. It was still fun to see how all these little details that have been in plain sight all along can be pieced together, all the loose ends tied up. It made me consider how much I skim as a reader, how much I miss because of my skimming. It also made me think about all the little (and not so little) secrets in families, and how they simmer until something causes them to boil over into open secrets (that's the title of one of my all-time favourite collections of Alice Munro's - I'm so happy you've put her on the list). Unless they are lucky enough to simmer until they evaporate, but those are the lucky few I think. More often the "truth will out", right? Oh- that provides a convenient lead up to introduce my photographs - in the letter you sent to accompany this volume you provided four photos from the library at Laurier House, and again, in the interest of symmetry, I thought I would offer up two from my own library. My Shakespeare, to be precise.





Aren't they lovely? My mother gave them to me, and they are one of my most prized possessions. I think in the event of a fire, I would rush to save them, maybe stacking them on top of the family photo albums. It is The New Temple Shakespeare, and my mum collected them. Some of them have inscriptions on the front flyleaf (in Hamlet: Gabriel from Ma. June 17.1958.) and some of them have inscriptions on the back flyleaf, written by my mother (Gabriel) (in Macbeth: 29.vii.55 Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, Stratford (Olivier), or King Lear: 11.viii.53 Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, Stratford (Redgrave). I've decided to add to the inscriptions, starting with As You Like It, which I saw at the McPherson Theatre here in Victoria two weeks ago. No big names, but a wonderful performance nevertheless. My mother is following our correspondences with interest, and has her own theories as to why you have not heard from the prime minister directly, but I will not go into them here.

Hmm. I do manage to get off topic. I did look out for the George Eliot reference you mentioned. I have not read The Mill on the Floss myself, but devoured Middlemarch and have been meaning to read more ever since. I see why you like that line. Perhaps you know the answer to a question that came up for me while reading - of course I can't find the exact reference right now, but at some point I think it is Flora who says things are beginning to seem like a scene from a Danish play. I thought of Ibsen, but no - Ibsen is Norweigian. So who is the Danish playwright being referred to? Just wondering.

I will be reading Elizabeth Smart on the plane, if the children let me, and will send you my next response from Montreal. Until then, all the best, and Happy Canada Day!

Rebecca Baugniet

Book 2: Animal Farm, by George Orwell

Dear Mr. Martel,

Well, I'm getting in just under the line, it being 11 pm PST. I just finished rereading Animal Farm, and am very pleased to have done so. The details of the book had been buried deep amongst most other memories from my high school years, and I 'm sure it was easier to reread it than to attempt an excavation of such memories. It is always interesting to read books at different stages in life, and see how it affects you depending on what experiences and education you've had or gained since your last reading. I would like to say that the political satire was more evident to me this time around, but sadly my knowledge of the Russian Revolution has not increased a great deal since grade seven, and without the notes on the text provided by Peter Davison in the recent Penguin edition I had out of the Greater Victoria Public Library (acquired by the GVPL on May 28th of this year - I think I was the first patron to read this copy!) I would not have known that Orwell intended Napoleon to be reminiscent of Stalin. Yes, the notes were helpful (and if you will allow another one of my digressions, on a little amazon hunt earlier this week I happened to notice that there is an edition out with an introduction by Ann Patchett. I would like to read what she has to say about it too. I like her - do you? Especially Bel Canto- I wonder if that would be a good one to send Stephen Harper). But what is wonderful about Animal Farm, I think (and surely why they made us read it in high school), is that you don't need to fully grasp the satire to appreciate its meaning.

The novel made all sorts of diverse thoughts surface in my brain, beginning with the personification of animals in literature (really, I could only come up with Aesop and Art Spiegelman's Maus in adult lit, but I think that is because my brain has become over-saturated with all the talking animals in the children's books I have been reading to my kids over the past nine years - there must be others). For all three (Aesop, Spiegelman and Orwell) the use of talking animals provides some distance from political commentary. Hmm. Maybe not so much with Maus. Speaking of children's books, have you come across Farmer Duck, written by Martin Waddell and illustrated by Helen Oxenbury? A rather peculiar children's story with some faint echoes of Orwell.

Animal Farm reminded me of my trips to Prague in '95, and Cuba in '97, and all the various perspectives on socialism I was exposed to in those places. I thought about bears a lot, although this is because I was reading it on a camping trip, and I have some qualms about camping in bear country. With small children. I also thought about how we treat animals. I was especially moved by the death of Boxer, and wondered why Orwell chose the pigs to be the cunning ones, while the other animals are all dense - did he observe this in a farmyard, I wonder? I have never viewed pigs as being particularly smart animals, however I haven't spent much time with farm animals. And I thought about your book - the one you mentioned to Harper when you sent him this book. I wonder how it is coming along - I am looking forward to reading it. Have I not yet mentioned it? I am a fan of your work. I thoroughly enjoyed The Life of Pi - I read it shortly after my second child was born, and remember becoming completely absorbed in it, but again, the details are foggy - I blame the sleepless nights of that period. (It's on my reread list). It is your Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios that is more fresh in my mind. I read it in 2004 before going to see it put on at the Bain St. Michel, and it blew me away. (Twice. The story and then the play.)

I have not had a reply from you yet, but I expect this is because you haven't really heard from me yet. I only mailed out the last letter earlier today. First I was delayed because my printer was out of ink. Then when I replaced the cartridges and printed it up I was a little paralyzed with self-doubt. Was this all too crazy? Shouldn't I have some better comments to put down before I sent off my responses? Etc. I got over that, but then the envelope got lost in the bottom of my purse, and then we went camping. So finally today, two weeks after writing the letter, I actually plucked up my courage and dropped the letter in a mailbox. Hopefully I will get this one off to you in a more timely fashion.

Wishing you a good two weeks (I see your birthday falls between this letter and my next so please accept my best early birthday wishes - I noticed that you wished the Prime Minister a happy birthday when you sent him Animal Farm, so there seems to be a nice symmetry there),

Rebecca Baugniet

Book 1: The Death of Ivan Ilych, Leo Tostoy

Dear Mr. Martel,

I finished The Death of Ivan Ilych today. You see, I’ve been following your correspondence with Prime Minister Harper (sporadically, I admit) since the beginning and have been growing increasingly disappointed by his lack of response. It was somewhat reassuring, in recent weeks, to see that you have received a couple of replies from his staff, but still, doesn’t it seem a little shabby, after the gift of fifty-five books, to have not yet had so much as a word from the man himself? Perhaps a “Dear Yann, Thanks for the books – I’m keeping them for my retirement. In the meantime I prefer to expand my stillness with Dick Francis. Your P.M…” I know the man is busy, but that only took me a few seconds to type out. Like you, I wonder about our leader and what makes him tick. And I began to wonder about what he was missing out on as well. Does he read your letters but not the books? Does he flip through the copies you send, admiring your dedication and skimming the back cover? Or is this all completely off his radar? Is there absolutely no time in his week for any literary interests, is he completely spent from politics and never gets to read for pleasure? I wonder. Which brings me to the real subject of my letter. I have decided to take on your reading list myself.

Please allow me to introduce myself: I am a 31-year old Canadian woman. I was born in Montreal, where I lived until last August, when my husband and I decided to move to the West Coast. Not for work or school, just for a change, and because we thought it would be nice to live by the sea (it is). I find myself without any employment or academic pursuits at the moment and am in need of something to keep my mind off this situation, in the moments when I am not busy trying to remedy it. Feeling that your project deserves a bit more attention than it has so far received, I am embarking on the literary journey you mapped out for Stephen Harper.

I am looking forward to most of the titles you have chosen - I have previously read twelve on the list, and started but not finished another two, maybe three. I am only dreading a couple. My plan is to read them all, in the order you sent them, and send you a response to each one. You may notice that I am only making a plan, and not a vow as you did. This is because I know myself well, and admit that I am easily distracted, especially from things I’ve assigned myself. I tend to start things out with great enthusiasm, which then fizzles out after a few months. I do hope this won’t happen, as your own persistence inspires me, but I am not prepared to make any promises. Nor do I aspire to write anything illuminating or especially erudite about these books, only a few assorted impressions I had while reading. My primary hope in doing this is to expand my own stillness (I like your phrase), but perhaps I also hope to bolster your mission in my small way – to affirm to our PM that yes, the average Canadian does care about culture. We are mourning the cuts to arts funding and the demise of small circulation arts, literary and cultural magazines. And yes, we read.

So I read The Death of Ivan Ilych over the past few days. I read it as you suggested Prime Minister Harper read it, in just a few minutes a day. I read it as I sat at the Aveda Institute letting the colour seep into my hair (please don’t get the wrong impression, I very rarely get my hair done, and when I do I usually see it as an opportunity to read for the trashy magazines that one finds there), I read it at the edge of the YMCA pool while my children were having their Sunday swimming lessons, letting the pages dampen with little chlorinated water droplets, and I read in other places too. I found it especially compelling to read it in these various spots, with so much life buzzing around, to contrast the death scene being drawn out in the book. At one point Ivan Ilych struck me as a sort of literary precursor to Holden Caulfield, that where Caulfield obsessed over the phoniness apparent to him in adolescence, Ilych was preoccupied by all the falsity surrounding him in his decline.

I’m embarrassed to report that this was my first proper taste of Tolstoy. I did try to read War and Peace the summer I was 19, but it did not grab me the way one wants a summer book to, and as I’ve already confessed, I am easily distracted. But back to Ivan. It wasn’t immediately obvious why you would have chosen it for the first book to send Harper, but looking over your article in the Globe from April 2007 that kicked this all off, I see how it would have seemed appropriate, given what you had just experienced in the House of Commons, to send a man wielding so much power at this stage of his life the chronicle of the final days of another powerful man who is agonising over whether he has lived the right life. It is an enormous question, and impossible to read without pausing and taking stock. Hmm, I wondered last night as I dozed off, am I doing what I want to do with this limited time I have? And if I’m not, how exactly to change course? Important considerations. I also liked the character of Gerasim, and he made me reflect on how some people are naturally so good at being with the infirm, without betraying any sense of pity or grudging or fears of their own, or any of the other emotions that surface in the presence of the terminally ill, while others are not (sadly, I feel that I fall into the latter category – as you said, he is the character in which we recognize ourselves the least). I had some other thoughts as well, but I think I've gone on long enough for today.

I’m off to the post now. I will mail this to you care of your publisher in Scotland, as that was the only contact address I came across online. I will be in touch again in two weeks when I have reread Animal Farm, which I have not looked at since I was in Shirley Pearlman’s grade 7 English class.

Until then, I wish you all the best,

Rebecca Baugniet