RKS CANADIAN LITERATURE: Cleaning Up Dog Shit and Marriage Vows (Joanna Goodman)

She does not feel young. She holds up her hand and twists her wedding band around her finger. Scott put it on her for the first time on a rooftop terrace in Gramercy Park, a lifetime ago. They were married there by a Unitarian minster, with only their families and a handful of good friends in attendance. The apartment belonged to the parents of one of her stepfather’s colleagues. The ceremony overlooked Manhattan, and she remembers thinking how strange it was to see people walking their dogs in the park below as she was saying, “I do.” It was the most momentous day of her life, and just an average day for those dogs and their owners, cleaning up shit and perhaps glancing up at the young couple on the terrace with their whole lives in front of them.

Joanna Goodman, “The Inheritance”, Harper Collins 2024

RKS American Literature: An Intelligent Woman’s Ability to See How Full of Shit a Man Is! (Dennis Lehane)

Now standing in front of Carmen Davenport’s building, holding both her hands by the fingers she tells him she had a nice night and he agrees that he did too and they both smile goofily and wonder if they should try another kiss, he realizes that what scares him about her is what scares him about all intelligent women – that’s she smart enough to see, very quickly how completely full of shit he is. He doesn’t know what he is doing; never did. Doesn’t know where he is going, never had a clue. He feels, at his essence, that he is a baby who was dropped by a stork and is still falling toward the chimney. Everything else he shows the world is costume.

Dennis Lehane, “Small Mercies”, 2023

“Lost in Puppydom: Rory Dylan Stephen’s Puppydom”: IS IT THE CAR OR THE DESTINATION? MY MULMUR HILLS ADVENTURE

IS IT THE CAR OR THE DESTINATION? MY MULMUR HILLS ADVENTURE

I caused an enormous ruckus on my first major car ride attempt down to Kensington Market in Toronto. So much so we had to return home lest my shrill bark of despair deafen Bob and Fay! Of course, Bob and Fay drove to Denfield, Ontario to pick me up and bring me “home” from Arendale Kennels and there were a couple of hellish car trips to the vet but this time we are travelling to the beautiful Mulmur Hills a two-hour trip from Toronto.

Of late when the word “car” hits my long radar like ears I become excited because it almost always means a trip to Sherwood Park. Do I really love the car like Arnie Cunnigham in the John Carpenter film “Christine” or is it the destination?

I think we may be splitting hairs here. If the car takes me to a destination I love then I love the car so let’s not argue the point.

We loaded up the car for our few days with Suzy Larue up at her estate in the Mulmur Hills. Suzy is known as Canada’s Pesto Queen selling all manner of pesto in the Canadian and American marketplace. Oregano pesto, Basil Pesto, Rosemary Pesto, Hot Pepper and Mixed Herb pesto to name but a few. It is a little-known fact, but Larue is the sister of that famous talk show host Johnny Larue portrayed in the Canadian comedy show SCTV!

And Larue has two dogs 15-year-old Pine Nut and 5-year-old Parmesan also the names of key ingredients for pesto! Speaking of pesto, it is made with loads of garlic a no no for dogs so while I love the smell of pesto I must not eat it. Oh the life of a dog!

My car trip to the Mulmur Hills was a breeze as I slept most of the time although I hear Bob say to Fay that small half dose of Trazadone might have helped. Trazadone? What on earth is that?

RKS American Literature: Bringing a Pornographer to Christmas Dinner (Dennis Lehane)

Mary Pat’s not going to be seen voluntarily walking two cops into her building. That would be like bringing a pornographer to Christmas dinner.

Dennis Lehane, “Small Mercies”, 2023

RKS American Literature: In Boston Stay in Your “Own Neighbourhood” (Dennis Lehane)

Because the truth is they don’t understand one another. It’s not a plan of Mary Pat’s making, nor is it her desire, that they have different tastes in music, in clothes, in food they put on their tables. But that’s the way it is just the same. They like different cars, different sports, different movies. They don’t even talk the same. The Puerto Ricans barely speak the language, but most of the blacks she knows have grown up here and still it’s like they didn’t. They speak that jive of theirs, which, truth be told, Mary Pat likes, loves the rhythm of it, loves the way they emphasize different words in a sentence than any white people she knows, have a way of punching out through the ends of their stories with big booming laughs. But it doesn’t sound anything like the speech that leaves the mouths of Mary Pat or her friends. So if you don’t speak like us, Mary Pat wants to ask, and if you don’t like our music, our clothes, our food, our ways, why come into our neighborhood?

Dennis Lehane, “Small Mercies”, 2023

Buddhism: The Dhammapada: The Mind (Root of Modern Mindfulness!)

The mind is wavering and restless, difficult to guard and restrain let the wise man straighten his mind as a maker of arrows makes his arrows straight.

The mind is fickle and flighty; it flies after fancies wherever it likes; it is difficult to restrain. But it is a great good to control the mind; a mind self controlled is a source of great joy.

Invisible and subtle is the mind and it flies after fancies wherever it likes; but let the wise man guard well his mind, for a mind well guarded is a source of great joy.

The Dhammapada

RKS Australian Wine: Redman 2022 Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon and Multiple Personality Disorder?

Aroma: Dense blueberry and blackberry predominate. Immediate impression of solidity and richness. Secondary notes of dark chocolate and licorice.

Palate: Tannic imprint builds gradually, perhaps better known as “drying tannins”, infused with a bit of pepper. Blackberry, cherry liqueur, cranberry and some brackishness on the long finish. Oh, if it could only show more of its fruit but give it another 2-3 years to start to develop (hopefully) and you’ll have a real Humdinger just like that character on Paw Patrol, Mayor Humdinger!

Personality: Confident and assertive but wet behind the years. Take a risk, as anyone does in cellaring, as wine writers are not Delphic oracles, and give me a couple of years to develop another personality. A wine with multiple personalities is the norm. We change with air temperature, your mood and the food you are eating.

Cellarbility: Take a risk and cellar for three years and take it from there.

Food Match: Fresh field vegetables in many parts of Canada are making their long-awaited appearance. Think a rich eggplant dish like Pasta a la Norma for this wine.

Music Match: Someone left a country music station on in the car as I headed to COSCTO to buy some British Columbia blueberries for jam making. Some poor singer was lamenting the fact he was in a strange city unable to sleep with a glass of wine by his bedside. Poor fellow but wine with country music? What a sin unless it is peach flavored Chardonnay consumed by ladies in shorts and cowboy boots leaning against a Ford F-150! This wine demands jazz!

Price: $23 CDN.

RKS Australian Wine Rating: 91/100 (22July2026). Angus Hughson winepilot.com 94 (august2024).

Redman Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon 2022, Coonawarra, South Australia, Redman Wines, Coonawarra, 750 mL, 14%). 

RKS American Literature: Harvard Hippies (Dennis Lehane)

Getting out at Harvard Station, she enters Harvard Square, and it’s as bad as she suspected it would be – fucking hippies are everywhere, the air smells like pot and B.O., every twenty feet or so someone’s playing guitar and crooning  about either love, man, or Richard Nixon, man. Nixon helicoptered off the White House lawn, almost three weeks ago, but he’s still their bogeyman, those pampered, over educated, draft-dodging pussies. She loses count of how many of them are barefoot, tromping around dirty streets in their frayed bell bottoms and their multicolored shirts with their beads and long hair, the girls without bras and their ass cheeks spilling out of their cut-off shorts, filling the air with cigarette smoke and clove cinnamon smoke and pot smoke and everyone of them a fucking embarrassment to their parents who spent an ungodly amount of money to send them to the best school in the world – a school no poor person could get into, that’s for fucking certain – and they return the favor by walking around with dirty feet and singing shitty folk music about love, man, love.

Dennis Lehane, “Small Mercies”, 2023

RKS EURO FILM: “Romería”: A Vast Overwhelming Ocean

Marina (Llúcia Garcia), an 18-year-old orphaned Spanish student, travels from Barcelona to Vigo for “bureaucratic” reasons as she has been awarded a scholarship at a university in Barcelona to study film. But in bureaucratic fashion she must be recognized on her father’s death certificate as his daughter. She ventures to Vigo in the Galician region of Spain attending the civil registry office to obtain a copy of the death certificate but she has not been listed as his daughter and the only manner of correction is to have his parents, Marina’s biological grandparents, attend the registry office and swear that Marina is the daughter of Alfonso, Marina’s father.

Marina is cast on a sea of uncertainty, lies, coverups and familial censorship. Alfonso died of AIDS in 1992 a shameful disease at that point in time. As his brother Iago stated, showing a picture to Marina of his past in the 1980’s, all in the photo, except him, died of AIDS, overdoses or accidents and it was not uncommon to “hide” family members who had contracted AIDS. Marina learns from her cousins (and not from Alfonso’s parents, brothers and sisters) Alfonso was in fact hidden away and her grandmother denied access to him by his friends.

The silence of suppression of the truth places Marina in very choppy seas to navigate, a fitting allegory as there is water and sailboats predominating in the film. The film is replete with a sense of overwhelmingness with so many family members being rapidly introduced not only is Marina overwhelmed but the viewer as well. If this was intentional very clever filmmaking indeed.

Marina’s “bureaucratic mission” rapidly escalates to asserting her true identity through a revised death certificate which she pursues despite an attempted easy “buy off” to protect her grandmother’s emotional state or is it guilt?

Marina’s mother and father were junkies living a destructively decadent lifestyle briefly emulated Marina in a bizarre trippy hallucination where she becomes her mother and her cousin her father.

Brilliant filmmaking, superb casting and a beautifully discordant soundtrack.

Why is such a seemingly joyous ending leaving this reviewer so despondent? Is this how great this film is?

You can watch the trailer here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=da3CAnPA_EM

Directed by Carla Simón.

RKS EURO FILM RATING 93/100.

RKS American Literature: Poverty and Luck in the United States (Dennis Lehane)

They aren’t poor because they don’t try hard, don’t work hard, aren’t deserving of better things. Mary Pat can look at almost anyone she’s ever known in Commonwealth in particular, or Southie in general, and find nothing but strivers, ballbusters, people who treat ten-ton burdens like they weigh the same as a golf ball, people who go to work day in and day out, and give their ungrateful-prick bosses ten hours of work every eight-hour day. They aren’t poor because they slack off, that’s for fucking sure.

They’re poor because there’s a limited amount of good luck in this world, and they’ve never been given any. It doesn’t fall from the sky and land on you, doesn’t find you when it wakes up every morning and goes looking for someone to attach itself to, there isn’t a damn thing you can do. There are more people in the world than luck, so you’re either in the right place at the right time at the very second luck shows up, for once and nevermore.

Dennis Lehane, “Small Mercies”, 2023