36 — Friday, April 23, 1999 ~ North Shore News Learning te live in a world of diversity Novelist Lesley Krueger finds her niche Layne Christensen News Reporter layne@nsnews.com ONE may be quick to draw parallels between the life of Canadian author Lesley Krueger and Holly Austin, the lead character in the writer’s latest novel, Drink the Sky (Key Porter Books, $21.95). But “This is not an autobiography,” warns Krueger, who, like her graracter, knows first hand the danger and excitement of living in Brazil. With Drink rhe Sky, Krueger has crafted a richly textured story and embroidered it with the sights and sensations of her own experience living south of the Equator. ‘The North Shore-raised author made Brazil her home for three years in the late "80s, while her husband was a foreign correspondent for the Globe and Mail. In Holly we see a character whose struggies are very different than the author’s own. “I took a person who had lived a somewhat more sheltered fife than me, I made her a person who had never left Vancouver, never done much travelling,” says Krueger, who left home in °76 after grad- uating from studies in political science and English at UBC. Holly has two young children and a husband who has become increasingly more self-absorbed in his career with a Greenpeacc-like organization. A frustrated artist weighed down by the demands of marriage and motherhood, she sees her husband’s posting to the Amazon as a chance to reclaim her sense of self. “She's locking, on going to Brazil as the time that she, somewhat belatedly in her 30s, will have an adventure chat her husband has been having all his life.” Krueger is no stranger to adventure. “In Rio, things constantly happen. it’s this incredibly violent, vibrant society.” One day while walking to the market, she witnessed a drive-by shooting. “A guy on a motorcycle pulied up next to the open win- dow of a car and shot the driver in the head.” The writer figures the shooting was drug related. “I was shocked,” she recalis. “An older Brazilian woman walking by me took my arm and said very pleasantly ‘We're going to keep on walking now,’ and talked away to me as if we were not paying any attention to anything.” As Holly’ adventure unfolds, her life as she knows it starts to uaravel. Krueger knows full well the personal changes that living in a coun- try like Brazil bring about, “the things that you have to learn to deal with that in our staid and happy homes in Canada you don’t neces- Used & sarily have to deal with.” Holly's struggle with a new cul- ture, a pew environment prompt her to redetine her own identity. “Ina funny way, so many people say, they find out how truly Canadian they are when living ina place like Brazil,” says Krueger. Since °93, she has made her home in Toronto. As a freelance magazine writer, she continues to travel extensively. Her assignments have caken her from Labrador and a story on Inuit education for Taday’s Parent magazine wo the Amazon and 4 story about the fragile ecology for Destinations magazine. “Journalism takes me all aver the place,” savs Krueger, who is house-bound this spring, at work on her fourth book for Key Porter Books. “Pm unable to travel at the moment because [’m writing a travel book,” she quips, referring to the irony of her situation. Journalism feeds her fiction writing. She savs her reporting is both a great education and grist for the mill. “I can never tell when I'm doing something exactly what will show up in a work of fiction even- tually.” Several years ago in Massachusetts while her husband was on a fel- lowship at Harvard, Krueger enrolled in a course with popular science writer Stephen Jay Gould. The course was on the history of Darwinian thought — a concept she weaves into the storyline of Drink the Sky. It is her third novel. She published her first short story collection in 1986 at the age of 31. It earned high praise among critics who pronounced her a likely candidate to succeed Alice Munro and Margaret Atwood as the prima donna of Canadian literature — praise Krueger calls “extremely flattering.” Krueger, now 44, says it’s taken her a long time to find her niche as a novelist. “It took me years of travelling to focus on what it was that is my subject,” she says. What interests her, what she’s passionate about is “living different places and observing people from different back- grounds trying to come to grips with cach other.” It’s a “powerful theme that we're living in Canada now because it used to be a rela- tively homogencous sort of place.” Krueger can recall that as a schoolgirl at Canyon Heights Elementary, her classmates were almost exclusively of Northern European descent. All that hss changed. “Essentially, my theme has come home. I feel it’s really a time when everything is coming together for me after years of learning what I was trying to write.” To win a copy of Drink the Sky see page 35. |Abused Sale a Ol . = : 5 16” round exposed aggregate, reg $4.99 : (Terra Cotta Planters Sale Pp . i . : Starting ARS 39" | Two francophone writers pay visit on Canada Book Day CHILDREN are invited to cuddle down for a bedtime story at Kidsbooks this evening. In recognition of Canada Book Day, the Edgemont Village children’s bookstore is hosting a reading by francophone writers Mireille Levert and Christiane Duchesne from Quebec. Both authors are in Vancouver as part of Idélire, a non-profit organization that has brought Frenca-speaking authars to B.C. immersion schools every April for the last six years. Kidsbooks is calling its event Bedtimes Stories to Dream About. Youngsters are encouraged to dress comfortably in pyjamas and bring with them their teddy bear or other bedtime friend. The event starts at 7 p.m. Today is also World Book Day, which was first proclaimed by UNESCO in 1995. The Writers’ Trust of Canada, which organizes Canada Book Day, sees Aprif 23 as a day to honour Canadian authors and to promote book readings and other literary events across the country. Other North Vancouver booksellers have planned events to mark Canada Book Day. 32 Books at 140 E. 14th Street in Central Lonsdale has hosted evening poetry readings all this past week. This evening’s guests are Canadian pocts Marilyn Bowering and Barbara Nickel who will read from their works starting at 7 p.m. Smithbooks in Park Royal is offering Avid Reader card holders an additional 10% dis- count on the purchase of any Canadian book. This week, schools across the country will recognize Canadian authors with special dis- plays and class projects. Balmoral Junior Secondary, for exampic, has a display of Canadian books in its library. As an English project Thursday, students cre- -ated a short story on a Canadian theme, cach class adding to it as it passed from classroom to classroom for completion. ; The schuol project is an adaptation of a Canada Book Day contest that involves writers from coast to coast in the creation of a real- time online short story. -— Layne Christensen SENID PRICE MEREMANoiee UTS (0 Devien tym nf EN, a) 4 Fabrics & Notions Current Fanny's Fabriclub Membersh' To Take Advantage of These Offers! Required . #& NORTH VANCOUVER, 710 West 14th.St.,980-0551 © Downtown Vancouver, Sth. Floor, the Bay, 649-2115 Burnaby, 7271 Gilley Ave., 430-6371 Coquitlam, 2773 Samet Hwy., 464-1913 : : «Maple Ridas, 22188 Lougheed Hwy 463-0067 - iS-1 20th, Streat, 590- 6 = Surrey, 2 * Langlay, 19950 Willowbrook Dr., 534-4805 S Abbotstord, 32638 Venture aver, ssaasse | hege= (SSG,