Book Lover’s Ball 2011 – Part One

Today, I finally have time away from work-work, so I can finally write my post about the amazing book event I attended on February 10th. The Book Lover’s Ball celebrated its 6th year in grand style. The event helps benefit the Toronto Public Library Foundation and it is a wonderful and unique experience. There was a healthy roster of Canadian authors present at this black-tie gala and each table of guests enjoyed the company of one author, during dinner. But…I am getting a bit ahead of myself here. I guess I should start at the beginning so you can have a full appreciation for how special this evening truly was.

The night before the event, February 9th, I made contact with Kirsti Stephenson, director of special events for The Mint Agency (responsible for the outstanding P.R. for the Ball). At the last minute, a member of the media was unable to attend so a vacancy had been created. Serendipity was smiling down and Kirsti extended a welcomed invitation to me which I very happily accepted. All of this occurred at about 7pm, giving me less than 24-hours to get prepared for the Ball. And yes, I did have a moment of feeling like Cinderella looking forward to attending the biggest party of the year (princesses aren’t usually my thing, though I will make an exception, at this time, for the coal-smudged, overworked Cinderella) . Along with being on deadline with a writing project, due the next day, I was looking like a regular ragamuffin! I was going to need more than a flock of chipper bluebirds and a mischief of mice to get me ready for the Ball!

My first priority was completing my writing assignment. Thankfully, I was nearly finished and had just a couple of hours of revisions and editing to get the piece to submittable status. By the time I finished, though, it was too late to call my hairdresser to see if she had an opening so I did what any other book-loving reviewer would do, I took to the internet to learn more about the authors I was not as familiar with who would be in attendance at the next evening’s event. Kirsti explained to me that there would be a cocktail reception from 6pm until 7pm. During this time, all of the authors would be mingling about, open to meeting and chatting with the guests. I wanted to ensure I had good familiarity with each writer (60 of them, in total), should I have an opportunity to meet with a writer who was outside of my reading and reviewing experience.

Thursday dawned and I was on the go! My hairdresser was booked up but one of her colleagues had an opening so I was able to get an appointment. Yippee!! First though, I was off for a mani-pedi. By the time I returned home at 3pm, I was coiffed, buffed and polished and ready for the party – except – I still had to figure out what to wear. In a lucky coincidence, I had two dresses, borrowed from my friend Cindy, as options for another special event that I ended up not attending. I chose a floor-length gown of Cindy’s that was beautiful. It was a flowing, black, sleeveless number, very Grecian in style, with beautiful beading around the waist. The theme for The Book Lover’s Ball was “Black and White and Read All Over” so the gown would be perfect. I make-up-ified and accessorized and was then ready to head downtown.

I arrived at the poshly adorned Royal York Hotel, an historical gem in downtown Toronto. As luck would have it, I arrived at the exact same time as writer, Graeme Gibson. An accomplished author, Gibson has also become known for being the partner of fellow author, Margaret Atwood. Ms. Atwood was away in England, so Gibson was without a date. He was looking very dapper in his tuxedo and tartan vest! We had a lovely chat as we made our way to the cocktail reception. Before I could ask some relevant book-related questions, Gibson was welcomed by several friends and my time with him ended as we neared the registration table. He was so kind and lovely! I presented myself at the media check-in and was greeted by some helpful volunteers. My name badge and table number secured, it was time to walk the red carpet! No, really! It was.

A red carpet was set up for guests to walk, in order to reach the cocktail lounge. This red carpet even came with some paparazzi – photographers and interviewers – ready to snap each guest’s arrival and ask questions of the many noted authors and local celebrities. Former Toronto comedienne, radio and television host Carla Collins was doing a great job promoting her new book. Then I noticed this, ummm, other lovely lady who had arrived dressed as Alice in Wonderland. Apparently, when The Book Lover’s Ball first launched, guests were encouraged to dress as literary characters, but this hasn’t been the case for a few years now. I would see Alice milling about, talking with an author every now and then and feel a weird disconnect from the reality of being at this amazing event. Perhaps I needed more wine?? The cocktail reception was beautiful. Held in two annex lounges off of the main ballroom, the intricate woodwork and marble that adorned the rooms was stunning. Coupled with the ornate ceilings, there was a certain period flair added to the ambiance of the evening. H’ors d’oeuvres were created by bad-boy chef, Marc Thuet. During the evening, a silent auction was running, with items to be bid upon ranging from books (of course) to trips, guest appearances by authors to sports memorabilia. Mostly, I was drooly over the bundles of books up for auction, courtesy of various Toronto publishers, but here was definitely something for everyone. People were spending a lot of time checking out the various items up for auction during the swish happy hour! While mingling before dinner, I had the opportunity to meet many writers, all of whom were gracious and interesting. My most in-depth chat was with poet, biographer and university professor, Richard Greene. “Rick”, as he introduced himself to me, won the 2010 Governor General’s Award for English-Language poetry. Greene has an upcoming biography on the life of Edith Sitwell due for release in Canada later this spring.

Here is a gallery of other authors I was lucky enough to meet during the cocktail hour:

From right to left are: Linwood Barclay with Lawrence Hill; Shilpi Somaya Gowda; Vincent Lam; and Claudia Dey.

Dinner began just after 7pm and, from the sounds within the room, everyone was having a great time. There was much laughter and a palpable buzz as we all enjoyed our meals. Following dinner was a fashion show that used themes from various books, such as Eat, Pray, Love and James Bond novels, to showcase some great designs from some amazing Toronto designers.

The biggest highlight for me came towards the end of the evening. I approached the bar and found myself standing next to Camilla Gibb (on the right, in photo). Now, Gibb is someone I have long admired. Her novels, such as Sweetness in the Belly, The Petty Details of So-and-So’s Life and her most recent releaseThe Beauty of Humanity Movement are evocative and richly detailed stories that transport the reader (or at least this reader) to another world. That Gibb is a brainiac (B.A., M.A., PhD (Oxford)) with a potential geek-factor makes her all the more awesome. So, here I was standing side-by-side with Gibb wondering how to introduce myself. I need not have worried. Due to a creepy skulker at the left side of the bar, I was drawn into the chat Gibb was having with a friend. “Did you see that?” I was asked, as they indicated off to the left. Yep, I had noticed the fellow in question. I think he had succeeded in giving at least three other women the heebie-jeebies in the few minutes I had been at the bar. Gibb, her friend and I, now in consort together over the gross-factor of the leech-man, ended up having a terrific conversation. I properly introduced myself and spent a very quick moment as a fawning fan, then quickly reverted to journalist-mode. Gibb gracefully accepted my praise for her writing and we spent nearly ten minutes chatting about the event, in general, and the internet as a tool for publishers and writers. I admit it, I developed a bit of a girl-crush after meeting Gibb, but excused myself so as to not overstay my welcome.

I had a wonderful time and hope to attend again next year! During dinner, I was seated with Anne Marie Aikins, manager of community relations with the Toronto Public Library. A few days after the event, I got in touch with Anne Marie to request some numbers for The Book Lover’s Ball. I wanted to be able to share the success of this annual event with you in a way that indicates just how important this event is for the library’s Foundation, as well as giving you an idea about where some of the money raised will be directed. Here is the message Anne Marie sent to me:

In its sixth year, The Book Lover’s Ball – Black and White and Read All Over – was once again a huge success raising $470,000 in support of Toronto’s Library and its 99 branches. This past February 10, 2011, almost 600 literary and library lovers gathered on February at the Fairmont Royal York and mingled with 57
celebrity authors including the likes of Brian Goldman, Camilla Gibb, Carla Collins, Kate Taylor, Lawrence Hill, Linwood Barclay, Robert Herjavec, Shilpi Somaya Gowda and Stuart McLean.

Guests enjoyed the delicious, French inspired hors d’oevres dished out by Chef Marc Thuet and showed their support of Toronto’s Library through a silent auction, raffle and a new fundraising initiative – Adopt a Branch raising an additional $22,000 in support library priority needs including collections, programs, and services and community spaces.

Wrapping up the evening was a stunning fashion show inspired by our city’s cultural diversity and its international – and internationally read – authors. Show designers included Nadya Toto, Second, Envers, Samuel Song, and Romona Keveza.

Toronto Public Library Foundation is grateful for the support of Presenting sponsor Sun Life Financial and other major sponsors including Toronto Star, TD Bank, Whitehots Inc., OSSTF, BMO Capital Markets, Harlequin, Rogers, Citytv, Hello Canada, Air Canada Vacations and Fairmont Hotels & Resorts.

I shall leave you with a few more photos of Canadian authors I was lucky enough to meet during the event:

From left to right, Stuart McLean; Annabel Lyon; Robert Herjavec with his Dragon’s Den co-star Arlene Dickinson; and Giles Blunt.

I hope you have enjoyed this post. I will add a new post, part two of the Ball, in a couple of days as there are many more wonderful photos to share with you! In the meantime, if you are in a position to help the Toronto Public Library Foundation, with a financial contribution, I know they would be greatly appreciative. Like many library systems in municipalities across North America, the Toronto Public Library will definitely be facing shortfalls for fiscal 2011. A new municipal government just took over the reigns of the city in November, 2010 and it has been made known that funding for our library system is not a priority. That so many citizens rely upon the services offered by the Toronto Public Library does not seem to matter, unfortunately. Please visit the TPL donation page if you are able to help a great cause. Thanks!! I’ll get off my soapbox now.

Credit for all photographs to George Pimentel. Used by permission from The Mint Agency, with thanks!

Perfection by Julie Metz

From the book description:

Julie Metz had seemingly the perfect life—an adoring husband, a happy, spirited daughter, a lovely old house in a quaint suburban town—but it was all a lie. Julie Metz’s life changed forever on one ordinary January afternoon when her husband, Henry, collapsed on the kitchen floor and died in her arms. Suddenly, this mother of a six-year-old became the young widow in her bucolic small town. But that was only the beginning. Seven months after Henry’s death, just when Julie thought she was emerging from the worst of it, came the rest of it: She discovered that what had appeared to be the reality of her marriage was but a half-truth. Henry had hidden another life from her. Perfection is the story of Metz’s journey through chaos and transformation as she creates a different life for herself and for her young daughter. It is the story of rebuilding both a life and an identity after betrayal and widowhood, of rebirth and happiness—if not perfection.

Julie Metz is a New York-born writer, graphic designer, and artist. In addition to Perfection she has written essays and commentary for The New York Times and The Huffington Post. She has also designed book covers for the novels: The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver, The Gathering, by Anne Enright and Boom! Aftershocks of the Sixties by Tom Brokaw. Metz’s husband, referred to as Henry in the book, died at home from a pulmonary embolism on January 8, 2003. Perfection is the resultant effort from Metz’s time absorbing the shock of Henry’s death and then working through the rage of his discovered betrayals and mostly covers the three years following Henry’s death.

In an interesting precursor to the book, a note to readers is included:

“I have changed the names (except my own), and other details of persons in this book. I have not changed the name of a certain dog, which suited the animal and my story perfectly. Sometimes real life surprises fiction even in the details. I have, on a few occasions, changed the order of events, where those changes benefit narrative flow without altering a factual telling of the story. Otherwise, all dialogue and events took place as I remember and recount them in these pages.”

I can only attribute this to the James Frey fall-out.

Having said that, nothing about Metz’s account comes across as questionable or improbable. Her story, though,is very probably any partnered person’s worst nightmare realized. Imagine the sudden and unexpected death of your spouse, in your kitchen, felled by a fatal pulmonary embolism. Now imagine, six months later, discovering the person you trusted absolutely was not, at all, who you thought. Is it worse to be bereaved or betrayed? Often, as an attempt at comfort, those grieving are reminded that their loved one will live on in their memories but if those memories are compromised, does the deceased still manage an existence in our world and our minds?

Julie Metz, through a revelation from a close friend, comes to know her husband had been not just unfaithful, but a serial philanderer (who was also hiding secret debts) throughout their thirteen year marriage. Using her own journal entries, along with Henry’s electronic diaries and emails, Metz created Perfection. She has been noted as “brave”, “shocking” and “candid” in other reviews of her book but none of Metz’s tale strikes me as shocking nor do her actions smack of bravery. Metz just did did what she needed to emerge on the other side.

While Henry is lying, dead on their kitchen floor, Metz is cognizant of her “last normal moment”. Metz rages at her husband now beyond her physical reach: “Henry, you are so fucking lucky to be dead.”, calling him “…a piece of shit bastard”; her grieving shoved aside to rail against Henry’s betrayal. Metz manages to identify and contact six of Henry’s mistresses, challenging them on how they were able to participate in a relationship with a married father. Through these interactions Metz comes to gain a more complete picture of the man who was her husband. Through executor privilege, Metz arranges a meeting with Henry’s therapist who offers Henry’s diagnosis of ‘narcissistic personality disorder’ with an amazing ability to compartmentalize, not as an excuse but, perhaps as a peg to hang things on in an attempt at coming to understand her husband’s actions.

Metz definitely does a compelling job sharing her loves, her losses and the lies she must deal with, while offering a cautionary tale about the idea of perfection within a marriage.

Hurry Down Sunshine by Michael Greenberg

Hurry Down Sunshine is a remarkable book. It is the type of book I want to tell everyone about: “You should read this book. Now!”

During the summer of 1996, on July 5th to be exact, Greenberg’s fifteen-year-old daughter, Sally, suffers a profound crack in her being which spirals into manic psychosis. This father makes a very difficult decision to commit his daughter to a psychiatric hospital for very needed treatment but struggles with why and how this happened.Hurry Down Sunshine offers a very intimate glimpse of a common psychiatric syndrome delivered from an uncommon perspective. In doing so, Greenberg illuminates an arena of collateral damage of mental illness that often eludes societal concern. The book is a two month segment of the life of a writer immersed in problems endemic to many—career, housing, finances, a first then a second marriage, children and several generations of troubled family, all suddenly up-ended by a mental illness as familiar and incomprehensible as if it were his own.

Sally, the quirky, brilliant 15-year-old daughter from his first marriage (to Robin), was transformed overnight into an angry stranger exploding with kaleidoscopic energy, her speech shattered like dropped glass. The story, in addition to being a heart-wrenching account of the brilliant burst and fall-out fading of a full-blown mania, records the desperate efforts of the author to hold the center of his life, manage the crisis, and quench his intense thirst to understand what was happening. The author’s obsession with etiology ranges the expanse from bad parenting to drug abuse, genetics, nutritional deficiency, a rare force of nature like a blizzard or flood, offenses to God, misaligned spirituality, a bad throw of the dice, and back to bad parenting. The question “Why?” can never really be fully answered in Greenberg’s case, nor, I suspect in the case of most people suffering and living with the same disease.

Greenberg broods under the shadow of the psychiatric affliction of his dysfunctional, nearly homeless brother, Steve, as well as his readings on mental illness in writers and their families: Robert Lowell’s wild mood swings; Ernest Hemingway’s granddaughter, who killed herself while reading one of his books – one day before the anniversary of Hemingway’s own suicide; and James Joyce, who mirrored the author’s preoccupation with a psychotic daughter. They shared the initial belief that oddness reflected the growing pains of a very gifted child, but as Joyce’s Lucia became chronically paranoid, he mercilessly blamed himself. He squandered years and a fortune seeking remedies, which included consultation with Carl Jung and an expensive fur coat believed to possess healing powers. Lucia’s only evidence of being in touch with reality occurred at his funeral, where she pronounced her father an idiot.

Sally had been an infant without serenity. She rejected Robin’s breast at two months and was a thrasher, gripper, and yanker of fingers, hair and ears, relentlessly propelling herself away from her parents. Later, she craved reassurance but always rejected it. In school she was found to have a serious learning disorder, yet her deftness with puns and wit, coupled with sheer determination, revealed a bewildering intelligence. Sally was only eleven when her parents divorced, and several years of shuffling between them, rebellious acting out, and school problems ensued. As Sally ages, a stint of special education seemed to be succeeding and things at home, living with her father and step-mother, Pat, seemed more settled. The mania erupted like a sudden storm. Sally suffered a truly harsh psychosis based on the belief that everyone is born a genius and it is her role to reveal this truth. Beyond the uncontrolled explosions of speech and action common to her illness, Sally had none of the ebullient expansiveness usually seen. Her pressured speech was wry and negative, tinged with paranoia, replete with delusions and, it is revealed later, auditory hallucinations.

While in hospital, Sally initially disappears behind locked doors and into isolation rooms without explanation or comment from a seemingly harsh hospital staff who regard the author for weeks on end as a bothersome intruder entitled neither to consolation nor information. Doctors mostly explained too little too quickly, thus mystification reigned for much too long. Eventually bonds of understanding are formed and Sally very slowly begins to emerge from the ruins of her mania.

The story also details how severe illness stresses the family. Sally’s mother, Robin, crowded into the scene, adding her anti-medical bias to the mix of confusion and worry. Tension with his second wife, Pat, finally led to a nasty marital fight, which rebounded with a reconciliation so sincere it engendered a pregnancy. The author’s mother and brothers, each on their own, felt obliged to contribute idiosyncratic cross-currents of counsel, adding more drag to the author’s effort to keep his nose above water.

The tide didn’t turn until well into Sally’s second month of illness, and recovery proceeded like sludge. But one evening the author perceived a slight shift in the air and quite unexpectedly Sally leaned against him and said, “You and Pat saved my life. It must have been hard for you.” The miracle of normalcy and ordinary existence had descended upon them. Sally was back, and she was able to return to school that fall not fully asymptomatic, but functional. In a postscript, we learn that she graduated from high school with honors, but shortly thereafter became ill again. Two years later, she entered a marriage that lasted only three years and at last report available to the reader, she was living and working near her mother in the country. We depart this eloquently told tale, yet unfinished, in hope and worry with her father.

You should read this book. Now!