Today was the final day of the Canada Reads 2018 debates! If you’ve missed the past few days you can find all three videos and my thoughts on the progress of the debates here. If you missed the finale, here’s the video (and watch to the end because my question made it into the Q&A!):
Today was my favourite day of the debates this year – and not just because we found out the winner. I felt like all the panellists brought their A games, and some really valuable points were made. It also got a little heated in the middle there, and was a little tense for a while! This was some edge of your seat debate, though aside from the one small dust-up, I found the debates to be very Canadian. Lots of “with all respect” and “not that the other books weren’t wonderful” as the panellists defended their books. There were also some deeply personal experiences shared by a few of the panellists that helped us to understand why they had the reactions they did to both their own books and those of the other panellists. I talked a bit in my previous post about my reaction to the debates so far, but here’s a quick overview of how I felt after listening to today’s debates before the votes were cast.
I haven’t finished American War (though I have begun it and the writing is stellar, as is the world-building and character introduction), which is annoying because I can only talk about it based on what I’ve heard in the debates and in other reviews. The impression I have of it is that it encompasses a lot of the themes the other four books also address – climate change, refugees, war, loss of family and the struggle for survival. Because it seems to encompass all these themes, I feel like it had that going for it. That it was larger in scope and was able to address so many topics, and to do so in a page-turning (so I’ve heard) story. And I appreciate that the author drew on his own experiences as a journalist in war-torn parts of the world. That experience, from what I’ve heard, really helped him to build a believable and chillingly realistic future world.
Forgiveness I have read (check out my review here). Of the three books I got all the way or most of the way through, it was probably the strongest. The writing was evocative, and I felt a very strong emotional connection to Mark Sakamoto’s grandparents as written by him. Their stories also opened up the Canadian WWII experience, and show us parts of our own history many of us don’t know about. I didn’t connect as strongly to the latter part of the book where Sakamoto talks about his own family, in particular his relationship with his mother. I cared about his story, but I felt more removed from it, and that did lessen the overall impact of the book for me. And while I think the WWII stories of Canadian soldiers and POWs and the internment of Japanese-Canadians in Canada during the war are parts of our history we really should be taught more about in our schools, and I’m glad to have read it, I don’t know if it’s the one story I would have all Canadians read at this particular moment in history. I feel like its messages are powerful and valuable, but I don’t know if it addresses the issues I feel are most important to us right now, or the ones that I feel need urgent attention.
So that’s where I stood coming out of the final day of debates (much the same way I felt prior to today’s final show-down), and I have to say that the discussion today didn’t really change much for me. Tahmoh Penikett’s arguments further convinced me that his book is one I do think sounds like it has powerful messages and ones I think we need to hear right now. I thought Jeanne Beker also did a really good job, but her points didn’t leave me feeling like Forgiveness should be the victor.
Coming down to the vote, I actually expected American War to win, because it seemed like in addition to Tahmoh, Jully Black and Mozhdah Jamalzadah were both pulling for it. I was really surprised that Mozhdah did, in the end, vote against it. I’m not sure why she made that decision, and am still really curious to know what swayed her. As I said, Forgiveness is a strong book. Objectively I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it or that it shouldn’t have won, it just wasn’t my personal favourite based on the debates and what I know about the books. I need to read American War in its entirety, at which point I’ll come back and let you all know if reading the book changed my views at all. But as it stands now, while I did enjoy Forgiveness and would recommend it, it isn’t the one I was pulling for as this year’s book to address the theme of “one book to open you eyes.” That said, American War is getting a lot more attention – it was also nominated for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize in 2017, the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Fiction this year, and the Goodreads Choice Award for Science Fiction & for Debut Goodreads Author in 2017. So perhaps in that sense it’s good that it didn’t come out on top, because it is already one that more people will have heard about and picked up. And, of course, just being on Canada Reads will bring all five of these books to the attention of thousands of readers who otherwise may not have heard of them, and they will all have wider readership as a result.
Now it’s over to you. For any of you who did tune into this year’s debates, particularly if you have read any of the books on the table. Which books did you feel addressed this year’s theme the best? Which was your favourite? Which did you feel had the strongest messages? Were you pleased that Forgiveness came out on top?