Nosy White Woman and Aubrey McKee: Two Books You Won’t Want to Miss

Written and Photos By Diana Isabel Torres Goñi

Reading is one of the easiest ways to escape the boredom of the walls we have been confined in. Naturally, there are a million and one different stories to be read— from fantastical stories designed to make us miss a time when dragons existed, to very real political memoirs that give us insight into some of the most powerful people in the world. While you might feel more inclined to one genre or the other, you might find a happy medium in prose created to reflect the peculiarities of daily life. 

Whether you prefer snapshots of reality intertwined with humour and sharp social commentary or you are more inclined to nostalgic recountings of a city full of itself, you are bound to enjoy both of Biblioasis’ new publications. Two distinctly ordinary proses that are overwhelmingly familiar and very much a mirror of Canadian mundanity. 

Nosy White Woman by Martha Wilson

Have you ever felt like peeking into someone’s window as you’re walking down the street? Maybe you’ve “accidentally” tuned into the conversation going on in the table next to you at a coffee shop. Or maybe you’re just really into reality shows. If you identified at all with these statements, then you’re very much not on your own.

 I’ll be the first one to admit I have an especially useful antenna when it comes to searching out gossip. This may be why Martha Wilson’s new collection of short stories Nosy White Woman drew me in from the get-go. Wilson’s stories are a window into the special mundane moments in people’s lives. Her stories are not for those seeking out-of-this-world adventures; Wilson’s pen writes for us the ordinary people of the world.

From volunteering to family resemblance, Wilson explores daily life and the issues surrounding it in a way I’ve never experienced before. Her writing shines a light in the deeper corners of the ordinary and forces the reader to do a double-take on what lies beneath our every action. Nosy White Woman brings forth the intersectionality between politics, morality, and social justice and daily life making obvious that “our small gestures and personal habits reverberate in the larger world of which we can’t help being citizens”.

The short story that gives its name to the collection is incredibly poignant and amazingly relevant in the current political and social climate. In the story, a young woman begins to question her concept of what makes a good citizen and her role in reshaping her mother’s perspective. In only a few pages, Wilson manages to address the problematic involvement of good-hearted citizens in police brutality. She also effectively explains the role that younger generations play in reshaping social consciousness in the older generations.

The common foibles and familiar settings that house them make each story feel oddly relatable and a tad intrusive. Reading each story was a rollercoaster ride through feeling like a voyeur, a judge and jury, a fly on the wall, and a character within the story. The descriptions are simple, yet thoroughly precise; each detail, each feeling accounted for. It’s impossible to feel like an outsider when Wilson’s pen pulls you so much into the action.

Throughout the book there is an ever-present sense of problematic morality and citizenship, which cross paths with large-scale problems in a small-scale scenario. Martha Wilson’s Nosy White Woman is an absolute must-read for anyone looking to challenge their own beliefs. Each story is filled with witty humour and fully developed characters that leave you wanting more, yet oddly satisfied. The style and voice in each story are unmistakably Wilson’s.

Aubrey McKee by Alex Pugsley

Walk around Halifax and you will see a very different city depending on where you find yourself. Up by the North End you will find houses fit for the working middle class with some upscale apartments here and there. Near the Waterfront you will find tall luxury buildings that harbour the vibrant, energetic Haligonians. Go down to the South End and you will find age-old giants. Three or four-story homes that tower over walker-bys and ooze history and riches, these are the homes that harbour the Halifax elite, the families that connect the past to the present and the bloodlines that build this city that we call our home. These homes are the setting for Alex Pugsley’s coming-of-age novel Aubrey McKee.

Aubrey McKee finds himself born into one of Halifax’s big families in the 70’s and lives through what being part of the zenith of society entails. McKee’s voice is at times meditative, and at times mysterious as he shares his life story with us. His memories entangled with the story of the city itself, of the people that live in it and the streets that make it. The novel is McKee’s memoir of entangled stories, the rise and the fall of the big families, and the good and the bad that comes from privilege. It is filled with anecdotes of silly infant games and not-so-fake legends of semi-abandoned homes, it describes reckless years of youth filled with drugs and bad decisions, and an adulthood marked by the sorrow of Halifax.

Above all, the pages of Aubrey McKee share the Halifax that the title character experienced. It bares the interconnectedness of the fish-bowl city, the ever-changing scene, the deterioration of the city’s prestigious buildings, and the demise of the families that in them resided. This is a story about a boy that grew up in the prestigious South End. But above all, it is the story of a Halifax that cannot go back to the past  and can only look forward, it is a story about the people that lived in these streets before Tower Road was filled with concrete apartment buildings, and when rose gardens and libraries still held power and meaning over the growing city.

Aubrey McKee is a novel of truths lived in Halifax, it is the coming-of-age story of the city itself. In these pages you will find the fantasy that is Halifax, how it was and how it became the fantasy of the Maritime region. Pugsley’s mysteriously fantastic pen has written a nostalgic retell of the brilliancy and decay of this our city of Halifax, where everyone is famous “because everyone in Halifax knows each other’s business”.