Charlene Carr's Blog
May 8, 2024
Book Review: The Lightning Bottles by Marissa Stapley
Perfect for fans of Taylor Jenkins Reid, THE LIGHTNING BOTTLES speaks to the pitfalls and perils of fame. Full of nostalgia and angst, and peppered with sharp insights and beautiful simplicity, Stapley has penned both a tender romance depicting tingle-inducing young love and a treatise on the dangers and complexities of the ever-moving targets of success. The women in this story lived in my thoughts even when I put the book down, and I was sad to say goodbye. A truly captivating read!
Author’s Website: marissastapley.com
(Available September 2024 BUT you can preorder now!)
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May 9, 2023
Book Review: The Whistling by Rebecca Netley
The Whistling will transport you to a remote Scottish island with uncanny ease. Rebecca Netley’s writing drips with 19th century atmospheric dread as she pulls the reader into the eerie new world of her grief-stricken protagonist and the life-threatening mystery this young woman must uncover.
I was captivated and read late into the night, compelled to keep turning the pages.
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February 22, 2023
Charlene Carr’s new novel inspired by real-life fear: What if her daughter wasn’t biologically her own?
When a woman gives birth, generally it’s the father who may have inklings of fear that the baby isn’t his. The mother does not – unless she got pregnant the way I did.
When my daughter was born via in vitro fertilization, my first memory is of joy – she was here, alive and mine. However, within weeks a fear started to creep in. I had grown her, birthed her, but I didn’t feel certain we shared DNA. And if we didn’t, what would that mean? Most importantly, what would I owe the woman whose child I was raising? These questions, when I finally felt confident they didn’t apply to me, led to Hold My Girl, a dual narrative novel about an egg switch at a fertility clinic.
Why did I have this fear?
As is the case for many new mothers, those early newborn days are a blur. All of my focus was on keeping my daughter alive, safe and fed. We w
ere in and out of the hospital, and then in and out of the doctor’s office as my milk failed to come in and then failed to come in enough. I breastfed 15 or more hours a day. I slept in 45-minute spurts … if I was lucky enough to sleep at all.
Slowly, things got easier. We left the house. People oohed and ahhed about how beautiful and alert my daughter was. How happy we must be (we were!) and how she was absolutely, unnervingly, the spitting image of my husband.
Their comments opened my eyes. She had dimples, like me, but in no other way could I see myself – a mixed-race Black woman – in my child. Not in her skin, paler than my white husband’s. Not in her hair, blonde and straight. Not in her grey eyes – a colour that, as far as we knew, didn’t exist on either side of our family trees.
Her dimples kept me sane. But lots of people have dimples. And so, my fear grew. It didn’t help that when out with white friends, strangers assumed my daughter was theirs. Or that while out alone with her, a kindly-seeming old man commented how fun it must be to have the job of taking care of such a beautiful child. He may have meant the “job” of motherhood, but I doubt it.
Thankfully,
when my daughter was about eight months old, her hair started to curl, her eyes turned brown and her features shifted. By the time she was 1, I had no doubt she was biologically mine, which gave me the freedom to write, exploring all the possibilities I hadn’t wanted to consider.
They’re considerations that plague many mothers going through fertility treatment. IVF switches have been in the news for years. In a fertility support group I belong to, I’ve seen nervous moms post, asking whether anyone has had their child’s DNA tested. Whether they stare at their babies, wondering if they are really theirs. Each time I saw one of these posts, never commenting myself, at least one mother would say she’d given into her fears and tested. Others would say they were considering it, and others, that they wouldn’t dare – too afraid of the consequences if their fears were realized.
In the fictionalized scenario of Hold My Girl, race, I knew, would also play a role. Even now, being fully confident that my daughter and I share DNA, there
is still anxiety – in the assumptions strangers make that she isn’t mine, or may not be. In how people will label her and how I’m supposed to help her navigate that, a visibly white child, who in a different time and place would have had to sit in the back of the bus; who in this time and place will encounter challenges in defining herself, determining her identity – who, at the tender age of five, already has.
When I sat down to write, I started with the birth mother, whose story most closely related to mine, then moved onto the biological mother, who had to learn that not only had she missed out on carrying and giving birth to her child, but raising her.
Even to myself, the question of who would deserve to have this child, who was the “true” mother, seemed unanswerable, so the novel quickly turned into an examination of not just my initial questions, but of what motherhood is, how it’s so much more than biology.
Another aspect I explored is the pain of infertility, which affects 1 in 6 Canadian couples, and which rose to the surface as I wrote. So many women are ashamed of their pregnancy struggles. We feel broken or embarrassed. We feel like we’re the only one. In the early years of infertility, the shame crushed me. I knew my infertility and pregnancy losses weren’t my fault, but despite that mental knowledge, I felt they were. And it was extremely hard to talk about.
While I was writing the novel, we tried for a second child. I went through multiple rounds of fertility treatment and embryo transfers, and multiple pregnancy losses. Each time I put the manuscript aside to grieve, but each time I came back – with more heartache and also more strength. Hold My Girl delves into these intimate pains with the goal of helping to normalize the unique struggles many couples face in their efforts to build a family. It is an exploration of infertility, IVF, racial identity and the definition of motherhood, and it is my hope that as those who are going through or have gone through this journey turn the pages, they will feel a little less alone and a little more seen.
Charlene Carr’s tenth novel, Hold My Girl, publishes Jan. 24 with HarperCollins Canada and has been optioned for television. Charlene lives in Dartmouth and received grants from Arts Nova Scotia and Canada Council for the Arts to write her next novel.
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February 18, 2023
Book Review: A Quiet Life by Ethan Joella
Beautifully written, A Quiet Life is an intimate exploration of grief, hope, and the power of connection.
With skillful prose that draws the reader in, these characters – and one elderly man, in particular – are sure to touch your heart.
Author’s Website: ethanjoellawriter.com
Click the book cover below or PREVIEW to start reading a free sample of A Quiet Life right now.
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December 29, 2022
The top 30 Canadian books to read in 2023 – Globe and Mail
“Book lovers have an exciting year ahead.
Renowned authors such as Margaret Atwood and Eleanor Catton return with new works, while fresh talent shows great literary promise. And if you’re looking for a change, the upcoming wealth of genres – suspense, horror, sci-fi, comedy, nonfiction deep-dives and celebrity memoirs – could light up new taste buds in any kind of reader.”
Click the link below for 30 Canadian fiction and non-fiction books to look forward to. Hold My Girl is on it!
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books/article-the-top-30-canadian-books-to-read-in-2023/
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October 5, 2022
Book Review: They Said This Would Be Fun by Eternity Martis
An incredibly informative and raw account of one woman’s experience of race and racism in a predominantly white Canadian city, and a look at the ways in which this experience is indicative of so many experiences.
Heartbreaking. Important. And I said in the video it should be required reading on Canadian campuses, but really it, or accounts like it, should be required on all campuses in the Western World.
Author’s Website: eternitymartis.com/
Click the book cover below or PREVIEW to start reading a free sample of They Said This Would Be Fun right now.
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August 31, 2022
Book Review: A Womb in the Shape of a Heart by Joanne Gallant
Joanne Gallant’s beautiful memoir about motherhood and miscarriage is raw and vulnerable, with such power infused throughout. I was completely blown away.
An insightful and brave read, perfect for anyone who’s suffered the pain of infertility, pregnancy loss and secondary infertility.
Author’s Website: joannegallant.com
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August 26, 2022
Book Review: The Witches of Moonshyne Manor by Bianca Marais
Such a delightful romp of a book! I was hesitant going in, as it seemed quite different from the books I usually read and love, but decided to give it a try.
A somewhat tongue-in-cheek book with a wonderful cast of characters, feminism, sisterhood, love, betrayal, and multiple animal sidekicks, the perfect read if you’re looking for something a little light-hearted that also has moments of insight and depth.
Also, check out the author’s website for a fun quiz to determine ‘which witch are you’!
Author’s Website: biancamaris.com
Click the book cover below or PREVIEW to start reading a free sample of The Witches of Moonshyne Manor right now.
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June 27, 2022
Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt
The type of book it’s hard to put down. Charming and tender, with characters who’ll work their way into your heart and make you much more interested in marine biology!
This endearing tale is full of questions of grief, loss, longing, identity and loneliness, while also including so much joy and connection.
A delight!
Author’s Website: shelbyvanpelt.com
Click the book cover below or PREVIEW to start reading a free sample of Remarkably Bright Creatures right now.
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May 21, 2022
Book Review: Wish You Were Here by Jodi Picoult
This book pulled me in and took me away. I was so involved in the lives of the characters, to the point where I was unreasonably upset about some aspects of this story – and that was a good thing.
I loved it – both the escape and the contemplation, and can see myself coming back to this one again some day.
Author’s Website: jodipicoult.com
Click the book cover below or PREVIEW to start reading a free sample of Wish You Were Here right now.
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