The Petty Details of So-and-so's Life

by Camilla Gibb

With her second novel, The Petty Details of So-and-so's Life, award-winning and celebrated author Camilla Gibb probes the bruises of family with humanity, hilarity, and a keen eye for the grotesque to deliver one of the most anticipated books of the year. A startling and ambitious novel, as funny as it is poignant, The Petty Details of So-and-so's Life tells the story of Blue and Emma Taylor, who, despite an almost telepathic connection, respond to the sudden disappearance of their explosive father in remarkably different ways. Emma sets off in pursuit of a new family, and discovers a sense of belonging in the most unexpected places. Burly, tattoo-stamped Blue, haunted by the brutal, disparaging voice of their father, embarks on a cross-country search for the elusive parent. Emma and Blue share a most intimate connection, one forged in the secret worlds and wordless communications of childhood. As they grow, they discover the limits of the language they share. Camilla Gibb's debut novel, Mouthing the Words, won the 2000 City of Toronto Book Award, and has been published in twelve countries. Camilla is one of two Canadian authors named to the Orange Futures List, compiled by the Orange Prize jury to celebrate twenty-one promising writers to watch in the new century.

Genres: Fiction, Canada, Roman, Adult Fiction, Coming Of Age, Family, Novels

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

From the author's web site:

"Camilla Gibb, born in 1968, is the author of three novels, Mouthing the Words, The Petty Details of So-and-so's Life and Sweetness in the Belly, as well as numerous short stories, articles and reviews.

She was the winner of the Trillium Book Award in 2006, a Scotiabank Giller Prize short list nominee in 2005, winner of the City of Toronto Book Award in 2000 and the recipient of the CBC Canadian Literary Award for short fiction in 2001. Her books have been published in 18 countries and translated into 14 languages and she was named by the jury of the prestigious Orange Prize as one of 21 writers to watch in the new century.

Camilla was born in London, England, and grew up in Toronto, Canada. She has a B.A. in anthropology and Middle Eastern studies from the University of Toronto, completed her Ph.D. in social anthropology at Oxford University in 1997, and spent two years at the University of Toronto as a post-doctoral research fellow before becoming a full-time writer.

Camilla has been writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta and the University of Toronto where, for the past two years, she served as an adjunct faculty member of the English Department's MA in Creative Writing Program.

She is currently working on a new novel and divides her time between Toronto and London, England."

Reviews

[Erica · Rating 2 out of 5]

Way too many metaphors for my taste and she often took them too far. It was supposed to be amusing, but I didn't find that much that was funny, especially at the end. I'm not really sure why I finished it.

[Laura Walin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Elämän pikkuseikat imaisi mukaansa heti alusta, kun lukija tutustuu päähenkilöihin lapsena. Emma ja Blue ovat sisarukset, jotka ovat syntyneet kahden vuoden välein vanhemmille, joilla ei ole edellytyksiä heistä huolehtia. Isä on bipolaarinen innostuja ja kirjailijanurasta haaveillut äiti joutuu alistumaan arjen pyörittäjäksi, mistä johtuvaa tuskaa hän turruttaa alkoholiin.

Gibb onnistuu luomaan alusta asti sen pahaenteisen vaikutelman, että asiat eivät varmaan mene hyvin. Emma ja Blue kipuilevat kasvaessaan kumpikin omalla tavallaan onnetonta lapsuuttaan, eikä kumpikaan löydä toimivaa vastausta siihen, miten jostain niin rikkinäisestä voisi ponnistaa ehjäksi. Isän katoaminen jättää molempiin ison aukon, joka huutaa täyttämistä.

Parasta Elämän pikkuseikoissa on Gibbin taito tehdä päähenkilöistään moniulotteisia henkilöitä, jotka kuitenkin omalla tavallaan yrittävät löytää tietään eteenpäin. Jotkut valinnat ovat hyviä, jotkut huonoja, mutta kaikkien kanssa pystyy jatkamaan elämää. Lopun mysteeri jää vaivaamaan kirjan sulkemisen jälkeen.

[Esme · Rating 3 out of 5]

This began with promise---but fell into a spiral of layering every possible metaphot about broken homes EVER..and got a bit cliche. The ending was SO confusing...has anyone else read it?

[Jessica · Rating 2 out of 5]

So much promise, but really not much to it.

[S. Lynham · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not something I would usually read but the pickings were slim in the pile of “books to maybe read”. This is a story about how the parents of children have such a huge influence on those children. That influence colours the world of each child into adulthood and not always is that influence a good thing. Emma and Blue are the children here and the story follows them from when they were small children hiding in the basement, near the furnace, while their parents fight above them. These children depend on each other very much, especially after their father, a hopeless dreamer/inventor/perhaps crazy man, leaves the family behind and their mother, who has been the breadwinner throughout the marriage, slips into an alcoholic stupor.
These are parents who never should have had children and who took little interest in them unless they could pass for an adult. The sad thing is that these parents have so little concept of what their children learn from the adults around them and they never seem to get much better. Of course, Emma and Blue are flawed and the story outlines many painful moments for both of them. The majority of the story is set in Niagara Falls, Canada (a marginally less tacky place than Niagara Falls, NY.) which may have had an effect on the children too as it seems they have trouble leaving it, even though both have a quest that they believe will change them into less damaged goods.
Lots of questions could arise in regard to this book which might make it a good book club read and I have no doubt that when it was published it was a popular read. I was left with that “is that all there is?” kind of feeling at the end of the book and I hate that. It feels like you have been a voyeur on a chunk of someone’s life but there is no real end, no purpose achieved, no resolution of the conflict in wrapping up the story because the lives go on, no longer under the reader’s microscope. I need a reason to leave the characters and none was provided, to my satisfaction, here. The book is tight and made me laugh out loud more than once. Others may find it far more enjoyable than I did, especially those who enjoy this genre as it is a good story.

[Charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

This novel is a harrowing account of a dysfunctional family in Niagara Fall,Ontario, with a daydreaming delusional abusive father Oliver Taylor, who has a very noxious influence on the 2 children Blue & Emma who grow up chronically anxious, lacking in self confidence & having difficulties with relationships, & who rebuffs their attempts at regaining contact years after he abandons the family. The mother Elaine is distant, uninterested in her children who drift off. Emma develops a crush on a bright young man from an upper class family who convinces her to go to college where she will study anthropology, but this will come to an unhappy confrontation with her professor, though she will continue her studies. She will discover her real love in Nina a sculptress. Blue will take off to Banff & meet a lapdancer at a club & fall in love, then come back to Niagara Falls to train in tatooing & open up his own parlor. In spite of success he is hounded by the ghost of his father & ends up in Vancouver where he murders a street person he mistakes for his father who had died a couple of years earlier, & is jailed. I found the ending of the book vague & unsatisfying, especially the father's "postcard from hell" which closes the book.

[Katherine Krige · Rating 3 out of 5]

Blue and Emma drew me in from the beginning of the novel. The dark twists and turns that they faced seemed to spell disaster, but the question was how it would devolve. With a drunken aloof mother and mentally unstable father, it looked like neither would make it through to their adult years, at least not unscathed. Surprisingly they did, but certainly not unscathed. As the story continued though, the thread that held them together became frayed.

I'm not sure if reading a few reviews as I was going along changed my view, but I found that while I quite enjoyed the beginning of the novel, my feelings waned as I went along. Neither Blue nor Emma seemed to really find any answers and very little peace as they stumbled through life. I was disappointed that their parents characters, neither Oliver nor Elaine, were developed more. While Gibb touched on them, I felt like I wanted a bit more to justify who they were and their actions. And the ending (I won't spoil), was left ambiguously, which might be truer to real life scenarios, but I didn't love.

Overall a well written book and I would try another one by Gibb.

[Ash HC · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5/5

I honestly really enjoyed this. I thought the writing was excellent, blending a little bit of whimsy into the oftentimes bleak reality of the lives of the characters. With that said, the writing never felt superfluous or like it was there for the sake of sounding clever or artistic; it all was very firmly hinged in reality and added to the humanity of the novel.
I thought the character development was excellent, the portraits of Blue and Emma demonstrating both real consistency and development as we watched them grow up. I wouldn't have minded hearing a little more from Elaine as the novel progressed but really no complaints about character.
It was pretty solid in every area. No complaints.

[Zoom · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this one while traveling in Iceland, and was captivated by the story, the writing, and the tender, broken characters. It's a story of family dysfunction, mental illness, resilience and vulnerability. It's sad and sweet and strange and sometimes even funny in a sad, sweet, strange way. The writing is lyrical and enticing; sometimes I fell in love with a sentence and read it over and over again.

The ending surprised me, which surprised me; usually stories about dysfunctional families take a predictable path towards their inevitable not-so-happily-ever-after conclusions. This isn't a criticism of books about dysfunctional families, but it was nice to be surprised for a change.

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is my third Camilla Gibb book, I really enjoyed the Beauty of Humanity Movement and full on cried while reading This is Happy as it really resonated with me. The Petty Details though showed lots of promise but did not quite come through. Blue and Emma's story is heartbreaking, a distant Mom who is barely coping, a Dad with mental illness and two kids who completely fall through the cracks. Real promise in the start of the novel but somewhere near the middle I lost empathy for the father and stopped identifying with Emma.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Camilla Gibb has a wonderful mastery of the written word, and she weaves an engaging tale of childhood trauma and the adult consequences that it can produce. Following a brother and sister born of a reckless dreamer and a beaten-down realist, the book divides its time between the siblings, following them both on their journeys. The strength of the book is in the character creations which are detailed and compelling. This is a very engaging read, with characters that you don't expect to root for, but are compelled to after learning their history.

[Anne Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story of a dysfunctional family and the enduring effects on two children, Blue and Emma. It's really well written, but seldom uplifting, and despite both Emma and Blue trying to move beyond their parents crappy parenting and desertion, they barely do. In an age where a lot of attention is focused on what can be done to assist struggling families and individuals, this novel reminds us that damage is often done early and is hard to recover from. As a novel it's probably worth more than 3 stars but I see enough of this around me in real life and couldn't really warm to the story.

[Debbie Hill · Rating 4 out of 5]

A harsh reality but beautifully written with rich metaphors! Meet siblings Emma and Llewellyn Taylor, two unique and well-rounded characters who must find their own way of coping with life's frustrations as well as the misguided teachings of their dysfunctional parents. A surprise ending that shocks yet demonstrates how easy it is to fall off the edge and reappear in that place called hell.

[Melody · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a dark story; family was messed up and had no place to go. Father abandons them and the rest of their lives are spent looking for him for answers. You felt sorry for them but at the same time you just wanted the book to end because you had had enough of their pitiful lives.

[Madolin · Rating 3 out of 5]

read in 2 days. Number 1 - Niagara Falls.

[Sandy Posluns · Rating 5 out of 5]

Second book I read by Gibbs. Liked both. The setting brought the characters to life in an incredibly skillful way.

[Monica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good story...coming of age in an odd family. Quick read with unexpected turns.

[DebPei · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved the first half of the book but the second half felt drawn out and depressing.

[Kathryn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully written with words strung together in a way that rips your heart out. That being said, the most depressing book I've ever read in my life.

[Gail · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't really like the characters

[Marion Listgarten · Rating 1 out of 5]

read about a 100 pgs Enough, quit. Liked some of her other books a lot.

[RustyShack · Rating 3 out of 5]

Felt like a young writer novel with clever authory turns of phrase everywhere. dnf ch 2

[jayden yau · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Deborah Sowery-Quinn · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story of two siblings, Emma and Blue, with a dysfunctional upbringing & how it affects their young adult lives. This kept me interested throughout & was connected to the characters.

[April · Rating 4 out of 5]

While an incredibly quick read (I finished it in 3.5 hours) "Petty Details..." is also incredibly rich. Gibb introduces us to Emma and Blue while they are small children hiding in their basement, speaking to each other in a language only they understand. They are blocking out the world around them, a world that is angry, bitter, and dysfunctional.

When their father leaves and their mother descends into numb alcoholism, Blue and Emma must learn to cope and each does so in their own distinct way. As they navigate the world and its highs and lows, these different coping mechanisms drawn the once close siblings apart while at the same time still binding them together as two halves of a whole. Blue does this while Emma does that but maybe combined their best and worst traits would balance each other out.

I loved the characters and Gibb's voice in writing them. She easily slips from point of view to point of view without the reader really noticing. We learn these characters, ironically, not through the petty details but through the major moments of their lives. I wanted more by the time the book ended. Much more. I believe I actually said out loud "That's it?!" when I turned the last page.

For all that I loved the book, I will say that towards the end Gibb tends to muddy the plot a bit by relying too much on inference and things left unsaid. Blue reiterates the motivation for his actions several times at the end, internally and to Emma and I didn't quite get it. I wasn't sure what he was trying to say, or if the implication that I read between the lines was meant to be there or something I made up. That's slightly frustrating.

Besides that one flaw, I really enjoyed the book greatly, and related to the characters a lot. It may be one of my new favourites.

[Karena · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked up a reading copy of this a few months ago because I heard Camilla Gibb was a hot rising star in the Canadian literary scene. I liked this novel a lot, it kept me absorbed and the characters were real, but there was a bit lacking. Usually I tend to gravitate to novels with extremely strong characters, poetic or metaphoric writing styles, and authors who try to explore one (or two?) concepts exheedingly well. Gibb has tried to achieve this, and I recognize her writing skill, but she seems to have not reached her stride, yet. I am looking forward to more of her novels. There's bound to be one amazing one coming soon.

This novel is about a pair of siblings who grow up in Niagara Falls, Canada, in a household where their parents hate each other...leading to their mother finding herself floating in the bottom of a glass and their father "creating" in the back shed until he disappears entirely leaving a bucket of hair. Blue, the young boy, grows up smoking dope and seeing his father everywhere, trying to find himself and his father. He eventually finds love instead and becomes a cultural trendsetter in the guise of a tatoo artist. Emma constantly remakes herself, first as the deathbunny Oksana Vladivostok, then as an upwardly-mobile archeologist with a passion for dinosaur bones, then finally as herself, emerging like one of Blue's butterflies out of a (to her) surprising relationship. Along the way Blue and Emma find a few very good friends who pull them out of their absence from life, and there is a cathartic ending...we hope.

[Jayne Charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book explores themes familiar in literature - sibling closeness, alcoholism, mental illness and shoddy parenting - but it has a highly original feel, mainly down to its constant inventiveness, and the brisk way in which the story is told. The author cleverly selects only the interesting elements of her characters' lives, and discards the mundane. The writing is lively and frequently humorous (the incident with the police and the furry pig was a particular case in point). I was keen to know what would happen, and you can't ask for much more. If there was a bum note, I would say that the constant reminders, in between events, of the reasons behind the characters' actions (it's all down to their upbringing etc etc) and the gazing at eachother's navels occasionally felt overly didactic, which is not to say that it was badly written. Oh, and the section where two pre-school children are sent unaccompanied on a bus gave me a bit of a jolt. Is this legal in Canada? I'd be tempted not to try it all the same.

[Reader81 · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read "Sweetness in the Belly" a few years ago and enjoyed it so I thought I'd give this one a try. This book was no less emotionally jarring than that book.

To enjoy this book you have to be ok reading about people's lives becoming messy and complicated. It's not a feel good read. Normally I don't like reading books about characters who are having mental health issues, but Gibb has a really nice writing style so it was easy to keep going and once I was about half way through I really wanted to know how things turned out in the end. I don't know that I'd say I was satisfied with the end though. It had a bit of a rushed feeling, almost as if she didn't know where to take it exactly but had to wrap things up.

It was an ok book. I don't know if I'd recommend it, but then again I don't regret reading it, so if you see it somewhere and don't have anything else to read you won't be bored.

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

In her second book, Gibb once again explores the dynamics of a family with parents who should never have been. This time the father is abusive in a verbal way that echoes through the years. He doesn't take any kind of care of his family. He actually resents their ties to him. The mother's true colours first come to light when she plunks five-year-old Emma and four-year-old Blue on a bus to Niagara Falls. The siblings rely on each other and their evolving dynamic is the most intriguing theme of this story. Each reacts in different ways to the tragedy of their upbringing. Emma seeks constantly to become someone else, while Blue attempts to fix things. Heartbreaking, at times hilarious, this family saga will stay with me for a long time.

[Carrie · Rating 4 out of 5]

August 1, 2018 Our childhoods bond us with siblings in inextricable ways that sustain us or challenge us or simply confuse us. The brother and sister in this story support each other to cope with their dysfunctional childhood reality - a father with mental health issues and a mother who is unable to cope. They struggle to find a path to re-establish their early connection and support one another. Tragic but so honest.

March 15th, 2020 - Just reread this book. The navigation through childhood dysfunction is fascinating, largely because it changes with our discovery and perception of what actually happened.