This is the 288th edition of SHuSH, the newsletter of The Sutherland House Inc. If you’re new here, press the button:
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PROGRAMMING NOTE: The Bloomsbury series should pick up again next week.
“Crime Novelist Murdered on Houseboat.” I read that headline on a news aggregation site about six weeks ago. After pausing to admire its elegance, I searched for everything I could find on the late Alexandra Fröhlich.
She first came to notice as a journalist in Ukraine, where she launched a women’s magazine in Kiev. Moving to Germany, she was a copy editor and freelance writer at Petra, Freundin, and Stern.de. Her first husband, and the father of her first child, died at some point in an accident of some sort. She later married a Russian stage actor with whom she had twins.
The title of her first novel (2012) translates roughly as My Russian Mother-in-law and Other Catastrophes. An “hilarious west-east satire,” it was a hit in Germany, sitting on the Der Spiegel bestseller list for several months and selling over 50,000 copies. Three more novels followed, all in the vein of family drama and crime.
After separating from her husband, Fröhlich moved into a cerise (what would you call it?) houseboat on the Holzhafen bank of the Elbe River. In the early hours of April 22, one of her sons found her dead on the boat.
Initial reports were that she’d been shot; speculation was that the weapon had been thrown into the river. Investigators later determined she died of blunt-force trauma. Before long, Fröhlich’s twenty-two-year-old son was arrested on suspicion of murder.
I was following the story closely in the German press, certain that I’d get a SHuSH out of it at some point. I expected to read a lot more about the author, the houseboat, her family, and the circumstances of her death.
It’s not often that a crime novelist is murdered on her houseboat.
But there’s been nothing at all.
The crime fiction industry looks healthy these days.
Crime journalism, not so much.
When I was a kid, there was an awful series of books in the school library with titles like This Little Piggy and The Little Red Hen, all of them generically illustrated with gold spines. I was shocked to learn this week that the series continues. It’s called Little Golden Books.
Random House paid $85 million for the franchise in 2001.
It now specializes in 24-page, 800-word celebrity biographies.
I figured they were all AI produced, but, nope: authors Lavalle Lavette and Apple Jordan are real people. Or, at least, they have presences on the Internet.
The Taylor Swift book sold a million copies.
This Little Piggy now sells on Ebay for $250 US.
I know nothing about this business.
In SHuSH 283, “Men, boys, and fiction,” we reviewed some dispiriting data on the reading habits of males. Matt Sturrock, co-founder of Vancouver’s Helicon Books and author of A Small Book of Exemplary Deaths (Sutherland House, 2022), responded with the following:
We have a chair near our front door at Helicon Books, which is variously known as The Boyfriend Perch or The Husband Depository.
This is the spot from which all too many males impatiently endure the book-browsing of their female companions. They cross our threshold, do not even deign to look at anything on our shelves, throw themselves down onto the provided furniture with a sigh, and proceed to gawp at their telephones with mounting signs of stupefaction on their faces. Some go beyond merely refusing to participate in the bookselling experience, and will actively sabotage their companions' efforts, reminding them relentlessly of the passing time or haranguing them about the number of unread books they already have at home. All too often, the defeated girl or woman then capitulates and leaves empty-handed. Philistinism triumphs.
SHuSH 279, “The excruciating pain of parting with books,” discussed just that. I underplayed one dimension of the problem. The difficulty of parting with books is compounded by the fact that there’s nowhere to take them. There aren’t many buyers of used books anymore, and those that remain tend to be picky about what they acquire because they’re spoiled for choice. I’ve always felt that if I could find a good home for my books, the parting would be easier.
Sutherland House author Phyllis Taylor—The Prison Lady: True Stories and Life Lessons from Both Sides of the Bars—wrote with a suggestion: donate them to correctional facilities. She mentioned a few that have an interest in rehabilitation. I’m not going to share the mentions because we’re not sure if they’re all still accepting donated books, but it’s a good thought.
It reminded me that a number of hospitals also have libraries and book carts. I’m told Goodwill and Habitat for Humanity ReStores accept donated books, as does the Children’s Book Bank.
If you have any other ideas in this vein, please share in the comments below.
The Sprawl is a Calgary “slow journalism” site, built in opposition to the relentless news cycles of our times. Two years ago, Meta decided to block news from Facebook and the Sprawl’s founder and editor, Jeremy Klaszus, started looking for new distribution channels. He joked that he should acquire a printing press so he could set type and distribute news the old-fashioned way.
One thing led to another, and Jeremy is now the proud owner of a tiny printing press:
Ours is a Kelsey Excelsior 5 x 8 tabletop platen press that was manufactured in 1967, used in Edmonton for awhile, and eventually ended up on Vancouver Island, which is where we found it (on Facebook Marketplace, of all places!) before hauling it back to Alberta.
Since then, we've taken it to local festivals, libraries and schools, inviting Calgarians to print so they can experience firsthand how newspapers and books and everything else used to be made—long before screens monopolized our attention.
After a lot of experimentation with wood type and printing blocks, he started making reproductions of local archival photos. He now has the press mounted on a tricycle that he takes around to locations featured in the photos where he lets people print their own copies. “This project has been a labour of love,” he says. “My dad put in countless days, which turned into weeks, to craft a beautiful cabinet system to hold the press in the trike box.”
I was briefly in Calgary last week and finally got a look at the new public library. It’s spectacular. I wish I’d taken my own photos.
It hurts for an Edmontonian to admit this, but with its new library, Studio Bell, Contemporary Calgary, and DJD Danceworks (featured in order below), as well as older venues like the massive Arts Commons and a five-year renovation of the Glenbow expected to be completed next year, Calgary is well on its way to becoming Canada’s most interesting downtown core.
Launched in 2022, Sutherland Quarterly is an exciting new series of captivating essays on current affairs by some of Canada’s finest writers, published individually as books and also available by annual subscription—four great books a year, mailed to your door, for just $67.99. Subscribe now at sutherlandquarterly.com and we’ll immediately be in touch to send you the free book of your choice.
Our regular reminder to readers to support independent booksellers. Click this link to make the above map come alive.
Our Books Newsletter Roll (suggestions welcome)
Kwame Fraser’s Kwame Eff, “economic democracy, political economy of Canadian arts and culture, etc.”
Last week my neighbourhood had its annual StreetFest.... my church has a basement filled with donated books.... so tables were set up and stocked with these books - mostly fiction of the sort that women read..... at 25 cents for a paperback and 50 cents for a hardcover we sold about $3000 in books - 90% to women...... and 10% to men.....
The London, Ontario Public Library has a volunteer bookshop, which accepts books. Those too specialized to sell in the shop are displayed at a big book sale in the fall which attracts dealers. Last year they raised $50,000 for children's library programmes and the like.
Last week my neighbourhood had its annual StreetFest.... my church has a basement filled with donated books.... so tables were set up and stocked with these books - mostly fiction of the sort that women read..... at 25 cents for a paperback and 50 cents for a hardcover we sold about $3000 in books - 90% to women...... and 10% to men.....
The London, Ontario Public Library has a volunteer bookshop, which accepts books. Those too specialized to sell in the shop are displayed at a big book sale in the fall which attracts dealers. Last year they raised $50,000 for children's library programmes and the like.