Time for a book review

Down to This
by Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall

I love this brilliant book and have a little crush on the author. Shaugnessy went and lived as one of the homeless in Toronto for almost a year.

His book is basically a 474-page diary of what happened and how the experience changed him.

Here's a few parts I liked:

March 31

I do love this squalor—every day a little more. I love busting out of this shack in the cold sun, wearing just jeans and unmatching boots….

I love the rats. They live beneath my floor, still scurry back under when they see me coming—as if I don’t know they’re there, like we don’t lie awake at night (me and the rats) listening to each other breathe, scratching and scraping, and sharpening our teeth.

I love the ducks, pigeons, seagulls, geese and doves, all flying and fighting for bits of bread, singing and squawking—how it seems they’re copying our every move….

I love my little big brother, Calvin [no relation]. I love his smiling shiny eyes and that he asks me if I’m doing okay whenever he’s not. I love that he laughs if I hit him a bit too hard when we’re jousting with two-by-fours or fighting in the woodpile. I love that we can’t hurt each other, no matter how much we bruise and bleed….


April 3

The woman ahead of me in the soup line today was laughing in a Hollywood approximation of madness. She turned to me, still cackling, and we stared at each other for a long time, both a bit out of our heads—monsters meeting in a desert world.

She put a cigarette in each of our mouths, and I lit them. She stopped laughing and said, "You have nice eyes." She said it like you might say, "You’ve shot me."

"Thank you."

She took a drag of her cigarette, then punched me hard in the stomach.

Everything’s kind of like that these days.