Phone Number
Phone Number
Checkout ()
Browse Store
Bookstore Cinema eBar
  • Home
  • About
    • Online Ordering
    • Map & Location
    • Hours
    • Contact Us
    • Staff
    • Our Story
  • Wine
  • Reviews
    • Page Turners & Pot Boilers
    • Literary
    • Non-Fiction
  • Kids
    • Picture Books
    • Early Reader
    • Young Adult
  • Bargain Books
    • Fiction
    • Non Fiction
    • Kids
  • Podcasts
  • Advertise With Us
    • Off the Shelf
    • On the Cinema Screen
  • Calendars
KNOWLEDGE IS POWER

On Pandemics: Deadly Diseases from Bubonic Plague to Coronavirus

By David Waltner-Toews

In the store

Containing important information about the coronavirus, this comprehensive, easy-to-follow primer on pandemics, epidemics, and the panics they ignite around the world also shares solutions for a safer, healthier future. David is a Guelph area resident!

Great Influenza: Epic Story Of The Greatest Plague In History

By John M. Barry

In the store

Spillover: Animal Infections And The Next Human Pandemic

By David Quammen

In the store

Epidemics and Society: From the Black Death to the Present

By Frank M Snowden

In the store

A brilliant and sobering look at the history and human costs of pandemic outbreaks. The World Economic Forum #1 book to read for context on the coronavirus outbreak

Soap and Water & Common Sense: The Definitive Guide to Viruses, Bacteria, Parasites, and Disease

By Bonnie Henry

In the store

BARB - The book that you never thought you'd need is out!....The definitive guide to fighting coronaviruses, colds, flus, pandemics, and deadly diseases, from Canada's newest heroine, Bonnie Henry.

A Journal of the Plague Year

By Daniel Defoe, Jason Goodwin

In the store

The Modern Classics Plague

By Robin Buss, Albert Camus, Tony Judt

In the store

Youth Can Change the World!

The March Against Fear: The Last Great Walk of the Civil Rights Movement and the Emergence of Black Power

By Ann Bausum

In the store

This is a great historical book about civil rights history, highlighted by photos of the movement. Recommended reading for ages 12+.

It's Your World: Get Informed, Get Inspired & Get Going!

By Chelsea Clinton

In the store

An exciting introduction to activism from an enthusiastic young voice!

Children's Book of Philosophy

By Dorling Kindersley

In the store

A bold, colourfully illustrated crash-course in big ideas for little people.

The Art of the Possible: An Everyday Guide to Politics

By Edward Keenan, Julie McLaughlin

In the store

A great book to get kids thinking about politics!!

Bookshelf twitter
Follow @bookshelfnews
RT @WilliamsonDC: Reaaaaal good. Get it at @Bookshelfnews or @GuelphLibrary! t.co/lzuYw2iS2t

RT @guelphmuseums: šŸ Take a bite out of #GuelphCirca1999! Tomorrow over the lunch hour during History Bites we’re chatting Guelph in t… t.co/47rD8joXfK

RT @JessicaWesthead: @QuarantineMag @Bookshelfnews @yuppoems @TimMHolmes @AmandaLeduc @MariaMeindl @CareHage @lindsayzv @inviteanauthor… t.co/Gtbltclz6i

RT @StoryPlanetTO: Exciting Announcement! New ways to take part in our first-ever creative #writing program for grown-ups, the Constel… t.co/7dzdIzeB8N

Page Turners & Pot Boilers

REVIEW: WORRY

Review By Andrew Hood

Date: 22 Sep 2019

Share On

Related...

Worry: A Novel

Sometimes it feels as though my attention, the force and thoroughness of it, is all that’s holding the world together. To let my guard down would be to turn off some causal gravity, unmooring everything and sending it drifting into oblivion.

I’m a worrier. Me and other worriers aren’t necessarily not the reason that the worst things you could possibly imagine aren’t constantly happening.

Ruth is also a worrier. For instance, she’s never without her well-stocked parental “bug-out bag.” Its presence and heft makes it a sort of sibling to her almost-four-year-old daughter, Fern. Though her husband stays behind to continue unpacking in their new house, when Ruth accepts an invitation to her childhood best friend Stef’s cottage, the pack certainly comes along. Ruth literally and figuratively brings her baggage along for the weekend because, for a worrier, there’s no such thing as leaving your worries behind.

Worrying can be an attempt to exert control over the unreliability of daily life, or at least to close off all the exits so things can’t get too far out of hand. At the lavish lakeside cottage, though, Ruth’s at the whim of Stef’s carefree—sometimes careless—attitude. Getting away from it all means exposing Fern to the bad TV and bad food and bad behaviour and bad who-knows-what-else that she otherwise strives to protect her from. With Fern at the age where she’s just starting getting big enough to see over the fence that Ruth’s built around her, the little boost of Stef’s Way risks allowing her to make a break for it.

When they first arrive, Ruth and Fern are left waiting for Stef and the rest of the family to show. Their car is in the driveway, but there’s no sign of them. As mother and daughter bake in the sun, waiting, a man appears on the lake, paddle-boarding toward them. Fern, even though she’s been warned countless times about talking to strangers, tugs at her tether and strikes up a conversation.

The man turns out to just be Marvin, a gregarious neighbour who’s come to report that Stef and her brood have taken a boat ride. “Stef’s in the lake,” he casually assures Ruth, bringing to the worrier’s mind images of her friend, drowned, “long strands of blonde hair like seaweed, drifting.”

Less than ten minutes later, Stef and her lot arrive. Everything’s fine. But the unsteadiness, tension, and mistrust of Ruth’s initial worry lingres like a ringing in her ears--and a ring in the reader's ear--which becomes an insidious hum that carries on as everything continues to be seemingly fine.

Jessica Westhead does as a writer what the best worrier is able to do: make you doubt your own sense of safety, compromise even the simplest, sturdiest-seeming structure with “but what ifs,” convinces you that all it takes is turning away for an instant for everything to go flying off into space. It’s an influence that, exerted deftly, makes you reconsider your own compass. Worry, on the surface, is a simple story. But any worrier will tell you that the surface of things is not to be trusted.

Of course there’s a comfort to worry. It’s the comfort of attentiveness that verges on augury: you predict the worst thing and either enjoy the reflief of things turning out okay, or you get proven right--your worry validated. Becuase the worst things happen all the time, and they usually happen when you’ve stopped paying attention for just an instant.

Go To Page Turners & Pot Boilers
  • The Bookshelf

    • 41 Quebec Street
      Guelph Ontario
      519.821.3311
  • Bookstore

    • Books, Magazines, Games & Gifts
    • Read Reviews & Interviews
    • Follow Columns & Articles
  • Cinema

    • Now Playing
    • Film Reviews
    • Cult Cinema
  • eBar

    • Dinner & A Movie
    • Live Music
    • DJ's & Dancing
    • Comedy & Burlesque
    • Special Events

A bookstore that shows movies • a cinema that serves dinner • a resto-bar that launches books