Renee Rodin launched her memoir Subject to Change (Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2011) yesterday afternoon at the Billy Bishop Legion in Kits. About sixty came out for an event made enjoyable first for editor Karl Seigler’s increasingly mysterious introductions, then Renee’s fabulous thank yous, which are artworks in themselves.

I received my copy of Subject to Change last month, and devoured it in a couple of sittings. Renee’s style is spare yet elegant, her narratives deceptively simple. And what a life! -- enriched as it is by her arrangement of it, as literature. Montreal, Vancouver, San Francisco, New York; the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and 00s.

Subject to Change is a book I will keep alongside two of my favorite memoirs: Harold Nicolson’s Some People and Bruce Chatwin’s In Patagonia. I look forward to return readings.