The Longest Death by Kevin Jagernauth
As a Neo-noir Neo-pulp (to coin a term), The Longest Death impressed and entertained me.
Brett Josef Grubisic
Brown Girls, Grown Up: Stories by Sima Qadeer
Though focused on Muslim Pakistani Canadian women, there’s some DNA of Bushnell/Star in Sima Qadeer’s story collection, Brown Girls, Grown Up.
Wild People Quiet by Tara Gereaux
As epigraphs go, Gereaux’s identifies commonplace racism circa 1869. The novel’s subsequent pair of historical settings, about four and eight decades later, suggest cultural change that could be measured in teaspoons.
Morgan’s Castle by Jan Hilliard
Less consciously literary and considerably more pulpy than Laurence, the Jan Hilliard novel Morgan’s Castle (written by Nova Scotia-born Torontonian Hilda Kay Grant), suggests an alternative CanLit tradition to me—our dime store authors.
Villain Hitting for Vicious Little Nobodies by Lindsay Wong
Villain Hitting for Vicious Little Nobodies is a lot.
The Atoner of Alberni by Ed Cepka
The first utterance by Larry, the raucous novel’s restless narrator, indicates just how far things did progress from the book’s early days as a sturdy pioneer saga: “I’m grateful for this cell and its vinyl padded walls and floor that they laughably justify so that I don’t harm myself.”
Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts by Margaret Atwood
An adept technician and genius at the craft of spinning a story, Atwood, who turns 86 in November, breathes tremendous vitality into Book of Lives.
Pools by Martin West
Funny, unsettling, and often completely off the rails, Pools is a snapshot of the early 1980s[…]
Death on the Caldera by Emily Paxman
Paxman is a whiz at threading this complex and evolving history into a recognizably Christie-esque formula, whether it’s Death on the Nile or A Haunting in Venice.
Welcome to the Neighbourhood by Clea Young
Young’s characters yearn for community, for untroubled friendships, for peace, love, and understanding (to quote Nick Lowe)—as though they too grew up with a notion of the Welcome Wagon and feel nostalgia for something they hold dear but cannot actually manifest in their everyday lives.
The Hypebeast by Adnan Khan
As a title, The Hypebeast, will mean nothing to many people. And, for select others, something highly specific.
Deep Cuts by Holly Brickley
In her self-portrait from a chronological distance, Percy celebrates a semi-misspent youth—all of its fiery enthusiasms and blind alleys, its dramas and earnestness, its lessons learned, misunderstandings, messiness, unbridled pleasures, and excesses. And, yes, humiliations.
Yellow Barks Spider by Harman Burns
There’s palpable tension in the spare opening pages of Yellow Barks Spider, a debut novella by Vancouver-based Saskatchewan transplant Harman Burns. Even before the story begins, a dedication—“for ██████ wherever you are” —draws any curious eye. A technique Burns revisits later, redaction—with its there/not there visibility—prompts inevitable questions: what’s the masked name and the story behind …
May Our Joy Endure by Kevin Lambert translated by Donald Winkler
Playing satirist, tragedian, humorist, and social historian, Lambert produces a unique book that contains a complete world.
