Throwback: Hey, Good Luck Out There by Georgia Toews
“Addicts don’t talk about the pain, the loss, the moments of deep sorrow that anchor us to the underbelly of society.”
Literary fiction
Temporary Palaces by Jeff Miller
It is perhaps in the valleys between each ripple, not the peaks, that Miller does his best work. The real emotional substance of the book thrives in the quiet moments, the silence before and after the bangs.
The Fall-Down Effect by Liz Johnston
Once a family experiences a wholly destabilizing trauma, and is fractured—how does it heal or reform in the proceeding years, and is this recovery ever sufficient?
Every Time We Say Goodbye by Ivana Sajko, Translated by Mima Simić
The unnamed narrator of this slim, stark novel is travelling by train from a small coastal town in southeastern Europe to Berlin.
Throwback: After We Drowned by Jill Yonit Goldberg
Covering the same sort of stark wasteland, both economic and emotional, Goldberg subverts expectations time and again by delineating a tangible humanity in the lost souls she describes.
The Unravelling of Ou by Hollay Ghadery
The Unravelling of Ou by Hollay Ghadery touches upon mothering, sexual identity, family dynamics and voice.
Seven Heavens Away by Ashraf Zaghal
The novel is set in 2015-2016, a time when Israeli forces began restricting access to Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem. Aziz, a young man at odds with his father, witnesses, alongside his friend Mustafa, the murder of their friend Hassan at the hands of an Israeli soldier.
Honeydew by Ben Zalkind
In Honeydew, Ben Zalkind’s new novel, tech billionaire Moses Honeydew is intent on tunnelling into the core of the earth. I suspect readers will either be automatically sold on the book after hearing this, or put off.
A Friend of Dorothy’s by Richard Willett
The focus of the book is that compassionate curiosity of the narrator Eric as he tries to puzzle out his life, his times.
Shoebox by Sean Paul Bedell
Bedell explores the life of Steve, former insurance salesman, current husband and father to two children, who is just trying to make everyone happy and earn a living.
Strangers at the Red Door by Dennis Bock
During his stay, he takes the reader on a roller-coaster journey through the eyes of a Westerner witnessing life under oppression in places like Hong Kong and mainland China, where teenagers play with drones, yet banned books are smuggled into the country.
In the Western Night by Nolan D. Insyte
Nolan D. Insyte conjures a milieu that feels at once raw and surreal, calling to mind the spectral streets of Dylan’s Desolation Row and, in a sly echo of the author’s own forward, Wilde’s Vera; or, The Nihilists, where misfits and nihilists collide in a kind of gauzy, narcotic ballet.
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.”
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.
