The Stolen Ones by Ida Linehan Young
The Stolen Ones by Ida Linehan Young is a modern day story of love and loss, heartbreak and healing and provides proof that knowing one’s roots can serve as a powerful antidote against adverse life experiences.
family
My Father’s Son by Tom Moore
Felix Ryan, from Curlew, Conception Bay, is a schoolteacher on the edge of a cliff in a serious mid-life crisis. But a phone call from Tammy, an ex-girlfriend, calls him back home to help his eccentric father in his latest crusade. A big US oil company has begun fracking in his hometown. Led by a jovial Texan and represented by a crack young lawyer, the company is buying up land. The town is split in two over fracking and its new prosperity.
Dancing with Chairs in the Music House by Caro Soles
Precocious ten-year-old Vanessa Dudley-Morris knows lots of secrets. In 1949 when she and her family are forced to move into two rooms on the second floor of 519 Jarvis Street in Toronto, a genteel but somewhat rundown rooming house owned by a reclusive pianist, she learns a lot more.
A Child to Cry Over by Vanessa C. Hawkins
Maddy Bell was just eight years old when she was sent away for the murder of a two year old boy living in the rural town of St. George, New Brunswick.
The Spoon Stealer by Lesley Crewe
Reading a novel by Lesley Cynthia Crewe is like covering yourself in an old quilt. You know you can settle in and get cozy, wrap yourself in the words and let the characters and their memories keep you company as you read. Emmeline is indeed a spoon stealer. She is also a tour de force. …
Broken Symmetry by Rosalie Osmond
Broken Symmetry centres on the Wentzell family. The events unfold from 1943 to 1959 and mostly occur in their shared family home in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia.
Akin by Emma Donoghue
Akin demonstrates yet again that, when it comes to fictional worlds, Emma Donoghue is at home everywhere. The novel is set in New York and Nice, France. Seventy-nine-year-old retired academic Noah—widowed, set in his ways, still living in the same apartment where he and his wife Joan (nine years dead) spent their married life and …
Reproduction by Ian Williams
Novels, like love and family, take many forms. On every page of Reproduction, his debut novel, Ian Williams finds ways to resist and defy conventional narrative practice while constructing an audacious and uniquely challenging story that crosses generational lines. In the process, he has written a poignant, resonant tale about intersecting lives and the ways that seemingly trivial decisions can have unexpected and far-reaching consequences.
The Daughters’ Story by Murielle Cyr
Nadine is banished to a home for unwed mothers in 1950. She’s 15. Her baby daughter, whose father is shrouded in secrecy, is put up for adoption without her permission. Vowing to reunite one day with her daughter, she cuts all ties with her dysfunctional Irish and French-Canadian Catholic family whose past is cluttered with secrets, betrayals, incest and violence.
Perfect World by Ian Colford
(This is a guest review submitted by Naomi MacKinnon of Consumed by Ink.) Naomi often reviews books that I can never get around to reading, and such is the case with Ian Colford’s Perfect World.) We first meet Tom as a 13-year-old living in rural Nova Scotia with his parents and new baby sister. But …
New 2018 Fiction from Goose Lane Editions
[dropcap]Here [/dropcap]are a couple of mini-reviews of two recent fiction titles New Brunswick’s Goose Lane Editions, Marry Bang Kill by Andrew Battershill and Catch my Drift by Genevieve Scott. Marry Bang Kill by Andrew Battershill The title of this book comes from a popular question: when presented with three things (typically celebrities) who would you: …
Malagash by Joey Comeau
(The following is an excerpt from a review written by Naomi MacKinnon at Consumed by Ink. It is reproduced here in part with her kind permission.) Malagash is a gem of a book. And I can’t think of anyone I wouldn’t recommend it to. The title of the book refers to the community where the …
In Many Waters by Ami Sands Brodoff
In Many Waters is the gripping story of three orphans whose lives intersect on the island of Malta during our current, urgent refugee crisis.
