What Endures by Pauline Holdstock
What struck me at the end of reading the collection of short stories that every single one was true.
literary fiction
Lords of Serendipity: An Interview with Randy Boyagoda
Acclaimed author and English professor Randy Boyagoda’s latest novel, Lords of Serendipity, is set between Sri Lanka and the United States, and follows two ambitious young women whose dreams of elite higher education expose a much larger world of parental sacrifice, global inequality, institutional gatekeeping, and the complicated moral economy surrounding modern universities. Both sharply …
The World So Wide by Zilla Jones
Complex female characters? Check. Historical revolution? Check. Challenging themes of race and class? Check. Opera? Check! The World So Wide by Zilla Jones is a beefy read in more ways than one, spanning decades, countries, nationalities, lovers, and stages. It really has everything, but most importantly it has Felicity, the main character. Felicity Alexander, the …
Mind the Gap by Alice Zorn
As in the piece that provides the book’s title, when Barbara meets her Austrian cousin Freddy as an adult, much has changed in the interim.
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.”
The Unravelling of Ou by Hollay Ghadery
The Unravelling of Ou by Hollay Ghadery touches upon mothering, sexual identity, family dynamics and voice.
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.
Dengue Boy by Michel Nieva, trans. Rahul Bery
An object of disgust, Dengue Boy is marked from birth as an outcast. Beset by a sudden thirst for blood, which only female mosquitoes possess, Dengue Boy realizes in adolescence that she is really Dengue Girl and sets out to exact her revenge on the wealthy people and tourists for whom her mother toils tirelessly.
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.”
Open, Heaven by Seán Hewitt
With their time together limited, teenage tragedy is inevitable – yet James becomes more himself with each passing day.
Excerpt: Songs for the Broken Hearted by Ayelet Tsabari
Excerpt from Songs for The Brokenhearted: A Novel by Ayelet Tsabari ©2024. Published by HarperCollins Canada. All rights reserved.
Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst
We follow Dave Win, the son of a Burmese man who he never knew and a white British mother, forever an outsider in his conservative village, who receives a scholarship to a local boarding school.
Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit by Nadine Sander-Green
Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit is a story centered around Millicent, a shy, 24-year-old reporter who moves to Whitehorse after graduating from college, where she focused more on poetry than journalism. Yet off to journalism she goes, to work at the Golden Nugget, a failing daily newspaper with three staff.
We Are Already Ghosts by Kit Dobson
There is a lyricism to Kit Dobson’s prose in We Are Already Ghosts, a way of revealing detail that is at once both elegant and calculated in its precision, distinguishing the novel by its tempered restraint.
