Conflicted: that describes my first impressions after meeting Pillow in Andrew Battershill's Giller-nominated novel of the same name,and it also describes his perspective on the world. It's hard to be Pillow, to see all the angles which converge and diverge simultaneously on any single thought he has. For instance: "Pillow
Neverhome is set in the years of the American Civil War and narrated by a fledgling letter-writer. She has survived the conflict and adopted this strange chore of authoring. Little, Brown and Company, 2014 "When I’d eaten up my given share of a day I’d take up my pen
Of course I made a reading list. Then, I saw Vasilly’s list. (You probably already know where this is heading.) Her list has many temptations on it, including some of my favourites. But I have been looking for a reason to read the rest of Kazu Kibuishi’s Amulet series since I
Shani Mootoo sidles up to her story. Random House Canada, 2014 A novel like Padma Viswanathan’s The Ever After of Ashwin Rao is more openly preoccupied with questions of grief and loss. One like Shyam Selvadurai’s The Hungry Ghosts explores family relationships and the passage of time in
For Today I Am a Boy is a very ordinary story, told in a gentle and quiet voice. Kim Fu's novel does not challenge vehemently, like Ghalib Islam's brash debut or Helen Oyeyemi's Boy, Snow, Bird. "My father stood on the step and watched with me. It was the fall
