David Chariandry’s Brother (M&S)
Rachel Cusk’s Transit (HarperCollins)
David Denchuk’s The Bone Mother (ChiZine)
Joel Thomas Hynes We’ll All Be Burnt in Our Beds Some Night (HarperCollins)
Andrée A. Michaud’s Boundary: The Last Summer (Trans. Donald Winkler) (Biblioasis)
Josip Novakovich’s Tumbleweed (Véhicule)
Ed O’Loughlin’s Minds of Winter (Anansi)
Zoey Leigh Peterson’s Next Year for Sure (Doubleday)
Michael Redhill’s Bellevue Square (Doubleday)
Eden Robinson’s Son of a Trickster (Knopf)
Deborah Willis’ The Dark and Other Love Stories (Hamish Hamilton)
Michelle Winters’ I Am a Truck (Invisible)
The 2017 Giller jury (André Alexis, Anita Rau Badami, Richard Beard, Lynn Coady and Nathan Englander) has selected twelve books, including short stories and fresh voices, unconventional styles and a work in translation, even a horror novel!
Altough the shortlist will be announced on October 2nd, before I will have had a chance to read through the list, I plan to read the longlist anyhow. If I manage to finish reading before the winner is announced on November 20th, I will privately offer it a lovely rose.
A rose from a reader.
Reading the 2017 Giller Prize Longlist
Guessing at each book’s Giller-a-bility
The last time the Giller longlist so tickled me was 2011. Back then, the jury (Howard Norman, Annabel Lyon and Andrew O’Hagan) introduced me to Michael Christie, Patrick deWitt and Alexi Zentner, and urged me to read – finally – Clark Blaise, Esi Edugyan, Pauline Holdstock, Dany Laferriere and Guy Vanderhaeghe.
Recent Prizelist and Event Reading
October 2017
James Maskalyk’s Life on the Ground Floor (2017)
Your airway is the width of your smallest finger: you can see how things can go wrong. "Airway first. Breathing next. Medicine is life
Jen Agg’s I Hear She’s a Real Bitch (2017)
"Everything about the restaurant business is made harder by being in it as a woman. And speaking out about that only makes it worse."
Any Other Way: How Toronto Got Queer
Intentionally pushing the boundaries, this LGBTTIQQ2SA history aims for inclusivity, representation and originality. These essays are designed to "dazzle" and to "distract" readers from
In the Black: In Business, In Life
Canada specializes in a kind of "underhanded racism", which is "as Canadian as maple syrup". This is displayed in B. Denham Jolly's memoir, alongside
Rachel Cusk’s Outline (2014) and Transit (2017)
Readers meet a woman up in the air. Literally. She is flying to Athens, where she will teach a course in creative writing. This
When You Already Miss the Characters, Fifty Pages from the End
I wasn't expecting to love Zoey Leigh Peterson's Next Year for Sure so much. Aryn Kyle's blurb caught my eye (because I've loved some
Even when I didn’t live in Toronto, I still watched this prizelist for books set in the city that I hoped to call home someday.
The International Festival of Authors brought me to Toronto many times before I actually moved to the city. It remains a favourite!
The ReLit Awards peer more closely at the books that are sometimes overlooked, those from smaller and independent presses.