In the wake of my IFOA reading list and the literary prizelists of the season, my November reading felt relatively whimsical. Without duedates attached to the majority of my reading, it was a pleasure to slip into volumes which had sat untouched in recent weeks. Each of these three volumes covers,
Even when Bernice is liked, she's not necessarily liked for the person she is, but for the person someone believes her to be. This is largely why she leaves herself, why she learns to fly. "I wonder how fascinated she’d be if she knew that I’d been fucked before I
The title of her second novel might well have been a discarded option for her debut; Riel Nason is back in familiar territory: the intersection between memory and identity, the line between mysticism and madness, and sibling bonds in a coming-of-age tale. Goose Lane, 2016 Now it is 1977
Nothing really happens. Here, the "main event is simply a view of the water". So Ruby's story should not be a page-turner. But, in fact, The Town that Drowned is a coming-of-age story with a curious momentum. No single element is responsible: character and voice, setting and structure, all work
Steven Price began as a poet, so the hype surrounding his new novel, By Gaslight, must have been disconcerting. But that's appropriate, because it is intended to be a disconcerting story. McClelland & Stewart - PRH, 2016 The majority of readers probably won't be interested in either the rumours surrounding
