Anyone fond of linked narratives will warm to the idea that Québécois writer Marcel Tremblay has written these six Mont-Royal novels to illuminate the characters that regularly figure in his plays. In long-fiction, readers have a glimpse into their thoughts and feelings. We are not only witnessing dialogues and
But now for a summer book that I actually read out-of-season: I was entranced by Mireille Gagné’s Horsefly (2024), translated by Pablo Strauss the following year. (Published by Coach House in Canada, New Cross Press in England, La livre de Poche in France). It’s turned a few heads, and
Almost straight away after Simon and Kaggsy chose 1961 for the current club year, I started to come across references. As in Stacey D’Erasmo’s memoir, The Long Run (2024) which draws a clear connection between one writer’s life and work and the values of the era: “We believed in
Continuing yesterday’s talk of remembrance reading, while I reflect on other reading from 2025 and possibilities for reading this year. The first of his books published in his mother tongue (Gikuyu), Weep Not, Child is the second novel by Ngugi Wa Thiong’o (b. 1938), who
Just when my thoughts were etching a loop as I struggled to describe Madeleine Thien’s new novel, The Book of Records, I came across this Joy Williams quotation*: “What good stories deal with is the horror and incomprehensibility of time, the dark encroachment of old catastrophes.” That is, indeed,
