Jennifer Quist's Love Letters of the Angels of Death is a taut novel which pulls the reader into the story with only a few paragraphs. Not only through plot, though the first paragraph is a bold invitation to read on: "It was only a matter of time before we found human
The cover image for Anthony De Sa's Kicking the Sky perfectly encapsulates the novel's themes, structure, setting and tone.* A child's bicycle leans against a garage door, the only sign of habitation. The view of the alleyway leaves the safety of home beyond the edges of the scene. The shadows are
Reading Hellgoing makes me wonder about Lynn Coady's personal relationships. Not for the obvious reasons that other readers might identify, stories like "Body Condom" and "Play the Monster Blind". But because I imagine that in order to write a short story, she disappears for a spell. I imagine she crawls
Three for three: I've read all three of Stacey May Fowles' novels straight-through. It just happened. But although it was true of Be Good and Fear of Fighting, I was prepared to take my time with Infidelity, an emotionally exhausting subject. But, then, it happened again. Perhaps it simply comes down
The shortlist for the Toronto Book Award nearly always introduces me to the work of one writer whose work I did not know. (This year, I "discovered" Kevin Irie's poetry.) • Kamal Al-Solaylee, Intolerable: A Memoir of Extremes (HarperCollins Canada) Harper Collins, 2012 Much of this memoir speaks
