Rockstar or not, Nicola Harwood's Flight Instructions for the Commitment Impaired is a bold and absorbing memoir. At times her style is plain and functional, at other times it is poetic and intricate - even captivating, her voice consistently displayed centre-stage. Caitlin Press, 2016 "No such thing as one true love,
Sometimes, it's clear who the bad guys are. Sometimes they're clearly drawn, not only unsavoury, but also unprincipled. Like the misogynists who people the Signy Shepherd series by Susan Philpott, in which women are rescued from life-threatening situations by other women working a type of Underground Railroad, called The Line. (Blown
What Jane Ozkowski captures beautifully in Watching Traffic is the very sensation embodied in the debut novel's title: Emily is overwhelmed by motion even while in a state of stillness. Groundwood Books, 2016 It's the summer after high-school gradulation, and Emily is working at a catering company, making egg-salad sandwiches and
All published in the season which would make them eligible for this year's Giller Prize, the kaleidoscope of covers for 2016 is now available on Pinterest, a text-based collection here. They had me at list-making, but also there are prizes, for lucky list-makers (rules, here). The images link to the
Massacre, killer, murder: when these words appear on a novel's first page, readers are fore-warned. And, yet, the first third of Sara Taylor's Boring Girls (2015) is a coming-of-age story. "It was becoming more and more apparent that I had been right all along. No one could truly understand me, unless they got
