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
It's with a subtle touch, but Nadia Bozak solidly roots the reader in time and place. House of Anansi, 2016 This is not an easy task, because Shell only grows to the age of seventeen in Thirteen Shells -- across thirteen stories, and childhood is inherently rootless. So the details
Fever at Dawn by Péter Gárdos began with a box of letters, or, more accurately, the letter-writers, who would become his parents. House of Anansi, 2016 "But for fifty years I did not know that their letters still existed. In the midst of political unheaval and the chaos of moving to
“If prison isn’t prison, the outside world has no meaning!” So says Aurora to Charmaine in Margaret Atwood's new novel, The Heart Goes Last. McClelland & Stewart, 2015 (Penguin Random House) It dates back, the CanLit icon's interest in imprisonment, a preoccupation with the idea of lives which
Ins Choi's play, Kim's Convenience is already on my list of favourite reads for this year. House of Anansi, 2015 I know, I know, it's only August, but I am certain already (because it literally made me laugh out loud several times and then it made me cry). It
