Excerpt from reading journal: Nadia Bozak is the reason that I have copies of the three books in Cormac McCarthy’s Border Trilogy on my shelves. Books that I never planned to read, but I came across the idea that the works were somehow connected with her novels Orphan Love and
Like his first novel, Touch, The Lobster Kings showcases Alexi Zentner’s penchant for storytelling. Knopf Canada, 2014 Readers who learn that this novel is a retelling of Shakespeare’s tragedy "King Lear" might expect the tale to distance readers, with the original story centuries old and memories of stilted
Although I always have a small stack of books underway, I have carried to extremes this act of multi-booking this summer. Yesterday I finished Michael Crummey’s new novel (Sweetland), Alison Wearing’s memoir (Confessions of a Fairy’s Daughter), Jan Zwicky’s poetry collection, the second volume in the Fruits Basket manga series,
Shani Mootoo sidles up to her story. Random House Canada, 2014 A novel like Padma Viswanathan’s The Ever After of Ashwin Rao is more openly preoccupied with questions of grief and loss. One like Shyam Selvadurai’s The Hungry Ghosts explores family relationships and the passage of time in
Readers might expect a retelling of the ancient Greek tale of Paris and Helen to be a bulky, wordy novel as useful for propping up a window on a hot summer day as for entertainment; but Jonatham Bennett's contemporary version of the story is a slim, polished novel that one would need to
