An excess of short stories in the later part of this year has led to a decision to return to the habit of more often devoting entire posts to collections rather than covering a variety in a single pass (last seen in Quarterly Stories: Autumn 2014) Algonquin Books, 2014
“Bad coffee can only keep you company for so long at four a.m. in a bus depot.” Caitlin Press, 2014 All of the characters in Janine Alyson Young’s debut collection seem as though they would immediately recognize the truth of that. They all seem to have a spot
When a passage on page two is just breathtakingly powerful, readers’ expectations soar. It seems impossible to imagine reading beyond this passage without stopping to reread, or not reading it aloud to a friend sitting alongside, or not tapping the stranger sitting next to you, pointing and saying “Check this out”.
Excerpt from Reading Journal: Knopf Canada, 2014 Last night I finished reading All My Puny Sorrows, and when I woke up this morning, I was weeping. This doesn’t reveal how the book ended, because I read more than half of it last night, half-skimming the first half that
Sean Michaels’ prose invites readers to participate in the relationship between sound and shape through the simple but beautiful language of Us Conductors. Random House of Canada, 2014 His images are simple and fresh, and they are momentarily disorienting – as beautiful things can be. “I didn’t laugh
