Fiction: Novels

Hester in Sunlight

Just shy of 175 years ago, Hester Prynne secured a primo spot in literary history. Arguably, thanks to school curricula and films such as Easy A, Hester remains a familiar name. In The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne describes ... Read More »

December 4, 2024 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

Subterrane

By Valérie Bah

Representation in the arts isn’t simply a matter of augmenting narratives that have been neglected. Within any identity category, there are bound to be fractures – nuances and contradictions that defy easy categorization. Must efforts ... Read More »

October 30, 2024 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

★ This Is It

By Matthew Fox

Sexuality, class, family, death: these grand themes are given a rich and deep exploration in This Is It, a moving and provocative debut novel by Matthew Fox. A Canadian now living in Berlin, Fox (formerly ... Read More »

October 16, 2024 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Fiction: Short, Reviews

★ White World

By Saad T. Farooqi

Saad T. Farooqi’s debut novel White World starts right in the middle of the action – with his protagonist, Avaan, running with a gun in his hand, in a dystopian Pakistan engulfed in a civil ... Read More »

October 9, 2024 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

Keep

By Jenny Haysom

Eventually, whether before a move or after a loss, we all have to make difficult decisions about what stays and what goes. Jenny Haysom’s debut novel Keep begins with a literal version of this challenging ... Read More »

October 2, 2024 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

★ What I Know About You

By Éric Chacour; Pablo Strauss (trans.)

When a novel receives multiple international awards and accolades in its original language it’s difficult not to approach the English translation with a combination of trepidation and high expectation. Will the book meet the high ... Read More »

September 25, 2024 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

★ Juiceboxers

By Benjamin Hertwig

When readers first meet Plinko, the focal character of Edmonton writer Benjamin Hertwig’s harrowing and powerful debut novel, Juiceboxers, it is 1999 and he is 16 years old, a fan of The Lord of the ... Read More »

September 18, 2024 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim

By Jacob Wren

A Jacob Wren novel is known for several things: narrators undergoing neurotic self-interrogation, a consideration of the gap between theory and practice, and a certain metafictional flair when it comes to signalling the work’s own ... Read More »

September 18, 2024 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

★ The Capital of Dreams

By Heather O’Neill

Fourteen-year-old Sofia Bottom has found herself alone due to the war that has come to her homeland. Elysia, a small European country, was once a vibrant, sensual, otherworldly place – where the arts flourished and ... Read More »

September 11, 2024 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

Songs for the Brokenhearted

By Ayelet Tsabari

Ayelet Tsabari’s Songs for the Brokenhearted begins with Zohara Haddad returning to Israel in 1995 for her mother Saida’s funeral. Zohara has been living in New York, where she is a graduate student at NYU, ... Read More »

September 4, 2024 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

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