★ I Remember Lights

Hello, gorgeous. Barbra Streisand’s iconic line, as Fanny Brice, captured during the filming of Funny Girl in late 1967, has all sorts of uses. Unbidden, the line came to me as I pored over the ... Read More »

March 12, 2025 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

★ Flesh

By David Szalay

“There’s something terrible about the way normality asserts itself.” The statement, placed in the close third-person consciousness of István, the protagonist of Montreal-born David Szalay’s latest novel, could serve as a thesis for the entire ... Read More »

March 5, 2025 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

Hester in Sunlight

By Hannah Calder

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

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