The Book of Rain

Thomas Wharton’s ambitious new novel, The Book of Rain, begins with a tech blackout on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon. The confused city folk take it as it comes, a break from the monotony of ... Read More »

March 8, 2023 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Some Unfinished Business

By Antanas Sileika

Reading two novels set in Soviet Europe in tandem, recurrent questions echo between two distinct fictional worlds. Must the past be understood in order to move forward? And in what ways does it define our ... Read More »

February 15, 2023 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

In a Land without Dogs the Cats Learn to Bark

By Jonathan Garfinkel

February 15, 2023 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Strange Loops

By Liz Harmer

In the opening pages of Liz Harmer’s smart, sharp, and magnetic novel Strange Loops, Francine revisits the past. Deeply, frantically restless (whether in her role as wife, mother, graduate student, or coffee shop proprietor), Francine shows up ... Read More »

February 1, 2023 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

Isolated Incident

By Mariam Pirbhai

An anonymous individual approaches a nondescript storefront in a strip mall in Toronto’s Rexdale neighbourhood that houses a mosque. They smash its windows, its entrance door, and dent the sign above it. With red ... Read More »

November 23, 2022 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

My Indian Summer

By Joseph Kakwinokanasum

Family doesn’t always mean blood, and blood doesn’t always mean family – 12-year-old Hunter, who is desperate to follow his older sister out of the tiny British Columbia town of Red Rock and escape his ... Read More »

November 9, 2022 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

★ Fayne

By Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald’s first novel in eight years, Fayne, is a reinvention for the bestselling author, who turns her attention away from the Canadian locales of her previous works to the wild borderlands of the British ... Read More »

October 18, 2022 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

The Elephant on Karlův Bridge

By Thomas Trofimuk

In his latest novel, The Elephant on Karlův Bridge, Thomas Trofimuk imagines the escape of an elephant named Sal from the Prague zoo on an early July morning. The novel follows the elephant through the ... Read More »

October 12, 2022 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

A Ballet of Lepers: A Novel and Stories

By Leonard Cohen

Reading the early and previously unpublished fiction of a writer – especially one known mainly for poetry – may produce some surprises, not all of them pleasant. And when the writer in question is a ... Read More »

October 5, 2022 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Fiction: Short, Reviews

★ We Spread

By Iain Reid

We Spread – the dizzying, stunning fourth novel from Ontario writer Iain Reid – begins in isolation. Octogenarian Penny lives alone in the apartment she once shared with her partner (referred to only as “he”) ... Read More »

September 21, 2022 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

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