Quill and Quire

Fiction: Novels

Wind Tails

By Anne DeGrace

Anne DeGrace, author of 2005’s Treading Water, sets her new novel during a single day in 1977 in a remote diner in a B.C. mountain pass. The story is primarily about Jo, a troubled teen ... Read More »

December 14, 2007 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Be Good

By Stacey May Fowles

The final chapter of Be Good, the debut novel by Toronto writer Stacey May Fowles, begins, “Everyone is posing again.” It’s a fitting description of the book itself, which is deeply concerned with questions of ... Read More »

December 10, 2007 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Macdonald

By Roy MacSkimming

Sir John A. Macdonald is being removed from the cramped cupboard of Canadian history for a series of contemporary airings, more than half a century after Donald Creighton brought out his impressive two-volume biography of ... Read More »

November 15, 2007 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Hunting with Diana

By David Watmough

David Watmough’s latest novel, Hunting With Diana, is a series of “connected fictions” inspired by the author’s obsessive reading of Greek myths. Hoping to “reincarnate these ancient treasures into the ultimate of contemporary literary fabrics,” ... Read More »

October 11, 2007 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Big White Knuckles

By Brian Tucker

As one might expect from the telegraphing-its-punches title, Big White Knuckles is another entry in the hardscrabble-realist tradition of Maritime writing. Dagan Cadden comes of age in an impoverished and often violent Cape Breton. His ... Read More »

October 2, 2007 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

The Book of Beasts

By Bernice Friesen

Show, don’t tell. It’s a hackneyed but still-relevant adage that’s been bandied about in creative writing classes for years. Unfortunately, this first novel from Saskatchewan author Bernice Friesen fails to heed the lesson.The Book of ... Read More »

October 2, 2007 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels