Fiction: Novels

One Madder Woman

It’s hard to imagine from today’s vantage that some of Édouard Manet’s most celebrated paintings, including Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe, with its female nude picnicker gazing defiantly at the viewer, were decreed artistically worthless when ... Read More »

December 3, 2020 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

Written in Stone

By Peter Unwin

Linda first meets Paul at the cast party for a no-budget production of Beckett’s Happy Days in which Linda stars. Paul approaches Linda and asks if she’s any good with a canoe. When Linda begs ... Read More »

November 30, 2020 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

Blaze Island

By Catherine Bush

Coming into Catherine Bush’s Blaze Island is akin to entering a world with a large cast of characters, not unlike a Charles Dickens novel. While Dickens’s novels are cultural artifacts of their time, Bush’s book ... Read More »

November 26, 2020 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

Waiting for a Star to Fall

By Kerry Clare

Toronto writer Kerry Clare’s sophomore novel begins with the fall of superstar politician Derek Murdoch. Standing accused of sexual assault, Derek denies the anonymous allegations at a press conference, viewed via livestream by his most ... Read More »

November 19, 2020 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

A Russian Sister

By Caroline Adderson

When The Seagull premiered in St. Petersburg on October 17, 1896, it was received so poorly playwright Anton Chekhov is reported to have fled the theatre to escape the boos and hisses that greeted the ... Read More »

October 29, 2020 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

Daughter of Here

By Ioana Georgescu; Katia Grubisic (trans.)

The French title of Ioana Georgescu’s third novel is La jetée. Elle s’appellera Mo. This translates roughly as “The pier. She will be called Mo.” Film buffs will recognize the nod to Chris Marker’s 1962 ... Read More »

October 22, 2020 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

The Occidental Hotel

By John Bentley Mays

The essay by author Antanas Sileika that opens the late John Bentley Mays’s previously unpublished final novel, The Occidental Hotel, is bracingly upfront in managing a reader’s expectations. “I cautioned John that many Canadian readers ... Read More »

October 19, 2020 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

Like a Bird

By Fariha Róisín

“Truth is what you’ve experienced. It’s what you know.” So says Taylia Chatterjee, the first-person narrator of Australian-Canadian author Fariha Róisín’s debut novel. Taylia voices what has become a staple of postmodern, therapy-inspired philosophy: truth ... Read More »

October 15, 2020 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

Cam & Beau

By Maria Cichosz

Maria Cichosz’s debut novel – the first in a projected series – brims with theory and tension. Cam and Beau are long-time best friends and roommates living in Toronto at the beginning of the 21st ... Read More »

October 5, 2020 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

★ Daniil and Vanya

By Marie-Hélène Larochelle; Michelle Winters (trans.)

Reading Marie-Hélène Larochelle’s debut novel is like watching a terrifying play. The sense of dread and horror is physically palpable, and the careful stagecraft of the writing – in Michelle Winters’s capable English translation – ... Read More »

October 1, 2020 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

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