Eleanor Rigby

There’s a brief moment in Douglas Coupland’s latest novel when he draws the reader’s attention to some peonies, cool and white and beautiful, placed in a room. They’re a fitting flower for a Coupland novel; ... Read More »

November 22, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

West Wind, North Chatter

By Deanna Kent-McDonald

It seems Sex and the City’s Carrie Bradshaw’s not the only one typing away her modern malaise. In Deanna Kent-McDonald’s first novel, West Wind, North Chatter, the entire town of Grand Prairie, Alberta, is busy ... Read More »

November 22, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

The Alien House

By Élise Turcotte, Sheila Fischman

Reading Elise Turcotte’s The Alien House is a little like overhearing the thoughts of one of Ingmar Bergman’s nearly silent film heroines. Like Liv Ullman in The Hour of the Wolf, Turcotte’s nameless narrator finds ... Read More »

November 22, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Displaced Persons

By Margie Taylor

According to its cover, Displaced Persons is based on a true story. For the uninitiated it’s difficult to tell where fact and fiction diverge. The novel’s narrator, a woman named Alex Cooper, is a writer ... Read More »

November 22, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

South of the Border

By Marlis Wesseler

South of the Border, Marlis Wesseler’s second novel, makes excellent use of a clever, deeply affecting plot twist. The story opens with 19-year-old Arlene (originally of Saskatoon) being roused from a deep sleep in her ... Read More »

November 22, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Second Sight

By George Szanto

George Szanto won justifiable praise in 1990 for The Underside of Stones, his first in a planned trilogy of novels set in the fictional landscape of Michocuaro, Mexico. The novel offered a probing of privileged ... Read More »

November 22, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

What’s Remembered

By Arthur Motyer

Over the course of a late-night supper in a little restaurant in Toronto’s Yorkville district, Peter Lindley finds himself recounting his personal history to a mostly silent dinner companion, trying to give a sense of ... Read More »

November 22, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Self-Titled

By Geoffrey Brown

The trick to reading Self-Titled, Ottawa writer Geoffrey Brown’s second novel, is to surrender to the work’s possibilities. But be warned: Brown takes his readers on a demanding verbal midway ride, giving words to thoughts ... Read More »

November 22, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

The Nine Planets

By Edward Riche

Two big new novels from young, male Newfoundland authors appeared in bookstores this season, and they could hardly have less in common. Michael Winter’s The Big Why, despite its dabblings in high art and unorthodox ... Read More »

November 22, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

★ Larry’s Party

By Carol Shields

If Laurence J. Weller’s life is a maze (and whose isn’t?), it is most definitely not the one of Greek legend, a complicated, malevolent labyrinth where a Minotaur strides angrily, wiping out brave soldiers. It ... Read More »

November 21, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

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