Fiction: Novels

Innocent Graves

Blonde and beautiful Deborah Harrison, a 16-year-old student, has been strangled, her almost nude body spread-eagled near an ancient mausoleum. The images appear in a chilling kaleidoscope, drawn with a talent Peter Robinson has honed ... Read More »

April 20, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

I Was Hitler’s Cat

By N.J. Dodic

Any book that plays Hitler for laughs has its work cut out for it. First, there are the jokes themselves, which must succeed on every page, given the very small market for Nazi comedy. Second, ... Read More »

April 20, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Memory Lane: A Willows and Parker Mystery

By Laurence Gough

Series mystery writers always have to compete with themselves while trying to keep the faith with readers who just want variations on the same old theme. Laurence Gough typically responds on two tracks, first by ... Read More »

April 20, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Gaffer: A Novel of Newfoundland

By Kevin Major

Shorn of his duties to the teen set, Kevin Major, a Newfoundland writer best known for his YA fiction, neglects the elements that typically make a novel work: clarity, story, character. Instead, he indulges style ... Read More »

April 20, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

If I Were Me

By Clark Blaise

If I were Lander – guilt-ridden main character, failed father and husband, famous neurolinguist – I might be less forgiving of myself. So why does author Clark Blaise allow his character to find so much ... Read More »

April 19, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Lydia Thrippe! A Critic’s Diary Followed by the Lydiad

By Daniel Sloate

At university I was given a secondhand copy of a literary anthology, with a free form novel-in-progress attached. The book had been owned by a celebrated Upper Canada College academic, who had scribbled thousands of ... Read More »

April 16, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Bodies in Motion: A Matthew Prior Mystery

By Anthony Quogan

In pseudonymous Toronto mystery writer Anthony Quogan’s Bodies in Motion, recurring character Matthew Prior is commissioned to adapt Hitchcock’s train thriller The Lady Vanishes for a modern-day American audience. By way of research, he is ... Read More »

April 16, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Between the Stillness and the Grove

By Erika de Vasconcelos

Erika de Vasconcelos’s second novel is more ambitious in scope than her acclaimed debut. Where My Darling Dead Ones concerned itself with the personal histories of a family of women, Between the Stillness and the ... Read More »

April 16, 2004 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction, Fiction: Novels

A Complicated Kindness

By Miriam Toews

Miriam Toews’ second novel starts with a funny-sad zinger: “Half of our family, the better-looking half, is missing,” and right away we’re hooked on our narrator’s mournful smarts. Laconic, restless, sixteen-year-old Naomi “Nomi” Nickel doesn’t ... Read More »

April 12, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

After Surfing Ocean Beach

By Mary Soderstrom

Mary Soderstrom’s third novel, though relatively uncomplicated in both style and structure, is curiously enigmatic. The mystery begins with the title: although the surf at Ocean Beach provides the setting for a number of flashback ... Read More »

April 12, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

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