Quill and Quire

Fiction: Novels

Bread, Wine & Angels

By Anna P. Zurzolo

Where more grandiose novelists might place epigraphs from Tolstoy or Flaubert at the beginning of each chapter, Anna Paletta Zurzolo has inserted recipes. And to deflate fiction’s pomposities even more, her instructions are written just ... Read More »

March 3, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

The Lion of Venice

By Mark Frutkin

Past-Governor-General’s-Award nominee Mark Frutkin’s The Lion of Venice is a hybrid of a fictionalized biography of Marco Polo and his travels to the East, and poetic introspective writing that evokes the atmosphere of 13th-century Venice, ... Read More »

March 3, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Jacob’s Ladder

By Joel Yanofsky

“Man plans and God laughs,” goes an old saying. Who hasn’t considered this existential Catch-22 at one time or another? In Jacob’s Ladder, an entertaining first novel by Montreal journalist Joel Yanofsky, each character is ... Read More »

March 3, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Two Ends of Sleep

By Lizard Jones

In Two Ends Of Sleep, the first novel from Vancouver artist Lizard Jones, dykes with names like Coral and Eagle cruise Commercial Drive, sipping cappuccino and cashing their unemployment cheques. Occasionally they create feminist, anti-racist ... Read More »

March 3, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Flesh and Gold

By Phyllis Gotlieb

Toronto author Phyllis Gotlieb has for decades been producing internationally successful novels, which, I think it’s safe to say, the majority of well-read Canadians have never heard of, let alone read. Lacking the mainstream crossover ... Read More »

March 3, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Delirium

By Douglas Cooper

Those looking forward to their reacquaintance with Izzy Darlow, the neurotic fairy-tale raconteur of Douglas Cooper’s enchanting 1992 novel Amnesia, are likely to be disappointed by the author’s muddled sophomore effort, the aptly titled Delirium.For ... Read More »

March 3, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels