Quill and Quire

Fiction: Novels

The Question

By Austin Clarke

Set in Toronto, this slightly surreal novel of sexual politics by veteran fiction writer Austin Clarke, winner of the 1999 W. O. Mitchell Literary Prize, tells the tale of a 40-something black man who meets ... Read More »

February 2, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Summer Burns

By Mary Jo Pollak

Hot summer nights. Parties. Small town Ontario. Drugs and alcohol. Waitressing. Hitchhiking. Best friends. Nicknames. This is Mary Jo Pollak’s first novel, Summer Burns. Living in the 1970s – where freedom mixes with drug dependency, ... Read More »

February 2, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Sulha

By Malka Marom

To read Sulha’s 566 pages is to undertake a long, intense journey that pushes us to see the world through different eyes. Singer and documentary producer Malka Marom’s debut sets us down in Israel in ... Read More »

February 2, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Lilac in Leather

By Sarah Murphy

Recently, American essayist Wendy Steiner characterized contemporary female fiction as being “rich in imagery and emotion, consumed by the desire to recover a lost or hidden past.” Sarah Murphy’s Lilac in Leather doesn’t stray far ... Read More »

February 2, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Mouthing the Words

By Camilla Gibb

Thelma Barley, the narrator of Toronto writer Camilla Gibb’s first novel, Mouthing the Words, survives childhood sexual abuse at the hands of her father and the emotional bludgeoning of her vain, capricious mother to become ... Read More »

February 2, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Amriika

By M.G. Vassanji

The strength of M.G. Vassanji’s new novel, his first since 1994’s The Book of Secrets, is that it has the urgency of television news. That is its fatal weakness too, for like television news, it ... Read More »

February 2, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Weird Sister

By Kate Pullinger

Unlike trashy films and television shows, which may at least offer inadvertent humour or cautionary insight into plastic surgery, escapist fiction is often dull. The novels of Harold Robbins, Judith Krantz, or Jackie Collins make ... Read More »

February 2, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Tracing Iris

By Genni Gunn

Kate Mason, the central character in Vancouver author Genni Gunn’s third novel, Tracing Iris, has a life even the worst-off won’t envy. Abandoned at an early age by her mother, Kate’s spent the majority of ... Read More »

February 2, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels