★ Not That Kind of Place

Based on a brief description, a reader might think they know what to expect from Not That Kind of Place, the stunning debut novel by Toronto-based writer Michael Melgaard. The background is simple, but harrowing: ... Read More »

August 2, 2023 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

Gin, Turpentine, Pennyroyal, Rue

By Christine Higdon

Near the end of Christine Higdon’s evocative and provocative novel Gin, Turpentine, Pennyroyal, Rue, Isla McKenzie wonders how different things will be for the next generation, who “could live through the twentieth century, and even ... Read More »

July 26, 2023 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

★ Lump

By Nathan Whitlock

Cat, a middle-class wife and mother, has largely accepted the typical expectations both roles entail. Just shy of 39 and largely dissatisfied, Cat dutifully soldiers on, trying to rebuild a lost career, enduring the indignities ... Read More »

July 12, 2023 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

★ What Comes Echoing Back

By Leo McKay Jr.

The kids aren’t alright in What Comes Echoing Back, the long-gestating third novel of Nova Scotia’s Leo McKay Jr., the author of the Giller Prize–shortlisted Twenty-Six. On the cusp of adult responsibilities and quandaries, they’re ... Read More »

July 5, 2023 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

Dreaming Home

By Lucian Childs

Coming out isn’t always easy. And it isn’t always by choice. One encounter on a fateful afternoon leads to a lifetime of alienation and discontent for Kyle Turner, the central character in this debut novel ... Read More »

June 28, 2023 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

Much Ado About Nada

By Uzma Jalaluddin

Nada Syed, the titular character in Uzma Jalaluddin’s new novel Much Ado About Nada, is nearly 30, not flirty, and certainly not thriving. Nada works a job she hates, lives with her overprotective parents in ... Read More »

June 21, 2023 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

Soldiers, Hunters, Not Cowboys

By Aaron Tucker

The days of the western’s primacy in popular culture may have come and gone, but its underlying value system of an ascendant masculinity has managed to stave off extinction; this is the premise of Aaron ... Read More »

June 21, 2023 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

Let It Destroy You

By Harriet Alida Lye

A complex and magnificent drama is about to be explained. This is the promise of Let It Destroy You as the novel opens on physicist August Snow on the eve of his trial for war ... Read More »

June 14, 2023 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

★ The Morning Bell Brings the Broken Hearted

By Jennifer Manuel

Jennifer Manuel’s debut novel, The Heaviness of Things That Float, told the story of a white nurse who spends 40 years serving a remote First Nations community in northwestern B.C. That book, which won ... Read More »

May 31, 2023 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Leave My Bones in Saskatoon

By Michael Afenfia

Before arriving at its destination of Saskatoon, Canada, Michael Afenfia’s Leave My Bones in Saskatoon has a layover in Abuja, Nigeria. There, the reader meets Owoicho Adakole, a television presenter, who is at a visa ... Read More »

April 5, 2023 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

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