Quill and Quire

Fiction: Novels

Born Weird

By Andrew Kaufman

In Andrew Kaufman’s third novel, five siblings with the surname Weird feel they don’t quite fit into the world. The Weirds don’t have the exaggerated strangeness of some of Kaufman’s previous characters, like The Waterproof ... Read More »

January 14, 2013 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

The Blue Guitar

By Ann Ireland

After suffering a breakdown at an international competition, guitarist Toby Hauser retreats from performance and settles into domestic life with his partner, Jasper. A decade after his collapse, Toby decides to venture back into the ... Read More »

January 7, 2013 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

★ Sussex Drive

By Linda Svendsen

The story of how Terry Fallis became an award-winning author is the stuff of frustrated writers’ wet dreams. After numerous rejections from publishers, he self-published his first novel, The Best Laid Plans, and was promptly ... Read More »

January 3, 2013 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Up and Down

By Terry Fallis

The story of how Terry Fallis became an award-winning author is the stuff of frustrated writers’ wet dreams. After numerous rejections from publishers, he self-published his first novel, The Best Laid Plans, and was promptly ... Read More »

January 3, 2013 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Blood and Salt

By Barbara Sapergia

The life-affirming power of storytelling is central to Barbara Sapergia’s fourth novel, a revealing saga based on historical events involving the internment of Ukrainian-Canadian immigrants during the First World War. The year is 1914 and, ... Read More »

January 3, 2013 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

The Harem

By Safia Fazlul

Farina is the deeply cynical and unhappy daughter of Bangladeshi parents. Living in a Muslim ghetto in a large Canadian city, she eschews university and instead gets a full-time deli job to fund her independence. ... Read More »

January 3, 2013 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

The Painted Girls

By Cathy Marie Buchanan

Reminiscent of Tracy Chevalier’s novel Girl with a Pearl Earring, Cathy Marie Buchanan’s second novel tells the fascinating story of the young 19th-century Parisian ballerina who posed for Edgar Degas’ famous sculpture Little Dancer, Aged ... Read More »

December 17, 2012 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Toploader

By Ed O’Loughlin

Toploader is an occasionally funny but ultimately flawed satire of American imperialism written very much in the spirit of Carl Hiaasen. What it takes from Hiaasen is the elaborate comic contraption of a plot driven ... Read More »

December 10, 2012 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels