It would be tempting to suggest that 2012 was a disappointing year for CanLit. Highly touted books failed to live up to their hype, social media was generally an echo chamber for word-of-mouth about the same half-dozen or so titles, and this year’s prestige awards lists were (for the most part) less than inspiring.
This impression, however, would be largely mistaken. Readers willing to tune out the omnipresent white noise would have found any number of strong books (many of them collections of short fiction) released in the past 12 months.
When asked to choose five of my favourites, I actually had a terrifically difficult time narrowing down the list. The five I chose could easily have shared space with worthy titles by Andrew Hood, Anne Fleming, Roo Borson, John Lent, Corey Redekop, Spencer Gordon, Jeanette Lynes, Nina Bunjevac, and any number of others.
But, five it is. The usual caveats apply: I haven’t read everything published in 2012, so this is not a list of the year’s best books, so much as a highly subjective crop of titles that made an impact on me as a reader. They are works that, in my opinion, deserve a second look (or, in many cases, a first).
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- Whatever you want to say about Pasha Malla's debut novel, you can't fault it for lacking ambition. Unfolding over an Easter weekend in an unnamed island city, Malla's polyphonic, unconstrained narrative focuses on the various ways societal bonds rupture following the appearance of a mysterious interloper. <i>People Park</i> owes a huge debt to the Situationist philosophy of Guy Debord, but Malla isn't heavy handed about this. Rather, he keeps his story ticking along over the course of nearly 500 pages through a combination of humour, fabulism, and surprising poignancy. This is by no means a perfect novel, but its ragged, ragamuffin aspect is part of what makes it so memorable.<br /> <br /> <a href="http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/088784216X/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=15121&creative=330641&creativeASIN=088784216X&linkCode=as2&tag=quillquire-20">Buy this book</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.ca/e/ir?t=quillquire-20&l=as2&o=15&a=088784216X" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /><br />
- <A HREF="http://www.quillandquire.com/reviews/review.cfm?review_id=7715"> People Park by Pasha Malla (House of Anansi Press)</A>
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- Best known as the author of the <i>Doomsday Book of Animals</i>, poet and naturalist David Day returns to the subject of extinction with a frankly unclassifiable volume that combines primary texts, prose, and poetry. Taking the form of a 24-hour meditative vigil of the kind practiced by the Coptic Orthodox Church, each section in the book is devoted to a species of animal that has gone extinct during the time that <i>homo sapiens</i> has walked the earth. Fascinating facts about creatures such as the Rukh (or Elephant Bird), the Galapagos Tortoise, and the Great Auk are paired with primary texts (from writers as diverse as Herodotus and Jared Diamond) and illustrations by seven noted wildlife artists. Part elegy, part call to arms, <i>Nevermore</i> is one of the most original and striking books of the year.<br /> <br /> <a href="http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/1926802683/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=15121&creative=330641&creativeASIN=1926802683&linkCode=as2&tag=quillquire-20">Buy this book</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.ca/e/ir?t=quillquire-20&l=as2&o=15&a=1926802683" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /><br />
- Nevermore: A Book of Hours by David Day (Fourfront Editions)
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- The title story in Yasuko Thanh's debut collection, about a group of Chinese lepers exiled to an island colony off the coast of B.C. at the turn of the 20th century, won the 2009 Journey Prize, and it is not hard to see why. Like the other stories in <i>Floating Like the Dead</i>, it is characterized by lush, evocative prose and a clear-eyed examination of displacement and belonging. Thanh's gaze ranges widely, from 1960s Germany to Honduras to Mexico (in the collection's best story, Hunting in Spanish), but these pieces are united by a careful attention to craft and a deep, empathetic understanding of the vagaries and paradoxes of being an outsider.<br /> <br /> <a href="http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/0771084293/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=15121&creative=330641&creativeASIN=0771084293&linkCode=as2&tag=quillquire-20">Buy this book</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.ca/e/ir?t=quillquire-20&l=as2&o=15&a=0771084293" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /><br />
- Floating Like the Dead by Yasuko Thanh (McClelland & Stewart)
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- Vancouver writer John Vigna's debut collection is a suite of eight stories that share a common setting (a fictionalized version of B.C.'s Elk Valley region) and a fascination for the ways in which men (for the most part) eke out a rough existence while struggling and scraping for some manner of succour or escape. Vigna's unsettling, violent stories marry brutality and a kind of craggy beauty, and resolutely refuse to compromise their clarity of vision and honest assessment of human failings. The great Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa once said, To be an artist means never to avert one's eyes. <i>Bull Head</i> announces Vigna as a consummate artist.<br /> <br /> <a href="http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/1551524902/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=15121&creative=330641&creativeASIN=1551524902&linkCode=as2&tag=quillquire-20">Buy this book</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.ca/e/ir?t=quillquire-20&l=as2&o=15&a=1551524902" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /><br />
- <A HREF="http://www.quillandquire.com/reviews/review.cfm?review_id=7831"> Bull Head by John Vigna (Arsenal Pulp Press)</A>
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- Alice Petersen is a minimalist. The 16 stories in her debut collection are finely crafted and pared down to their bare essentials: the longest of these pieces runs 13 pages. The settings range from Quebec to New Zealand, but Petersen's subject is the inner lives of her characters: the past that haunts them and the present that they try (often unsuccessfully) to make sense of. Petersen refuses to spoon-feed readers, and most of what is significant in these stories occurs below the surface. (Neptune's Necklace, apparently about a melancholy artist mourning the long-ago drowning of her daughter, takes on an entirely different resonance if one recognizes the importance of its setting.) These are stories that work on multiple levels, and continue to divulge their secrets after several rereadings.<br /> <br /> <a href="http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/1926845528/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=15121&creative=330641&creativeASIN=1926845528&linkCode=as2&tag=quillquire-20">Buy this book</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.ca/e/ir?t=quillquire-20&l=as2&o=15&a=1926845528" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" />
- <A HREF="http://www.quillandquire.com/reviews/review.cfm?review_id=7602">All the Voices Cry by Alice Petersen (Biblioasis)</A>
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