Bury Your Dead

When I last reviewed a Louise Penny novel in these pages (2009’s The Brutal Telling), I wondered how much longer she could spin stories of murder in her chosen setting of the cloistered, tight-knit Eastern ... Read More »

November 4, 2010 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

I Am a Japanese Writer

By Dany Laferriere

Last year, Dany Laferrière won the prestigious Prix Médicis for his 14th novel, L’énigme du retour. This year sees the English-language publication of his 13th, the playful, perplexingly self-referential I Am a Japanese Writer. The ... Read More »

November 4, 2010 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

YOU comma Idiot

By Doug Harris

Given that this good-natured debut by film producer Doug Harris takes the unconventional form of a second-person narrative, the reader should not assume that its title is directed at him. Instead, it likely refers to ... Read More »

November 4, 2010 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

The Matter with Morris

By David Bergen

David Bergen signals a thematic and stylistic shift from his last two novels in the epigraph to his latest work. The quotation, from Saul Bellow’s idiosyncratic comic masterpiece Herzog, reads, “Oh, for a change of ... Read More »

November 4, 2010 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

The Case Against Owen Williams

By Allan Donaldson

War veteran John Maclean, the hapless title character of Allan Donaldson’s first novel, Maclean (nominated for the 2005 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize), makes a brief appearance in his latest. Maclean’s inclusion in the novel, ... Read More »

November 4, 2010 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Seven Good Reasons Not to Be Good

By John Gould

In his debut novel, the follow-up to 2003’s Scotiabank Giller Prize–nominated story collection Kilter: 55 Fictions, John Gould delivers punch after emotional punch, pulling readers into his characters’ manic and often tragic lives. A movie ... Read More »

November 4, 2010 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Girl Unwrapped

By Gabriella Goliger

Toni Goldblatt never feels quite as she should. Everything – from her body to her parents to her religion – seems somehow off. The daughter of Holocaust survivors, Toni (short for Antonia) is an only ... Read More »

November 4, 2010 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

★ Zero History

By William Gibson

Starting with 2003’s Pattern Recognition, famed science-fiction author William Gibson has been taking apart the techno-thriller and putting the pieces back together in new and interesting ways. Pattern Recognition (for my money, Gibson’s best book ... Read More »

November 4, 2010 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

★ Glimpse: Selected Aphorisms

By George Murray

George Murray’s fourth book of poetry is a selection of 409 aphorisms – those sometimes philosophic, sometimes sophomoric distillations of thought invented by Hippocrates and perfected by Yogi Berra. Murray is one of the few ... Read More »

November 1, 2010 | Filed under: Poetry

The Secret Life of Owen Skye

By Alan Cumyn

One of the most compelling aspects of creating a make-believe life is the sense of protracted time and otherworldliness that comes with it. The narrator in Alan Cumyn’s latest novel reveals glimpses of this other ... Read More »

October 29, 2010 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction

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