David Chariandry’s Brother (M&S)
Rachel Cusk’s Transit (HarperCollins)
David Denchuk’s The Bone Mother (ChiZine)
Joel Thomas Hynes We’ll All Be Burnt in Our Beds Some Night (HarperCollins)
Andrée A. Michaud’s Boundary: The Last Summer (Trans. Donald Winkler) (Biblioasis)
Josip Novakovich’s Tumbleweed (Véhicule)
Ed O’Loughlin’s Minds of Winter (Anansi)
Zoey Leigh Peterson’s Next Year for Sure (Doubleday)
Michael Redhill’s Bellevue Square (Doubleday)
Eden Robinson’s Son of a Trickster (Knopf)
Deborah Willis’ The Dark and Other Love Stories (Hamish Hamilton)
Michelle Winters’ I Am a Truck (Invisible)
The 2017 Giller jury (André Alexis, Anita Rau Badami, Richard Beard, Lynn Coady and Nathan Englander) has selected twelve books, including short stories and fresh voices, unconventional styles and a work in translation, even a horror novel!
Altough the shortlist will be announced on October 2nd, before I will have had a chance to read through the list, I plan to read the longlist anyhow. If I manage to finish reading before the winner is announced on November 20th, I will privately offer it a lovely rose.
A rose from a reader.
Reading the 2017 Giller Prize Longlist
Guessing at each book’s Giller-a-bility
The last time the Giller longlist so tickled me was 2011. Back then, the jury (Howard Norman, Annabel Lyon and Andrew O’Hagan) introduced me to Michael Christie, Patrick deWitt and Alexi Zentner, and urged me to read – finally – Clark Blaise, Esi Edugyan, Pauline Holdstock, Dany Laferriere and Guy Vanderhaeghe.
Recent Prizelist and Event Reading
October 2017
Rachel Cusk’s Outline (2014) and Transit (2017)
Readers meet a woman up in the air. Literally. She is flying to Athens, where she will teach a course in creative writing. This
When You Already Miss the Characters, Fifty Pages from the End
I wasn't expecting to love Zoey Leigh Peterson's Next Year for Sure so much. Aryn Kyle's blurb caught my eye (because I've loved some
September 2017
And the Jailbird Speaks
"No one wants to hear what’s going on in some jailbird’s heart now do they?" It comes near the end of the novel, but
Michelle Winters’ I Am a Truck (2016)
A Chevy truck, a Thermos of coffee, date squares and bologna sandwiches: I Am a Truck begins with the basics. A fishing trip which,
The Trickster Story Eden Robinson Had To Write
If you've glanced at the union regulations for Native writers, you'd have seen this one coming: Eden Robinson explains that it's a requirement. "It’s
Even when I didn’t live in Toronto, I still watched this prizelist for books set in the city that I hoped to call home someday.
The International Festival of Authors brought me to Toronto many times before I actually moved to the city. It remains a favourite!
The ReLit Awards peer more closely at the books that are sometimes overlooked, those from smaller and independent presses.