If Marian Engel had not died mid-career, her name might have been as well known today as Margaret Atwood's today. Instead her name graces an award granted to a Canadian female writer mid-career by the Writers' Trust. A variety of forms, a strong feminist voice, challenging female characters, a fascination
Though set further north of the bluffs, David Chariandy's follow-up to his debut Soucouyant is every bit as family-soaked, its losses and sorrows cast against a remarkable and enduring landscape. In Brother, Michael introduces readers to the Rouge Valley, to his mother and to the memory of his brother
As you might have guessed, the characters in Tumbleweed are always in motion. Sometimes literally, as with a hitchhiker in the title story, who has come to an abrupt stop and views the world differently from his sudden stillness. "Through the tinted glass, I beheld quite a sight before
Delicate and deliberate, these stories are sometimes startling and always moving. In some, the darkness is overt and inescapable; in others, quietly pervasive and creeping. A passage from "Welcome to Paradise" seems to whisper of the author's motivations: "Even now I like ghost towns and abandoned houses, places that seem
It's no secret that Mazo de la Roche loved to read. So, we have sassy young Adeline pulling out a book on the ship which takes her from Ireland to the wilds of what-would-soon-be-Canada. There's at least one literary reference in each of the volumes, and sometimes these are endowed with
