If the idea of experimental or innovative short stories makes you squirm, even though you are simultaneously bored with more traditional structure, Not Anyone’s Anything belongs on your bookshelf. Ian Williams puts relationships at the core of his work and this fiction collection exhibits this tendency as well. I also
The first volume of his Toronto trilogy introduces readers to Bernice Leach, who has left Barbados to work in Toronto as a housekeeper in an upscale neighbourhood in the 1960s. She has left behind a son and his father, as well as a mother and a sister, and she is
From my discovery of Neil Bantock's Griffin and Sabine books, I have sought out books that play with form. (Even earlier, I fell hard for Anastasia Krupnik's To-Do lists which appeared as handwritten notes on lined paper in Lois Lowry's books.) Recently, Kim Belair's and Ariadne MacGillivray's Pure Steele (2013) struck
Penguin-Razorbill, 2012 Mariko Tamaki's (You) Set Me On Fire (2012) Read: At the hair salon, on the TTC, standing in line: everywhere. Allison's voice is strong and compelling. I could pick up this story and immediately fall into step with her, even if I only had a very
Jon Chan Simpson invites readers into a world of "abductions, gunshots, commando dads, street-poet moms", a world populated by gangs and kidnapping conspiracies. "‘This thing - chinksta.’ She stumbled over the word, at first but pulled herself through it. ‘You’re worried this is all you got,’ she said. 'This is
