In the wake of my IFOA reading list and the literary prizelists of the season, my November reading felt relatively whimsical. Without duedates attached to the majority of my reading, it was a pleasure to slip into volumes which had sat untouched in recent weeks. Each of these three volumes covers,
"The past presses so hard on the present, the present is badly bruised, blood brims under the skin." These lines from Brenda Shaughnessy's poem “Nachträglichkeit”* fit beautifully with Darren Greer's new novel, Advocate: Not only because much of Advocate is preoccupied with memory, with what the characters carry with them
Having stories narrated by - or assembled via - a number of voices is a popular way of world-building. Each of the following books plays with this technique, allowing different perspectives to combine and create a more credible space for readers to inhabit. Just as in Meg Wolitzer's The Position, the matriarch
What Jane Ozkowski captures beautifully in Watching Traffic is the very sensation embodied in the debut novel's title: Emily is overwhelmed by motion even while in a state of stillness. Groundwood Books, 2016 It's the summer after high-school gradulation, and Emily is working at a catering company, making egg-salad sandwiches and
Tomorrow, I will be on the move. So many of the books currently occupying a position in my stacks are bulky and heavy, that it was easy to choose amongst the skinny residents. I have one more story to read in Gabrielle Roy's The Road Past Altamont. There are only three in
