Farzana Doctor's Stealing Nasreen Inanna Publications, 2007 This debut novel opens with an introduction to Shaffiq, a member of the cleaning staff, working the night shift, pulling a photograph torn in two from the garbage can he is emptying. He is fascinated by "clues and curiosities", shares them with his
Hunt of the Unicorn Tapestry Suzette Mayr's Monoceros Coach House Books, 2011 Nowadays, it's been Disney-fied, but once-upon-a-time the unicorn wasn't about pink glitter and rainbows, but about raw passions, about what cannot be tamed. In one of Da Vinci's notebooks is this note: "The unicorn, through its
Timothy Findley's Spadework (2001) This is an author who has been particularly important to me. In that peculiar way in which someone with whom you have had virtually no contact can affect you more than people with whom you have spent years of your life. So I delayed reading his
Tomson Highway's Kiss of the Fur Queen Doubleday 1998 It’s February and Abraham Okimasis is on a sled pulled by eight huskies, racing to the finish line in northern Manitoba. That’s the opening scene of Tomson Highway’s first novel, Kiss of the Fur Queen. The reader, however, receives mixed messages
Kathleen Winter's Annabel House of Anansi, 2010 (Looking for a swallow rather than a full glass? ORANGE Squirt below.) Like Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing and Kate Grenville’s The Secret River, it’s impossible to imagine Kathleen Winter’s Annabel being set anywhere other than the landscape therein. “In Croyden Harbour human life came
