The characters in Shani Mootoo’s fiction often carry a burden. Cereus Blooms at Night (1996) is a lyrical and painful story of reconciling past trauma with present-day understanding (and a personal favourite). In Moving Sideways Like a Crab (2014), one character believes that all they “learned about women and
Within the first few pages of Watching You Without Me, I was reminded of why I enjoy Lynn Coady’s work so much, her capacity to inhabit characters so thoroughly. Here, we have Karen, who’s returned to Nova Scotia to settle matters with her developmentally disabled older sister, following their
My experience reading David Bergen runs the gamut. When I first read The Time in Between, I felt disengaged from the story. Years later, stuck in a waiting room with The Matter with Morris (2010), I recognized layers to his storytelling which I’d missed before. With The Age of
Jean-Christophe Réhel’s Tatouine is every bit as remarkable as QC Fiction’s earlier offerings. Other QC Fiction titles are reviewed here (if you enjoy a wickedly operatic story), here (if you prefer to feel a little heart-broken for a long while), here (if you wonder what it would be like
Adam Wilson’s Sensation Machines (2020) is smart and disturbing, subversive and entertaining. It’s set in an eerily could-be-now New York City: “Headlines warned of rising sea levels and methane emissions. Chronicled the continuing barrage of Weinstein-esque behavior in politics and entertainment. Addressed the uptick in anti-immigration violence in the
