There are a lot of lonely characters in CanLit: just think about all that snow, how starkly a single shape stands out in relief against the “great northern woods and in the empty places of the earth”. (I’ve recently read Louis Hémon’s snow-soaked 1921 classic, Maria Chapdelaine, translated by
June is at the heart of this collection of stories; she is the link, the thread of light through a series of dark scenes. She is our guide to the ‘burbs: “The picture perfect suburban dream with the groomed lawns, nine-to-five jobs, 2.5 children kind of places. Domino effect.
Whether or not it's 50%, there is a part of Michael Redhill who is Inger Ash Wolfe; he has published four mysteries using this pseudonym. And, so, there is certainly some Michael Redhill, in Hazel Micallef, too. Hazel being the heroine of that series. But she's a character, you
The thing with an explosion is that it comes out of nowhere. And that's exactly what happens in Alison Watt's debut novel. Even though I knew that the 1917 event was at the heart of this Halifax story, I was completely absorbed in Clare and Fred's ordinary workday at
In which there is talk of true stories and stories that fall between the cracks of imagined facts and probabilities. Kyo Maclear's Birds Art Life (2017) Arranged as though composed over a twelve-month period, this would seem to be the perfect book to read slowly, meditatively. To allow the pages
