It's with a subtle touch, but Nadia Bozak solidly roots the reader in time and place. House of Anansi, 2016 This is not an easy task, because Shell only grows to the age of seventeen in Thirteen Shells -- across thirteen stories, and childhood is inherently rootless. So the details
It's clear from the beginning: one might long for escape from this narrative, might opt for a bloody end rather than endure more misery. House of Anansi, 2016 "No one but a fool could look so happy in a miserable house, could they? The mice here probably throw
So many of the risks in "Deep-Holes" are either averted or declared meaningless. "Sally packed devilled eggs—something she hated to take on a picnic, because they were so messy." Nobody ate the devilled eggs anyway, so it didn't matter how messy they were. "Ham sandwiches, crab salad, lemon tarts—also a
It's an old term, 'wolf border', from the Finnish language: susiraja. The boundary betweent the capital region and the rest of the country: everything which lies beyond the border is wilderness. HarperCollins, 2015 Certainly Rachel does have to explain a lot about her scientific work with wolves beyond the
Angie Adbou handles multiple narrative voices very well. Readers familiar with her earlier novels, The Bone Cage (2008) and The Canterbury Trail (2011) will know this, having inhabited narratives from varying perspectives. They will also know (as will readers of her 2006 collection of short stories, Anything Boys Can Do) that
