For Today I Am a Boy is a very ordinary story, told in a gentle and quiet voice. Kim Fu's novel does not challenge vehemently, like Ghalib Islam's brash debut or Helen Oyeyemi's Boy, Snow, Bird. "My father stood on the step and watched with me. It was the fall
It's on the back of Canada's five-dollar bill: the opening lines of Roch Carrier's "The Hockey Sweater". 1979; House of Anansi, 2012 That's how central this story, only four pages long, is to Canadians. A short story about hockey, a 10-year-old French-Canadian boy's crowning disappointment, and the cultural
Some readers will be unsettled by the title alone. (I had early exposure as a young reader to Don Marquis' archy and mehitabel, so it didn't work that way for me.) Most readers will be unsettled by the story. (As activist and artist Banksy has said: “Art should comfort
Louise Penny's Dead Cold (2006) Louise Penny's The Cruellest Month(2007) I plunged into Louise Penny's Gamache mysteries last October with the first in her series, Still Life. When I found books two and three nestled together on the library's paperback mysteries shelf, earlier this summer, I felt like someone was
Elizabeth Vonarburg's Reluctant Voyagers (1995) Trans. from the French Jane Brierley Does sci-fi reading use a different muscle? If so, mine is out of practice. And no wonder. With exception of a handful of fantasy novels and one speculative fiction novel, I've been decidedly rooted in realism this reading year.
