In the wake of my IFOA reading list and the literary prizelists of the season, my November reading felt relatively whimsical. Without duedates attached to the majority of my reading, it was a pleasure to slip into volumes which had sat untouched in recent weeks. Each of these three volumes covers,
Nothing really happens. Here, the "main event is simply a view of the water". So Ruby's story should not be a page-turner. But, in fact, The Town that Drowned is a coming-of-age story with a curious momentum. No single element is responsible: character and voice, setting and structure, all work
At the "Modern Families" roundtable at this year's IFOA, Rowan Hisayo Buchanan explained that it only felt natural to build her characters with the seemingly endless details that comprise their lives, their selves. Identity is clearly at the heart of her much-lauded debut, Harmless Like You, and a good part of
I pulled André Alexis' Despair and Other Stories of Ottawa (1994) off my shelf when Fifteen Dogs was nominated for the Toronto Book Award (since then, FD has also been nominated for the Giller Prize and the Rogers' Writers' Trust Fiction Award). There aren't any notable four-legged characters, but the collection is fascinating.
Desmond has returned to the island because the prime minister has asked those who went abroad to help rebuild the nation, now that it has gained its independence. Harper Collins Publishers, 2014 Cecil Foster's experience is not unlike Desmond's, but Independence is rooted in the story of a
