"No one wants to hear what’s going on in some jailbird’s heart now do they?" It comes near the end of the novel, but I suspect that Joel Thomas Hynes took this idea as a challenge, that that's what inspired his Giller-Prize nominated novel We'll All Be Burnt in
Many of Margaret Millar's characters have had an escape, often in the face of difficulty. Robert has achieved the ultimate escape - he has disappeared - and readers wonder whether that was deliberate or accidental, malicious or ambitious. "The world of Robert’s maps was nice and flat and simple. It
Conflicted: that describes my first impressions after meeting Pillow in Andrew Battershill's Giller-nominated novel of the same name,and it also describes his perspective on the world. It's hard to be Pillow, to see all the angles which converge and diverge simultaneously on any single thought he has. For instance: "Pillow
If you recognize Mary Dyer as being one of the Boston Martyrs, you will expect Beth Powning's tale to be a harrowing one. To some extent, this is the case. Knopf - Penguin Random House, 2015 But even if the historical record considers the most remarkable aspect of Mary
No need to wonder whether you fit in this novel: Harriet Baxter is speaking directly to you, Reader. Even before the novel has properly begun, she is saying "Reader, if you wonder -- as I suspect you may..." Even though you weren't wondering yet. And, on the next page, she
