The Ghost in the House

Novels with ghost plots can be very ambiguous: who’s real, who’s dead, who’s a figment of someone’s imagination? And while The Ghost in the House starts off with a few of these questions, it quickly ... Read More »

August 20, 2020 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

★ Seven

By Farzana Doctor

In her fourth novel, Farzana Doctor breaks open the taboo subject of khatna (female genital mutilation/cutting) in the Dawoodi Bohra community. The Dawoodi Bohra is a subsect of Shia Ismailis, known for involvement with business ... Read More »

August 6, 2020 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

The Finder

By Will Ferguson

Will Ferguson has long demonstrated an enduring fondness for the con. From his Leacock-winning debut Generica (later retitled Happiness™) to the oft-overlooked period novel Spanish Fly to the Nigerian fraud at the heart of his ... Read More »

August 6, 2020 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

★ Indians on Vacation

By Thomas King

Thomas King’s latest novel is a jaunty picaresque that contains within it an incisive character study. Each page of the novel offers the reader the author’s blend of humour and awareness of emotional layers – ... Read More »

August 5, 2020 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Things Worth Burying

By Matt Mayr

When you’re out in the bush, you can bury your troubles – and, sometimes, a body. Joe Adler is a third-generation logging foreman in Black River, a northern Ontario town where everyone knows your business ... Read More »

July 27, 2020 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

The Woman before Wallis: A Novel of Windsors, Vanderbilts, and Royal Scandal

By Bryn Turnbull

If one positive thing came out of Madonna’s disastrous 2011 Wallis Simpson biopic, W.E., it’s that the film introduced Toronto writer Bryn Turnbull to the story of Thelma Morgan Furness. The American socialite had been ... Read More »

July 20, 2020 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

The Imago Stage

By Karoline Georges; Rhonda Mullins (trans.)

The epigraph to Daniel J. Boorstin’s essential 1961 book The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America is a quote from the Swiss playwright Max Frisch: “Technology … the knack of so arranging the world ... Read More »

July 13, 2020 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

The Diamond House

By Dianne Warren

How does one measure the worth of a life? By deeds done or money earned? The number of family and friends one holds close? Years lived? And how do these measurements differ when applied to ... Read More »

July 9, 2020 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

Speechless

By Anne Simpson

A novel about a white woman claiming to speak for a Black woman comes burdened with the pre-existing trope of the “white saviour complex,” a belief system rooted in colonization’s “civilizing” efforts of trade, religion, ... Read More »

July 6, 2020 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

Last Impressions

By Joseph Kertes

In this tender tragicomic novel, Joseph Kertes plumbs themes that have obsessed him throughout his career. How does a family come to terms with a traumatic history that feels too painful to talk about? Can ... Read More »

June 8, 2020 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

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