The Extraordinary Garden

By rançois Gravel, Sheila Fischman, trans.

Sometimes the best stories are the simplest ones. “I can sum up … in two minutes,” Marc-André begins. “I desired her for seven years, I loved her for three days and three nights, and then ... Read More »

June 8, 2005 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Night’s Child

By Maureen Jennings

In Night’s Child, the fifth Detective Murdoch mystery, Maureen Jennings once again takes readers to the dark side of Victorian Toronto. This time around we discover that the rough trade of child pornography was already ... Read More »

June 8, 2005 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

★ The Dodecahedron or a Frame for Frames

By Paul Glennon

To call The Dodecahedron Paul Glennon’s second “collection” would be a little misleading. Images, phrases, characters, and scenarios recur so frequently over these twelve stories that spotting the skewed correspondences becomes a sort of hallucinatory ... Read More »

June 6, 2005 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

The Origin of Haloes

By Kristen den Hartog

"Whole lives are born out of coincidence.” That is the unfortunate premise of this unfortunately titled third novel by Kristen den Hartog. Coincidence is very thin gruel on which to base a story, particularly when ... Read More »

May 17, 2005 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

The Wildfire Season

By Andrew Pyper

In a poignant section near the beginning of Andrew Pyper’s third novel, Miles McEwan attempts to come to terms with life after suffering disfiguring burns he received fighting wildfires in B.C. He returns home to ... Read More »

May 11, 2005 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Gently Down the Stream

By Ray Robertson

The experience of reading Ray Robertson’s fourth novel is analogous to the careless slide through life evoked by the title, recalling the jobless summer days of childhood, when books were read without a thought for ... Read More »

May 11, 2005 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

He Drown She in the Sea

By Shani Mootoo

Shani Mootoo’s second novel, He Drown She in the Sea, set on the imaginary Caribbean island of Guanagaspar, is a tale of lovers stymied by class divisions and circumstance, star-crossed in a very post-colonial, contemporary ... Read More »

May 9, 2005 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Sylvanus Now

By Donna Morrissey

To read Sylvanus Now, the third novel from Donna Morrissey, is to be immersed in the life of a Newfoundland outport community in the middle of the last century. It is a bracing experience, a ... Read More »

April 25, 2005 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

A Perfect Night to Go to China

By David Gilmour

Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. In recent years, it’s become standard practice for novelists to adopt pop psychology’s five-stage model of grieving when writing about trauma. But as Toronto author and TV arts presenter David ... Read More »

April 20, 2005 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

The Bird Factory

By David Layton

In this, his second book, David Layton tells the story of a man with an egomaniacal, eccentric, and adulterous artist for a father. It may sound like a sequel to his autobiography, Motion Sickness, in ... Read More »