The Subtweet

Vivek Shraya has become one of Canada’s most well-known chameleons of the arts and culture. Shraya has received praise in different artistic realms, including five separate nominations for Lambda Literary Awards and a nomination for ... Read More »

March 5, 2020 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

Coming Up for Air

By Sarah Leipciger

No spoilers here: the first line of Sarah Leipciger’s Coming Up for Air is “This is how I drowned.” The narrator who delivers it is inspired by L’Inconnue de la Seine (the unknown woman of ... Read More »

March 2, 2020 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

How a Woman Becomes a Lake

By Marjorie Celona

Marjorie Celona’s taut, melancholy sophomore novel opens on New Year’s Day in a frigid corner of Washington State. Officer Lewis Côté finds Vera Gusev’s car abandoned in a parking lot near a frozen lake, “doors ... Read More »

March 2, 2020 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

The Eyelid

By S.D. Chrostowska

“Sleeping one’s fill, as physical regeneration and cognitive housekeeping, is a luxury that even the rich, let alone those following suit, cannot afford,” writes S.D. Chrostowska in her 2015 hybrid of philosophy, criticism, and aphorism, ... Read More »

February 20, 2020 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Evie of the Deepthorn

By André Babyn

The question at the heart of Toronto writer André Babyn’s debut novel seems fairly straightforward: just what is Evie of the Deepthorn? The answer, however, is not as simple as it might appear. The novel’s ... Read More »

February 7, 2020 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

Secret Lives of Mothers and Daughters

By Anita Kushwaha

Ottawa-based author Anita Kushwaha’s second novel can’t help but be compared to Shilpi Somaya Gowda’s Secret Daughter, another story about the relationship between a mother and her adopted Indian daughter and the fears and hopes ... Read More »

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

Recipe for a Perfect Wife

By Karma Brown

Alice Hale is desperate to escape her life, but she never imagined freedom would mean leaving New York City for a dilapidated old house in the bedroom town of Greenville. She only agrees to her ... Read More »

January 23, 2020 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

★ The Baudelaire Fractal

By Lisa Robertson

Acclaimed poet Lisa Robertson’s debut novel is a difficult book. But that should be expected, seeing as Robertson’s poetry is also famously difficult. Her work – conceptual, fixated on questions of form and linguistic subjectivity, ... Read More »

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

Never Forget

By Martin Michaud; Arthur Holden (trans.)

Crime writers working in a series format must navigate a fine line between making each novel unique and accessible to new readers, and ensuring enough continuity and development to satisfy long-time series devotees. This line ... Read More »

January 16, 2020 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews