Quill and Quire

Fiction: Novels

Angel Falls

By Tim Wynveen

Tim Wynveen gives fair warning that his debut novel, Angel Falls, is not going to be a shiny, happy affair. In the prologue, the narrator Benoni informs us that his name, translated from Hebrew, means ... Read More »

March 9, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Dying for Veronica

By Matthew Remski

Early in Dying for Veronica, Matthew Remski’s more-gothic-than-Catholic, guilt-ridden first novel, the author writes: “The room filled with the light you see when the purple curtains of your confessional cleave open like the dress of ... Read More »

March 9, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Blueheart

By Alison Sinclair

A distant planet covered in water, a political struggle for its future, and a mysterious corpse form the framework of the science fiction novel Blueheart, by Calgary medical student Alison Sinclair. It would, however, be ... Read More »

March 9, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Instruments of Darkness

By Nancy Huston

Nancy Huston’s most recent English-language novel, an intriguing counterpoint of musical and religious imagery, tells the story of a successful middle-aged novelist named Nadia and her efforts to exorcise the trauma of her disturbing family ... Read More »

March 9, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

A Quality of Light

By Richard Wagamese

In his second novel, Ojibwe author Richard Wagamese, a National Newspaper Award-winning journalist before his turn to fiction, creates a metaphor for Canada’s treatment of its aboriginal inhabitants. A Quality of Light offers a complicated ... Read More »

March 9, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Home Movies

By Ray Robertson

As its title suggests, Toronto writer Ray Robertson’s first novel, Home Movies, could be read as an attempt to forge a new independent Canadian film sub-genre: urban cowboy loser noir. It fails even as it ... Read More »

March 9, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Opium Dreams

By Margaret Gibson

The narrator of Margaret Gibson’s first novel, Opium Dreams, is “grown-poet and some-time short-story writer Maggie Glass,” a Canada Council grantee who has published “one award-winning short-story book and one award-winning poetry book.” Maggie confesses, ... Read More »

March 9, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels