Quill and Quire

Fiction: Novels

Sweeter Life

By Tim Wynveen

The song remains the same in most rock and roll novels. Often thinly veiled memoirs, they’re crammed with a few anecdotes of life on the road but little of the human mechanics that make good ... Read More »

January 12, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Waterborne

By Joanne Soper-Cook

Like Frederico Garcia Lorca and playwrights Sean O’Casey and John Millington Synge, Newfoundland writer Joanne Soper-Cook instinctively understands the deep-rooted relationship between person and place. No matter where people find themselves, we are told, they ... Read More »

January 12, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Karnival

By Michael Mortensen

From its evocative opening sentences to its startling yet inevitable finale, Karnival, the debut novel from American expatriate and long-time Toronto resident Michael Mortensen, weaves a compelling spell. Mortensen draws on his 15 years of ... Read More »

January 12, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

The Dutch Wife

By Eric McCormack

From the novel’s first image – a stall-keeper idly winding an endless parasite out of his belly – this is vintage Eric McCormack Gothic. That horrifying “Guinea worm,” along with other curious phrases such as ... Read More »

January 12, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

The Peacekeeper’s Teahouse

By Larry Gaudet

Larry Gaudet’s second novel is part cultural-political commentary, part academic love story. The Peacekeeper’s Teahouse is told by Elliot MacDonald, a retired UN constitutional negotiator. After years of service as a frontline spin-doctor, sanitizing coups ... Read More »

January 12, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Salt Fish Girl

By Larissa Lai

Larissa Lai’s second novel, Salt Fish Girl, stinks. Or rather it’s filled with stink, so much so that odours are described on nearly every page, ranging from the salty tang of the title character to ... Read More »

January 8, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels