Quill and Quire

Fiction: Novels

★ The Amateurs

By Liz Harmer

In her near-perfect debut novel, Liz Harmer taps into current anxieties about technology to explore themes of transcendence, post-urbanity, and survival. Harmer has won a National Magazine Award and been published in multiple literary journals; ... Read More »

June 11, 2018 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

On the Up

By Shilo Jones

As it appears in the newspaper these days, Vancouver is a strange, divided city. This perception is reinforced in the expansive fiction debut from former tree planter, English teacher, and University of British Columbia MFA ... Read More »

June 7, 2018 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Mary Cyr

By David Adams Richards

Over a long and lauded career, David Adams Richards has carved out a spot as the chronicler of misery among the impoverished of New Brunswick’s Miramichi River region. With his new novel, he demonstrates that ... Read More »

June 4, 2018 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

1979

By Ray Robertson

Small towns have always occupied a fraught place in Canadian storytelling. Unlike cities or the wilderness – places where things happen – small towns in our national literature have usually been defined by their sense ... Read More »

May 29, 2018 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Warlight

By Michael Ondaatje

The dimmed lights that guided emergency vehicles during London’s wartime blackouts were known as warlight; this titular image sets the melancholy mood for Michael Ondaatje’s haunting new novel, which takes place in the years following ... Read More »

May 28, 2018 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Still Water

By Amy Stuart

Amy Stuart’s 2016 bestseller, Still Mine, which was nominated for the Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Novel, began with a complicated premise. A woman arrives in town asking questions about another woman who has ... Read More »

May 24, 2018 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels