The Dictator

In the 1930s, when many countries, including Canada, were turning away Jews fleeing Nazi Germany, one unlikely country actively sought out these refugees: the Dominican Republic. At the Evian Conference in 1938, the Caribbean island ... Read More »

May 29, 2017 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Fugue States

By Pasha Malla

In the wake of his father’s death, Ash, the 30-something Toronto-based host of a literary radio show, finds a single credible candidate for the position of “buddy.” Matt, who has been a more or less ... Read More »

May 29, 2017 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

The Clothesline Swing

By Ahmad Danny Ramadan

With nearly half a million Syrians dead and an estimated 10 million internally and globally displaced since the start of the country’s civil war in 2011, it’s no wonder that Ahmad Danny Ramadan’s The Clothesline ... Read More »

May 23, 2017 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

The Substitute

By Nicole Lundrigan

Following the publication of her fifth novel, 2013’s The Widow Tree, Nicole Lundrigan took a break from writing. “I felt drained of ideas,” she acknowledged in a blog post on her website. Eventually, however, she ... Read More »

May 15, 2017 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

★ Arabic for Beginners

By Ariela Freedman

It would take a very good writer, in the opening pages of her first published novel, to distill the entire history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into a symbol of two children fighting over a toy ... Read More »

May 11, 2017 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

The Last Neanderthal

By Claire Cameron

In Claire Cameron’s third novel, twinned narratives develop out of the 2010 discovery of two fossilized skeletons – a female Neanderthal and a male Homo sapiens – locked in what appears to be an embrace. ... Read More »

May 8, 2017 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

The Slip

By Mark Sampson

When Philip Sharpe – philosophy professor, bestselling author, and left-wing public intellectual – makes a phenomenally ill-advised remark on live TV, his “slip” goes viral, sending the rest of his life into a tailspin. It’s ... Read More »

May 4, 2017 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

Blue Field

By Elise Levine

Some novels draw you in; Blue Field drags you under and keeps clamping down, an exercise in storytelling as centrifugal force. A good portion of Elise Levine’s first book in more than a decade takes ... Read More »

May 1, 2017 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

★ Little Sister

By Barbara Gowdy

A darkening sky, the clap of thunder, and Rose Bowan is no longer herself. Her consciousness leaves her body behind and lands inside another woman, Harriet Smith. Rose sees what Harriet sees, breathes in her ... Read More »

April 17, 2017 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

★ So Much Love

By Rebecca Rosenblum

Rebecca Rosenblum opens her commanding, technically impressive debut novel with a note-perfect chapter titled “Marriage.” Assured and captivating, it portrays a deeply melancholic narrator, a slumped English professor in “the middle of a near-silent summer,” ... Read More »