Quill and Quire

Fiction: Novels

Natural Order

By Brian Francis

Brian Francis, author of Canada Reads finalist Fruit (ECW Press), has written an ambitious second novel that dissects the disastrous relationship between a mother and her gay son. Despite an occasionally heavy-handed narrative style and ... Read More »

August 8, 2011 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

The Antagonist

By Lynn Coady

Our literature is inordinately dominated by A+ students who blazed from kindergarten to an MFA while constantly winning prizes from their teachers and cheers from their middle-class parents. No wonder so much of Canadian fiction, ... Read More »

July 26, 2011 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

River City

By John Farrow

River City is an overly ambitious novel by John Farrow, the detective-writer alias of much-lionized Quebec author Trevor Ferguson (The Timekeeper, The Kinkajou, High Water Chants). Despite appearing under Farrow’s name, River City is much, ... Read More »

July 26, 2011 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Arrhythmia

By Alice Zorn

Alice Zorn’s first novel follows five Montrealers as they navigate critical junctures in their relationships. Joelle, a former film student now working as a medical secretary, has just turned 40. Her husband, Marc, has become ... Read More »

July 26, 2011 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

The O’Briens

By Peter Behrens

Compared to the relative restraint of his 2006 Governor General’s Literary Award–winning first novel, The Law of Dreams, which chronicled, over the course of a year, an Irish emigrant’s attempt to flee to Canada during ... Read More »

July 26, 2011 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels