Days by Moonlight

“Days by Moonlight is not a work of realism. It’s not a work that uses the imagination to show the real, but one that uses the real to show the imagination.” So writes André Alexis ... Read More »

January 7, 2019 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

The Art of Leaving: A Memoir

By Ayelet Tsabari

Shortly before her 10th birthday, Ayelet Tsabari was forced to deal with the death of her father. Though losing a parent is undeniably painful – especially for a child – Tsabari’s father bequeathed his young ... Read More »

January 7, 2019 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Reviews

Seven Days

By Patrick Senécal; Howard Scott and Phyllis Aronoff (trans.)

The name Patrick Senécal may not mean much to English-language readers, but in his home province, the author is a bona fide literary blockbuster. Frequently referred to as Quebec’s Stephen King, Senécal sells in the ... Read More »

December 20, 2018 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

The Gown: A Novel of the Royal Wedding

By Jennifer Robson

Months before Meghan Markle, the future Duchess of Sussex, walked down the aisle at St. George’s Chapel, finally revealing her Givenchy wedding gown, British bookies twice halted their betting pools over which couturier had received ... Read More »

December 20, 2018 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

The Goddess of Yantai

By Ian Hamilton

When the first Ava Lee novel was published in 2011, it introduced a character who was fresh and atypical: a lesbian Chinese-Canadian forensic accountant and martial arts master who dresses in Brooks Brothers suits and ... Read More »

December 17, 2018 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

Fate: The Lost Decades of Uncle Chow Tung

By Ian Hamilton

December 17, 2018 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

You Don’t Know Me, But You Love Me: The Lives of Dick Miller

By Caelum Vatnsdal

The maxim that there are no small parts, only small actors gets inverted wonderfully in Caelum Vatnsdal’s You Don’t Know Me, But You Love Me. This voluminous appreciation of the American character actor Dick Miller ... Read More »

December 13, 2018 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Reviews

Northern Wildflower: A Memoir

By Catherine Lafferty

Reading Catherine Lafferty’s memoir Northern Wildflower, I kept wondering if my responses to it made me a morally reprehensible human being, a Donald Trump of the reviewing world. How can a story of growing up ... Read More »

December 13, 2018 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Reviews

Angela of the Stones

By Amanda Hale

Every now and then, a short story appears that manages, through the author’s sheer craft, to compress all the emotional and narrative heft of a novel into 15 or 20 pages. Alice Munro has built ... Read More »

December 13, 2018 | Filed under: Fiction: Short, Reviews