★ Sealskin

Tyler Keevil writes stories about men doing manly things. In this, his most immediate and significant literary predecessor is Hemingway, but Keevil also stakes out ground among a group of younger Canadian writers – Kevin ... Read More »

September 6, 2018 | Filed under: Fiction: Short

The Accidental Education of Jerome Lupien

By Yves Beauchemin; Wayne Grady (trans.)

In the ominous opening pages of Yves Beauchemin’s new tome, the moon looks “as if it had been dipped in blood,” which matches the titular protagonist’s “shock of gorgeous red hair that gave him the ... Read More »

September 5, 2018 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Hungover: The Morning After and One Man’s Quest for the Cure

By Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall

Here’s a drinking game you can play at home: every time Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall’s new book mentions Kingsley Amis – his hero and a giant of both postwar British fiction and guzzling alcohol – take a ... Read More »

August 27, 2018 | Filed under: Health & Self-help, Memoir & Biography

Tilly and the Crazy Eights

By Monique Gray Smith

Since winning the 2014 Burt Award for First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Literature for Tilly: A Story of Hope and Resilience, Cree-Lakota-Scottish writer Monique Gray Smith has published three children’s books and produced the podcast ... Read More »

August 23, 2018 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

★ A Circle on the Surface

By Carol Bruneau

Eleven years after the end of the Second World War, Enman Greene waits patiently for his 12-year-old daughter’s music lesson to end. It’s her birthday, and he has decided at lunch to finally tell her ... Read More »

August 23, 2018 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Hockey Fight in Canada: The Big Media Faceoff Over the NHL

By David Shoalts

The formula for producing a Hockey Night in Canada ratings bonanza is relatively simple. In the best-case scenario, all six of Canada’s National Hockey League franchises make the Stanley Cup playoffs, capped by a seven-game ... Read More »

August 20, 2018 | Filed under: Sports, Health & Self-help

★ Women Talking

By Miriam Toews

From 2005 to 2009, a group of men from the Manitoba Colony of Mennonites in Bolivia routinely drugged and raped female (and, some have suggested, male) residents, leaving their victims bloody, bruised, and covered in ... Read More »

August 17, 2018 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

★ Madame Victoria

By Catherine Leroux; Lazer Lederhendler (trans.)

Montreal-based author Catherine Leroux was shortlisted for the 2016 Scotiabank Giller Prize for the English translation of her second novel, The Party Wall. Leroux returns with a new novel in translation (once again in collaboration ... Read More »

August 16, 2018 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

★ Beirut Hellfire Society

By Rawi Hage

“This is a book of mourning for the many who witnessed senseless wars, and for those who perished in those wars.” So writes Rawi Hage in the acknowledgements to his fourth novel. Death is front ... Read More »

August 13, 2018 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

The Saturday Night Ghost Club

By Craig Davidson

Despite producing a sizable output of genre horror under the pen name Nick Cutter and Precious Cargo, a 2016 memoir about his year as a bus driver for kids with special needs (a book that ... Read More »