Quill and Quire

BOOK REVIEWS

Esther

By Sharon McKay

Stories of girls who pass as boys have been a perennial favourite in children’s historical fiction. In Esther, Sharon McKay (Charlie Wilcox’s Great War) explores this theme with a novel based on the true tale ... Read More »

September 20, 2004 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction

★ Heck Superhero

By Martine Leavitt

As in her last novel, Tom Finder, Martine Leavitt uses speculative fiction to explore the grittiness of real life to superb effect. Heck Superhero believes that if he does one more altruistic good deed, he’ll ... Read More »

September 20, 2004

The Memory Artists

By Jeffrey Moore

Jeffrey Moore’s second novel has all the ingredients of an entertaining, seductive mystery. Our naïve hero, Noel, equally blessed and plagued by synaesthesia, a condition that causes voices to appear as colours and shapes and ... Read More »

September 20, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Summat Else

By Royston Tester

Over the 13 linked stories comprising this debut collection from Birmingham, England-born, Toronto resident Royston Tester, our protagonist, Enoch, is clubbed with one revelation after another: his father’s illiteracy, his own nascent and tumultuous sexuality, ... Read More »

September 20, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Short

The Naked Island

By Bryna Wasserman

This debut novel from Toronto’s Bryna Wasserman is a strange and beguiling tale that showcases considerable ambition and emerging talent. The Naked Island follows Rachel Gold, a young Jewish woman, on a trip around the ... Read More »

September 20, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

What Casanova Told Me

By Susan Swan

British writer George MacDonald Fraser is famous for his antihero Flashman, a womanizing, cowardly cad who stumbles through some of the most important historical events of the 18th and 19th centuries, concerned only with saving ... Read More »

September 20, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels