I think one of the reasons I’m not a novelist is because I can’t imagine myself into the space of being able to see the whole. I’m not saying that wouldn’t ever happen, but I would struggle, I think . . . I tend to see in patchwork.
Personal Score: Sport, Culture, Identity – Ellen van Neerven
By looking at First Nation sporting lineages and lexicons, van Neerven invites us to imagine the different roles sports may play in our lives and in the world beyond dominance and defeat.
The Poet and the Silk Girl – Satsuki Ina
At first glance, The Poet and the Silk Girl is richly visual, with many photographs and documents reproduced alongside the text. But it’s also a book about language: the familect of a second-generation couple and their children, and the therapeutic powers of translation and writing.
My Cousin Maria Schneider – Vanessa Schneider
Perhaps a story told through the prism of deep love will always be molded to the contours of its creator; a twinning of subject and author.
The Italy Letters – Vi Khi Nao
Where do you put your emotional energy when you love someone who doesn’t love you back?
Mystery Lights – Lena Valencia
Through the process of stripping away parts of the self . . . the women come face-to-face with their own uncanny reality, however ugly. Ghosts do not give up easily.
Corey Fah Does Social Mobility – Isabel Waidner
Waidner dramatizes the knots into which society will twist itself to keep capital out of the hands of the disenfranchised.
Sister Golden Calf – Colleen Burner
One of the greatest joys of Burner’s novella is that classic feature of the road trip: not having any clue who or what you are going to run into next.
SCHOOL eviscerates post-structural conceits, derides the cult-leader-status of celebrity intellectuals, and denounces the academic pyramid scheme.
No paean to Montreal’s transformation into a global capital of commerce and culture . . . [Bock’s novel] imagines one of the countless souls who built contemporary Montreal, giving their bodies for the city . . .