For a long while, if ever someone forced me to pick a favourite author, I would say J. D. Salinger. I love the simplicity of his sentences. I love the way he conveys annoyance and miscommunication within scenes. I love that he hates phoneys. Franny and Zooey was always my least-favourite Salinger, but I thought … Continue reading Franny and Zooey by J. D. Salinger
Roz Chast is a cartoonist for The New Yorker, and Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? is a memoir about caring for her parents in their final years. In both her illustrations and her writing, Chast demonstrates great talent for finding telling details – the bits of gesture and paraphernalia that reveal mountains about … Continue reading Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? by Roz Chast
This book is a gift. The more I read, the more I wondered why Chelsea Vowel was giving it to us ignoramus colonizers. We clearly don’t deserve it. We’ve been taught these lessons a million times over the last 150 years and we continue to be racist assholes, and yet Indigenous people continue to patiently … Continue reading Indigenous Writes by Chelsea Vowel
Birdie tells the story of a young Cree woman from her childhood on reserve in Northern Alberta, through foster care and street life in Edmonton, to young adulthood in coastal BC where years of piled-up trauma force her into a near-coma. It also tells the story of “Canada 150” with the band-aid pulled off, all … Continue reading Birdie by Tracey Lindberg
Hag-Seed is Margaret Atwood’s modern re-telling of The Tempest, part of a series of Shakespeare reinterpretations by best-selling authors. Atwood sets hers in a prison theater program, with a disgraced director who used to run a Stratford-like festival. The novel is faithful and creative in its interpretation of Shakespeare, giving laymen an appreciation for The … Continue reading Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood
Fatty Legs is a short chapter book for elementary school children, telling the true story of eight-year-old Olemaun (Margaret) Pokiak-Fenton’s two years in residential school in the 1940’s. The vocabulary is basic but the writing is artful, evoking both a place and a culture, so this is not just a book for kids. The subject matter … Continue reading Fatty Legs by Christy Jordan-Fenton & Margaret Pokiak-Fenton, Illustrated by Liz Amini-Holmes
The dust jacket for this wee novel describes it as a cross between The Little Prince and The Alchemist. I cannot disagree – it is light and open-hearted like The Little Prince, and it ponders life’s big questions like The Alchemist – but it pales in comparison to both. Like author Francois Lelord, Hector is … Continue reading Hector and the Search for Happiness by François Lelord
