This novel feels to me like a poem or a painting. A story told under dim, forgiving lights with a record that never ends, wine that never empties. This novel is more like a feeling than a story; even though it is full of plot points, it rarely pushes with action. It pushes like … Continue reading Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson
This is a novel about a black family, hired by a white institute, to live with a chimpanzee, and treat it like a brother. They earn the contract because they know sign language – the whole family does – so they can teach it to the chimp. Also because they’re black, and for centuries racist white scientists have been … Continue reading We Love You, Charlie Freeman by Kaitlyn Greenidge
Any Canadian Settler serious about reconciliation needs to read The Break. It is not easy. It is not all-encompassing. But it is a bead in the belt of education we must do. The Break shows us how trauma travels through generations, and demonstrates why indigenous lives are still affected by past injustices: residential schools, the sixties … Continue reading The Break by Katherena Vermette
(Photo: Amy Attas) The dogs gain human intelligence and soon escape the veterinary clinic. Their cages weren’t locked – just bolted – because up until five minutes before, these fifteen dogs were just dogs. Now they are dogs with the intelligence of humans, and they quickly figure out how doors work, and streets, and traffic … Continue reading Fifteen Dogs by André Alexis
(Photo: Carol Leowen) I first read A Complicated Kindness around the time it came out, in 2004, but after rescuing this copy from a grocery store bargain bin I decided it was time for a re-read. Reading a bargain-bin bestseller is part of this book’s story. Miriam Toews was relatively unknown when she wrote A … Continue reading A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews
(Photo: Amy Attas) I don’t know what I was expecting from Toni Morrison, but it wasn’t this. I knew she was a Nobel Prize-winning goddess who guides humanity towards the light, but I’d never read any of her fiction. It was more sensational than I thought it would be – so much violence, trauma, crime … Continue reading God Help the Child by Toni Morrison
(Photo: Amy Attas) Late Nights on Air won the Canadian Giller Prize in 2007, and I finally got around to it. I’ve been circling. I picked up Alone in the Classroom when I couldn’t get my hands on Late Nights, and I didn’t like it. I think my mind goes dead with multi-generational Canadian novels … Continue reading Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay
(Photo: Amy Attas) “Who has seen the wind? Neither you nor I: But when the trees bow down their heads, The wind is passing by.” -Christina Rosetti On the surface, this is a restrained book of minimal consequence. A boy in a small prairie town passes through the years from age four to age ten … Continue reading Who Has Seen The Wind by W.O. Mitchell
(Photo: Ash Mar) I didn’t know Sleater-Kinney in the 90’s. I still dig this book. Even chapters revealing how specific albums were made (albums I’ve never heard) were illuminating. Because this book isn’t a celebrity tell-all; it’s a meditation on creativity, on dark confusing youth, on finding validation in other people’s art, on exploring the ways to let … Continue reading Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl by Carrie Brownstein
I didn’t expect to read all of this book. I picked it up to get more information about a perfect wave I’d heard the author describe in an interview. But I ended up falling into it so hard that when I moved, I returned my copy to one library, logged into a different library account, placed a … Continue reading Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life by William Finnegan
Amy Attas 