Books shelved under “Canlit”

I read and reviewed my first M.G. Vassanji novel in 2009, when I was nineteen years old, making it among one of the earliest reviews I wrote, about a year into this project. It’s wild, going back and reading those old reviews. Kara of 2009 was so young, and self-deprecating: “I suspect that when I revisit this book as an older, more experienced person, I will see additional facets of the story that escaped…

C.L. Polk is fast becoming one of my favourite fantasy authors (love that they are Canadian to boot, eh). Even Though I Knew the End is everything I want in a novella: fast pace, great worldbuilding, and a protagonist I can get behind without too much exposition.

Helena, aka Elena, was once in training to be a “mystic,” one of few women accepted to the very sexist Brotherhood. Then she made a demonic deal, sold…

Almost a exactly a year ago, I read the first and second books in The Keeper Chronicles. Now we conclude this trilogy with Long Hot Summoning. Tanya Huff increases the role of Claire’s younger sister, Diana, giving her a Summoning of her own and more responsibility for saving the world. It’s a fresh and fun adventure with much of the charm but also most of the flaws of the first two books. Also,…

This is one of those books I heard so much buzz about I nearly didn’t read it just to be contrary—and what a mistake that would have been. Kate Heartfield’s fantastical take on the lives of two queens—Marie Antoinette and her sister Maria Carolina, also known as Charlotte—at the end of the Enlightenment is exactly the kind of historical fiction I love. From 1768 to 1793, The Embroidered Book charts the rise and fall of…

Once again Heather O’Neill proves her ability to cut deep. When We Lost Our Heads is an invigorating, frustrating, dark, beautiful, terrible tragedy. As much as I loved Lullabies for Little Criminals, I think if I went back and reread the book for a third time I would be more critical of it now—both because I’m older and because O’Neill’s writing has improved since then. When We Lost Our Heads displays a mastery over…

It feels like I have had this Massey Lectures book forever, always next on the to-read list, always another nonfiction book slipping in and taking its place but finally, finally I’ve sat down and given Esi Edugyan the time she deserves here. Out of the Sun is a great example of what the Massey Lectures can be: give someone the platform to talk about whatever they want, basically, but in a way that is…

It’s no secret that I love stories about storytelling. Similarly, as much as I love a good action-packed epic, slow stories have their own unique virtues. Close Your Eyes: A Fairy Tale is such a slow story about stories—and in particular, how the stories we tell about ourselves and one another shape our choices in life. Chris Tomasini uses the backdrop of fifteenth-century Europe and crafts a small, memorable cast of characters. I enjoyed the…

Mean Girls was a formative movie of my youth for so many reasons, to the point where it was the first movie I purchased on DVD (at the same time that I bought my first DVD player). It was released in 2004, the same year I started high school, so I was of the generation it depicted. I also loved math. Indeed, my strongest Mean Girls memory is of my AP Calculus course in Grade…

As I’ve said in the past, I am very selective about the anthologies I read. Novels are my jam when it comes to fiction, short stories and novelettes and novellas much less so. Nevertheless, when Derek Künsken’s collection Flight from the Ages And Other Stories came up on NetGalley, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to request an eARC for review. Künsken might fast become one of my favourite living science-fiction authors. Ever since I…

Time travel always opens up such interesting storytelling possibilities, loops and predestination paradoxes among them. We humans are so immured in the linearity of time that these possibilities can be tantalizing, frightening, and even bewildering. Add on top of that metafiction, the idea of a story escaping itself into the real world, and you get some truly fascinating plot ideas. Sea of Tranquility tries to create such an atmosphere of possibility. Though I wouldn’t say…

The downside of a book about a delicious pastry is that it made me want to eat pastry! Nancy Mauro is a dangerous temptress with The Sugar Thief. Set primarily in Mauro’s and my hometown of Thunder Bay, Ontario, this novel is a mystery wrapped in the warmth of family and iced with the frosting of betrayal and recrimination. It asks us what happens when people go to any lengths to establish the life…

Claire Hansen returns in this sequel to Summon the Keeper. It’s rare that I manage to read the next book in a series in such close succession, but here we go! The Second Summoning embraces and builds upon certain elements of absurdity present in the first book. I admire how Tanya Huff can write urban fantasy that is simultaneously tense and intriguing yet also funny and lighthearted. However, the plot of this book didn’t…

On my most recent trip to our town’s used bookstore, I got a hefty dose of Tanya Huff books. Having finished the Gale Women series (though that didn’t stop me from accidentally buying another copy of The Future Falls by mistake, oops), I was happy to discover several books in two different series from Huff. I decided to start her Keeper Chronicles first with Summon the Keeper. It was a great change of pace…

Heather O’Neill wormed her way into my brain with Lullabies for Little Criminals. I missed The Lonely Hearts Hotel when it first came out, but when I saw she has a new book coming out soon, I finally learned about this one and jumped on borrowing it from my library. Also set in Montréal, albeit decades prior to Lullabies for Little Criminals, The Lonely Hearts Hotel echoes motifs from O’Neill’s earlier work. Once…

Every so often one encounters a book that should be required reading for all Canadians. Unreconciled: Family, Truth, and Indigenous Resistance is one such book. The moment I cracked open the first chapter, I knew I had to use this in my English class of adult learners (all of whom, at the moment, are Anishinaabeg from Treaty 9 nations). Jesse Wente appears in a documentary, Reel Injun, that I often use in my English…

Ordinarily, a book with this kind of ending angers me, but I think I was already angry with The Subtweet—in a good way. Ironically it took a Scot recommending me, a Canadian, this book by fellow Canadian author Vivek Shraya. So it goes. I was asking for recommendations for novels by trans authors that aren’t about “trans stuff.” As much as I love reading about trans experiences from trans authors, I believe it is…

Somehow amidst all the well-deserved hype for The Skin We’re In, I missed hearing about its structure! This is Not Your Typical political memoir in that Desmond Cole has chosen a very deliberate structure: each chapter is a month in 2017 (with a coda for January 2018). He uses an event from each month of that year as a launching point for discussing issues of anti-Black racism and social justice in Canada. In this…

Like many Canadians, sometimes it feels like I know more about American politics than our own politics. American politics are louder, flashier, and take up more space in our news. So I’m trying my best to continue to monitor my country’s politics, particularly when it comes to issues of equity. That’s what drew me to Can You Hear Me Now?: I had heard of Celina Caesar-Chavannes and her rocky experience as a Black, female…

You ever read a book and have an epiphany, only for that epiphany to evaporate before you get around to writing it down or telling others? I think that happened here—I think one of Alicia Elliott’s essays in A Mind Spread Out on the Ground inspired an epiphany regarding my relationship with poetry … yet I have totally forgotten the thought now! I even paged through the book again to see if I could recover…

This is an own-voices review for being a transgender woman, but I am white and do not share the protagonist’s ethnicity. For Today I Am A Boy left me unsettled in ways I didn’t expect, and not entirely in the good kind of unsettled you want from some literature. I’m going to be harsh here because it’s how I feel, having read the book, but I would like to disclaim up front that even though…