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The new Canadian classics
Roads that lead far beyond Avonlea
Canada’s rich cultural panoply and its wide array of voices is writ large in these extraordinary literary works. They tell stories of carving out a place for oneself, speaking with voices previously little-heard in the hallowed halls of “CanLit”—and some convey a quintessentially Canadian in-betweenness through genre-bending forms. Explore these beautiful and honest—and often funny!—stories that speak to a Canada we recognize today.
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The Polished Hoe
Winner of the 2002 Scotiabank Giller Prize, Clarke’s tenth novel is set in the post-colonial West Indies and begins with a confession of murder. The story unravels over a 24-hour period, but spans the lifetime of a woman and a society built on and bound by the trauma of slavery. In his quest to “creolize” Oxford English, Clarke drew inspiration from a range of sources including Miles Davis and Geoffrey Chaucer. The result is a haunting and lyrical story of the power of memory and the human spirit.
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Autopsy of a Boring Wife
Hailed as a Quebecois Bridget Jones’ Diary, Autopsy of a Boring Wife is the touching and funny tale of poor old Diane, a 48-year old woman whose husband has an affair and leaves her because, he says, she bores him. Well, who could take that news without a fight? Not Diane, who embarks upon an often racy, always entertaining journey to find herself and her spark again. The CBC called this book ‘wonderfully fresh and engaging”, and “an astute commentary on women and girls, gender differences and the curious institution of marriage in the 21st-century.”
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Refuge
Cassandra MacCallum, 96, is living quietly and well thank you very much -- when suddenly things take a dramatic turn. A young Burmese woman turns up claiming to be kin and tells a harrowing story of torture and flight. Can any of it be true? And is this stranger actually family? Slowly, Cass is forced to face a tragedy she had buried for half a century.
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Alligator
In her gritty third novel, set on the brooding Newfoundland coast, Lisa Moore constructs an interwoven cast of characters, each grappling with mortal battles of various weight. To wit, and not exhaustively: An Inuit man is found inexplicably dead in his room in St. John’s; a young woman strives to save the pine martens; a sociopathic yet oddly charming Russian gangster stakes out his territory; a dying filmmaker struggles to create her magnum opus. These are very human struggles, set against a powerful and brutally glorious landscape in a deftly told story filled with passion, regret, joy and despair.
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Frying Plantain
The interwoven stories of Frying Plantain are set in midtown Toronto where, if you walk a few yards one direction you are in Little Italy, a few steps the other way you’re in Little Jamaica. The location is a perfect metaphor for protagonist Kara Davis, “a girl caught in the middle” - not a kid but not an adult, Canadian but yearning to be more Jamaican, and altogether too “too” - too loud, too quiet, too soft, too bold. It’s a powerful coming of age story of growing up between worlds.
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Cockroach
Woe is the man who can’t successfully commit his own suicide. Rescued against his will, the self-described and unfortunately-for-him-very-much-alive thief reluctantly attends sessions with a well-meaning but naive therapist and unravels his violent life story of growing up in a war-torn country, then emigrating to Montreal where where he imagines himself a cockroach invading the lives of the privileged. It’s not precisely a plot twist, but from this wrecked life emerges a glimmer of hope for redemption.
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Indian Horse
Saul Indian Horse's story is a heartbreaking tragedy, but one that is all too familiar to Canadian residential school survivors. This book is revered as "an unforgettable work of art" by The National Post, and in it we follow Saul as he grows up in the residential school system, his one spot of joy to be found in playing hockey. His traumatic past bubbles to the surface in adulthood, leading Saul to a rehabilitation centre, where he begins his healing journey. This is a heavy read about racism, abuse, destruction, and displacement, and absolutely required reading for all Canadians.
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Six Metres of Pavement
Twenty years ago, Ismail Boxwala made a mistake, resulting in the death of his daughter, the breakdown of his marriage, and sets him on a path to alcoholism. However, this is an uplifting story about found family, as Ismail finds solace in his growing relationship with the widowed Cecilia, and friendship with homeless queer activist Fatima. Taking place in Toronto, it's a window into the hidden struggles of those around us, and a testament to the fact that strangers are friends waiting to happen.
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The Outlander
No, not THAT Outlander. In this case the outlander is 19-year-old Mary Boulton, a “widow by her own hand” on the run from her husband’s vengeful brothers and a pack of bloodhounds. Opening in mid-flight, this is a fast-paced road trip tale set in the rough and ready Canadian west circa 1903, an adventure story where the outlaw is a steely young woman determined to outrun her fate.
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On the Shores of Darkness, There is Light
They may mess you up, your mom and dad, but they’re not alone; siblings can do a fine job of being both too much and too little, too. Harriet is “eleven going on thirty”, a striving artist who dreams of living in the woods like Tom Thompson, free of the burden of her feckless parents and the devotion of her severely handicapped little brother. To fund an escape, Harriet runs errands for the residents of the improbably named Shangrila apartment complex, putting her in contact with many other equally flawed characters. There are no paragons here, no authority figures, and as to her escape, character may well be destiny.
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Bone and Bread
Beena and Sadhana are sisters who share a close bond, and the same tragic history, being orphaned and then raised by a harried Sikh uncle who runs a bagel shop in Montreal’s Hasidic community in Mile End. But their paths diverge dramatically and when Sadhana dies suddenly and mysteriously, Beena sets off on a search for truth that stirs memories, opens wounds and threatens to topple her carefully constructed new life.
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Microserfs
Unable to tolerate another minute subsisting on foods flat enough to pass under closed office doors while monitoring their email inboxes just in case Bill Gates plans to swoop in, defectors from Microsoft band together to build lives and find love.
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Life Is About Losing Everything
This has been called Crosbie’s “most honest, most cutting, most hilarious” book so far, a hefty claim given that she is the highly controversial author of Liar and Paul’s Case, a sort-of fictionalization, some said adoration, of a real-life serial killer. Here the envelope-pusher offers a memoir-like collection of experiences real and imagined, a harrowing and beautiful examination of what it is to be slouching toward infinity.
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This All Happened
If you are the sort of person whose house is never cleaner than when you have to write something, this is the fictionalized memoir you wish you’d had the cleverness to come up with. Gabriel English desperately wants to write a novel. He has the idea and everything. Thing is, he can’t write it, so he focuses instead on his passion for Lydia. Alas, it’s a love unrequited, and through a year of daily journal entries we watch him descend from love to peevishness to fury. Luckily we as readers are in the very capable hands of an actual writer.
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The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond of Matches
The Girl is a total delight. Translated from the French, it was the first novel published in Quebec ever to be nominated -- let alone become a finalist -- for France's prestigious Prix Renaudot. It is the charming, magical-realist tale of a boy and girl who grow up in isolation and learn of the outside world only through the world of books and fairy tales. Following the shocking suicide of their father, they suddenly have to grapple with the outside world. The story rides the tension between playfulness, cheeky twists, and Soucy’s fascination with guilt, cruelty and violence.
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Flight to Canada
Sometimes a book is “Canadian” because a Canadian citizen or resident wrote it. Sometimes it’s because it is set here. And sometimes it’s because it nods in a northward direction. Such is this entry, a comic and rageful re-imagining of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, cheekily published in 1976, America’s bicentennial, and so-named because it is the final destination of hope for a runaway slave. Time and history are fluid on this trip, Lincoln is re-cast as a “player” or con-man who appears on the Late Show, carriages have A/C and power locks and the humdrum horrors of slavery are reinvented with comic rage.
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