Fall 2015

Poetry

A look at this fall's selection of poetry.

By Jaime Forsythe

Canada Lives Here

Canada Lives Here

Twenty-eight. That’s the number I can’t get out of my head. There are a lot of figures and statistics in Wade Rowland’s cir de cœur for the decline to near-terminal status of the once proud and nation-defining CBC, but for this reader the one that jumped off the page and put it all in perspective appears in a breakdown of the comparative per capita subsidy for public broadcasting among countries who have such things.

By Ian McGillis

Beyond Brutal Passions

The written histories of cities usually tell the big stories, hashing out biographies of visionary men building things and founding things and fighting one another for the spoils. In Beyond Brutal Passions, Mary Anne Poutanen delves into the details to create a portrait of Montreal’s early nineteenth-century prostitutes, scouring city archives for moments when the lives of these mostly forgotten women intersected with official public record.

By Emily Raine

Rebel Priest in the Time of Tyrants

Rebel Priest in the Time of Tyrants

Few figures are as stirring – and heroic – as a servant, walking a dangerous but noble path, abandoned by the very people who called him to it. We may not be capable of such idealism, but it reminds us of what faithfulness looks like. And the tragedies that usually accompany such missions show us true sacrifice and heroism.

By Matthew R. Anderson

Arvida

Arvida

Named for its author’s hometown, Samuel Archibald’s debut short-story collection Arvida is a grab bag of family lore, tall tales, idle boasts, and dark secrets – the kind of stories usually told around a kitchen table or campfire before vanishing into the night air like smoke.

By Pablo Strauss

Mouthquake

Mouthquake

Employing a variety of experimental techniques in style and structure, Daniel Allen Cox’s fourth novel, Mouthquake, details the queer coming-of-age of a stuttering young man in Montreal.

By Jeff Miller

Captive

Captive

Claudine Dumont’s Captive is animated by the idea of power, and how quickly it can be gained or lost. When Emma, the novel’s first-person narrator, is abducted from her bedroom by a group of masked assailants and awakens in a locked room, she is quickly reduced to a state of helplessness and terror.

By Danielle Barkley

That Summer in Provincetown

That Summer in Provincetown

The title suggests tangled nights on the beach, afternoon cocktails, at least a bit of coming-of-age necking. But That Summer in Provincetown is only glancingly about any such summer.

By Katia Grubisic

The Lake

The Lake

In the village of Malabourg, girlhood is a difficult, even dangerous time. This fictional town on the Baie des Chaleurs, the setting of Perrine Leblanc’s second novel, is a place out of time, inhabited by generations of lantern-jawed fishermen and run by local gossips. The Lake, translated into English by Lazer Lederhendler, seems at first glance to promise a kind of thriller, but its village setting is the stuff of contes or legends.

By Aimee Wall

Ex-Yu

Ex-Yu

The word Balkan may bring to mind a number of associations. Complex borders, fraternity, religion, betrayal, atrocity. It gets complicated very quickly. Josip Novakovich’s most recent collection of short stories, Ex-Yu, explores each of these topics in turn and in conjunction

By Rob Sherren

The Nature of the Beast

The Nature of the Beast

The worst writing advice Louise Penny ever got – to abandon any hope of seeing her work in print – came early in her career, back when she first decided to give creative writing a go. “There are a lot of people who went out of their way to tell me that I wouldn’t be published,” Penny recalls.

By Sarah Lolley

Step Aside, Pops

Step Aside, Pops

Fans of Kate Beaton don’t need a review to tell them what to expect from Step Aside, Pops, the second collection from the author of the web-comic Hark! A Vagrant. Beaton’s followers have no doubt been eagerly anticipating another feast of lumpy presidents, sassy dames, and unaccountably bitter superheroes since Beaton’s first collection (also called Hark! A Vagrant) came out in 2011. Step Aside, Pops won’t disappoint, and those who have yet to discover her work have a hearty spread awaiting them.

By Anna Leventhal