Elise Moser

"That quality of recognition is not something that can be forced; it’s something that arises, if we are fortunate."

"What does it mean to write our own history, or, more troubling, to write the life of another into being?”

Cid V Brunet's memoir is a smooth read studded with golden nuggets of deft description and clever turns of phrase.

Sam’s disappearance is the still point around which Sophie Bienvenu’s affecting short novel unspools, with Mathieu’s life unwinding in all its love and heartbreak from page to page.

The knot of urgent issues that ties together hunger, environmental crisis, and animal exploitation gets more tangled every day. Among its most visible strands is the question of the production and consumption of meat.

As a child, Gravel thought she would be either a teacher or a rock ’n’ roll star. Now all grown up, she’s become one of the most successful author-illustrators of kids’ books in Quebec, part of a vibrant scene that includes such stars as Marie-Louise Gay and Mélanie Watt.

For a book peopled with characters who feel life is empty of meaning, who rely on pilfered pills and large quantities of alcohol for fun, who spend money as fast as they can acquire it in a desperate search for some kind of satisfaction, Listening for Jupiter and its denizens are unexpectedly sweet and appealing.

In just over a hundred pages, All That Sang is many things. It is a tale of two cities, opening with a subtle, cinematic description of the rooftops of Paris before leading the reader down into the streets, evoking a morning’s gathering activity. The other city is Toronto, which appears from time to time, usually in counterpoint to the French capital.

In the 1970s, Marguerite Andersen compiled one of the first feminist anthologies in Quebec, Mother Was Not a Person. Many books later, on the cusp of her ninth decade, she picked up her pen again to reconsider one mother in particular: herself.

The Last Bonobo is a brilliant book, exactly the kind of intellectually powerful, clear, and compassionate account that could – literally – help save the world.

Pain and Prejudice is a rare account of one woman’s scientific career. Messing has an easy style – personal and personable, earnest and engaging. The book is a lively portrait of a committed scholar doing science with and for people

Kim Thúy is a marvellous storyteller, full of energy, vibrant and animated, quite unlike the jewel-like precision and restraint of her writing.

Mirrors and Mirages offers a refreshing glimpse into the inner lives of a cohort not yet well represented in Canadian fiction. In fact, believers of any faith are thin on the ground in CanLit, and the effort these characters make to balance their individual beliefs and the demands of their families and the culture around them is central to the story Monia Mazigh wishes to tell.

Fortier’s writing is very far from “pure ravings.” It is lucid, rich in detail, and showcases her deep and broad interest in the history of science, which sets her novels apart from much of fiction.

For those who enjoy depictions of that life, complete with sled dogs, snow, and a smattering of Algonquin vocabulary, Robert Poirier’s collection, On the Crow and Other Stories, might afford a pleasurable read.

This is no New Age fluffball. The book opens with decomposing human remains, and includes a corpse lowered into a grave filled with water and another buried in concrete.

Varsha Dharma is the teenaged daughter of Canadian-born parents. Her family lives in the house that her mysterious immigrant grandfather Mr. J.K. Dharma built in the wilderness outside a small town in northern British Columbia. When Varsha’s mother dies, her father goes to India to get a new wife. Suman, the new bride, could not have imagined the cold and isolation awaiting her.