When author and activist June Callwood was asked to provide some words of wisdom for aspiring writers, she responded, “Read, read, read. Forgive your parents.” Blind Spot, by Laurence Miall, is the story of a man who cannot follow the last part of that advice.
The epigraph to Jon Paul Fiorentino’s I’m Not Scared of You or Anything is a quotation from comedian Andy Kaufman: “I never told a joke in my life.” It’s a code of conduct Kaufman undoubtedly followed. He was a prankster and a trickster – audiences sometimes wouldn’t know whether he was performing or not. His characters were strange and childlike, uncomfortable, completely open … and funny.
Chez L’arabe, the debut short story collection of National Post columnist Mireille Silcoff, establishes its homegrown credentials early on. Not two pages in, readers will encounter Mount Royal, chemin de la Côte-des-Neiges, potholes, and the narrator’s assumption that “all Montreal Arabs [are] Lebanese,” a throwaway line designed to set up a not-so-surprising revelation about the national origin of two minor characters.
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.
April, it seems, is not the cruellest month. That would be November. That is, if we’re to believe James Benson Nablo’s protagonist in his novel The Long November. The latest book to be published under Véhicule Press’s Ricochet imprint, The Long November is a noir, gritty, raw novel, but it’s not a mystery or a potboiler. It’s an anti-war novel, a rags-to-riches novel, a love story, and a coming-of-age story in oh so many ways. In short, it’s nothing you would expect.
“It’s easy to romanticize the sea,” writes Louise Carson in Mermaid Road. While the evocative seafoam colour of this hand-bound chapbook does well to immerse the reader in a romanticized feeling of the sea, the story emphasizes the practical considerations a mermaid and her family must make when getting by in the twentieth century.
To enter the world of Jacob Wren’s novel Polyamorous Love Song is to enter a bizarre yet compelling dreamscape, a parallel universe where everyone is an artist (regardless of whether they produce physical artwork or not) and where revolutionaries don mascot uniforms and risk death for their cause, the politics of which are left ambiguous.
Where do we draw the line between storytelling and lies? Can a good story veil (or protect) reality while revealing a larger truth? And what is the responsibility of the storyteller to his audience? In his second novel, The Goat in the Tree, Lorne Elliott – comedian, award-winning playwright, musician, and Hudson resident – playfully poses these questions, wrapping them in a tale about a storyteller whose talent for fabrication is his ticket to ride. To sweeten the plot, Elliott adds parables and fables as guideposts to the characters we meet along the way.
Kidd has been a fixture in the Montreal artistic landscape since the 1990s, launched to spoken word stardom (such as it is) by such works as her much-acclaimed show and poetry collection Sea Peach, which toured internationally. Hyena Subpoena shows off the best of her signature poetic traits – a gift for philosophical whimsy (described by some critics as “Dr Seuss for adults”), frankly dazzling technical virtuosity in the realm of subtle rhyme and complex meter, crisp vocal performance, and a slightly bizarre yet strikingly resonant fixation with animal metaphors.
The private self is arguably one’s most authentic voice, if only for the truth of what is expressed before any social filter is applied. The written word, however, “outs” the author, muddying the distinction between private self and public persona. What happens to the author who knows his or her most personal reflections will be paraded in front of the public and even celebrated by that public? What happens to the writing? And what exactly is celebrity?
Young Canadians travelling abroad have a reputation for being pleasant, earnest, and occasionally prickly. Daniel Baylis is just such a Canadian, searching for social engagement, and meaning at a point in his late twenties when, for some people, working life can begin to look like a protracted actuarial exercise. The Traveller is the true story of the year Baylis spent volunteer-circumnavigating the world. Twelve months. Twelve countries. Twelve volunteer stints. Or that was the plan anyway.
