Carly Rosalie Vandergriendt

A simple coming-of-age narrative told in rhythmic prose, The Benjamenta College of Art follows Luca, a first-year student carving outa place for himself at the titular institution.

A sense of being trapped – by gender, mental illness, duty, class, or indeed, a town so small that everyone knows you – is palpable in many of the stories in Send More Tourists... the Last Ones Were Delicious.

People have been writing novels about infidelity for about as long as people have been writing novels. Indeed, within the literary canon – think Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, or The Great Gatsby – adultery is about as common a subject as an absent father or an unplanned pregnancy. Incidentally, 26 Knots, the debut novel from Montreal- based pediatrician Bindu Suresh, has all three of these things. It wasn’t until after I’d finished reading, however, that I noticed just how much Suresh had packed into such a slight volume.

Clicking into Place, by writer and improviser Jordan Moffatt, is a different kind of book – it’s a Bad Book, the first fiction title from the micro-press founded by Fawn Parker and Thomas Molander in 2018. The press’s mission is to “broaden the definition of ‘CanLit,’” and Moffatt’s flash fiction collection fits the bill – it’s unlike any CanLit I’ve read in recent memory – but not in the ways I expected.

A simple image served as the starting point for Montreal-based author Rawi Hage’s fourth novel, Beirut Hellfire Society. On a balmy morning in early September, he describes that image to me over coffee at a busy café in Mile End. “Someone standing on a balcony above the road to the cemetery. Simple.”

Behind The Eyes We Meet, Mélissa Verreault’s second novel and her first to appear in English, translated by Arielle Aaronson, isn’t what it initially seems. Rooted in contemporary milieus and conflicts, the first of three parts follows Emmanuelle, a twenty-nine-year-old graphic designer who lives in Hochelaga and goes by Manue.