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Long Shadows
by Erna ParisHow do nations reinvent themselves after cataclysmic events? Who gets to decide what happened yesterday, then to propagate the tale, and what are the consequences of their choices? These are some of the questions author and historian Erna Paris carried with her through the United States, with its long-buried memory of slavery; to South Africa, to sit in on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's attempts to heal the divisions of apartheid; to Japan, France and Germany and the unresolved pain of Hiroshima and the Holocaust; and to the former Yugoslavia where she exposes the cynical shaping of historical memory, and the way the world community responded to the lethal outcome of that half-imagined history.Combining gripping storytelling with insight and sharp observation, Paris takes us to the places of reckoning--be they courtrooms or concentration camps--and finds hope in the way ordinary people grapple with the defining events of their lives. Evocatively written, her journey illuminates a crucial subject that straddles the 20th and 21st centuries.
Lost in September
by Kathleen WinterLong-awaited, thrilling new fiction from Kathleen Winter, whose previous novel Annabel was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller, Governor General's Award, Writers' Trust and Orange prizes, was a Globe and Mail "Best Book" and a New York Times "Notable," and was a #1 bestselling Canada Reads selection.From one of Canada's most exciting writers comes a gripping, compassionate and stunning novel that overturns and rewrites history. Enter the world of Jimmy--a tall, red-haired, homeless thirty-something ex-soldier, battered by PTSD--as he camps out on the streets of modern-day Montreal, trying to remember and reclaim his youth. While his past is something of an enigma, even to himself, the young man bears a striking resemblance to General James Wolfe, "Conqueror of Canada" and "Hero of Quebec," who died on the Plains of Abraham in 1759.As a young soldier in his twenties, the historical James Wolfe (1727-1759) was granted a short and much longed-for leave to travel to Paris to study poetry, music and dance--three of his passions. But in that very year, 1752, the British Empire abandoned the Julian calendar for the Gregorian, and every citizen of England lost eleven days: September 2 was followed by September 14. These lost eleven days happened to occur during the period that Wolfe had been granted for his leave. Despondent and bitter, he never got the chance to explore his artistic bent, and seven short years later, on the anniversary of this foreshortened leave, he died on the Plains of Abraham.Now, James is getting his eleven days back . . . but instead of the salons of 18th century Paris, he's wandering the streets of present-day Montreal and Quebec City, not as "the Hero of Quebec" but as a damaged war veteran wracked with anguish. Much like George Saunders in Lincoln in the Bardo, award-winning author Kathleen Winter takes a brief, intensely personal incident in the life of a famous historical figure, and using her incomparable gifts as a fiction writer, powerfully reimagines him. Here is a wrenching, unforgettable portrait--like none you have ever seen or read--of one of the most well-known figures in Canadian history.
The Year of the Runaways
by Sunjeev SahotaNominated for the Man Booker Prize. One of Granta's Best Young British Novelists in 2013 gives us a sweeping, urgent, contemporary epic about a year in the life of a group of young illegal immigrants living and working together in the north of England.Three young men from very different backgrounds come together in a journey from India to England, where they hope to begin something new. To support their families; where they can, to build their future; to show their worth; to escape the past. They have almost no idea of what awaits them.In a dilapidated shared house in Sheffield, Tarlochan, a former rickshaw driver, will say nothing about his life in Bihar. Avtar has a secret that binds him to the unpredictable Randeep. Randeep, in turn, has a visa-wife in a flat on the other side of town, whose cupboards are full of her husband's clothes in case the immigration men surprise her with a visit. She is Narinder, and her story is the most surprising of all.Utterly absorbing and beautiful, sweeping in scope, The Year of the Runaways is written with compassion touched by grace. As Tochi, Avtar, Randeep and Narinder negotiate their dreams, desires and shocking realities, as their histories continue to pull at them, as the seasons pass, what emerges is a novel of overwhelming humanity: one which asks how far we can decide our own course in life, and what we should do for love, for faith, and for family.From the Hardcover edition.
In Flanders Fields: 100 Years
by Amanda BettsA beautifully designed collection of essays on war, loss and remembrance to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the writing of Canada's most famous poem. In early 1915, the death of a young friend on the battlefields of Ypres inspired Canadian soldier, field surgeon and poet John McCrae to write "In Flanders Fields." Within months of the poem's December 1915 publication in the British magazine Punch it became part of the collective consciousness in North America and Europe, and its extraordinary power has endured over the decades and across generations. In this anthology, Canada's finest historians, novelists and poets contemplate the evolving meaning of the poem; the man who wrote it and the World War I setting from which it emerged; its themes of valour, grief and remembrance; and the iconic image of the poppy. Among the thirteen contributors: Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire (ret'd) writes about the emotional meaning of the poem for war veterans; Tim Cook describes the rich and varied life of McCrae; Frances Itani revisits her time in Flanders, and mines the acts of witnessing and remembering; Kevin Patterson offers a riveting depiction of the adrenaline-fueled work of a WWI field surgeon; Mary Janigan reveals the poem's surprisingly divisive effect during the 1917 federal election; Ken Dryden tells us how lines from the poem ended up on the wall of the Montreal Canadiens' dressing room; and Patrick Lane recalls a Remembrance Day from his childhood in a moving reflection on how war shapes us all. Gorgeously designed in full colour with archival and contemporary images, In Flanders Fields: 100 Years will reflect and illuminate the importance of art in how we process war and loss.
Dunbar
by Edward St. AubynEdward St. Aubyn, "perhaps the most brilliant novelist of his generation" (Alan Hollinghurst), author of the internationally acclaimed Patrick Melrose novels, brings us a savage, satirical, outrageously entertaining novel of loyalty, betrayal, corporate greed, and the wisdom that shines through the accumulating indignities of age.'I really did have an empire, you know,' said Dunbar. 'Have I ever told you the story of how it was stolen from me?'Henry Dunbar, the once all-powerful head of a global media corporation, is not having a good day. In his dotage he hands over care of the corporation to his two eldest daughters, Abby and Megan, but as relations sour he starts to doubt the wisdom of past decisions . . .Now imprisoned in a care home in the Lake District with only a demented alcoholic comedian as company, Dunbar starts planning his escape. As he flees into the hills, his family is hot on his heels. But who will find him first, his beloved youngest daughter, Florence, or the tigresses Abby and Megan, so keen to divest him of his estate?Edward St. Aubyn is renowned for his masterwork, the five Melrose novels, which dissect with savage and beautiful precision the agonies of family life. Dunbar is a devastating family story and an excoriating novel for and of our times—an examination of power, money and the value of forgiveness.
Ghostly
by Audrey NiffeneggerCollected and introduced by the bestselling author of The Time Traveler's Wife and Her Fearful Symmetry--including Audrey Niffenegger's own fabulous new illustrations for each piece, and a new story by her--this is a unique and haunting anthology of some of the best ghost stories of all time. From Edgar Allan Poe to Kelly Link, M.R. James to Neil Gaiman, H.H. Munro to Audrey Niffenegger herself, Ghostly reveals the evolution of the ghost story genre with tales going back to the eighteenth century and into the modern era, ranging across styles from Gothic Horror to Victorian, stories about haunting--haunted children, animals, houses. Every story is introduced by Audrey Niffenegger, an acclaimed master of the craft, with some words on its background and why she chose to include it. Audrey's own story is "A Secret Life With Cats." Perfect for the classic and contemporary ghost story aficionado, this is a delightful volume, beautifully illustrated by Audrey, who is a graphic artist with great vision. Ghostly showcases the best of the best in the field, including Edith Wharton, P.G. Wodehouse, A.S. Byatt, Ray Bradbury, and so many more.
Is This Live?: The Nation's Music Station
by Mike Myers Christopher WardFrom former VJ Christopher Ward, Is This Live? captures the pure fun and rock 'n' roll rebellion of the early years of MuchMusic. On August 31, 1984, the Nation's Music Station launched, breaking ground as the Wild (Canadian) West of television--live, gloriously unpredictable, seat-of-the-pants TV, delivered fresh daily. The dream child of TV visionary Moses Znaimer, and John Martin, the maverick creator of The New Music, Much was live and largely improvised, and an entire generation of Canadians grew up watching the VJs and embraced the new music that became the video soundtrack of our lives. The careers of Canadian legends like Blue Rodeo, Corey Hart, Jane Siberry, Bryan Adams, Platinum Blonde, Glass Tiger, Colin James, the Parachute Club, Honeymoon Suite, Barenaked Ladies, Maestro Fresh Wes and Sloan were launched when Much brought them closer to their fans. Much also gave us international acts (Duran, Duran, Tina Turner, Iggy Pop, David Bowie, Madonna, Motorhead, Guns N' Roses, Nirvana, Red Hot Chili Peppers), and covered the second wave of music activism with events like Live Aid and the Amnesty International Human Rights Now! tour. Ranging from Toronto's iconic studio at 299 Queen Street West, to Vancouver's MuchWest, MuchMusic's programming travelled across Canada and connected the Canadian music scenes in an unprecedented way. With stories of the bands, the music, the videos, the specialty shows, the style and the improvisational approach to daily broadcast life at Much, Is This Live? is told by the people who were there--the colourful cast of on-air VJs, the artists who found their way into our living rooms of the nation as never before, and the people behind the cameras. As our tour guide to the first decade at MuchMusic Christopher Ward delivers a full-on dose of pop culture nostalgia from the 1980s and '90s, when the music scene in Canada changed forever.From the Trade Paperback edition.
This I Know: Marketing Lessons from Under the Influence
by David Chilton Terry O'ReillyCanada's most famous adman spills a career's worth of marketing secrets, so anyone can compete with the best in their business--whatever that business might be.Big companies spend a fortune marketing their wares and services. Can yours? Invariably people ask advertising veteran and CBC Radio host Terry O'Reilly one question more than any other: How does a little business compete with the big guys? After decades at the helm of an award-winning advertising production company, and over a decade exploring the art and science of marketing for CBC Radio, O'Reilly delivers all the answers they--and anyone with something to sell--ever wanted to know. Following his bestselling Age of Persuasion, O'Reilly collects a lifetime of marketing wisdom into an indispensable guide to competing for your customers' attention. From understanding what business you're really in and foregoing the extra mile in favour of the extra inch, to the benefits of counterintuitive thinking and knowing an opportunity when you see one, This I Know will help anyone understand the fundamentals of good marketing strategy and building the relationships that turn good marketing into great results, no matter how big or small your budget.From the Hardcover edition.
Do Not Say We Have Nothing
by Madeleine ThienAn extraordinary novel set in China before, during and after the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989--the breakout book we've been waiting for from a bestselling, Amazon.ca First Novel Award winner.Madeleine Thien's new novel is breathtaking in scope and ambition even as it is hauntingly intimate. With the ease and skill of a master storyteller, Thien takes us inside an extended family in China, showing us the lives of two successive generations--those who lived through Mao's Cultural Revolution in the mid-twentieth century; and the children of the survivors, who became the students protesting in Tiananmen Square in 1989, in one of the most important political moments of the past century. With exquisite writing sharpened by a surprising vein of wit and sly humour, Thien has crafted unforgettable characters who are by turns flinty and headstrong, dreamy and tender, foolish and wise. At the centre of this epic tale, as capacious and mysterious as life itself, are enigmatic Sparrow, a genius composer who wishes desperately to create music yet can find truth only in silence; his mother and aunt, Big Mother Knife and Swirl, survivors with captivating singing voices and an unbreakable bond; Sparrow's ethereal cousin Zhuli, daughter of Swirl and storyteller Wen the Dreamer, who as a child witnesses the denunciation of her parents and as a young woman becomes the target of denunciations herself; and headstrong, talented Kai, best friend of Sparrow and Zhuli, and a determinedly successful musician who is a virtuoso at masking his true self until the day he can hide no longer. Here, too, is Kai's daughter, the ever-questioning mathematician Marie, who pieces together the tale of her fractured family in present-day Vancouver, seeking a fragile meaning in the layers of their collective story. With maturity and sophistication, humour and beauty, a huge heart and impressive understanding, Thien has crafted a novel that is at once beautifully intimate and grandly political, rooted in the details of daily life inside China, yet transcendent in its universality.
Do Not Say We Have Nothing
by Madeleine ThienWinner of the 2016 Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and longlisted for the 2017 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, this extraordinary novel tells the story of three musicians in China before, during and after the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. Madeleine Thien's new novel is breathtaking in scope and ambition even as it is hauntingly intimate. With the ease and skill of a master storyteller, Thien takes us inside an extended family in China, showing us the lives of two successive generations--those who lived through Mao's Cultural Revolution in the mid-twentieth century; and the children of the survivors, who became the students protesting in Tiananmen Square in 1989, in one of the most important political moments of the past century. With exquisite writing sharpened by a surprising vein of wit and sly humour, Thien has crafted unforgettable characters who are by turns flinty and headstrong, dreamy and tender, foolish and wise. At the centre of this epic tale, as capacious and mysterious as life itself, are enigmatic Sparrow, a genius composer who wishes desperately to create music yet can find truth only in silence; his mother and aunt, Big Mother Knife and Swirl, survivors with captivating singing voices and an unbreakable bond; Sparrow's ethereal cousin Zhuli, daughter of Swirl and storyteller Wen the Dreamer, who as a child witnesses the denunciation of her parents and as a young woman becomes the target of denunciations herself; and headstrong, talented Kai, best friend of Sparrow and Zhuli, and a determinedly successful musician who is a virtuoso at masking his true self until the day he can hide no longer. Here, too, is Kai's daughter, the ever-questioning mathematician Marie, who pieces together the tale of her fractured family in present-day Vancouver, seeking a fragile meaning in the layers of their collective story. With maturity and sophistication, humour and beauty, a huge heart and impressive understanding, Thien has crafted a novel that is at once beautifully intimate and grandly political, rooted in the details of daily life inside China, yet transcendent in its universality.
Strangers with the Same Dream
by Alison PickA brilliant, astonishing and politically timely page-turner set in 1921 Palestine, from the author of the bestselling novel Far to Go, nominated for the Man Booker Prize.This spare, beautifully written, shocking and timely novel whisks us back to 1921 Palestine, when a band of young Jewish pioneers, many escaping violence in their homelands, set out to realize a utopian dream: the founding of a kibbutz on a patch of land that will, twenty-five years later, become part of the State of Israel. Writing with tightly controlled intensity, Alison Pick takes us inside the minds of her vastly different characters--two young unmarried women, one plain and one beautiful, escaping peril in Russia and Europe; one older man, a charismatic group leader who is married with two children; and his wife, Hannah, who understands all too well the dark side of "equality"--to show us how idealism quickly tumbles into pragmatism, and how the utopian dream is punctured by messy human entanglements. This is also the story of the land itself (present-day Israel and Palestine), revealing with compassion and terrible irony how the pioneers chose to ignore the subtle but undeniable fact that their valley was already populated, home to a people whose lives they did not entirely understand. Writing with extraordinary power, Pick creates unforgettably human characters who, isolated in the enclosure of their hard-won utopian dream, are haunted by ghosts, compromised by unbearable secrets, and finally, despite flashes of love and hope, worn down by hardship, human frailty, and the pull of violent confrontation. The novel's utterly shocking but satisfying conclusion will have readers flipping back to the first page to trace patterns and wrestle with the question of what is, or is not, inevitable and knowable in the human heart.
Precious Cargo: My Year of Driving the Kids on School Bus 3077
by Craig DavidsonFor readers of Kristine Barnett's The Spark, Andrew Solomon's Far From the Tree and Ian Brown's The Boy in the Moon, here is a heartfelt, funny and surprising memoir about one year spent driving a bus full of children with special needs.With his last novel, Cataract City, Craig Davidson established himself as one of our most talented novelists. But before writing that novel and before his previous work, Rust and Bone, was made into a Golden Globe-nominated film, Davidson experienced a period of poverty, apparent failure and despair. In this new work of riveting and timely non-fiction, Davidson tells the unvarnished story of one transformative year in his life and of his unlikely relationships with a handful of unique and vibrant children who were, to his initial astonishment and bewilderment, and eventual delight, placed in his care for a couple of hours each day--the kids on school bus 3077. One morning in 2008, desperate and impoverished while trying unsuccessfully to write, Davidson plucked a flyer out of his mailbox that read, "Bus Drivers Wanted." That was the first step towards an unlikely new career: driving a school bus full of special-needs kids for a year. Armed only with a sense of humour akin to that of his charges, a creative approach to the challenge of driving a large, awkward vehicle while corralling a rowdy gang of kids, and unexpected reserves of empathy, Davidson takes us along for the ride. He shows us how his evolving relationship with the kids on that bus, each of them struggling physically as well as emotionally and socially, slowly but surely changed his life along with the lives of the "precious cargo" in his care. This is the extraordinary story of that year and those relationships. It is also a moving, important and universal story about how we see and treat people with special needs in our society.From the Trade Paperback edition.
Motherhood
by Sheila HetiA daring, funny, and poignant novel about the desire and duty to procreate, by one of our most brilliant and original writersMotherhood treats one of the most consequential decisions of early adulthood--whether or not to have children--with the intelligence, wit and originality that have won Sheila Heti international acclaim, and which led her previous work, How Should a Person Be?, to be called "one of the most talked-about books of the year" (TIME magazine). Having reached an age when most of her peers are asking themselves when they will become mothers, Heti's narrator considers, with the same urgency, whether she will do so at all. Over the course of several years, under the influence of her partner, body, family, friends, mysticism and chance, she struggles to make a moral and meaningful choice. In a compellingly direct mode that straddles the forms of the novel and the essay, Motherhood raises radical and essential questions about womanhood, parenthood, and how--and for whom--to live.
Motherhood: A Novel
by Sheila HetiA daring, funny, and poignant novel about the desire and duty to procreate, by one of our most brilliant and original writers.Motherhood treats one of the most consequential decisions of early adulthood--whether or not to have children--with the intelligence, wit and originality that have won Sheila Heti international acclaim, and which led her previous work, How Should a Person Be?, to be called "one of the most talked-about books of the year" (TIME magazine).Having reached an age when most of her peers are asking themselves when they will become mothers, Heti's narrator considers, with the same urgency, whether she will do so at all. Over the course of several years, under the influence of her partner, body, family, friends, mysticism and chance, she struggles to make a moral and meaningful choice.In a compellingly direct mode that straddles the forms of the novel and the essay, Motherhood raises radical and essential questions about womanhood, parenthood, and how--and for whom--to live.
In the Land of the Cyclops: Essays
by Karl Ove KnausgaardFrom this New York Times bestselling author comes a collection of ambitious, remarkably erudite essays on art, literature, culture, and philosophy.In the Land of the Cyclops is a collection of thirty-seven essays by Karl Ove Knausgaard. In these pieces, he discusses Swedish politics, brain surgery, Laurie Anderson, Edvard Munch, the northern lights, and the work of an array of writers and visual artists (paired with full colour images of their art). These essays beautifully capture Knausgaard's ability to mediate between the deeply personal and the universal, demonstrating his trademark self-scrutiny and his deep longing to authentically see, understand, and experience the world.
Night Boat to Tangier: A novel
by Kevin BarryLONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZEFrom the acclaimed author of the international sensations City of Bohane and Beatlebone, a striking and gorgeous new novel of two aging criminals at the butt ends of their damage-filled careers. A superbly melancholic melody of a novel full of beautiful phrases and terrible men.In the dark waiting room of the ferry terminal in the sketchy Spanish port of Algeciras, two fading Irish gangsters, Maurice Hearne and Charlie Redmond--longtime partners in the lucrative and dangerous enterprise of smuggling drugs--are waiting on the boat from Tangier, and none too patiently. It is October 23, 2018, and they are expecting Maurice's estranged daughter (or is she?), Dilly, to either arrive on a boat coming from Tangier or depart on one heading there. This nocturnal vigil will initiate an extraordinary journey back in time to excavate their shared history of violence, romance, mutual betrayals and serial exiles. Mordant and hilarious, lyrical yet laden with menace, Night Boat to Tangier is a tragicomic masterpiece rendered with the dark humour and the hardboiled Hibernian lyricism that have made multi award-winning writer Kevin Barry one of the most striking and admired fiction writers at work today.
That Old Country Music: Stories
by Kevin BarryFrom the author of the wildly acclaimed Night Boat to Tangier, a New York Times "Top 10" book of 2019, here are stories of contemporary Ireland: full of love (and sex), melancholy and magic, bedecked in some of the most gorgeous prose being written today.With his three novels and two short story collections, Kevin Barry has steadily established his stature as one of the finest writers not just in Ireland but in the English language. His prodigious gifts with language, character, and setting in these eleven exquisite stories transport the reader to an Ireland both timeless and recognizably modern. Shot through with dark humour and the uncanny primal power of the Irish landscape, the stories in That Old Country Music represent some of the finest fiction being written today.
Be My Wolff
by Emma RichlerWidely heralded for her bestselling first novel (Feed My Dear Dogs) and award-winning stories (Sister Crazy, also nominated for the Orange Prize), Emma Richler finally returns with a dazzling major novel with the power of A.S. Byatt's Possession, the wit and wonder of Peter Carey's Oscar and Lucinda and Kate Atkinson's Life After Life--about a sister and her adopted brother with a one-of-a-kind connection: a profoundly moving, original love story about the unbreakable ties that bind, and the choices we make or create for ourselves.Zachariah and Rachel are brother and sister. Well, not exactly. They are star-crossed lovers. Well, not exactly. Rachel is the cherished daughter of a Russian family living in London--the richly imagined, mysterious Wolffs; Zach is her parents' adopted son who arrived from the orphanage with one sweater, a head of curls and a dexterous set of fists. As children, they became as close as two people can be. But when they crossed a forbidden line, there was no going back. Now, as an adult, coping with their father's furious rebuttal of Zach, Rachel sets herself the task of inventing a family history for her beloved. And so she brings to life his imagined ancestry--from a tavern-educated boxer in Dickensian times, to a Hussar at the Battle of Borodino during the Napoleonic Wars--even as their troubles in present-day Camden Town build to yet another point of no return. Cartwheeling through history, filled with art and science, fairy tales and folk songs, tsars and foundlings, epic battles in the prize ring and on the Eastern Front, and characters that take over our hearts, Be My Wolff is riveting--wondrous, funny and tragic and of astonishing imagination and beauty.From the Hardcover edition.
Home and Away: Writing The Beautiful Game
by Karl Ove Knausgaard Fredrik EkelundFrom the always astonishing Karl Ove Knausgaard--a brilliantly unusual book to delight both reading sports fans and the literary world. Bridging the two worlds of soccer and great writing, in the tradition of Lewis's Moneyball, Hornby's Fever Pitch or Buford's Among the Thugs, Knausgaard provides us with a die-hard fan's impassioned, personal, quirky, entertaining musings on that fundamental relationship between sports and life.I remember every single World Cup starting with the one in 1978, what I was doing, how I was living, who I was, and the world in which it took place. But I have always just watched them on TV, never in reality, and I want it to stay that way--so that´s the starting point for this book, isn't it? Life against death, yes against no, Brazil against Argentina. Karl Ove is sitting at home in Sweden watching the World Cup on TV (and falling asleep), with his wife, four small children and the dog; his good pal Fredrik is away in Brazil, playing beautiful football on the beach and watching the match. In this lively, argumentative, unique long-form email correspondence between them, written back and forth across the world, what begins as musings on the famous 2014 World Cup becomes (naturally) an exploration of the essential questions of life, with soccer as the catalyst for an inspiringly entertaining exchange of thoughts and ideas encompassing everything from the elusive nature of personal happiness, competitiveness, politics, insider knowledge about international football, art and literature, all rivetingly dissected with brilliance, verve and humour.
Son of a Trickster
by Eden RobinsonWith striking originality and precision, Eden Robinson, the Giller-shortlisted author of the classic Monkey Beach and winner of the Writers’ Trust Engel/Findley Award, blends humour with heartbreak in this compelling coming-of-age novel. Everyday teen existence meets indigenous beliefs, crazy family dynamics, and cannibalistic river otter . . . The exciting first novel in her trickster trilogy.Everyone knows a guy like Jared: the burnout kid in high school who sells weed cookies and has a scary mom who's often wasted and wielding some kind of weapon. Jared does smoke and drink too much, and he does make the best cookies in town, and his mom is a mess, but he's also a kid who has an immense capacity for compassion and an impulse to watch over people more than twice his age, and he can't rely on anyone for consistent love and support, except for his flatulent pit bull, Baby Killer (he calls her Baby)--and now she's dead. Jared can't count on his mom to stay sober and stick around to take care of him. He can't rely on his dad to pay the bills and support his new wife and step-daughter. Jared is only sixteen but feels like he is the one who must stabilize his family's life, even look out for his elderly neighbours. But he struggles to keep everything afloat...and sometimes he blacks out. And he puzzles over why his maternal grandmother has never liked him, why she says he's the son of a trickster, that he isn't human. Mind you, ravens speak to him--even when he's not stoned. You think you know Jared, but you don't.
The Spawning Grounds
by Gail Anderson-DargatzThe long-awaited new novel by the two-time Giller-shortlisted author is full of the qualities Gail Anderson-Dargatz's fans love: it's an intimate family saga rooted in the Thompson-Shuswap region of British Columbia, and saturated with the history of the place. A bold new story that bridges Native and white cultures across a bend in a river where the salmon run.On one side of the river is a ranch once owned by Eugene Robertson, who came in the gold rush around 1860, and stayed on as a homesteader. On the other side is a Shuswap community that has its own tangled history with the river--and the whites. At the heart of the novel are Hannah and Brandon Robertson, teenagers who have been raised by their grandfather after they lost their mother. As the novel opens, the river is dying, its flow reduced to a trickle, and Hannah is carrying salmon past the choke point to the spawning grounds while her childhood best friend, Alex, leads a Native protest against the development further threatening the river. When drowning nearly claims the lives of both Hannah's grandfather and her little brother, their world is thrown into chaos. Hannah, Alex, and most especially Brandon come to doubt their own reality as they are pulled deep into Brandon's numinous visions, which summon the myths of Shuswap culture and tragic family stories of the past. The novel hovers beautifully in the fluid boundary between past and present, between the ordinary world and the world of the spirit, all disordered by the human and environmental crises that have knit the white and Native worlds together in love, and hate, and tragedy for 150 years. Can Hannah and her brother, and Alex, find a way forward that will neither destroy the river nor themselves?
Arcadia: A novel
by Iain PearsIn a major suspense novel set to surpass the internationally bestselling An Instance of the Fingerpost comes a dazzling story of youth, love and murderous ambition--a novel of time travel spanning three beautifully detailed worlds: the intellectual spires of Oxford in 1960, an ancient Arcadian world, and a dystopian future.In 1960, Henry Lytten is an Oxford don who dabbles in espionage and fiction writing. Rosie Wilson is the quick-witted, curious 15-year-old girl who feeds Professor Lytten's cat. Several hundred years in the future, living in a dystopian society on the Isle of Mull, is Angela Meerson--a brilliant psychomathematician who has discovered the world-changing potential of a powerful new machine. Somewhere, sometime, is Jay--a scholar's apprentice in an idyllic, pastoral land. Who these people really are, and how their stories come together, will be revealed in Iain Pears's fascinating great puzzle of a novel.
What the Body Remembers
by Shauna Singh BaldwinIntroducing an eloquent, sensual new Canadian voice that rings out in a first novel that is exquisitely rich and stunningly original.Roop is a sixteen-year-old village girl in the Punjab region of undivided India in 1937 whose family is respectable but poor -- her father is deep in debt and her mother is dead. Innocent and lovely, yet afraid she may not marry well, she is elated when she learns she is to become the second wife of a wealthy Sikh landowner, Sardarji, whose first wife, Satya, has failed to bear him any children. Roop trusts that the strong-willed Satya will treat her as a sister, but their relationship becomes far more ominous and complicated than expected.Roop's tale draws the reader immediately into her world, making the exotic familiar and the family's story startlingly universal, but What the Body Remembers is also very much Satya's story. She is mortified and angry when Sardarji takes Roop for a wife, a woman whose low status Satya takes as an affront to her position, and she adopts desperate measures to maintain her place in society and in her husband's heart. Yet it is also Sardarji's story, as the India he knows and understands -- the temples, cities, villages and countryside, all so vividly evoked -- begins to change. The escalating tensions in his personal life reflect those between Hindu and Muslim that lead to the cleaving of India and trap the Sikhs in a horrifying middle ground.Deeply imbued with the languages, customs and layered history of colonial India, What the Body Remembers is an absolute triumph of storytelling. Never before has a novel of love and partition been told from the point of view of the Sikh minority, never before through Sikh women's eyes. This is a novel to read, treasure and admire that, like its two compelling heroines, resists all efforts to be put aside.
What the Body Remembers
by Shauna Singh BaldwinIt's 1937, and with her father in debt, motherless sixteen year old Roop learns she is to become the second wife of Sardarji, a wealthy Sikh landowner whose first wife, Satya, has failed to bear him a child. Roop believes that the strong willed Satya will treat her as a sister, but their relationship swiftly becomes ominous and complicated. What the Body Remembers is also Satya's story. Mortified when Sardarji marries Roop, Satya resorts to desperate measures to maintain her place in society and her husband's heart. Sardarji himself struggles as the India he knows begins to change when separatist tensions between Hindus and Muslims trap the Sikhs in a horrifying middle ground and the departing British prepare to divide the land into India and Pakistan.
At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails
by Sarah BakewellGreat philosophy meets powerful biography in this entertaining and immensely readable portrait of mid-20th century Paris and the fascinating characters of Sartre, de Beauvoir, Camus, and their circle, who loved and hated, drank and debated with each other--and forever changed the way we think about thinking.<P><P> At the Existentialist Café is a thrilling look at the famous group of post-war thinkers who became known as the Existentialists: Sartre, de Beauvoir, Camus, Heidegger, and their circle. Starting with Paris after the devastation of the Second World War, Sarah Bakewell (winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for her previous book) takes us inside the passionate debates and equally passionate lives of these brilliant, if flawed, characters. Here is a wonderful, vibrant look at the social, artistic and political currents that shaped the existentialist movement--a mode of thinking and being that, as Bakewell vividly shows, deeply affects us today. <P> Never has the story of this influential group, and especially that of the legendary relationship between Sartre and de Beauvoir, been told with such verve and sweep, weaving personal life with social upheaval and the universal quest for understanding.