Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien

September 11, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – Kindle edition. W.W. Norton & Company, 2016. 474 pgs. Purchased.  Marie’s father committed suicide in Hong Kong in the days after the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre — duel sins referred to only in hushed tones. Ten-year-old Marie is unsure how she is supposed to grieve for the father than abandoned her and her mother back in Vancouver months before the protests were brutally ended. And her distance from mainland China leaves her unsure as to why her father […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Asia, Awards and Prizes, Canada, China, Chunkster, Fiction, Giller Prize, North America, ReadDiverse, Women's Prize • Tags: Madeleine Thien

The Wonder by Emma Donoghue

March 15, 2017 by Christina

Fiction – print. Little, Brown and Company, 2016. 291 pgs. Library copy. Seven years after the Irish potato famine of 1845 and 1852, a Nightingale-trained English nurse by the name of Lib Wright is employed by an Irish town council to investigate the claim that an eleven-year-old resident by the name Anna O’Donnell has existed some four months without consuming any food. As deeply pious Catholics, Anna, her parents, and her cousin-turned-maid believe the young girl’s faith in God is sustaining her life, and the […]

Categories: 2017 Reads, Book Club, Europe, Fiction, Giller Prize, Ireland, Religion • Tags: Emma Donoghue

The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway

March 7, 2016 by Christina

Fiction — audiobook. Read by Gareth Armstrong. Naxos Audiobooks, 2010. Originally published 2008. 5 hours, 23 minutes. Library copy. Set at the beginning of what would become a nearly four-year long siege of the city, four individuals are attempting to navigate the complex jungle that Sarajevo has become. A man named Kenan has left his wife and child to collect water from a clean, working source on the other side of the city while another man, Dragan, has left the safety […]

Categories: 2016 Reads, Audiobook, Balkans, Book Club, Europe, Fiction, Giller Prize • Tags: Gareth Armstrong, Steven Galloway

Fifteen Dogs by André Alexis

December 8, 2015 by Christina

Fiction — print. Coach House Books, 2015. 171 pgs. Library copy. In this imaginative, little book, the Greek gods Hermes and Apollo visit a dog kennel near Toronto and gift the fifteen dogs there with consciousness. The two have wagered a bet over whether or not intelligence — or, maybe more appropriately,  awareness of one’s place in society outside the insular pack — makes humans happier than other beings. If one of these fifteen dogs gifted with human intelligence dies […]

Categories: 2015 Reads, Animals, Canada, Fiction, Giller Prize, North America • Tags: André Alexis

Tell by Frances Itani

January 29, 2015 by Christina

Fiction — print. Black Cat, 2014. 321 pgs. Purchased. Shortlisted for the 2014 Giller Prize, Itani’s novel is set in a small Canadian village named Deseronto in Ontario following the Great War and reintroduces readers to the characters first presented in her 2003 novel, Deafening. That novel, apparently, focused on a deaf woman named Grania and her sister Tress (I haven’t read the novel); this novel focuses on Tress’ partner, Kenan, and the impact his post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD, or […]

Categories: 2015 Reads, Canada, Fiction, Giller Prize, North America • Tags: Frances Itani

All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews

December 29, 2014 by Christina

Fiction — print. McSweeney’s, 2014. 330 pgs. Library copy. Raised in a Mennonite household haunted by remembers of religious persecution in Russia, Elfrieda and Yolandi are expected to conform to particular expectations for their life and live in a community where people gossip and whisper about the nonconformists. Elfrieda, known as Elf to her family, is a progeny at the piano offering her an opportunity to escape from the insular community and her sister, known as Yoli, an example of […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Canada, Fiction, Giller Prize, North America • Tags: Miriam Toews

The Betrayers by David Bezmozgis

November 7, 2014 by Christina

Fiction — print. Little, Brown and Company, 2014. 227 pgs. Library copy. Over a twenty-four period, Baruch Kotler watches his affair become front page news of every newspaper in Israel after he refuses to change his stance on the West Bank settlements, flies to the Crimea with his young mistress Leora, and confronts Tankilevich, the man who denounced him to the KGB as a Zionist interloper almost forty years ago. Not only does Kotler have to confront the man who […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Europe, Fiction, Giller Prize, Israel/Palestine, Middle East • Tags: David Bezmozgis

The Girl Who Was Saturday Night by Heather O’Neill

October 16, 2014 by Christina

Fiction — print. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014. 416 pgs. Library copy. Set against the backdrop of the 1995 Quebec referendum for national sovereignty, O’Neill’s novel introduces readers to the Tremblay family, a colorful cast of characters whose identities are entwined with the independence movement by a documentary produced about their lives during the first referendum in 1980. Told through the eyes of nineteen-year-old Nouschka, the novel follows her as she returns to school after dropping out at sixteen with her twin […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Canada, Fiction, Giller Prize, North America • Tags: Heather O’Neill

American Innovations by Rivka Galchen

October 10, 2014 by Christina

Fiction — print. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014. 175 pgs. Library copy. Galchen’s collection includes ten short stories and nearly all of them are written in first-person making it difficult to determine how distinct these stories are supposed to be from one another. Even so, I found myself warming to nearly every rendition of ‘I’ and greatly enjoying the magical realism injected into many of the stories. The book begins with “The Lost Order” in which the narrator is harassed […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Fiction, Giller Prize, New York, North America, Short Stories, United States • Tags: Rivka Galchen

Us Conductors by Sean Michaels

October 6, 2014 by Christina

Fiction — print. Tin House Books, 2014. 464 pgs. Library copy. Based on the subtitle — “In which I seek the heart of Clara Rockmore, my one true love, finest theremin player the world will ever know” — alone, I expected to read a novel feature a so-called “nice guy” who engages in the rather hipster pastime of listening to the music of an obscure instrument. Imagine my surprise when I reached the fifteenth page and learned the novel is, […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Chunkster, Europe, Fiction, Giller Prize, New York, North America, Russia, United States • Tags: Sean Michaels

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood

November 16, 2010 by Christina

Fiction — print. Anchor Books, 1997. Originally published 1996. 468 pgs. Received from PaperBackSwap. Based on a real Canadian murder (allegedly) committed by Grace Marks in 1843, Atwood’s novel examines the murders in a fictional manner and explores the burgeoning field of mental illness during that time. The last couple of books I’ve read have been pretty bad, and I’m so glad that I decided to start Atwood’s novel because it’s just fantastic. Overall, the novel is very well-written with […]

Categories: 2010 Reads, AP Literature, Canada, Chunkster, Fiction, Giller Prize, North America • Tags: Margaret Atwood