Whitney Moran

DISCLAIMER: Do not read this book in public because you’ll look insane. Not just because you’re reading a book with the weirdest title ever, but you’ll be laughing so hard people will stare at you and clear their throats passive aggressively. The master storyteller and humourist returns with a new collection that never disappoints. From […]

It’s big news when an avid promoter of Atlantic Canadian fiction releases his sophomore novel. Chad Pelley, who runs the CanLit site Salty Ink, is very aware of the literary landscape in which his book has landed. Every Little Thing indulges in the expected familial tragedy abated with humour and community that has characterized much […]

In this fast-paced, nihilistic American short story collection, Adam Levin explores 10 disturbingly imaginable worlds with a sort of cartoonish realism I’ve never before encountered. We begin with “Frankwittgenstein,” a hilarious, non-stop social commentary about a family whose patriarch becomes obsessed with curing preadolescent anorexia and fritters away his life (and family’s money) fashioning an […]

Imagine your life punctuated by strange talismans—taxidermy, a narwhal’s tooth— illustrated by forgotten items of clothing—an old cardigan, a slip—set in motion by an antique opal found on the ground. Imagine your life in footnotes. Now imagine you are young and sent to live in Paris against your will. Imagine you get there and do […]

“The desire for facts and the need for fiction are often interchangeable….” And that is exactly the attitude Sarah Dearling takes in her newest novel. I have difficulty calling it a novel because the ever-tenuous genre does not quite apply. Half-memoir, half-fiction, The Art of Sufficient Conclusions follows a young, troubled teacher who stands in […]

With the most ambitious format of any book I’ve read this year, The Dinner introduces us to two couples that sit through a five-course dinner— from apertif to digestif—saying everything to each other but what they should. Translated from the Dutch, this bestselling, award-winning novel —much like the dinner itself—took a while to get going. […]

“But even one letter changes a meaning entirely.” With delicately biting prose, Kathleen Alcott’s first novel is anything but rookie material. It is a love story, but by no means a simple one. Ida meets Jackson and James in childhood, and experiences an instant bond. The three form a family unit outside of their broken […]

“I am the sexiest side of beef in the slaughterhouse of desire.” This is what model Richard Trench tells himself on the runway to pump himself up. Narrating his story as a torso in the trunk of a car, Trench sets the novel up as a sort of grotesque superfan murder mystery. We do find […]

“The closet is the dark room where her things will mingle with his things.” In his newest novel, Stephen Marche digs himself into the trenches of adultery and deconstructs the subversive activity down to the very word (he suggests “adolescentry” might be a suitable alternative), taking a simple plot and giving it substantial weight through […]