Literary

“It is at the edge of a petal that love waits.” So says the narrator of Rosie Chard’s sophomore novel. The former landscape architect brings her encyclopedic knowledge of plant life to bear in this dark domestic tale of a young woman, Edith Stoker, whose family is suffocating her. Set in 1969 East Midlands, UK, […]

Donna Tartt releases a book about every 10 years. The Goldfinch began gestating around 1993, while the author was visiting Amsterdam, was researched largely in a New York library and further inspired by a trip to Las Vegas. So it’s no surprise that the novel treats all three places with such detail they become surrogate […]

Donna Tartt releases a book about every 10 years. The Goldfinch began gestating around 1993, while the author was visiting Amsterdam, was researched largely in a New York library and further inspired by a trip to Las Vegas. So it’s no surprise that the novel treats all three places with such detail they become surrogate […]

After I’m Gone is a story of secrets that don’t stay buried. Felix Brewer jumped bail before his trial in 1976 and 10 years later his mistress Julie disappears and is assumed to have joined him–until her dead body is found. The book alternates between Sandy, a widower and retired detective working the cold case, […]

Woman Rebel is a comic book biography of Margaret Sanger, turn-of-the century birth control proponent and woman’s right trailblazer. A large part of the book’s charm comes from the cartoonish art style: It looks like a Little Lulu strip, if Lulu grew up and traded in pranks for activism. The book is an interesting look […]

The Empty Room covers a day in the life of alcoholic Colleen Kerrigan— and it’s not a good day. The haunting novel begins with a promise not to drink, but of course it doesn’t last long, especially after a confrontation at work. Filled with vivid description, Davis’ writing is honest, desperate and raw, resulting in […]

Remember in undergrad when you worked on the school newspaper? Doesn’t matter. When you read this, you’ll relive those days whether you lived them in the first place or not—that’s how familiar Michael Hingston’s The Dilettantes, set on the campus of Simon Fraser, feels. It’s a funny, fast read and its portrait of university life […]

Although the gift-giving “season” has again come to an end, keep Well-Read Women in your back pocket—literally, although it’s rather sizeable, or figuratively, if you’re ever in need of a coveted object for the biblio-femme in your life. Here, a collection of literary “heroines” is depicted in vibrant watercolour, portrayed with as much mystery, sensuality, […]

If you’ve read Zailckas’ first book, the non-fiction title Smashed, an exploration exploring the author’s lost, drunken, teen years, it might not come as a surprise that the characters in her first novel Mother, Mother, are so incredibly, indelibly fucked up. The story follows, from varying third-person perspectives, the unstable saga of the Hurst family. […]

“You’re simply two people groping to find meaning when there’s little to none.” Sadly, this quote from Stacey May Fowles’ second novel aptly sums up my feelings on Infidelity. As a fan of Fear of Fighting (2008), I admit my expectations were high, and while Fowles does manage to cover meaningful terrain—about the lengths people […]