Literary

“One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time,” Sue Goyette offers up this quote by André Gide as a good summary of the feelings behind her latest collection, aptly titled Ocean (Gaspereau Press). Goyette readily states that she would never have written Ocean if […]

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 […]

Libby Thorne, your average teen, awakes in the hospital with no memory of how she got there. She soon discovers her role in an accident that has left a victim critically injured. Her turmoil connected to being criminally charged blends with her confusion related to boys, drinking and out-of-character decisions leading up to the accident. […]

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 […]

Three things consistently make me cry with joy: Beyoncé’s “Halo,” when Christian the lion remembers his human friends and Andrew Kaufman. Kaufman’s novels are so clever and fun, I don’t realize how deeply his characters’ emotions resonate with me until I’m welling up. Born Weird is an expertly crafted modern fairytale about the emotions of […]

“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 […]

Let’s call a spade a spade: I’m a literature snob. It is a rarity for me to pick up the book that “everyone is reading,” but in this case, I’m infinitely glad I did. From their once-perfect marriage, Amy and Nick fall into a mutual loathing. On their fifth wedding anniversary she disappears, and he’s […]

Juliann Garey’s disciplined literary realism navigates a murky, disruptive plot detouring through Rome, Bangkok, Israel, Kampala, Nairobi and Santiago in debut novel Too Bright to Hear Too Loud to See. Greyson Todd, a high-powered Hollywood studio executive hiding his bipolar disorder for years, tires of living the lie. Unhinged, Todd spontaneously abandons saintly suburban wife […]

“NSCAD is not just a brand and is not a business. We are a community not a corporation. We require our board and administration to have the skill and the fervour to not only adequately represent NSCAD, but also to fight for it.” These are some of the strong words laid out in the Manifesto […]