Literary

The WreckageMichael CrummeyThe Wreckage is a gorgeous novel set sometimes in a Newfoundland outport, sometimes in the city, and sometimes in a World War Two prisoner-of-war camp in Japan. Michael Crummey writes beautiful sentences of the sort that make other writers wonder why they bother. The book is loosely based on bits of Crummey’s family […]

The Fate of The ArtistEddie CampbellFirst SecondAs a memoirist, Eddie Campbell could be described as willfully obscuring. His minimalist artwork on Alan Moore’s titanic Jack the Ripper tome From Hell tended to reveal truths in the darkness, whereas his Alec series (the titular hero a character standing in for the author), though also based on […]

Teenagers from MarsRick Spears and Rob GGigantic Graphic NovelsThe independent comic series and cult favourite that launched the careers of Rick Spears and Rob G is collected in one volume. Set in the uptight suburban town of Mars, amateur comic artist Macon finds himself fighting for his freedom and his art alongside his punk girlfriend […]

A Year of Magical ThinkingJoan DidionJoan Didion had an annus horribilis to rival Queen Elizabeth’s that time. First, a few days before Christmas, her only child, 33-year-old Quintana fell seriously ill, was hospitalized and put into an induced coma. Then, the night before New Year’s Eve, her husband died of a massive heart attack while […]

Fun Home: A Family TragicomicAlison BechdelHoughton MifflinCartoonist Alison Bechdel of Dykes to Watch Out For fame wrote and illustrated this story, an autobiographical account of the relationship between a girl and her father. The memoir of Bechdel’s childhood in Pennsylvania recalls, jumping through a fractured chronology, her burgeoning homosexuality and her parent’s repression. He taught […]

The Goon: Fancy Pants EditionEric PowellDark Horse ComicsEric Powell’s beautifully crafted horror-comedy stories about a thug named Goon get the treatment they deserve in this Fancy Pants hardcover edition. The Goon is not your everyday thug: Not only does he have to worry about collecting for his protection racket, he’s also the first line of […]

Airstream Land YachtKen BabstockAnansiConsidered one of the finest young poets in Canada today, Ken Babstock is the ideal re-entry for anyone who abandoned poetry in high school. Funny, contemporary and smart, Babstock delighted the crowds at the Halifax International Writers’ Festival when he read with the charming American poet Mark Strand. Babstock’s language is so […]

Lost GirlsAlan MooreTop ShelfYears in the making, here is another Alan Moore-penned, shelf-splintering hardcover volume that every self-respecting (and self-disrespecting) comic fan must own. With the soft, colourful and ornate drawings of Melinda Gebbie, Moore takes recognizable fictional characters—as he did in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen—Alice from Alice in Wonderland, Wendy from Peter Pan […]

The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of ZionWill EisnerWW Norton and CompanyFinished a month before his death earlier this year, comics legend Will Eisner’s heavily researched story about the origins of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a fitting final work for the man who led the way […]

The Birth HouseAmi McKayKnoft CanadaJust like her plucky protagonist, the midwife-in-training Dora Rare, Ami McKay is one of those characters you root for—not that she needs your help. McKay’s first novel, set in rural World War I-era Scots Bay, Nova Scotia, planted itself firmly on all the bestseller lists this year, found UK and US […]

Louis Riel: A Comic-Strip BiographyChester BrownDrawn & QuarterlyLet’s face it, Canadian history is pretty dull. Once you take away the fur traders, Hudson’s Bay Company and the Plains of Abraham, what are you left with? Louis Riel, of course, our only real outlaw. Chester Brown revisits a familiar tale in simple six-panel, black & white […]