Literary

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 […]

The Push Man and other storiesYoshihiro TatsumiDrawn & QuarterlyFirst published in Japan nearly 40 years ago, the short stories in The Push Man are Tatsumi’s examinations of the dark, repressed natures of modern man. Disturbing yet very beautiful, these vignettes of late 1960s Japan have more in common with the modern alternative comics of Daniel […]

Carry Me DownMJ HylandHarperCollinsMJ Hyland’s shortlisted Booker Prize novel avoids being shelved in the overpopulated “poor, poor Irish family” category, thanks to its narrator. Set in 1970s rural Ireland, 11-year-old John Egan has a special problem: He almost tips six-feet-tall, which upsets his mother terribly and results in many concerned trips to the doctor and […]

Pride of BaghdadBrian K. VaughanDC/VertigoWriter Brian K. Vaughan is a fan favourite, and his ongoing West Wing-with-superhero story Ex Machina has been making these kinds of lists since its debut a couple of years ago. This hardcover original with art from Nino Henrichon takes its inspiration from actual events: In April 2003, a pride of […]

The Forty NinersAlan Moore and Gene HaAmerica’s Best ComicsThe long-awaited prequel to Alan Moore (Watchmen, From Hell), Gene Ha and Zander Cannon’s hit superhero-cop drama Top Ten. From the perspective of new arrival Jetlad (Top Ten’s Captain Traynor), we see the formative years of Neopolis, the city inhabited entirely by super-powered beings. Ha handled the […]