Canada Day seems like a long time ago. I’ve tried to be steadfast in posting the answers to the quiz, but the day job is getting in the way. Read the original quiz

Here’s the skinny:

1. Arnason
“Jerry was fifty years old when his daughters denounced him, as he had always known they would.” David Arnason, King Jerry

[This is a great satire of King Lear. In some ways the writing reminds me of David Lodge, perhaps that is just because the setting is a university campus, but I don’t think so. Arnason is a fantastic storyteller. His collections of short stories are my favourites, If Pigs Could Fly and Fifty Stories and a Piece of Advice.]

2. Brand
“Marie Ursule woke up this morning knowing what morning it was and that it might be her last.” Dionne Brand, at the full and change of the moon, Full post

3. Davies
“My lifelong involvement with Mrs Dempster began at 5:58 oíclock p.m. on 27 December 1908, at which time I was ten years and seven months old.” Robertson Davies, Fifth Business, Full post

4. Findley
“All night long, Hooker Winslowís eyes were open.” Timothy Findley, The Last of the Crazy People, Full post

5. Kroetsch
“The pizza man.”
Robert Kroetsch, The Puppeteer
[A great novel. Like Fifth Business, the master of magicians wrecks havoc with the reader’s sense of truth. Crazy characters, murder, madness, what else could you ask for?]

6. MacLennan
“Northwest of Montreal, through a valley always in sight of the low mountains of the Laurentian Shield, the Ottawa River flows out of Protestant Ontario into Catholic Quebec.” Hugh MacLennan, Two Solitudes

[This is a sad book for me. First published in 1945, MacLennan’s novel deals with the events of the First World War to the Second, in particular the drafting of French Canadians. Some similar themes as The English Patient: self-realization, betrayal, national identity and social conflict.]

7. MacLeod
“‘Weíll just have to sell him,’ I remember my mother saying with finality.” Alistair MacLeod, The Lost Salt Gift of Blood, ìIn the Fallî
[MacLeod’s collection of short stories, The Lost Salt Gift of Blood, is one of my all-time favourite collections. The stories are little windows on a big world. They seem to be self-contained worlds, but I think about these stories long after I’ve closed the book. MacLeod is a natural storyteller and you can hear his voice, the cadence of it, in the writing.]

8. Ondaatje
“She stands up in the garden where she has been working and looks into the distance.” Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient, Full post

9. Purdy
“He was going into the house through the woodshed when he heard his name mentioned.” Al Purdy, A Splinter in the Heart
[Al Purdy is best known for his poetry, but this is his only novel. It is set in the town of Trenton, which lies in the shadow of a dynamite factory, and well, guess the rest.]

10. Schoemperlen
“Looking back on it now, I can see there were signs.” Diane Schoemperlen, Our Lady of the Lost and Found, Full post

11. Tefs
“Hank Peterson went into the bedroom of his house one Friday morning about 6:30, carrying a shotgun, and when he came out the lives of everyone in Red Rock had changed forever.” Wayne Tefs, Red Rock
[Wayne Tefs is a great writer. Red Rock is a mystery set in a small mining town. Literary mystery I suppose. I really liked it, and I don’t often read mysteries.]

12. Winter
“Lydia leans back to laugh at something Wilf Jardine says.” Michael Winter, This All Happened, Full post