Description: This is magic realism Canadian style. Gabriel Garcia Marquez meets Raymond Chandler, in Toronto. What do I mean? The Ticking Heart is a story about the inevitable and the inescapable. For the protagonist Charlie, the inevitable and inescapable truth is that his marriage is over and he needs to get on with it. To force his hand (or rather his heart), the universe intervenes by “poof” and Charlie finds himself in Metamorphia, a place where nothing is as it seems. Charlie is a private detective, summoned by an ex-girlfriend, to resolve the unpleasant matter of where her beloved has hidden his heart. There’s a cyclops, a man with twigs for arms, and a jail that you put yourself into voluntarily. I can’t explain the crazy, but this is a fun read.

Poof is how people get in and out of Metamorphia. For Charlie, the clock is ticking. His kids have karate, and the ex-girlfriend has replace his heart with a ticking bomb. Falling in and out of love is tricky business!

Who is it for? Fans of film noir, scifi, and magic realism. If you’re a fan of Kaufman and his previous works then no doubt you have already read this one. It’s quirky, cute and at its heart a fable about what it means to love.

Favourite moment: Chapter 16: Return of the Cyclops

“It was raining sheet music when Charlie came out of the Library of Blank Pages. Crisp white scores, lined with staffs and dotted with notes, fell through the air. Each page struck a note as it hit the ground, producing random plunks, a Cage-like cat pacing the length of a piano. Charlie didn’t try to figure out what it mean. He allowed himself to become engrossed in the beauty of it. That is why he didn’t notice how quickly the Cyclops was approaching him.”

Description: This novel reads like a series of short stories linked together. Each are fairy-tale romances with strange heroines and a bit of magic. The general premise is that celebrated Mr. Fox can’t stop thinking about his muse, so much so that she actually comes to life, much to the chagrin of his wife Daphne. The characters in the stories often are named Mr. Fox, Mary Foxe, and Daphne, but they are never the same people in the same story.

Who is it for? If you liked The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, this has some of the mystery and magic, and the nonlinear narrative. I found it odd in a lovely way.

Favourite moment: When Daphne thinks Mr. Fox is cheating on her but then comes face to face with Mary. Daphne knows Mary is not real but still takes her out to dinner.

Description: The book blurbs reference Philip Roth and John Updike but to me this is Bonfire of the Vanities meets The Great Gatsby. Regardless, it’s a remarkable debut novel by Taffy Brodesser-Akner and has the feel of an amazing personal account with embellishment.

Toby Fleishman is a well-respected New York doctor earning $285K. But his wife Rachel is the true breadwinner and the more ambitious partner. She wants (and has) the house in the Hampton’s, she runs a successful talent agency, she works out at the right yoga gyms with the right people, but it’s never enough. She’s driven to achieve more and more. She puts her career above her family and Toby is the working dad who leaves on time to pick up the kids, who makes the dinners, and is on hand for homework and parental duties like fundraisers and parent conferences.

The Fleishman’s are a modern-day family and Rachel battles sexism in her job, friend circle, and family. She’s the absentee parent who loves her children but feels wrecked by them. The Fleishman’s whole world really goes topsy turvy though when Rachel disappears. She drops the kids off unexpectedly with Toby then vanishes. She’s 3 weeks late picking up the kids, and by her standards that’s late.

Brodesser-Akner structures this novel in a fascinating way where we have Toby’s point of view for 3/4 of the novel and Rachel’s at the end. The tale is narrated by Elizabeth, a mutual friend (well mostly Toby’s friend from university), and through her perspective we see a big unraveling of the structure of marriage, the competitive nature of New Yorkers, and feminism and in the workplace.

Perfect read for fans of Tom Wolfe, JD Salinger, or Edith Wharton. I love the writing. This is a classic like Bonfire of the Vanities (Tom Wolfe) or The Great Gatsby in its shrewd observations of this moment in time. From afar, it looks like a perfect portrait of New York society and a careful re-construction of the pain and endless questions prompted by divorce. Brodesser-Akner dutifully probes the behaviour and psychology of upper-class New Yorkers in the style of long-form magazine prose.

Michael Ondaatje’s 8th novel is absolutely spellbinding. I loved every bit of this story about a young man piecing together his family history.

Description: Fourteen-year-old Nathaniel and his sister, Rachel, are unexpectedly abandoned by their parents and left in the care of a gentle, but strange man who they call The Moth. Things are not totally on the up and up but it’s post-war London and everything is in flux.

The two kids are sent to boarding school, from which they quickly escape. The Moth organizes for them to continue school but live in the family home. While home, they are introduced to a motley crew of men and women who all have strange or mysterious careers.

A dozen years later, with fading romances and petty crime sprees, Nathaniel starts piecing it all together.

This is the story of an absent mother and the havoc it causes for her children. But it’s melancholic rather than tragic. And Ondaatje beautifully pulls back layer upon layer of emotion. It’s sentimental and sad but also invigorating.

Favourite Moment: Nathaniel starts doing night runs with the Darter on the Thames. The Darter is legally importing greyhounds.

…it was our nights on the mussel boat I loved. The boat, originally a sailing kotter, had now been equipped with a modern diesel. The Darter was borrowing it from “a respected dockland merchant,” who needed it only three days a week; unless, he warned us, a royal wedding was suddenly announced, which would mean the hurried importation of cheap crockery with a royal image fired up and shipped from some satanic mill in Le Havre. In that event the transportation of dogs would have to be postponed.

The Darter is quite an influential figure for Nathaniel. He’s a lady’s man, loves a boat, is mildly nefarious, and above all has his eye out for Nathaniel and Rachel.

Warlight is perfect for anyone who wants a satisfying read. If you liked All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, you’ll like this too. Or if you’re a fan of post-war London novels, a fan of Ondaatje, Canadian writers, then give this a read.

Description: Where’d You Go Bernadette meets The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. Gail Honeyman’s debut novel is satisfyingly funny. It has the deadpan humour of Where’d You Go Bernadette coming from a woman who does not give a flip. And it has the socially awkward protagonist solving a low-level mystery, reminiscent of The Curious Incident.

I held off on reading this novel because it had so much praise when it came out and then became a Reese’s Book Club pick. But I needn’t have worried. This book lives up to the hype.

Eleanor Oliphant struggles with social skills and as a result sticks to herself. She’s awkward. Loves a routine and a crossword. Miss Oliphant does not have any friends, nor does she welcome them. Her only friend is Polly the plant. Her only visitor is a social worker. Eleanor has been a ward of the state since she was a child and there’s the edge of a mystery through the novel about what exactly created these conditions.

One day she falls in love with a musician and suddenly Eleanor is in make-over fever. Around the same time, she meets Raymond, the bumbling IT guy from the office. Despite Eleanor’s lack of social graces, Raymond finds her funny. His bighearted nature also means Eleanor now has a friend, whether she wants one or not.

Favourite Moment: All of them. Eleanor leads a fairly sheltered life and through the novel ends up having all sorts of normal encounters that she’s never had before, or that she’s never considered having. In the midst of a makeover moment, she ends up at the make-up counter getting a smokey eye. Here’s the conversation with the technician.

“Well,” she said, “what do you think?”

“I look like a small Madagascan primate, or perhaps a North American raccoon,” I said. “It’s charming!”

She laughed so much she had to cross her legs, and she shooed me down from the chair and toward the door.

“I’m supposed to try and sell you the products and brushes,” she said. “If you want any, come back tomorrow and ask for Irene!”

I nodded, waved good-bye. Whoever Irene was, there was literally more chance of me purchasing weapons-grade plutonium from her.”

Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine is the perfect read for anyone who loved The Rosie Project, Where’d You Go Bernadette, or The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. This is a fun, quirky read about an oddball woman who works in an office and otherwise sticks to herself, and her routine of frozen pizza and lots of vodka. Until that all changes.