Description: Set in Moscow, 1921, Tatiana and Sasha meet as two young intellectuals in a bookstore. The bookstore is bombed that night and as they run away, hand in hand, it’s the start of their romance. This is a witty and tender book about growing up, losing trust in the system, the bureaucracy of adulthood in an ever-changing Communist regime, and all the small betrayals between mentors, friends, and lovers. These are unforgettable characters who alternate between being wise and foolish. I loved it. In particular the story between Tatiana (a scientist) and Sasha (an artist) and how the idealism and contradictions of Russian politics affects where and how they live, what they believe, and how they grapple with those tensions.

• Shortlisted, 2017 Governor General’s Award for Fiction

Perfect Read for fans of Madeleine Thien’s Do Not Say We Have Nothing. If you like the slow unfolding of characters and situations, are interested in cultural revolutions or the formation of ideologies, especially through the lens of young minds, then this is the perfect read for you. It has a love story, some history of post-Revolutionary Russia, a cool look at the early scientific research done in brain science, and politics and art.

Favourite Moment: The whole book. The scene where Tatiana and Sasha meet is tender and quiet, despite the fact that a bomb just went off. The drinking and debauchery scenes in the artist studios are full of youthful spirit and the tensions of jostling for position. The strained quiet of the institute where Tatiana works, slicing and documenting brain structures, is creepily cool. It feels like every emotion is explored in a tentative and revealing way.

Quote: 1921
Before Lenin was dead and before my life had properly begun, I used to spend all my time in a bookstore down on Nikitskaya. I was barely a person then, just a girl, and then just a girl staring down the women I’d meet, wondering if their fate had to be mine. The bookstore had no sign. Either you knew where it was or you didn’t. The entrance was several steps below street level. To find it, you looked for the tobacco place next door because it had a glowing green lamp in its window. When the snow shrouded the entrance on winter afternoons, that blur of green was the only indication that you’d arrived. If you knew to look.

Uncertain Weights & Measures by Jocelyn Parr
Published by Goose Lane

Support an indie publisher and buy direct.

Description: A General Theory of Oblivion is an absolutely lovely little book about an agoraphobic woman who bricks herself into her Luandan apartment during civil unrest in Angola in the 70s. Ludo has been brought to Angola from Portugal to live with her sister and brother-in-law. On the eve of Angolan independence she bricks up the apartment door in an effort to stay safe from looters and thugs looking for money and jewels. Her sister and brother-in-law have gone out for the evening and never return. She doesn’t know what’s happened to them, only that she’s afraid, can’t speak the language, and hooligans are threatening to return. The crazy twist is that Ludo stays bricked in for 30 years, living off vegetables that she grows on the terrace and pigeons. This is a story that slowly unfolds, with each layer of the intertwining lives of the characters beautifully unwrapped. A lovingly crafted story about love and survival.

• Winner of the 2017 Dublin International Literary Award!
• Shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize 2016
• Shortlisted for the Three Percent Best Translated Book Award

Perfect Read for fans of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. This is a winding family tale with beautiful descriptive prose, and such elegance. Applause to the writer Jose Eduardo Agualusa and translator Daniel Hahn.

Favourite Moment: Ludo sacrifices a lot to stay hidden in her apartment, but there is a hilarious moment when the tenants below her house chickens on their balcony. Ludo fashions a noose and nonchalantly nabs the rooster, who doesn’t seem to give a flap and is still happily alive when released. This gives Ludo an idea that this doesn’t need to be a one-off adventure. She can raise chickens too, so she goes after a hen. The hen is far less enthused than the rooster and kicks up a fuss. It’s a funny and triumphant moment for this poor woman.

Although this is fiction, Ludovica Mano died in Luanda, at the Sagrada Esperanca clinic, in the early hours of October 5, 2010. She was eight-five years old. Sabalu Estevao Capitango gave Agualusa copies of ten notebooks in which Ludo had been writing her diary, in the first years of the twenty-eight during which she had shut herself away. In addition, Agualusa had access to the diaries that followed her release and to a huge collection of photographs taken of Ludo’s texts and charcoal pictures on the walls of her apartment. He’s used her diaries, poems, and reflections to reconstruct much of her first-hand account, albeit fictionalized for the novel.

A General Theory of Oblivion
by Jose Eduardo Agualusa
translated from the Portuguese by Daniel Hahn
Published by Archipelago Books

Description: Bestselling author Jessie Burton delivers! This novel weaves together two stories: one set in 1967 in London and the other in 1936 Spain, just before the Spanish civil war. Odelle Bastien is a new immigrant from the Caribbean and lands a job as a typist at the prestigious Skelton Institute of Art. Her boss Marjorie Quick is a bit like the boss in The Devil Wears Prada. Odelle’s boyfriend inherits a painting that is rumoured to be the work of a Spanish artist who thrilled the art market in the 1930s but then disappeared. The story running in parallel to Odelle’s is that of the painting’s creator. This is a great novel about women in art, and modern working women. Peggy Guggenheim makes a brief appearance as well.

Favourite Moment: The dialogue scenes between Odelle and her friend Cynth are really fun, but so is Odelle’s commentary and observations about her new country and workplace.

Quote: For nearly the whole of the first week the only person I spoke to was a girl called Pamela Rudge. Pamela was the receptionist, and she would always be there, reading the Express at her counter, elbows on teh wood, gum poppin gin her mouth before the big fellers showed and she threw it in the bin. With a hint of suffering, as if she’d been interrupted in a difficult activity, she would fold the newspaper like a piece of delicate lace and loop up at me. ‘Good morning, Adele,’ she’d say. Twenty-one years old, Pam Rudge was the latest in a long line of East-Enders, an immobile beehive lacquered to her head and enough black eyeliner to feed five pharaohs.

Description: Eden Robinson’s novel Son of a Trickster is a gritty, mess of a tale about that boy everyone knows from high school who was the almost-dropout, who sold weed on the side and had a scary mom you didn’t want to mess with. Jared. Jared is the bad example your mother warned you about. And yet even with the freaky mom, the guns and drugs, the dead beat dad, this kid manages to survive. He’s a good kid, despite it all. This is a novel about life lessons and unpredictable paths. Towards the end of the novel, Robinson veers off into magic realism but it all seems to work.

• Shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize

Perfect Read for those who liked Heather O’Neill’s Lullabies for Little Criminals. Fans of Lee Maracle and Thomas King will like this too. Imagine a venn diagram of Indigenous storytellers and Edgar Allen Poe.

Son of a Trickster by Eden Robinson
Published by Knopf Canada

And applause for an awesome cover!

Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz available from HarperCollins Canada

Description: This murder mystery is a story within a story. Susan Ryeland is Alan Conway’s editor. He’s submitted his recent manuscript but there’s a chapter missing and he’s turned up dead. As a reader you get Conway’s manuscript, plus the story of Susan trying to solve Alan’s murder.

The perfect read for BBC Mysteries fans. This mystery is Midsomer Murders and Foyle’s War meets House of Silk, all 3 of which are written by Horowitz.

Favourite Moment: Conway’s detective series is built around Atticus Pund is a Poiret-inspired figure. Atticus is as likeable as any of the great detectives in literature.

Description: Bellevue Square is a much lauded novel, but it wasn’t my cup of tea. The writing was interesting, but I didn’t care about the characters. As the protagonist Jean Mason goes off the rails so did my attention. But this is a novel I should have loved. I like psychological thrillers and mysteries. Jean works in a bookstore near Kensington Market and apparently has a doppelganger. She tries to seek out her lookalike by hanging around in Bellevue Square, where “Ingrid” has been spotted. But in the end she mostly meets drug addicts, scam artists, vagrants, and some locals who are no strangers to the nearby mental health services.

Here are a few of the accolades:
• Winner of the 2017 Scotiabank Giller Prize
• #1 National Bestseller
• Globe and Mail Best Book of 2017
• National Post Best Book of 2017
• CBC Best Book of 2017
• Kobo Best Book of 2017

Spoiler Alert: The novel starts out great, interesting story, but as Jean becomes more and more obsessed with finding Ingrid, it’s clear that Ingrid is not real. Jean has functional delusions and as the novel nears its end, the delusions get more and more elaborate. In some ways the novel reminded me of Roddy Doyle’s Smile, where you’re not certain what is real or not. But for me, I was happy to get to the end of Bellevue Square.

Perfect Read for fans of CanLit. The setting is Kensington Market in Toronto, there are lots of nice nuances to the feel of that place. Plus Michael Redhill’s previous novels have been finalists or longlisted for major prizes so if you like writing that throws you off the trace then this is well-written but tame thriller.

Favourite Moment: Jean and her mother-in-law have some little abrasive moments that are a bit funny; and most of the scenes with her husband Ian and the kids provide light-hearted humour. “Ian’s mother drops the kids after lunch Sunday. They have enjoyed their weekend at the Condo of No Rules. If you want to see what a hangover looks like on a ten-year-old, let him stay up until the middle of the night two nights in a row.”

Bellevue Square by Michael Redhill
Published by Doubleday Canada

Smile by Roddy Doyle (published by Knopf Canada)

Description: Victor Forde is down on his luck and out on his ear. He’s recently split from his wife, has moved into a subpar apartment, and is looking for some social time (without too many attachments). He finds himself down at the local pub where he runs into a former school mate named Fitzpatrick. Victor doesn’t quite remember this guy as a lad he hung out with, but Fitzpatrick knows a lot about their time together at school. The chance encounter gets Victor thinking about their school days at a Christian Brothers school. There was bullying, taunts about being queer, and the ever-present authority of the Brothers.

Disclaimer: There’s a psycho-thriller element to this story and not everything is as it seems.

Smile is the perfect book for Roddy Doyle fans. If you are drawn to dark, gritty dramas then this is a great read, although an unsettling subject.

Favourite Moment: An early scene in the novel sets the stage and provides context for the title of the novel. The boys are in French class and want to get out of their weekend homework. Victor is goaded into making the request on their behalf. Brother Murphy turns from the board and says “Victor Forde, I can never resist your smile.” Creepy!

www.roddydoyle.ie

Description: Anosh Irani is one of those authors that I always seek out. His novels are dark, gritty, and deeply unsettling. There’s typically some moment of joy or inspiration so that it’s not dire straits the whole way through. This novel, though, ugh. It’s such a terrible, heartbreaking story. It took me weeks to get around to thinking about it and how to write a review. The basics are that Madhu is born a boy but knows he’s a girl. There’s no way his family will accept this, it’s an embarrassment to his father and both parents turn their back, maybe unknowingly. Madhu runs away and is adopted into the close-knit clan of transgender sex workers in Kamathipura, the notorious red-light district of Bombay. There are lots of graphic details on the rituals of becoming a eunuch, and about the sex trade. Madhu grows up a beauty and is sought after, but now at 40 has moved away from prostitution and is bringing up the next generation. The hardest part of this novel is reading about the kidnapping and trafficking of young girls, who are sold by beloved aunties or their parents. It’s devastating that is not pure fiction. Madhu has a redemptive moment but, as a reader, this novel left me feeling despair.

Perfect Read for fans of Rohinton Mistry and Yann Martel, who like the darker sides of those reads. This is beautiful writing, and tragic subject matter.

Favourite Moment: I love all the small details that paint a full picture of the scene. Here’s the opening of chapter 2: “Underwear Tree had its name thanks to the array of underclothes that were left to hang and dry in its loving care. It was one giant hanger for clothes, a dhobi’s delight. At any time of day, underwear in all shapes and sizes were caught in its branches like kites. Over the years, Underwear Tree served as a barometer for economic growth. If the elastic of the underwear was tight, it signified that people living in the hutments below the tree were doing well. If the elastic was loose, it meant overuse for the underwear and hard days for the owners.”

The Parcel by Anosh Irani
Published by Knopf Canada

I had the great fortune of exchanging some correspondence with Quindaro Press and it lead to a review copy of Gunpowder Girls: The True Stories of Three Civil War Tragedies by Tanya Anderson. It was a great audio book, and the narrator is Carrie Olsen. It’s a quick one: only 2 hrs and 3 mins but a fascinating, rich look at women and the work they were doing during the American Civil War in the arsenals.

There are intriguing details about the work itself (facts about the guns and ammunition, how it was produced and assembled, what the issues were with distribution, volume of ammo needed during various periods) and the nature of the work (how the women had to sit close together and were constrained by their huge hoop skirts, the conditions of the arsenals, who did what jobs and why, and the reason these women were working at all).

Here’s my Audible review:

“Fantastic Look at Women & Work”

Would you consider the audio edition of Gunpowder Girls to be better than the print version?
I didn’t read the print version but the audio edition is fantastic. The narrator’s voice is crisp, clear and engaging. There are slight intonations to connote different sections, presumably sidebar material.

Who was your favorite character and why?
This is nonfiction but there are several characters mentioned throughout, some are the foremen or boys who deliver gunpowder but it’s really a book about the women and the work they did during the civil war. There are several personal stories and anecdotes throughout. This is not boring history.

Which scene was your favorite?
The descriptions of two of the arsenal explosions are affecting. You can really imagine that you were at the scene. The descriptions are vivid and the author has done a great job of providing not just the facts but the story and context.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
I listened to this in a few long sessions.

Any additional comments?
The quality of the writing and the narration are superb. As a disclaimer, I received a free review copy but it was a book I requested and very much enjoyed.