by Michael Christie In the midst of the Great Depression in New Brunswick, Everett Greenwood lives simply in his tiny shack selling maple syrup harvested off the land he squats on. But his life gets upended when he finds an infant swaddled along with a journal in the forest, left for dead. When discovering that…
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by André Alexis Days by Moonlight concerns the young botanist Alfred Homer’s journey across Southern Ontario. Alfred comes along to drive and assist Professor Bruno, a close friend of his late parents, as he interviews friends and family members of a mysterious poet––the subject of his biography-in-progress. Along the way, the pair bears witness to…
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by Kazuo Ishiguro When reading, I tend to explore everything laid out on and within the copy of the book at hand before getting into the story proper––you know, synopses, blurbs, forewords, introductions. And I’m aware of vast differences of opinion about how you should and should not proceed in this respect, especially with regard…
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by Kris Bertin Use Your Imagination! is a short story collection that very immediately put me in mind with Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son, both because the majority of the stories deal with misfits behaving badly––or just strangely––and because they’re built upon a solid foundation of exceptional writing. This is happily one of those cases where…
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by Kurt Vonnegut After taking control of the Rosewater Foundation, Eliot Rosewater dedicates his time and the copious amounts of money in his trust to helping average Americans, no strings attached. Some people––including his father, Senator Lister Ames Rosewater, the man who started the Foundation as a way to prevent tax collectors from getting at…
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by Anakana Schofield Bina––pronounced Bye-na, not Bee-na––is the latest non-traditional story by Giller nominated Schofield. Told as a series of warnings scribbled on the backs of old envelopes and receipts, the titular septuagenarian bluntly describes her dangerous encounters with men. Because Bina’s convinced that he’s largely to blame for ruining her life and turning her…
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by Edgar Rice Burroughs Tarzan of the Apes is the book that introduced the world to the now all but ubiquitously known king of the jungle. After the death of his parents in a remote region of Africa, the infant Tarzan is raised by a great ape, taught to survive in the wild. As he…
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by Mesha Maren Eighteen years after being sentenced to life in prison in the late ’80s at the age of 17, a lawyer takes interest in Jodi McCarty’s case, resulting in her release. Sugar Run bounces between two periods: running off with her lover, Paula, to find happiness and easy money on the fringes of…
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by Chuck Palahniuk Though it feels at least a bit silly to write up a synopsis for a book as famous as Fight Club, a review without a synopsis conversely feels incomplete. (Those who don’t believe me are welcome to check out some of my older reviews in which I believed synopses to be frivolous.)…
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by Jaroslav Hašek The Good Soldier Schweik is said to be one of the most famous pieces of Czech literature that exists, if not the most famous. It’s at least the most widely-translated and far-reaching novel to come out of the region, with lasting influences on language and culture in the Czech Republic and elsewhere….
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