by Chigozie Obioma Some time ago, I was discussing literature with a friend, when the topic turned to the comparison of Kevin Hardcastle’s writing to Cormac McCarthy’s in numerous blurbs and reviews, and how such an exercise usually sets him up for unreasonable expectations that tend to be crushed in due course. At the time,…
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by Jonathan Safran Foer Everything is Illuminated is autobiographical, but only a touch, only superficially. It’s about a character named Jonathan Safran Foer travelling to Ukraine with only an old picture to help him find a woman who may have helped save his grandfather from the Nazis. This much actually happened, but I understand that…
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by Gore Vidal In the final days of high school in small town Virginia, Jim Willard has a homosexual encounter with Bob Ford, and he falls for him hard. Unfortunately for Jim, this happens only days before Bob leaves to travel the world as a sailor. The City and the Pillar follows Jim’s journey in…
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by Andrew Battershill Marry, Bang, Kill follows Alan Mouse––Mousey to his “friends”––a retired cop living on Quadra Island, a quiet place just off the coast of Vancouver Island. When he crosses paths with Tommy Marlo, a small time mugger who stole a laptop loaded with incriminating photos along with a hundred grand from a dangerous…
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by Lynn Coady When I’m choosing books to read, I do my best to pick things I think I’ll enjoy. I like to think I’m getting better at having an understanding about this, going in, largely based on covers and brief readings and discussions about books ahead of time, but, obviously, I’m not perfect. That…
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by S. E. Hinton The Outsiders is S. E. Hinton’s popular and enduring story about class, friendship, and family, wrapped in a narrative about youth gang wars, presumably taking place in the ’50s or ’60s. Ponyboy and Johnny––both greasers, the lower-class gang––end up killing a Soc in self-defense. (Soc: short for “social,” so likely closer…
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by Jordan Tannahill In Liminal, the health of Jordan Tannahill’s mother, Monica, has been in a bit of decline. She’s just started going on the mend after having a mini-stroke, but she hasn’t felt great recently. After she doesn’t emerge from her bedroom long after she normally would in the morning, Jordan investigates. Seeing his…
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by Jules Verne After discovering a coded note in an ancient book, Professor Otto Lidenbrock and his nephew, Axel, set out to an extinct volcano in Iceland said to hold a passage to the centre of the Earth. Along with their Icelandic guide, they embark on a voyage to a subterranean world filled with unknown…
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by Kenneth Grahame This one was really weird to me, and for a few different reasons. Firstly, The Wind in the Willows is another case of any synopsis I read failing to get to the heart of the story, partly because there are multiple storylines following different characters throughout, but also because the only one…
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by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry In The Little Prince, an unnamed narrator crashes his airplane in the middle of the Sahara Desert. With a dwindling supply of water, he works frantically to repair his craft, but is met unexpectedly by a small boy who doesn’t seem to understand the urgency of the situation. The boy questions him,…
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