Snow Road Station / Elizabeth Hay TO: Knopf Canada, c2023. 230 p. I haven't been reading as many current Canadian novels as usual, but I did pick this one up recently after someone mentioned how much she liked it. I found it okay, a little bit slow-going but overall a decent read. I think I might have enjoyed it more if I'd read some of Hay's earlier books, as apparently these characters are ones who've reappeared from other stories.  Actress Lulu Blake is starring in a demanding play in the winter of 2008. But she dried on stage, and as the story opens she is heading through t ..read more

Shubeik Lubeik / Deena Mohamed trans. from the Arabic by the author New York : Pantheon Books, 2022. 518 p. What would you wish for, if you knew your wish would come true? This is the question asked by Deena Mohamed in this imaginative graphic novel, set in an alternative Cairo, where wishes are real, regulated, bottled and licensed. There are three classes of wish: first class, second class and the banned third class wish (due to their malicious unreliability). Wishes can be tricky and deceptive; the wording has to be just right for optimal results. The story follows three charact ..read more

Night Side of the River / Jeanette Winterson NY: Atlantic Monthly Press, c2023. 320 p. This was an interesting concept for a book -- ghost stories by literary writer Jeanette Winterson, followed by a true story of her own experience with the unknown world after each section. I found one of the true stories more haunting than anything else in the book!  The stories are varied, with many of them exploring technology and how it interacts with life, death and grief. From immersive ghost tours to a virtual world in which a woman visits the new and improved version of her dead husba ..read more

Cold / Drew Hayden Taylor TO: McLelland & Stewart, c2024. 359 p. This is a book I would not have normally picked up -- it's a horror/thriller with hockey, middle aged men, and gore. But, it's also by Drew Hayden Taylor. I've read quite a few of his books and usually enjoy them -- everything he does is leavened with humour, and I find his Indigenous themes are compelling and engaging. So I read it.  It is a bit more horror-ish than I usually like, especially with the few explicitly gory scenes. But it is also horror-lite enough for this squeamish reader. The story has three ..read more

The Skull / Jon Klassen Somerville, MA: Candlewick, c2023. 106 p. This little middle grade read was recommended to me by a friend, and so I read it -- quickly, as it's barely 100 pages, with lots of illustration and minimal text. But it is quite odd and adorable, and I would pass on the recommendation to experience this story!  It's a rewrite of a Tyrolean folk tale that Canadian writer Jon Klassen read in a collection once and when he went back to reread it, realized he had remembered it quite differently than the original. So he wrote a new version reflecting his own experienc ..read more

  The Hearing Trumpet / Leonora Carrington Potter's Bar, UK: Naxos Audiobooks, 2017, c1974 This novel by Surrealist painter Leonora Carrington was certainly as surreal as her artwork! I didn't know much about it when I began listening to it in audio format, so it was quite an adventure.  Marian Leatherby is an aged woman living with her son and his family somewhere in Mexico. She spends most of her days in her room or in the yard which she can access directly from her room. She is fairly satisfied, but her family is not. They feel that her mind is failing, that she needs to ..read more

The Future / Catherine Leroux trans. from the French by Susan Ouriou Windsor, ON : Biblioasis, c2023. 309 p. The Future, which I read about a month ago, has just won this year's Canada Reads competition. I didn't think it would -- translations aren't always the most popular choices for things like Canada Reads. But it did, and I'm happy with that result.  It's a dystopia of sorts; more of an exaggerated and hyperextended vision of the decline of civilization. This one's set in an alternate Detroit which was never surrendered to the Americans, and boasts a French community. Whic ..read more

  Snowglobe / Soyoung Park trans. from the Korean by Joungmin Lee Comfort New York : Delacorte Press, 2024, c2020. 372 p. This YA dystopia is set in a future Korea after climate disaster has reduced most of the world to constant sub-zero weather. We’re talking -50 on an ongoing basis. Chobahm lives in a small settlement with her mother, twin brother and grandma. Now that she is finished school, she works at the local plant – nearly everyone in every settlement spends their days generating electricity on a human hamster wheel. Other jobs are few and far between - some postal cle ..read more

  Marigold and Rose / Louise Gluck  New York : Picador/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023, ©2022 55p. This slim tale by poet Louise Gluck is a charming read. Marigold and Rose are twins, infant girls who don't yet have language but have rich inner lives. It is interested in words, language, time, identity -- sweet and yet thoughtful, it’s also melancholic in parts. It's a quick read, short and plainly written. But there is so much in it, you can linger on lines and think about the deeper meaning in an apparently simple statement. Marigold is the quieter, more thoughtful twin ..read more

The Ukraine / Artem Chapeye trans. from the Ukrainian by Zenia Tompkins NY: Seven Stories Press, c2024. 272 p. This is a recent translation, a collection of fiction and non-fiction by Artem Chapeye. Zenia Tompkins of the translation agency TAULT is focusing on writing by those involved in the war this year, and this is one of those works.  Chapeye is fairly well known as a journalist, but the title short story The Ukraine is one that was published previously in the New Yorker (in 2022). This fiction plays with "The", an article that is contentious in English -- he re ..read more