My Top Ten Books of 2007 … and a contest!!

We’re nearly at the end of 2007, and it’s time for me to look back through a year’s worth of book reviews and pick my ten favourites.  Hard to know what criteria to apply — “literary quality” is such a nebulous thing, and not always what makes a book memorable for me.  I guess I’ll [...]

Turtle Valley, by Gail Anderson-Dargatz

Turtle Valley is a quiet, restrained novel about big events — a forest fire and evacuation, a death, a marriage falling apart, buried memories of family abuse, insanity, infidelity and perhaps even murder.  The main character, Katrine, returns to her childhood home to help her elderly parents prepare for evacuation.  While there she uncovers [...]

Isobel Gunn, by Audrey Thomas

Many years ago, in what seems like another lifetime, I did an MA in English and wrote my thesis on Audrey Thomas.  Just in case you were wondering, the thesis was called Mother Tongues: Language and Maternity in the Fictions of Audrey Thomas, and one of the eight zillion things I disagreed with my [...]

Nectar From a Stone, by Jane Guill

Nectar from a Stone is set in medieval Wales, in the era of the Black Death. The plague is a menacing presence that looms in the background of the story, influencing the characters and all they do. The main character is Elise, a reluctant wife to the boorish and abusive Maelgwyn. When [...]

Livyers World, by Robin McGrath

Livyers World is a young-adult science fiction novel with a fascinating premise.  It’s set in a future Newfoundland — or rather, two future Newfoundlands. The young protagonist Viddy is drawn into what he first thinks is an interactive computer program, but it quickly begins to seem more like a parallel world to his own, an [...]