Life Shrinkage + The New Guy James P. Reynolds Crack the Spine Literary Journal, U.S.A. April and August, 2012 Having so far written about 300 posts about other people’s writing, now I am going to showcase my own fiction. Last year, Crack the Spine, an on-line literary journal, published 2 of my short stories. Life [...]
Rat Jelly & Other Poems 1963-78 Michael Ondaatje Marion Boyars, U.K. 1980 Rat Jelly was a book of poetry originally published by Coach House Press in Toronto in 1973. In 1979, McClelland and Stewart out of Toronto and WW Norton out of New York published There’s a Trick with a Knife I’m Learning to Do: [...]
The Piano Man’s Daughter Timothy Findley Harper Collins, Canada, 1995 Openly gay Canadian writer Timothy Findley was nominated for the Giller Prize for this novel, which was adapted into a made-for-TV movie in 2003. Ten years before this book was published, he was appointed an officer of the Order of Canada. He was a founding [...]
The In-Between World of Vikram Lall M. G. Vassanji Random House, Canada, 2003 M. G. Vassanji was born in Kenya, raised in Tunisia, and educated in the U.S. as a nuclear physicist. He moved to Canada in 1978 where he became interested in medieval Indian literature. In the 1980′s, he co-founded and edited a literary [...]
The Time in Between David Bergen McClelland and Stewart, Canada, 2005 This wonderful fourth novel by Canadian author David Bergen won the 2005 Giller Prize and the McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award. It received a prestigious starred review from Kirkus Reviews. It was on the 2007 longlist for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary [...]
The Cat’s Table Michael Ondaatje Jonathan Cape, U.K 2011 This mostly fictionalized memoir is Ondaatje’s most recent novel. It is about a boy named Michael who travels from Ceylon to England on an ocean liner to go and live with his mother. The Cat’s Table is the table furthest away from the captain’s table, where [...]
Under the Volcano Malcolm Lowry Jonathan Cape, U.K. 1967 Here is a very unusual edition of Under the Volcano. I can find only one copy for sale on-line today. The one copy available is in poor condition and costs about $100. With no other listings to compare it to, it is hard to say whether [...]
The Big Why Michael Winter House of Anansi Press, Canada, 2004 The Big Why is Michael Winter’s second novel. It was shortlisted for the Trillium Award and the Thomas Head Raddall Award, and it was longlisted for the IMPAC Award. His debut novel This All Happened won the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. In 2008, [...]
The Matter With Morris David Bergen HarperCollins, Canada, 2010 It takes a rare talent like Bergen’s to write a book about mourning and loss and still have it come across as optimistic. The Matter With Morris is Bergen’s sixth and, perhaps, his most accomplished novel to date. Steve Hayward says in his Globe and Mail [...]
Larry’s Party Carol Shields Random House, Canada, 1997 This great novel came out three years after Shields’ incredibly successful The Stone Diaries, which won the Governor General’s Award for fiction in Canada and the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award in the U.S. The San Diego Tribune said, The Stone Diaries is [...]