The Bookseller: Mary-Ann Yazedjian, Book Warehouse Main Street (Vancouver, BC)
The Pick: A Real Somebody, by Deryn Collier
I loved this new novel from BC author Deryn Collier. It’s the smart, engaging story of June Grant (based on the author’s aunt) trying to make ends meet as the sole earner in her family in 1947 Montreal. June has to contend with family and societal pressures to get married and start a family, when what she really wants is to follow her passion of writing and creativity. I adored the characters and was riveted by the story. Highly recommend it.
*
The Bookseller: Chris Hall of McNally Robinson (Winnipeg, MN)
The Picks:
The Compassionate Imagination, by Max Wyman
We all enjoy the arts, everything from music to movies to television and beyond. And yet we don’t support them well, and aside from the famous few, it’s difficult to make a living in the industry. Here is a call for the importance of a new vision for how we fund and think of the arts both publicly and privately.
The Librarianist, by Patrick deWitt
Retired librarian Bob Comet lives a solitary life until he helps a confused elderly woman back to her senior centre. Soon a brush with his past opens up his life story and it turns out Bob has a talent for attracting eccentric people into his life. His life has had more dramatic moments than he thought he wanted.
To the Forest, by Anais Barbeau-Lavalette
A family is forced to retreat to a rural property due to the pandemic. Along with the disruption and loss due to deaths within their extended family and community come the pleasures of rediscovering nature and its rhythms as well as a different expectation of life.
*
The Bookseller: David Worsley, Words Worth Books (Waterloo, ON)
The Pick: Lump, by Nathan Whitlock
Lump is a light but mordantly funny look at marriage, class, privilege and human foibles, as well as a dive into systemic inequality and agency, a novel that succeeds as both a snack and a meal. Cat and Donovan are an urban Ontario couple in a good enough marriage with lives filled with kids, jobs and a shot at the middle class. Both have a secret that, once revealed, complicates and compounds the other, resulting in a choice that gets harder to undo in the fourth act. Lump is one of the best novels I've read this year, and I'll read everything Nathan Whitlock writes.
*
The Bookseller: Megan Pickering, Blue Heron Books (Uxbridge, ON)
The Pick: Meet Me At the Lake, by Carley Fortune: A story intertwined with family love and loss, finding your footing, and getting back to your roots was the perfect way to kick off my summer reading list. I'm looking forward to what comes next for Fortune.
*
The Bookseller: Jo Treggiari, Block Shop Books (Lunenburg, NS)
The Picks:
Indigiqueerness: A Conversation About Storytelling (in dialogue with Angie Abdou), by Joshua Whitehead
This slim volume packs a punch. Author, essayist, and poet Whitehead reflects on his work, life, identity, and queerness. Part memoir, part examination of his writing process, this is an intimate and meaningful look at inspiration and a celebration of storytelling and Indigenous art.
Superfan: How Pop Culture Broke My Heart, by Jen Sookfong Lee
An honest, raw memoir told in a series of essays about key pop culture moments that shaped Lee's life as a Chinese-Canadian woman growing up in the nineties. Lee parallels her experiences with the art that impacted her and offered her solace. So for instance, the importance of Anne Of Green Gables to Lee when her father dies suddenly, and the comfort of TV painter Bob Ross when dealing with loss and grief. Beyond the intimate memoir aspect, Lee also unpacks a lot, using pop culture to make social commentary and address racism, fetishization, and misogyny as a member of the Chinese diaspora. Vulnerable, empowering, and engaging.
VenCo, by Cherie Dimaline
A witchy fantasy meets intersectional feminist coming-of-age story in this new captivating novel by Dimaline. Lucky, a young Metis woman, works dead-end jobs and cares for her grandmother Stella who is suffering with dementia. When Lucky finds a magic spoon that connects her to a coven of women who have been looking for her, she and Stella embark on a road trip to recover the seventh spoon that will allow the magic circle to be completed, establishing a North-American coven. However dark forces move against them and their search becomes a race against time. Suspenseful and action-packed; the relationship between Lucky and Stella is particularly lovely.
A Green Velvet Secret, by Vicki Grant
A bittersweet, magical middle-grade novel that handles some tough subjects with tons of heart and much laughter. Twelve-year-old Yardley definitely has her own style and some of that is due to her fearless best friend, her grandmother Gidge. When Gidge learns she has terminal cancer she is determined to make amends for past mistakes. Yardley is convinced that Gidge's good karma will allow for an immediate reincarnation and when a customer comes into the used clothing store where she works, and eyeballs a certain special dress, Yardley is convinced. Aided by letters that Gidge wrote before she passed and a new sort of friendship with a prickly co-worker, Yardley goes on the hunt and by story's end learns some things about celebrating life and growing up.
The Grace of Wild Things, by Heather Fawcett
A magical, witchy retelling of Anne of Green Gables. Grace is unadoptable and the only thing she has ever been good at is magic, so she decides to apprentice herself to the scary witch who lives in the forest. Once she arrives she discovers that all the terrible tales are true: this is a witch who steals souls and gobbles hearts. Still Grace strikes a bargain—if she can learn all the spells in the witch's grimoire then the witch will spare her from the oven and teach her. A vivacious and loquacious heroine, spells, new friendships, a fabulous poetry-loving crow called Windweaver and a wicked witch who might not be so very wicked conjure up a winsome fantasy for middle-grade readers.
*
The Bookseller: Hilary Atleo, Iron Dog Books (Tsleil-Waututh, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh and Musqueam territories - Vancouver, BC)
The Pick: The Tenant Class, by Ricardo Tranjan
Data-founded and clear-sighted, The Tenant Class reveals the reality of housing in Canada: that property ownership with unconstrained profit incentives will always lead to economic disparity. Recommended read for activists, civil servants, and all elected officials.
*
The Bookseller: Sylvie Beauregard, Galiano Island Books (Galiano Island, BC)
The Pick: Outsider, by Brett Popplewell
Brett Popplewell's Outsider is a book for two kinds of readers: (1) The ones who really dislike reading biographies about folks practising extreme sports but who are nonetheless fascinated by trying to figure out what makes someone who they are and why someone would engage with such a passion in dangerous sports, and (2) those who are passionate about the history of World War II and its impact on those born during the war. This is the life story of a BC man Dag Aabye, marvellously well written by biographer Brett Popplewell.
During the war and the German occupation of Norway, Hitler ordered his soldiers to rape a large number of Norwegian women. He believed that children born with German and Norwegian DNA would grow into superior human beings. Out of this tragedy, 4,000 children were born and many of them adopted into Nazi supporting families. His whole life, Dag, a Norwegian, tries to find his mother and wonders if she was one of the women raped and whether or not he was one of those offspring. The consequences of this search produced an exceptional being and one wonders what he would have turned out to be if he had not been born under these circumstances. With the help of his biographer Brett Popplewell, Dag eventually finds out who he really is.
Dag lives in the woods as a hermit in Vernon, BC. At over 83 years old he still runs everyday. He was in James Bond movies, and survived many avalanches in Whistler. Nancy Green said of him that he was the first ever extreme skier. Thanks to the excellent work of Mr. Popplewell, this book reads as a novel. It is a page turner and may very well transform your perception of the individuals who live amazing lives and choose to isolate themselves while staying very active and relatively sane. It is also a touching testimony of the author's mother who lives with the effects of Alzheimer's. Outsider is a fascinating read that I highly recommend.
*
The Bookseller: Michelle Berry, bookseller emeritus (Peterborough, ON)
The Pick: Confessions with Keith, by Pauline Holdstock
One of my favourite Canadian novelists, Pauline Holdstock (of The Hunter and The Wild Girl, Here I am, Beyond Measure, and more), has written another winner. Confessions with Keith is about a female writer in the midst of a failed marriage. But it’s so much more than that. Vita Glass juggles her children, her husband, her house and her job—all in diary format, spanning 15 months. She writes with playful abandon about her midlife, about her pets and crazed kids, about her friends and her husband’s infidelity, about a camping trip and a book reading and her collapsing plumbing, and mostly about her hairdresser Keith’s stories and pseudo-philosophical theories. This is a diary, a confession, and we commiserate but we also laugh out loud. Vita’s life is wildly funny at times and her perspective on her life and the people around her is unique. This is a fabulous book.
*
The Bookseller: Thom G., Audreys Books (Edmonton, AB)
The Pick: The Annual Migration of Clouds, By Premee Mohamed
This novella took me on a great dystopian journey. Set in a post-apocalyptic prairie city, Mohamed really gets to the human element, even in this inhospitable landscape that she’s chosen. To me this book is comparable to the best speculative fiction by authors such as Octavia Butler, N. K. Jemisin, and Nnedi Okorafor.