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Maidenhead
By Tamara Faith Berger. 2012
Myra, naive and curious, is on a family vacation to the southernmost tip of Florida - a mangy Key West…
full of Spring Breakers. Here, suffering through the embarrassments of a family on the verge of splitting up, she meets Elijah, a charismatic Tanzanian musician who seduces her at the edge of the tourist zone. Myra longs to lose her virginity to Elijah, and is shocked to learn he lives with Gayl, a secretive and violent woman with a strange power over him. Myra and her family return to an unnamed, middle-class, grey Canadian city and she falls in with a pot-smoking, intellectual anarchist crowd. When Gayl and Elijah travel north and infiltrate Myra's life, she walks willingly into their world: Myra continues to experiment sexually with Elijah, while Gayl plays an integral part in the increasingly abject games. Maidenhead traverses the desperate, wild spaces of a teenage girl's self-consciousness. How does a girl feel scared? What is she scared of? And how does telling yourself not to be scared really work? As Myra enters worlds unfamiliar of sex, porn, race and class, she explores territories unknown in herself.Fifteen Dogs
By Andre Alexis. 2015
And so it begins: a bet between the gods Hermes and Apollo leads them to grant human consciousness and language…
to a group of dogs overnighting at a Toronto veterinary clinic. Suddenly capable of more complex thought, the pack is torn between those who resist the new ways of thinking, preferring the old 'dog' ways, and those who embrace the change. The gods watch from above as the dogs venture into their newly unfamiliar world, as they become divided among themselves, as each struggles with new thoughts and feelings. Wily Benjy moves from home to home, Prince becomes a poet, and Majnoun forges a relationship with a kind couple that stops even the Fates in their tracks. André Alexis's contemporary take on the apologue offers an utterly compelling and affecting look at the beauty and perils of human consciousness. By turns meditative and devastating, charming and strange, Fifteen Dogs shows you can teach an old genre new tricks.Cousin Cinderella
By Sara Jeanette Duncan, Douglas Lochhead. 1973
After experiencing life in London, the narrator and her brother discover that they are Canadians, not colonials. Their encounters with…
Englishmen and Americans demonstrate that there are three distinct countries, each with a character of its own, but sharing common interests. This is an early novel on the eternal theme of identity.A Ballet of Lepers: A Novel and Stories
By Leonard Cohen. 2022
NATIONAL BESTSELLERAn unprecedented glimpse into the formation of the legendary talent of Leonard Cohen.Before the celebrated late-career world tours, before…
the Grammy awards, before the chart-topping albums, before &“Hallelujah&” and &“So Long, Marianne&” and &“Famous Blue Raincoat,&” the young Leonard Cohen wrote poetry and fiction and yearned for literary stardom. In A Ballet of Lepers, readers will discover that the magic that animated Cohen&’s unforgettable body of work was present from the very beginning.Written between 1956 in Montreal, just as Cohen was publishing his first poetry collection, and 1961, when he&’d settled on Greece&’s Hydra island, the pieces in this collection offer startling insight into Cohen&’s imagination and creative process, and explore themes that would permeate his later work, from shame and unworthiness to sexual desire to longing, whether for love, family, freedom, or transcendence.The titular novel, A Ballet of Lepers—one he later remarked was &“probably a better novel&” than his celebrated book The Favourite Game—is a haunting examination of these elements, while the fifteen stories, as well as the playscript, probe the inner demons of his characters, many of whom could function as stand-ins for the author himself.Meditative, surprising, playful, and provocative, A Ballet of Lepers is vivid in its detail, unsparing in its gaze, and reveals the great artist and visceral genius like never before.Almost Japanese
By Sarah Sheard. 1985
In Sarah Sheard's celebrated novel Almost Japanese, a young girl's obsession with a famous Japanese musician blossoms into personal transformation.…
In spare, lyrical prose, Sheard documents Emma's discovery of her new next door neighbour, a dazzling Japanese symphony conductor. Things Japanese soon begin to transform Emma's world. Several years later, she must journey to Japan on a private pilgrimage to connect to the source of her obsession.Changing Heaven
By Jane Urquhart. 1990
Two worlds are intertwined in this hauntingly beautiful story as it moves from Toronto to the English moors and to…
Venice, Italy. The time frame shifts between present and past, linking the lives of a young Brontë scholar (a woman in the throes of a troubled love affair), a turn-of-the-century female balloonist, and an elusive explorer with the ghost - or the memory - of Emily Brontë. Urquhart reveals something about the act of artistic creation, the ways in which stories enter our lives, and about the cyclical nature of love throughout time. This is a novel of darkness and light, of intense weather and inner calm.Sanctuary Line
By Jane Urquhart. 2010
Solitary, nostalgic Liz Crane returns to her family's now-deserted farmhouse to study the migratory habits of the Monarch butterfly. A…
rich family history - all the anecdotes and blarney of successful Irish immigrants - is now tainted with sadness. Her cousin Amanda, a gifted military strategist, has been killed in Afghanistan, a loss foreshadowed by the earlier disappearance of her charismatic father. Reflecting on the fragility and transcience of human life and relations - mirrored in the Monarchs' restless flight - Liz finds that love is there to be found where you least expect it.Sanctuary Line
By Jane Urquhart. 2010
Solitary, nostalgic Liz Crane returns to her family's now-deserted farmhouse to study the migratory habits of the Monarch butterfly. A…
rich family history - all the anecdotes and blarney of successful Irish immigrants - is now tainted with sadness. Her cousin Amanda, a gifted military strategist, has been killed in Afghanistan, a loss foreshadowed by the earlier disappearance of her charismatic father. Reflecting on the fragility and transcience of human life and relations - mirrored in the Monarchs' restless flight - Liz finds that love is there to be found where you least expect it.The Papers of Samuel Marchbanks
By Robertson Davies. 1985
&“Davies introduces us to his alter ego . . . A humorous and insightful picture of postwar Canadian life as…
seen through the eyes of a delightful eccentric.&”—Library Journal As editor and later publisher of the Peterborough Examiner, Robertson Davies published witty, curmudgeonly, mischievous, and fiercely individualistic columns under the name of his alter ego, Samuel Marchbanks. In 1985, Davies edited and selected from his alter ego&’s observations to bring together previous titles in the Marchbanks bibliography: The Diary (1947), The Table Talk (1949), and Samuel Marchbanks&’ Almanack (1967). Marchbanks opines on politics, on his furnace, on theatre, on the taxman, on trains, on Christmas, on book-banners, on manners, indeed on everything under the sun. Not only this, but Davies&’s copious and quite delectable Notes are &“calculated to remove all Difficulties caused by the passage of Time and to offer the Wisdom, not to speak of Whimsicality, of this astonishing man to the Modern Public, in the most convenient form.&” &“This writing of four decades ago is consistently incisive, insulting, funny, relevant and altogether interesting.&”—The New York Times &“Now this crank of the first order is on full display for the first time in America . . . To explain to his younger American readers such arcana as &‘telegrams&’ and &‘coal-burning furnaces,&’ Davies has added graceful and comic notes that rival the entertaining opinions of Marchbanks himself.&”—South Florida Sun-SentinelSalterton Trilogy Omnibus: Tempest-tost; Leaven Of Malice; A Mixture Of Frailties (Salterton Trilogy)
By Robertson Davies. 2011
Available in one volume, all three books of the award-winning Salterton Trilogy: Tempest-Tost, Leaven of Malice, and A Mixture of…
Frailties.Visit the quaint town of Salterton, Ontario, and the enigmatic lives of those who inhabit it . . .Tempest-Tost. An amateur production of The Tempest provides a colorful backdrop for a hilarious look at unrequited love. Mathematics teacher Hector Mackilwraith, stirred and troubled by Shakespeare&’s play, falls in love with the beautiful heiress Griselda Webster. When Griselda shows she has plans of her own, Hector despairs on the play&’s opening night.Leaven of Malice. Winner of the Leacock Medal, awarded for the best in Canadian literary humor. A malicious false engagement notice between locals Solly Bridgetower and Pearl Vambrace leads to permanent changes, for good or ill, in the lives of many citizens of Salterton.A Mixture of Frailties. Louisa Bridgetower, the imposing Salterton matron, has died. The substantial income from her estate is to be used to send an unmarried young woman to Europe to pursue an education in the arts. Monica Gall, an almost entirely unschooled singer soon finds herself in England, as she gradually blossoms from a Canadian rube to a cosmopolitan soprano with a unique—and tragicomic—career.Praise for the Salterton Trilogy&“Full of zest, wit and urbanity.&”—The New York Times &“High comedy with a spice of satire to give it savor.&”—Montreal Gazette &“An exercise in puckish persiflage.&”—Toronto Star &“Hilarious, satirical, witty and clever.&”—Edmonton JournalIn Ballast to the White Sea (Canadian Literature Collection)
By Malcolm Lowry, Paul Tiessen, Miguel Mota, Patrick A. Mccarthy, Vik Doyen, Chris Ackerley. 2014
In Ballast to the White Sea is Malcolm Lowry's most ambitious work of the mid-1930s. Inspired by his life experience,…
the novel recounts the story of a Cambridge undergraduate who aspires to be a writer but has come to believe that both his book and, in a sense, his life have already been "written." After a fire broke out in Lowry's squatter's shack, all that remained of In Ballast to the White Sea were a few sheets of paper. Only decades after Lowry's death did it become known that his first wife, Jan Gabrial, still had a typescript. This scholarly edition presents, for the first time, the once-lost novel. Patrick McCarthy's critical introduction offers insight into Lowry's sense of himself while Chris Ackerley's extensive annotations provide important information about Lowry's life and art in an edition that will captivate readers and scholars alike.Swinging the Maelstrom: A Critical Edition (Canadian Literature Collection)
By Malcolm Lowry, Paul Tiessen, Miguel Mota, Patrick A. Mccarthy, Vik Doyen, Chris Ackerley, Philip Surrey. 2013
Swinging the Maelstrom is the story of a musician enduring existence in the Bellevue psychiatric hospital in New York. Written…
during his happiest and most fruitful years, this novella reveals the deep healing influence that the idyllic retreat at Dollarton had on Lowry. This long-overdue scholarly edition will allow scholars to engage in a genetic study of the text and reconstruct, step by step, the creative process that developed from a rather pessimistic and misanthropic vision of the world as a madhouse (The Last Address, 1936), via the apocalyptic metaphors of a world on the brink of Armageddon (The Last Address, 1939), to a world that, in spite of all its troubles, leaves room for self-irony and humanistic concern (Swinging the Maelstrom,1942-1944).Swinging the Maelstrom: A Critical Edition (Canadian Literature Collection)
By Malcolm Lowry. 2013
Swinging the Maelstrom is the story of a musician enduring existence in the Bellevue psychiatric hospital in New York. Written during…
his happiest and most fruitful years, this novella reveals the deep healing influence that the idyllic retreat at Dollarton had on Lowry. This long-overdue scholarly edition will allow scholars to engage in a genetic study of the text and reconstruct, step by step, the creative process that developed from a rather pessimistic and misanthropic vision of the world as a madhouse (The Last Address, 1936), via the apocalyptic metaphors of a world on the brink of Armageddon (The Last Address, 1939), to a world that, in spite of all its troubles, leaves room for self-irony and humanistic concern (Swinging the Maelstrom,1942–1944). - This book is published in English.Un vieux, un jeune ; un conteur, un auditeur ; des heures d’un travail routinier, propice aux histoires et aux réflexions. La…
table est mise pour ces courts essais anecdotiques.Que peut bien raconter le concierge d’un évêché, dans le Témiscamingue ontarien des années soixante ? Pas mal de choses, en vérité, quand il est un observateur sagace de la réalité qui l’entoure, quand il est amateur d’histoire régionale, quand il a un passé riche et diversifié, quand il a une personnalité forte et un verbe truculent, quand il a un auditeur privilégié en la présence d’un jeune qui ne demande pas mieux que de le faire parler ! Voici monsieur Terrien, conteur haut en couleur, bourru mais attachant, digne représentant du Témiscamingue d’autrefois. Robert Major consacre son essai Témiscamingue, réparti en 17 chapitres, à ces récits dont il a été auditeur et qui font partie de l’histoire orale de ce coin de pays.In Ballast to the White Sea (Canadian Literature Collection)
By Malcolm Lowry. 2014
In Ballast to the White Sea is Malcolm Lowry’s most ambitious work of the mid-1930s. Inspired by his life experience,…
the novel recounts the story of a Cambridge undergraduate who aspires to be a writer but has come to believe that both his book and, in a sense, his life have already been “written.” After a fire broke out in Lowry’s squatter’s shack, all that remained of In Ballast to the White Sea were a few sheets of paper. Only decades after Lowry’s death did it become known that his first wife, Jan Gabrial, still had a typescript. This scholarly edition presents, for the first time, the once-lost novel. Patrick McCarthy’s critical introduction offers insight into Lowry’s sense of himself while Chris Ackerley’s extensive annotations provide important information about Lowry’s life and art in an edition that will captivate readers and scholars alike.No Call Too Small
By Oscar Martens. 2020
&“Martens&’ work would be impressive in any era, but it is particularly timely today. It is wonderful to come upon…
an author who faces into the horrific absurdities of modern life without flinching, a stylist who delivers his most powerful satiric points with laser sharp accuracy and lyrically beautiful language."—Vancouver Sun&“Haunting, darkly funny situations, captured in crisp, spare prose, will appeal to fans of George Saunders.&”—Publishers WeeklyBy the end of the day, a cop must choose between ethics and social death. A camp counsellor, stuck deep in the woods with a small group of boys, only has a few hours before the DTs kick in. Adult children scramble to get the best of what remains of their mother's estate, but funeral plans may be premature. Sandwiched between a depressed mother and a careless father, a young girl must help attract customers to the family business, no matter the cost.The stories in No Call Too Small represent micro-scale disaster tourism on a winding road that is long and dark. Driving too fast, weaving between flaming wrecks, and drifting through cliff-side curves, there's little choice but to hang on and meet whatever's over the rise head on.&“Marten&’s strong prose is a pleasure to read, with dark humour and lively storytelling that brings a quirky humanity to his characters.&”—Janie Chang, Globe and Mail bestselling author of Dragon Springs Road&“A beautifully crafted collection.&”—Marcia Butler, author of Pickle&’s Progress