BOOKS

BOOKS Fall books season arrives with plenty of choices

by Susan Cole

This is more than a bit of a buzzkill, but COVID may have us hunkering down again soon. Even if we don’t have to for public health reasons, the weather will probably drive us into our homes this winter, where books can spark our imaginations and ful ll our craving for ideas. Here are some suggestions.

DANTE’S INDIANA By Randy Boyagoda (Biblioasis) Boyagoda’s second novel of a planned trilogy brings back his character Prin, who, while still yearning to reconnect with his distant wife, moves to Indiana to take a job at new theme park Dante’s Inferno. Many of his coworkers are opioid-dependent, and the death of a young Black teen at the hands of police intensifies the community’s woes. The convergence of unscrupulous politicians, creationists, and outraged protesters on the small town doesn’t help. Another sharp satire from one of Canada’s best writers. Out now.

MISFITS: A PERSONAL MANIFESTO By Michaela Coel (Henry Holt/Raincoast) Fans of Coel’s incendiary TV series I May Destroy You will get everything they crave—though something quite di erent—from this courageous creator in her memoir-cum-manifesto that traces her development from London public-housing resident to celebrated storyteller. It’s inspirational, yes, but also clear-eyed about what it’s like to live on the margins and why we need to embrace radical honesty, empathy, and our di erences. Out now.

RED X by David Demchuk (Strange Light) On its face, Red X looks like a novel set against the backdrop of the serial killings in Toronto’s gay village that began in 2014. It is that, with T.O.’s history of homophobia, problematic police attitudes— from violence to indi erence—and the AIDS crisis also in the background, but the story is not about the killings themselves. Rather, Demchuk pursues his fascination with the horror genre to create a unique narrative covering more than 30 years, his personal story, a new take on the relationship between queerness and horror, and the conjuring of a new kind of monster. Out now.

OUT OF THE SUN: ON RACE AND STORYTELLING By Esi Edugyan (Anansi) e brilliant two-time Giller winner from Victoria (Half-Blood Blues, Washington Black) delivers her rst book of non ction, an exhilarating inquiry into the

Book publishers often issue their most appealing titles, including the ones above, in autumn to coincide with writers festivals such as those scheduled next month in Vancouver and Whistler. importance of stories, speci cally Black stories, that hover at the margins. Determined to give these narratives—some from her own life—centrality, Edugyan looks at Black histories in literature and lm in ways that subvert our assumptions of who we are as individuals and as a nation. e beauty in this comes from Edugyan’s willingness to challenge herself as much as she challenges her readers. Out September 28.

HUNTING BY STARS By Cherie Dimaline (Penguin) Young-adult ction seldom lands on a list like this one. But as we confront the truth about Canada’s relationships with our First Nations—through history and right now— let’s take heart from the fact that, thanks in part to author Dimaline, young people are reading about residential schools. is follow-up to 2018’s megaseller e Marrow ieves, about governments’ attempts to kidnap Indigenous people to harvest their bone marrow (the seat of their dreams), follows teenaged French, who is forcibly locked up and must gure out a way to survive without betraying his community. Out October 19.

AUGUST INTO WINTER by Guy Vanderhaeghe (McClelland & Stewart) Looking for some literary he ? Triple Governor General’s Award–winning Vanderhaeghe is back with a new novel, almost 10 years in the making. e complex narrative spotlights highly problematic character Ernie, who leaves town with the 12-year-old girl he idealizes and is pursued by three other men with issues of their own. ere is chaos and cruelty in this story—Vanderhaeghe is fascinated by those elements—but there is also love and unremitting suspense. Out now.

THE STRANGERS By Katherena Vermette (Hamish Hamilton) We’ve waited four years for this follow-up to Vermette’s excellent debut, e Break, and the award-winning author comes through with a novel that expands her literary palette. Struggling with addiction, Elsie tries to reconnect with her two daughters: Cedar, who now lives with her father a er surviving foster care, and Phoenix, still in foster care, pregnant, with little chance to raise the child. It does sound grim, but Vermette has a way of seeing light through the crack in the wall of a dark room. Out September 28.

THE MOMENT: STANDING UP TO BILL COSBY, SPEAKING UP FOR WOMEN By Andrea Constand (Viking) High on my list of heroes is the courageous Canadian Constand, the first woman to get in serial rapist Bill Cosby’s face, legally speaking, and who, 10 years after he sexually assaulted her, decided to bring him to justice, inspiring more than 60 other women to come forward with their stories. The title refers to three life-changing moments: the trauma of her rape, the decision to go to police, and the cultural moment when the #MeToo movement shifted public awareness about the sexual-assault epidemic. Read this and you’ll only be more outraged that Cosby was released from jail last June because of a Trumpite prosecutor’s incompetence. Out now.

OUR COUNTRY FRIENDS By Gary Shteyngart (Random House) Novels with characters in lockdown were bound to deluge us, and—even if you’re the type to dread that scenario—a book by Shteyngart, one of America’s most entertaining writers, is hard to resist. A Russianborn novelist, his psychiatrist wife, their precocious child too deeply into K-pop, a struggling Indian American writer, a successful Korean American app developer, a world traveller with three passports, and a provocative Southern essayist all appear to be surviving until a movie star threatens to burst their bubble. Out November 2.

SECRET LIFE By eo Ellsworth from a short story by Je VanderMeer (Drawn & Quarterly) Drawn & Quarterly has a Leonard Cohen illustrated biography scheduled for release, which is guaranteed to attract a large readership, but the graphic take on an eerie short story about life inside an o ce building promises to be much more provocative. In this mind-bending narrative, all kinds of weird things are happening: mice can speak English, while lower-caste workers on the second oor develop their own language. e simple act of lending a pen drives one worker around the bend; everywhere, competition for dominance is rampant, and nature, too, has gone wonky as vines are growing inside the walls. It’s an allegory about work life like no other. Out September 28.

LETTERS TO AMELIA By Lindsay Zier-Vogel (Book*hug) A er being dumped by her partner of seven years, library tech Grace is grieving deeply but nds distraction when she’s tasked to read the newly discovered passionate letters that famed early aviator/ writer Amelia Earhart wrote to her lover, Gene Vidal. Grace’s fascination with the aviation hero intensi es when she discovers she’s pregnant, and soon she’s writing her own letters to Earhart as she tries to get on with her life. From the creator of the Love Lettering Project, this could be the surprise debut novel of the year. It’s set in Toronto and references Earhart’s connection to the city where she was a volunteer nurse in 1917. Who knew? Out now.

WONDER DRUG: LSD IN THE LAND OF LIVING SKIES By Hugh D. A. Goldring, illustrated by nicole marie burton (Between the Lines) e story may be familiar, but the format— a graphic novel—has never before been used to tell it. In the ’50s, the tiny town of Weyburn, Saskatchewan, of all places, became the seat of groundbreaking research

Canada’s former justice minister and ex–Vancouver Granville MP Jody Wilson-Raybould created a stir in the federal election campaign when an excerpt of her new book was published. on psychedelics. The scientists discovered that LSD could turn into a valued cure for depression and alcoholism. But when the war on drugs took hold, the researchers’ higher-ups and timid politicians made sure to bury the new discoveries. Books like these bring this tidbit of history back into the public eye. Out November 8.

THE SNOW LINE By Tessa McWatt (Random House) Four people meet at a wedding in Punjab: a yoga teacher, a classical singer, an amateur photographer, and a man who’s there with the secondary purpose of scattering his late wife’s ashes. The quartet see a chance for adventure and embark on a journey to the Himalayas to help the widower complete his task. We featured McWatt on our cover when her first book, Out of My Skin—probing identity, displacement, and human connection—was released in 1998. Since then, she has pursued many of the same themes while finely honing a unique ability to find intimacy in a narrative of epic proportions. Out now.

“INDIAN” IN THE CABINET: SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER By Jody Wilson-Raybould (HarperCollins) Political junkies can get their fix with this memoir from the Vancouver woman at the centre of one of Canada’s biggest news stories of 2019. But don’t just skip to the juicy part about Wilson-Raybould’s role as minister of justice in the SNC-Lavalin affair. Her childhood as the granddaughter of a woman determined to keep traditions alive and the daughter of a hereditary chief is fascinating, send- ing her on a path to leadership she knew she had to follow. And Trudeau’s handling of the SNCLavalin scandal isn’t the only thing Wilson-Raybould sees as problematic on Parliament Hill. She’s looking for fundamental change in the practise of Canadian politics. Out now.

WE ARE NOT LIKE THEM By Jo Piazza and Christine Pride (Simon&Schuster) Cowritten novels are an unusual thing, but when the subject is the lifelong bond between two women—Riley, who’s Black, and Jen, who’s white—that’s a good strategy for creating authenticity. Here, Jen’s police officer husband is implicated in a police shooting, and aspiring TV journalist Riley is covering the story. It’s a page turner like last year’s The Other Black Girl, part of a surge of new fiction about anti-Black racism in America. Out October 5.

ALSO ON THE HORIZON Matrix (Riverhead), Lauren Groff’s follow-up to her superb Fates and Furies, this time out about a 12th-century nun trying to save the nunnery; Unreconciled (Viking), Indigenous cultural activist and creator Jesse Wente’s memoir; State Of Terror (Simon & Schuster), a thriller set in the White House, by Louise Penny and Hillary Rodham Clinton; A Runner’s Journey (University of Toronto Press), a memoir from Canadian sports icon Bruce Kidd; Lean Fall Stand (HarperCollins), a moving novel from Jon McGregor about a man who has seen the worst but can’t talk about it. g

Vancouver Writers Fest reveals this year’s lineup

by Charlie Smith

For Vancouver book lovers, October just might be their favourite time of the year. Not only is that when many fall titles become available, it’s also when the Vancouver Writers Fest takes place.

Today, the festival announced its lineup of in-person, hybrid, and online events from October 18 to 24. And it includes many celebrated authors.

Among them are Miriam Toews, Jesse Wente, Esi Edugyan, Katherena Vermette, André Alexis, Omar El Akkad, Ann Goldstein, Lauren Groff, Zoe Whittall, Tomson Highway, Anthony Doerr, Susan Orlean, and Jeff VanderMeer.

Highway, also a playwright and pianist, will discuss his new memoir, Permanent Astonishment. His first language is Cree, and in 2001 Maclean’s included him on its list of the 100 most important people in Canadian history.

Edugyan, a two-time winner of the Scotiabank Giller Prize, will speak about her 2021 Massey Lectures, entitled Out of the Sun, which took a deep dive into art and race.

Toews, a two-time winner of the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, is out with a new book, Fight Night. It’s an intergenerational tale told through a character named Swiv, a nine-year-old in Toronto with a pregnant mother and a wise and loving grandmother.

“In a year when our worlds became so small, and doorways closed, it was through art, music, and books that many of us found new pathways,” Vancouver Writers Fest artistic director Leslie Hurtig said in a news release announcing this year’s lineup. “Now, we invite you to join us on Granville Island, and from your homes, as we present the works of over 115 extraordinary authors.”

Guest curator Lawrence Hill, author of The Book of Negroes and The Illegal, will showcase Black and Indigenous authors.

He’s moderating a discussion with Cherie Jones and Myriam Chancy about Caribbean literature. In addition, Hill will interview Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize–winning poet Chantal Gibson, who has a new collection, with/holding. Hill has also programmed events with Lisa Bird-Wilson and Katherena Vermette, among others.

Theatre-event tickets are $25, apart from the pay-what-you-can discussions at the Nest. The Literary Cabaret and Afternoon Tea events are $45, whereas digital events are being offered on a pay-what-you-can basis.

The Vancouver Writers Fest has a Digital Festival Pass for $100, offering access to every digital-only event.

This year’s Literary Cafe features Mona Awad, Gary Barwin, Christa Couture, Marcello Di Cintio, Omar El Akkad, and Darrel McLeod.

The Afternoon Tea event includes Myriam Chancey, Linden MacIntyre, Casey Plett, Jael Richardson, Ian Williams, and Zoe Whittall.

Both will take place in-person at Performance Works on Granville Island.

Under Hurtig’s direction in recent years, the Vancouver Writers Fest has ramped up its youth-education programming. This year is no exception, as there are 15 events for students from kindergarten to Grade 12 in the Writers in the Classroom program.

Participating authors include George Elliott Clarke, Wab Kinew, Adam Sol, and Uzma Jalaluddin. In addition to being a bestselling author, Kinew is leader of the Manitoba New Democratic Party. g

Author Esi Edugyan will be at the Vancouver Writers Fest. Photo by Daniel Harasymchuk.

…through art, music and books…many of us found new pathways.

– artistic director Leslie Hurtig