The Inconvenient Indian wins RBC Taylor Prize

Thomas King the author of The Inconvenient Indian: A curious account of native people in North America was the winner of the RBC Taylor Prize for non-fiction for 2014.

The Inconvenient Indian is at once a "history" and the complete subversion of a history--in short, a critical and personal meditation that the remarkable Thomas King has conducted over the past 50 years about what it means to be "Indian" in North America. Rich with dark and light, pain and magic, this book distills the insights gleaned from that meditation, weaving the curiously circular tale of the relationship between non-Natives and Natives in the centuries since the two first encountered each other. In the process, King refashions old stories about historical events and figures, takes a sideways look at film and pop culture, relates his own complex experiences with activism, and articulates a deep and revolutionary understanding of the cumulative effects of ever-shifting laws and treaties on Native peoples and lands. This is a book both timeless and timely, burnished with anger but tempered by wit, and ultimately a hard-won offering of hope -- a sometimes inconvenient, but nonetheless indispensable account for all of us, Indian and non-Indian alike, seeking to understand how we might tell a new story for the future

 He beat out four other finalists for the Taylor Prize.
They included:

The Dogs Are Eating Them Now: Our War in Afghanistan by Graeme Smith
For readers of War by Sebastian Junger, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families by Philip Gourevitch, and The Forever War by Dexter Filkins: The Dogs Are Eating Them Now is a raw, uncensored account of the war in Afghanistan from a brilliant young reporter who for several years was the only Western journalist brave enough to live full-time in the dangerous southern region. The Dogs are Eating Them Now is a highly personal narrative of our war in Afghanistan and how it went dangerously wrong. Written by a respected and fearless former foreign correspondent who has won multiple awards for his journalism (including an Emmy for the video series "Talking with the Taliban") this is a gripping account of modern warfare that takes you into back alleys, cockpits and prisons--telling stories that would have endangered his life had he published this book while still working as a journalist. From the corruption of law enforcement agents and the tribal nature of the local power structure to the economics of the drug trade and the frequent blunders of foreign troops, this is the no-holds-barred story from a leading expert on the insurgency. Smith draws on his unmatched compassion and a rare ability to cut through the noise and see the broader truths to give us a bold and candid look at the Taliban's continued influence--and at the mistakes, catastrophes and ultimate failure of the West's best intentions.

The Massey Murder by Charlotte Gray
A Globe & Mail 100 Selection and longlisted for the 2014 RBC Taylor Prize! A scandalous crime, a sensational trial, a surprise verdict--the true story of Carrie Davies, the maid who shot a Massey In February 1915, a member of one of Canada's wealthiest families was shot and killed on the front porch of his home in Toronto as he was returning from work. Carrie Davies, an 18-year-old domestic servant, quickly confessed. But who was the victim here? Charles "Bert" Massey, a scion of a famous family, or the frightened, perhaps mentally unstable Carrie, a penniless British immigrant? When the brilliant lawyer Hartley Dewart, QC, took on her case, his grudge against the powerful Masseys would fuel a dramatic trial that pitted the old order against the new, wealth and privilege against virtue and honest hard work. Set against a backdrop of the Great War in Europe and the changing faceof a nation, this sensational crime is brought to vivid life for the first time. As in her previous bestselling book, Gold Diggers--now in production as a Discovery Television miniseries--multi-award-winning historian and biographer Charlotte Gray has created a captivating narrative rich in detail and brimming with larger-than-life personalities, as she shines alight on a central moment in our past

The Once and Future World by J.B  MacKinnon
From one of Canada's most exciting writers and ecological thinkers, a book that will change the way we see nature and show that in restoring the living world, we are also restoring ourselves. The Once and Future World began in the moment J.B. MacKinnon realized the grassland he grew up on was not the pristine wilderness he had always believed it to be. Instead, his home prairie was the outcome of a long history of transformation, from the disappearance of the grizzly bear to the introduction of cattle. What remains today is an illusion of the wild--an illusion that has in many ways created our world. In 3 beautifully drawn parts, MacKinnon revisits a globe exuberant with life, where lions roam North America and 20 times more whales swim in the sea. He traces how humans destroyed that reality, out of rapaciousness, yes, but also through a great forgetting. Finally, he calls for an "age of restoration," not only to revisit that richer and more awe-filled world, but to reconnect with our truest human nature. MacKinnon never fails to remind us that nature is a menagerie of marvels. Here are fish that pass down the wisdom of elders, landscapes still shaped by "ecological ghosts," a tortoise that is slowly remaking prehistory. "It remains a beautiful world," MacKinnon writes, "and it is its beauty, not its emptiness, that should inspire us to seek more nature in our lives."

Arthur Erickson: An Architect's Life by David Stouck
Arthur Erickson, Canada's preeminent philosopher-architect, was renowned for his innovative approach to landscape, his genius for spatial composition and his epic vision of architecture for people. Erickson worked chiefly in concrete, which he called "the marble of our times," and wherever they appear, his buildings move the spirit with their poetic freshness and their mission to inspire. Erickson was also a controversial figure, more than once attracting the ire of his fellow architects, and leading a complicated personal life that resulted in a series of bankruptcies. In a fall from grace that recalls a Greek tragedy, Canada's great architect -- a handsome, elegant man who lived like a millionaire and counted among his close friends Pierre Trudeau and Elizabeth Taylor -- eventually became penniless. Arthur Ericksonis both an intimate portrait of the man and a stirring account of how he made his buildings work.

RBC Taylor Prize Shortlist Finalists 2014

The RBC Taylor prize for non-fiction has announced their shortlist of finalists for 2014. The winner will be announced in March and receive a $25 000 prize. The finalists are:

The Massey Murder: A Maid, her Master, and a Trial that Shocked a Country by Charlotte Gray

Novels about Canadian true crimes by Margaret Atwood (Alias Grace) or Lynn Crosbie (Paul's Case) might capture public attention, but this book by one of Canada's top biographers and historians (Gold Diggers) captivates as an evocative and eye-opening history lesson. Set in the bourgeois world of 1915 Toronto, the expertly-paced procedural follows the fate of an English-born servant, Carrie Davies, whose characteristic "hard, hard life" as one of the city's nearly 12,000 domestics underwent a sudden and radical transformation when she shot Charles Massey, the scion of an influential family, claiming he'd ruined her character. Depicting rapidly changing Canada as a place "riddled with anachronisms and paradoxes" where "seams of hypocrisy and prudery ran deep," the story winds from the Toronto's Women's Court in the heyday of maternal feminism and warring newspapers to a bitter, alcoholic defense attorney, self-important judicial functionaries, courtroom mobs filled with morbid curiosity, and families with unchallenged patrician attitudes. The unfolding drama was a welcome distraction from the "pitiless meat grinder" of war in Europe. While the two-day trial featured competing "gothic horror story" theatrics, the jury of Carrie's 12 social peers eventually obeyed a peculiar logic, reflecting the nation's shifting values.

The Inconvenient Indian:  A Curious Account of Native People in North America by Thomas King

The Inconvenient Indian is at once a "history" and the complete subversion of a history--in short, a critical and personal meditation that the remarkable Thomas King has conducted over the past 50 years about what it means to be "Indian" in North America. Rich with dark and light, pain and magic, this book distills the insights gleaned from that meditation, weaving the curiously circular tale of the relationship between non-Natives and Natives in the centuries since the two first encountered each other. In the process, King refashions old stories about historical events and figures, takes a sideways look at film and pop culture, relates his own complex experiences with activism, and articulates a deep and revolutionary understanding of the cumulative effects of ever-shifting laws and treaties on Native peoples and lands. This is a book both timeless and timely, burnished with anger but tempered by wit, and ultimately a hard-won offering of hope -- a sometimes inconvenient, but nonetheless indispensable account for all of us, Indian and non-Indian alike, seeking to understand how we might tell a new story for the future.

The Once and Future World:  Nature as it was, As it is, As it could Be by J.B. MacKinnon

The Once and Future World began in the moment J.B. MacKinnon realized the grassland he grew up on was not the pristine wilderness he had always believed it to be. Instead, his home prairie was the outcome of a long history of transformation, from the disappearance of the grizzly bear to the introduction of cattle. What remains today is an illusion of the wild--an illusion that has in many ways created our world. In 3 beautifully drawn parts, MacKinnon revisits a globe exuberant with life, where lions roam North America and 20 times more whales swim in the sea. He traces how humans destroyed that reality, out of rapaciousness, yes, but also through a great forgetting. Finally, he calls for an "age of restoration," not only to revisit that richer and more awe-filled world, but to reconnect with our truest human nature. MacKinnon never fails to remind us that nature is a menagerie of marvels. Here are fish that pass down the wisdom of elders, landscapes still shaped by "ecological ghosts," a tortoise that is slowly remaking prehistory. "It remains a beautiful world," MacKinnon writes, "and it is its beauty, not its emptiness, that should inspire us to seek more nature in our lives."

The Dogs Are Eating Them Now: Our War in Afghanistan by Graeme Smith

For readers of War by Sebastian Junger, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families by Philip Gourevitch, and The Forever War by Dexter Filkins: The Dogs Are Eating Them Now is a raw, uncensored account of the war in Afghanistan from a brilliant young reporter who for several years was the only Western journalist brave enough to live full-time in the dangerous southern region. The Dogs are Eating Them Now is a highly personal narrative of our war in Afghanistan and how it went dangerously wrong. Written by a respected and fearless former foreign correspondent who has won multiple awards for his journalism (including an Emmy for the video series "Talking with the Taliban") this is a gripping account of modern warfare that takes you into back alleys, cockpits and prisons--telling stories that would have endangered his life had he published this book while still working as a journalist. From the corruption of law enforcement agents and the tribal nature of the local power structure to the economics of the drug trade and the frequent blunders of foreign troops, this is the no-holds-barred story from a leading expert on the insurgency. Smith draws on his unmatched compassion and a rare ability to cut through the noise and see the broader truths to give us a bold and candid look at the Taliban's continued influence--and at the mistakes, catastrophes and ultimate failure of the West's best intentions.

Arthur Erickson: An Architect's Life by David Stouck

Not available in the Parkland Regional System at this time.

"This first full biography of Erickson, who died in 2009 at the age of 84, traces his life from its modest origins to his emergence on the world stage. Grounded in interviews with Erickson and his family, friends and clients, Arthur Ericksonis both an intimate portrait of the man and a stirring account of how he made his buildings work. Brilliantly written and superbly researched, it is also a provocative look at the phenomenon of cultural heroes and the nature of what we call "genius."" from douglas-mcintyre.com (January 16, 2014).

Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize 2013

The winner of the Rogers Writers' Trust has been announced. The prize goes to:

A Beautiful Truth by Colin McAdam

Told simultaneously from the perspective of humans and chimpanzees, set in a Vermont home and a Florida primate research facility, "A Beautiful Truth"--at times brutal, other times deeply moving--is about the simple truths that transcend species, the meaning of family, the lure of belonging, and the capacity for survival. A powerful and haunting meditation on human nature told from the dual perspectives of a Vermont family that has adopted a chimp as a surrogate son, and a group of chimpanzees in a Florida research institute. Looee, a chimp raised by a well-meaning and compassionate human couple who cannot conceive a baby of their own, is forever set apart. He's not human, but with his peculiar upbringing he is no longer like other chimps. One tragic night Looee's two natures collide and their unique family is forever changed. At the Girdish Institute in Florida, a group of chimpanzees has been studied for decades. The work at Girdish has proven that chimps have memories and solve problems, that they can learn language and need friends, and that they build complex cultures. They are political, altruistic, get angry, and forgive. When Looee is moved to the Institute, he is forced to try to find a place in their world. " A Beautiful Truth "is an epic and heartfelt story about parenthood, friendship, loneliness, fear and conflict, about the things we hold sacred as humans and how much we have in common with our animal relatives. A novel of great heart and wisdom from a literary master, it exposes the yearnings, cruelty, and resilience of all great apes.

Colin wins $25 000 as well as the statue. For more information on the prize winner and the finalists check out The Writers' Trust of Canada.

Governor General's Literary Award Winner 2013

The Governor General Literary Awards for 2013 were announced last night. The winners are:

For English fiction -  The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton

Winner of the 2013 Man Booker Prize, and set during the heady days of New Zealand's Gold Rush, " The Luminaries" isa magnificent novel of love, lust, murder, and greed, in which three unsolved crimes link the fates and fortunes of twelve men. Dickens meets "Deadwood "in this internationally celebrated phenomenon. In January 1866, young Walter Moody lands in a gold-mining frontier town on the west coast of New Zealand to make his fortune and forever leave behind a family scandal. On arrival, he stumbles across a tense gathering of twelve local men who have met in secret to investigate what links three crimes that occurred on a single day: the town's wealthiest man has vanished. An enormous fortune in pure gold has been discovered in the home of a luckless drunk. A prostitute has supposedly tried to end her life. But nothing is quite as it seems. As the men share their stories, what emerges is an intricate network of alliances and betrayals, secrets and lies, that is as exquisitely patterned as the night sky. Part mystery, part fantastical love story, and full of diabolical twists and turns, "The Luminaries" is a richly imagined novel that brilliantly weaves together the changing fates and fortunes of an entire community, one where everyone has something to hide. Full of character and event, it is a gripping page-turner -- and a unique, atmospheric world - in which readers will gladly lose themselves.

For English poetry- North End Love Songs by Katherena Vermetter

Not available in the Parkland Regional Library System at this time.










For English drama - Fault Lines: Three Plays by Nicolas Billon

Not available in the Parkland Regional Library System at this time.








For English Non-fiction: Journey with No Maps: A Life of P. K. Page by Sandra Djwa

Not available in the Parkland Regional Library System at this time.







For English Children's Text: The Unlikely Hero of Room 13B by Teresa Toten

Teresa Toten is back with a compulsively readable new book for teens! When Adam meets Robyn at a support group for kids coping with obsessive-compulsive disorder, he is drawn to her almost before he can take a breath. He's determined to protect and defend her--to play Batman to her Robyn--whatever the cost. But when you're fourteen and the everyday problems of dealing with divorced parents and step-siblings are supplemented by the challenges of OCD, it's hard to imagine yourself falling in love. How can you have a "normal" relationship when your life is so fraught with problems? And that's not even to mention the small matter of those threatening letters Adam's mother has started to receive . . . Teresa Toten sets some tough and topical issues against the backdrop of a traditional whodunit in this engaging new novel that readers will find hard to put down.



For English Children's Illustration: Northwest Passage by Matt James

Award-winning artist Matt James takes the iconic song Northwest Passage by legendary Canadian songwriter and singer Stan Rogers and tells the dramatic story of the elusive route through Canada's North to the Pacific, which for hundreds of years and once again today, nations, explorers and commercial interests have dreamt of conquering, often with tragic consequences. For hundreds of years explorers attempted to find the Northwest Passage - a route through Canada's northern waters to the Pacific Ocean and Asia. Others attempted to find a land route. Many hundreds of men perished in the attempt, until finally, in 1906, Roald Amundsen completed the voyage by ship. Today global warming has brought interest in the passage back to a fever pitch as nations contend with each other over its control and future uses. The historic search inspired Canadian folk musician Stan Rogers to write Northwest Passage, a song that has become a widely known favorite since its 1981 release. It describes Stan's own journey overland as he contemplates the arduous journeys of some of the explorers, including Kelsey, Mackenzie, Thompson and especially Franklin. The song is moving and haunting, a paean to the adventurous spirit of the explorers and to the beauty of the vast land and icy seas. The lyrics are accompanied by the striking paintings of multiple award-winning artist Matt James. Matt brings a unique vision to the song and the history behind it, annotating his illustrations with marginalia about the explorers, including the native peoples of the North. The book also contains the music for the song, a note on the Northwest Passage, maps, information about Stan Rogers (as well as a final verse of the song that was never recorded), mini-biographies and portraits of the principle explorers, and a note on the illustrations. Following on the success of Canadian Railroad Trilogy, this is another beautiful book in which a memorable song illuminates a fascinating history that has taken on new resonance today.


For English Translation: The Major Verbs by Donald Winkler

Not available in the Parkland Regional Library System at this time.








For further information on the short-listed books as well as the French winners check out their website - GG 2013

Giller Prize winner for 2013

It appears to be the year of the short story.

The winner of the Giller Prize is:
Hellgoing by  Lynn Coady
With astonishing range and depth,Lynn Coady gives us eight unforgettable new stories, each one of them grabbing our attention from the first line and resonating long after the last. A young nun charged with talking an anorexic out of her religious fanaticism toys with the thin distance between practicality and blasphemy. A strange bond between a teacher and a schoolgirl takes on ever deeper, and stranger, shapes as the years progress. A bride-to-be with a penchant for nocturnal bondage can't seem to stop bashing herself up in the light of day. Equally adept at capturing the foibles and obsessions of men and of women, compassionate in her humour yet never missing an opportunity to make her characters squirm, fascinated as much by faithlessness as by faith, Lynn Coady is quite possibly the writer who best captures what it is to be human at this particular moment in our history.




Here is Lynn with her trophy (Scotiabank.com, November 8, 2013)

Man Booker Prize Winner is Canadian!

The winner of the prestigious Man Booker Award is Canadian Eleanor Catton with her book Luminaries. 

She is the youngest winner with the longest book that has ever won the Man Booker award. Born in Canada she now resides in New Zealand where her novel takes place.

From the award-winning author of The Rehearsal comes a bold neo-Victorian murder mystery set in a remote gold-mining frontier town in nineteenth-century New Zealand, in which three unsolved crimes link the fates and fortunes of twelve men. Dickens meets Deadwood in this tour de force that will appeal to readers of Peter Carey, Jennifer Egan, Kate Atkinson, David Mitchell, and Michel Faber's The Crimson Petal and the White . In 1866, a weary Englishman lands in a gold-mining frontier town on the coast of New Zealand to make his fortune and forever leave behind his family's shame. On arrival, he stumbles across a tense gathering of twelve local men who have met in secret to investigate what links three crimes that occurred on a single day, events in which each man finds himself implicated in some way: the town's wealthiest man has vanished. An enormous fortune in pure gold has been discovered in the home of a luckless drunk. A prostitute is found unconscious on a deserted road. But nothing is quite as it seems. As the men share their stories, what emerges is an intricate web of alliances and betrayals, secrets and lies in which everything is connected and everyone plays a part, whether they know it or not. Part mystery, part fantastical love story, and full of diabolical twists and turns, The Luminaries is a breathtaking feat of storytelling that reveals the ways our interconnected lives can shape our destinies. Bursting with characters and event, it is a story -- and a unique, richly atmospheric world -- that readers will gladly lose themselves in.

I know I plan on reading this book, it is sitting on my to read pile at home.

Alice Munro wins Nobel Prize for Literature

Canadian author Alice Munro has been awarded the 2013 Nobel Prize for literature. Check out her works:

Dear Life
With her peerless ability to give us the essence of a life in often brief but spacious and timeless stories, Alice Munro illumines the moment a life is shaped -- the moment a dream, or sex, or perhaps a simple twist of fate turns a person out of his or her accustomed path and into another way of being. Suffused with Munro's clarity of vision and her unparalleled gift for storytelling, these stories (set in the world Munro has made her own: the countryside and towns around Lake Huron) about departures and beginnings, accidents, dangers, and homecomings both virtual and real, paint a vivid and lasting portrait of how strange, dangerous, and extraordinary the ordinary life can be.

Too Much Happiness
Brilliantly paced, lit with sparks of danger and underlying menace, these are dazzling, provocative stories about Svengali men and the radical women who outmanoeuvre them, about destructive marriages and curdled friendships, about mothers and sons, about moments that change or haunt a life. A wife and mother whose spirit has been crushed finds release from her extraordinary pain in the most unlikely of places. The young victim of a humiliating seduction (which involves reading Housman in the nude) finds an unusual way to get her own back and move on. An older woman, dying of cancer, weaves a poisonous story to save her life. Alice Munro takes on complex, even harrowing emotions and events and renders them into stories that surprise, amaze, and shed light on the unpredictable ways we accommodate to what happens in our lives.

Away From Her
Married for fifty years, Grant and Fiona's perfect life together is shattered after Fiona is diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.

The View From Castle Rock
A new collection of stories by Alice Munro is always a major event. This new collection -- her most personal to date -- is no exception. Alice Munro's stories are always wonderful and so ingrained with truths about life that readers always want to know where they came from. In this book, Alice Munro tells us. In her Foreword (an unusual feature in itself), she explains how she, born Alice Laidlaw in Ontario, in recent years became interested in the history of her Laidlaw ancestors. Starting in the wilds of the Scottish Borders, she learned a great deal about a famous ancestor, born around 1700, who, as his tombstone records, "for feats of frolic, agility and strength, had no equal in his day." She traced the family's history with the help of that man's nephew, the famous writer James Hogg, finding to her delight that each generation of the family had produced a writer who wanted to record what had befallen them. In this way, she was able to follow the family's voyage to Canada in 1818, and their hard times as pioneers -- once a father dies on the same day that a daughter is born in the same frontier cabin. "I put all this material together over the years," Alice tells us, "and almost without my noticing what was happening, it began to shape itself, here and there, into something almost like stories. Some of the characters gave themselves to me in their own words, others rose out of their situations." As the book goes down through the generations, we come to Robert Laidlaw, Alice's father, and then, at the book's heart, the stories become first-person stories, set during her lifetime. So is this a memoir? No. She drew on personal experiences, "but then I did anything I wanted to with this material, because the chief thing I was doing was making a story." The resulting collection of stories range from the title story -- where through a haze of whiskey Alice's ancestors gaze north from Edinburgh Castle at the Fife coast, believing that it is North America -- all the way to the final story, where we travel with "Alice Munro" today. In the author's words, these stories "pay more attention to the truth of a life than fiction usually does. But not enough to swear on." All of them are Alice Munro stories. There could be no higher praise.

Runaway
"Runaway"is the first story in this stunning collection, sure to be a runaway success. All of the eight stories here are new, published in book form for the first time. Two of the eight have never appeared anywhere, so this will be a special feast for the millions of Munro fans around the world. Miraculously, these stories seem to have been written by a young writer at the peak of her powers. Alice Munro's central characters range from 14-year-old Lauren in "Trespass," through the young couple in "Runaway," whose helpful older neighbour intervenes to help the wife escape, all the way to a 70-year-old woman meeting a friend of her youth on a Vancouver street and sitting with him to recall their tangled lives fifty years earlier, through a web of cheerful lies. Three of the stories, "Chance," "Soon," and "Silence," are linked, showing us how the young teacher Juliet meets her fisherman lover on a train (and, by terrible chance, visits his B.C. home on the day after his wife's funeral); how, years later, she brings baby Penelope back east to show her parents and learns sad secrets about their marriage; and how, twenty years on, she visits the estranged Penelope in her cult-like B.C. community. The result is more powerful than most novels, a quality in Alice Munro's stories that has been noted by many reviewers. The final story, "Powers," spans 50 years and runs from Goderich to Vancouver and involves a cast of four characters, each of whom steps forward to dominate the scene, not least Tessa, the plain girl whose psychic powers take her on the vaudeville circuit. But it is Alice Munro's own powers that dominate this collection and that will amaze reviewers and readers. How can she keep getting better? How can any one person know so much about the heads and hearts of so many different people? And how can she weave them together in stories that delight academics and ordinary readers alike, making each new Alice Munro book a runaway bestseller?

Hateship, friendship, courtship, loveship, marriage.
Here's another collection of short but sure-to-please stories from the incomparable Alice Munro. This is the tenth collection of stories from Canada's matchless chronicler of women's external fates, inner lives, and painful journeys toward and away from self-understanding. These particular nine tales are set mostly in Munro's native Ontario or in Western Canada, and they're sure to leave listeners mesmerized once again.


The love a good woman
All of these eight wonderful stories are about what people will do for love, and the unexpected routes their passion will force them to take. An old landlady in Vancouver who alarms the just-married narrator with her prim advice about married life - and "the peculiar threat" of a china cabinet that must be washed once a month - is shown to have conspired when young in a crime of passion. A young mother, at the mercy of the "radiant explosion" that comes when she thinks of her secret life, abandons her baby and four-year old to be with her lover in the story "The Children Stay." A gruff old country doctor in the 1960s is discovered by his daughter to be helping desperate women, his "special patients." An impetuous young woman meets a visiting Indian student and conceives on a train from Vancouver to Toronto because of "the fact that you couldn't get condoms around the Calgary station, not for love or money." An Ontario farm wife's affair drives her husband to commit a murder; its discovery, years later, will act as a negotiating point for a new, presumably satisfactory, marriage. The book is clear-eyed about the imperfections of marriage, the clutter of our emotional lives, and the impermanence of love: "Not that that was the end. For we did make up. But we didn't forgive each other." Even the shared memories of earlier times prove to be a minefield, and many of the stories track the changes that time brings over generations to families, lovers, and even to friends who share old, intimate secrets about "the prostration of love." As always these stories by Alice Munro are shot through with humour, and are as rich as novels. As always the characters in the stories are easily, sometimes uncomfortably, recognizable as people like us. One quote summarizes the delightful surprises that await the reader: "Did you ever think that people's lives could be like that and end up like this? Well, they can."

Open secrets
Open Secrets, Alice Munro's eighth book, consists of eight matchless stories, each one as rich as a full novel. All of them provide compulsive reading - and rewarding re-reading. "Perhaps you will be surprised to hear from a person you don't know and that doesn't remember your name." These intriguing words begin a letter dated 1917 to the Librarian in Carstairs, Ontario (the heart of "Alice Munro Country"). The letter sweeps us away into a world of secrets and revelations where nothing - not even a courtship by letter that leads, over time, to a solid marriage - is as it originally seems. The Ontario stories range from "A Wilderness Station," which gives an account of an 1852 tree-felling accident and sheds light on the harsh life of the pioneers, all the way to the present, where family names known to us appear again in a world of TV shows and snowmobiles. Just as the stories range back and forth in time, they also travel far to distant settings. Much of "The Albanian Virgin" is set in a remote mountain area where a Canadian tourist in the 1920s is captured by bandits; her tale of escape is comforting to a Victoria bookseller escaping from her own former life. "The Jack Randa Hotel" brings a deserted wife in cold pursuit to Australia, which leads to another intriguing letter. "Dear Mrs. Thornaby, It has come to my attention that you are dead..." Things that cannot be explained happen here. In the title story a lawyer's wife has a flash of insight - illogical, unprovable and terrifying - into the fate of a missing teenager; in another, the appearance of a long-dead visitor reveals the grip of a former love. Yet the true magic lies in the way that Alice Munro makes everything here - unexpected marriages, elopements, acts of sudden vengeance - unfold with the ease of the inevitable. This is the mark of a great writer, and it is stamped on every page of this book.

Giller Prize Shortlist 2013

The five shortlist finalists for the Giller Prize have been announced. They are:

Going Home Again by Dennis Bock
A wrenching and dramatic story that explores the fabric of family: sibling rivalries, marriages on the rocks, hurt children, midlife crisese"in short, modern life When Charlie Bellerose reunites with his flamboyant brother Nate, after two decades apart, their youthful rivalry seems forgotten. Drawn together again by their failed marriages, trying to survive in a world of long-distance parenting and hopeful reunions, they begin to imagine that they can be a new family of sorts. But Charliee(tm)s chance encounter with his first love, Holly, now happily married, unravels his past and complicates his present, plunging him back to his bittersweet college days in Montreal and the fate of his best friend Miles, and forward into Natee(tm)s dangerous attraction to Hollye(tm)s sixteen-year-old daughter, Riley. Yet even Charlie, with all he now knows about his brother, cannot foresee the violence to come. A novel about the mysteries of the human heart, Going Home Again is rich with the exquisite tensions between men and women as they fall in and out of love.

Hellgoing by Lynn Coady
With astonishing range and depth, Scotiabank Giller Prize finalist Lynn Coady gives us eight unforgettable new stories, each one of them grabbing our attention from the first line and resonating long after the last. A young nun charged with talking an anorexic out of her religious fanaticism toys with the thin distance between practicality and blasphemy. A strange bond between a teacher and a schoolgirl takes on ever deeper, and stranger, shapes as the years progress. A bride-to-be with a penchant for nocturnal bondage can't seem to stop bashing herself up in the light of day. Equally adept at capturing the foibles and obsessions of men and of women, compassionate in her humour yet never missing an opportunity to make her characters squirm, fascinated as much by faithlessness as by faith, Lynn Coady is quite possibly the writer who best captures what it is to be human at this particular moment in our history

Cataract City by Craig Davidson
Owen and Duncan are childhood friends who've grown up in picturesque Niagara Falls--known to them by the grittier name Cataract City. As the two know well, there's more to the bordertown than meets the eye: behind the gaudy storefronts and sidewalk vendors, past the hawkers of tourist T-shirts and cheap souvenirs live the real people who scrape together a living by toiling at the Bisk, the local cookie factory. And then there are the truly desperate, those who find themselves drawn to the borderline and a world of dog-racing, bare-knuckle fighting, and night-time smuggling. Owen and Duncan think they are different: both dream of escape, a longing made more urgent by a near-death incident in childhood that sealed their bond. But in adulthood their paths diverge, and as Duncan, the less privileged, falls deep into the town's underworld, he and Owen become reluctant adversaries at opposite ends of the law. At stake is not only survival and escape, but a lifelong friendship that can only be broken at an unthinkable price.

Caught by Lisa Moore
"In the creation of David Slaney, Lisa Moore brings us an unforgettable character, embodying the exuberance and energy of misspent youth. Caught is a propulsive and harrowing read." - Patrick deWitt, author of The Sisters Brothers Internationally acclaimed author Lisa Moore offers us a remarkable new novel about a man who escapes from prison to embark upon one of the most ambitious pot-smuggling adventures ever attempted. Here are bravado and betrayal, bad weather and seas, love, undercover agents, the collusion of governments, unbridled ambition, innocence and the loss thereof, and many, many bales of marijuana. Here, too, is the seeming invincibility of youth and all the folly that it allows. Caught is an exuberant, relentlessly suspenseful, and utterly unique novel, and promises to be the astonishing Lisa Moore's most accomplished work to date.

The Crooked Maid by Dan Vyleta
From the writer praised as a cross between Hitchcock and Dostoyevsky, a dark and suspenseful novel set in post-war Vienna among the spectators in a criminal trial Mid-summer, 1948. Two strangers, Anna Beer and young Robert Seidel, meet on a train as they return to Vienna, where life is just resuming after the upheavals of war. Men who were conscripted into the German army are filtering back home, including Annae(tm)s estranged husband, Dr. Anton Beer, who was held prisoner in a brutal Russian camp. But when Anna returns to their old apartment, she finds another man living there and her husband missing. At his own house, Robert is greeted by a young maid with a deformed spine. The household is in disarray, with his mother addicted to narcotics and his stepfather, an industrialist and former Party member, hospitalized after a mysterious attack. Determined to rebuild their lives, Anna and Robert each begin a dogged search for answers in a world where repression is the order of the day. Before long, they are reunited as spectators at a criminal trial set to deliver judgment on Austriae(tm)s Nazi crimes. In The Crooked Maid, Dan Vyleta conjures up a city haunted by its sins and a people caught between the needs of the present and debts owed to the past.


You have until November 5th to read them all and pick your own winner. The Giller Prize winner will be announced that date!

The Writers' Trust Awards 2013

The nominations for the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize were announced:

 Krista Bridge for The Eliot Girls 
Not yet available in the Parkland Regional Library System.




Lynn Coady for Hellgoing 
With astonishing range and depth, Scotiabank Giller Prize finalist Lynn Coady gives us eight unforgettable new stories, each one of them grabbing our attention from the first line and resonating long after the last. A young nun charged with talking an anorexic out of her religious fanaticism toys with the thin distance between practicality and blasphemy. A strange bond between a teacher and a schoolgirl takes on ever deeper, and stranger, shapes as the years progress. A bride-to-be with a penchant for nocturnal bondage can't seem to stop bashing herself up in the light of day. Equally adept at capturing the foibles and obsessions of men and of women, compassionate in her humour yet never missing an opportunity to make her characters squirm, fascinated as much by faithlessness as by faith, Lynn Coady is quite possibly the writer who best captures what it is to be human at this particular moment in our history.

Cary Fagan for A Bird’s Eye
With all the wonder of a small-scale The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay comes this moving and unforgettable novel about childhood, love, and magic. Growing up in a Jewish neighbourhood in the 1930s, young Benjamin Kleeman falls in love, first with Corrine Foster and then with magic. Hiding his new passions from his parents -- the long-suffering Bella, an Italian immigrant, and Jacob, a talented but failed inventor of elaborate mechanical devices -- Benjamin begins apprenticeships in magic and life itself, learning along the way that everything is more complicated than it seems. With wit, tenderness, humour, and, startling beauty, Cary Fagan brings a gifted young man's rise to a peculiar kind of stardom, wonderfully alive.

Colin McAdam for A Beautiful Truth
Not yet available in the Parkland Regional Library System.




Lisa Moore for Caught
"In the creation of David Slaney, Lisa Moore brings us an unforgettable character, embodying the exuberance and energy of misspent youth. Caught is a propulsive and harrowing read." - Patrick deWitt, author of The Sisters Brothers Internationally acclaimed author Lisa Moore offers us a remarkable new novel about a man who escapes from prison to embark upon one of the most ambitious pot-smuggling adventures ever attempted. Here are bravado and betrayal, bad weather and seas, love, undercover agents, the collusion of governments, unbridled ambition, innocence and the loss thereof, and many, many bales of marijuana. Here, too, is the seeming invincibility of youth and all the folly that it allows. Caught is an exuberant, relentlessly suspenseful, and utterly unique novel, and promises to be the astonishing Lisa Moore's most accomplished work to date.

The winners will be announced on November 20th. The Writers' Trust Fiction Prize website offers more information.

This is a very different list of nominees when compared to the Giller or the Man Booker lists. Check them all out and see what you think!