Best of
Canadian-Literature

1996

Fall on Your Knees


Ann-Marie MacDonald - 1996
    Chronicling five generations of this eccentric clan, Fall on Your Knees follows four remarkable sisters whose lives are filled with driving ambition, inescapable family bonds, and forbidden love. Their experiences will take them from their stormswept homeland, across the battlefields of World War I, to the freedom and independence of Jazz-era New York City.Compellingly written, running the literary gamut from menacingly dark to hilariously funny, this is an epic saga of one family’s trials and triumphs in a world of sin, guilt, and redemption.

Traplines


Eden Robinson - 1996
    In crackling prose, she describes homes ruled by bullies, psychopaths, and delinquents; families whose conflict resolution techniques range from grand theft to homicide; kids who have nowhere to go and a lifetime to get there.

Fugitive Pieces


Anne Michaels - 1996
    His name is Jakob Beer. He is only seven years old. And although by all rights he should have shared the fate of the other Jews in his village, he has not only survived but been rescued by a Greek geologist, who does not recognize the boy as human until he begins to cry. With this electrifying image, Anne Michaels ushers us into her rapturously acclaimed novel of loss, memory, history, and redemption.   As Michaels follows Jakob across two continents, she lets us witness his transformation from a half-wild casualty of the Holocaust to an artist who extracts meaning from its abyss. Filled with mysterious symmetries and rendered in heart-stopping prose, Fugitive Pieces is a triumphant work, a book that should not so much be read as it should be surrendered to.

The Merry Heart: Reflections on Reading Writing & the World of Books


Robertson Davies - 1996
    Coming almost entirely from Davies? own files of unpublished material, these twenty-four essays and lectures range over themes from "The Novelist and Magic" to "Literature and Technology," from "Painting, Fiction, and Faking," to "Can a Doctor Be a Humanist?" and "Creativity in Old Age." For devotees of Davies and all lovers of literature and language, here is the "urbanity, wit, and high seriousness mixed by a master chef" (Cleveland Plain Dealer)?vintage delights from an exquisite literary menu. Davies himself says merely: "Lucky writers. . .like wine, die rich in fruitiness and delicious aftertaste, so that their works survive them." Viking will publish Robertson Davies? Happy Alchemy in July 1998Many fine works by Robertson Davies are available from Penguin including The Deptford Trilogy, The Cornish Trilogy, and The Salterton Trilogy

Silver Threads


Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch - 1996
    As the young couple struggle to build their homestead, World War I breaks out. Ages 8+ years.

Selected Poetry


Gwendolyn MacEwen - 1996
    It traces the trajectory of her verse and the development of her fiction and drama, and includes letters, paintings, and photographs from the oeuvre of this beloved Canadian poet.

The Lesser Blessed


Richard Van Camp - 1996
    His tongue, his hallucinations and his fantasies are hotter than the sun. At sixteen, he loves Iron Maiden, the North and Juliet Hope, the high school "tramp." When Johnny Beck, a Metis from Hay River, moves to town, Larry is ready for almost anything.In this powerful and often very funny first novel, Richard Van Camp gives us one of the most original teenage characters in fiction. Skinny as spaghetti, nervy and self-deprecating, Larry is an appealing mixture of bravado and vulnerability. His past holds many terrors: an abusive father, blackouts from sniffing gasoline, an accident that killed several of his cousins. But through his friendship with Johnny, he’s ready now to face his memories—and his future.Marking the debut of an exciting new writer, The Lesser Blessed is an eye-opening depiction of what it is to be a young Native man in the age of AIDS, disillusionment with Catholicism and a growing world consciousness.A coming-of-age story that any fan of The Catcher in the Rye will enjoy.

Mondo Canuck: A Canadian pop culture odyssey


Geoff Pevere - 1996
    Topics range from the greatness of SCTV to the rise of Trivial Pursuit to the glorious careers of William Shatner, Stompin' Tom Connors, and many other noble Canadians. This may be the one book whose scope is wide enough to encompass both the Guess Who and the Galloping Gourmet.Though the subjects are wildly diverse, Pevere and Dymond believe that the purest manifestations of Canuck junk-culture have much in common. For instance, they write that the "blithe indifference to trend and fashion" of fabled power-trio Rush makes it distinctly Canadian. Furthermore, the band's "refusal to pack up and go away even though it's constantly criticized for not being 'Canadian' enough" is evidence of "the same sheer Northern stubbornness" possessed by figures like filmmaker David Cronenberg and television innovator Moses Znaimer. Mondo Canuck also ridicules the most inane varieties of Canada's cultural output (e.g., the countless ice-skating spectaculars, the Rene Simard specials, the Celine Dion ballads). The authors describe the disastrous movies spawned by the tax-shelter film boom of the late '70s as what happens "when Canadians attempt to be just like the Americans, except without the history, money, population, promotional savvy or market base." Rigorously researched and frequently hilarious, Mondo Canuck illustrates that Canadians are no slouches when it comes to schlock. But at least it's our schlock.