Book picks similar to
Selected Poetry by Gwendolyn MacEwen


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Canoe Lake


Roy MacGregor - 2002
    As she searches through dusty records and stirs up old memories among those around her, three young people emerge from the mists of the past…a beautiful woman named Jenny, a shy local boy named Russell, and a dark-eyed painter named Tom, who changes the course of Jenny and Russell’s lives. Historical reality and conjecture are skilfully interwoven with intrigue and suspense as these three move unwittingly toward tragedy.

thirsty


Dionne Brand - 2002
    About a man who has visions, hovering on the edge but hating it, restless and at war with the world but wanting the peace that passeth understanding. Everything he does is half-done, except his death. When he falls, his parched spirit crying "thirsty," his family falls apart. This is a poem about Toronto, the city that’s never happened before, about waiting for a bus, standing on a corner, watching a stranger: the bank to one corner, the driving school on another, the milk store and the church. This is also about the poet, her own restless sensibility woven in and out through moments of lyric beauty, dramatic power and storytelling grace. It is written in the margins, like a medieval manuscript with shades of light and darkness.

Mysterium


Eric McCormack - 1992
    What he finds is the dying and the dead, an entire population suffering from a strange and unnatural plague. Is it possible that every one of the townsfolk have been poisoned? At the heart of the mystery is the local pharmacist, Aiken. He is responsible for summoning young Maxwell to Carrick. He offers motives, explanations, stories, questions. But could he also be guilty of this heinous crime? Maxwell soon realizes that, although a great violence is being done to Carrick, the town itself hides from its own secrets - events from long ago and truths hidden from outsiders at all costs, even their lives. Maxwell interviews the final survivors who are suffering from a disease characterized by a barely recognizable but nonetheless identifiable odour, and a garrulousness unusual in such taciturn people, long accustomed to keeping secrets. yet their confessions lead constantly to more questions and always back to Aiken. As one who knows him well queries, "He's like a stick in water. Is he bent or not?"In The Mysterium, Eric McCormack's second novel, the nature of truth is found to be as deadly as the poison killing the people of Carrick. For at the heart of everything, at the heart of every story and every truth, there is only the mystery.

Atonement


Gaétan Soucy - 1997
    During that one blustery winter solstice day, between the railway station and the church where a funeral mass is underway, he meets old villagers, forgotten neighbours, and characters who are either imagined or real. But there's only one person he seeks: the von Croft twin he taught to read music and to whom he wants to atone.Soucy creates a world where nothing is left to chance and the line between dream and reality is always shifting.

Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet)


Ann-Marie MacDonald - 1997
    Escaping into her research, Constance decodes the Gustav Manuscript, and discovers a pair of comedies that she believes are the source for Shakespeare's Othello and Romeo and Juliet. Transported into the world of her theory, she comes face-to-face with Desdemona and Juliet and discovers that, far from shrinking violets, they are hellions full of surprises. What follows is a riotous retelling of theatrical legend that brings Constance out of her gloom and straight into a new and confident self.

The Astrological Diary of God


Bo Fowler - 1999
    Japs Eye Fontanelle, an 88-year-old overweight, retired Japanese kamikaze pilot, insists that he is the rightful king of the Holy Channel Island of Jersey. He also claims to be the Creator of the Universe. This is his autobiography, written while under armed guard inside the gold vault at Fort Knox. Fontanelle recounts his truly remarkable life: from his birth in the city of Kyoto and his involvement in World War II, to his study of the ancient science of astrology, the historic discovery of his own divinity, and the founding of the first Astrological Kingdom on Earth. Occasionally, when he isn't busy creating galaxies, he takes a break to watch "Star Trek".Structured in twelve meticulously-researched, hilariously funny zodiacal chapters-and padded with photo inserts revealing such delights as God returning from his ninth suicide mission, Shinto monks, and God's genitals- The Astrological Diary of God is a savage and irreverent take on modern belief.

Falling For My Best Friend


Dee James - 2018
    They'd been friends ever since he taught her to ride her bicycle when she was five. To Rhea, who fell for Vikram over the years, he was perfect, her own 'Prince Charming' who could do no wrong. Or so she thought! Until he brought his fiancée home to introduce to his parents.For Vikram, Rhea was that best friend with who he could talk about anything. Orphaned at a young age, Rhea lived with Vikram's family and they had grown up together. While he held her on a pedestal, he wasn't aware of his best friend's love for him. That was until the day he kissed her. Will their friendship survive the attraction? Where did Tanya, Vikram's fiancée, fit into all this?

Midnight Milkshakes: Ice Cream And Suicide Vol. II


Jack Ray - 2018
    The book features raw, blunt, and in your face poems depicting the darker side of relationships. Readers will find themes such as lies, cheating, and heartache abundant in much of this collection. Midnight Milkshakes, being the second volume of Ray's Ice Cream And Suicide, is great for returning readers to the series. The book focuses on much of the same style and mood that is common in his writings.

Burning Sugar


Cicely Belle Blain - 2020
    They use poetry to illuminate their activist work: exposing racism, especially anti-Blackness, and helping people see the connections between history and systemic oppression that show up in every human interaction, space, and community. Their poems demonstrate how the world is both beautiful and cruel, a truth that inspires overwhelming anger and awe -- all of which spills out onto the page to tell the story of a challenging, complex, nuanced, and joyful life.In Burning Sugar, verse and epistolary, racism and resilience, pain and precarity are flawlessly sewn together by the mighty hands of a Black, queer femme.This book is the second title to be published under the VS. Books imprint, a series curated and edited by writer-musician Vivek Shraya, featuring work by new and emerging Indigenous or Black writers, or writers of color.

The Vinyl Cafe Notebooks


Stuart McLean - 2010
    From meditations on peacekeeping to praise for the toothpick, The Vinyl Cafe Notebooks runs the gamut from considered argument to light-hearted opinion. Whether McLean is visiting a forgotten corner of the Canadian Shield, a big-city doughnut factory, or Sir John A. Macdonald's gravesite, his observations are absorbing, unexpected, and original. With thought-provoking proposals about the world we live in and introductions to the people he meets in his extensive travels across our country, The Vinyl Cafe Notebooks is informed by McLean's intimate relationship with Canada and Canadians. Yet the collection is also an intriguing look at the writer himself—his past, his present, and his vision of the future. Sometimes funny, often wise, and always entertaining, The Vinyl Cafe Notebooks is sure to provide a wealth of reading pleasure that fans will return to again and again.

SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water Junior Novel (The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water in 3D)


Nickelodeon Publishing - 2015
    This junior novel retells the whole hilarious story and features eight pages of full-color scenes from the movie! It’s perfect for boys and girls ages 8 to 12.

The Age of Longing


Richard B. Wright - 1996
    Wright's acclaimed novel of Howard Wheeler's search for self-understanding is a journey through the past, both real and imagined, a brilliant gathering-together of the many threads of emotional inheritance that make up life.

Restlessness


Aritha van Herk - 1998
    Unable to commit suicide, she hires a professional killer and contracts him to kill her, by her choice and on her terms. In an effort to dissuade her from death, her killer elicits from her stories about her travels. In this reversal of Sheherazade, who saves her life through a continuous story, Restlessness becomes a story about how to avoid story, a travel book about how to evade travel, a manual for how to stay put.

Swann


Carol Shields - 1987
    Carol Shields's award-winning and critically acclaimed "literary mystery," first published in 1987.Swann is the story of four individuals who become entwined in the life of Mary Swann, a rural Canadian poet whose authentic and unique voice is discovered only hours before her husband hacks her to pieces.Who is Mary Swann? And how could she have produced these works of genius in almost complete isolation? Mysteriously, all traces of Swann's existence — her notebook, the first draft of her work, even her photograph — gradually vanish as the characters in this engrossing novel become caught up in their own concepts of who Mary Swann was.

Butterflies Dance in the Dark


Beatrice MacNeil - 2002
    Around her revolves a vividly drawn cast of characters: her mother Adele; Misha, a Polish Jew; the willful, bitter Mother Superior; and her powerfully intelligent twin brothers, who sleep beside a map of the world they long to explore. Brilliantly imagined and buoyed by the clear-eyed perceptions of youth, it is an eloquent and profound story from a gifted writer.