Recent Canadian Fiction by Women Writers

Eleanor Catton, 2024

Do read Eleanor Catton's engrossing, Booker short-listed Birnam Wood. Does this philosophical eco-thriller ever accelerate to a devastating end! From McClelland & Stewart. Read it in conjunction with the equally fabulous The Future by Natalie Alderman. What these Big Tech CEO bro’s get up to!

Elisabeth de Mariaffi, 2021

The Banff Centre for the Arts has never felt more ominous! The physical setting is gorgeous and dangerous: watch out for Nature, warns one of the characters. A retreat from daily life for a few artists, lucky... or unlucky. And another study in misogyny. The Retreat ends in a strange, somewhat unbelievable retreat from unutterable trauma: "But she's already imagining how her dancers will look. How to make these movements, this broken body, into something beautiful. The bear is behind her now. Maeve reaches down and lights a flare." Now that's artistic diligence! I read Lisa de Nikolits's The occult persuasion and the anarchist's solution / a novel in one gulp. SO much fun: “The thin line between the improbable and the probable is known in magic as ‘the sphere of availability.” Hurrah for Inanna Publications!!

Claudia Dey, 2023

“𝘐 𝘵𝘰𝘭𝘥 𝘗𝘢𝘶𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘨𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘧 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘪𝘮𝘮𝘰𝘷𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘵 𝘩𝘢𝘥 𝘯𝘰 𝘥𝘪𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯, 𝘪𝘵 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘵 𝘭𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘥 𝘪𝘯 𝘮𝘺 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘰𝘢𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘯 𝘮𝘺 𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘯 𝘮𝘺 𝘰𝘳𝘨𝘢𝘯𝘴.” “𝘓𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘮𝘺 𝘣𝘰𝘥𝘺 𝘧𝘦𝘭𝘵 𝘥𝘪𝘧𝘧𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘐 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵. 𝘓𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘮𝘺 𝘣𝘰𝘥𝘺 𝘧𝘦𝘭𝘵 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘨𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘬𝘯𝘪𝘧𝘦𝘥.” Father/daughter relations are intense to begin with, but Claudia Dey with her playwright’s gift for dialogue: “He transposed her lines and he stuffed them into the mouths of the women in his books, his unpublished books, they were good lines, like neural pathways, they were the good lines of searching women.” And the end turns the tale on its head!

Cherie Dimaline, 2023

Cherie Dimaline does magic and beats the old patriarch(y) in a lovely turn of events. Her heroine, Lucky, is endearing and resilient, the latest witch to be discovered for a transformative cover of seven of those born with or without a silver spoon. Fun and fast, this scavenger hunt reveals many a secret. I hope VenCo is the first in a series. More on the Oracles, please, Cherie!

Emma Donoghue, 2023

Two young women, age 14, fall in love at a boarding school. What could go wrong? Read on... "You won’t be surprised that I so treasure these old haunts. It was in York that I received my education; where I was stamped like warm wax by a seal, formed once and for all. I know you’ll recall the song—where all the joy and mirth, made this town heaven on earth. At the Manor School, I tasted heaven on earth even as I toiled to pack my poor skull with the knowledge and wisdom I was told I’d need for life. The joke is, Lister, the only lesson I learned, or at least the only lesson I remember, was you." For more of the intrepid Anne Lister, adventurer, take a look at Gentleman Jack, the series created by Sally Wainwright.

Alicia Elliott, 2024

This heart-rending articulation of postpartum paranoia and cultural dislocation might just lead our not-so-reliable narrator Alice out to other portals through Haudenosaunee ways of knowing as Alice attempts to recreate the Creation story of Sky Woman. Alice and Ellie, Alicia Elliott: no coincidence. Random House

Marina Endicott, 2023

This is a novel that hovers between fiction and memoir. It's a tender closeup of a couple in highly stressful situations, describing the toll trauma takes with a fierce delicacy. In the midst of all we read about the RCMP and police in general, THE OBSERVER is a welcome, sensitive antidote from a very fine writer. The setting, based on Mayerthorpe, Alberta, is particularly poignant given recent shootings of four RCMP officers there.

Elyse Friedman, 2022

The Opportunist is a delight! When Succession hits an island off Vancouver Island, mayhem ensues, maybe. Guess who among many is The Opportunist... or the most opportunistic? Twists and turns galore frolic to a glorious ending. Fun and Fast! What a sweet Easter Egg is laid in The Opportunist! Kelly’s original name is Aisling: “Aisling is an Irish feminine given name meaning "dream" or "vision". The aisling, or vision poem, is a poetic genre that developed during the late 17th and 18th centuries in Irish language poetry.” If you loved The Opportunist, you’ll enjoy Susan Juby's equally engaging novel, Mindful of Murder, also set on a West Coast island!

Emma Hooper, 2022

Historical novels ain’t what they used to be. Hooper’s epic travelogue set across the Roman Empire is more fun and more inviting than a hagiography. This highly original story only bogs down in the middle for a bit. Hooper's lovely language, with hypnotic rhythms of repetition, is almost musical, even when conversational. Nine twin sisters and their diverging stories: none of them Virgin Suicides, though one becomes a Vestal Virgin in Carthage, another a saint. Brilliant.

Elizabeth Hay, 2023

From her first line (“Fields go back to forest, first love runs to fat.”, Hay holds us in a gorgeous snow globe. What an evocative description of Lanark County! "Always what they are—and so changed from what they were.” Elizabeth Hay’s last words in Snow Road Station describe in her always elegant prose her books and her characters, people we know from earlier work: fun to see how they develop.

Susan Juby, 2022

Laughing & loving this Buddhist butler mystery, a novel that appears to be based on Hollyhock Retreat Centre, Cortes Island BC: so much fun! & delighted there's more to come. A series! I want to BE Helen: more scrutable than Jeeves and better looking. Now on to Juby's Home to Woefield and soon, her new novel, A Meditation on Murder!

Rivka Galchen, 2021

A slew of books about witches last year! The Book of Magic (Practical Magic, #2) by Alice Hoffman is the most fanciful and fun. A. K. Blakemore’s The Manningtree Witches is set in the exact same era and area: this book is more grounded in 17th C. reality... and better written in depicting the realities of witch hunting. Also interesting for contemporary historical enactment is Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch by Rivka Galchen, staff writer for The New Yorker. The accused mother in question is Katharina Kepler, mother of scientist Johannes Kepler. See also The Mercies, by Kiran Millwood Hargrave and See Alix Hawley's piece, https://thewalrus.ca/the-year-of-witc....

Natalie Jenner, 2022

“Only connect”: in this novel set in 1950’s literary Bloomsbury, connections matter. Juliet Stevenson reads it perfectly. Competent women take over the stodgy old bookstore! Read it just after seeing the last season of Endeavour, set in 1970, with the same sexist tropes. A trilogy of lively characters, following THE JANE AUSTEN SOCIETY, with EVERY TIME WE SAY GOODBYE forthcoming in 2024.

Jessica Johns, 2023

What a privilege it is to read the extraordinary Indigenous writing that is being published in Canada these days. Expanding a short story into a novel sometimes stretches the original out of shape, and Bad Cree shows stretch marks but what a fascinating all-female tale! A fascinating, sometimes askew mixture of Cree lore and dreaming; grief literature and coming of age. “‘I noticed that the colours [in dreams] meant something, too, but even they changed meaning without any clear pattern.’ As Auntie talks, the lazy river of energy enveloping us starts to quicken.” The reader is right inside this family, as the women work in community to ward off “the bad”: “Now that we’re all carrying our secrets together, my breath comes easier.” “I still hold a piece of the bad inside me. I used to think enough love was supposed to wipe all the bad clean, but I don’t think that’s true anymore. The truth is, I’m brimming with love. The love pouring from the tip of kokum’s finger when she pointed out wapanewask [yarrow, a protector plant].”

Eva Jurczyk, 2022

A bibliophile's literary mystery which our slighted librarian of a certain age solves… and so upsets the male dominated academic apple cart!

Ellen J Lewinberg, 2023

Glorious and necessary for understanding our relationship with water: kids of all ages will love this book! Ellen Lewinberg's delightful earth-friendly book, JOEY AND HIS FRIEND WATER, is essential, engaging reading that celebrates a deep connection with nature in embracing a sense of wonder. Water has a bubbly personality in the stream form that Joey meets. It also connects to water everywhere in every body. For children of every age! #IReadCanadian. Beloved author and critic Elizabeth Waterston writes: "This book offers an interesting approach to the concept of connectedness in nature, translating it into story form for young children. Colorful illustrations help present a complex idea in a readable way." For more information on this earth-friendly, kid-friendly book: https://ellenlewinbergauthor.com/

Jeanette Lynes, 2022

Perfect comfort fare with a cuppa by the fire: I'm enjoying The Apothecary's Garden. A fine literary Romance celebrating beloved Bronwen Wallace's Common Magic... oh, and Whitman! Set in 19th C. Belleville, ON.

Harriet Alida Lye, 2023

“Find what you love, and let it destroy you.” Very apt exploration of ethics in science, in junction with the film now playing, Oppenheimer. The story of atomic scientist Leo Szilard inspires the character of August Snow, in a fictional trial at the 1945 International War Crimes Court for patenting the radiation machine to cure his child’s cancer. Listen to the audiobook with two narrators, Charlie Carrick as August and Harriet Alida Lye as June. McClelland & Stewart

Ann-Marie MacDonald, 2023

If you can, read Fayne along with or after reading Emma Donoghue's LEARNED BY HEART: a similar place, though Fayne is set fifty years later. Treasures, both. "And it occurred to me that memory is shaped not merely by events and their retention, but also by the telling, and by the listening. Thereby, too, is shaped the future."

Anne Michaels, 2023

"I wanted to explore the effects over time, of our inner lives — what is essentially invisible; how moments of comprehension, desire, transcendence, doubt, belief, the longing for meaning — work their transformations decades later," Anne Michaels “the shiver, my first realisation that nature, in that new lantern light, could contain something that seemed so alien, something that was impossible to say whether presage or promise.” McClelland & Stewart

Marianne Micros, 2023

Dopplegangers are everywhere these days, from Naomi Klein's book of the same name to Deborah Levy's AUGUST BLUE. Marianne Micros is in synch with the times, even though her writing calls on the timeless. The 15 stories in STATUE are deeply informed by her Greek heritage, with close ties to folklore and the uncanny. As professor of English at the University of Guelph, she taught Renaissance and Scottish literature, folktales, and creative writing: fields that continue to feed her imagination. These mesmerizing tales blur the strict lines usually drawn between nature and the supernatural: they’ll keep you up at night, wondering… Guernica Editions

Martha Schabas, 2023

"My mother is an artist and I am a liar. Or, if I scratch the surface, my mother is a sick woman and I am an actress . . ." Certain critical insights like Martha Schabas’s terrific opening line kept me hoping for “something acerbic and fresh that would knock [the main character, Justine] out of [her] head.” The self analysis is drawn out without real awareness. “I’d let acting wriggle its way into my life so insidiously and so completely that parts of my life and parts of my acting had become indistinguishable from each other.”

Joan Thomas, 2023

“If you can envision it, can you therefore create it?” I loved Wild Hope by Joan Thomas, and I think you will too! Gorgeous evocative writing, fascinating characters. The haunting inexorable drive of the plot kept me reading faster but the beauty of the sentences demanded a second look. Art and the land; love and loss: Wild Hope has it all: “almost impressionistic, dabs of transparent colour guiding your eye to areas of the canvas that were immaculately detailed. The scene was tender, it had an interior radiance” “as a way of seeing. Draw from the right place, as a creature of nature. Heal that breach.”

Lindsay Wong, 2023

For a wild, outlandish and punchy mix of humour and horror, I recommend Lindsay Wong's astonishing, exuberant stories in Tell Me Pleasant Things about Immortality, especially her huli jing, those elusive shape-shifting fox spirits!

Alissa York, 2023

Far Cry is beautifully evocative of a West Coast cannery village in the early 20th c: Rivers Inlet, BC. You feel for each character and their travails through their long histories. Haunting images linger long after you’ve set the book down.

Lindsay Zier-Vogel, 2021

Writing to Amelia Earhart, Grace knew that she needed “to be close to something that was an extension of you”: the Vespa. Earhart embodies the courage and the grit that Grace desperately craves in her own life decisions. How wonderful that Zier-Vogel itself translates to “ornamental bird”, as if in flight! Coincidence? Lovely work by Lindsay Zier-Vogel

Zoe Whittall, 2023