A haunting portrayal of the gentrification of Toronto’s Chinatown-Kensington Market, told from the viewpoint of an elderly Chinese-Canadian woman, Wang Cho Sum. After the heartbreaking death of her husband in a hit-and-run accident, Cho Sum copes with grief by collecting recyclables. Loss is everywhere: shops closing, loss of the Toisan dialect. How can you build a new life when elders are dismissed and discarded? The moving prose is accompanied by beautifully-rendered black-and-white drawings by David Innes. This book should be a powerful contender for Canada Reads, championed by Naheed Nenshi.
Category: grief
The Fake – Zoe Whittall
Full disclosure – this is a superb relationship book, my favourite genre. Shelby meets Cammie at a grief support group. Shelby is grieving the sudden death of her wife; Cammie is recovering from cancer and many other apparent calamities. Gibson is recently divorced, meets Cammie in a bar and falls in love. But what if Cammie is a lying psychopath, a consummate con person? And what does it say about the psychology of Shelby and Gibson that they can be so profoundly manipulated? Finally, the ending of this book is sublime in its simplicity: highly recommended.
Bad Cree – Jessica Johns
This remarkable debut novel is all about Indigenous women. Mackenzie is a young Cree woman living in Vancouver, but darkness dreams drive her to return to her home on High Prairie, Alberta, in part to confront her unprocessed grief over the death of her older sister. Can spirits visit people in their dreams? Can evil entities feed off the hurt, isolated and grieving? This is both a masterful mystery and horror story that will forever change your appreciation of the phrase “murder of crows”. Highly recommended.
Maureen – Rachel Joyce
In the first book of a trilogy, Harold Fry embarks on a walking pilgrimage to see his dieing friend Queenie. The second book details Queenie’s backstory. And now the trilogy is completed with a novel about Maureen, Harold’s wife, setting out on another journey. Maureen is difficult and damaged, both judgemental and unlikeable. In fact, she is dealing with unprocessed grief over a death that occurred more than 30 years previously. There is a profoundly moving finale with emotional impact: self-discovery and forgiveness and the question – can grief be appropriated? All three books are wonderful; The Music Shop is an unrelated gem.
The Winners – Fredrik Backman
This fabulous and long (670 pages) book concludes a trilogy: previous books were Beartown and Us Against You. Backman’s writing is both heart-warming and heart-wrenching. Two remote forest towns (in Sweden but could be Canada) are intense rivals in hockey and politics. There are two funerals, impending violence and intimidation, and a ferocious summer storm. Backman’s writing is often philosophical: what it means to experience fear, for example. Be warned, the story is very emotional with complicated relationships, especially within families; expect to experience extreme sadness (and tears) when confronting loyalty, friendship and loss.
The Good Women of Safe Harbor – Bobbi French
There is much to admire in this first novel. First, it is a female relationship book that deals with gritty subjects: teenage pregnancy, suicide, and medically assisted death. And second, the setting is Newfoundland. Some core values: friendship and forgiveness, the decision to love and be loved.
The Paradox Hotel – Rob Hart
A fascinating speculative-fiction story: the time is 2072 and the place: The Einstein Intercontinental Time-Port and associated Paradox Hotel. Yes, there is time travel for tourists, to visit, for example, Ancient Egypt or the Triassic Period. January Cole works for the Time Enforcement Agency providing hotel security and she has an extraordinary caustic and acerbic personality. The story is really about the nature of time, but also grief and memory. And there are murders, dinosaurs and maybe ghosts: a thrilling read.
My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She’s Sorry – Fredrik Backman
Elsa is a precocious almost 8-year-old who is perceived as different and thus bullied at school. Thankfully, she has a very close relationship with her 77-year-old grandmother who tells her mythical stories about the Land-of-Almost-Awake. When Elsa’s grandmother dies, Elsa receives a series of apology letters that she is directed to deliver, and so Elsa learns about her grandmother’s incredible back story. This is a brilliant book about life and death, with inspired comic moments and deeply sentimental sad situations, so both laughs and tears abound.
The Book of Form and Emptiness – Ruth Ozeki
This brilliant new book by the author of A Tale For The Time Being is wildly imaginative, and thus hard to describe. Benny is a teenager who hears voices; his mother Annabelle is a hoarder. Both are grieving the death of their father/husband. Most key events take place in a public library, and books have a consciousness that allow them to narrate the story. Events are chaotic and often perplexing. What is reality, especially with grief and PTSD? What is the price of imagination? Highly recommended.
