I fall in love with most books I am reading. I am steadfastly fickle in this matter. Whittling out recommendations from my night table stacks is a daunting task, so I have chosen a few special books that have contributed to my journey as a writer. These works not only delighted me as a reader, but also informed my own endeavours - made me ask the questions: How did the author craft this offering? How did they evoke emotion? Conjure humanity? How did they convince me of the authenticity of their created worlds? (With apologies to those omitted, including Shakespeare and Atwood).
Lunar Wake by Catherine Hunter (Turnstone Press). This poetry collection is chock-full of wit, brimming with the symbolic and imaginative. At the lunar wake, "...the wolves and astronauts were inconsolable..." I took consolation reading and re-reading this inspired whetstone.Dickie by Wayne Tefs (House of Anansi). Dickie is the younger brother who witnesses the tragic forces that rend his family apart. Tefs so aptly and edgily depicts both social era and specific emotional turmoil that I had the sense this novel inhaled and exhaled in my grasp.
Black Swan Green by David Mitchell (Knopf Canada). This book was a fortuitous pluck-from-the-shelf pick. A captivating read ensued. The work is vivid, yet subtle, and exhibits a storytelling prowess that crystallizes life's minor events into memorable literary gemstones.
The Little Friend by Donna Tartt (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group). From the opening paragraphs describing a young boy's mysterious murder, Tartt invited me to surrender my hand and follow her wherever she chose to lead me. (Ditto for her first novel, The Secret History).
Lottery by Patricia Wood (Berkley Publishing). I would like to believe this book appealed to me because a thematic struggle between good and evil is reflected in its folds; but perhaps I just find cheering for the underdog to be irresistible and therapeutic.
Blue Sunflower Startle by Yasmin Ladha (Broadview Press). A poetic feast of a novel - the language so rich and laden, I gained weight reading it. The story is steeped in a series of domestic realms, while conveying an array of political, religious and cultural insights.
Empire Falls by Richard Russo (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group). In this book, Russo exhibits a masterful control over the ebb and flow of dramatic tension. He conducted me through the midst of beguiling characters and oh-so-familiar situations to the brink of the unbearable.
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Patti Grayson has worked as an actor, puppeteer, advertising copywriter and school librarian. Her first collection of short stories Core Samples (Turnstone, 2004) garnered nominations for the John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Manitoba Writer and the Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book. Her novel Autumn, One Spring was featured as a Breakfast Television Book Club choice shortly after it was launched at McNally Robinson this past October. She lives in St. Andrews, Manitoba.
| Categories: Reviews, Discussions, Authors, Night Table Recommendations |
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Autumn Greene returns to her hometown after a six-year absence, uninvited to her sister Christine’s wedding, the daughter she conceived in a one-time encounter with her sister’s ex-fiancé...
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From the publisher: Patti Grayson’s debut collection of short fiction takes as its subject matter those moments in our lives when everything suddenly feels foreign, when a turn of heart ...
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Lunar Wake ebbs and flows like an ocean tide, bringing with it madness, romance, obsession, egoism: the uncontrollable forces that control our lives, reflecting the poets own ambivalence ...
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From award-winning writer David Mitchell comes a sinewy, meditative novel of boyhood on the cusp of adulthood and the old on the cusp of the new. Black Swan tracks a single year in what ...
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The Little Friend seems destined to become a special kind of classic. . . . It grips you like a fairy tale, but denies you the consoling assurance that it’s all just make-believe.” —The N...
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Truly deserving of the accolade a modern classic, Donna Tartt’s novel is a remarkable achievement—both compelling and elegant, dramatic and playful.Under the influence of thei...
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In the early 1960s, a young girl and her brother move to their grandparents' flourmill in Dodoma in newly-independent Tanzania. Her grandfather bellows his love for East Africa, where he ...
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Winner of the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.Miles Roby has been slinging burgers at the Empire Grill for 20 years, a job that cost him his college education and much of his self-respect...
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