A fine shortlist, a wide range of subjects and styles. I congratulate W. P. Kinsella for choosing an excellent stack of novels.
What's Remembered by Arthur Motyer was a reading experience that reminded me of the summer when I was twenty-three and read The Horse's Mouth by Joyce Cary. It's that sort of roiling, intellectual, very male book that requires a lot of drinking and reflection in a kitchen full of food. There are oblique references to deeper literature and art, humour and intellect. The more I read the more I enjoyed this environment, and I very much want to meet the author and buy him a drink and a rabbit pie. There's something wise and wonderful on every other page.
Sunday Afternoon by David Elias. I placed this book in the corner after the first two pages and went and read another book instead. But then I started reading it again and forgave it the habits of clichT (descriptions of women) and settled into enjoying the rip- roaring drama and storytelling.
The plot rolled along and I soon got caught up in the intrigue. This is an entertaining and unapologetic romp through both private and social politics set on the dynamic border between Canada and the States. A good summer read.
Bishop's Road by Catherine Safer is an unusual book that requires an expansion of the mind to consider what is real and what is imagined. It's a dream book, but the dreams are as solid as tables and windows. I guess I'm talking about fairy-tale life and how much of it still exists in this day and age. This novel is an excellent example of an ignored section of fiction: novels that apply state-of-the-art technical skills to a land imbued with wise characters and a power that emanates from beyond the material world. Catherine Safer floored me with her grasp of story, character and, most particular of all, her avoidance of all the novels that she didn't write. It would have been so easy for this book to fall into colourful Atlantic gothic mode, and it is a tribute to the author that she ploughs her own field. Her own sensibility seeps through. While steeped in the tradition of regional fiction, Bishop's Road acknowledges the techniques and expanse of the modern novel. The dialogue bites with scathing humour, the characters are extreme and made real by the very atmosphere contained in the novel. A well-wrought world this book.
Skinny by Ibi Kaslik surprised me with its blend of intimate domestic detail and hard- nosed scientific inquiry. Those qualities are successfully drawn out and provide a new structure and content that I grew to learn and enjoy. I was prepared for more flashy arrogance; instead, what I read was tender, moving, insightful and wise. It's less hip than sincere. Here is a writer willing to flirt with the very delicate interior thoughts of a vulnerable character. I loved all the small modern moments so aptly observed and defined. This book draws close to top marks.
Colin McAdam's Some Great Thing has a daring, aggressive beginning. What confidence. It's like being thrown into the deep end of the last half of a series of confessions. This gambit pays off and, once we hear a few of the characters (for we hear this book rather than read it), we trust the writerùhis flawless ability to weave language and structure, and we flow into the more conventional middle of the book as though sailing on a silk pillowcase the author himself has provided. A strange deepness then occurs. I guess it's because we watch the repercussions unfold of earlier action, and our characters grow older and juggle around their mistakes. The end is almost, dare I say it, tender. A very funny book that is both moving, stylistically audacious, and yet grappling with a timeless essence: that of love and power and how we attain and lose both, usually at the same time. Some Great Thing impressed me with its imaginative muscle and connective tissue. It has resonance. It's also a book that feels new. And for that, along with its many technical merits obviously displayed, it receives full marks.