Tag: Canadian author

Jamie Chai Yun Liew’s—Dandelion

In a small mining town in eastern British Columbia, Lily and her sister Bea suffer racial slurs because of their Chinese heritage. At home, they listen to their mother’s constant moaning about how she hates Canada and nothing is as good as Brunei where she spent most of her earlier life. Just as the mine is closing down, their father discovers their mother’s clothes are gone and there’s no sign of her. The father is forced to bring up the children with the help of his sister and they move to Calgary.

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Michael Christie’s—Greenwood *****

What first fascinated me about this book was its structure. Like the rings of a tree, the story begins on the outer ring in the future and heads to the centre—its heartwood—going back in time exploring a key member of the Greenwood clan to 1934. Then the story heads out across the rings to the opposite edge completing Greenwood lives until it ends with Jake in 2038.

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Kathleen Winter’s—Annabel*****

In a remote Labrador community during the 1960s, Jacinta and Treadway have a child. After the birth, Jacinta and Thomasina, who helped with the birth, decide to keep the baby’s hermaphrodite condition to themselves, but Treadway senses something is wrong with their child. The child, Wayne is taken to the Goose Bay hospital where, at Treadway’s insistence, the baby’s female condition is suppressed through operations and drugs. As Wayne grows, Treadway introduces the boy into his male domain of hunting while Jacinta saddens at the loss of a daughter.

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Yasuko Thanh’s—To the bridge*****

Rose carries a load of baggage that is slowly revealed after her daughter, Juliet tries to commit suicide. She questions what she has done wrong as a mother while defending her actions to her husband, Syd who has done little to support the parenting of their teenage daughter.

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