Hard to Do: The Surprising, Feminist History of Breaking Up By Kelli María Korducki Coach House, $13.95 Hard To Do: The Surprising, Feminist History of Breaking Up, by National Magazine Award-nominated journalist Kelli María Korducki, is a lifeline for women navigating expectations, standards, and break-ups in today’s liberated, but uncharted, relationships. Using examples from history, […] More »

The Doll’s Alphabet By Camilla Grudova Coach House Books, $19.95 Pick up The Doll’s Alphabet, a spellbinding collection of short stories by Camilla Grudova, and prepare to have your day and night dreams forever and delightfully altered by Grudova’s uncertain universe. In it, meet exceptionally original, gorgeously dark, grotesque, and utterly fantastical characters conjured up […] More »

Any Other Way: How Toronto Got Queer Edited by Stephanie Chambers, Jane Farrow, Maureen FitzGerald, Ed Jackson, John Lorinc, Tim McCaskell, Rebecka Sheffield, Rahim Thawer, and Tatum Taylor Coach House Books, $25.95 Any Other Way: How Toronto Got Queer provides an illuminating look into the multi-faceted history of queerness in Toronto. From a peer into […] More »

The Last Word: Reviving the Dying Art of Eulogy By Julia Cooper Coach House Books, $14.95 Not knowing what to say when death arrives is precisely why readers should pick up Julia Cooper’s lifesaver of a book, The Last Word: Reviving the Dying Art of Eulogy. In this critical examination and analysis of the eulogy […] More »

The Island of Books By Dominique Fortier (translated by Rhonda Mullins) Coach House Books, $19.95 An ode to books, Rhonda Mullins’s translation of Dominique Fortier’s The Island of Books captures the emotions of two struggling individuals hoping to find strength in writing. Told from the perspectives of an illiterate, grieving artist from the 15th century […] More »

Shot-Blue By Jesse Ruddock Coach House Books, $19.95 Set against the backdrop of a remote lake, Jesse Ruddock’s debut novel Shot-Blue follows a boy who learns to survive in a land that was once his home, but is now changed by strangers. Packed with characters who are at times intertwined and disconnected—as evidenced by the […] More »

Even when it’s not faced with an uncertain digital future, the publishing industry occupies a very uncomfortable place at the intersection of art and commerce. “Intersection” may not be the right word; it’s more like art is one end of a teeter totter and money is the other, with publishing in the middle, trying to […] More »

Quebec writer Nicole Brossard’s latest novel, Fences in Breathing (translated by Susanne de Lotbinière-Harwood), confronts a subject favoured by a cadre of contemporary literary darlings, Roberto Bolaño, David Foster Wallace, and John Wray among them: namely, a profound distrust in the magic of fiction. A woman of letters herself, Brossard’s Québécoise protagonist, Anne, labours to […] More »

IDEA MAN It always makes me wild with rage when the complexities of a federal election are idiotically reduced to a single issue for voters. The major parties, and the mainstream media, seem to assume that people have the attention span of three-year-olds. Then along comes Jack Layton’s Speaking Out: Ideas That Work for Canadians, […] More »