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Miriam Toews
The Flying Troutmans
Knopf Canada
Days after being dumped by her boyfriend in Paris, Hattie finds herself flying back to Winnipeg to check her sister into a psychiatric hospital and take care of Thebes and Logan, her niece and nephew. Not knowing what else to do, she loads the kids, a cooler, and a pile of CDs into their van and they set out on a road trip in search of the children’s long-lost father.
Miriam Toews is the author of three previous novels: Summer of My Amazing Luck; A Boy of Good Breeding and A Complicated Kindness (winner of the 2004 Governor’s General Award for fiction) and one work of non-fiction: Swing Low: A Life. She lives in Winnipeg.
Miriam Toews's book, The Flying Troutmans, is the story of a road trip but at its heart it is a portrait of the fragility and fervor that is adolescence. It is told through the perspective of a young adult who suddenly finds her niece and nephew in her care. Her grasp on adulthood and the responsibilities it entails is barely more than that of her wards. Every detail of Toews young heroes' behavior rings startlingly true and the dialogue is pitch perfect. The premise of the book is sad, yet its execution is filled to the brim with hilarity and joy. Toews captures the rawness of teenagers' personalities-- their fledging attempts at brilliance, their hysterical naivete, and their troubled longings. Toews's book is a love song to young people trying to navigate the volcanic world of adult emotions.
-2008 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize jury
(Lawrence Hill, Annabel Lyon, Heather O’Neill)
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Rivka Galchen
Atmospheric Disturbances
HarperCollins
Dr. Leo Liebenstein’s wife has disappeared, leaving behind a single, confounding clue: a woman who looks, talks, and behaves exactly like her and even audaciously claims to be her. While everyone else is fooled by this imposter, Leo knows better than to trust his senses in matters of the heart. Certain that the original is alive and in hiding, Leo embarks on a quixotic journey to reclaim his lost love.
Rivka Galchen recieved her MD from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, having spent a year in South America working on public health issues. Galchen recently completed her MFA at Columbia University, where she was a Robert Bingham Fellow. Galchen was born in Toronto and lives in New York City. This is her first novel.
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Rawi Hage
Cockroach
House of Anansi Press
In Montreal's restless immigrant community, a self-described "thief" has tried to commit suicide by hanging himself from a tree in a local park. Rescued against his will, the narrator leads us back to his violent childhood in a war-torn country, forward into his current life in the smoky émigré cafés, and out into the frozen night-time streets of Montreal, where he imagines himself to be a cockroach invading the lives of the privileged, but willfully blind, citizens who surround him.
Rawi Hage was born in Beirut, Lebanon, and immigrated to Canada in 1992. He is a writer, visual artist, and curator. His debut novel, De Niro's Game, won the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and was a finalist for numerous literary awards, including the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. Hage lives in Montreal.
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Lee Henderson
The Man Game
Viking Canada
In 1886, out of the smouldering ashes of the great fire that destroyed much of Vancouver, Molly Erwagen—former vaudeville performer—arrives from Toronto with her beloved husband to start a new life. Meanwhile, Litz and Pisk, two lumberjacks exiled after the fire, and blamed for having started it, are trying to clear their names. Before long, they’ve teamed up with Molly to invent a new sport that will change the course of that fledgling city’s history.
Lee Henderson is the author of The Broken Record Technique, which won the Danuta Gleed Literary Award. He has been a finalist for the Journey Prize and is a regular contributor to Border Crossings and Contemporary. Henderson lives in Vancouver. For more information visit www.leehenderson.com.
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Patrick Lane
Red Dog, Red Dog
McClelland & Stewart
Unrepentant, bitter, older brother Eddy Stark speeds freely along, his desperate path fuelled by drugs and weapons, while Tom Stark, a loner, attempts to conceal their secrets and protect what remains of the family. Set in the mid-1950s, in a small town in the Okanagan Valley, Red Dog, Red Dog reaches back to the harsh life of settlers in the 1880s to tell a family’s story complicated by loyalties, betrayals, and shifts of power.
Patrick Lane is the author of 21 books of poetry, and has received numerous awards for his writing, including the Governor General’s Award for Poetry. His memoir, This is a Season, was a finalist for the Pearson Writers’ Trust Non-Fiction Prize. Lane lives near Victoria, British Columbia, with poet Lorna Crozier. For more information visit www.patricklane.ca.
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