By Barbara Buxton
Port Moody Public Library
July seems to be the month to celebrate all things Canadian, including Canadian writers. Canadian publishing is alive and well and there are dozens of excellent authors writing in all genres of fiction. If you haven’t read much Canadian fiction before, here are some suggestions to get you started.
Why not enjoy a mystery that takes place in a Canadian location? Local author Debra Purdy Kong’s latest mystery, Fatal Encryption, is actually set in and around Vancouver at Halloween, with the final act happening in our own Rocky Point Park. Author Vicki Delany, has a series set in a small town in the Kootenays featuring a young female RCMP officer, doing her best to do her job in the town where she grew up. Farther afield, there is an excellent series by Louise Penny, featuring Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec and the dastardly crimes perpetrated in the idyllic village of Three Pines. If you enjoy historical mysteries, try Maureen Jennings’ series about Detective William Murdoch in late 19th century Toronto, featured in the CBC television series, Murdoch Mysteries. (Ms. Jennings will be at Coquitlam City Hall on October 6th for the launch of a new series of Quick Reads for adult learners.)
If fantasy is your choice, you cannot do better than author Guy Gavriel Kay. From his early epic fantasy series, The Summer Tree to his later works that mix fantasy and history, these books will keep you turning pages. His latest work Under Heaven is a story of one man’s dangerous quest in a time and place that somewhat resembles the 8th Century Tang Dynasty. For science fiction, you might try Vancouver writer Spider Robinson whose most recent book Very Hard Choices has a telepathic tracker looking for a serial killer.
For a sweeping historical adventure story try Guy Vanderhaege’s The Last Crossing, about a British aristocrat searching for his missing brother across the American and Canadian west. And if you are a fan of the Arthurian legend, don’t miss Jack Whyte’s epic series beginning with The Skystone, which chronicles the forging of Excalibur and the full history of King Arthur. Or try his second exciting series about the Knights Templar.
For other contemporary and historical fiction the choices for good Canadian reads seem endless. In this article we can only touch on a few. One of my favourites is The Birth House, by Amy McKay. This novel of early 20th century Nova Scotia chronicles the conflict between a young midwife and a new male doctor and his fancy new maternity hospital. The confrontation between these two and their comparative understanding of the challenges faced by women in the back country makes for a thought provoking and enjoyable story.
In Crow Lake, a wonderful first novel of love, death and redemption by Mary Lawson, we follow the story of a young girl and her brothers in a small Ontario town, orphaned when their parents were killed in a car accident. Fighting the “helpful” plans of their neighbours the three find a way to stay together, but the tragedy and trouble follows them to adulthood, where eventually they each come to terms with the past in their own way.
The struggles of new immigrants from India and their search for identity and belonging are sensitively explored in Anita Rau Badame’s book Can You Hear the Nightbird Call? In a similar vein, Lawrence Hill’s Book of Negroes and Any Known Blood tell the stories of black slaves who settled in Canada and their descendants, trying to find their place in a white world.
Linda Holeman’s Moonlit Cage tells of the struggles of a young 19th century Afghan woman to free herself from an abusive marriage, while her new book The Saffron Gate narrates the adventures of a young woman searching for her missing lover in Marrakech in the 1930’s.
Another excellent BC writer is Jack Hodgins, whose most recent book The Inventions of the World, like his earlier ones, tell big tales of small town Vancouver Island combining wonderful eccentric characters and local myths.
These and many, many more can be found in your local library. Ask the librarian for a list of Canadian fiction and discover the wealth of our literary tradition.
