A NEW YEAR OF BOOKS
Fairy tales, for kids and adults alike, appear to be one of the trends in the world of words this year,
“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language / And next year’s words await another voice.” T.S. Eliot, “Little Gidding”
What ideas are we going to unpack this year from words and which voices can we not wait to hear? As always, there are plenty of worthy books coming out this spring — and, as always, we wish we had more time to dig in and read more.
Trends we’re expecting include fairy tales — for both adults and children.
Where over the past few years we’ve seen Shakespeare retold, this year fairy tales being given new life and modern interpretations or the form being used to tell new stories with magic realism, such as in Kerri Sakamoto’s Floating City, which comes out April 17 (Knopf).
There are also plenty of new books coming out of the #MeToo movement, and plenty looking at the political situation south of the border. “Ring out the false, ring in the true,” wrote Alfred Lord Tennyson in his poem “Ring Out Wild Bells.” Which is likely exactly what writers and readers both should be most looking forward to this year.
January
Playwright and creative force Jordan Tannahill is turning his considerable talents to writing a novel. Liminal (House of Anansi, out now) is fiction — but features a main character named Jordan Tannahill who sees his mother in bed and doesn’t know whether she’s sleeping or dead (the real Jordan Tannahill’s mother is fighting cancer). An entirely successful addition to the many art forms Tannahill creates in.
Trumpocracy, David Frum (Harper, out now) Canadian writer Frum has been working in the United States for years, memorably as a speech writer for President George W. Bush who coined the term “axis of evil.” He is now a senior editor at the Atlantic Magazine and a well-known Canadian commentator and critic of the current Republican government. In this book this long-time Republican supporter takes a look at how we’ve ended up here and what it means for democracy.
February
Maggie O’Farrell, I Am, I Am, I Am (Feb. 6, Knopf) This bestselling writer from Northern Ireland is perhaps best known for The Hand That First Held Mine and Instructions for a Heatwave, two of her seven novels. This time, though, she’s written something a bit different: a memoir based on the 17 near-death experiences the author has had, with illness, a serial killer and other dangers. An astonishing way to explore life. When Andrew Morton’s 17 Carnations: The Royals, the Nazis, and the Biggest Cover-Up in History was set to come out three years ago this spring, it made this same list in 2015. This time he’s out with Wallis In Love: The Untold Life of the Duchess of Windsor, the Woman Who Changed the Monarchy (Feb. 13, Grand Central Publishing) and it’s already creating interest. Of course, the recent engagement of Prince Harry to a divorced American woman has people commenting on the similarities, but
it also speaks to the undying interest readers have for this story — and Andrew Morton’s style is always intimate and fun.
Freshwater, Akwaeke Emezi (Feb. 23, Grove/Atlantic) Sometimes debut novels create so much buzz they fly to the top of must-read lists; sometimes, the buzz is overstated and they disappoint. That is not the case with Emezi’s debut, which is a powerful, metaphysical story about a young Nigerian woman who develops separate selves she struggles to reconcile in order to construct her own identity. She’s one of the most recognized voices of her generation not only as a novelist, but also as an essayist, most notably for the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books. Feel Free (Feb. 6, Penguin Press) is a new collection of Zadie Smith’s essays — some already published but many of them new — that groups her thoughts into five categories: In the World, In the Audience, In the Gallery, On the Bookshelf and Feel Free — so we know she’s going to have plenty to say about a wide range of subjects, including Facebook. “It’s a cruel portrait of us: 500 million sentient people entrapped in the recent careless thoughts of a Harvard sophomore.” Fabulous.
March
Dear Current Occupant, Chelene Knight (March 1, Book*hug) Knight spent her childhood moving — between 20 different houses with her mother and brother in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. This book is a series of letters written to the occupants of those houses — almost literally peering through the windows at her past to construct a poignant and vividly remembered memoir. Find You in the Dark, Nathan Rip-- ley (a.k.a. Naben Ruthnum) (March 6, Simon & Schuster) The multi-talented Mr. Ripley — under his Naben Ruthnum nomer he released the very popular book Curry: Eating, Reading, and
Race last summer and is a well-regarded short story and essayist. He’s also — witness this new book about a family man who finds and digs up the remains of serial killer victims — proving to be a first-class thriller writer. The Italian Teacher, Tom Rach
man (March 20, Doubleday) He’s a University of Toronto graduate, has been an Associated Press correspondent — and his international experience has helped to give Rachman’s books a unique perspective. Rachman’s debut novel The Imperfectionists was feted and translated around the world. This third book takes him to Rome and the art world, and promises to be just as engrossing as his first. That Time I Loved You, Carianne
Leung (March 28, Harper Collins) Leung was shortlisted for the Toronto Book Award for The Won
drous Woo; this new book tells the story of a Chinese-Canadian girl coming of age in 1970s Scarborough — the suburbs, where families were trying to make their hard-fought dreams come true. A look into the lives behind the neatly trimmed front lawns.
April
Macbeth, Jo Nesbo (April 10, Knopf Canada) The Hogarth Shakespeare series has been going for a couple of years now, with major writers
around the world recasting the Bards’s works — Margaret Atwood, etc. Nesbo’s take is particularly fun: Duncan is the chief of police in a rundown industrial town, and he comes up against the drug trade and one of the town’s biggest drug lords, Hecate. Who would’ve thought? Can’t wait to read this one. West: A Novel, Carys Davies (April 24, Simon & Schuster) Davies’ book of short stories from last year, The Redemption of
Galen Pike, was sublime. This time the Welsh writer turns her hand to the novel, telling a story set on the American frontier, with the story of a widower who heads west, leaving his daughter behind to fend for herself. Essential reading.
Vi, Kim Thuy (April 10, Random House Canada) This one was written in French and has been out for a while but this is English Canada’s first peek — in translation by no less than Sheila Fischman, who has translated some of the country’s most well-known authors including Roch Carrier, Anne Hébert and Yves Beauchemin, among others — at a novel that explores the lives, loves and struggles of Vietnamese refugees as they create a home for themselves.
Little Fish, Casey Plett (April 1, Arsenal Pulp Press) Casey Plett is out with her debut novel, which explores the struggles of a transgender woman in Manitoba’s Mennonite country, a landscape very familiar to Plett. She won the Lambda Literary Award for her short story collection A Safe Girl to Love; this one promises to add a strong and necessary voice to trans writing in this country.
May
Motherhood, Sheila Heti (May 1, Knopf) is going to spark a lot of debate when this book comes out at the beginning of the month. It is an in- quiry into the very heart of motherhood. But this is not a collection of essays or a memoir — it’s a novel in which the main character struggles to make an informed, wise choice as to whether or not to have a child. Heti explores societal, familial and peer pressures and raises some very interesting questions. I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You: A Letter to My Daughter, David
Chariandy (May 29, McClelland and Stewart — cover not yet available) We were reintroduced to Chariandy’s lovely writing in last year’s award-winning novel Brother. This year we see a different side of him in a non-fiction book: a letter to his daughter about racism. It will be important, passionate and well-reasoned.
Chicken, Lynn Crosbie (May 22, Anansi) Crosbie is always interesting. This new book follows both her moving collection of poems about her father, Corpses of the Future, and her previous “fan fiction” take on Kurt Cobain, Where Did You Sleep Last Night.
Chicken channels the cult of celebrity and a culture of fame, with Crosbie’s unswerving powers of observation. The Mars Room, Rachel Kushner (May 1, Scribner) Kushner’s previous two novels, The Flamethrowers and
Telex From Cuba, were both National Book Award finalists thanks to her remarkable storytelling abilities. This one’s about a woman beginning two consecutive life sentences in a California prison and the reality of life on the inside — and it provides Kushner with a backdrop to explore inequality, freedom and class. Warlight, Michael Ondaatje (May 8, McClelland and Stewart — cover not yet available) When is a new Michael Ondaatje novel not an event? 2011’s The Cat’s Table was his last release — he most recently won the Governor General’s Literary Award for his 2007 novel Divisadero. This new book is set in London in 1945, in the aftermath of the Second World War, and is described l i ke this: “a mesmerizing new novel that tells a dramatic story . . . through the lives of a small group of unexpected characters and two teenagers whose lives are indelibly shaped by their unwitting involvement.” Can’t wait.
June
Kudos, Rachel Cusk (June 5, HarperCollins — cover not yet available) The first two books in this trilogy both made the Giller Prize shortlist (for Outline, 2015 and Transit, 2017); now, she’s out with the final instalment.
This one’s theme is described as “the relationship between pain and honour, and investigates the moral nature of success as a precept of both art and living.” Cusk is a writer’s writer who’s also gained mainstream fans.