25 books that will make a splash this fall
Time to turn the page: the autumn publishing season is already in swing, and here’s what readers should be anticipating most
The fall season started early this year with so many publishers getting a jump and bringing out some of the biggest books of the season in August: Miriam Toews’ Women Talking, Craig Davidson’s The Saturday Night Ghost Club,
Vivek Shraya’s I’m Afraid of Men, Rawi
Hage’s Beirut Hellfire Society, Richard
Wagamese’s Starlight and Esi Edugyan’s Washington Black among many others. Still, from September onward, there’s plenty to talk about. Here are just a few of the books we think are going to make a splash.
Fiction Canadian
Machine Without Horses, Helen Humphreys (HarperCollins, Sept. 5)
Humphreys is one of this country’s most beautiful writers, and her books are often sparked by a single moment. This newest, for example, stems from an obituary, from which she creates a life story. In this book, she both explores the real life and creates the imagined internal life of the famous salmon-fly dresser, Megan Boyd, who worked for 60 years in the north of Scotland. Woman World, Aminder Dhaliwal (Drawn and Quarterly, Sept. 11) She’s already an Instagram star for her satirical web comic Woman World developed from plans for a children’s show that didn’t go anywhere. She now has more than 120,000 readers — and this print version of the comic about to come out. It follows the rebuilding process after a birth defect wipes out the planet’s entire male population.
Theory, Dionne
Brand (McClelland and Stewart, Sept. 18)
Dionne Brand is out with two books this fall — this novel, Theory and an epic work of poetry The Blue Clerk (McClelland and Stewart, Sept. 18). Both are a chance to see Brand in fine form, exploring writing, its limitations, and its relationship with the world. Split Tooth, Tanya Tagaq (Viking, Sept. 25) Inuit artist Tagaq is best known for her throat singing, which has garnered her an international following and a Polaris music prize. This is her first book, a combination of poetry and prose, a gritty account
of growing up in Nunavut in the 1970s.
Trickster Drift, Eden Robinson (McClelland and Stewart, Oct. 2)
Trickster, the first in this planned trilogy, took readers, the bestsellers lists and the publishing world by storm. This is the second in the trilogy about Jared, the eponymous son of a Trickster from the first novel, who is now 17 and sober, and another must-read. The Grimoire of Kensington
Market, Lauren B. Davis (Wolsak and Wynn/Buckrider, Oct. 16)
Kensington Market, as you’ll recall, also featured in one of last year’s biggest books, Michael Redhill’s Giller-winning Bellevue Square. In this book, Hans Christian Andersen’s tale “The Snow Queen,” inspired Davis’s modern fairytale/fable about Toronto being consumed by elysium, a drug that allows users to enter another world. Plus it’s got caribou racing along the Northern Lights.
Original Prin, Randy Boyagoda (Biblioasis, Sept. 25)
The first in a planned trilogy, U of T prof Boyagoda’s satirical sensibility uses Catholicism, prostate surgery and a terrorist incident, among other timely points, to take aim at academia, media sensationalism and religious faith in a modern, secular world. Boyagoda’s previous books include Governor of the Northern Province and Beggar’s Feast. All The Lonely People: Collected Stories, Barry Callaghan (Exile Editions, Nov. 7)
Callaghan has long been recognized as one of the best shortstory writers in the country. Here, a collection of stories (its title changed from The Dark Laughter Stories) — told in a number of voices, from street hustlers to priests, blues singers to Holocaust survivors as well as “ordinary” people — that spans his career, along with a preface from Margaret Atwood. —Deborah Dundas
Fiction International
Lake Success, Gary Shteyngart (Random House, Sept. 4)
Shteyngart kicks off the fall with a novel not so much “ripped from the headlines” as “channelling social media” — this story of a hedge-fund manager who, in the shadow of a federal investigation, flees New York — promises to be a funny, touching, scathing exploration of the .01 per cent at what might be the end of the American experiment. Killing Commendatore, Haruki Murakami (Doubleday, Oct. 9)
A bold, epic work from Haruki Murakami following a couple of lower-key releases, Killing Commendatore mixes elements from Mozart’s Don Giovanni and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby to tell the story of a young portrait painter who becomes caretaker of an aging, major artist. Oh, and there’s also a portal to another world, as Murakami readers might expect.
Unsheltered, Barbara Kingsolver (HarperCollins, Oct. 16)
A new Kingsolver novel is always something to look forward to, but Unsheltered sounds especially powerful, with two interweaving storylines — one set in the 19th century, one set today — following two characters struggling in times of momentous social change, set in the house the characters share, more than a century apart.
Melmoth, Sarah Perry (HarperCollins, Oct. 16)
As she did with her breakthrough novel The Essex Serpent, Sarah Perry once again turns to previous literature, folklore and fairy tales for inspiration. This time, it’s the story of Melmoth the Witness, who observes history from the shadows, judging and punishing, and the young, English translator who catches the immortal’s attention. Anniversaries: From a Year in the Life of Gesine Cresspahl, Uwe Johnson, trans. by Damion Searls (New York Review of Books, Oct. 16)
An epic family saga set in New York City in 1968, more than 1,700 pages in two volumes, this is the sort of book one wants to sink teeth into. Considered a modern classic of German literature, this is the first English translation of Anniversaries, which sounds like a perfect read as the nights grow longer.
—Robert Wiersema
Non Fiction, Canadian
I’m Afraid of Men, Vivek Shraya (Penguin, Aug. 28) Shraya has been making a name for herself as an artist, musician and writer, challenging definitions and stereotypes of gender. I’m Afraid of Men is her very powerful and honest story of being forced to behave as a boy as a child, and how that haunts her adult life as a woman. Powerful, emotional and personal — it’s a book, fundamentally, about cherishing our differences. No Place To Go: How Public Toilets Fail our Private Needs, Lezlie Lowe (Coach House, Sept. 1)
Coach House has a way of publishing books that take a unique look at things and, in the telling, revealing to us something about the world in which we live. No Place To Go looks at questions such as: what do the homeless do for bathrooms? What about girls who quit sports because there’s nowhere to go pee? And what do
our public bathrooms say about cities, society, design and equity? Fascinating stuff.
Big Lonely Doug, Harley Rustad (Anansi, Sept 4.)
This isn’t just the story of a tree. It’s the story of a tree saved because of one logger’s decision to tag a tree as worthy of saving. So, as the rest of the forest came down around it, the tree dubbed Big Lonely Doug (it’s a Douglas fir) survived and became both a symbol and a way of telling the story of old-growth forests in Canada, their past and precarious future. Be With: Letters to a Caregiver, Mike Barnes (Biblioasis, Sept. 18) and All Things Consoled, Elizabeth Hay (McClelland and Stewart, Sept. 18)
Two very different books that deal with taking care of others: Barnes took care of his mother through various stages of dementia and late-stage Alzheimer’s. These four “letters” are intimate and personal and make a deep connection. Hay looks at how the dynamics in her family changed when she became caregiver to her formidable mother and father. In Other Words: How I Fell in Love with Canada One Book at a Time, Anna Porter (Simon and Schuster, Sept. 25)
Porter arrived on the Canadian publishing scene in 1968 when she began work at McClelland & Stewart. This is a gossipy, informed take on the next 30 years and beyond, an era that saw the rise of CanLit stalwarts including Leonard Cohen, Margaret Laurence, Atwood et al, as well as Porter’s time as president of Key Porter books. Buffy Sainte-Marie: The Authorized Biography, Andrea Warner (Greystone)
With a foreword by Joni Mitchell, and written by pop-culture expert Warner, this biography of the legendary Ste. Marie looks at her music and career in the heart of the 1960s and ’70s, her work as an activist, and intimate details of at times very difficult, traumatic and violent experiences in her personal life. Refuse: CanLit in Ruins, edited by Hannah McGregor, Julie Rak and Erin Wunker (Book*hug, Nov. 15)
This book will likely prove to be controversial — a collection of essays from powerful and vocal new voices including Alicia Elliott and Joshua Whitehead, it tackles a variety of issues that have been roiling in the choppy waters of Twitter and the halls of academia alike, including rape culture, appropriation and white power.
—Deborah Dundas
Teen and Young Adult
Dodger Boy, Sarah Ellis (Groundwood, Sept. 1)
Ellis evokes the era when Canadians might have had draft dodgers living in the basement, tie-dyeing happening in the garage and Happenings happening in city parks. How does Charlotte’s life change when a softspoken Texan draft dodger takes shelter with her Quaker family?
Kens, Raziel Reid (Penguin, Sept. 18)
Will this mannered confection meet with the same enthusiasm that greeted Reid’s When Everything Feels Like the Movies? Marketed as “the gay Heathers meets Mean Girls,” it promises a romp of savage absurdity as plastic surgery, flamboyant online suicides and playing gay converge in a suburban high school.
Love to Everyone, Hilary McKay (Margaret K. McElderry, Sept. 18)
McKay’s writing style is refreshingly artful and rewarding, comic and moving. Here she draws readers into the life of Clarry Penrose, a girl who sturdily, bravely, emerges into adulthood during the First World War. Tales from the Inner City, Shaun Tan (Tundra, Sept. 25)
The Arrival; Tales from Outer Suburbia — Tan’s previous work is original, surprising and haunting. With Tales from the Inner City, he promises new insightful weirdness in a collection of his own short stories and luminous, surrealist art. Bridge of Clay, Markus Zusak (Knopf, Oct. 9)
What’s Zusak been doing since publishing The Book Thief ? Working on this tome of a family saga about five orphan boys, The Odyssey, a murderer, a mule and a bridge. Like The Book Thief, the narrative voice jumps out and seizes the reader from the first pages.