Canadian voices heard
Pat St. Germain discovers tense thrills, harrowing fiction and political tales
Women Talking: A Novel
Miriam Toews Alfred A. Knopf Canada Faith and hypocrisy, humour and grace, horror and depravity: Miriam Toews’ seventh novel is a finely measured work — haunting, beautifully nuanced and powerful.
An imagined conversation between eight women and girls at an ultra-conservative Mennonite colony in Bolivia, the novel was inspired by factual events — seven men from the colony, called Manitoba, were convicted in 2009 of raping some 130 women and children after spraying a knockout chemical into victims’ homes.
It’s impossible to escape the real-life parallels to The Handmaid’s Tale and its fictional Gilead (the women can’t read and they live by the rule of the Bible, as interpreted by men), which makes Toews’ restraint all the more commendable.
She gives the women distinct, authentic voices — they’re funny, sarcastic and wise, whether overcome with seething fury or with tender, sisterly love.
Raised in the predominantly Mennonite town of Steinbach, Man., Toronto-based Toews’ past novels (including A Complicated Kindness, Irma Voth and The Flying Troutmans) have earned a bundle of literary awards. With Women Talking, she’s approaching national-treasure stature.
An Unwanted Guest
Shari Lapena Viking
In her third novel in as many years, Shari Lapena (The Couple Next Door, A Stranger in the House) takes a page from the Agatha Christie playbook, stranding guests at a remote country inn, where a murderer starts picking them off one by one.
When a snowstorm closes the roads and knocks out electrical power, the scene is set for a fast-paced whodunit that offers a neat little bonus twist at the finish.
Potential victims include a middle-aged couple whose marriage is on the rocks; rich socialites planning their wedding; and a criminal lawyer who’d like to keep his past history secret.
The lawyer is not the only one hiding a secret, and it doesn’t take long for the body count to start rising — along with the terror threshold — as the survivors try to ferret out the killer in their midst.
Who Are You and Why Are You Here? Tales of International Development
Jacques Claessens Between the Lines
Petty rivalries, incompetence and corruption contaminate well-intentioned international development schemes in late Quebec author Jacques Claessens’ tales from the front lines.
Translated from the original French by Nigel G. Spencer, the book explores the impact of a toxic Canadian gold mine, but centres on two United Nations missions to the West African country of Burkina Faso: A water management project doomed by bumblers and scoundrels, and a massive forest management project that was a model of sustainability and co-operation until infighting between two UN agencies killed it.
Claessens leaves us a cautionary tale against imposing Western solutions on developing nations without adequate local consultation.