WORD UNDER THE STREET
You know when you see a stranger on the subway immersed in a book and you’re just dying to know what they’re reading? Well, Geoffrey Vendeville asked for you.
Ana Walker, 22, works at a coffee shop Book: The Legend of Luke by Brian Jacques
Stop: Museum Walker was fond of the Redwall series of fantasy books and its anthropomorphic heroes when she was younger. It was only when she stumbled on a pile of Redwall books at Doug Miller Books, in Koreatown, that she decided to revisit one of her childhood favourites. The Legend of Luke, no. 12 in the series, tells the story of two quests, “that of a son trying to find his father and that of a father to avenge the murder of his beloved wife,” according to the book’s description on the author’s site. Walker finds the novels formulaic but nevertheless enjoyable.
Christine Nguyen, 30, researcher Book: The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
Stop: Eglinton The unnamed narrator in The Sympathizer is a Communist double agent who keeps tabs on the head of the South Vietnamese police force, including the secret police. After the Fall of Saigon, he arranges the general’s escape to the U.S. and continues to spy on him there. Nguyen was eager to read the book not only because it won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, but also because she has a personal connection to the events it describes. “My parents were Vietnamese refugees and the book goes into that experience,” she said. “I don’t know a whole lot about the history and my parents don’t talk about it a whole lot.”
Andrew Lee, 21, university student Book: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Stop: St. Clair Lee often goes to the books section of Reddit to find the next book for his nightstand. He picked up this novel because many users said it influenced their outlook on life and relationships. It’s set in the 1990s, in an alternate, dystopian Britain where human clones are brought up at a boarding school called Hailsham to be used as organ donors. The main characters are Kathy, Tommy and Ruth, students who form a love triangle. About one third of the way into the novel, Lee says it’s about finding your place in society — a theme he says he can relate to.
Sara Mack, 55, works in alternative healing Book: Perelandra (Voyage to Venus) by C.S. Lewis
Stop: Queen’s Park C.S. Lewis reinterprets the story of Adam and Eve, staging it on Venus in the second novel of his Space Trilogy. Elwin Ransom, an academic and the series’ main character, travels to Venus and discovers a water-covered world with islands of vegetation, animals and almost no other intelligent life except for a green woman, who represents Eve. Ransom must battle a rival from the previous book in the series to preserve the planet’s innocence. Mack was rereading Perelandra because she said it was an interesting retelling of the biblical story.