This week’s top book reviews

All in one place — the books we’ve reviewed this week. Click on a link to take you to our review, or to purchase it on iBooks or Amazon.

Arrivals

Emma Hooper, author of “Our Homesick Songs.”
Emma Hooper, author of “Our Homesick Songs.”  (Hamish Hamilton)

Margaret Laurence & Jack McClelland: Letters, edited by Laura K. Davis and Linda M. Morra, University of Alberta

Margaret Laurence (1926-1987) was at the forefront of creating a distinctive Canadian literature. Jack McClelland (1922-2004), the president of the venerable McClelland & Stewart, was a Canadian publishing impresario, a man who adopted a flamboyant guise to promote arts and letters. It’s a glimpse into a warm friendship and mutually beneficial business relationship.

Read the Star’s review here.

Article Continued Below

Buy it on Amazon here.

Buy it on iBooks here.

The Little Clan, Iris Martin Cohen, Park Row

Author Iris Martin Cohen lived the real-life version of this debut novel in 2004, when she and a friend founded what became a fashionable literary salon, the Accompanied Library Society, above Manhattan’s venerable National Arts Club. Her fictionalized take on that experience is presided over by bookish alter ego Ava, who serves as librarian of the musty Lazarus Club, and her glamorous friend, Stephanie.

Read the Star’s review here.

Buy it on Amazon here.

Buy it on iBooks here.

Article Continued Below

The Finch in My Brain, Martino Sclavi, Hodder & Stoughton

Six years ago, screenwriter and producer Martino Sclavi was diagnosed with a Stage 4 glioblastoma (the most aggressive type of brain tumour) and told he was unlikely to live more than 18 months. He has defied the odds, but one of the effects of the surgery he underwent is that he can no longer read. You would think that would signal career death for a writer. This memoir proves otherwise.

Read the Star’s review here.

Buy it on Amazon here.

Buy it on iBooks here.

Abridged Classics: Brief Summaries of Books You Were Supposed to Read But Probably Didn’t, John Atkinson, Harper Design

The title pretty much explains the idea. Ottawa cartoonist John Atkinson distils the best of Western literature with an illustration and a few deft words. Some of my favourites: Ulysses(“Dublin, something, something, something, run-on sentence.”); Brave New World (“Everyone is high. Nothing gets done.”); Catcher in the Rye (“Moody teen complains a lot. He has a red hat). You get the idea.

Read the Star’s review here.

Buy it on Amazon here.

Buy it on iBooks here.

The Bookshop of Yesterdays, Amy Meyerson, Park Row

Miranda inherits Prospero Books (be prepared for other references to The Tempest) from her Uncle Billy, and embarks on a triple quest where she must find out why her beloved uncle severed contact with her 16 years before when she was 12. A solid debut novel, with an unalloyed sweetness at its heart.

Read the Star’s review here.

Buy it on Amazon here.

Buy it on iBooks here.

Reviews and Interviews

Foe, Iain Reid

When Iain Reid’s debut novel I’m Thinking of Ending Things came out in 2016 its over-the-top psycho-thriller plot drew a number of apt and complimentary comparisons to the films of M. Night Shyamalan. These are likely to continue with the publication of Foe, a very similar but deeper work. If Foe were just a thriller it would be a catchy beach read, but it’s not a book without further layers.

Read the Star’s review here.

Buy it on Amazon here.

Buy it on iBooks here.

Our Homesick Songs, Emma Hooper

Newfoundland. The 1990s. The Atlantic has emptied of cod and the fishing out ports of the rugged island are emptying of fishing families at pace. That recent heartbreaking period in Newfoundland history is the backdrop to Emma Hooper’s new novel, Our Homesick Songs. Rooted as it is in the mystical tales of this mythical land, Our Homesick Songs feels like a come-from-away version of the island, celebrating its charm but not necessarily steeped in the salty brine of island culture.

Read the Star’s review here.

Buy it on Amazon here.

Buy it on iBooks here.

An Unwanted Guest, Shari Lapena

Lapena is obviously not a murderer, but she gets into the mind of one with her new mystery thriller, An Wanted Guest. With her two international bestselling books, The Couple Next Door and A Stranger in the House, the former lawyer and English teacher quickly established herself as one of Canada’s most exportable writers.

Read the Star’s review here.

Buy it on Amazon here.

Buy it on iBooks here.

Historical Fiction

The Hour of the Fox, Kurt Palka

In his forward to readers in The Hour of the Fox, bestselling Canadian novelist Kurt Palka writes that his seventh novel, set in the 1970s in Nova Scotia and Toronto, is about courage. “Not the noisy ‘courage’ of bravura and daring,” he elaborates, “but the much more interesting quiet, sustained courage to hang in and endure in the face of adversities that seem all but overwhelming.” Elegantly-written and utterly compelling from start to finish, this is an exquisite outing.

Read the Star’s review here.

Buy it on Amazon here.

Buy it on iBooks here.

The Restless Sea, Vanessa de Haan

Based on both family stories from her grandmother and great-aunt and extensive interviews with World War II veterans, British journalist Vanessa de Haan’s debut The Restless Sea tells the story of a merchant seaman, a scrappy Londoner named Jack who’s fled both the trauma of The Blitz and the desperation of his working-class life. On leave in a secret Scottish harbour, he meets golden-haired Olivia. The coming-of-age tale that follows is full of fascinating historical detail, and packs a powerful emotional punch.

Read the Star’s review here.

Buy it on Amazon here.

Buy it on iBooks here.

The Optickal Illusion, Rachel Halliburton

In 2004, journalist Rachel Halliburton visited an exhibition at The New York Public Library and discovered the work of the 18th Century cartoonist James Gillray. Ten years later, mulling over the idea of penning a novel, she revisited his cartoons and came across a cryptic satire of a real-life scandal: the story of Benjamin West, painter and president of the Royal Academy of Arts. Never one to turn away from a compelling story, Halliburton threw herself into research, and the result is this debut, set in Georgian London.

Read the Star’s review here.

Buy it on Amazon here.

Buy it on iBooks here.

Visible Empire, Hannah Pittard

In Visible Empire, Pittard charts the crisis’s aftermath through a vivid cast of characters, including an adulterous journalist and his orphaned, pregnant wife, a young African-American runaway trying to find his place in the world and Atlanta’s mayor, who’s coping not just with the disaster, and its many ensuing memorial services, but also his eccentric wife. The writing throughout is masterful, bringing this turbulent time in local history to living, breathing life. A triumph.

Read the Star’s review here.

Buy it on Amazon here.

Buy it on iBooks here.

More from The Star & Partners

LOADING

  •  
     
     

     

  •  
     
     

     

  •  
     
     

     

  •  
     
     

     

  •  
     
     

     

  •  
     
     

     

  •  
     
     

     

  •  
     
     

     

  •  
     
     

     
https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/2018/08/03/this-weeks-top-book-reviews.html
www.thestar.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2018-34
117082
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:2T77ZKAYS7UY6FC4XJ5WF2CFDXNDKT6D
<urn:uuid:b329be27-aa71-4a9a-89f0-e29bc0432a2c>
2018-08-15T11:47:12Z
52.84.126.46
text/html
sha1:PVUJT6NC2JLYQJ6I7S4AJGWPWQWSHPKD
<urn:uuid:adc56624-3df8-4d8b-b970-31ce91a783d2>
https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/2018/08/03/this-weeks-top-book-reviews.html
response
<urn:uuid:c922dba0-9d05-4a0e-8cd5-5b3df7c96def>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2018-34
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for August 2018
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-65-78-181.ec2.internal
software: Apache Nutch 1.15 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 0.11-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: http://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/