THE FATES WILL FIND THEIR WAY by Hannah Pittard (2011) Ecco

Told in the bewildered third person plural, THE FATES WILL FIND THEIR WAY contemplates the disappearance of 16-year-old Nora Lindell one Halloween, from the perspective of the teenaged boys in her life, not only at the time of Nora's likely abduction, but also later in their lives as young married men with children of their own. Their collective guilt at not being able to find Nora and keep her safe leads to magical thinking about the life she may well have found without them.

Because the imagined reality of Nora's abduction and subsequent torture is too painful to conceive, the boys spin an alternative life for her where she is pregnant with twin girls and waiting tables at a restaurant in Arizona. There she's hired without any previous experience because she tells the manager "I'm a blank slate. Teach me and I'll do exactly what you say." Nora falls for the old Mexican cook, a man so unlike the boys in his tenderness and desire to care for Nora and her babies.

The boys keep secrets, or at least try to, as they grow up with Nora's absence a haunting presence in their lives. Like the time Danny Hatchet accidentally killed the Wilsons' lab or the creepy shenanigans of the Junior year boys in the balcony at the film night that especially traumatized a group of girls. They also confide in each other about terrible truths including a mom's suicide and an adult friend's Lolita-fueled fantasy about one of their own daughters.

We ride side by side with these boys from their confusing Senior year in High School to the cusp of their 45th birthdays and attend the funerals of parents and classmates along the way. All the while we wonder, like them, if Nora could have possibly found an alternative life blossoming with love, even though the cold hard facts reveal a life snuffed out at its height of promise.

THE FATES WILL FIND THEIR WAY will remind you of your own adolescence in its heady confusion and equal dreaminess: a shared belief in the possibility of a fantastic future that will be realized in spite of any obstacles that may come your way. Through Pittard's masterful narrative I am haunted by a disappearance from my own childhood in the 1970s. Sally Ann Hanson, a country schoolgirl, disappeared when I was in Grade 4. Other than the imagined terror of her fate befalling any one of my classmates, I never considered a future for her. Until now.

This book has traction. I think it's going to be 2011's ROOM.

GREAT PHILOSOPHERS WHO FAILED AT LOVE by Andrew Shaffer (2011) Harper Perennial

Writer Andrew Shaffer is another Twitter find. You'll spot him there as himself @andrewtshaffer and also as the amusingly wicked aliases @EvilWylie and @EmperorFranzen, having outed himself in Galley Cat and then revealed more in a wonderful interview by @ninatypewriter. You don't need to be a big book geek like me, however, to enjoy Shaffer's fascinating debut GREAT PHILOSOPHERS WHO FAILED AT LOVE.

Anyone who has taken a philosophy 020 course as an undergrad will remember the names Aristotle, St. Augustine, Descartes, Engels, Goethe, Hegel, Hume, Locke, Rousseau and Sartre, but scratch the back of your brain and try to come up with something lasting that one of these guys has thought or said. Fret not. Their pithy remarks about love and women are conjured here in tantalizing entries. And, if you think you've made your fair share of mistakes on the love parade, be prepared to sit in the rumble seat, because the errors these great thinkers have made will push you further than a back-seat ride.

According to Diogenes the Cynic, Aristotle would "walk up and down discussing philosophy with his pupils until it was time to rub themselves with oil" while women were confined to the home and barred from public functions. After he indulged in "hellish pleasures" with his lover for more than a dozen years, St. Augustine's mother set HIM up with a "respectable woman" (a 10-year-old girl). And, then he converted to Catholicism. Camus was clear about his inability to love his wives or any other woman for that matter: "to love someone means to be willing to age with that person. I am not capable of such love." John Locke claimed that his "health...is the only mistress." Such a romantic.

The craziest, to me, however, is Ayn Rand, who when abandoned by her much younger lover (who happened to be heating it up with a fashion model at the same time) insisted, "The man to whom I dedicated Atlas Shrugged would never want anything less than me! I don't care if I'm ninety years old and in a wheelchair!" You see? Capital C-Crazy. Take solace. You may drink and dial, but you'll never be as mad in love as Ayn Rand.

Pick up GREAT PHILOSOPHERS WHO FAILED AT LOVE , sit back, relax and enjoy the deliciously lascivious and often kooky ride. Besides, it'll make you look good.

THE WATER RAT OF WANCHAI: AN AVA LEE NOVEL by Ian Hamilton (ARC, forthcoming February 2011) House of Anansi Press

Ava Lee is a feisty, intelligent, resourceful and polite 30-year-old forensic accountant from Toronto who happens to be business partners with a septugenarian "Uncle" in Hong Kong who works unofficially on white collar crime and who may or may not have connections to the Chinese Triads.

At first glance, the petite, glamorous Ava seems physically unthreatening (immaculately groomed and fashionably dressed in Chanel), but as someone trained in the ancient and secret martial art of bak mei by Grandmaster Tang, she is her own lethal weapon.

When one of Uncle's old friends persuades him to help his nephew Andrew Tam, Ava is enlisted to find the missing money, a whopping five million dollars. The money trail takes Ava from the comfort of her Toronto condo to Hong Kong and into the arms of katoey culture and corrupt, but helpful, law enforcers. From Hong Kong Ava travels to Guyana where she meets her wily match in Captain Robbins, who also happens to have daughters back in Toronto, attending Havergal College, Ava's boarding school alma mater. Robbins, a former Bajan cop, and one of the few white men in Georgetown, looks and behaves like a mafia godfather. And, Ava is in the precarious position of needing to trust "The Captain" at his word.

Just as Ava is closing the deal with a bank in the British Virgin Islands and hoping to return the missing funds in full to her client in Hong Kong, Captain Robbins, through his equally corrupt and menacing younger brother Jack, turns the tables on her and she finds herself needing to access all of her resources with the hope of making it off the island without her Canadian passport and returning home to Toronto where she'll contemplate taking Uncle's next great case.

In Ava Lee, Ian Hamilton has created an appealing and memorable heroine with a voice as fresh as Alan Bradley's Flavia de Luce in his debut novel THE SWEETNESS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PIE.

As the first mystery in House of Anansi's SPIDERLINE imprint, THE WATER RAT OF WANCHAI has introduced me to an intelligent, feisty and impeccably polite woman who is sure to have my attention with each subsequent adventure in the Ava Lee series. And, I'll only have to wait until July 2011 to join Ava on her next journey, all of her resources in tact. How clever of Senior Editor Janie Yoon to see the promise in this series. It is sure to become a beloved blockbuster.

TETHERED by Amy MacKinnon (2008) Random House

Has a book ever made its way to your hands and then inched its way into your heart, leaving an indelible mark?

After hearing about TETHERED from the Friday Reads meme on Twitter I special ordered a copy from one of my favourite independent booksellers here in Toronto and I picked it up on Thursday after work. Because Nicholas Hoare Books is down at the foot of the city, I ended up taking the Queen streetcar home which gave me almost an hour to immerse myself in the exquisitely created broken lives of Amy MacKinnon's characters, characters who seemed so frankly familiar to me.

The tenderness with which protagonist Clara, a mortician, prepares the corpse of a cancer victim in the opening scene had me weeping openly, not only from the care with which the moment is rendered but from the recognition of such an imagined kindness performed on the bodies of my brother and my grandparents after their deaths. Those unfamiliar with the business of preparing bodies for burial or cremation might find the visceral description almost untenable, but as the title implies, as a reader you will be tethered to that moment.

There were revelations throughout this sensitive and shocking novel that I felt as if MacKinnon were peeling back secrets of my past, my family's history. Like Clara, my mother lost her mother as a young child. In fact, her only distinct memory is approaching the open casket, with violets gripped in her furled three-year-old hand, made to put the flowers in with her mother's cancer-ridden chilled corpse, grazing those frozen fingers. And, like Clara, I too tore out clumps of hair as a child (apparently in my sleep), leaving spongy patches, scalp tattoos barely hidden by skillful parts. Something I had entirely forgotten until I read about it here and recognized myself with horror.

In funeral home director Linus, MacKinnon has created someone immediately knowable to me: a man who understands the privilege of his position and his role as pragmatic comforter in chief to the recently bereaved. A man who can reassure those in acute emotional distress because he has walked the walk himself through the unexpected loss of his only son.

When Clara discovers Trecie, a neglected little girl who seeks refuge in the funeral home, she reluctantly befriends her, wary of the emotional truths that will be revealed, both about Trecie and about herself. And, when Detective Mike Sullivan, no stranger to loss himself, starts prodding Clara about an unidentified child's corpse she prepared three years' previous, she finds her life shift in a profound way.

From the opening gambit to the immensely satisfying end, with life-threatening and life-changing detours along the way, TETHERED is a haunting debut, rife with man's inhumanity to man and the determination of those who are essentially good and true to abide by what is right.

THE MIDWIFE OF VENICE by Roberta Rich (from the ARC, on sale February 2011) Doubleday Canada

THE MIDWIFE OF VENICE is Roberta Rich's glorious debut novel.

Hannah Levi, a young married Jewish woman, is known for her midwifery skills throughout 16th century Venice. When a Christian nobleman arrives at her ghetto door under the cloak of night, imploring Hannah to aid his dying wife, believing that she is their only true hope of a safe delivery, Hannah's faith is tested. As her aging rabbi reminds her, for a Jew to minister to a Christian is not only against the law, but also punishable by torture and death.

Then the Conte offers Hannah an unthinkable sum of money, an amount so generous that Hannah could possibly buy back her husband's life from the Knights of St. John by whom he has been captured and forced into slavery in Malta months before. Hannah is willing to take the risk of not being able to save the Contessa's and her baby's life and being caught ministering to a labouring Christian woman in order to live with the real hope that she will be reunited soon with Isaac, her true love.

Complicating Hannah's journey are the toxic younger brothers of the Conte who are threatened by the idea of an heir to their brother's estate (let alone a living, breathing one) and the sweeping presence of the plague that fills barges daily with diseased corpses of old and young alike.

Written with an eye for relevant historical detail and a capacity for rich sensory experiences exquisitely rendered, THE MIDWIFE OF VENICE surprised me at every narrative turn. Robert Rich is a novelist to watch.

TELL NO ONE by Harlan Coben (2001) Random House

Harlan Coben is a new-to-me crime fiction writer. I have become familiar with his name through Twitter where his fellow novelist Alafair Burke (with whose work I am happily familiar and utterly committed as a reader) has commented about his writing and what a swell guy he is and where I also follow his 140-character tweets @HarlanCoben. Last week I was talking up Alafair Burke's books to a colleague and he just happened to recommend Coben and offered to loan me his favourite: TELL NO ONE.

As part of the Criminal Plots Reading challenge, Coben's TELL NO ONE serves as the book by an author who has blurbed a crime novel I've already read--in my case the overexposed Stieg Larsson's THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO.

TELL NO ONE follows Dr. David Beck, a widower who continues to grieve the loss of his wife Elizabeth eight years after the traumatic evening he heard her piercing screams and she was abducted, the last night he saw her alive. His friends worry about Beck and encourage him to accommodate Elizabeth's loss in his life and move on. Beck immerses himself in his work as a pediatrician who serves a slum community where many of the parents he sees are children themselves.

However, one day Beck receives an enigmatic message on his work computer and the content of that message opens up a sliver of hope that perhaps Elizabeth isn't dead after all. Beck becomes obsessed with the idea that Elizabeth's death was a hoax and he enlists his sister's partner Shauna (his university roommate and most trusted friend) to help him puzzle out the truth.

In a story that Dennis Lehane calls "an exhilarating, bang-up, Porsche turbo of a novel," Coben unravels a narrative with twists and turns that take you to the precipice at Beck's side wondering how he will ever possibly elude the gangsters and federal officers who now pursue him with equal zeal.

This first exposure to Coben's style has me convinced to read my way through all of his novels, looking forward to what I expect to be gripping, intelligent, morally-driven stories that matter.

THE GUARDIANS by Andrew Pyper (2011) Doubleday Canada

The launch of a new Andrew Pyper title is cause for excitement for fans of smart literary thrillers. I've been shoving copies of Pyper's books into the hands of discerning readers for years: LOST GIRLS, THE TRADE MISSION, WILDFIRE SEASON, THE KILLING CIRCLE and now THE GUARDIANS. Each time I wonder, baited-breathedly, if the new novel will match the excitement, intelligence and sensitivity of the previous one and each time I am relieved and delighted to see that it does. And then some.

Trevor, Ben, Randy and Carl are boyhood friends and hockey teammates who grew up in a small Ontario town in the 1970s and are bound by ties that they don't yet fully understand. Now, in their early 40s, the four come together again on the sad occasion of Ben's accidental death. Trevor, recently diagnosed with early onset Parkinson's Disease, has already come face to face with the idea of his own mortality through his trembling limbs. When he reunites first with Randy, and later with Carl, the unspoken specter from their past becomes prescient in their present.

With breathtaking tension and a capacity to reveal human frailty, Pyper leads you by the hand alongside these broken men towards their path of redemption.

As someone who believes that Pyper is already writing at the top of his game, there simply aren't enough superlatives to shout from the rooftops about THE GUARDIANS. If you haven't already found your way to Andrew Pyper's books, well, isn't it just about time?

THE SENTIMENTALISTS by Johanna Skibsrud (2009) Gaspereau Press

Let me begin by confessing that I have an M.A. in English Literature and that the time I spent in graduate school has me predisposed to perhaps not only read fiction regarded dull by others, but also perversely to seem to enjoy it.

When Johanna Skibsrud was named the recipient of the 2010 Scotiabank Giller Prize (ostensibly the finest book of fiction published in Canada in a given year) by the three-member jury of broadcaster Michael Enright and novelists Claire Messud and Ali Smith, I was curious to read her novel THE SENTIMENTALISTS. Published by Gaspereau Press, a small east-coast firm that takes pride in its fine product, this novel was the talk of the town last fall because another house joined Gaspereau to keep up with the demand for copies after Skibsrud was crowned the Giller Princessa in November.

Before opening THE SENTIMENTALISTS I'd already read three of the other four short-listed titles: Kathleen Winter's ANNABEL, Sarah Selecky's THIS CAKE IS FOR THE PARTY and Alexander MacLeod's LIGHT LIFTING. Each of those three books impressed me both stylistically and in terms of engaging storytelling. I couldn't imagine, really, how the winner could be decidedly more accomplished.

Well, I was right about that.

THE SENTIMENTALISTS is clunky and dull and wants for narrative drive until page 109 (out of 218 pages) where the pace is at least lively and the characters temporarily engaging. The Epilogue is a tagged on interview that for me was an irritant and did not contribute to my greater understanding of the protagonist and his demons.

In a season in which there were such strong titles as Steven Heighton's EVERY LOST COUNTRY and Alison Pick's FAR TO GO that were neglected by the shortlist makers, I am truly baffled as to why this book made it to the top of the list.

If you disagree with me, please let me know. I would like to try to understand what I missed.

IN HER SHOES by Jennifer Weiner (2002) Simon and Schuster

If I happen to be online while Jennifer Weiner is live-tweeting episodes of THE BACHELOR, I am sure to be amused by her wit and snark, which is why I ordered this novel from her chick lit canon last week.

I have not seen the Hollywood movie adaptation starring Cameron Diaz and Toni Collette, so I happily leapt between these pages without any expectation other than being entertained by the story.

Rose and Maggie Feller are sisters with not much more in common than their shoe size and DNA. Rose is a Princeton-educated (like Weiner herself) attorney making her way in a Philadelphia law firm and her younger sister Maggie is a fly-by-the-seat-of-her-pants 20-something stunner who makes most hetero men's heads swivel when she enters a room.

When Maggie yet again oversteps her mark in Rose's life, this time her transgression is not so easily forgiven. Yet, Maggie is a survivor and manages to find her way into the Florida retirement community where her estranged grandmother Ella lives and there discovers truths about herself and a way back to the present where she is able to make amends with Rose after all.

I enjoyed witnessing Maggie's emotional growth through her service to Corinne, a blind woman who lives near the Princeton campus where Maggie is squatting in a library and through the rapport she builds with the retired folk in her grandmother's community. It is amazing what we are all capable of when we finally find the courage to be ourselves.

MORDECAI: THE LIFE & TIMES by Charles Foran (2010) Knopf Canada

MORDECAI: THE LIFE & TIMES is a brick of a book at 717 pages, but this exhaustive and engaging biography of the Canadian literary icon is worth every minute that you will spend in its heady company.

As Booker-Prize-winning novelist Yann Martel explains in his cover blurb, "Charles Foran vividly renders the life of Mordecai Richler, in all his complexity and with all his contradictions." Foran had unlimited access to Richler's archives both public and private thanks to the generosity of his widow Florence and this accessibility combined with Foran's own talent as a storyteller (he's published nine books of fiction/nonfiction) has produced the definitive biography of an indefinable character.

Foran is careful to balance Richler's public irascibility with the private tenderness of a father to five remarkably creative children (Daniel, Noah, Emma, Martha & Jacob) and the old-fashioned devoted husband to the woman he most respected and loved, Florence Mann. In understanding Richler's family history, and specifically those in-your-face coming-of-age years in Montreal, Foran has provided the falsework for all of the novels. And, in so doing has made me want to revisit THE APPRENTICESHIP OF DUDDY KRAVITZ, SOLOMON GURSKY WAS HERE & BARNEY'S VERSION for starters.

Travel to London and Paris with twenty-something Mordecai and mingle with legendary editor Diana Athill, expat fiction writer Mavis Gallant, fellow novelist Brian Moore and rising film star Sean Connery. Find out how Richler believed that Pierre Trudeau "could never be elected Prime Minister," how he championed THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP by a young novelist named John Irving, and why he regarded Brian Mulroney as one of the finest liars of all time "who lied even when it wasn't necessary just to keep in shape, his voice, a dead give-away, sinking into his Guccis whenever he was about to deliver one of his whoppers."

I really loved this book and hope that it will be named the recipient of this year's BC National Award for Canadian Nonfiction later this month as well as a contender for the Charles Taylor Prize for literary nonfiction not to mention make its way into the hands of grateful readers keen to read a real story well told.

GROWING UP JUNG: COMING OF AGE AS THE SON OF TWO SHRINKS by Micah Toub (2010) Doubleday Canada

I received this copy of Micah Toub's memoir from @cbcbooks for tweeting book reviews to their feed. Having recently taught Catherine Gildiner's SEDUCTION and introduced students to the theories of Freud and Jung, I was happy to thumb my way through GROWING UP JUNG and relieved that I hadn't shared Toub's coming-of-age experiences.

Toub admits that some of the time what his Jungian therapist parents shared with him and his half sister was often flaky, but also occasionally profound. However, I can't ever imagine the mental health benefits of discussing my sex life with my mother as Toub so readily did with his mom who insisted that he "BE the penis." Or, that pursuing an active "animus" could lead the "synchronicity" of a fiancé.

What I did enjoy about Toub's narrative was the frankness with which he wrote and the Jungian theory refresher that reminded me why I had at one time been drawn to Jung's ideas about dreams and the shadow self.

Micah Toub writes a biweekly column about relationships from a male perspective for THE GLOBE AND MAIL and may be followed on Twitter @MicahToub.

A COLD NIGHT FOR ALLIGATORS by Nick Crowe from the ARC (due Feb 8, 2011) Knopf Canada

First time novelist Nick Crowe, one of Random House/Knopf Canada's New Faces of Fiction for 2011, opens his tale with a scene that will be a familiar worry to many city commuters, at least those who travel to and from work as I do along the subterranean trail of the TTC. Our 20-something narrator Jasper observes with curiosity a man on the subway platform. And the scratch at the back of his brain tells him to be wary, but not before this stranger pushes him into the charging path of the incoming train.

Seven months later Jasper wakes up from a coma and becomes preoccupied with the disappearance of his older brother Coleman 10 years previous. On his birthday Jasper receives a phone call, but on the other end of the line there's only silence. Not ready to return to work, he embarks upon a southward journey with unconventional companions, Donny (Jasper's ex-girlfriend's devout new flame) and Duane who are planning to participate in a fishing derby en route to Florida where Jasper hopes beyond hope to get a trail on Coleman.

Eventually reunited with his mom's sister, Aunt Val, and her lazy, meth-addled and brutal husband Rolly Lee, Jasper begins to discover that his past perceptions that protected him through the lens of childhood memory are not necessarily reliable.

Through flashbacks of his family vacations to Florida where "watching the sunrise from the back of a station wagon... is a very fine thing indeed" and memories of Coleman's idiosyncracies before he disappeared, Jasper moves closer to the emotional truth and comes face to face with loss in his life.

A COLD NIGHT FOR ALLIGATORS made me squeamish at times with its moments of gratuitous violence, but I couldn't put the book down.

A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD by Jennifer Egan (2010) Knopf

A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD is my first exposure to Jennifer Egan, but it certainly won't be my last. I'll be shuffling through her backlist as soon as my local library branch can source each title. Her narrative is smart and her prose clean and sometimes startling.

The novel weaves together the stories of Bennie Salazar, a 60-something NYC record exec with a punk rocker past, with Sasha, his glamorous and competent assistant with a storied past of her own that includes kleptomania, anorexia and more than one attempt at suicide. And, although Bennie and Sasha are oblivious about the essential details of each others' complicated lives, we are party to every secret along the way from a family safari in Africa to getting lost and found in Naples, Italy to San Francisco's punk scene in the early 70s and New York City today.

There are supporting characters that move in and out of Bennie's and Sasha's lives and the gaps between their entrances and exits serve as musical rests in the symphony of each life. We come to understand that the silences are as resonant as the notes themselves. Sasha's 13-yr-old son Lincoln is obsessed with the pauses in songs and it is his obsession that leads Sasha to realize, "the pause makes you think the song will end. And then the song isn't really over, so you're relieved. But then the song does actually end because every song ends, obviously, and THAT. TIME. THE. END. IS. FOR. REAL."

Egan uses a variety of narrative techniques that embrace and satirize contemporary forms including texting and PowerPoint. For me, each page was a revelation, a pause on each character's path to redemption. Isn't that what we all yearn for?

STARTED EARLY, TOOK MY DOG by Kate Atkinson (2010) Bond Street Books

After another masterful turn with WHEN WILL THERE BE GOOD NEWS?, Kate Atkinson offers a new literary thriller featuring Jackson Brodie, her now retired detective who manages to find himself in the thick of it in Leeds while he's innocently researching a private client's mysterious past.

There are three narrative threads in STARTED EARLY, TOOK MY DOG: Tracy Waterhouse is a retired Police Superintendent now passing the time as the chief of security at a shopping complex; Tilly is a septogenarian actress suffering the early stages of dementia and playing the heart-throb's mother in COLLIER, a t.v. show; and, Jackson Brodie is the familiar rough around the edges divorced and retired detective, "drifting, as a tourist in his own country" when he witnesses the cruel and unusual punishment of a lively little terrier and decides that a "small,helpless dog seemed like a good place to draw the line" about violence.

When Tracy makes a Faustian deal with a known prostitute and her transaction is witnessed by both Tilly and Jackson, their trajectories become entwined and all three soon come to realize that no good deed goes unpunished.

Atkinson creates credible responses to incredible circumstances for each of her characters and her command of storytelling sets her up to rival the best writing today. In Kate Atkinson's world there is wit and wisdom and fierce moral intelligence. You will always be satisfied by the way she weaves her tale.

TOUCH by Alexi Zentner (from the ARC) due April 2011 from Knopf Canada

Alexi Zentner is one of Random House of Canada's 2011 New Faces of Fiction and if you are the kind of reader who yearns for a lyrical tale well told, this novel is for you. With such lush, sophisticated and haunting prose, it's hard to believe that this is Zentner's first one.

TOUCH opens in a logging village in Northern BC in the early 20th century where the narrator Stephen (now an Anglican priest with a family of his own) is his boyhood self watching his foreman father standing "at the top of the chute hollering at the men and shaking his mangled hand, urging them on." In that distant past Stephen shows us the heart of the loss of his childhood, an incident that resonates in every winter landscape. And, there we meet his grandfather Jeannot, a tough and mysterious giant in Stephen's memory, a man whose convictions hide behind Stephen's adult faith and doubt.

As I was reading, I couldn't help but think of Joseph Boyden's THREE DAY ROAD and the way that it honours Native spirituality and the healing power of stories through the tales Niska tells her nephew on their final journey home. Here Zentner does the same by giving equal measure to Jeannot's wild beliefs as he does to Stephen's more conventional ones, honed as a chaplain on the WWI Front from which he returned, "getting off the ship the day the Treaty of Versailles was signed."

The novel shifts seamlessly back and forth between past and present, a present wherein Stephen has returned to his childhood village to bear witness to his ailing mother's death, to deliver her eulogy, and to take over his stepfather's responsibilities as the pastor of the Anglican Church in Sawgamet. Stephen admits (and this is the heart of this marvelous book), "no matter how many times my thoughts returned to the winter I was ten, no matter how many questions I asked my mother as she lay dying, no matter how many stories I have heard about my father and grandfather, there are still so many things I will never know."

There are still so many things I will never know, but in reading TOUCH I am a little bit closer to their truth.

AN OBJECT OF BEAUTY by Steve Martin (2010) Grand Central Publishing

Is there anything this Renaissance man cannot do? He can go toe to toe with Alec Baldwin for Meryl Streep's affection in IT'S COMPLICATED, make a mean chocolate croissant from scratch, and date Liz Lemon as the pathological liar Gavin Velour in a guest starring spot on 30 ROCK. And, didn't he just win a Grammy for plinking his banjo and also publish a New York Times bestseller in the same year?

I've long admired Steve Martin's writing, having read both his fiction (PICASSO AT THE LAPIN AGILE, SHOPGIRL, THE PLEASURE OF MY COMPANY) and his nonfiction (BORN STANDING UP), so was excited to see that he had a new novel out this fall.

AN OBJECT OF BEAUTY transports you into the idiosyncratic world of art collectors and offers an Art History 101 course replete with colour panels of important paintings while you're along for the heady ride.

Daniel Franks, who is true to his family name, is our reliable narrator who tells the story of Lacey Yeager, a one-time lover and longtime friend who is a clever and captivating student of the NYC art world into which she hurls herself in the early 90s. Apprenticing in the dungeons at Sotheby's, cataloguing, Lacey soon finds a way to move up the corporate ladder and then out into the world of boutique Manhattan galleries frequented by both the rich and famous who are eager to add to their burgeoning collections. With a shrewd investment of a Warhol that she purchases for a song and then parlays into real money, Lacey makes her way, toppling romantic entanglements that seem to take up just too much of her time.

Lacey is plucky and intelligent and not often easy to like in her narcissism, but as her former lover Patrice explains near the end of the tale, "I think Lacey is the kind of person who will always be okay."

Three things I did not expect and was delighted to find in this wonderful romp: a John Updike cameo, an allusion to HAMLET, and a renewed interest in the paintings of Rockwell Kent. If you are looking for a smart, elegant read that immerses you in NYC's tony art community, AN OBJECT OF BEAUTY is the novel for you.

COAL DUST KISSES: A CHRISTMAS MEMOIR by Will Ferguson (2010) Penguin Canada

Will Ferguson has been awarded the Leacock Medal for Humour for previous books, including his travelogue BEAUTY TIPS FROM MOOSEJAW which has some of the most hilarious situational pieces you will ever read.

I am always on the lookout for little Christmas stories to use as stocking stuffers and was pleased to find his COAL DUST KISSES to add to my preferred collection that includes Alistair MacLeod's exquisite holiday fare TO EVERY THING THERE IS A SEASON. Like the MacLeod book that includes hand drawn illustrations, Ferguson's Christmas memoir has lovely complementary pen & ink drawings by Marie-Eve Tremblay.

In this charming little tale, Ferguson traces the tradition of coal dust kisses that originated with his Scottish grandfather and travels through the generations and across the continents where Ferguson finds himself building his own life first in the North, then in Equador, in southern Japan and finally in Cape Breton. COAL DUST KISSES is just the right elixir of nostalgia, forgiveness and storytelling magic.

SKIPPY DIES by Paul Murray (2010) Hamish Hamilton

Paul Murray's boys' boarding school bildungsroman, SKIPPY DIES, has been on my must-read list for several weeks now and on my radar since it made the Man Booker Longlist alongside Emma Donoghue's ROOM earlier this year. It's a brick at 600+ pages, so I needed chunks of dedicated time to inch my way through it--the first few days of our school break have afforded me that luxury.

Since I teach at a school for boys, I expected to find familiar territory between the covers, but not so much that I would feel Murray were writing directly to me. How often do you pick up a book and feel the author reaching out from the pages to make your particular acquaintance? That is what Murray has done for me in this big, sad, boisterous, beautiful book about the idiosyncratic community of teachers and students and the Old Boy network that supports both.

As its title declares, Daniel "Skippy" Juster dies and that death is no surprise as we see it played out in the opening pages. What is more surprising is the palpable tension with which Murray reveals the circumstances that lead to this athlete's unexpected passing that unravel over the remaining 650 pages.

As much as the story had me in its thrall, and the characters felt astonishingly familiar, it was Murray's language play and observations about human frailty that captivated me throughout the novel. When you spend your days in the company of teenaged boys, you will catch gems like, "Mermaids don't have beavers, you clown. Even if you were amphibious you couldn't have sex with them." Or, "If James Clerk Maxwell had said, 'more beaver, less maths,' we wouldn't have electricity. Maths and the universe go hand in hand." The president of Dublin's tony Seabrook School for Boys is "one of those sleek, silver-haired, ageless men who manage to connote prestige and power without having expressed a single memorable thought." And, working for a school where the parents are also the clients, you might agree with snarky Father Green, "Ah yes. Go easy: the motto of the age. For these children, as for their parents, everything must be easy." And, when Old Boys return to their alma mater for events, "each reintroduction repeated a truth at once shocking and totally banal: people grow up and become orthodontists." Yet, "once you've seen someone firing peas out of his nostril, it's difficult to take him seriously as a hedge fund manager." I know this to be true.

One of the final thoughts is given appropriately to Lori (Skippy's own dying wish involved her) who is puzzling out her existence: "Maybe instead of strings, it's stories things are made of, an infinite number of tiny vibrating stories; once upon a time they all were part of one big giant superstory, except it got broken in a jillion different pieces, that's why no story on its own makes any sense, and so what you have to do in a life is try and weave it back together, my story into your story...until you've got something that...might look like a letter or even a whole word."

This novel is not for the weak of heart. There are genuinely loathsome characters that will make your smacking hand itch. But, the way that Ruprecht, Skippy and their peculiar coterie of boarding school chums struggle to find belonging will be familiar and make you grateful that that particular tumultuous time is decidedly in your past.

THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)

There are some books that bear rereading over and over again. THE GREAT GATSBY is one of them. It resonates with me now in ways that I never could have understood when I first read it at sixteen. And, I am gobsmacked by Fitzgerald's prose--its rhythm and beauty.

About the original cover (pictured above) Hemingway wrote in A MOVEABLE FEAST: "It had a garish dust jacket and I remember being embarrassed by the violence, bad taste and slippery look of it...for a book of bad science fiction. Scott told me not to be put off by it, that it had to do with a billboard along a highway in Long Island that was important in the story."

Read each of these passages and marvel at their grace and accuracy. Kissing Daisy for the first time is a religious rite/ communion for Gatsby: "He waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning-fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her."

When Nick arranges for Daisy to drop by his little cottage for tea one afternoon in order to meet Gatsby, he wonders if "perhaps my presence made them feel more satisfactorily alone."

Of the multitude of strangers who find themselves the beneficiaries of Gatsby's outlandish summer parties, Nick explains, "they came and went without having met Gatsby at all, came to the party with a simplicity of heart that was its own ticket of admission." And during those very fetes, "laughter is easier minute by minute, spilled with prodigality, tipped out at a cheerful word." Isn't Fitzgerald's prose gorgeous?

Consider this Romantic notion chronicling Gatsby's reunion with Daisy: "A universe of ineffable gaudiness spun itself out in his brain...and the moon soaked with wet light his tangled clothes upon the floor." Or that, "No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man can store up in his ghostly heart."

Reading THE GREAT GATSBY with the subtext of Fitzgerald's complicated life with his wife Zelda (and Hemingway's portrayal of her in "Hawks Do Not Share" and "A Matter of Measurements") adds another layer to Gatsby's desperate yearning to repeat his past.

APOCALYPSE FOR BEGINNERS by Nicolas Dickner, translated by Lazer Lederhendler (2010) Vintage Canada

"The future ain't what it used to be," provides Yogi Berra in the novel's epigraph.

High school student Hope Randall comes from a long line of magical thinkers who receive prophetic visions about the end of the world, and when those visions fail to materialize most go mad and find a way to end their own lives. In the summer of 1989, Hope and her mother Ann load up their Lada with ramen noodles and Bibles and head west until the little Russian car conks out near Riviere -du-Loup where they move into a former pet store that still stinks like the giant cage that it was.

Hope doesn't mind being an outsider (she's a mathematics and chemistry genius AND a girl) and it's while sitting alone on the stands at the local stadium, probably thinking about David Suzuki, her TV crush on The Nature Of Things, that Hope first meets Mickey Bauermann who intends to save Hope from her crazy situation.

Mickey and Hope become steadfast friends and predictably lovers, but when Hope's destiny is revealed by chance on a package of Captain Mofuku, she decides she needs to take charge of their future and seek out the source through a journey that leads her to New York City, Seattle and finally Tokyo, Japan.

APOCALYPSE FOR BEGINNERS is quirky fun, with a dash of melodrama and bildungsroman thrown in for good measure.

YOU HAD ME AT WOOF: HOW DOGS TAUGHT ME THE SECRETS OF HAPPINESS by Julie Klam (2010) Riverhead Books

Carrie Fisher praises Julie Klam's writing by insisting, "if tragedy plus time equals comedy, [she] makes the most of that equation."

I knew I would find Julie Klam's memoir charming, predisposed as I am to champion canine narratives, but I did not expect to do such extensive time-traveling through my own life by her side.

At 30, Klam is single, working part time in a make-ends-meet kind of job, consulting psychics and tarot readers to assuage her fear that she might well end up alone since sitting on her sofa and watching tv seems to be her preferred way to meet eligible men. Enter Otto, stage left. Otto is a Boston terrier that Klam adopts as her first own canine companion who shows her that she just might be able to share her home and her life with another. Enter Paul, stage right. Six years later Klam is married and has a baby daughter, Violet, who completes her family with Paul and Otto. They become involved with a Boston terrier rescue organization and their modest one-bedroom NYC apartment becomes a revolving door for the needy and dispossessed dogs who are difficult to place.

As Klam reminisces about the mastiffs she grew up with and the lasting nicknames that her brother Matt gave each one, I remembered too our first family dog, Nikki, a real pet who at the local dog show earned the ribbon for "the dog that least resembled any known breed" (though she looked most like a little bouvier with a rusty beard) and was affectionately nicknamed "Stinkhead" abbreviated to "Stink" by my brother David because of her horrible breath. Then, Mad Max, another pound rescue who had "Springer's rage" and had to be euthanized because he bit our father's hand one New Year's Eve, damaging the nerves. Most beloved was Winston, raised from an 8-week-old pup, aka Mister/ Mist/ the Uncle/ Mon Oncle, David's constant companion who survived the crash that killed him and managed to get the rest of us through those early days of our keen untenable grief. You see what I mean about time travel?

Like Klam I dreamed the existence of my own dogs, too. Or, perhaps, realized them from a figurine that stood on a secretary in the entrance hall of my grandparents' Toronto apartment: two liver and white Springer Spaniels, their feathery tails uncropped. Along came Bronte and then Doolin, now both gone. And, now Finn, a darling of a chocolate lab with a heart the size of the Chrysler Building, stretches across the queen-sized bed, paws flicking, chasing dream squirrels.

I know exactly what Klam means when she writes: "From Otto, who showed me I could be in a reciprocal nurturing relationship, to Dahlia, who proved that life continues to surprise, each dog in my life has brought me something or taught me a lesson that improved the quality of my life. I am richer in every way because of the dogs I've known." There's even the scientific proof for the doubting Thomases/ Cranky McCranky's who just simply can't see the point of sharing a life in this way: "When a person interacts with a dog, the central nervous system releases several hormones that cause feelings of pleasure--included in that is oxytocin."

YOU HAD ME AT WOOF makes a wonderful stocking stuffer, even for the most curmudgeonly grinch on your list. Follow @JulieKlam on twitter or visit her website to learn more: http://julieklam.com/

THIS CAKE IS FOR THE PARTY by Sarah Selecky (2010) Thomas Allen Publishers

THIS CAKE IS FOR THE PARTY caught the attention of this year's Giller Prize jury (Michael Enright, Ali Smith and Claire Messud) who shortlisted it in the excellent company of David Bergen, Alexander MacLeod, Joanna Skibsrud and Kathleen Winter.

I paced myself with this exquisite short story collection, sampling it slice by slice, and you should too. I know these characters. I am ashamed to admit that I've been some of these characters.

Selecky has a keen ear for conversational rhythm, both natural and forced and is able to draw attention to her characters' flawed attitudes through their gestures that are at once subtle and sometimes grand. Like Lisa Moore and Michael Winter, Sarah Selecky writes fiction that feels like nonfiction. And, I believe every word.

EVERY LOST COUNTRY by Steven Heighton (2010) Knopf Canada

Based loosely on an incident that occurred in Fall 2006 on the border between Nepal and the Tibet Autonomous Region of China, EVERY LOST COUNTRY charts the courses of Lewis Book, a doctor who has a history of serving in difficult conflicts; his 16-year-old daughter Sophie who is escaping her own recent past misstep; Wade Lawson, an extreme climber hoping to be the first to summit Mt. Kyatruk; and, Amaris McRae, a Chinese-Canadian filmmaker documenting their journey.

Heighton is an established poet as well as a novelist and throughout this haunting novel there are many lines of found poetry, including the opening line that "air this thin/turns anyone/into a mystic." As the members of the expedition, including local Sherpa guides, acclimatize to the air pressure at their base camp, one evening Sophie perches on the border between China and Nepal to scribble in her sketchbook/journal and watch the sun set over the Himalayas "by four in the afternoon...the cold dusk already deepening...spotlighting the pass and the valley and dyeing the glacier as it descends...a vast, glowing channel of lava running down a volcanic slope." Sophie "sees the trouble coming because she knows her father."

Shots ring out as Chinese soldiers fire at Tibetan refugees trying to flee into exile (as 150,000 have done before them, since 1959, including the current Dalai Lama). Lewis, Sophie's dad, is compelled to attend to the wounded and in so doing finds himself marched away by the Chinese, a captive and political pawn. Amaris, too, with her drive to film the hard truth, becomes a fugitive as Lawson, Sophie and the others look impotently on.

What follows is a thrilling pursuit where each of the characters is forced to face their fears and decide whether or not they can find within themselves the moral courage to continue, especially when the odds of survival are stacked against them. In EVERY LOST COUNTRY, Steven Heighton has woven a tale where complicated emotional truths and even more complicated circumstances intersect and you find yourself wondering alongside Lewis, Sophie, Wade and Amaris when it is acceptable to be a bystander and when life, love and loyalty demand more. Don't miss this extraordinary journey where "desire is a narrative/that keeps you moving forward/even at a crawl/needing to find out."

BURY YOUR DEAD by Louise Penny (2010) Sphere

If you haven't found your way to the Three Pines mysteries by Louise Penny, you should. I've read all of them and find myself welcomed back to the fold each time by the familiar warmth and intelligence of Detective Armand Gamache and the antics of the charismatic locals: artists Peter and Clara Morrow; psychologist-turned-bookseller Myrna; cranky, but gifted, poet Ruth; bistro patrons and partners, Gabri and Olivier.

BURY YOUR DEAD relies partially on the fallout of a curious murder in the previous novel THE BRUTAL TELLING (the 5th in the series, recently named the 2010 Anthony Award winner for the best crime novel in the US) where Olivier has been arrested and convicted of killing the enigmatic Hermit. Gamache has doubts about this conviction, and, as a man of conscience, he sends his 2 I.C., Inspector Jean-Guy Beauvoir, back to the sleepy hamlet to investigate further.

In the recent past there is a moment that personally haunts Gamache, one that leads him to take a temporary leave of absence from the work that he so loves and we learn in an intentionally suspenseful way throughout this narrative what actually happened to break him.

Ostensibly attempting to heal himself in the company of his mentor, the retired Chief Inspector, 80-year-old Emile Comeau who "knew the power, and length of time, Avec le temps, it takes to heal" Gamache heads to Quebec City for respite with his wife Reine-Marie and their adopted German shepherd Henri. There Gamache immerses himself in research about the Battle of the Plains of Abraham at the local library and when his wife returns to Montreal he has Emile introduce him to the members of the Societé Champlain. Gamache also ingratiates himself with the Anglo community that is the Literary and Historical Society and they turn to him for help when there is a grisly murder on their premises. A man has been brutally killed in one of the city's oldest buildings, a place where the English citizens of Quebec safeguard their version of history.

Penny knows her characters intimately and writes convincingly from their perspectives in all of her books, but it's in BURY YOUR DEAD that she fully realizes her narrative structural potential. This newest Inspector Gamache mystery will have you eagerly turning pages through its smart twists and turns to a completely satisfying conclusion.

Check out Louise Penny's website: www.louisepenny.com

FAUNA by Alissa York (2010) RandomHouse Canada

I've been dipping into FAUNA for a few weeks, taking my time, having surrendered completely to York's world. It is a gorgeous book both inside and out.

Protagonist Edal Jones is on leave from her job as a federal wildlife officer, having witnessed one too many humans smuggling in rare creatures and killing most in the process. One morning, as she's cycling through the empty streets at the heart of Toronto, Edal watches a young girl and her big black dog rescuing birds that have knocked themselves out on the city's glass skyscrapers. Edal follows Lily to a wrecker's yard and there meets more waifs and strays both animal and human who seek refuge in this unexpected haven.

York creates memorable characters in Edal, Lily, Guy and Stephen-- all vulnerable and deeply wounded--and suggests that literature itself offers emotional balm as they gather to hear Guy read from Kipling.

What most amazed me about this novel is the confidence from which the narrative unfurls from the perspectives of raccoons, skunks and coyotes as well as from the mouths and minds of the humans.

FAUNA is a billet-doux to Toronto's wildlife community and to broken souls everywhere.

If you are in Toronto, come to Ben McNally Books (366 Bay Street, south of Richmond) on Tues. Nov. 16th at 7:30 PM and get your own copy of FAUNA personalized by Alissa York. It makes a wonderful gift and an even better treat for yourself.

FREEDOM by Jonathan Franzen (2010) HarperCollins Canada

After hearing Franzen read from FREEDOM at IFOA in October, I was lured to crack the spine of his most-recently lauded magnum opus that landed him on the cover of TIME Magazine (joining Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner, Robert Frost and Stephen King as one of the few writers to do so) and found him forgiven by Oprah who made her own corrections by selecting this novel as her next book club pick, deifying him in the process.

FREEDOM is a brick of a book weighing in at 562 pages and it is not for those of you who are looking for a page-turner to get you through your next trans-Atlantic flight. But, it is worth the time and attention that it requires. Franzen is a literary novelist and he takes his writing seriously.

I'd already met Walter and Patty Berglund in an excerpt in THE NEW YORKER, so knew a little of what to expect at least stylistically of this epic narrative about contemporary love and marriage. There are the stereotypic threats to Patty and Walter's partnership: the younger woman (Walter's assistant, of course) and the college rival roommate (who just happens to be a minor rock star on whom Patty has had a crush for over 20 years).

The Berglunds have two adult children, Jessica and Joey, who do their best to assert their navel-gazing importance. And, though there are many tears throughout the narrative--most of them understandable and pain-driven--I didn't find myself weeping alongside the characters as I did when I read THE CORRECTIONS, Franzen's previous novel that completely exhausted me and left me gobsmacked in awe at his capacity to render fully formed such flawed beings.

Like Dickens, Franzen manages to write a convincing cast of supporting characters who weave memorably in and out as the story moves from the present to the past and back again. And, he takes on big issues increasingly relevant today: environmentalism, moral courage, responsibility.

There were times that I felt bogged down by detail in the middle of the book and frustrated by the narcissism of Joey (who certainly made my smacking hand itch) especially; however, I suspect being irritated is entirely the point.

In FREEDOM Jonathan Franzen has offered up a looking glass to contemporary North American culture and it is no small wonder when we shudder at the image of what is reflected back.

THE BONE CAGE by Angie Abdou (2007) NeWest Press

Without my obsessive tweeting about books and following other like-minded bibliophiles in the Twitterverse, I don't think I would have found my way to THE BONE CAGE, dedicated advocate of CanLit that I am--and what a shame that would have been.

Those of you who follow CBC books and are aware of its recent request to find the top 40 Canadian novels/collections of short stories published since 2000 (as suggested by readers across the country) may have become aware of Abdou's book there when it leapt to the controversially curated Top 10 List where it holds its place alongside Ami MacKay's THE BIRTH HOUSE, Lawrence Hill's THE BOOK OF NEGROES and Joseph Boyden's THREE DAY ROAD--perhaps the finest novel ever written about the WWI Front and its consequences.

My copy of THE BONE CAGE came winging to me in the mail last week as payback for a copy of Alexander MacLeod's LIGHT LIFTING. How lucky I am in return.

THE BONE CAGE is a dual narrative told in confident third-person about two elite athletes training in Calgary with the hope of making it to the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney: The Show. Sadie is a swimmer with an English Literature degree and Digger is an 85-kilo wrestler and both stand on the verge of realizing every competitive athlete's dream. Because Sadie is 26 and Digger is 30, both are also already beginning to contemplate what will become of them when their bodies eventually betray them, as all bodies do.

Abdou's description is visceral and precise and I found myself wishing I could work up a sweat at the gym as efficiently as Digger and find the vision to work through pain like Sadie does for hours every day in the pool. In addition to her focused narrative drive, I found myself admiring Abdou's original figurative language: "His words come from far away, and they barely reach her. She feels them slide off her body and land in a puddle at her feet." Wow. Right?

I hope that the current exposure on the road to Canada Reads 2011 finds Angie Abdou's THE BONE CAGE the wider and appreciative audience that it so deserves.

WILDLIFE by Richard Ford (1990) Random House

I am on a Richard Ford reading binge, flipping through each book that comes my way. Plus I have my Grade 12 writing students delving in as well to short pieces like "Leaving for Kenosha" (short story), "A City Beyond the Reach of Empathy" (nonfiction about immediate post-Katrina New Orleans), and "Gov't On Our Minds" (about the US midterm elections & published last week in The New Yorker)

Everywhere I turn Ford's prose startles and energizes me.

In WILDLIFE, set in Great Falls, Montana in 1960, protagonist Joe Brinson bears witness to the dissolution of his parents' marriage. Joe's father, Jerry Brinson, was a man who "loved the game of golf because it was a game that other people found difficult and that was easy for him." When he is fired from his job as a golf pro at a local club where he'd hoped to ride the coattails of his wealthy clients and experience the promise of good times that their successes suggested, Jerry makes the unconventional decision of joining a group of volunteer firefighters who will be facing the wildfire that threatens to destroy their community. His wife Jeannette predicts that Jerry will "get burned up," since his only knowledge of fires comes from library books.

Ford creates palpable tension between the main players of this three-day drama and at the end of those days it's difficult not to believe every word of what has happened to the Brinsons, all of whose lives have been made wild by the events. What is remarkable to me is how Jeannette and Jerry find their way back after so much has happened to rend them apart.

Richard Ford must be read. By picking up WILDLIFE, you will learn more about yourself and your capacity for dignity, courage and forgiveness--all essential elements of being human.

HALF BROTHER by Kenneth Oppel (2010) HarperCollins Canada

Thirteen-year-old Ben Tomlin is less than thrilled when his mother brings home an 8-day-old chimpanzee they name Zan. Ben is accustomed to being the only child of two curious behavioural scientist parents, but now thanks to one of his father's high-profile experiments, Ben has been uprooted to the west coast where a university has agreed to support the project that hopes to determine if a chimpanzee can learn human sign language. And, Ben finds himself in the sometimes uncomfortable position of explaining that he now has a little brother who is a chimp.

To begin with Zan is treated like a human baby, swaddled in blankets and diapered. He adjusts relatively well to his new life with the Tomlins and a caring group of graduate students that help to support him. It only takes a few months for Zan to learn his first few signs and he becomes a media sensation with reporters from TIME magazine showing up as well as a 60 MINUTES crew. It's the 70s and there are nascent groups of Animal Rights Activists who are becoming vocal. Could they threaten the fascinating project that Dr. Tomlin has created?

Being a teenager, Ben is also struggling to fit in to a new community of schoolmates and coming to terms with what he refers to as the "Project Jennifer"-his intention to properly woo one of his classmates whose father is his own father's boss at the university.

HALF BROTHER raises ethical questions about animal experimentation and there were several moments where I found myself weeping for Zan as he struggles with his own identity: animal or human?

Oppel clearly remembers what it is like to navigate the turbulent waters of adolescence and writes convincingly from Ben's perspective as a result. This is a novel that would appeal tremendously to Grades 6-8, especially as students are developing moral courage and figuring out what is fair.

SANCTUARY LINE by Jane Urquhart (2010) McClelland & Stewart

Set today SANCTUARY LINE follows Liz Crane, an entomologist, who moves back to the family farmhouse where she spent most of her childhood summers in southwestern Ontario. Liz is there for pragmatic and personal reasons: she will be monitoring the Monarch butterfly colony nearby and trying to cope with the recent loss of her cousin Amanda, a skilled military strategist killed recently while serving in Afghanistan.

Just being in this particular place cracks wide Liz's memories of her formative years growing up with her cousins, reminding her of the stories that her uncle told of previous generations of lighthouse keepers and the Mexican workers who laboured throughout the orchards at harvest time. Liz is especially haunted by her recollection of a young Mexican named Teo, the son of the foreman Dolores, who held a special place in Liz's heart.

With the begrudging help of her mother, Liz is able to reconstruct the events of the final summer in the farmhouse, the summer that became the turning point for both her and Amanda in the way they were able to see truth for the first time. There are secrets broken and kept and it's only through forgiveness that Liz manages to understand why the people she loves made the choices they did.

THE NIGHT SHIFT: REAL LIFE IN THE HEART OF THE E.R. by Dr. Brian Goldman (2010) HarperCollins Canada

Dr. Brian Goldman may be a familiar name to you if you're a CBC geek like me. He's the host of CBC Radio's "White Coat, Black Art," a show that aims to speak directly about issues facing doctors and patients. However, in addition to being a recognized medical journalist, Goldman also continues to work as an emergency room physician at Mount Sinai Hospital here in Toronto.

THE NIGHT SHIFT demystifies life in an Emergency Room and follows Goldman through a typical round from 10pm to 7am one evening, an evening where he deals with a dislocated shoulder, a dying cancer patient having a seizure, a stroke victim in denial, a paranoid woman, a pregnant woman who had no idea she was in labour, a victim of a date-rape drug, kidney failure presenting as a gastrointestinal bleed, a broken wrist, and a suicide risk, among several others.

Ever wondered about the triage rules? There are 5 levels ranging from 1-5 depending on the urgency of your required care and here are the wait times as well:
1: resuscitation (requires immediate, aggressive intervention) IMMEDIATE ATTENTION
2: emergent (almost same danger as level 1) WITHIN 15 MINUTES
3: urgent (vaginal bleeding, moderate head trauma, acute pain, suicidal thoughts) WITHIN 30 MINUTES
4: semi-urgent (back pain, headaches) 60 MINUTES
5: non-urgent (sore throat, minor abdominal pain) 2 HOURS

The book is rife with interesting anecdotes and statistics like, in Ontario, it may take anywhere from 24 hours - 3 years to have a suitable available liver for transplantation--that's quite an open window. If you have needed a push to SIGN YOUR Organ Donor Card, consider this statistic that reality check.

All of the chapters have engaging titles, but the most intriguing to me is "Moonlighters and Frequent Flyers" which explores the cases of patients who are prescription drug addicts and make their own rounds from hospital to hospital telling their embellished tales of lost-in-flight bottles of Oxycontin or accidentally flushed Demerol tablets. The frequent flyers of the title are alcohol dependents, some of whom have minor scrapes and bruises from a bar brawl, but who intend to be placed on a gurney in the hallway and wait for the opportunity to swipe bottles of hand sanitizer which they consume to become further intoxicated.

The range of patients requiring treatment on any given NIGHT SHIFT keeps E.R. physicians like Goldman engaged in the adrenaline-pumping, creative problem-solving essential to practicing their chosen medicine.

Dr. Brian Goldman may be followed on twitter @WCBADoctorBrian and you may meet him and have him sign a copy of NIGHT SHIFT at GET CAUGHT READING on Tuesday November 16th at 7pm at Ben McNally Books--RSGC's annual event that this year supports The Children's Book Bank here in Toronto. The event is open to the public. I hope to see you there.

LIGHT LIFTING by Alexander MacLeod (2010) Biblioasis

Yesterday afternoon I heard the IFOA panel hosted by Antanas Sileika and featuring Alexander MacLeod, Paolo Giordano and Karl Marlantes: word/sentence/book. Each of these writers is a little startled by the remarkable successes of their first books. I'd already dipped into LIGHT LIFTING, but after this incredibly engaging round table discussion was buoyed to finish it.

In their very public conversation, MacLeod referred to the opening paragraph of "Miracle Mile," the first story in this exquisite, elegiac collection. He wanted to write a piece that "whittles down, the focus becoming so precise that all other social context is irrelevant." He does just that in the moment just before Mike Tyson bites off Evander Holyfield's ear when "the tendons in his neck bulge out and his eyes pop wide open and his teeth come grinding down." That moment is pure instinct and rage.

MacLeod went on to say that "everyone has material, but you admire the way that they do it. You lust after style." As I was reading each of these stories that contemplates the ordinariness of daily lives, I couldn't help but compare their rhythm and pacing to Richard Ford's A MULTITUDE OF SINS. Each sentence is measured without being overwrought. And, it's interesting to know that both fiction writers read their work aloud to be sure that it sounds just right.

What especially impresses me about each story is the resonant final sentence that folds in on itself and gestures to both personal and shared experiences. Take a look for yourself at the final image in "Wonder About Parents": "Like a discotheque, maybe, or the reflection of ancient fire in a cave;" or in "Light Lifting:" "It wasn't right and I kept wishing for it to be darker so I didn't have to see it all so clearly;" or in "Adult Beginner 1:" "It rises out of the dark, advances over the water and swallows everything in its path." Do you see what I mean?

LIGHT LIFTING is the product of 15 years of hard work. I sure hope we won't have to wait another 15 for Alexander MacLeod's next book. Lucky for you, if you live in Toronto, he will be reading from this luminous collection on Saturday October 30th at the Scotiabank Giller Shortlist night at IFOA. 8pm Fleck Dance Theatre.

A MULTITUDE OF SINS: STORIES by Richard Ford (1996) Random House

Before the Opening Night of the International Festival of Authors here in Toronto on Wednesday night, I was already firmly entrenched in my belief that Richard Ford is one of the finest fiction writers scribbling today. Having met him and spent time speaking with him since he headlined the event that I co-chaired to support PEN Canada, I am also besotted with Richard Ford the man. The mensch. And he is one, full stop.

Talking about the role of literature in his life he said, it "gave meaning to my life. Reaching out both ways. You know, that rare understanding between reader & writer?" Well, yes. Don't you? And, "when everyone was telling me about the best in Mississippi during those days of segregation, literature helped me believe in a better place." At its best, literature convinces me of a better place, where others listen, bear witness, act compassionately, are playful, love books.

A MULTITUDE OF SINS is Ford's previous collection of short stories, (he has promised his publisher another forthcoming after his next novel CANADA, mostly penned already) many of which contemplate infidelity and its consequences.

What if you manage to sneak your girlfriend off on a trip to the Grand Canyon without your spouses knowing, but then you find her a little boring, and she just happens to accidentally die there? What then? What if your wife admits to adultery on the way to a dinner party hosted by her lover? What do you do? Do you respond honestly? Do you hold back your true feelings? Are you able to treat her like a lady? What if you still love your husband, but find him straying, yet know that he still loves you?

These are not questions with easy answers, but the way Ford exposes the underlying truths with candor and insight may just encourage you to be more sincere, empathic, passionate and loving to those you desire. Moral ground is messy territory, especially when your sense of right and wrong is put into such vivid relief against the backdrop of a Richard Ford story.

THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF MAF THE DOG AND OF HIS FRIEND MARILYN MONROE by Andrew O'Hagan (2010) McClelland & Stewart

I will read anything that Andrew O'Hagan writes, from a short story in GRANTA to a book review in the LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS to one of his gorgeous literary novels like PERSONALITY or BE NEAR ME.

THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF MAF THE DOG AND OF HIS FRIEND MARILYN MONROE will transport you headlong into the 60s: the nascent Camelot presidency of JFK; the brat pack tomfoolery of Frank Sinatra, Peter Lawford, Sammy Davis Jr. and Dean Martin; the Hollywood star system that transformed Natalie Wood and Marilyn Monroe into superluminaries.

Maf is the canine companion, a gift to Marilyn from Sinatra, who journeys everywhere with Marilyn in the final two years of her life. He dines at the best restaurants in NYC and LA, visits film sets, travels to Mexico to finalize Marilyn's divorce from Arthur Miller, witnesses acting classes with the Strassbergs and philosophizes all the while about high art, bedroom comedy, cats who mimic poet William Carlos Williams and the heady politics of change.

Written in the tradition of picaresque novels of the 18th century and with homage to other pets that have gone before Maf (Virginia Woolf's Mitz "who behaved as if the world were a question"; Maud Gonne's Chaperone, "a grey marmoset filled with Celtic lore and Hellinc rhymes [about] the impotence of human passion;" Greyfriars Bobby, "a kind of saint, really. And sainthood is the kind of fame you want;" Laika, "a brave Russian soul...[whose] memoirs would constitute a masterpiece to rival David Copperfield."), THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF MAF THE DOG AND OF HIS FRIEND MARILYN MONROE is a marvelous romp that will have you yearning for more stories of such wit, rife with literary and popular culture allusion.

Mafia Honey (Monroe's full name for her beloved Maltese) may well be my new best friend.

Hollywood has hopped on the Andrew O'Hagan bandwagon and will be producing Maf's story for the big screen, featuring George Clooney as Sinatra and Angelina Jolie as Monroe. It should be a lark.

A SECRET KEPT by Tatiana De Rosnay (2010)

If you love being read to, then get yourself a copy of Macmillan Audio's unabridged audio book of Tatiana De Rosnay's A SECRET KEPT, masterfully read by Simon Vance.

Protagonist Antoine Rey organizes a surprise 40th birthday getaway for his younger sister Melanie at Noirmoutier, an island where they spent several pleasurable summers as small children with their parents and grandparents. It's been 30 years since the Reys' last visit, the summer before their mother Clarisse died unexpectedly. Antoine and Melanie reminisce about those halcyon days, but the visit also triggers in Melanie a memory that unsettles her.

When Melanie finds the courage to disclose this troubled memory to Antoine on their drive back to Paris, the car veers off the road and Melanie, a wisp of a woman to begin with (and the mirror image of her mother), ends up fighting for her life in a provincial hospital. There, Antoine meets a remarkable woman, Angele, who happens to be the hospital mortician. And, although her work day is filled with death, it is Angele who infuses new life into Antoine.

Months later as Melanie is recovering at home in Paris she tells Antoine the dark secret about their mother, a taboo topic that causes both of them pain. As Antoine copes with other losses in his life involving his ex wife Astrid and their teenaged children, he struggles with the idea that perhaps he never really knew the real Clarisse and tries to figure out a way to make peace with his past.

Written with exquisite attention to the complications and messiness of ordinary lives and the human capacity to endure, De Rosnay shows that some secrets, no matter how painful, are meant to be told.

THE SPORTSWRITER by Richard Ford (1986)

Having read Ford's Bascombe trilogy in backwards order (because that's the way they arrived from my local library), I feel like I've been time-traveling back to the 80s in the often erudite and always direct company of protagonist Frank Bascombe, the sportswriter of the title.

At 38, Frank is a fairly recent member of the Divorced Men's Club, where he has met men his introspective equal, and one in particular who has become confessional in a way that makes Frank feel a little ill at ease, because the last thing he needs is someone else to worry about.

On this long Easter weekend over which the novel takes place, Frank finds himself facing the great sadness of his own past (the death of his young son Ralph) and longing for "one of the last moments of unalloyed tenderness in the world" that he shared with his then-wife Ann as Ralph died. In the present he finds himself at the table of his girlfriend VIcki's father, a likable man who has found God and even has the life-sized image of His Son hanging outside his suburban home. There Frank receives a call from the police that pushes him away from Vicki and all that she symbolizes and further into himself, stumbling temporarily into the succour offered from the kindness of a stranger.

And, as Frank concludes, "the only truth that can never be a lie...is life itself--the thing that happens." Spend time in Frank Bascombe's company. Your eyes will be opened a little wider and you'll be all the richer for it.

INDEPENDENCE DAY by Richard Ford (1995)

The middle novel of the Bascombe trilogy, INDEPENDENCE DAY, won Ford the coveted Pulitzer Prize. No longer a sportswriter, protagonist Frank Bascombe is divorced and selling real estate in Haddam, New Jersey, in the midst of what he refers to as the Existence Period of his life.

His ex-wife Ann lives in Connecticut with their two children Claire and Paul and her wealthy paramour Charley O'Dell. This holiday weekend Frank has plans to take the Ur-father/son excursion with Paul to Cooperstown and the Baseball Hall of Fame, stopping en route at the Basketball Hall of Fame to warm up. Paul has recently clocked his stepfather and has begun barking for attention, so Frank is hopeful that his opportunity to bond alone with Paul might be just what the doctor ordered, if not his ex-wife.

Humming along in the subplot is Frank's nascent 10 month-old relationship with his lady friend, "blond, tall and leggy Sally Caldwell" , and the very separate demands of hard-to-please real estate clients looking to get a new start in Frank's neck of the woods.

Frank's Independence Day weekend goes awry in a batting box at the Baseball Hall of Fame and he finds himself negotiating with his ex-wife for emergency medical care for their son and unexpectedly reunited with his stepbrother who helps to get him through this unexpected turn of events. Yet, by the time Frank faces the 4th of July head on, this most private of private men finds himself drawn to the parade crowd: "The trumpets go again. My heartbeat quickens. I feel the push, pull, the weave and sway of others."

PRACTICAL JEAN by Trevor Cole (2010)

Trevor Cole reeled me in with his opening sentences: "You might think is a rather horrible and depraved sort of story. But that's because you're a nice person. The events of this story are not the sort of thing that nice people think about, let alone do."

Even if you don't admit to being a prurient sort of person, you can't help but find that narrative taunt alluring. Cole knows how to weave a tale and to sweep you along for the wild ride. It's heartening to know that his accomplished storytelling and dark humour have not gone unnoticed by fiction juries. Last week, PRACTICAL JEAN was named to the shortlist for this year's Rogers Writers' Trust fiction prize where it is in handsome company with THE DEATH OF DONNA WHALEN, ROOM, ANNABEL and CITIES OF REFUGE, all novels previously written about in this blog.

When I began PRACTICAL JEAN, I felt immediate kinship with the titular character as she witnesses first hand the horrors of aging and the mess that dying of natural and painful causes can be as she nurses her mother. Relieved by her mother's death, Jean resolves to embrace practicality and to offer "last poems" to her closest friends, so they won't ever have to suffer as her mother did. Determined in the rightness of her cause, Jean embarks on a brave new project and the sleepy town of Kotemee will never be the same.

Lynn Coady writes that "this take on female friendship gives chilling new meaning to the phrase tough love. PRACTICAL JEAN is Trevor Cole at his satirical best."

Believe her and believe me: PRACTICAL JEAN is witty, naughty fun.