LOVE WALKED IN by Marisa De Los Santos (2005)

When Martin Grace walks into the hip Philadelphia coffee shop that Cornelia Brown manages, her life alters. This new-found Cary-Grant-look-alike love is the harbinger of greater changes to come. Across town, eleven-year-old Clare Hobbs is abandoned by her mentally ill mother and decides to go looking for her lost father. Clare and Cornelia's paths cross and the two form an unlikely and improbable friendship. De Los Santos invokes the power of classic films to illuminate the mystery and wonder of love in all its permutations.

THE BLACK BOOK by Ian Rankin (1993)

There are several black books that give this gripping Rebus tale its title. When a close colleague is brutally attacked, Detective Rebus is drawn into a cold case that involves a hotel fire, the privileged playboy son of a banker, an unidentified corpse and a long forgotten night of terror and murder. HIs nemesis Ger Cafferty figures slyly. Rebus has to try to decode the secrets in his colleague's notebook to piece together a jigsaw of clues that no-one wants completed.

THE MISTRESS'S DAUGHTER by A.M. Homes (2007)

I read a review of this memoir in the Sunday New York Times and decided to pick it up. I admire Homes's short fiction, with its spare prose and directness, so thought at least stylistically I would like her memoir. Her birth mother contacts her through a lawyer and the eventual reunion is fraught with neediness. When her birth father decides to get in the game as well, Homes finds herself agreeing to a paternity test which determines that they are a 99.9% match. Though, she knew he was her blood relative with one glimpse of his ass. Her ass. The power of genetic determination.

When Homes finally unpacks the boxes of her birth mother's life, your heart will crack just a little. Throughout, Homes reassures that her real parents are the people who raised her in a loving home. And, it is her mother who telephones to tell her that her mother died, not the lawyer.

DEATH AND JUDGMENT by Donna Leon (1995)

Set in Venice and its environs, DEATH AND JUDGMENT is another of Leon's Commissario Brunetti crime novels. A truck crashes on a treacherous bend in the mountains of Northern Italy, spilling a surprising cargo of young sex trade workers being smuggled. A few days later a prominent international lawyer is found dead aboard an intercity train at Santa Lucia. Commissario Brunetti wonders if the two tragedies could be related.

His quest for truth leads him to a seedy Venetian bar and a crime network that stretches beyond the lagoon. It will take at least another gruesome death before Brunnetti and his colleagues begin to understand what is really going on.

Pick up Donna Leon's books. She will keep you flipping pages in earnest.

SERENDIPITY ROAD by Catherine DeVrye (2007)

SERENDIPTY ROAD chronicles DeVrye’s personal journey. Abandoned as a baby, she was adopted by loving parents in Calgary. When DeVrye was 21, her parents died of cancer within a year of each other.

When DeVrye packed her bags and arrived jobless in Australia, she began to find her place—but not before she waited tables, taught phys. ed., worked on a mine site and became a public servant. Later she joined IBM where she was posted in Tokyo, Hong Kong and New York.

Named Australian Executive Woman of the Year, Catherine found herself dining with princes, prime ministers and Olympic athletes. In her down time she cycled over the Andes, dived with sharks and climbed Kilimanjaro.

When DeVrye decided to search for her biological parents, her adventures really began.

COME AWAY by Anne Hines (2007)

In COME AWAY, U of T professor Reggie Niefeild has devoted his academic life to unraveling the mystery of the baffling erotic love poem that has disturbed clergy for over two thousand years. In a parallel plot, Shahiroz, a young Jewish woman, priestess of the goddess Asherah, is confronted with exile from Babylon with a return to Jerusalem and to a strange and solitary god called Yahweh.

COME AWAY suggests startling truths about the genesis of the Bible, our Western concept of God and of love itself.

BETWEEN TRAINS by Barry Callaghan (2007)

BETWEEN TRAINS is Callaghan’s eagerly anticipated and already celebrated collection of short fiction inhabited by characters including gangsters, Shoah survivors, priests and the idle rich. In spite of having no faith, they try desperately to believe; though their hearts have been broken, they try desperately to love; though they feel forgotten, they try desperately to tell their stories. In the most daring story of the collection, Callaghan provides true appeal for retributive justice.

GARCIA'S HEART by Liam Durcan (2007)

Durcan's first novel is now on my list of top ten contemporary novels. I had only intended to dip into it this weekend and instead dove headfirst, reluctant to come up for air.

Dr. Hernan Garcia is on trial for crimes against humanity committed in the 1980s in Honduras. Patrick Lazerenko, a neurologist with previously close ties to Garcia's family, finds himself taking a leave of absence and travelling to the Hague where he tries to reconcile his understanding of this man who had been so kind and generous to him in the past.

The book appealed to me on many levels--as an exploration of a complicated man; as a travelogue of the Hague (where I roamed last March); as a bildungsroman; as a lesson in medical terminology...I am particularly interested now in neurological terms because a dear friend has been recently diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer; as a riff on man's inhumanity to man.....and the kindness of strangers.

Really, it's such a brilliant book. And beautifully written. All discerning readers should pick up a copy of Liam Durcan's GARCIA'S HEART.

THE FALLS by Ian Rankin (2001)

As part of my newfound obsession in reading everything Rankin before October 17th (including the newly serialized story OPEN DOORS in this past weekend's Sunday New York Times Book Review), I devoured THE FALLS. What I've come to expect with Rankin in his storytelling are broad allusions to poetry and witty use of music and lyrics to amplify mood and character development.

The daughter of a banker disappears and a bizarre little coffin is found at the fall near her family estate. Both Rebus and his partner DC Clarke are put on the case and they discover a creepy online correspondence between "Flip" and someone who refers to himself only as "Quizmaster." Siobhan contacts him and is led on an eerie journey that finds her combing the Edinburgh streets for the next cryptic clue, hoping to reveal the truth about what has happened to Flip.

A dottering retired pathologist, a dissheveled ex-boyfriend, a loopy potter, a godfather with a questionably close relationship to the victim and a medical student with a likely grudge round out the cast of potential suspects in this typically gripping narrative.

I WAS A CHILD OF HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS by Bernice Eisenstein (2006)

This graphic memoir distills, through text and illustration, Eisenstein's memories of her 1950s childhood in Toronto with her Yiddish-speaking parents, whose often unspoken experiences of war were nevertheless always present. Remarkably, her parents met in Auschwitz , near the end of the war and were married shortly after Liberation.

With poignancy and searing honesty, Eisenstein explores with ineffable sadness the bittersweet humour her childhood growing up in the shadow of the Holocaust.I was especially moved by her mother's account of what happened to her at Auschwitz as transcribed by Eisenstein from the videotape interview made for Steven Spielberg's Shoah project.

This haunting, visually ravishing graphic memoir speaks universally about memory, loss and recovery of the past through storytelling.


Bernice Eisenstein will talk about her book and show accompanying images on Tuesday May 15th at 7:30 p.m. at Royal St. George's College in Toronto.

OUTCAST by Jose Latour (2007)

In this hard-boiled, crime novel Havana is beautiful, rundown and home to Elliot Steil, an English teacher barely eking out a living in Cuba. As much as he loves his country, it frustrates and disappoints him. So, when a man claiming to be a friend of his estranged American father offers Elliot a way off the island, he reluctantly agrees.

Steill makes it to Miami, but not as he had planned. You would think the difficulties were well behind him by the time he washes ashore, but not so. He combs Miami's mean streets for the man who deceived him and the reason why he was so horribly betrayed. He finds that the new world is a dysfunctional free-market flipside of communist Cuba-- both brimming with greed, corruption and explosive violence, but also with the kindness of strangers so unexpected that it's wrenching.

RESURRECTION MEN by Ian Rankin (2001)

Since Ian Rankin has agreed to appear in a PEN Canada event I am co-chairing in October 2007, I am reading as many of his novels as I can. His Inspector Rebus appeals to me immensely with his penchant for writing poetry, drinking single malt and listening to The Stones.

In RESURRECTION MAN, Rebus is sent to be "re-trained" at the police college for having tossed a cup of coffee in the direction of his boss Gil Temple. There, he works on a cold case with other miscreants throughout the force. It soon becomes clear that Rebus is there undercover to try to expose some dirty cops.

In the subplot, Rebus's partner, Siobhan gets close to a prostitute who is slashed by her ex-boyfriend and dies in her arms. She thinks that mobster Gerry Cafferty is behind it all, but this time, he's not.

Typically engaging and provocative, RESURRECTION MEN is worth a weekend.

MISSISSIPPI SISSY by Kevin Sessums (2007)

This memoir will make you laugh until you weep and then make you weep again. Sessums is a longtime contributing editor to VANITY FAIR and ALLURE and this first book has launched him to superstardom with its directness and moving prose.

Born in the south to an NBA player for the New York Knicks and his adorable wife, Sessums became the man of the house when his father was killed in a car crash when Kevin was only seven and then his mother died of cancer a year later. Kevin and his younger siblings Kim and Karole were raised by their maternal grandparents. To cope, Kevin divined an imaginary friend, a little Black girl he named Epiphany and chanelled Arlene Francis, his t.v. idol from What's My Line--that campy socialite who flounced about in evening gowns and wore a black silk eyemask dotted with diamond chips.

Sessums read at Harborfront last week and won me over with the authenticity of his voice. If you want to treat yourself, get yourself a copy of this book and watch the author emerge in this fine portrait of the artist as a young man.

BITTER CHOCOLATE by Carol Off (2006)

Subtitled INVESTIGATING THE DARK SIDE OF THE WORLD'S MOST SEDUCTIVE SWEET, Carol Off's foray begins with tracing the origins and lore of the cocoa craze in South America while revealing the exploitation that has always been part of the production of the treat. More recently, the complicity of Western governments and corporations that turn a blind eye to the child labour that makes cheap labour possible in Cote D'Ivoire (which produces nearly half of the world's cocoa beans) reveals the indentured servitude of thousands of young boys who have never tasted chocolate. Part history lesson, part expose of the multi-billion dollar industry, BITTER CHOCOLATE will shock you into never reaching for a Mars bar or Snickers or package of Smarties again.

THE NAMING OF THE DEAD by Ian Rankin (2006)

Taking place in the days surrounding the G8 summit at Gleneagles, Scotland in July 2005, the latest Rankin novel immediately had my attention because I had been in Edinburgh at the end of June that same year and witnessed the barricades being set up near Holyrood House and talked with shopkeepers who were considering boarding up windows along Princes Street.

Although the big show would be to protect the diplomats arriving for the official confab about making poverty history, with the focus on increasing aid to sub-Saharan Africa, the real show for Inspector John Rebus and his colleague Siobhan Clarke is a series of murders with clues left at the nearby Clootie well in Auchterarder. And, when an UK civil servant seems to leap to his death from the rampart at Edinburgh castle, the stakes increase. And, that's not all. Rebus's nemesis, the intimidating Ger Cafferty, seems to be implicated in back room dealings as well as paying off dirty cops.

Add Rebus's own personal loss of his only brother, Michael, at the beginning of the book, and you have a sophisticated mulit-layered tale of which Rankin is the master weaver. THE NAMING OF THE DEAD is not to be missed.

THE EMPEROR'S CHILDREN by Claire Messud (2006)

Set in NYC in 2001 the novel follows three friends and their hangers-on throughout the summer and early fall. Things fall apart, the centre does not hold and mere anarchy is loosed upon their worlds, to bastardize W.B. Yeats. It's a little like a soap opera for a literary palate.

One t.v.-producing girlfriend is having an affair with her best friend's father, a famous writer. Another is a gay freelancer who pays the bills by temping and bedding his handsome boss who wears bespoke suits. An indulged Bryn Mawr princess who has never held a job in her life, moves back in with her parents in their lavish apartment overlooking the Park and then falls for an Australia anarchist who has great designs on conquering New York with his brilliantly conceived satirical magazine.

Add the loner, university dropout nephew who stirs every pot and leaves the extended circle of friends and relatives with their perplexed heads swivelling from side to side, and you've got Messud's version of modern society. Over indulged and over indulging. Though disappointed with the ending, up until the denouement, I didn't want to put this book down.

THE END OF THE ALPHABET by C.S. Richardson (2007)

My friend Pat loaned me her copy of this delectable first novel last night and I read it from cover to cover in one gulp, in spite of the fact that I picked it up at 10:45 at night and had to be at work by 7:30 this morning.

On or about his 50th birthday, Ambrose Zephyr is told by his matter-of-fact MD that he has an incurable disease which "would kill him within the month. Give or take a day." He and his wife Zappora embark on a tour of the alphabet in his remaining days. Some of their choices are nostalgic and others adventuresome: Amsterdam, Berlin, Chartres...Elba (then amended to Eiffel Tower in Paris), Florence, Giza...Istanbul...truncated MNOPQRSTU...Venice....originally Zanzibar and finally home with Zipper.

Richardson's writing is clean and his affinity for storytelling prescient. And, the cover design of an imitation Moleskin journal makes you feel like you're prying into someone's life--the true true thing. Where fiction transcends non-fiction in its ability to reveal emotional truth.

Read this beautiful billet-doux of a book.

C.S. Richardson is appearing with Ian McEwen in Toronto at the EnWave Theatre on Monday April 30th 2007.

RAISIN WINE by James Bartleman (2007)

Ontario's Lieutenant General has penned this charming memoir about growing up in a different Muskoka during the 40s and early 50s. The title refers to the homebrew that Jimmy's Scottish dad concocts and serves to the locals out behind their outhouse as liberally as he does his stories. Raised in poverty by loving parents and having faced racist taunts of "half-breed" throughout his childhood because his mother is Native and his father is white, we follow the plucky and determined 7-13 year-old Jimmy as he schemes to break the cycle by taking on jobs as a paperboy and later as a scrap metal collector.

Written with honesty and true affection for another time and place in spite of its challenges, RAISIN WINE is worth your time.

THE TIME IN BETWEEN (2005) by David Bergen

Bergen's novel travels from the interior of BC to Vietnam and back and insists that the reader takes that journey eavesdropping alongside Charles Boatman and two of his children Ada and Jon.

Boatman raised his three children on his own when his estranged wife is killed in an accident. And, though he insists that he is a man incapable of love, he manages to show real love towards Ada, Jon and Del. Charles is haunted by his past. Specifically by his active duty in Vietnam where he served with other eighteen year olds and bore witness to the slaughter of innocent Vietnamese.

When his children are adults getting on with their own lives, Charles decides to visit Vietnam to try to put some of his personal ghosts to rest. And, when he loses contact with his children, two of them follow in his footsteps determined to peel away the layers of secrecy in his complicated life.

Bergen's prose is strong, spare and rhythmic. And, boy does he know how to tell a compelling story.

THE PETTY DETAILS OF SO AND SO'S LIFE (2002) by Camilla Gibb

I reread this novel in preparation for the Spring novel studies in my Grade 11 class and loved it even more the second time through. Blue and Emma are siblings who find meaning in their lives first through their connection to each other and then through their separate passions of archeology and tatooing. They lack for models in the parenting department since their father Oliver, an inventor and dreamer, abandoned them and their mother Elaine and with his creepy departure they lost their mother to the fog of alcoholism.

In spite of emotional journeys fraught with disappointment and disillusion both Blue and Emma turn out just fine in the end. Knowing as they always have that they can rely on each other no matter what.