THE BIRTH HOUSE by Ami McKay (2006)

Set during the years of WWI in a small town in Nova Scotia, THE BIRTH HOUSE is the story of Dora Rare, the only daughter born to the Rare clan, in several generations. Dora, an unusual child, is drawn to Miss Marie Babineau, an outspoken Acadian midwife with a gift for healing.

When modern medicine arrives at Scots Bay in the form of Dr. Gilbert Thomas, an obstetrician who promises painfree childbirth to the young mothers, the community begins to question Miss B's methods. Dora inherits the legacy of midwifery and finds herself frequently ostracized, so much so that she has to disappear. She travels to Boston where she stays with one of her brothers and his pro-suffragette girlfriend Maxine.

In addition to Dora's personal journey, you learn about the Halifax Explosion and the influenza epidemic.

I couldn't put this book down.

A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS by Khaled Hosseini (2007)

Hosseini continues to explore the troubled territory of Afghanistan throughout the past 30 years from the Russian occupation through the Taliban and post-Taliban rule in this second novel that follows on the heels of his international bestseller THE KITE RUNNER.

In A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS, every page resonates with loss: loss experienced and loss anticipated. We begin to understand the violence and the struggle to survive in a war-torn country through the stories of generations that focus on the lives of co-wives Mariam and Laila, both victims of circumstance. Mariam is culturally ostracized because she was born a bastard to her wealthy and influential father Jalil who, although he keeps several wives, refuses to marry Mariam's mother, his mistress.

Laila, is a 14-year-old neighbour to the adult Mariam in Kabul who is pulled from the rubble of a neighborhood bombing by Mariam's much older husband Rasheed. Rasheed decides to take Laila on as his second wife because Mariam has been unable to carry any pregnancy to term and he is shamed by not having any children. Laila's life with Rasheed is rife with abuse, both verbal and physical. In fact, the visceral way in which Hosseini writes those repeated scenes of domestic abuse, witnessed by small children, is extremely upsetting. And, that is entirely the point. No one is safe--not even at home.

At the height of the Afghani refugee exodus, more than 8 million were living outside of Afghanistan. Hosseini, himself born in Kabul, emigrated to the US in 1980. In 2006, he was appointed UN Special Envoy to the UN Refugee Agency. He writes that today over 2 million Afghanis who were forced out of their homes continue to live in Pakistan. If you want to learn more about their plight, visit www.UNrefugees.org

TERRORIST by John Updike (2006)

With more than 50 published books of poetry, fiction, short fiction and essays to his name, John Updike is certainly one of America's best known contemporary men of letters.

TERRORIST, his most recent novel, is the story of high school senior Ahmad Molloy, who is disenchanted with the hedonistic and materialistic pursuit of his peers in the New Jersey town he calls home. Abandoned by his Egyptian father when he was a toddler, Ahmad was raised by his lapsed Catholic Irish mother whose Bohemian ways are an embarrassment to him. He turns to the words of the Holy Qur'an for comfort and guidance and devotes himself fervently to Allah and to the ministrations of a proselytizing imam at his local mosque.

Ahmad's narrative is balanced by the story of his middle-aged guidance counsellor Jack Levy whose sister-in-law Hermione works for the Department of Homeland Security. In surprising and satisfying ways Updike weaves the parallel storylines together to an unexpected conclusion in Ahmad's post-9/11 world.

BREAK NO BONES by Kathy Reichs

Crime novelist Kathy Reichs is a certified forensic anthropologist, like her fictional creation Dr. Temperance Brennan. Having also read CROSS BONES and found the plot fast-paced and the characters credible, I was eager to try another.

In BREAK NO BONES, Dr. Brennan finds herself teaching an on-site course in an archeology field school in Charleston, South Carolina. Among the ancient remains in a Native American burial ground, one of Brennan's students unearths a fresh skeleton. Within days, several other more recent corpses are discovered and Brennan remains in Charleston to work for the coroner's department.

There is a bizarre pattern among the homicides and the clues found in the cervical bones lead to an alarming discovery at a local street clinic where it appears that the marginalized clientele of the extreme poor are being used for nefarious and profitable means.

Written with a social conscience in addition to mastery of the genre, BREAK NO BONES has me reaching for every other title penned by Reichs.

A LIFE IN THE BUSH by Roy Macgregor

MacGregor's memoir about his father Duncan is a full portrait of a man who was an anomaly in his time--a bush-loving ranger, who read everything from Juvenal to Robert Service. Duncan MacGregor was most at home in Algonquin Park in his little cabin, managing the park and communing with the wildlife. Except during the summer months when his children were out of school, Duncan remained apart from his young family.

As an adult, Roy took his father on a roadtrip to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. That story is the most charming of those unfurled in this loving tribute of a book. When they passed a low mountain range en route to the baseball shrine, Duncan asked what he was seeing and then remarked, "so that's what a mountain looks like." Until that journey, the only travelling Duncan had done was through his imagination.

LIFE CLASS by Pat Barker (2007)

Best known for her REGENERATION trilogy of novels set during WWI, Pat Barker returns to the early years of the war with her most recent book. It's 1914 London and there is a burgeoning class of talented painters at the famed Slade School, under the tutelage of Henry Tonks, a former surgeon who runs the life-drawing studio. There Elinor Brooke and Paul Tarrant meet.

When Paul decides to volunteer for the Belgian Red Cross, his life is more than a world away from his days in art school. Though, on the front near Ypres, where he treats the maimed, dressing their wounds and amputated stumps, he does the best work of his life.

LIFE CLASS raises interesting and disturbing questions about the wounds of war and how they have been represented in visual art--or more often, hidden.

In 1916, the real Dr. Henry Tonks worked with Dr. Harold Gillies, a surgeon then pioneering techniques of plastic surgery on the faces of mutilated young men. Tonks made drawings of the patients before, during and after surgery and those drawings were not exhibited in his lifetime, eventhough they are among some of the most moving images to come out of any war.

THE UNCOMMON READER by Alan Bennett (2007)

If you only have time to read one little book, this is the one to pick up. The Tony-award-winning playwright of THE HISTORY BOYS has imagined a reading life for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. And, it is a delightful romp.

When the rambunctious corgis take exception to a strange vehicle parked on the palace grounds, the Queen finds herself apologizing to the librarian/driver about their over-enthusiastic behaviour. Because manners matter above all else, Her Majesty decides she cannot leave the little library on wheels without making a selection. So begins Bennett's delightful odyssey into a discourse on literature and why we all must read.

Soon, the previously duty-bound Queen finds herself making excuses, or playing sick in order to finish the current book under her nascent critical eye: from Alice Munro to Marcel Proust to Samuel Beckett. Her equerries are outraged and conspire to put a stop to her foolish reading. However, the Queen has a trump card solution to their high stakes game, which she plays at a High Tea for her Privy Councillors in celebration of her 80th birthday.

For its whimsy and intelligence, you can't match THE UNCOMMON READER.

THE ALMOST MOON by Alice Sebold (2007)

I loved Alice Sebold's bold and unconventional breakout novel THE LOVELY BONES, told from the perspective of a murdered child, so was keen to read this new one. THE ALMOST MOON examines the strained rapport between mother and daughter Claire and Helen Knightly and opens with a shocking scene.

Sebold is unafraid to push the envelope and to challenge taboos, and if you are remotely prudish, this novel is not for you. And yet. Sebold is a sophisticated storyteller and able to write about the darkness and complexity of human relationships better than just about anyone else in the fiction game.

PEGASUS DESCENDING by James Lee Burke (2006)

Dave Robicheaux is a detective in Louisiana who is blindsided by the arrival of a casino hussler named Trish Klein, because he witnessed, and might have prevented, her father's murder over twenty years previous, had he not been completely drunk at the time. A fellow Vietnam Vet, Dallas Klein was killed in cold blood for gambling debts.

Nurtured by his second wife Molly ( a former nun), Robicheaux finds himself in the thrall of trying to solve the apparent suicide of a young black woman who fell in with the wrong frat crowd at university.

I especially like Burke's earthy diction and distinctly southern way.

EXIT GHOST by Philip Roth (2007)

There is no finer contemporary American novelist than Philip Roth. He won me over with THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA and has kept me going through THE HUMAN STAIN, EVERYMAN and now EXIT GHOST, the final Nathan Zuckerman novel. He writes about aging and the betrayals of the body with honesty and directness.

In EXIT GHOST, Zuckerman--entrenched in his 70s--returns to New York City to seek treatment from a urologist who offers a procedure that may save him the embarrassment of wetting himself and wearing diapers that have been a daily part of his life since his prostate surgery a few years before. By happenstance Zuckerman remeets a woman he met only in passing 40 years previously at the home of a revered novelist E.I. Lonoff. Amy Bellette buried her famous lover decades ago and is facing her own death from brain cancer.

When Zuckerman answers an ad in the paper placed by young writers who wish to house swap with someone outside of the city, he finds himself falling for Jamie, the young Harvard grad whose sexuality arouses him in a way he'd abandoned as plausible. And, her attraction enables Zuckerman to write again. "Things fall apart. The centre cannot hold."

THE MAYTREES by Annie Dillard (2007)

I've been a longtime fan of Dillard's prose since I read her memoir AN AMERICAN CHILDHOOD which was charming and evocative. I was excited to pick up THE MAYTREES which received a glowing review in the Sunday NY Times. However, I found it plodding and poncy with at least a word on each page that I had to look up in the OED. Its pretense of cleverness ruined the read for me.

THE ABSTINENCE TEACHER by Tom Perrotta (2007)

I heard Perrotta talking about his most recent novel at Ben McNally's Books and Brunch at the King Edward last week. Perrotta was compelled to write a book wherein he could contemplate the current polemic in the USA with the rise of fundamentalism, especially post 9/11.

So, in THE ABSTINENCE TEACHER, he follows the narratives of two characters, both loving, middle-aged parents of young girls. Ruth Ramsey is the health teacher at the local high school who believes that "pleasure is good, shame is bad and knowledge is power." Her daughter's soccer coach, Tim Mason, has found Jesus at the local Tabernacle under the guidance of Pastor Dennis after having hit rock bottom in a life of drug abuse and philandering. His evangelical church makes Ruth the focus of a very public crusade that leads to her redeployment in the classroom where she refuses to teach an abstinence only curriculum.

The most stable romantic relationship in the book is one between two gay men who have been together for over 15 years and are contemplating leaving their all-American suburb to begin life anew in Massachusetts, the only state in the union where it is possible for gay couples to marry.

THE ABSTINENCE TEACHER is a perfect mixture of compassion and satire and has me reaching for Perrotta's other more famous books, ELECTION and LITTLE CHILDREN. This guy knows how to write.

GRATITUDE by Joe Kertes (forthcoming Spring 2008)

Joe Kertes captivated me with his opening scene in 1944 Hungary where 16-year-old Lili crouches behind a wardrobe in her parents' bedroom wearing the bridal dress her mother presented her with earlier in the day. As her birthday cake bakes and then burns in the stone oven downstairs, Lili considers the fates of her family--her mother hiding in the field with her younger siblings and her father off showing the new authorities the family's papers.

As German occupation closes in upon Hungary, in the months ahead over half a million Jews will have been murdered. Through terrible circumstance, Lili finds herself welcomed in to the Beck family in Budapest where she waits with the hope of being reunited with her own lost family when the occupation ends in January 1945.

GRATITUDE explores the complexities of the human psyche in its darkest hour and offers a tender portrait of a European empire's last days.

Since our theme at RSGC this year is gratitude, when this fine novel is published by Penguin Canada this spring, all of the staff and students will be reading it.

THE GATHERING by Anne Enright (2006)

I heard Anne Enright interviewed at IFOA shortly after she was awarded this year's Booker Prize for THE GATHERING. She is spunky and unforgiving in conversation, suggesting to her interviewer that "surely only an eejit would ask that about my book." I warmed to her immediately because of her directness.

THE GATHERING chronicles the days surrounding the death of Liam Hegarty, the most wayward of the Hegarty children, as told by his older sister Veronica. That the family is dysfunctional is an understatement. Veronica shepherds the mourners who gather around her younger brother's corpse laid out in the front room of her mother's house, and tries to decide whether or not to reveal an awful truth about their shared past.

These lines from the opening chapter show you the beauty of Enright's prose:

"I wait for the kind of sense that dawn makes, when you have not slept. I stay downstairs while the family breathes above me and I write it down, I lay them out in nice sentences, all my clean, white bones"

OCTOBER by Richard B. Wright (2007)

James Hillyer, a retired Victorian Lit professor, receives an upsetting call from his only daughter Susan, a headmistress at a British boarding school. James finds an outrageously expensive next day flight out of Toronto to spend the week with Susan as she tries to make sense of her recent diagnosis.

While in London, James has a chance meeting with an irascible man named Gabriel whom he'd met one summer in the eastern townships of Quebec about sixty years previous when they were young men in the bloom of youth. Gabriel makes an unlikely proposition to his erstwhile friend and through happenstance James finds himself face to face with tender ghosts of his past.

I borrowed the book from the library earlier today and could not put it down. Wright not only explores the rapport between fathers and daughters but also our greater understanding of loss. And, he does so with kindness and a lack of judgment.

FINDING HOME by Eric Wright (2007)

Although Wright is known for his detective fiction, FINDING HOME is a departure from that as a literary novel. Will Prentice is a successful middle-aged Toronto businessman recently cuckolded by his wife of 30 years. His mother's death in England provides the impetus for him to reconnect with his remaining relatives and to refamiliarize himself with the landscape of his youth. His nephew Fred, a recent Cambridge grad with time on his hands, offers to be Will's personal guide across the English countryside.

When Will's aunt (his mother's sister) gives him old photos of his mother with an unfamiliar man, Will begins an intriguing journey through her past and discovers that she was a woman way ahead of her time.

THE BOOK OF STANLEY by Todd Babiak (2007)

I almost put the book down when I discovered that the Stanley Moss, a retired florist, is suffering from a brain tumour since a friend of mine is slouching his way towards death with the same ailment. However, Babiak throws a curve ball early on and Stan finds himself feeling unaccountably well on his way to see his palliative care MD. So well that he's able to hurl a couple of punkish teens up against a car en route, his retributive justice delivered by hand. Who wouldn't want to believe in this kind of wish fulfillment?

Other characters who seem rife for divine intervention find themselves making a pilgrimmage to Banff where Stan himself is heading because he is compelled to go with his wife Frieda. An unlikely troupe gathers: a 24-year-old hockey player who had once dreamed of making the NHL who has tossed his last punch in front of his young daughter; a 17-year-old Muslim woman who has disappointed her family in Montreal by having sex publically with a white boy; a 30-something entertainment executive who has just survived a concrete slab falling from the sky and narrowly missing her in her Hummer; and Moss's former brother-in-law Alok, a New Age guru who believes that Stan is the new Messiah.

Somehow Babiak manages to make this dark comedy about love, death, the afterlife and sasquatches, yes sasquatches, not only plausible but desirable.

FINDING LILY by Richard Clewes (2006)

Clewes moderated a panel of male writers recently at IFOA and in spite of David Gilmour's petulance and determination to sink their collective ship of discourse, Clewes remained gracious. His good manners led me to pick up his memoir FINDING LILY which chronicles his journey after the suicide of his wife Erin.

FINDING LILY is a little piece of perfection like Calvin Trillin's ABOUT ALICE. Both men unabashedly chronicle their feelings about the women they loved and how life in the void of their deaths is changed utterly, to quote Yeats.

Unlike Trillin, Clewes decides to travel in search of self and in search of the why that culminated in Erin's death when she flung herself from her mother's balcony. Part of Clewes's journey leads him to filling sketchbooks with daily observations and mailing postcards to himself to affirm his existence.

Jim Harrison wrote that this "is an engrossing book. It is one thing when a mate dies and quite another when the reason is suicide, which calls existence into severe question. Clewes struggles, and I think, succeeds, which means he finally understands. This is the most anyone can hope for."

EXIT MUSIC by Ian Rankin (2007)

It's D.I. John Rebus's final fortnight on the force and he is relegated to the sidelines when he is in the wrong place at the wrong time and implicated in the attack on his longtime nemesis Big Ger Cafferty. Rebus's partner, Siobhan Clarke, has been put in charge of another investigation that involves the beating and subsequent murder of a Russian poet named Todorov.

Since I recently co-chaired an event here in Toronto with Ian Rankin appearing on stage with Margaret Atwood in support of PEN Canada, I was thrilled to see that Rankin had written PEN into the storyline since the visiting Russian poet is a guest of the university in Edinburgh as well as of the local PEN chapter.

Fans of Rebus will be sad to see him retire, since Rebus has aged in real time over the years Rankin has been writing him, but will not be disappointed in his final song. Rankin's powers as a storyteller continue to grow.

A QUESTION OF BLOOD by Ian Rankin (2003)

Inspector Rebus finds himself in hospital at the beginning of the novel, hands bandaged from a scalding. Unfortunately, a petty criminal who had been stalking Rebus's colleague Siobhan Clarke has been found burnt to death in his own home and witnesses saw Rebus with him earlier that night.

A horrific shooting at an Edinburgh private school in which two students are killed as well as an ex-Army loner who appears to have turned the gun on himself draws Rebus's especial attention since one of the victims, Derek Renshaw, is his cousin's son. It is a question of blood, family blood, for Rebus.

If you haven't yet read any Ian Rankin, this book is a great place to start.