Some of the pitches I’ve made-to review or discuss these new and forthcoming works-will likely land after I publish this, but I would be pleased to review all of these books, which are roughly listed in publication order.
If we’ve worked together previously, let me know your time-frame, and if you’re interested in working together for the first time, please share your rate information and specifics about your revision schedule. (This is only the third time I’ve posted a list like this: it worked well, but I’m not considering it a regular feature here yet.)
Sophia Lambton published this novel under her auspices at the crepuscular press. Her pitch revealed that she’d taken a peek at my reading preferences and she tailored the email in such a way that I was drawn into her passion for the story quickly.
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Manuel Astur’s Of Saints and Miracles from New Vessel Press is “a sensual portrayal of an outcast’s struggle to survive in a chaotic world of both tragedy and magical splendor” in translation by Claire Wadie.
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Suzette Mayr’s The Sleeping Car Porter from Coach House Books has already been listed for the Giller Prize. As I’m familiar with her backlist, I’m particularly keen to cover this novel in the context of her body of work.
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Ramona Emerson’s Shutter is a debut mystery from Soho Press, which also recently released the third novel in Marcie Rendon’s Cash Blackbear series; these Indigenous mystery novels would fit perfectly on the shelf next to Thomas King’s mystery series featuring Thumps DreadfulWater. Entertaining but quietly informative too.
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Randall Kenan’s Black Folk Could Fly is likely to end up on my list of favourite reads for this year. Discovering his work a few years ago, I pitched to review If I Had Two Wings, and then took the opportunity to read through his backlist, which is fantastic. W.W. Norton.
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Eric Dupont’s earlier fiction has impressed me and made me laugh out loud. I pitched to review Rosa’s Very Own Personal Revolution, in translation by Peter McCambridge, before I even read it, and it did not disappoint. The latest in QC Fiction‘s voice-driven and expectation-shattering line.
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Paul Sunga’s new novel from Goose Lane is Because of Nothing at All, which Sharon Bala describes as a “thoroughly absorbing read: a deep dive into capitalism and foreign aid that lays bare the limits of the latter, in the face of the former, and the absurdities of both.”
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Michelle Sinclair’s Almost Visible is a debut novel that explores “cultural and personal memory…[and] reflects on what can happen when a lonely person intervenes in another person’s life.” An epigraph from Simone Weil suggests this will be an interesting read from Baraka Books.
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Nicholas Herring’s Some Hellish from Goose Lane has already appeared on a literary prizelist. With a comparison to David Adams Richards on the cover, this is likely to veer towards the melancholic, but just leafing through the vivid writing and detail looks to balance that out.
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Also from Goose Lane, Gary Saunders’ Earthkeeping fits with the climate crisis and nature reading I’ve done in recent years. Because he has published many volumes in this sector, I’m keen to experience Saunders’ latest.
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Tomson Highway’s Laughing with the Trickster would have landed on my stack even without a reason. I’ve grown to love trickster stories, Highway is one of my MustReadEverything authors, and I’ve listened to so many of the Massey Lectures that I’m starting to think I should make a project of reading through the gaps. Anansi.
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As a sucker for a good love story, my interest in Sarah L. Taggart’s Pacifique was immediate and pressing. I’m expecting this to be somewhat unsettling but clever. Another provocative read from Coach House Books, it seems.
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Reviewing Larissa Lai’s The Lost Century was my first commissioned work. The ARC took longer than expected to arrive, which made me anxious and, then, I could tell within a few pages that I was going to need tiiiiime for this one: every detail counts but the prose seems effortless and the structure organic. Sometimes it’s more challenging to review a novel that I have really loved, but that’s a terrific problem to have. Arsenal Pulp.
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When I pitched to review Graeme Macrae Brunet’s Case Study, published by Biblioasis, it was before it had been listed for the Booker and before I’d read any of his other books. On a library browse, now some years in the past, I’d read a chunk of his debut novel (short-listed for the Booker more than five years ago) and loved it…in short, I was looking for an excuse to read his backlist.
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Ariane Lessard’s School for Girls (translated by Frances Pope) looks deliciously creepy. A couple of other books from QC Fiction have eerie-ed me out, so this one, which is openly identified as “disturbing” will probably scare the bejeebies out of me.
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Emily Saso’s Nine Dash Line from Freehand Books is a follow-up The Weather Inside, which I liked a lot. Jan Wong calls this both lyrical and mystical and it’ll add a new feather in my reading cap, as I don’t believe I’ve read another novel set in the South China Sea.
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Also from Freehand Books, Barbara Joan Scott’s The Taste of Hunger tells the story of a 15-year-old Ukrainian immigrant trapped in an unhappy marriage in 1920s Saskatchewan. Perhaps because I am in a very different kind of marriage myself, I gravitate towards stories about unhappy ones, so this intrigues me greatly.
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Mikka Jacobsen’s essay collection Modern Fables is blurbed by Suzette Mayr (see above) who calls them wicked. Also from Freehand Books.
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Marie Hélène Poitras’ strange novel Sing, Nightingale (in translation by Rhonda Mullins, whose translations always pull me close) is a loose hair down the back of my shirt. I both want to and dread reading it (partly due to the description of it being like Peter Greenaway meeting Angela Carter, with talk of secrets and revenge). Coach House Books.
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