RaveThe Globe and Mail (CAN)A quietly delightful read, perfectly calibrated for deep enjoyment. It has none of the high-stakes drama of the Man Booker Prize-shortlisted Room or the magical gimmickry of The Wonder, but Akin will satisfy Donoghue-ites just as much as her previous best-sellers. It succeeds, you see, because it just does so many things right, a melody that’s pleasing simply because there are no off notes. Donoghue, who lived there for two years, captures Nice during Carnival vividly, detail after detail painting a portrait so real the combined smells of urine and socca seem to waft off the pages. There are insertions—of everything from knock-knock jokes to heartbreaking fragments of history and genuinely interesting science facts—that work harder to pull you into this world than any amount of edge-of-your-seat plotting. Her portrayal of an 11-year-old in particular is almost note perfect ... Crucially, Donoghue crafts a believable bond between Noah and Michael. They’re an odd couple, sure, separated by generation, class and an ability to comprehend selfies, but this funny pair grow genuinely fond of each other. Just as I think you will of them.
Sara Collins
RaveThe Globe and Mail (CAN)Sara Collins’s debut novel does bear a passing resemblance to [Alias Grace]—most notably a narrator with a magnetic, mercurial pull on your emotion and attention and an Atwood-ian bite to its social commentary—this is a book that owes far more to the literature of its early-19th century setting. It’s less about inspiration, however, and more interrogation: Collins declares her intent to flip these texts on their heads up front, including the names of the books and genres she’s here to rethink within the text. It’s both a treasure hunt and a treasure map, full of Easter eggs for those who might care, and offering subtle hints as to how it all might end for those with eyes to see ... Frances is as layered in her personhood as Collins’s writing is saturated in intelligent insights into what might seem a familiar tale. Which is to say: very.So no, this is not a murder mystery, although we do, at the very end, find out how George and Margeurite Benham really did die, or at least Frances’s account of the events. What it is, instead, is a beautifully crafted piece of historical fiction, one that fulfills all the best promise of that genre, in that it renders the past so vividly that it feels as urgent as the present.
Curtis Sittenfeld
RaveThe Globe and Mail...a breezy collection of short stories about not a whole lot. There are no cliffhangers or gasp-worthy twists in Curtis Sittenfeld’s world of mostly white, generally professional-class middle America ... Give it a few pages, however, and like a Trojan Horse wrapped in Midwestern nice, this Cincinnati, Ohio-born, St. Louis, Mo.-based writer’s latest release is discomforting, disturbing and chock full of the kind of one-liners that require a digestion break ... you won’t be able to stop thinking about it, talking about it, imploring everyone you know to please hurry up and read this story or that one so you can debrief what went down ... The make-you-squirm accuracy with which she nails her mostly female narrators’ inner lives makes you wonder if she’s had your own internal monologue wearing a wire.
