TOPIC: SHELFIES
Shelfies
A mother's love is supposed to be unconditional. What happens when it's not?
Ainslie Hogarth's novel Motherthing makes a horror story out of maternal wounds and intergenerational cycles. And for writer Alicia Elliott, reading it hit close to home.
Shelfies
Does art about abuse need to make us comfortable?
Liz Harmer's novel Strange Loops calls to mind another recent work whose depiction of abuse was misunderstood by some audiences: Todd Field's 2022 film Tár.
Shelfies
This novel asks us to confront the darkest parts of ourselves — and to forgive
A story of forbidden love between two queer Syrian refugees, Danny Ramadan's The Foghorn Echoes asks what it means to truly hold ourselves accountable and find healing.
Shelfies
Who does power truly belong to? This book digs into the layers of an abusive relationship to find out
If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English, Noor Naga's Giller Prize-nominated novel, asks the reader to confront their ideas of morality and control.
Shelfies
Why the Griffin Poetry Prize combining its awards is bad news for Canadian poets
The move takes away a rare opportunity for visibility and economic stability that was once guaranteed to Canadian poets, argues writer Alicia Elliott.
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Black and Indigenous liberation are forever linked. It's time to build a new world
Alicia Elliott traces the shared struggle from its roots in the Doctrine of Discovery through to Leanne Betasamosake Simpson and Robyn Maynard's book Rehearsals for Living.
Shelfies
If memories are just stories we tell ourselves, how can we write our lives?
Fawn Parker's new novel What We Both Know shows why it's so hard to write the truth while trying to work through past traumas.
Shelfies
This new book vividly captures the time distortion and grief we've all been feeling
Sheila Heti's Pure Colour steps out of the five stages of grief and into what's been called the sixth: meaning.
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The case FOR the trauma plot? How writers can use it with purpose and care
It's been criticized for being used as a "shortcut," but it can actually offer something essential to its audience.
Shelfies
Can you hear the hum? How Jordan Tannahill's The Listeners illuminated my experience with mental illness
Instead of dismissing people as "crazy," Alicia Elliott longs for a world where we actually listen to them.
Shelfies
What if we allowed ourselves the space — and grace — to change? This novel asks us to do just that
Zoe Whittall's The Spectacular follows three women across generations as they learn to accept their own paths.
Shelfies
The haunted, homophobic history of Toronto is a real-life horror story
The violence follows a formula as reliable as any slasher movie, and David Demchuk's book Red X puts it on the page.
Shelfies
After the crisis, what kind of world do we want? Post-apocalyptic novels hold lessons — and warnings
"Art gives me hope. Will we take those values, that hope, and use them to imagine a better collective future?"
Shelfies
Black Canadian writers offer us vivid portraits of Black life — but we have to actually listen
"If we really want to get serious about justice in this nation, we need to stop asking Black writers to repeat themselves and start actually reading."
Shelfies
New year, new me? How memoirs can help us shape our futures by examining other people's pasts
Alicia Elliott found a resolution of sorts in Keith Maillard's Fatherless: to live with radical compassion.
Shelfies
For women authors, violence is intensely personal — which makes their writing on it essential
"In a country that continually refuses to even name the legacy of violence against women, it's more important than ever that we read books that do this work."
Shelfies
The rise of Indigenous horror: How a fiction genre is confronting a monstrous reality
Indigenous writers know what it's like to live in a world where the horror never stops — so imagining an alternate timeline where it does end can be a comforting escape.