I was travelling for much of Fall 2025 and let my book reviewing lapse. Now that I’m back in Canada, here’s a favourite read from the past six months.
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan, 2021. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Irish Times Readers’ Choice for Best Irish Book of the Century.
Small Things Like These delivers storytelling at its finest. Not a wasted word.
Keegan’s 2021 novellais a masterpiece of tone and fidelity, powerfully evocative of life in Ireland. The tale is reminiscent of The Dead, a short story in James Joyce’s Dubliners. Both are Irish gems.
Sit in front of a hearth with a loved one and read Keegan’s book out loud to them.
Anyone who’s been to ‘The Rock’ knows Newfoundlanders love to tell stories. I can’t think of any Newfoundland and Labrador author more accomplished than Michael Crummey.
Over a span of six novels, from River Thieves (2001) to The Adversary (2023), Crummey has wrangled and harnessed Newfoundland English, transforming an ever-changing spoken vernacular into prose – a difficult task, one he’s discharged with flying colours.
Each of Crummey’s novels is both a haunting tale and a feast of words. He spins splendid descriptions and memorable dialogs. If you want to hear Newfoundland and feel it too, pick up a Crummey novel.
Crummey’s latest, The Adversary, winner of the 2025 International Dublin Literary Award, catapults the reader to the fishing port of Mockbeggar, Newfoundland. It’s the late 1700s. One year the Atlantic is choked with cod; the next, it’s barren. One day the sky is clear; the next, it’s a howling grey wolf. The novel delivers an evocative tale, an unsparing story of two warring siblings.
PS: List of Michael Crummey novels in order of publication: River Thieves (2001); The Wreckage (2005); Galore (2009); Sweetland (2014); The Innocents (2019); The Adversary (2023). Crummey has also published poetry, short stories, and non-fiction. For further information, see the author on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crummey.
To give a book is to give a window into another world. Here are four gift ideas for the 2024 Holidays.
First, a mystery/detective suggestion:
The Lock-Up by John Banville, 2023. Booker Prize-Winner John Banville writes inventive whodunits that also happen to be eloquent and atmospheric. The Lock-Up, a Strafford and Quirke Mystery, evokes the sights, smells, and sounds of mid-1900s Ireland. If your giftee is a fan of character-driven detective tales, giftwrap The Lock-Up for them.
In Winter I Get Up at Night by Jane Urquhart, 2024. Longlisted for the 2024 Giller Prize. Urquhart’s latest novel cements her reputation as one of Canada’s finest historical fiction authors. The novel is a wide-sweeping tale encompassing artistry, education, and politics in the first half of the twentieth century. Sure to please lovers of Canadiana as well as historical and prairie fiction.
Playground by Richard Powers, 2024. Given his wide fictional lens, Pulitzer Prize-Winner Richard Powers is one of the most thought-provoking American novelists of the past ten years. Although the opening sags a bit, Playgroundsoon lifts off and the story soars, a tale intertwining AI and the future of the world’s oceans. The novel is, by turns, playful and disquieting. It is also inventive, evocative, and forward-looking.
Held by Anne Michaels, 2024. Shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize | Winner of the 2024 Giller Prize. Heldis poetic without being precious, revealing solid bones under a lyrical skin. The novel won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. Some will find the storyline scattered. Like C.S. Richardson’s All The Colour In the World, Heldrequires the reader to slow down. If they do, Michaels’ cadence and imagery will pull them in.
In Joan Didion’s last published work, Let Me Tell You What I Mean, she describes a talk she gave on writing, saying she stole the title of her talk from George Orwell’s essay Why I Write (1946). [Not into the writing game? You may want to skip ahead to the last paragraph.]
In Orwell’s essay, he argued that a writer writes from a desire to seem clever and be talked about. In addition to egoism, Orwell put pen to paper for political purposes. Hence we have, among other classics, Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Back to Didion. She relates that one reason she stole the title from Orwell was that she liked its cadence: “Three short unambiguous words that share a sound and the sound they share is this: I, I, I.”
“In many ways,” Didion claims, “writing is the act of saying I, of imposing oneself upon other people, of saying listen to me, see it my way, change your mind. It’s an aggressive, even a hostile act.”
Which brings me to today’s novelists. Why do they write? Orwell published his most famous novel (Nineteen Eighty-Four) in 1949; Didion, her final novel (The Last Thing He Wanted) in 1996. In 2024, few fiction authors write to impose anything on anybody, or admit to it. They don’t try to politicize readers. In my case, I aim to entertain them, which is not to say that I avoid topics like politics, ethics, or egoism.
Hmm, politics and egoism? Brings to mind a certain ex-president/wannabe dictator. ‘Hey, AMP,’ you say, ‘it could be fun to fictionalize him.’ True.How about an updated version of Orwell’s Big Brother, a double-speaking oaf with the attention span of a gnat? We’ll call it 2042.
Recently, Shepherd.com asked for my three favourite reads of 2023. Shepherd is a site created to link readers to books highlighted by authors as opposed to algorithms.
1. The Wolf and the Watchman by Niklas Natt Och Dag.
A captivating whodunit written with literary flare. The descriptions are lyrical yet on point. You get a heartrending page-turner peopled by characters you won’t forget, driven by motivations as dark as a Stockholm winter night.
2. The Sweet Goodbye by Ron Corbett.
What’s a crime thriller without complex perpetrators and victims, powerful descriptive passages that pull me into the action, and subterfuge that keeps me guessing until the end? A book I put down. No danger of that with The Sweet Goodbye.
3. The Tao of Travel: Enlightenments from Lives on the Road by Paul Theroux.
For years, I’ve been rereading my favourite travel writers, such as Robert Macfarlane, Pico Iyer, Jan Morris, and Paul Theroux. In 2023, I reread The Tao of Travel, a compendium of pithy quotes that spans the globe. You can open it at any page and instantly enjoy the banquet you encounter. When you’re hungry again, simply turn the page.
Click the link below to see the full post on Shepherd:
North Noir 