Canada is about 20 minutes away from me. Going through US Customs coming back into the USA is a major pain so we don't often go.
But we did last weekend and I went into a bookstore that had a nice section on Canadian authors. I had read a handful: Alice Munro, Margaret ATWOOD (sorry), Margaret Lawrence, John McFetridge, Mordecai Richler, Robertson Davies and Sandra Ruttan, (if you count people now in the U.S.) And there were more that I knew about. But so many I didn't. How about you? Do you read fiction by our neighbors to the north?
I have a challenge here: a reading challenge. How about reading a book by a Canadian author over the next month and we will all post a review on the last Friday in November. The book doesn't have to be forgotten-but I think most would count as neglected. Let's pump up the numbers for our Canadian pals.
29 comments:
Does William Shatner count?
I've read more of these than I'd have thought, and especially love Alice Munro. Are you sure Margaret Drabble is Canadian? I don't think so, and can't find any evidence that she is.
Sgt. Preston?
Sorry I meant Margaret Atwood and will correct it.
Bertrand Sinclair, Ralph Connor, and Paul St. Pierre.
Elizabeth Hay, Linwood Barclay.
I'm familiar with two famous writers who made Canada their home a long time ago - India-born Rohinton Mistry and Sri Lanka-born Michael Ondaatje. I highly recommend their respective books SUCH A LONG JOURNEY and THE ENGLISH PATIENT.
I consider Robertson Davies as a unfairly forgotten writer who is a Canadian. I'll read one of his novels for FFB for the last Friday in November. I've read 6 or 7 of Davies' novels, but I have a whole stack more.
Oh, I have read THE ENGLISH PATIENT. So much better than the movie. Mistry I look on longingly, but he's usually long. Maybe this is a shorter. I will check it out.
I have read most of them, George, and he is always worth reading. What a great imagination.
I just ordered the Mistry book from Amazon and will read that if it arrives quickly.
I'm on a listserv (as is Todd Mason) that discussed this topic a couple weeks ago.
I came up with only a few:
Farley Mowat
Craig Davidson
Giles Blunt
Trevor Ferguson/John Farrow
An aside: I met Linwood Barclay at the Random House party at Bouchercon. I never heard of him before then and was surprised to hear how many books he sells in the UK.
I was also very drunk. DEWAR'S!
Linwood Barclay became very well known after he was chosen for the Richard and Judy Book Club in the UK.
Patti, I think you'd like Elizabeth Hay. GARBO LAUGHS is such a wonderful book.
Guy Vanderhaeghe has written an excellent western trilogy that concluded this year with "A Good Man", and includes "The Englishman's Boy" and "The Last Crossing". And I'd completely forgotten Linwood Barclay was Canadian.
I'm with George re Robertson Davies--he has been unjustly forgotten here since his death in the 1990s. I strongly recommend his work, especially his first three novels (referred to collectively as "The Salterton Trilogy," but they can be read out-of-sequence without losing too much): TEMPEST TOSS'D, A LEAVEN OF MALICE, and A MIXTURE OF FRAILTIES. Of his later work, WHAT'S BRED IN THE BONE is my favorite.
No one has mentioned Canadian singer/songwriter Leonard Cohen, but in the 1960s he published two novels, THE FAVORITE GAME and THE BEAUTIFUL LOSERS. I've read and enjoyed both of them (although admittedly when I was younger and in more of a hippie mode).
I've seen the movie "Why Shoot the Teacher," but I haven't read the book yet by Max Braithwaite. This is the description on Amazon:
Why Shoot the Teacher is a caustic, amiable, and unflinchingly honest account of one young man's first collision with reality - an ill paid teaching assignment in an isolated country school during the Great Depression. The young man is Max Braithwaite, now one of this country's most successful authors and freelance writers. The story he has to tell is riotous, grim, candid and infinitely entertaining. This is a Braithwaite at his vintage best and the humor that earned him the 1972 Leacock Memorial Metal is here in rich abundance. Here, too, is the de-humanizing desolation of the "Dirty Thirties" on the Saskatchewan Praries, the ordeal of youth among a populace bereft of pity and charity, and the human compassion that adds warmth and poignancy to Braithwaite's recollections.
I just ordered a used copy. I had been planning on ordering the book for months but it slipped my mind, so thanks for reminding me!
If you'd care to write a review, Kitty, just ship it along.
I don't know why it should surprise me that Leonard Cohen would write a book. He is so much about words. If you can resurrect the memory, Deb, please enlighten us.
Patti--I'll write about THE BEAUTIFUL LOSERS for FFB (last Friday in November)--but since I don't have a blog, give me your email address so I can email it to you. Thanks!
Great! aa2579@wayne.edu
Thanks!
I'm reading a book by William Shatner right now. I guess he counts. There's also Atwood. Hum, I'm not sure after that.
Well, goodness (and Gerard, I must admit I'd not engaged with the search for Canadians on Fiction-L as much as I could've...which is to say, I haven't read the posts yet), but among the further emigres in various directions are such as Margaret (nee Sturm) Millar & Kenneth Millar (aka J. Ross Macdonald), John Clute, Spider (and the late Jeanne) Robinson, Judith Merril, Nalo Hopkinson, Gordon Dickson, Cory Doctorow and the undersung Andrew Weiner (not the US Rep)(nearly all of whom are as imaginative as the imaginative Robertson Davies), and then there are those started and have more or less stayed Candian, such as Phyllis Gottlieb and such folks as have been cited...they're everywhere, eh.
Candian? Reminds me I could mention Candas Jean Dorsey. Among so many others. (Hey, A. E. van Vogt for those looking for an excuse to dust his work off, and Robert Sawyer, neither of whom I'm likely to do....)
Clearly it's time go back to bed...Candas Jane Dorsey (not Jean). Elisabeth Vonarburg, who appeared in TOMORROW SPECULATIVE FICTION about the same time (probably the same issue) as I did...in checking Dorsey's name, I see even Charlotte MacLeod (you can tell by the names!) was an infant emigre.
And Leonard Cohen was a straight-up poet and fiction-writer before he considered murmuring to music...I think even before he began looking into Buddhism...
One that no one has mentioned (in the mystery field) who is definitely worth checking out is William Deverell. Two of my favorite "Canadian" mystery writers are actually English but have lived in Canada for decades: Eric Wright and Peter Robinson.
Jeff M.
Jeff, if living in a place for a while gives you citizenship by default, the US is in trouble with their immigration policy. ;) Seriously.
Lots of great mentions already. I'll put my plug in for Margaret Lawrence - highly recommend.
In the crime field, one author I don't think anyone mentioned is Rick Mofina.
More Canadian crime writers: L. R. (Laurali) Wright, who won an Edgar for her first mystery, THE SUSPECT. Howard Engel, creator of p.i. Benny Cooperman. J. Robert Janes, whose series is set in WWII-era France and features an odd couple of detectives: a French Surete man working with a Gestapo agent. Laurence Gough, whose police procedurals are set in Vancouver. John Lawrence Reynolds. Rosemary Aubert. One more: Scott Young (Neil's father), mostly known as a sportswriter but he also wrote a couple of mysteries.
Jeff M.
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