The Listeners by Jordan Tannahill is a wild and intoxicating ride. Current tensions including fake-news, mass hysteria, the dissemination of misinformation, polarization, cancel culture, identity politics, and incivility weave throughout the narrative creating confusion and anxiety not only for the fictionalized characters, but for the reader as well. Tannahill pits opposing worldviews against one another, but he also marries them. In so doing, he begs the question: What is the difference between de normalcy? What is truth? What is reality? What is sanity?

Fight Night by Miriam Toews is a brilliant novel. Written in the voice of a girl named Swiv as she pens a letter to her absent father, Toews captures the universal vicissitudes of a life lived. All readers will likely relate to Swiv; her young perspective reflects the vulnerable child in all of us, the piece of us that always feels a bit uneasy and unprepared for the challenges we face.

Fight Night leaves a lasting impression and begs to be reread—a Giller competitor, indeed.

Lately, reports of displacement seem to be less newsworthy, but El Akkad won’t let us forget; his novel invites readers to look, to see, to know, and to do better. For those of us privileged enough to have never been forced from our homes, What Strange Paradise is necessary reading; it is an exceptional book.