Occasionally, a writer offers the world a book so glorious that readers find it difficult to articulate just what, exactly, was so profoundly breathtaking about said book. This is my experience of Astra. Okay, so I didn’t love every story included in this linked short story collection (only ten of the eleven episodic chapters were my favourite.) I didn’t even really love the main character whose story is told eleven different ways, only one of which is from her point of view (brilliant!)

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.

The Winter-Blooming Tree is a tender account of the Koehl-Niederhauser family as they manoeuvre through life changes, deal with miscommunications, and heal from past hurts. Can this family of three find a way to start over?