Home Base: Brooklyn, New York
Author’s Take: “Who I am in Splinters, yes, is me — I lived all of those things, but at the same time, I’m choosing what that narrator does and says and is on the page, and building her piece by piece.”
Favourite Line: “Being an adult meant watching many possible versions of yourself whittle into just one.”
Review: It seems disingenuous to refer to Leslie Jamison’s new book Splinters as her first memoir, as has been claimed. Jamison is something of an icon in the personal essay world: Her two essay collections – The Empathy Exams and Make It Scream, Make It Burn – occupy proud places in virtually every non-fiction writers’ bookshelf, and her third book, The Recovering, is an account of her alcoholism and recovery. Splinters is set apart, though. While Jamison’s earlier work interwove memoir elements with similar, external accounts, Splinters stays relentlessly focused on Jamison and her own experiences. This was a good choice, but Splinters is in another league altogether.

Splinters begins with the end of Jamison’s marriage, as she and her young daughter move into a sublet next to a fire station. Readers get a brief overview of her relationship with C., her husband, a writer himself, who Jamison met at a writer’s space in New York. They married quickly, and almost as quickly found their marriage coming apart. There are, threaded through the book, accounts of meetings with divorce lawyers, awkward encounters with the ex, and other situations familiar to anyone who has gone through a divorce. However, the focus of Splinters is on Jamison’s relationship with her daughter, her own stumbling,  ill-fated experiences with post-marriage intimate relationships, and her attempts to define and find a home for herself and her daughter.
What separates Splinters from the many other “divorce memoirs” is Jamison’s
approach, and the power of her writing. Rather than establishing a simple, linear narrative, Jamison writes in tiny micro-essays, splinters of meaning, which both stand on their own and constantly refer back (and forward) to other entries. The form creates a vivid immediacy to the account, a sensation further supported by the sharp-edged, poetic-minimalist style of Jamison’s writing.
The book, while brief, feels like it contains entire lives, closely examined, held up to the light and re-examined, a process of continual self-questioning and realization. This dizzying feat will envelop readers in its grasp. —R.W.

Home Base: London, England
Author’s Take: “I came across a short article which alleged that, in the nineteenth century, the popular British travel company Thomas Cook offered tours for people to go and witness public hangings around the country.”
Favourite Lines: “There is a hideous intimacy to the occasion; with no scaffold, the crowd is so close they will be able to sense every twitch of the condemned. They will hear every muttered word, every fearful breath, every last wet rattle of the lungs.”
Review: Set in the 1850s Victorian era of ghoulish obsession with public hanging, Maude Horton’s Glorious Revenge opens with an ending. That is, someone falls from the gibbet, but we don’t know who. And so the atmospheric tale of a woman hunting for the truth about her sister’s mysterious death begins.
Close to home, Maude, whose grandfather runs an apothecary, is so shattered over losing her sibling Constance (she doesn’t know where she went) that when a strange man slips her a diary by “Jack Aldridge,” she gains the courage of a lion to go after the men in the British Admiralty (and many others indulging in a coverup).
Along the way, we will travel from England as the ship Makepeace hunts for the lost Franklin Expedition in the icy north of Canada. And there isn’t anything like the frigid cold, howling winds, the tormenting hunger, the filthy sailors on those endless Arctic voyages. Whalers, polar bears, bones, skeletons and a disturbed man of wealth figure prominently. And frost-blooded debt collectors, oh yes.
British novelist and travel writer Lizzie Pook effortlessly laces together the twin tales of the truthseeker’s steps from one clue to another throughout seedy, gas-lit London, and the unhinged events that take shape on and off the ship – no one is what they seem. Constance, who was the adventurous one of the two sisters, keeps a diary hidden on board as she braves the stunningly brutal life of a “cabin boy” ­– throughout, we all wonder why she dared embrace this disguise.
There is reveal after marvellous reveal in this sly historical fiction, only peripherally based on truth. The throughline is the era’s infatuation with the macabre executions of a convict hanging for his or her sins in the town square. It was sheer spectacle: Hotels, bars, even festive train trips to neighbouring towns were organized for both the wealthy and the poor. The punters made enormous profits from the circus-like gatherings, complete with meat pies. No gallows humour here, it is a feel-good (yes!) believable tale of women combatting imperious men, bountifully written, with a solid wink toward feminism. —Susan Grimbly

Home Base: Northampton, Mass.
Author’s Take: “I’m a writer who finds it very useful to have a deadline, so when I sold Get in Trouble to Random House, I sold them a novel as well, on the grounds that it would make me actually write one.”
Favourite Line: “In movies, you usually had a bad guy and a good guy, but in real life, you probably just got two assholes and Bowie, whatever he was.”
Review: It seems a bit odd to refer to Kelly Link as a cult writer. She is widely regarded as one of the best short story writers currently at work, and one of her collections (Get in Trouble, 2016) was shortlisted for the Pulitzer. It’s interesting, therefore, that she’s not a household name, but largely floating under the surface of books discourse. Perhaps it’s because she has worked exclusively in the short story realm, a form that gets less respect. Perhaps it’s because her work is within the general fantasy field (an uncomfortable fit) and rooted in fairy tales and dream logic. Whatever the reason, Link’s status is likely to change with the publication of The Book of Love. It’s not only a novel (Link’s first) but it has the feel of a masterpiece.
The book opens with three teenagers suddenly appearing in the music room of their high school in Lovesend, Mass. They don’t know why they’re there, or where they have been, but their music teacher, Mr. Anabin, who may have been waiting for them, is in the room. He informs Laura, Daniel and Mo that they disappeared almost a year earlier (they don’t remember) and they have somehow returned (they don’t understand). Within a few pages, they are drafted into an age-old conflict between Mr. Anabin and the mysterious Bogomil, in whose realm they have spent their lost months. For “a set of trials,” they must figure out what happened to them on the night they disappeared, they must “accomplish some form of magic,” and more.
Everyone believed them to have been away, studying in Ireland, and they must piece together the questions at the root of their renewed existence. But the trio have all changed, in key ways, and their lives are not quite as they remember them. And that’s just the beginning. In Link’s hands, what could be a standard fantasy YA novel becomes something far grander, weirder and grown-up. Link writes with the authoritative voice of the narrator of a fairy tale, while at the same time demonstrating a keen, often cutting eye for both the
minutiae of everyday life and the grandeur of magic. —R.W.

Home Base: Washington, D.C.
Author’s Take: “I think the problem with being surrounded by algorithmic recommendations is that it prevents us from being challenged and surprised a lot of the time, like everything is molded to our preferences that we’ve already expressed.”
Favourite Line: “Over the twentieth century, taste became less a philosophical concept concerning the quality of art than a parallel to industrial-era consumerism.”
Review: For New Yorker writer Kyle Chayka, it started with coffee shops. A frequent traveller, he began to notice that wherever he went in the world, he was encountering cafes with the same aesthetic: “white subway tiles lining the walls, broad industrial tables made of reclaimed wood, mid-century modern chairs with spindly legs, and hanging pendant lamps fitted with Edison bulbs.” These weren’t part of a chain; each locale had individually adopted this “‘Instagrammy’ aesthetic.” More significantly, he found versions of himself in every one, no matter where he was travelling.
Here, Chayka explores what he calls “Filterworld,” “the vast, interlocking and yet diffuse network of algorithms that influence our lives today.” While we’ve grown grudgingly comfortable with the role of algorithms in guiding what we watch or listen to, Chayka demonstrates how those algorithms are shaping the offline world. In Filterworld, his focus is on culture, and the diminished role of personal recommendations and knowledgeable guides.
This might not seem significant; but that’s the way algorithms have attained power, by instilling themselves into our lives with little fuss. And Chayka looks beyond the value of the personalized playlist to question the effect of these algorithms at our personal core: How do we actually know what we like when we are served songs, movies and aesthetics many times each day? Who are we, really, when something like the mid-century-modern aesthetic, for example, so popular on Instagram, shapes our tastes and, ultimately, our surroundings while algorithmically stripping away alternatives?
Filterworld is not only a thought-provoking examination of the topic, it ultimately becomes a somewhat terrifying inquiry into what makes us who we are. As Chayka writes, the Filterworld is “pleasant or average enough that it can be ignored and unobtrusively fade into the background, oftentimes going unnoticed until you look for it. After you notice it, however, you tend to see it everywhere.” —R.W.

Home Base: London, England
Author’s Take: “I certainly felt I was putting into practise all I’d learned writing the first two books, and delivering a story that is hopefully more procedural and satisfying to follow.”
Favourite Line: “Quick question: have you found the baby yet?”

Review: English journalist and screenwriter Janice Hallett has carved out a significant space for herself in the crime fiction world in the last couple of years. With just two novels – The Appeal and The Twyford Code – she has become a repeat bestseller, has appeared on multiple year-end best-of lists, and been awarded the Crime Writers Association New Blood Dagger for best debut book. When Alperton Angels was published in the U.K. last year, it became a sensation.
And rightly so. This is the story of true-crime writer Amanda Bailey investigating the Alperton Angels, a cult in the early 2000s that  came to an end with a mass suicide, a murder and the birth of a prophesized child.
Their leader, Gabriel, is in jail, and the child is now 18; the story is ripe for coverage. Bailey quickly learns, though, that a former classmate and longtime rival, Oliver Menzies, is working on a book about the Angels as well. Menzies and Bailey are forced to pool their resources, though neither trusts the other, and both play their cards close to their respective chests.
All of this is a terrific premise, but Hallett swerves from the outset. The Alperton Angels isn’t typical, which the reader learns early on: “You have a key that opens a safe deposit box. Inside is a bundle of documents, archived research material for a book that has just been published. You must read it all and make a decision. Either: replace the documents and the box, then throw the key where it will never be found…or take everything to the police.”
That archive shapes the novel: interviews, emails, texts, newspaper clippings,
records, film script excerpts and so on. At first, one gets the impression the two are reading a writerly procedural, an inside look at how the true-crime sausage gets made, but this gradually changes, with the materials revealing a story of obsession with possible supernatural overtones, stories that don’t quite match that might reveal a larger conspiracy, and … well, to say more would be a spoiler. Suffice it to say, the mystery at the centre of the book isn’t the mystery one thinks it is. It’s glorious prestidigitation that will delight even the most ardent mystery or true crime buff. —R.W.

Home Base: College Station, Texas

Author’s Take: “The story is basically about a person who is a partially human, partially a machine construct. These people are created by corporations, primarily for security purposes and they’re rented out, and classified as equipment. … They cannot go more than 100 metres from the clients they are rented to, and their governor modules can kill them if they do not obey orders.”

Favourite Lines: “So the next time I get optimistic about something, I want one of you to punch me in the face. Okay, not really, because let’s be real, that would end badly. Maybe remind me to punch myself in the face.”

Review: The release day of  a new Murderbot Diaries book from Martha Wells is a cause for celebration in my world. I’ve been addicted to these slim tomes (some, novellas; some, short novels) for several years, having caught up with the series three books in. 

The set-up is simple: Set in the distant, star-travelling future, a time when corporations own almost everything, we meet the unnamed, ungendered “Security Unit” shortly after they have disabled their governor module, freeing them from the commands of their overseers (and from the threat of instant death for disobedience). Rather than going on a rampage (just yet)  the Murderbot spends its time watching thousands of hours of soap operas, struggling to understand humans and, by extension, their own humanity.

System Collapse, the seventh Murderbot Diaries book, begins shortly after the events of “Network Effect” (during which the Murderbot was held prisoner, and I’ll resist further spoilers). While investigating a colony on a terraformed world, Murderbot and its cohorts are once again drawn into direct conflict with the Barish-Estranza corporation  – and its own SecUnits – which hopes to claim the colonists as property (likely to sell as slaves). 

Murderbot, though, has its own issues: It is struggling with what happened in Network Effect, and an event that happened between the two books … which is hidden from its memory for a period of time (“I wasn’t supposed to come down to the planet again. Me, ART, Mensah, Seth, and Martyn had all made that decision, because of … redacted.”)

Like all of the Murderbot Diaries, System Collapse is a delight, a fun read grounded in Murderbot’s snarky, self-effacing narration. Like the other books, though, the new novel cuts deep in its questions about the nature of humanity, the value of life, and, in a twist, the weight of trauma. These books, essentially about a killer cyborg, are some of the most human, searching books you are likely to encounter. —R.W.

 

Home Base: Oslo, Norway

Author’s Take: “Art has a role in society and, therefore, a political impact. […] I think that, if you try to bring forward the political message — or religious message, or whatever — too explicitly, you’ll probably end up writing badly. … I cannot remember any evangelizing literary work, so to speak, that’s a good work.” 

Favourite Lines: “Now it’s really as dark as it can get and there in front of me I see the outline of something that looks like a person. A shining outline, getting clearer and clearer. Yes, a white outline there in the dark, right in front of me.”

Review:  Released around the time last fall when Jon Fosse was named winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, A Shining serves as the perfect introduction to the work of the Norwegian writer. It is a small, seemingly simple book, but one which expands outward, exploding into significance.

At a narrative level, A Shining is straightforward: An unnamed man decides to go for a drive. “I got in my car and drove and when I got somewhere I could turn right or left I turned right, and at the next place I could turn right or left I turned left, and so on.” He goes deep into the country, and finally onto a forest road, where his car gets mired. As it starts to snow, he takes a path into the forest, looking for help. What he finds, though, defies explanation.

Although the novella is written in a single paragraph from the man’s point of view, it never lags, and never alienates the reader. In part, this is due to the translation by Damion Searles, which moves gracefully in English while never sacrificing its roots in Nynorsk, a written form of Norwegian dialect known for its poetic quality. At times looping and digressive, there is a musical quality to the man’s internal monologue that insinuates itself within the reader.

Fosse – who converted to Catholicism more than a decade ago – has crafted a deeply spiritual work with echoes of The Divine Comedy and the Bible, which obviates the strictures of religion. Simply, a holy book.—Robert Wiersema

Home Base: Toronto

Author’s Take:  “Losing my mother opened my eyes to things that many people already knew to be true, and that is how monstrous and terrifying grief can be. How it can change who you are in an instant, how it can feel like you’re drowning and will never resurface.”

Favourite Line: “Trey had brewed vats of moonshine in the decrepit bathtub in the cellar, a new recipe that still tasted like lighter fluid but was bright purple this time.”

I never expected a Rolex watch to be a plot twist but it is one of the sleight-of-hand tricks in this inexplicable, impressive debut mystery (where everyone is lonely and depressed) set in an achingly small no-hope town. And we all know about small towns – they REALLY know how to keep secrets bunkered. 

The story opens with a catastrophic crash on a bridge over a dark river, with a 17-year-old woman, a promising student, dying on the road before the ambulance can get to her. Flash forward 10 years: There will finally be a memorial in honour of the allegedly “golden girl” Phoebe Dean. (A second crash by an older woman has put the heinous, dilapidated bridge back in the spotlight, and town citizens are lobbying to have it pulled down.)

Told over three days, the novel sees secrets bubbling to the surface like lava, threatening to scorch the town with the truth. A number of characters try to threaten the truth-knowers into submission, but the pressure mounts as the memorial draws closer, dredging up uncomfortable memories, illusory visions (ghosts?) that only grow stronger as the tale gains momentum. 

There is weird psychology among the brat pack of June, Grant, Becca, Phoebe and Wyatt, former high school students in West Wilmer. The arc unfolds through dual timelines and multiple points of view. Grief rides herd throughout, torturing the bad actors, such as Grant Dean, the former high school football star and Phoebe’s brother (who was driving the truck the night of the accident), and clingy Becca (who was in the crash too). 

Along for the ride, we have angry mothers who have lost husbands early. Brother and sister acts – with a trifle too much closeness. Alcoholism. Teenage partying. Football hopes and dreams (to escape from small-townsville) with strings attached to drug dealers. This book is very American, with vivid characters that are not especially likeable. —S.G.

 

Author’s Take: “It didn’t matter to me as a writer which way the story went. Guilty or innocent, it was going to be more thorough than had ever been done before. I’m talking facts. Not inferences, not speculation, not rumors.” 

Favourite Line: “His hatred wasn’t limited to those who once made fun of him; he hated everybody, a world that had no use for him, no place for him.”

Review: The eight-day killing spree committed by teenager Charles Starkweather, in the company of his underage girlfriend Caril Ann Fugate, claimed the lives of 10 victims in Nebraska and Wyoming in January 1958. The capture of the two teenagers and their trials became national news, the first major crime of the nascent television age. It inspired such films as Badlands (which told a version of Starkweather and Fugate’s story), Kalifornia and Natural Born Killers, as well as Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska, the title track of his 1982 album.

The killing spree was personal for writer and lawyer Harry N. MacLean. “I was fifteen in January 1958,” MacLean writes in Starkweather, his compelling account of the killing spree and its aftermath. “Caril was thirteen; Charlie was nineteen. We all lived in Lincoln. My middle-class home was a little over a mile from the house where, at the end of that month, a wealthy couple and their maid would die. I knew their son. My older brother, Mike, was in shop class with Charlie.” 

Now, as the writer enters his 80s, he has finally confronted the story. The book draws largely on legal materials, media coverage and primary documents to chronicle the 11 murders (Starkweather was alone when he killed a gas station attendant in late 1957) in unflinching, detail. The account, however, never feels salacious or predatory, because MacLean is focused on the role of Fugate. Fugate and Starkweather were convicted of murder, with Starkweather executed in 1959 (Fugate served 17 years). Her true guilt remains an open question. Starkweather said she was present and supportive when he killed her family, but that was only after he had said she wasn’t. Despite Starkweather being a noted liar, his testimony was the only evidence of her complicity, and prosecutors used it to poison her in the mind of the jury.

MacLean writes with a powerful clarity, introducing facts and theories as if he were writing as a defence attorney, repeating key pieces of evidence until the full picture snaps into place. Using contemporary psychological diagnoses and modern criminal procedure (the case occurred before the establishment of Miranda Rights to prevent self-incrimination, for example), MacLean argues not just that Fugate was innocent, but was a victim of Starkweather in his mad rush toward, as he saw it, death and glory. —R.W.