28 books you heard about on CBC Radio recently
Check out some of the books discussed on national CBC Radio programs from Feb. 26-March 10, 2024
Check out some of the books discussed on national CBC Radio programs these past two weeks, from Feb. 26-March 10, 2024.
The Future by Catherine Leroux, translated by Susan Ouriou
Heard on: Canada Reads
The Future is set in an alternate history of Detroit where the French never surrendered the city to the U.S. Its residents deal with poverty, pollution and a legacy of racism. When Gloria, a woman looking for answers about her missing granddaughters, arrives in the city, she finds a kingdom of orphaned and abandoned children who have created their own society.
The Future won Canada Reads 2024. It was championed by Heather O'Neill.
Catherine Leroux is a writer, translator and journalist from Montreal. She was shortlisted for the 2016 Scotiabank Giller Prize for The Party Wall, which is an English translation of her French-language short story collection Le mur mitoyen.
Susan Ouriou is a French and Spanish to English translator, a fiction writer and a playwright. She has previously won the Governor General's Literary Award for translation for her work.
Shut Up You're Pretty by Téa Mutonji
Heard on: Canada Reads
Shut Up You're Pretty is a short fiction collection that tells stories of a young woman coming of age in the 21st century in Scarborough, Ont. The disarming, punchy and observant stories follow her as she watches someone decide to shave her head in an abortion clinic waiting room, bonds with her mother over fish and contemplates her Congolese traditions at a wedding.
Shut Up You're Pretty was on the 2019 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize shortlist and won the 2020 Edmund White Award for debut fiction. It was championed by Kudakwashe Rutendo on Canada Reads 2024.
CBC Books named Téa Mutonji a writer to watch in 2019. Born in Congo-Kinshasa, Mutonji is also the editor of the anthology Feel Ways: A Scarborough Anthology. She currently lives in Toronto.
Bad Cree by Jessica Johns
Heard on: Canada Reads
Bad Cree is a horror-infused novel that centres around a young woman named Mackenzie, who is haunted by terrifying nightmares and wracked with guilt about her sister Sabrina's untimely death. The lines between her dreams and reality start to blur when she begins seeing a murder of crows following her around the city and starts getting threatening text messages from someone claiming to be her dead sister.
Looking to escape, Mackenzie heads back to her hometown in rural Alberta where she finds her family still entrenched in their grief. With her dreams intensifying and getting more dangerous, Mackenzie must confront a violent family legacy and reconcile with the land and her community.
Bad Cree was championed by Dallas Soonias on Canada Reads 2024.
Jessica Johns is a queer nehiyaw aunty with English-Irish ancestry and a member of Sucker Creek First Nation. Johns won the 2020 Writers' Trust Journey Prize for the short story Bad Cree, which evolved into the novel of the same name. Bad Cree also won the MacEwan Book of the Year prize. Johns is currently based in Edmonton.
Denison Avenue by Christina Wong & Daniel Innes
Heard on: Canada Reads
Set in Toronto's Chinatown and Kensington Market, Denison Avenue is a moving portrait of a city undergoing mass gentrification and a Chinese Canadian elder experiencing the existential challenges of getting old and being Asian in North America. Recently widowed, Wong Cho Sum takes long walks through the city, collecting bottles and cans and meeting people on her journeys in a bid to ease her grief.
Denison Avenue was championed by Naheed Nenshi on Canada Reads 2024.
Christina Wong is a Toronto writer, playwright and multidisciplinary artist who also works in sound installation, audio documentaries and photography.
Daniel Innes is a multidisciplinary artist from Toronto. He works in painting, installation, graphic and textile design, illustration, sign painting and tattooing.
Meet Me at the Lake by Carley Fortune
Heard on: Canada Reads
Meet Me at the Lake finds 32-year-old Fern Brookbanks stuck — she can't quite stop thinking about one perfect day she spent in her twenties. By chance, she met a man named Will Baxter and the two spent a romantic 24 hours in Toronto, after which they promised to meet up one year later. But Will never showed up.
Now, Fern manages her mother's Muskoka resort by the lake, a role she promised herself she'd never take on. Disillusioned with her life, Fern is shocked when Will shows up at her door, suitcase in hand, asking to help. Why is he here after all this time and more importantly, can she trust him to stay? It's clear Will has a secret but Fern isn't sure if she's ready to hear it all these years later.
Meet Me at the Lake was championed by Mirian Njoh on Canada Reads 2024.
Carley Fortune is a Toronto-based journalist who has worked as an editor for Refinery29, The Globe and Mail, Chatelaine and Toronto Life. Meet Me at the Lake is her second novel. Her debut was Every Summer After, a romance about childhood summer friends who reunite years later.
I'm So Glad We Had This Time Together by Maurice Vellekoop
Heard on: The Next Chapter
Maurice Vellekoop was raised in 1970s Toronto by extremely religious Dutch parents. Despite heralding a household love of art, music and film, Maurice's mother cannot accept her son's queerness and so they become estranged. I'm So Glad We Had This Time Together is a graphic memoir following Vellekoop's life as he seeks acceptance and community in college and through adulthood as a fervent artist. Vellekoop turns back to childhood passions as he struggles under the shadow of the AIDS crisis, but finally learns to untangle his demons in psychotherapy in a long, often funny process.
Vellekoop lives in Toronto working as a prolific, award-winning artist and illustrator. I'm So Glad We Had This Time Together is his first book.
The Fake by Zoe Whittall
Heard on: The Next Chapter
The Fake is about Shelby, who signs up for a grief support group after her wife dies and grieving with her family becomes unbearable. There, she meets Cammie, a dynamic person who just so happens to have cancer. Shelby throws herself into supporting Cammie but the closer she grows to her, the more she begins to question the person she is supporting. When Shelby meets Gibson, a newly divorced man who is intimately involved with Cammie, the two of them soon realize Cammie may not be everything she says she is.
Zoe Whittall is a Canadian novelist and screenwriter. Her books include Bottle Rocket Hearts, Holding Still for as Long as Possible, The Best Kind of People and The Spectacular. The Best Kind of People was a finalist for the 2016 Scotiabank Giller Prize and is being adapted for film by Sarah Polley. She was a writer for the hit CBC comedy series Baroness Von Sketch Show and was a story editor on the sitcom Schitt's Creek.
Yellowface by R.F. Kuang
Heard on: The Next Chapter
Yellowface is the story of young, disgruntled white author June Hayward who, in a fit of jealousy, steals her former classmate Athena Liu's manuscript afer Liu's death and attempts to publish it as her own. Set in the contemporary world of publishing, Yellowface prods at questions of cultural appropriation and whose voices are ultimately uplifted in the industry, and at what cost.
R. F. Kuang is the award-winning American author of The Poppy War Trilogy and Babel. She holds a MPhil in Chinese Studies from Cambridge and an MSc in Contemporary Chinese Studies from Oxford and is currently pursuing a PhD in East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale.
Charlatan by Pope Brock
Heard on: The Next Chapter
John R. Brinkley, the titular Charlatan and notorious American conman, introduces a new surgical method for saving male virility in 1917. Customers and riches pour in, but Brinkley is opposed by staunch myth buster Morris Fishbein who vows to destroy his business. Their battle culminates in the courtroom, and serves to highlight the true audacity of one man and his ease in fooling an entire nation.
Pope Brock's previous book, the true crime Indiana Gothic, was published in 1999. His work has appeared in publications such as Rolling Stone, Esquire, GQ and the London Sunday Times Magazine. Brock lives in upstate New York.
Dinner on Monster Island by Tania De Rozario
Heard on: The Next Chapter
In her book Dinner on Monster Island, Tania De Rozario looks at her experiences growing up in Singapore and how she often felt monstrous and othered as a queer, brown, fat girl. The essays recount traumatic life events such as getting gay-exorcized at age 12 and connects them with elements of history, pop culture and horror films.
De Rozario is a Vancouver-based writer and artist whose other books include And The Walls Come Crumbling Down and Tender Delirium.
Hope Ablaze by Sarah Mughal Rana
Heard on: The Next Chapter
Nida's life and poetry exist in her uncle Mamou Abdul-hafeedh's shadow, expected to fill his shoes after his wrongful incarceration in the novel Hope Ablaze. When she is illegally frisked at a political rally, Nida writes a searing poem to process the event, never dreaming that it would go viral and win her a national poetry contest. Her reserved life upended and now struggling to write at all, Nida must balance all these new expectations with the truth of who she feels she is.
Sarah Mughal Rana is a Muslim author who completed her first degree at the University of Toronto. Cohost of the On the White Track podcast and a BookToker, Rana is now pursuing her MPhil in Asian studies at Oxford. Hope Ablaze is her first novel.
Batshit Seven by Sheung-King
Heard on: The Next Chapter
Glem "Glue" Wu has a general apathy toward his return to Hong Kong in Batshit Seven. As a lacklustre, weed smoking, hungover ESL teacher, Glue is largely able to watch Hong Kong fall into conflict around him. He cares only for his sister, trying to marry rich, an on-and-off-again relationship and the memory of a Canadian connection now lost. Government control hardens, thrusting Glue into a journey that ultimately ends in violence.
Sheung-King's first novel, You Are Eating an Orange. You are Naked., was a finalist for multiple awards, including the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction and the Amazon Canada First Novel Award. It was also longlisted for Canada Reads 2021. Sheung-Kin splits his time between Canada and China.
Tom Lake by Ann Patchett
Heard on: The Next Chapter
When Lara's daughters reunite with their mother at the family orchard, they beg Lara for a particular story in the novel Tom Lake. Years before, Lara shared a stage and romance with a man named Peter Duke at the Tom Lake theatre company. The tale forces all the women to reexamine their lives and relationships — not only with one another, but themselves.
Ann Patchett is the author of many novels, including The Patron Saint of Liars, Taft, The Magician's Assistant and Bel Canto. Her book The Dutch House was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. She also opened the bookstore Parnassus Books in Nashville, where she lives with her husband and dog.
Gutter Child by Jael Richardson
Heard on: The Next Chapter
In a fictitious world where the vulnerable must work off a debt to society in order to earn their freedom, a social experiment is taking place. One hundred babies are plucked from the Gutter and brought to the Mainland to be raised in better opportunities. When Elimina's Mainland mother dies, she is thrust into an academy with rigid rules and an unfamiliar servant's destiny as a Gutter Child. Befriending other children in the Gutter System, Elimina discovers that freedom may not actually be what she truly needs.
Jael Richardson is the founder and the artistic director of the Festival for Literary Diversity (FOLD) and the former books columnist for Q on CBC Radio. She is also the author of the nonfiction book The Stone Thrower, which was also adapted into a picture book of the same name. Gutter Child is her first work of fiction.
The Whispers by Ashley Audrain
Heard on: The Next Chapter
In The Whispers, the truth behind a picture perfect neighbourhood is revealed following an incident at a neighbourhood barbeque when the seemingly flawless hostess explodes in fury because her son disobeys her. When the son falls from his bedside window one night, and the mother stops talking to everyone as she accompanies him at the hospital where he is fighting for his life, the women in the neighbourhood begin to contend with what led to this horrible incident.
Ashley Audrain is the former publicity director of Penguin Canada. Her debut novel The Push was a New York Times bestseller. She currently lives in Toronto.
Daughter by Claudia Dey
Heard on: The Next Chapter
Daughter follows a playwright, actress and titular daughter named Mona Dean, who is caught in her charismatic father's web — a man famous for one great novel, and whose needs and insecurities have a hold on the women in the family. Daughter explores the regenerative power of art, and how making art is making selfhood, when Mona Dean strives to make a life and art of her own.
Claudia Dey is a Toronto author, playwright and actor. She is also the co-designer of women's clothing brand Horses Atelier. She is also the author of the novels Stunt and Heartbreaker. Heartbreaker was a finalist for the 2019 Trillium Book Award.
Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange
Heard on: The Current
The follow up to There There, Tommy Orange's new book Wandering Stars maps the aftermath of Star's survival of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864, the founding of the residential school Carlisle Industrial School for Indians and the generational trauma and violence that follows Star's son Charles, his friend Opal Viola and their families.
Tommy Orange lives in Oakland, California. His first novel, There There, was shortlisted for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize and won the 2019 American Book Award. Orange is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma.
Our Crumbling Foundation by Gregor Craigie
Heard on: The Current
Canada's current, on-going housing crisis is examined in Our Crumbling Foundation, which seeks to offer current, real-life solutions to compounding problems such as rising interest rates, a lack of new homes and the varying needs of owners, renters and the homeless. The book takes us from Canada across the world to see how countries like Ireland, France, Japan and Malaysia are better serving their communities' housing needs and what we could learn from them.
Gregor Craigie is a CBC journalist and the host of On The Island radio show. He is based in Victoria.
The Little Liar by Mitch Albom
Heard on: The Sunday Magazine
The Little Liar is about Nico Crispi, who has never told a lie. When his Grecian home is invaded by the Nazis, Nico is persuaded that the trains bound for "the east," will deliver his family and their Jewish friends and neighbours to safety. But when Nico assures everyone of this, he learns too late that he's sent his entire family to their deaths. We follow Nico, his brother Sebastian and a schoolmate Fanni who search for Nico for decades, now a pathological liar. The Little Liar examines the ties between honesty, survival and revenge and how love may finally offer redemption from deceit.
Mitch Albom is the author of many books, including Tuesdays with Morrie, The Next Person You Meet in Heaven and The Stranger in the Lifeboat. He live with his wife Janine in Michigan.
The Zone of Interest by Martin Amis
Heard on: Writers & Company
Told by three narrators, The Zone of Interest maps the love triangle between a Nazi officer, Auschwitz camp commandant and the commandant's wife. Despite officer Agelus Thomsen and Hannah Doll's attempts to be discreet, commandant Paul Doll's suspicions are raised. What follows is a chain of events that alters and destroys lives.
Martin Amis was an English writer whose works included the novels Money, London Fields and The Information. The Zone of Interest was adapted for film in 2023 and won two Academy Awards, including best international feature film.
Pew by Catherine Lacey
Heard on: Writers & Company
In the opening of Catherine Lacey's 2020 novel, Pew, a strange person is discovered sleeping in a small-town Southern church— nameless, silent, of ambiguous age, gender and race. In the course of a week, the people of the town anxiously try to determine who this enigmatic stranger might be. It's a striking premise, in a book that's taut, tender, mysterious — and surprisingly funny.
Named one of Granta's best of young American novelists, Lacey has earned acclaim for her adventurous body of work, including three novels, a story collection and a playful book called The Art of the Affair. Born in 1985 in Tupelo, Miss., and once a devout Christian, she left all that world behind, but it seeps into her stories in provocative ways.
Math in Drag by Kyne Santos
Heard on: Day 6
Ru Paul's Drag Race queen Kyne Santos offers a simultaneous course in mathematical mystery and drag history in her book Math in Drag. She explores the connection between ballroom culture and infinity, stats in Drag Race and offers insight into the often difficult path of queer people in STEM fields.
Kyne Santos is a math and science educator and communicator, social media influencer and drag queen.
Papyrus by Irene Vallejo, translated by Charlotte Whittle
Heard on: Ideas
In Papyrus, philologist and historian Irene Vallejo takes us through the invention of the book. She explores the rich history of books from papyrus scrolls all the way to e-readers, the shift from oral histories to silent reading, and the various types of paper used to create what we know today.
Irene Vallejo is the author of several novels, essays and short fiction. Her work appears regularly in El País and Heraldo de Aragón.
An editor and bilingual publisher, Charlotte Whittle has translated works by authors such as Norah Lange, Silvia Goldmanv and Rafael Toriz. Her writing and translations have appeared in publications including Mantis, The Literary Review, The Los Angeles Times and the Northwest Review of Books. Originally from England and Utah, she is now based in New York.
The Last of Its Kind by Gísli Pálsson
Heard on: Quirks & Quarks
The great auk, a flightless bird, lived in remote islands of the North Atlantic before The Last of Its Kind were hunted in Iceland in 1844. This book weaves the accounts of British ornithologists John Jolley and Alfred Newton with the Icelandic men who sealed the auk's fate, which opened Victorian minds of the time to the real threat humans posed on mass extinctions.
Gísli Pálsson's other books include The Human Age, Down to Earth and The Man Who Stole Himself. He is a professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of Iceland.
Wrong Way by Joanne McNeil
Heard on: Spark
Stuck in the endless working, middle class cycle of labour that has her moving constantly from one job to another, Teresa's luck may finally be changing. She's offered a contract at AllOver, a fintech company which provides driverless cars to its premium members. The further Teresa gets into her onboarding, the more troubles are revealed at the company. Is the promise of financial stability enough for her to stay? Wrong Way explores the class gaps made even larger by AI and the treacherous existence of our current non-stop gig economy.
Joanne McNeil is the author of Lurking: How a Person Became a User and the inaugural winner of the Carl & Marilynn Thoma Art Foundation's Arts Writing Award for an emerging writer. She is currently based in Los Angeles.
The Last Human Job by Allison Pugh
Heard on: Spark
In a vivid, compelling argument, The Last Human Job explores the imperative of human connection that underlies all work and argues for the value of what we all do for one another. The book draws on interviews and observations from individuals in all kinds of work, from physicians and teachers to therapists and hairdressers, to develop the concept of "connective labour," and the threats imposed upon it by AI, metric emphasis and standardization practices.
Allison Pugh's writing has appeared in The New Yorker, the New York Times, and the New Republic. Her two previous books are The Tumbleweed Society and Longing and Belonging. She is a professor and department chair at the University of Virginia.
I, Human by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic
Heard on: Spark
In I, Human, we are whisked through the AI landscape to understand how it affects our daily lives, for better or worse. The book argues that the choice between fostering humanity's improvement or alienation is ours— that our worsening distraction, selfishness and entitlement can be counteracted with curiosity, adaptability and emotional intelligence. Keeping empathy and humility at the forefront of our engagements with artificial intelligence could change the way we use and perceive it, but we must make it so.
Psychologist Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premusic is a professor of business psychology at Columbia University and University College London and is equally the chief innovation officer at ManpowerGroup. His many other books include The Talent Delusion, Why Do So many Incompetent Men Become Leaders and Confidence.
Gay Girl Prayers by Emily Austin
Heard on: Q
A debut poetry collection, Gay Girl Prayers rewrites Bible verses and Catholic prayers to reclaim and affirm the realities of queer, feminist and trans people. The book challenges the powers that be with humour, self-respect and cringy yet earnest declarations of love and celebrates the lives and perspectives of "strange women."
Emily Austin is the author of Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead, which was shortlisted for several awards and longisted for the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour. She resides in Ottawa.
