7 books you heard about on CBC Radio recently
Check out some of the books discussed on national CBC Radio programs between Nov. 12-19, 2024.
Curiosities by Anne Fleming
Heard on: Bookends with Mattea Roach
In Curiosities, Anne Fleming inserts herself into her fiction as a "goofily overenthusiastic" amateur historian to piece together the story of two 17th century girls as they navigate their way to adulthood.
Weaving together different fictional accounts, the novel recounts the lives of Joan and Thomasina, who goes by Tom, the only two survivors of a village ravaged by the plague, and how they eventually find each other again — in a tale of witchcraft, forbidden love and the very nature of truth itself.
Curiosities was a finalist for the 2024 Giller Prize.
Anne Fleming is an author based in Victoria. Her books include Pool-Hopping and Other Stories, which was shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction and the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. She has also written a middle-grade novel, The Goat, which was a Junior Library Guild and White Ravens selection.
What I Know About You by Éric Chacour, translated by Pablo Strauss
Heard on: Bookends with Mattea Roach
Éric Chacour's debut novel is his own take on Romeo and Juliet — ditching Verona's cobblestone streets for the sounds and smells of Cairo in the second half of the 20th century.
What I Know About You, translated from French by Pablo Strauss, is a powerful queer love story that examines the consequences of breaking free from a life path that's been prescribed by family, religion, politics and society.
Éric Chacour is a Montreal-based writer who was born to Egyptian parents and grew up between France and Quebec. In addition to writing, he works in the financial sector. What I Know About You is his first book and was a bestseller in its French edition, winning many awards including the Prix Femina.
Pablo Strauss has translated 12 works of fiction, several graphic novels and one screenplay. He was a finalist for the Governor General's Literary Award for translation for The Country Will Bring Us No Peace, Synapses and The Longest Year. His translation of Le plongeur by Stephane Larue called The Dishwasher won the 2020 Amazon First Novel Award. He lives in Quebec City.
A Way to Be Happy by Caroline Adderson
Heard on: The Next Chapter
A Way to Be Happy is a short story collection that follows various characters as they try to find happiness. Ranging from mundane to extraordinary, the stories feature everything from a pair of addicts robbing parties to fund their sobriety to a Russian hitman dealing with an illness and reliving his past.
Caroline Adderson is the Vancouver-based author of five novels, including The Sky is Falling, Ellen in Pieces and A Russian Sister. She has also published two short story collections, including the 1993 Governor General's Literary Award finalist Bad Imaginings.
Adderson's awards include three B.C. Book Prizes, a National Magazine Award Gold Medal for Fiction. She has received the 2006 Marian Engel Award for mid-career achievement. She is also a three-time winner of the CBC Literary Prizes.
Hair for Men by Michelle Winters
Heard on: The Next Chapter
Struggling with trauma from her teenage years, Louise lives a life of punk violence until she gets a job at a men's hair salon in the novel Hair for Men. There, she builds relationships with her clients and begins to feel more settled. But when that sense of calm is destroyed, she runs away to the East Coast to escape her past, which she does successfully until a man from the Bay of Fundy arrives and gives her the opportunity to right her wrongs.
Michelle Winters is a writer, painter and translator from Saint John currently living in Toronto. Her novel debut novel, I Am a Truck, was shortlisted for the 2017 Scotiabank Giller Prize. She also translated Kiss the Undertow and Daniil and Vanya by Marie-Hélène Larochelle.
Something, Not Nothing by Sarah Leavitt
Heard on: The Next Chapter
Following the medically assisted death of her partner of twenty-two years, cartoonist Sarah Leavitt began small sketches that quickly became something new and unexpected to her. In Something, Not Nothing the abstract images mixed with poetic text, layers of watercolour, ink and coloured pencil combine to tell a story of love, grief, peace and new beginnings.
Sarah Leavitt is a Vancouver comics creator and writing teacher. Her debut book was Tangles: A Story About Alzheimer's, My Mother, and Me.
What I Mean to Say by Ian Williams
Heard on: Ideas
Poet and Giller-Prize winning author Ian Williams is this year's Massey lecturer. In What I Mean to Say, the award-winning Canadian writer and professor has chosen to focus on the topic of conversations — more specifically, our inability to have them in an age of increasing polarization, cancel culture and emerging forms of online communication.
Williams is the author of seven books of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. His novel, Reproduction, won the Scotiabank Giller Prize. He is a professor of English at the University of Toronto, director of the Creative Writing program, and academic advisor for the Massey College William Southam Journalism Fellowship.
They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us by Hanif Abdurraqib
Heard on: The Next Chapter
Hanif Abdurraqib's first collection of essays, They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us, pays tribute to the power of music to inspire empowerment and strengthen community. The title is a phrase Abdurraqib saw written down at the memorial of 18-year-old Michael Brown, which stuck with him as he finished this book. Abdurraqib is an accomplished wordsmith, whose reflections on pop culture are intensely personal, political and compelling.
Abdurraqib is an Ohio-based American poet and writer. His essay collection A Little Devil in America won the 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Obama previously included A Little Devil in America on his 2022 Summer Reading List.
