Essential Canadian novelsLike this list

59 items

• Indian Horse

  Wagamese, Richard

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  Saul Indian Horse has hit bottom. His last binge almost killed him, and now he's a reluctant resident in a treatment centre for alcoholics, surrounded by people he's sure will never understand him. But Saul wants peace, and he grudgingly…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Half-blood Blues

  Edugyan, Esi

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  Winner of the 2011 Scotiabank Giller Prize, short-listed for the 2011 Governor General's Award for Fiction Paris, 1940. A brilliant jazz musician, Hiero, is arrested by the Nazis and never heard from again. He is twenty years old. He is a…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• In the Skin of a Lion

  a Novel

  Ondaatje, Michael, 1943-

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  Bristling with intelligence and shimmering with romance, this novel tests the boundary between history and myth. Patrick Lewis arrives in Toronto in the 1920s and earns his living searching for a vanished millionaire and tunneling beneath…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Handmaid's Tale

  Atwood, Margaret, 1939-

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  The Handmaid's Tale is a novel of such power that the reader will be unable to forget its images and its forecast. Set in the near future, it describes life in what was once the United States and is now called the Republic of Gilead, a…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• How the Light Gets in

  Penny, Louise

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  When Gamache receives a message from Myrna Landers that a longtime friend has failed to arrive for Christmas in the village of Three Pines, he welcomes the chance to get away from the city. Mystified by Myrna's reluctance to reveal her…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Sisters Brothers

  deWitt, Patrick, 1975-

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  In this Booker-shortlisted novel, notorious bounty-hunters Eli and Charlie Sisters take exception to their reputation as thieves and killers. The brothers are told that when they kill Mr. Warm they must steal his "formula," which turns out…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Life of Pi

  Martel, Yann

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  After the tragic sinking of a cargo ship, a solitary lifeboat remains bobbing on the wild, blue Pacific. The only survivors from the wreck are a sixteen-year-old boy named Pi, a hyena, a zebra (with a broken leg), a female orangutan--and a…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Deafening

  Itani, Frances, 1942-

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  Elegantly written and profoundly moving, Frances Itani's #1 bestselling, award-winning novel is a tale of virtuosity and power. Set during the Great War and the 1918 flu pandemic, Deafening tells the story of Grania, a young deaf woman who…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Three Day Road

  Boyden, Joseph, 1966-

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  It is 1919, and Niska, the last Oji-Cree woman to live off the land, has received word that one of the two boys she saw off to the Great War has returned. Xavier Bird, her sole living relation, is gravely wounded and addicted to morphine.…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Away

  a Novel

  Urquhart, Jane, 1949-

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  A stunning, evocative novel set in Ireland and Canada, Away traces a family's complex and layered past. The narrative unfolds with shimmering clarity, and takes us from the harsh northern Irish coast in the 1840s to the quarantine stations…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Obasan

  Kogawa, Joy

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  Based on the author's own experiences, this award-winning novel was the first to tell the story of the evacuation, relocation, and dispersal of Canadian citizens of Japanese ancestry during the Second World War.

• Ru

  Thúy, Kim

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  The tragic story of a young Vietnamese girl is relayed in vignettes of exquisite clarity, sharp observation and sly wit. The reader journeys from a palatial residence in Saigon to a crowded and muddy Malaysian refugee camp and onward to a…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• 419

  Ferguson, Will

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  Will Ferguson takes readers deep into the labyrinth of lies that is “419,” the world’s most insidious Internet scam. When Laura Curtis, a lonely editor in a cold northern city, discovers that her father has died because of one such…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Annabel

  Winter, Kathleen

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  Shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Governor General's Award for Fiction, and the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. In 1968, into the beautiful, spare environment of remote coastal Labrador, a mysterious child is born: a…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Fugitive Pieces

  Michaels, Anne, 1958-

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  In 1940 a boy bursts from the mud of a war-torn Polish city, where he has buried himself to hide from the soldiers who murdered his family. His name is Jakob Beer. He is only seven years old. And although by all rights he should have…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Galore

  a Novel

  Crummey, Michael

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  An intricate family saga and love story spanning two centuries, Galore is a portrait of the improbable medieval world that was rural Newfoundland, a place almost too harrowing and extravagant to be real. Remote and isolated, exposed to…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Late Nights on Air

  Hay, Elizabeth, 1951-

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  Elizabeth Hay has been compared to Annie Proulx, Alice Hoffman, and Isabel Allende, yet she is uniquely herself. With unforgettable characters, vividly evoked settings, in this new novel, Hay brings to bear her skewering intelligence into…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Barometer Rising

  MacLennan, Hugh, 1907-1990

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  Penelope Wain believes that her lover, Neil Macrae, has been killed while serving overseas under her father. That he died apparently in disgrace does not alter her love for him, even though her father is insistent on his guilt. What…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Birth House

  McKay, Ami, 1968-

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  The Birth House is the story of Dora Rare, the first daughter to be born in five generations of Rares. As a child in an isolated village in Nova Scotia, she is drawn to Miss Babineau, an outspoken Acadian midwife with a gift for healing.…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Girls

  Lansens, Lori

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  Rose and Ruby Darlen of Baldoon County, Ontario, are two of the most extraordinary and unforgettable characters to spring into our literature. As Kirkus Reviews puts it, “The novel's power lies in the wonderful narrative voices of Rose and…Read moreRead more of this annotation