Many things happened over the past year, and to celebrate we reached out to the community to find out what made an impact here and across the province. The top fives include highlights from the world of art, literature, history and film, and are a way to look forward to 2018 by looking back at what we saw in 2017.
Alissa York: The Naturalist (Canadian Authors Award for Fiction)
Set in the time when Darwin was introducing his views on evolution and natural selection, The Naturaist takes the reader deep into the Amazon jungles on a richly detailed excursion following the death of (fictional) famed naturalist, Walter Ash. York’s descriptive powers are what make this novel notable.
Joel Thomas Hynes: We’ll All Be Burnt in Our Beds Some Night (Governor General’s Literacy Award)
Johnny Keough hasn’t had an easy time of it. Following the fatal accident of his girlfriend, Johnny decides to turn his life around and take Madonna’s ashes to a beach on the outskirts of Vancouver. It won the Governor General’s Literacy Award for the unique main character, and the hilarious yet disturbing journey of Johnny.
Andre Alexis: Fifteen Dogs (Canada Reads)
Fifteen Dogs won the Giller Prize in 2015, making it the first novel to win both the Giller and Canada Reads. Two gods give the dogs human intelligence and linguistic skills during a night on the town to settle a bet. Alexis makes his readers think about what it means to have consciousness, and the good and bad that come of it.
Michael Redhill: Bellevue Square (Scotiabank Giller Prize)
Jean Mason has a doppelganger. And as she recruits more people to help her in her mission to see it, members of Jean’s network of homeless, drug addicts, and scam artists start turning up dead. One line in the novel is; “I do subtlety in other areas of my life”, which describes this novel.
David Chariandy: Brother (Rogers’ Writer’s Trust Fiction)
Two Trinidadian immigrant brothers who are being raised by their single mother. The brothers navigate casual racism in their everyday lives — from being viewed as thieves to being funneled into general classes at school — and the place they escape to to imagine a better life for themselves. While facing some very relevant social issues, Brother still leaves the reader with a sense of hope.
— Submitted by Yorkton Public Library
