Welcome to Litsy!

A strong narrative propels this time travel tale, bringing all the pieces neatly together at the end, yet leaving me with a delightful sense of wonder & the question: What is reality? Also delightful: walk-ons by characters from The Glass Hotel, plus an obviously autobiographical section (set in 2203) about an author (who lives on a moon colony) touring one of her previous novels (about a pandemic) because it‘s being made into a film. #Canadian

Light touches of science fiction, horror or fantastical elements give these twelve tightly-wrought stories an unsettling quality. My favourites include Liddy, First to Fly—a girl grows wings; June Bugs—a nightmarish beetle infestation; and Do You Remember Candy—the generational divide regarding nostalgia for the taste of food. #CanadianAuthor #shadowgiller2022

“Tonight, ghosts of misery will invite themselves in & feast upon my sorrow, leaving me in hunger & solitude.”
Lebanese Canadian Rawi Hage taps into quiet desperation & the absurdity of humanity in his new collection of stories. The protagonists—eccentric intellectuals, dreamers, sad clownish men—have the temperament & peculiar ideas that keep them out of step with other people. Dark humour & exquisite prose kept me enthralled. #shadowgiller2022

“How could she explain it? That there was something whole she wanted severed. Something clean she needed soiled.” The grief-struck central character is in bad shape, having escaped her old life but unable to escape herself. I had difficulty feeling compassion as I witnessed her self-sabotaging behaviour. What I found missing from the prose is some up-and-downess, if you know what I mean. Something to relieve the bleak flatness. #shadowGiller2022

A feel-good Christmas ghost story set in contemporary Edmonton, mid-pandemic. Rags to riches, multiple points of view, multiple ghosts. Charles Dickens would probably approve. I certainly did. #Audiobook read by Jennifer Wigmore. #Canadian #ShadowGiller2022

Unlike the way I kept stopping to wonder about the science in Weir‘s The Martian, I trusted all the space technology stuff in Hadfield‘s writing & just immersed myself in the setting, enjoying the psychological thrill of a suspenseful mystery set during the Cold War between the USA & the Soviets. I was reminded of the cool facts in Roach‘s Packing for Mars. I loved the woman cosmonaut & all the character dynamics. #Audiobook read by Ray Porter.