Canada Reads 2010

Canada Reads 2010 is officially underway with five great Canadian books being dicussed and defended by five great Canadians.

The books that are going to be debated and discussed are:

• Good to a Fault by Marina Endicott, defended by Simi Sara
  • Summary:

    Marina Endicott's compelling novel Good to a Fault begins with a bang — two cars collide at an intersection. As the story unfolds, the lives of all those involved are unalterably jolted, too.

    The driver at fault is 43-year-old Clara Purdy, who works at a Saskatoon insurance company. Affluent but unfulfilled, she has spent years nursing her dying parents and now finds herself alone.

    The other car is home to an impoverished family on its way to Fort McMurray, Alberta, in search of a new start. The mother, Lorraine, the only one who's injured in the accident, ends up in the hospital.

    Feeling that she wants to do what's right — and also that she's to blame for the situation — Clara chooses to help not only Lorraine but also her sullen husband, their three children and the grumpy grandmother, Mrs. Pell. Clara's decision brings chaos and complications into her life, along with powerful new emotions, both rewarding and painful.

    Told from the viewpoint of a number of characters, Good to a Fault is a compassionate, insightful exploration of the choices people make and the complex motives that drive them.

    A story of two classes colliding, Good to a Fault is both an exploration of faith and a meditation on the meaning of home. The author handles these serious themes with a light touch, and her tale of a Canadian Good Samaritan is full of surprises and humour. 

     
• Nikolski by Nicholas Dickner, translated by Lazer Lederhendler, defended by Michel Vezina
  • Summary:

    Nikolski is a small village in the Aleutian Islands off the shore of Alaska. It is also a thematic connection for Nicolas Dickner's novel about three young francophones, unaware of the ties that bind them.

    One is an unnamed young man who works in a secondhand bookshop and cherishes his only gift from his father, a broken compass that mysteriously points towards Nikolski.

    Joyce, who comes from an Acadian family, is inspired by her grandfather's stories about the family history of sailors and pirates. She runs away to Montreal, where she finds a day job gutting fish and spends her nights dumpster diving for computer parts.

    Noah spent the first 18 years of his life living as a nomad, roaming the roads of central Canada with his mother. He moves to Montreal to study archeology, and ends up writing a thesis on urban garbage.

    Full of coincidences and paradoxes, the novel journeys across western Canada, spends time in an immigrant neighbourhood in Montreal and takes a side trip to Venezuela.

    Nikolski was published in Quebec in 2005 and has since been garlanded with awards, including the Prix des libraries du Québec, the Prix littéraire des collegiens, the Prix Anne-Hebert for best first book, and France's Prix Printemps des Lecteurs — Lavinal.

• Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture by Douglas Coupland, defended by Roland Pemberton
  • Summary:

    With Generation X, Douglas Coupland didn't just write a book that sold wildly in North America and around the world. He changed the way people viewed an entire generation, while coining such unforgettable terms as "McJob" and "poverty jet set." The novel serves up angst with a generous helping of wit, and is both entertaining and illuminating.

    Alienated twenty-somethings Andy, Dag and Claire have cut themselves loose from their home towns and live in adjacent cottages in Palm Springs, California. They're connected by their friendship and by the feeling that the world is passing them by, but that dropping out is still the only sensible solution.

    Oppressed by the successes of their yuppie elders and by a sense of their own "futurelessness," the trio juggles their anxieties, their diminishing expectations and their cynicism. Bored by their dead-end service jobs, they spend time driving around in an old Saab and sipping cocktails, while trading stories real and imagined to try to make sense of life.

    Countless young readers across North America identified with Coupland's characters when the book came out in 1991, and their story continues to resonate with readers from new generations.

• The Jade Peony by Wayson Choy, defended by Samantha Nutt 
  • Summary:

    Wayson Choy's poignant, award-winning debut novel, The Jade Peony, is told from the point of view of three siblings who come of age in Vancouver's Chinatown during the Depression and war years.

    Jook-Liang, the family's only girl, and her brothers Jung-Sum and Sek-Lung (nicknamed Sekky) were all born in Canada, but their parents and the rest of the family are recent immigrants. The children grow up torn between the reality of their lives outside the family circle and the old-world traditions that prevail at home.

    The children are drawn to figures from North American popular culture, from cowboys to Shirley Temple, but they're also captivated by the magical stories told by Poh-Poh, their grandmother. Her mythic tales feature ghosts, dragons and characters from Chinese folklore such as the Monkey King and the scary Fox Lady.

    The three have very different experiences of life in their family and the world at large. Sekky, the youngest, witnesses a love affair between his Chinese-Canadian babysitter and a young man of Japanese heritage, which plays out against the backdrop of the racism that flourished during the Second World War.

    The Jade Peony is a sensitive depiction of the collision between cultures that all newcomers experience — and the conflicts within families that can arise as a result. It's also a vivid evocation of the division between the world of adults and the world of childhood, rendered with insight, humour and grace.

    Wayson Choy's tale began life as a short story of the same name, which was widely anthologized in Canada and the U.S. after its publication in 1979. The novel, published in 1995, won both Ontario's Trillium Book Award and the City of Vancouver Book Award and garnered glowing reviews at home and abroad.

        
• Fall on Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald, defended by Perdita Felicien
  • Summary:

    Ann-Marie MacDonald's first novel, published in 1996, brought her international attention and acclaim for its riveting depiction of a family beset by hidden desires and secrets.

    Fall on Your Knees begins in a small mining community in Nova Scotia in the early 1900s and moves to the battlefields of World War I and then to Harlem during the Jazz Age and the Depression.

    It all begins when James elopes with his 13-year-old bride, Materia Mahmoud, whose Lebanese father then casts her out and curses her.

    Four sisters are born to the couple: beautiful Kathleen, who sings like an angel, self-sacrificing and obedient Mercedes, naughty, rebellious Frances and pure-hearted Lily. There is hope, talent and passion in each of them, but each is affected in her own way by their father's hold on their lives.

    Fall on Your Knees has been translated into more than 20 languages and has won numerous awards and accolades, including the Canadian Authors' Association Literary Award, the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book and the Canadian Booksellers Association Libris Award. It was also a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and was selected for Oprah's Book Club in 2002.

Canada Reads is a week-long show hosted by Jian Ghomeshi. In this annual literary bun-fight, five celebrity panelists are asked to defend their favourite Canadian work of fiction. Day by day, books are voted off the list, until one panelist triumphs with the book for Canada to read this year.

The half-hour debates will air on CBC Radio One from March 8 to March 12, 2010, at 11:30 a.m. and 7:30 p.m.

For more information about Canada Reads, to vote and take part, to join in the online discussions and more, be sure to check out the website at http://www.cbc.ca/canadareads/.

To put your name on the list if you haven't read any of these titles but still would like to, place an online hold at www.tracpac.ab.ca.

Happy Reading!