Literature lovers had their hands – and eyes – full in 2015. There are hundreds of thousands of new titles published every year and that's just in North America. If you look at books from around the world, well, your head would spin.
Personally, the best book that I read last year was not entirely a new one. In preparation for my interview with retired astronaut Col. Chris Hadfield, I read An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth. It was interesting, full of unique observations, rife with details about space and what it took for him to get there, and was sharply written. It was published in 2013 but I would recommend it to anyone interested in non-fiction, self-help, humour, or religion. Or anything, really. I read it cover-to-cover, barely able to put it down.
This job finds me reading a lot as there is no dearth of local authors with their own entries on the bookshelves. The local librarians and staff at the St. Albert Public Library are bookworms too, so I put the question to them what their favourite reads of last year were.
The Outside Circle by Patti LaBoucane-Benson
Graphic novels are not my usual format for reading, but this was the perfect medium to so powerfully convey this story. Pete, an aboriginal teen, has had a difficult life, growing up with no father and a junkie mother while trying to watch out for his younger brother, Joey. He is enmeshed in the gang life as he tries to provide for the family. An altercation with his mother's abusive boyfriend leads to the death of that boyfriend and Pete's arrest.
While incarcerated he is given the opportunity to transfer to an aboriginal healing centre and take part in the "Search of Your Warrior" program – a difficult and challenging process – one which forces him to confront his past but gives him back his cultural and spiritual roots and ultimately, helps him to rebuild.
I was particularly taken in by this story on a number of levels – how the graphic novel format so effectively depicts the darkness and reality of life for those enmeshed in this perpetuating cycle of need, violence, and anger; the strength, resilience and hope that the story speaks to, and the fact that through it I became aware of a treatment program that is making a difference in our community. I am also thrilled to see this book on the Canada Reads 2016 longlist, as it definitely addresses the 2016 theme for Canada Reads - "starting over."
- Heather Dolman, public services manager
The Deep by Nick Cutter
I discovered Canadian Nick Cutter with his first horror novel, The Troop. Cool cover, endorsement by Stephen King, scary and gross – everything you could want in a horror novel. I was so excited to see The Deep appear on the library shelf. New Nick Cutter!
I was treated to the same smart writing and was sucked in immediately to this tale of our heroes' journey to the crushing depths of the ocean to recover a (possibly) mad genius. Absolutely terrifying and claustrophobic! Cutter did an amazing job of building up the pressure, hysteria, and horror as the characters descend into the deep.
I posted this on Facebook: "I have to stop to catch my breath, with 60 pages of The Deep left to go. I'm curled up in my armchair, chewing on my fingers, terrified! Take the most claustrophobic creepy space movie, move it to the depths of the abyss, and dial the terror up to 11!" Meeting Nick Cutter (or rather, his alter-ego, Craig Davidson) at STARFest was the highlight of my year. This is not just my new favourite horror writer but my new favourite author, period!
- championed by Michelle Steinhusen, adult programming librarian
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
I'm not often drawn to dystopian novels, but this one caught my eye with its intriguing premise and literary writing style. The setting is Toronto in the near future when an aggressive virus kills most of the world's population within weeks after a famous actor dies of a heart attack on stage. We meet some of the main characters in that first scene, characters that appear in flashbacks to the stricken actor's life as well as 20 years after the spread of the virus that all but obliterates civilization.
The author leaves the details of the virus's destruction to the reader's imagination while inviting us to consider what was lost, what we take for granted in our everyday lives, and how resilient people can be. The story is richly imagined, well crafted and elegantly written. It provides a great lesson in gratitude for everything modern life has to offer. Station Eleven is a great read – worth leaving your comfort zone for!
- championed by Luise Mendler-Johnson, adult services librarian
The Evening Chorus by Helen Humphreys
Readers might wonder if there's anything left for novelists to say about the Second World War. The Evening Chorus by Canadian author Helen Humphreys covers territory that is not typically explored in war novels, namely, the POW experience and the lives of civilian women 'back home'.
James, a captured pilot, languishes in a POW camp. He begins to watch a family of birds just beyond the camp's barbed wire, and is nourished by the sight of their freedom and the discipline that watching the birds brings to his life. He is also sustained by the memory of his bride of six months, Rose.
Back in their country cottage, Rose begins a passionate affair that leads her to question the wisdom of her hasty marriage to James. James' sister Enid who is fleeing the recent experience of her married lover's death in a London bombing raid joins her in the cottage. Each of the main characters is sustained, in part, by a connection to the natural world. This story of interconnected characters is hauntingly told in language that is both simple and poetic.
- championed by Sheila Drummond, adult services co-ordinator
The War That Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley
Every once in a while I come across a children's novel that truly moves me emotionally and is difficult to forget. The War that Saved My Life is such a story.
This powerful historical middle-grade novel is about a young girl's determination against all odds to escape from her abusive mother and start a new life. Set in London and later the English countryside during the Second World War, the story is based on the character Ada who was born with a clubfoot, which has never been corrected. Ada is abused by her mother because of her "deformity" and never allowed to leave their one room flat.
When Ada discovers that her brother is being shipped to the country for safety she secretly learns to walk and escapes with him. They are taken in by Susan who shows them care, respect and kindness but their time with her is always tinged by the fear that their mother may come for them.
Children can be touched deeply by good stories that provide situations that they can learn from. Besides being an interesting historical novel, this book explores courage in powerful ways that may be the catalyst for children to find the courage to stand up for themselves.
- championed by Barb Moreau, children's services co-ordinator
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
When stocking one of the new fiction displays at the library, I noticed a peculiar book jacket, featuring a black and white photo of a man coddling himself almost as if he was easing his own torment. Undeterred by both its page count (700+) and ominous tone, I made a great choice to disrupt the comforts of my usual light summer reading when I picked up A Little Life.
The novel starts off resembling almost any other New York City genre novel, with an ensemble cast of friends that struggle to define success in their formative years. At times, these characters feel like caricatures: the trust funded half black, half white architect; the struggling Haitian American artist; an even more struggling, but terribly good looking, actor; finally, the emotionally unavailable litigator, harboring a dark secret.
It is this secret, revealed in piecemeal by the author, that pulled me into one of the most darkly intense dramas about the meaning of friendship, addiction, abuse and what drives us to continue under the most tragic of circumstances. Though many stretches of this novel are tough to read, it is the moments of light that make this novel worth reading. These moments are short lived, spanning only sentences at times, but are of a mundane kind of tenderness and sentimentality, rarely found in a novel. In short, they are made of the stuff that makes us unavoidably human.
- championed by Geoff Manderscheid, library assistant with public services
Vanishing Girls by Lauren Oliver
Girl on the Train was a runaway success, and if you're looking for your next psychological thriller, Vanishing Girls by Lauren Oliver is a good pick. It's a novel for older teens, but with complex characters and compelling writing, it will easily appeal to adults.
Sisters Nick and Dara, once inseparable, are torn apart in the wake of a serious accident. Beautiful, popular Dara, always the centre of attention, is now disfigured and seethes resentment. As the elder and more reliable sister, Nick strives to mend their broken relationship, but the involvement of the boy they both love complicates matters. When Dara and another young girl vanish, Nick comes to believe that the disappearances are linked and vows to find the missing girls.
I enjoyed Vanishing Girls so much that I was inspired to pick up Rooms, Lauren Oliver's first novel for adults, told from the perspective of ghosts Sandra and Alice who inhabit a country house. More accurately, they are rooted to the house and cannot leave its structure, which has become their body, but they watch as the family of a newly dead patriarch return to settle his affairs. This is dark writing, ripe with secrets and family drama. I dare you not to be sucked in by the eerie atmosphere and cast of intriguing characters with messy relationships.
- championed by Alison Watson, teen librarian
The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan
We live busy lives, dealing with the tsunami of information by moving on and staying on the surface, never delving too deeply. To counter this, each summer I look for a big, satisfying book that rewards my investment of scarce time, a book that wraps me in its world and engages me on many levels. This year that book was Richard Flanagan's stunning, moving novel, The Narrow Road to the Deep North.
On the surface, this is the life story of Australian Dorrigo Evans, a surgeon and war hero, and the central events in his life; his time in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp in the Second World War, working on the Burma death railway, and his love affair with Amy, his uncle's wife. The brutal scenes in the POW camp are difficult to read at times yet incredibly powerful. But there are so many levels to the novel beyond the war, starting with Dorrigo himself, a complex, flawed man who struggles to understand his own life. And as Dorrigo struggles, I was drawn deeper too, brought to reflect on my own life and those hard questions like, what does it all mean? And you can't ask more of a book than that.
- championed by Peter Bailey, library director
