Five Canadian books to add to your fall reading list

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So long, summer — it’s time to hit the books. Luckily, September’s slate is packed with CanLit stars.

Pick a Colour: A Novel
Souvankham Thammavongsa
Knopf Canada

In her exquisite short-story collection, How to Pronounce Knife, Giller Prize and O. Henry Award winner Souvankham Thammavongsa wrote about a failed boxer who discovered a hidden talent after his sister hired him to work at her nail salon. There are shades of that immigrant story in Thammavongsa’s debut novel, which examines the rich inner life of retired boxer and nail-salon owner Ning, who lives above the shop.
Class and privilege are in play as, for simplicity’s sake, the salon’s customers know Ning and all the other salon workers as Susan. Toiling in polite anonymity, 42-year-old Ning is profoundly self-aware, and equally aware of how she is perceived by clients. One summer’s day, as the Susans share gossip and a common language, Ning contemplates her life’s path and her place in the world in a way that readers may find poignant and enlightening.

Anarchists in Love
Robert Hough
Douglas & McIntyre

Anarchist, libertine and pioneering feminist Emma Goldman and her lover Alexander Berkman hoped to spark a revolution after they met in 1890s New York City. It was the Gilded Age of robber barons, when 90 per cent of America’s wealth was in the hands of a precious few on the top tier of the economic ladder. Sound familiar? The modern-day echoes of that era are not lost on celebrated author Robert Hough (The Marriage of Rose Camilleri, The Final Confession of Mabel Stark).
Impoverished immigrants, Emma and Alexander plotted to assassinate a rich industrialist and advocated for anarchy in place of formal government. Goldman, who was deported from the U.S. in 1919, died in Toronto in 1940, after a lifetime of campaigning for workers’ rights and women’s liberation.
A compelling fictional take on their lives and passionate romance, Anarchists in Love promises to be edifying, and perhaps inspiring, as well as entertaining.

The Trial of Katterfelto: A Novel
Michael Redhill
Knopf Canada

Magician, quack, pseudo-scientist — Gustavus Katterfelto was basically a triple threat as a travelling entertainer in late 18th-century England. Giller Prize winner Michael Redhill (Bellevue Square), conjures up a neat fictional addition to Katterfelto’s bag of tricks, when he and sidekick Roger Gossage stumble upon a metal horn that transmits the voice of a woman who declares she is “Siri of Toronto.”
Naturally, they incorporate Siri into their shows, while trying to figure out why she has contacted them from a land “plagued by climate catastrophe and social unrest.”

The Hunger We Pass Down
Jen Sookfong Lee
McClelland & Stewart

A struggling single mom is at the centre of a horror story set, for the most part, in present-day Vancouver and Second World War-era Hong Kong. Alice is the great granddaughter of Gigi, who was abducted into sexual slavery as a “comfort woman” for Japanese soldiers during the war. Since Gigi’s tragic death, intergenerational trauma — in the form of a literal demon — has plagued all the women in her Chinese-Canadian family. Divorced, alcoholic and neglectful as a mother, Alice still manages to run a successful online business and carry on a secret romance. How she manages it all is a mystery — until a long-buried secret is unearthed in her own backyard. Along with her teenage daughter, Luna, Alice tries to put the family demon to rest for good.

Strangers at the Red Door
Dennis Bock
Harper Perennial

A ghostwriter encounters an actual ghost at a train station in China and becomes possessed — and then obsessed with tracking down a bookseller who has been “disappeared” by Chinese authorities.
Ghostwriter Faron Jones is on his way to Hong Kong when he first encounters the ghost of Chinese writer Jiang Ming, along with bookseller Mildred Chen, who is soon arrested for trying to carry Jiang Ming’s banned novel to mainland China.
Soon afterward, Faron is surprised to discover he is suddenly fluent in Mandarin and Cantonese. He’s even more surprised to learn that Jiang Ming has taken up residence in his body, and that his spirit cannot rest until they find Mildred Chen.