A mini-Canadian book festival

Elbows up, fellow Canuck readers! 

Between avoiding Amazon, American strawberries, and travel south of the border, why not check out some new Canadian titles? I recently enjoyed three very different ones released this year by women authors, two of whom are from Vancouver! You don’t have to be a fellow Canadian, though, to enjoy these great summer reads.

The first is “Snap” by Susin Nielsen, her debut adult novel after authoring children’s books and a successful career as a showrunner for the Canadian-made show Family Law. “Snap” follows three characters thrown into weekly court-ordered anger management training who of course, become great friends too. As the book jacket promises, it truly delivers a laugh-out-loud story.

I particularly related to when the main protagonist, a fifty-something children’s author, snaps and loses her temper with an obnoxious student during a school presentation. Is there an author alive who didn’t once feel like screaming at someone at a book event? (For me, it was the smug expat husbands, usually from the financial sector, in my audiences. I want to slap most of them senseless.) At a time of over-reaction to absolutely everything going on, an entertaining book about losing your shit altogether is well-timed.

Author Liann Zhang is also from Vancouver and just starting out. After reading her debut “Julie Chan is Dead”, I’m willing to predict a great writing career is in her future. 

I could not stop chuckling as the writer sliced and diced the superficial, materialistic world of social media influencers. Why would anyone would want to become one? Fame, money, and lots of freebies it would seem, but not much joy. 

If you read last year’s bestseller “Yellow Face” by R.F. Kuang which spoofed the publishing industry, you will definitely enjoy “Julie Chan is Dead” for Zhang’s take on women in the social media world.

I wasn’t laughing while reading “How to Share an Egg: A True Story of Hunger, Love, and Plenty” by Bonny Reichert. Rather, I sobbed through most of the first hundred pages. It’s a beautiful memoir written by the Toronto food writer about growing up as a child of a Holocaust survivor. 

Reichert uses food to write about her family’s intergenerational trauma. This is not a literary stretch as her father was a restauranteur in Edmonton after surviving the camps. The author grew up surrounded by Jewish cooking. It was her descriptions of some of those dishes, many of which I had also grown up with, that had me welling up. (I was reading the book on an airplane so that was a bit embarrassing. Then again, I have been known to weep on airplanes. Something to do with the altitude!)

Funnily enough, despite being from Toronto and Jewish too, I had to introduce family members and friends I was visiting there last month to this title. The author should thank me for the additional five copies I purchased as gifts!