What is it about Canadian writers?

Margaret Atwood, Carol Shields and Alice Munro are at the top of literary lists and I recommend Cat's eye, The stone diaries and Runaway as "must reads". But there are other contemporary Canadian writers who deserve to be read more widely.

I have just read February by Lisa Moore and was impressed by its uncovering of feelings through her analysis of family situations and an appalling tragedy. The narrative spirals round and round a preoccupation but is resolved in an understated way leaving the reader to fit the pieces together. Very satisfying.

And immediately afterwards I read Good to a fault by Marina Endicott which won the Commonwealth Writers Prize in 2009. Considered a social observer in the tradition of Jane Austen - Barbara Pym - Anne Tyler (yes, all on my list of highly recommended writers), Marina Endicott has drawn an unlikely picture of cohabitation and peopled it with memorable characters. She comments with wit and wisdom on illness, death, religion and goodness and provides another credible and satisfying ending.

    Listen to an interview with Marina Endicott  

What makes a New Zealand novel?

The classic New Zealand novel by Jane Mander, The story of a New Zealand river explores feelings of isolation, remoteness and loneliness but there is a way for Alice to come to terms with her surroundings.

A modern New Zealand novel by poet Elizabeth Smither considers feelings in terms of family rather than landscape but it also includes a growing awareness of self that makes for interesting reading.
This contemporary novel, just like modern life, is wider than New Zealand including sections set in Australia and trips overseas.

Lola is a gentle read, written poetically with wry humour and I enjoyed it very much.

First person narratives

First person narratives in fiction are always interesting, sometimes not reliable and increasingly speaking from elsewhere! I'm thinking about the books narrated after a character's death;  The Lovely bones, If I stay and Her fearful symmetry in particular.

What links these books is that the narrator is trying to make sense of the current situation by considering the past and the possible future. In essence, these books explore relationships between the narrator and the other characters but because of the narrator's unique position they have more knowledge than any of the other characters. That adds an extra element of analysis and consideration that I have enjoyed in these three novels.

And I have just noticed that the covers are a similar shade of blue - now I wonder if that is significant too?