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