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Miriam toews' latest novel offers ardent, funny lessons in staying and fighting.

Kristen Martin

In a recent interview with The Globe and Mail , Canadian writer Miriam Toews explained that she thinks of all of her novels as "one big book. Every protagonist is some version of me and there's always some version of my sister, some version of my mother, just some version of the people in my world."

Toews has, again and again, mined the oppressive patriarchy and repressive religion of the Mennonite community she left behind. She peppers her novels with Plautdietsch dialect, punctuates them with absurdity that deflates sanctimony, and centers them on the perspectives of strong women who have suffered much but are determined to persevere. At the heart of Toews's "one big book" are the central traumas of her life — the depressions and suicides of both her father and sister — which she kaleidoscopically parses, considering what it means to trudge forward after catastrophic loss.

Her last novel, 2018's Women Talking , introduced a variation into this pattern, exploring the lives of people Toews does not know personally, but to whom she is distantly related . Women Talking is "an act of female imagination" responding to the men of a Mennonite colony in Bolivia who serially drugged and raped their women and girls for years. The result is a Greek chorus of eight women who meet in a hay loft to discuss what they should do in response to the attacks. They have three options: do nothing, stay and fight, or leave.

These 'Women Talking' Build Their Own Faith And Future

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'women talking' gives a human voice to horror.

Toews's latest, Fight Night , brings the thread of her "one big book" back home and broadens what it means to stay and fight. Fight Night once again explores multigenerational female relationships, but this time zeroes in on one Toronto family: nine-year-old Swiv, who has been expelled from school for fighting; Mooshie, Swiv's mother, an actor who is heavily pregnant; and Elvira, Mooshie's effervescent and sui generis mother and the stand-in for Toews's mother, whose name is also Elvira. Mooshie — preoccupied with her third trimester, the play she's rehearsing, her sister's suicide, and her husband's walking out — relies on Elvira to watch Swiv. Elvira — her heart petering out, dependent on nitroglycerin spray — relies on Swiv to help her bathe, accompany her around the city, and saw her whodunnits into slenderer (and thus easier to hold) volumes. In return, Swiv receives lessons in how to fight, and how to survive.

Fight Night is narrated by Swiv, in the form of a letter to her missing father — a pair of risks that (mostly) pay off. Toews is a master of voice, and Swiv's, with its mix of precocious parroting of Mooshie and Elvira and exasperation with them, is one that I could read forever. In the opening pages, we get such gems as, "Mom is having a complete nervous breakdown and a geriatric pregnancy which doesn't mean she's going to push an old geezer out of her vag, it means she's too old to be up the stump and is so exhausted ." And while the first half of the book is light on plot — like Women Talking , this is a novel driven mostly by women talking — it is carried by Swiv's transcriptions of Elvira's routine antics. In Toews's hands, mundanity teems with comic detail:

When she drops pills on the floor accidentally, if she notices she drops them, she says Bombs away, Swiv! ... I come running and drop down onto the floor and scramble around by her feet picking them up and also picking up hearing aid batteries and conchigliettes and pieces from her Amish farm puzzle.

Fight Night 's Elvira shares much with Elvira Toews: they both love the Raptors, suffer chronic heart conditions, and have left what Swiv calls the "town of escaped Russians." They've both lost a husband and daughter to suicide, and in the aftermath have grappled with how to keep living. For both Elviras, the answer to surviving grief is to ask "Who can I help?" The Elvira of Fight Night has moved in with Mooshie to help her through her "fear and anxiety and rage" borne of her sudden single motherhood, pregnancy, grief, and terror of inherited mental illness.

Helping Mooshie means helping Swiv, who's been reacting to mother's "scorched earth" moods and her father's absence by fighting to point that she comes home from school "with dried blood on [her] face." What Swiv is really worried about is death and bereavement — that her mother will go the way of her aunt and grandfather, that her grandma's heart will give out, that her father will never return. It is in these conversations that Toews distills the meaning of staying and fighting. The fight is for survival in a hostile world: The women in Fight Night have fought off their demons; the "pompous, authoritarian, insecure" leader of their Mennonite village and his similarly endowed male followers, "doucherocket" directors, an alcoholic husband looking for an excuse to leave, and a bloodline filled with depression telling the lie that leaving is the best option. For these women, fighting is pushing against the currents of despair and remembering, as Elvira puts it, that "we're here! We are all here now."

Swiv begins to comprehend this meaning of fighting in the second half of the novel, when she accompanies Elvira on a trip to visit her nephews in Fresno before the baby comes and while her heart will allow it. Amid the slapstick routines of negotiating airport travel, ill-advised dance moves at a nursing home, and a lurching lesson in driving a stick shift, Swiv finally learns what Mooshie — who is largely an absence in the book — has truly been fighting through in the past year. As Toews shifts the narration to Elvira, who for once stops laughing to be frank with Swiv, Fight Night delves into the abyss of despair, betrayal, stolen agency and stolen joy.

The journey to this dark place is brief, and part of me wished for more dwelling in the hardest parts of these women's lives — a kind of reflection that a nine-year-old, even one who has seen as much as Swiv, cannot provide. But, as Elvira says, "To be alive means full body contact with the absurd. Still, we can be happy." This is an apt mission statement for Toews's body of work. Fight Night makes an ardent, hilarious, and moving addition.

Kristen Martin's writing has also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Believer, The Baffler, and elsewhere. She tweets at @kwistent .

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Home of Tundra Books, Puffin Canada, Penguin Teen Canada, and Friends

The Globe 100: Our Favourite Books of 2020

Every year, the reviewers and editors at the Globe and Mail put together their list of notable books called The Globe 100 and we’re so happy to see some of our titles were included! Congratulations to our creators!

The Magic Fish By Trung Le Nguyen 256 Pages | Ages 12+ | Hardcover ISBN 9780593125298 | Random House Graphic Real life isn’t a fairytale. But Tiến still enjoys reading his favorite stories with his parents from the books he borrows from the local library. It’s hard enough trying to communicate with your parents as a kid, but for Tiến, he doesn’t even have the right words because his parents are struggling with their English. Is there a Vietnamese word for what he’s going through? Is there a way to tell them he’s gay? A beautifully illustrated story by Trung Le Nguyen that follows a young boy as he tries to navigate life through fairytales, an instant classic that shows us how we are all connected.

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Ismailimail

Https://ismailimail.blog, book reviews | the globe and mail arts staff writers recommend three new books including ayaz pirani’s “how beautiful people are”.

• by ismailimail
• Posted on July 4, 2022

June 29, 2022 : The Globe and Mail Arts staff recommend short and sweet summer reads.

How Beautiful People Are by Ayaz Pirani (Gordon Hill Press) – review by Rukhsar Ali

For those who answer, “Where are you from?” with an asterisked half-truth, you will find comfort in the in-between space where Ayaz Pirani’s newest collection of poetry digs in its roots. Animated through the character of Kabir from Pirani’s past work, How Beautiful People Are embodies love and loss, and longing and belonging all at once, journeying the reader through the complexity of the human condition and the dynamism of identity.

Written with allusions to the diwan (collection) of ginan and granth literature from the Indian subcontinent, the collection is unapologetic in its origins while simultaneously exploring the question of its postcolonial existence. Pirani’s speaker restlessly rustles the definitions of home through the book’s pages to find familiarity “on the last leg of / someone else’s journey.” But the task isn’t quite so simple, because “Once you leave the village / there’s no road back.”

Drawing from his own hyphenated identity, the poet, born in Tanzania and raised in Canada, snapshots moments in time in short, and often snappy, poems that revel in nuance in a world where “Nuance is heading for the door.” At times crisp and poignant, eccentric and whimsical, the poetry collection is an intergenerational garden where definitions of home rendezvous in cleverly structured poems on the page.

How Beautiful People Are is a mosaic of experiences, memories and tradition where these facets of being interplay. It’s a quick read that’ll leave you asking questions about origin and humanity, and a sense of comfort in not having all the answers.

Click here to purchase the book.

About the author Ayaz Pirani was born in Tanzania and studied Humanities in Toronto and Montreal. His degree is from Vermont College of Fine Arts. His books include Happy You Are Here , Kabir’s Jacket Has a Thousand Pockets , and Bachelor of Art . His work has recently appeared in ARC Poetry Magazine , The Antigonish Review , The Malahat Review , and Guest 16 .

Additional book reviews by The Globe and Mail Arts staff writers : Tides by Sara Freeman (Penguin Random House Canada) – review by Marsha Lederman : Tides begins with a woman on a long bus journey out, heading toward the sea. Who she is and why she’s leaving slowly unfold, revealed in bits and pieces in brief segments à la Jenny Offill. The segments can be as brief as a single sentence, but through each, the bitter onion of this woman’s life is unpeeled, and the reader begins to understand. Read full review at The Global and Mail

Good Girl by Anna Fitzpatrick (Flying Books) – review by Rebecca Tucker : Lucy Selberg, the protagonist of Toronto writer Anna Fitzpatrick’s debut novel, Good Girl , is a 25-year-old writer and bookseller also living in Toronto. After she meets Henry, a man with whom she’s able to explore her interest in kink (specifically, her interest in BDSM), Lucy finds herself also exploring, essentially, how to be the right kind of person – the right kind of colleague, the right kind of friend, the right kind of lover, the right kind of feminist, the right kind of writer. How to be good. Read full review at The Global and Mail

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Independent, civil society media featuring Ismaili Muslim community, inter and intra faith endeavors, achievements and humanitarian works. View all posts by ismailimail

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Globe and Mail reviews Albatross

Posted August 19, 2019 by Terry Fallis

It’s always nice to make the Globe and Mail! The takeaway line for me in this mini-review:

“This novel has a fable-like quality and philosophical depths that Fallis plumbs with a deceptive subtlety.”

Having seldom been known for being either deceptive or subtle in my writing, I’m very happy with this. It’s still early days, but I’m pleased with how everything is unfolding since the launch of Albatross less than a week ago.

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• #globeandmail
• #mcclellandstewart
• #mediacoverage
• #terryfallis

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Mark Bourrie, winner of the 2020 Charles Taylor Prize for “Bush Runner: The Adventures of Pierre Radisson,” now turns his considerable investigative powers to the “fast life and quick death” of George McCullagh.

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George McCullagh in the Globe office just after he bought the paper in 1936.

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Gold mining and stock riches, race horses and establishment acceptance, Globe & Mail founder George McCullagh’s ‘fast life and quick death’

A critical assessment of the merits of a subject, such as art, film, music, television, food and literature. Reviews are based on the writer’s informed/expert opinion.

Mark Bourrie’s new book ‘Big Men Fear Me’ gives shape to an era and man almost erased by history

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Mark Bourrie, winner of the 2020 Charles Taylor Prize for “Bush Runner: The Adventures of Pierre Radisson,” now turns his considerable investigative powers to the “fast life and quick death” of George McCullagh. This handsome, ambitious, charismatic newspaper man — founder of the Globe and Mail — has, until now, been almost erased from Toronto history. The facts are these: a “bright kid from London (Ontario) with no education” grew up to mingle with the rich and powerful, attract thousands of listeners to his radio speeches and grace the pages of the world’s press.

His story begins in the dusty rural roads of Ontario, where young George first made his mark selling the Globe newspaper — so successfully that the paper hired, then fired him. (He smoked, drank, loved horses and racing: all habits disdained by his puritanical bosses.) At age 31, wealthy from mining investments — Bourrie’s chapters on Ontario’s gold mining boom are worth the price of the book — and with backing from friend and mining magnate William Wright, George purchased the Globe, then the Mail and Empire: the Globe and Mail was born.

Like a northern Horatio Alger or Jay Gatsby, McCullagh shone in Toronto’s financial, newspaper and sporting circles. He was on the board of Toronto’s Maple Leaf Gardens, part-owner of the Argonauts football team, owned one of the best racehorse stables in the country and was frequently touted as a future prime minister. Then he was found dead at his estate north of the city, aged 47.

There are many threads to untangle here and Bourrie — journalist, academic, and lawyer — unpicks them all. Spanning the first half of 20th-century Ontario, McCullagh’s life and times become an engrossing tale of ambition, politics and bipolar illness — it’s like little else we’re likely to read this year.

“George McCullagh’s Canada has passed into history — a land where great veins of gold were waiting to be discovered by people willing to trudge through -45 degree weather, where a man without an education could become the most powerful publisher in Canada,” Bourrie writes.

The book features a cast of historical characters that Bourrie often calls “weird”; they include politicians, prospectors and, of course, newspapermen — they were mostly, but not all, men. (One Ontario gold millionaire, Harry Oakes, was mysteriously murdered in the Bahamas.) These near-Shakespearean characters sometimes include George’s friends, sometimes the opposite — especially those who were social progressives.

His interest in newspapers began in his Bay Street days, after he became friendly with Percy Parker, a successful lawyer and fellow gold and oil mining speculator. Parker’s death left an empty seat on the University of Toronto board that Premier Mitch Hepburn awarded George, since Hepburn’s political success had benefited hugely from Parker and McCullagh backing his recent campaign. Not bad for a dropout. George McCullagh, young media darling, seemed destined to achieve the heights of power. But that unfortunate boast in an early interview, “big men fear me,” showed naiveté and hubris, his essential character flaws.

It was a tumultuous life, and Bourrie tells it with wit and humour — “If McCullagh hadn’t had bad luck in politics, he would have had no luck at all.” Under McCullagh’s leadership, his newspapers waged a long and sometimes vicious war of words with the Toronto Star and its owner, “Holy Joe” Atkinson, a strict Protestant who abhorred drinking but championed the rights of women and the poor.

Whereas Atkinson and then prime minister Mackenzie King were fast friends, the gregarious, racecourse-loving McCullagh was an outsider whose politics swerved hard right when American unions inspired Ontario’s underpaid Oshawa autoworkers to strike in 1937. Both he and his backer, Bill Wright, to whom he was much indebted, fiercely opposed unionization.

The word “communism” was flung about. “And the strike fuelled the already tough competition between McCullagh and Atkinson into a hate-fuelled brawl,” destroying “the idea that McCullagh was a man of the people.” When McCullagh next formed the Leadership League, a coalition scheme aimed at eliminating provincial political parties entirely, his grand scheme fizzled.

It was a rambunctious age. In early days, Hemingway was filing stories for the Star, soon to become “Canada’s most successful metropolitan newspaper.” During the Depression, Hepburn, an onion farmer whose Trumpian-style populism kept him in power for years, carried on secret boozing and womanizing in his suite at the King Edward Hotel on King Street, activities unreported by the press.

Capturing the energy and pathos of these decades — two world wars, the Depression, the early postwar years — Bourrie recreates a whole world for readers who don’t remember which daily newspaper landed on their front steps, or which political party was supported in its editorial pages.

So lively is his style that McCullagh’s sudden death in 1951 comes as almost as sad a shock as it did to his friends and contemporaries, who assiduously covered up rumours about mental illness and suicide. A “two-fisted Canadian” (when that was high praise) the epitome of the age’s ideal, a handsome self-made man, who greeted “newsies” (the old men who sold papers on city streets) by their first names, but whose portrait no longer hangs at the paper he created, is brought to nostalgic, vivid life, his portrait restored, flaws and all.

Nancy Wigston is a freelance writer in Toronto.

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WARMINGTON: Thieves had their eye on a stolen Lamborghini, so did the cops

Kinsella: is this, at long last, the result of multiculturalism, 'not supposed to happen:' celebrities who found love later in life, chaudhri: termination of rbc cfo raises questions, maple leafs sign defenceman nicolas mattinen, book review: former globe and mail editor dissects past, present and future of news media.

John Stackhouse, former editor-in-chief of the Globe and Mail, explores the decline of newspapers in his new book Mass Disruption: Thirty Years on the Front Lines of a Media Revolution.

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Article content

Mass Disruption: Thirty Years on the Front Lines of a Media Revolution

by John Stackhouse

Random House

Although more people than ever before are reading newspapers, the business model that has sustained newspapers for more than 100 years is in trouble as advertisers move online, where ads sell for far less than in the printed product.

“The second decade of the new millennium rattled just about everything to do with newspapers, except perhaps their influence,” Stackhouse writes in the book. “For all the red ink splashing around the advertising and circulation departments, the editorial side of the business enjoyed a cachet that was less diminished. … (W)hen journalism made a lasting difference, it continued to do so, more often that not, through a newspaper site.”

Stackhouse worked for 30 years in newspapers, beginning in the 1980s. He started at the London Free Press, where there were about 150 journalists, while today there are less than 50, he said.

“The economic duress of serious journalism-based organizations is putting in jeopardy the quality of the information and that is something that has a risk of eroding until it’s too late and we realize what we’ve lost,” Stackhouse said. “We’re seeing a severe diminution of quality journalism and reporting, more at the local level than at the national level.”

This becomes a significant problem when, as found in one study in the U.S., the most significant source of news is the local politician’s Facebook page or the most significant provider of news about crime is the police department, he says.

“I don’t think that’s how, as citizens, we want to be informed about crime, exclusively by the police,” Stackhouse said. “We’re sliding into a very risky era, where, especially at the local level, the coverage of institutions, which I think we’d all agree is a public good, is being taken over by individual private interests.”

Nonetheless, he’s hopeful. He says the demand is high for quality journalism, all that’s missing is the economic formula to sustain it.

He’s found a couple of emerging business models that might work, including an advertising-based model used at the Atlantic and a non-profit model used at the Texas Tribune.

Newspapers can charge more for advertisements online, if they can prove the ads will reach a quality audience, Stackhouse said. Also, getting regular readers who will revisit a site again and again is critical to getting subscribers, which Stackhouse is convinced newspapers are going to need in the future.

“One of the things that gives me hope is that there is more and, I would argue, better information about current events than ever,” Stackhouse said. “There’s more variety. We saw that in the recent election. It would be hard to argue that we all did not have access to good information and a good debate.”

Stackhouse also wrote Out of Poverty: And into Something More Comfortable and Timbit Nation: A Hitchhiker’s View of Canada. After five years as editor-in-chief at the Globe, he is now a senior vice-president in the office of the CEO at the Royal Bank of Canada.

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Book review: Former Globe and Mail editor dissects past, present and future of news media Back to video

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The Next Chapter's mystery book panel recommends 9 books to read this summer

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Summer is finally here! And as is  The Next Chapter  tradition, our mystery panel joins Shelagh Rogers to deliver a brand new list of whodunits.

McMaster University professor P.K. Rangachari, bookstore owner Michael Bumsted and Globe and Mail columnist Margaret Cannon have nine books that mystery fans should read over the summer. 

The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris

Margaret says:  "This is a smart, funny, crazy, little novel set in the high tension world of modern publishing. Nella Rogers is the only Black employee at a prestigious New York publishing house. One day, another Black girl arrives — and very rapidly, Nella is swept off her pedestal and starts receiving nasty notes that tell her to get out of the publishing house. She feels threatened and undermined by someone who should be her friend. 

If you're a fan of Jordan Peele, you're going to love this book. - Margaret Cannon

"There are four narrators. All of them are unreliable at one time or another, but they're also quite reliable. If you're a fan of Jordan Peele, you're going to love this book. It's a great, funny, smart read."

Rotherweird by Andrew Caldecott

Michael says: "This novel is a bit of a mystery 'mash up': It's a historical mystery, in that it is about a town that was founded in 1558 by some Englishmen who are afraid that Mary Tudor is going to kill a whole bunch of child geniuses. The town is then separated from England to be a totally autonomous town. The history of the town or the history of England before 1800 is not allowed to be taught. 

"Then we move into the setup of a caper in which a con man is hiring an actress to be his wife and a young street tough to be his son so that he can infiltrate the town, for purposes we don't know. 

This novel is a bit of a mystery mash-up. - Michael Bumsted

"Then it is a 'missing persons' mystery, where a young and recently out of work historian finds himself hired to be the modern history teacher at the school. He's the only outsider allowed into the town — and he is only allowed to teach from 1800 onward. 

"There are the summer reads that you can pick up and put down as you realize that you need to go turn the steaks or it suddenly started raining — and there are the summer reads that you want to grab and carry and then sort of have with you over the course of it.

"This book fits into that latter category."

The Windsor Knot by SJ Bennett

P.K. says:  "Queen Elizabeth is the main detective in this book. Of course, being the Queen, she doesn't get her hands dirty —  she nudges, she hints, she suggests. Basically, the story is about a pianist, a guest at Windsor, who has been found strangled in some rather odd circumstances — he's naked with only a purple dressing gown. It's unclear if it was a suicide or a murder.

"So the Queen investigates, and she has her Nigerian assistant actually doing most of the legwork. 

Queen Elizabeth is the main detective in this book. - P.K. Rangachari

"It's very funny because he brings in a whole lot of new issues, including China's involvement in Africa, Putin, all kinds of things. It's still in the realm of what I'd like to call 'light and larky.'"

Girl A by Abigail Dean

Margaret says: " This is a hard book for a summer read, but it's beautifully written. It's a gripping psychological novel. The central character is a woman named Lex Gracie. We first encounter her when she's on her way to the prison where her mother has died. She discovers that her mother has left a modest amount of money and the house where Lex grew up.

"We discover that she's one of seven children who were part of a terrible, terrible case of child abuse. That's where the Girl A comes from, because Lex was a girl who escaped and rescued her siblings.

This is a hard book for a summer read, but it's beautifully written. - Margaret Cannon

"That opens the story of her beginning now to explore as she meets with each of her siblings to discuss the disposition of the house. This is a story of not so much what happened, but why and how it happened.

"It's quite brilliantly done. It's very well written."

This Town Sleeps By Dennis E. Staples

Michael says:  "Dennis E. Staples is from northern Minnesota. He's an Ojibwe writer. This is his debut novel, which is about the after-effects of a crime. A murder has been committed on the reservation, of a teenage basketball star. Years later, our protagonist, a character named Marion Lafournier, has come back to live near the reservation and is investigating. He finds himself, not on purpose, being drawn toward uncovering what happened to the character who was murdered.

"Marion, who is openly gay, finds himself in a relationship with a classmate, a white non-Indigenous character who lives within the community, who is also closeted.

It's certainly a heavy book, but it is so lightly, wonderfully written. - Michael Bumsted

"I read it in about three hours. It moved so quickly for me. It has such a powerful theme — and such powerful points of discussion about reservation life, about secret romances between openly gay and closeted gay men and about alcoholism.

"It's certainly a heavy book, but it is so lightly, wonderfully written." 

• Check out  The Next Chapter 's mystery panels' summer reading guide

Arsenic and Adobo by Mia P. Manansala

P.K. says:  "This is part of the Tita Rosie's Kitchen Mystery series. It is set in a kitchen that serves Filipino food and there are a whole lot of recipes through the book. One of the characters, the main character's ex-boyfriend, has become a critic, and happens to be eating in the restaurant and dies. That's the start of the mystery. 

It is set in a kitchen that serves Filipino food and there's a whole lot of recipes through the book. - P.K. Rangachari

"The story has this intensely claustrophobic atmosphere of everybody giving advice and making comments about you. It's quite funny, actually, and for anybody who wants to know about Filipino cooking and all the desserts, this book is just dotted with eating."

Blood Grove by Walter Mosley

Margaret says:  "Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins series of books are probably one of the first books to explore not only the Black detective, but the Black historical movement in Los Angeles in the post-Second World War. The series begins with Devil in a Blue Dress in 1946, and this latest book has us up to 1969. 

"In 1969, Los Angeles was burning. South Central was full of riots. The anti-war movement was at its peak. In the midst of all of this chaos comes an unusual murder. 

We have an exploration of the chasms between Americans at that period in time, which is not all that different from our own day. - Margaret Cannon

"Easy, as fans know, is not a professional detective. He started out as a local investigator, and he's emerged as the local man to go to if you have a problem. This time, the person who comes to him is a young white man who needs help because he's being accused of killing a man who was attacking a woman. 

"We have an exploration of the chasms between Americans at that period in time, which is not all that different from our own day. We look at race, we look at caste, we look at class. Mosley brings it all together in this one particular investigation of one particular crime."

So Many Windings by Catherine Macdonald

Michael says:  "It's a historical book. It's set in 1900 Scotland. It features the characters from her previous book: Reverend Charles Lauchlan and his fiancée, Maggie. Charles is a Presbyterian minister, based roughly on Ralph Connor, the famous Canadian author of the early 20th century. Charles and Maggie find themselves accidentally on a bicycle tour of the Scottish Highlands. 

As an author, Macdonald does a wonderful job of taking her experience as a historian and an archival researcher. - Michael Bumsted

"We find that a murder takes place on the bicycle tour and Charles and his friends and colleagues are there to solve it. Macdonald does a wonderful job of taking her experience as a historian and an archival researcher. She mixes that information together with a lot of the themes of the early 20th century."

Lost Immunity by Daniel Kalla

P.K. says:  "This book is set in a post-COVID world. But it raises the issue that there are older diseases we also have to worry about, such as meningitis. 

"The book deals with a vaccine and, as a doctor, Kalla brings in a lot of nuances. We always think of frontline workers. But there's a lot of back line workers that are very important in the production and distribution of a vaccine.

This book is set in a post-Covid world. - P.K. Rangachari

"It's well worth reading — and it raises a whole lot of issues."

The panelists' comments have been edited for clarity and length.  

More from this episode

• 2021 Indspire Awards recipient Drew Hayden Taylor talks about how he wrote the novel Motorcycles & Sweetgrass
• Candy Palmater shares her 3 favourite sci-fi & fantasy books
• Heather Greenwood Davis reviews 3 books to make you think about our post-pandemic world
• Bedside Books Canadian pop singer Olivia Penalva is 'obsessed' with reading Inward by Yung Pueblo
• FULL EPISODE: Full Episode: June 19, 2021

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Book Club Dec. 19, 2023 Live Discussion with Nina MacLaughlin and Jacob Fricke

Jenny odell on breaking free of the ultimate tyranny in ‘saving time: discovering a life beyond the clock’ odell’s subtle, itinerant study of time feels like an attempt to break through the language of power and find something approaching coexistence., a young woman juggles the burdens of family and self in jessica george’s engaging debut, ‘maame’ this evocative — and, at times, gloriously messy — coming-of-age story tackles enormous contemporary topics and issues., sick of clichés about love camonghne felix’s powerful memoir ‘dyscalculia’ captures searing miscalculations of the heart, book review thomas mallon’s ‘up with the sun’ is a fictional biography of real-life actor dick kallman, replete with murder and celebrities mallon has a gift for mixing dogged research with a keen understanding of power and human foibles. he conjures empathy for the most despicable of characters., book review mark whitaker’s ‘saying it loud: 1966’ gives new insight into the black power movement a history of activism challenges entrenched beliefs about the origins and intentions of the black power movement., book review aleksandar hemon’s ‘the world and all that it holds’ conscripts readers into the war torn life and love of a queer jewish apothecary turned soldier and survivor the novel’s ability to perpetuate itself seems to come both from the fantastic virtuosity of the writing and from the wonderfully realized idea of the book., book review kathryn ma’s ‘the chinese groove’ is a dickensian journey set in an immigrant’s world ma’s mildly satirical novel follows 18-year-old shelley zheng as he navigates complicated social dynamics where nothing is as simple as it seems after moving from gejiu, china, to san francisco..

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7 New Books We Recommend This Week

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Where are all the books about work? That question lands in our inbox from time to time, and no wonder: In terms of hours and paychecks and the sense of identity they impart, jobs are a consuming part of our lives that authors do indeed too often neglect. So this week we recommend three books that put the world of paid labor front and center: Adelle Waldman’s novel “Help Wanted” is set in a suburban box store, Hamilton Nolan’s “The Hammer” assesses the current state of union organizing, and Jane Kamensky’s “Candida Royalle and the Sexual Revolution” takes the measure of a proto-girlboss who went from starring in pornographic movies to launching her own production company with a feminist slant.

Also recommended this week: a look at Saddam Hussein’s state of mind as America and Iraq approached war in 2003, a study of African American literature as a reflection of Black history, a warning about the impacts of climate-fueled migration and, in fiction, Percival Everett’s sparkling riff on the story of Huck Finn, this time centering the character of Huck’s fellow runaway Jim. Happy reading. — Gregory Cowles

JAMES Percival Everett

In this reworking of the “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” Jim, the enslaved man who accompanies Huck down the Mississippi River, is the narrator, and he recounts the classic tale in a language that is his own and with surprising details that reveal a far more resourceful, cunning and powerful character than we knew.

“Luxuriates in language. Everett, like Twain, is a master of American argot. … This is Everett’s most thrilling novel, but also his most soulful.”

From Dwight Garner’s review

Doubleday | $28

CANDIDA ROYALLE AND THE SEXUAL REVOLUTION: A History From Below Jane Kamensky

In 1984, Candida Royalle changed the porn industry when she co-founded the female-targeted Femme Productions. As Kamensky convincingly argues in this scholarly and engaging tribute, the performer, producer and director was more than a feminist pioneer; her life mirrored that of the sexual revolution itself.

“Her rigor and thoroughness demand that the reader take seriously an underdog who made her name in a stigmatized industry. This book is a labor of empathy that refuses to simplify or valorize its subject.”

From Rich Juzwiak’s review

Norton | $35

HELP WANTED Adelle Waldman

Waldman’s long-anticipated follow-up to her 2013 debut, “The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.,” applies her sharp sense of relational drama and dark comedy to the retail work space. The big-box store is Town Square, and the cast of characters who toil there are as surprising and varied as the merchandise they stock.

“Waldman is skilled at building momentum and tension through intricacies of plot. The book shines whenever the group is together, concocting plans … in search of a shared sense of hope.”

From Alexandra Chang’s review

Norton | $28.99

THE HAMMER: Power, Inequality, and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor Hamilton Nolan

The longtime labor reporter and former Gawker journalist’s lively account of the current landscape of the American labor movement paints colorful portraits of union organizers from across the country alongside a pointed critique of the A.F.L.-C.I.O.

“Offers an impressive array of scenes from the front lines of the 21st-century economy. … As ‘The Hammer’ shows, the kind of solidarity that might naturally arise from shared frustrations on the conveyor belt doesn’t necessarily translate to the broader movement all on its own.”

From Willa Glickman’s review

Hachette | $30

THE ACHILLES TRAP: Saddam Hussein, the C.I.A., and the Origins of America’s Invasion of Iraq Steve Coll

Coll’s book stretches from Hussein’s earliest days in power to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003, tracking the dictator’s state of mind with the help of 2,000 hours of rarely accessed audio from high-level meetings that Hussein “recorded as assiduously as Richard Nixon,” Coll says.

“Most of the story is vivid and sometimes even funny. … Unlike his main character, Coll succeeds in part because he has an eye for dramatic irony.”

From Noreen Malone’s review

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ON THE MOVE: The Overheating Earth and the Uprooting of America Abrahm Lustgarten

The climate is changing, says the author, a climate scientist — and drought, fire and heat waves are going to cause massive demographic shifts. To get a sense of the scale of these changes, the author examines studies and models that simulate future migration scenarios, and combines his insights with first-person reportage. The results are often alarming and admittedly speculative, but never less than compelling.

“The author’s eloquent personal insights … are astonishing as well as gripping, presenting an intimate understanding of why poor agricultural workers, beset by droughts and calamitous economic circumstances, risk everything.”

From Jon Gertner’s review

Farrar, Straus & Giroux | $30

THE BLACK BOX: Writing the Race Henry Louis Gates Jr.

In his latest book, the Harvard scholar shows how African American writers have used the written word to shape their reality despite constraints imposed on them from outside, using the metaphor of the box to reflect ordeals withstood and survived since Africans were first brought to this continent.

“The allure of this book, and the reason for its existence, are the narrative links he draws. … This is a literary history of Black America, but it is also an argument that African American history is inextricable from the history of African American literature.”

From Tope Folarin’s review

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