3 jaw-dropping books to read if you loved The Party Wall
Jennifer Warren | CBC | Posted: June 21, 2017 2:25 PM | Last Updated: July 4, 2017
Catherine Leroux's The Party Wall earned a spot on the 2016 Scotiabank Giller Prize shortlist. Meanwhile, its translator, Lazer Lederhendler, won the 2016 Governor General's Literary Award for French-to-English translation.
If The Party Wall's twists, turns and transcendent revelations left you wanting more of the same, here are three Canadian books that will hit you just as hard in the feels.
Arvida by Samuel Archibald
Elevator pitch: The stories in this collection pull back the curtain on the myth, lore and everyday life of an aluminum-smelting town in Quebec's Saguenay region.
If you loved The Party Wall for: Its author's rising-Quebec-literary-rock-star status. Shocking twists and deeply buried secrets, bubbling up through the cracks in seemingly ordinary lives.
Literary street cred: Arvida was a breakout book for the small publisher Biblioasis in 2015, and was a Scotiabank Giller Prize finalist. Biblioasis is also The Party Wall's publisher.
From the book: There was a very beautiful photo from after the war, which was, like all beautiful photos, an empty picture, with practically nothing in it and everything outside it. In it, a dozen bicycles were strewn over the lawn in front of the clinic. Outside the photo, in the building's basement, children were lined up before a large white curtain, waiting to be vaccinated against polio. Outside the photo, the few times I saw it, my grandmother pressed her finger down on it, saying:
"You see? There are no thieves in Arvida."
That's what she said all her life, my grandmother, mother of my father. Except for about twenty years when, from time to time, she looked at my father and said:
"There were no thieves in Arvida. Now there's you.
Inside by Alix Ohlin
Elevator pitch: A Montreal therapist named Grace stumbles upon a man who's tried to kill himself and sets off a fragmented, globetrotting narrative about our flawed connections with each other.
If you loved The Party Wall for: The surprising ways in which disparate characters are linked, the twists in their fates, the varied settings and the unfailingly poetic language in which it all plays out.
Literary street cred: Inside was a finalist for both the 2012 Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Rogers Writers' Trust Prize for Fiction.
From the book: "There usually aren't many people in that part of the park," she said, "which I guess must be why you chose it. I don't know what would've happened if I hadn't come along. Would you have tried again, after a while?"
He said nothing.
There were deep lines around his eyes, as if he spent a lot of time outdoors. His lips were unnaturally pale. Beneath the thin hospital blanket his body looked sturdy and solidly muscled. It was impossible to tell, as he lay there, whether he was handsome or not. The spirit that would have animated his face, giving it character and attitude, had receded from view. She stepped closer. Even at this little distance his body seemed to give off no heat whatsoever, as if he'd been permanently chilled.
"You're back from the dead," she said. "Maybe you don't want to be, but you are."
All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews
Elevator pitch: Two sisters, Elfrieda and Yolandi, share an unbreakable bond — a bond that is tested to its limits when Elfrieda asks her sister to help her end her life.
If you loved The Party Wall for: The full power of family ties. Characters undergoing breakthrough moment after breakthrough moment, even if they have to punch through a wall to get there.
Literary street cred: All My Puny Sorrows won the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize in 2014, and was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize the same year.
From the book: She had been inspired by the ochre paintings on the rock, by their impermeability and their mixed message of hope, reverence, defiance and eternal aloneness. She decided she too would make her mark. She came up with a design that incorporated her initials E.V.R. (Elfrieda Von Riesen) and below those the initials A.M.P. Then like a coiled snake, the letter S which covered, underlined and dissected the other letters. She showed me what it looked like, on a yellow legal notepad. Hmm, I said, I don't get it. Well, she told me, the initials of my name are obviously the initials of my name and the A.M.P. stands for All My Puny... then the big S stands for Sorrows which encloses all the other letters. She made a fist with her right hand and punched the open palm of her left hand.