If you’ve ever wondered what your favourite Canadian author’s favourite Canadian book is, we’ve got your answer.
From gripping history to soul-searing fiction and a double-dose of the woman who made an orphan from PEI a global superstar, here are the homegrown reads that left an indelible mark on some of the most exciting Canadians putting pen to page today.
Emma Donoghue: Fall on Your Knees, Ann-Marie MacDonald
“I had adored MacDonald as an actor ever since I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing in 1987 so when this first novel of hers appeared in 1996 – when I was in the process of applying for a visa to settle in Canada – I snatched it up.
“I would describe it as the most engrossing, flavoursome, moving study of family in crisis. A few years later I got my book club to read it, and the ensuing fight between those who loved it and those who hated it almost broke the club. For this reason I would recommend Fall on Your Knees to all book clubs who want a lively evening, and all readers who want their minds blown by Maritime cultural history, Catholic guilt and startling, gender-bending queer romance.”
Emma Donoghue’s latest book is The Paris Express.
Genevieve Graham: Someday I’ll Find You, C.C. Humphreys
“From the opening page, I was in 1940, in Europe, in the middle of the war, breathing real history and living alongside characters I both adored and despised. I read it twice, then I read it out loud to my husband – something we do on vacations – and he demanded I read one particular chapter three times because it was so enthralling. And it wasn’t a short chapter! I know that if I were to pick up the book right now and start again, I would be just as engaged. It really should be made into a movie, except a movie could never do it justice.
“I am a romantic. I thrive on adventure and romance, but in order for a story to steal my heart, it has to be believable and deeply consequential. Someday I’ll Find You is loosely based on Chris’s parents – his mother was a spy and his father was a pilot – which made it even more meaningful. Chris’s gift, I think, is partially in how he can make his characters so courageous, and yet entirely vulnerable at the same time. Then there’s the impeccable research, the natural dialogue and his descriptive genius – just enough, never too much.”
Genevieve Graham’s latest novel is On Isabella Street
Charlotte Gray: The Private Capital: Ambition and Love in the Age of Macdonald and Laurier, Sandra Gwyn
“I read this book soon after it was published in 1984. I had left London, England, five years earlier to live in Canada’s capital – a city that I quickly discovered was scorned by Toronto literati as ‘the town that fun forgot.’ I also discovered that, in my new country, the spotlight was always on political and military history. There were few lively books about the social history that I had embraced during my British childhood, how people lived, rather than what they argued over, fought about and died for.
“And then Sandra Gwyn published The Private Capital, and brought my new home brilliantly to life. It wasn’t just her cinematic style of writing, which opened my eyes to Ottawa’s extraordinary Victorian Gothic parliamentary buildings and the swirling currents of the wide Ottawa River. It was the excitement of plunging into Canada’s governing society at the time of Confederation – meeting the bold-face personalities and their wives, servants, lovers and rivals, and watching a raw, boozy lumbertown evolve into a colonial capital.
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“In elegant prose laced with dark wit, Sandra interwove hilarious scandals with nation-building achievements. It was time travel at its best. The Private Capital convinced me that Canadian ignorance of our past represents both a massive waste of extraordinary stories and a reckless indifference to this country’s unique identity.”
Charlotte Gray’s latest book is Passionate Mothers, Powerful Sons: The Lives of Jennie Jerome Churchill and Sara Delano Roosevelt.
Randy Boyagoda: The Collected Stories of Mavis Gallant
“My current favourite Canadian book is not by a Canadian or directly about a Canadian, but Sam Tanenhaus’s just-published life of William F. Buckley Jr. This is a magisterial biography of a major modern figure, which reveals the significance of Canada to this American conservative icon’s story. In 1950, Buckley married Patricia Taylor, the Vancouver-born heiress and daughter of Austin Taylor, the B.C. lumber magnate. Buckley’s wealth, which underwrote his decades of high profile life, owes a great deal to this little-known Canadian source.
“But to be responsible in terms of what I have been asked about for this item, my favourite Canadian book would be The Collected Stories of Mavis Gallant. Oh what a wonderful way to spend a reading season like summer, moving around in Gallant’s world of hopeful, hopeless people trying to make the best of bad situations, in Europe and Canada, both. The prose is crisp and cold, strong and biting, like a stiff and icy gin and tonic at dusk in hot high summer.”
Randy Boyagoda’s latest book is Little Sanctuary.
Bal Khabra: A Complicated Kindness, Miriam Toews
“I read it for the first time in my Grade 10 English class, and it really stuck with me. Miriam Toews has this way of blending heartbreak with these dry, unexpected bits of humour, and it just works. It was the first time I realized how much a character’s inner voice could shape a story. The book hits especially hard when you’re a teenager because it delves into that cognitive dissonance between personal identity and your environment.
“It takes grief, confusion and isolation and threads them through such a sharp, observant teenage voice that you don’t even realize it’s not one of those fast-paced, high-stakes plots. It’s quietly devastating in the best way.
“If you’re into stories that get into the heartache, the confusion and lonely kind of doomed feeling that sticks with you as a teen and follows you through young adulthood, this book lays it out beautifully.”
Bal Khabra is the author of Collide, the first instalment in her series of sports romances.
Kenneth Oppel: Emily of New Moon, L.M. Montgomery
“I read it when I was 12 years old, in Grade 7 in Halifax. I felt completely exhilarated. It was the first story I’d read about someone who had the same aspirations as me: to become a writer. Emily’s excitement over a new blank book, the desire to fill its pages and her ecstatic descriptions of ‘the flash’ all felt very familiar and affirming to me. I was riveted by her experiences of submitting her early poems and stories and waiting for a response. I would say it’s a brilliant coming-of-age story about a young person with an intense inner life, discovering the agonies and ecstasies of creativity.”
Kenneth Oppel’s latest novel is Best of All Worlds.
Carley Fortune: Anne of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery
“I own multiple editions but the copy I first read is a hardcover edition published in Australia in 1991, with beautiful illustrations by Linda Arnold. My mom must have bought it just before we moved back to Canada from Australia. I remember reading it in my bedroom in Barry’s Bay as a child. I was having a tough time making friends and was lonely. I related so much to Anne’s feelings of being an outsider, her love of the natural world and her competitive streak.
“I don’t think there’s another piece of culture that has had as great an impact on my own writing than Anne of Green Gables, and the eighties screen adaptation, starring Megan Follows and Jonathan Crombie. The strong sense of place, the friendship between Anne and Diana, the intergenerational relationships between women, the theme of found family, the mistakes, the romance, the humour and, of course, the puffed sleeves – this story is imprinted on me at the cellular level.
“Anne has a spot in the Canadian literary canon, but I’m surprised by how many bookish people in other countries haven’t read it. It’s one of the greatest works of literature. Full stop.”
Carley Fortune’s latest novel is One Golden Summer.
