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Private Thomas Leadbeater Turvey is nobody's idea of a capable recruit. Shifted from regimental pillar to post, Turvey tries and fails at every odd job in the army with a remarkable genius for mishap.A casualty before he has a chance to see action, Turvey watches the maimed and dying return from the front; thus Earle Birney's comic masterpiece becomes an unforgettable indictment of war.Turvey won the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour in 1949.
The bestselling, critically acclaimed author of A Nurse's Story and The Making of a Nurse is back to describe her experiences as a summer camp nurse.After years of working in intensive care units caring for critically ill people, nurse Tilda Shalof now turns her attention to healthy patients - the kids at summer camp. In this reminiscence of six summers at a variety of camps, Shalof opens a window into the world that is a utopia for the vast majority of children, the proverbial "happy campers," but sometimes also a place of intense misery for a few. Throughout the summers, as kids troop through the infirmary with a variety of ordinary - as well as some quite extraordinary - complaints, Shalof describes how she assesses, diagnoses, and treats them all, from pesky lice infestations and scratchy bug bites, to broken arms and severe accidents. But Shalof finds that more often than not, she is treating the psychological maladies. She befriends kids from families going through bitter divorces, girls with eating disorders, a camper who attempts suicide in a desperate plea to be sent home, a teenager grieving the recent death of his father. Whatever the problem or concern, it is to the camp nurse that kids - and counsellors - go for help. These anecdotes are told in a light-hearted tone, full of good humour and lots of laughs. Shalof's stories are wildly entertaining and will satisfy the twinges of nostalgia every parent feels when sending their kids away to camp.
Part culinary travelogue, part cultural history, Save the Deli is a must-read for anyone whose idea of perfect happiness is tucking into a pastrami on rye with a pickle on the sideCorned beef. Pastrami. Brisket. Matzo balls. Knishes. Mustard and rye. In this book about Jewish delicatessens, about deli's history and characters, its greatest triumphs, spectacular failures, and ultimately the very future of its existence, David Sax goes deep into the world of the Jewish deli. He explores the histories and experiences of the immigrant counterman and kvetching customer; examines the pressures that many delis face; and enjoys the food that is deli's signature. In New York and Chicago, Florida, L.A., Montreal, Toronto, Paris, and beyond, Sax strives to answer the question, Can Jewish deli thrive, and if so, how? Funny, poignant, and impeccably written, Save the Deli is the story of one man's search to save a defining element of a culture — and the sandwiches — he loves.
Seeking refuge from her mysterious past, the beautiful Mrs. Dorval arrives in a small British Columbia town at the confluence of the Fraser and Thompson Rivers. As Frankie Burnaby, the young schoolgirl Mrs. Dorval befriends, pieces together Hetty's story, she begins to realize that her enigmatic idol is also a treacherous opponent.Hetty Dorval, Wilson's first novel, is a wise and expertly crafted tale of innocence and experience.
In the two novellas that make up The Equations of Love, Ethel Wilson describes ordinary people in perilous circumstances with extraordinary insight and compassion. "Tuesday and Wednesday” reconstructs the events of two days in the life of Mort and Myrtle Johnson, whose uninspired marriage is strangely transformed by the tragic intervention of fate. "Lilly's Story” is the study of a woman who, protecting her daughter, invents a new identity for herself, only to live as a fugitive from her own happiness.Fist published in 1952, these intuitive and richly ironic stories reveal the unspoken longings and surprising motives that balance the equations of love.
Set against the austere landscape of northern Labrador, Windflower is the poignant story of Elsa Kumachuk, a young Inuit woman torn between two worlds by the birth of her blond-haired, blue-eyed son. Unacknowledged by his father, an American GI, the child is welcomed into the Inuit community with astonishment and delight. Elsa, however, must come to terms with the conflicting values implied by her son's dual heritage.Gabrielle Roy's last novel, Windflower is both a moving account of one woman's tragic dilemma and a sensitive portrait of a society in transition.
Precocious in childhood, irrepressible in old age, Miss Topaz Edgeworth's singular accomplishment is to live out an entire century in unflagging - and mostly oblivious - optimism. At once outmoded and unconventional, tyrannical and benign, Topaz leads a largely unexamined life. But the magical quality of her consciousness, revealed through stunning narrative technique, makes her into one of the most delightful characters in Canadian literature. Published in 1949, The Innocent Traveller is Ethel Wilson's most original literary achievement.
Set in the hip urban core of Toronto and in the city's outlying areas, this is the story of an unlikely family - held together by love and longing, pain and regret - and what happens when the ties that bind them begin to unravel. There is Walker, a tender but rough-edged horse dealer trying to do the right thing; his fading lounge-singer girlfriend, Mimi; his sister, Joy, who cleans at the golf club nearby; and Joy's teenage daughter, Tanis, self-sufficient, nervy, wise, locked in conflict with her mother, and ready to break away from the tangle of this makeshift family - and does, until a tragic event changes everything. Gritty, seductive, infused with wit and an undercover poignancy, this is an audacious and emotionally compelling novel by a writer who knows exactly where the heart lives and why it's sometimes so hard to find it.
A sparkling, inventive debut novel inspired by Sir John Franklin's grand - but ultimately failed - quest to discover the Northwest Passage and by his extraordinary wife, Lady Jane.Originally published in Quebec as Du bon usage des etoiles, Dominique Fortier's debut On the Proper Use of Stars is as fresh and imaginative as anything published in recent years. It weaves together the voices of Francis Crozier, Sir John Franklin's second in command, who turns a sceptical eye on the grandiose ambitions and hubris of his leader, and of Lady Jane Franklin and her niece Sophia, both driven to uncommon actions by love and by frustration as months then years pass with no word from the expedition. Fortier skilfully accents the main narratives with overheard conversations and snippets from letters and documents that bring two entirely different worlds - the frozen Arctic and busy Victorian London - alive.
Daring, tough, and darkly humorous, these linked stories have at their centre the relationship between parents and children. As devastating in their emotional honesty as they are poignant and wise, these stories map the intricate terrain of adoption and birth, and look at the lives we make for ourselves in the universal search for who we are. Among them: a girl is abducted by a man claiming to be her father; a distraught mother finds herself fabricating a past for her adopted teenaged daughter; a woman is haunted by her birth mother's ghostly visitations; a new mother is overtaken by a feeling of alienation as gradually her world becomes as empty as she feels her heart to be. Uniquely imagined, vividly describing the world we inhabit, Can You Wave Bye Bye, Baby? introduces a bold, new literary voice.
After surviving a terrifying ordeal at the hands of terrorists in the South Pacific island of Santa Irene, Bill Burridge returns home to Ottawa and casts himself single-mindedly into building a human-rights organization to stand watch over the world's most troubled areas. Yet, plagued by memories of his incarceration and by the strain of his disintegrating marriage, he is a man struggling to hold his life together. When a democratic revolution stands Santa Irene on a knife-edge between chaos and healing, Burridge reluctantly agrees to serve on a Truth Commission there to investigate past atrocities. Taut, intelligent, and written in the compelling, often sardonic voice of Bill Burridge, Cumyn's gripping novel immerses us in a shadowy world of betrayals and shifting loyalties, and reveals the intricate, rejuvenating bonds of human relationships. Bill Burridge's voice is infectious, his story a remarkable one as the novel builds to its climactic final scenes.
The superbly crafted stories in this internationally acclaimed collection trace four generations of the Lafrenière family in the fictional small town of Agassiz, Manitoba, from the time of the great flood of 1950 to the present. There is Mika, the matriarch of the family, tired of being a mother to her children, and her Métis husband, Maurice, who is by turns fascinated and ashamed of his Native heritage. Their marriage has long been an uneasy truce. As their children grow up to pursue their own lives, the frustrations of one generation will collide with the dreams of another, and the past will leave an indelible mark on all that is to come. Agassiz Stories is at once funny and heartbreaking, and written with a rare, illuminating honesty.
Alexis's long-awaited second novel follows his award-winning Childhood.Set in Ottawa during the Mulroney years, Asylum is André Alexis's sweeping, edged-in-satire, yet deeply serious tale of intertwined lives and fortunes, of politics and vain ambition, of the building of a magnificent prison, of human fallibility, of the search for refuge, of the impossibility of love, and of finding home. Whether he is taking us into the machinations of a government office or into the mysterious workings of the human heart, Alexis is always alert to the humour and the profound truth of any situation. His cast of characters is eccentric and unforgettable, all recognizable in one way or another as aspects of ourselves or people we know well. At the centre of the story, which covers almost a decade, is a visionary project to build an ideal prison, a perfect metaphor for the purest aspects of artistic ambition and for all that is great and flawed in the world.André Alexis is a true original, one of the most talented and astute writers writing in Canada today. This dazzling novel is filled with tragedy, dry wit, intellectual grist. It is playful, linguistically accomplished, and psychologically profound. Its yearnings constitute the highest level of human concerns and pursuits. Alexis has written The Great Canadian Novel, with a twist.
These beautifully crafted stories will introduce readers to the fiction of one of our literary bright lights - Lorna Goodison, the internationally renowned poet and award-winning author of the memoir From Harvey River. In sensuous language textured with the cadences of Creole speech, these stories vividly evoke a world where pride, injustice, love, and unexpected changes of fortune leave their mark but cannot extinguish the human spirit. When her past lover returns to Jamaica with his Irish bride, a successful businesswoman must contend with her old flame's renewed courtship. A well-known chanteuse with humble beginnings tells a young female reporter the tale of her life's great turnaround. In the Pushcart Prize-winning story "By Love Possessed," Goodison reveals the melancholy and resilience of a woman whose illusions about her dream man come to a disturbing and abrupt end.With warm humour, empathy, and an unsentimental and perceptive eye for the foibles of human relationships, Goodison immerses us into the lives of an unforgettable community of people as they face challenges both intensely private and universally recognizable.
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