Tag: CanLit canon

  • CanLit Canon Review #17: Margaret Laurence’s The Stone Angel

    CanLit Canon Review #17: Margaret Laurence’s The Stone Angel

    In an attempt to make himself a better Canadian, Craig MacBride is reading and reviewing the books that shaped this country. It’s the day after you finish it, when you’re tying your shoes and see it on the coffee table, that you realize The Stone Angel has done something to you, that it’s now a…

  • CanLit Canon Review #15: Mordecai Richler’s The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz

    CanLit Canon Review #15: Mordecai Richler’s The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz

    In an attempt to make himself a better Canadian, Craig MacBride is reading and reviewing the books that shaped this country. Mordecai Richler’s The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, published in 1959, is a hilarious and rambunctious novel that gives little space to scenery or introspection. It is the story of Duddy Kravitz, a smart-ass kid…

  • CanLit Canon Review #14: Donald Creighton’s John A. Macdonald: The Young Politician

    In an attempt to make himself a better Canadian, Craig MacBride is reading and reviewing books that shed fascinating light on Canada’s history. Of all the books I’ve read as part of this project, John A. Macdonald: The Young Politician has most improved me as a Canadian. Published in 1952, this book explores Canada’s beginnings…

  • CanLit Canon Review #13: Farley Mowat’s People of the Deer

    CanLit Canon Review #13: Farley Mowat’s People of the Deer

    In an attempt to make himself a better Canadian, Craig MacBride is reading and reviewing the books that shaped this country. People of the Deer, Farley Mowat’s first book, was published in 1952. At the time, the story was already old, but the way in which Mowat told it was new. It’s the story of white…

  • CanLit Canon Review #12: Harold Innis’s Empire and Communications

    CanLit Canon Review #12: Harold Innis’s Empire and Communications

    In an attempt to make himself a better Canadian, Craig MacBride is reading and reviewing the books that shaped this country. What is most remarkable about Harold Innis is his consistency through the years. Whether it’s his first book, The Fur Trade in Canada or, 20 years later, his last book, Empire and Communications, Innis is…

  • CanLit Canon Review #11: W.O. Mitchell’s Who Has Seen the Wind

    CanLit Canon Review #11: W.O. Mitchell’s Who Has Seen the Wind

    In an attempt to make himself a better Canadian, Craig MacBride is reading and reviewing the books that shaped this country. Published in 1947, W.O. Mitchell’s Who Has Seen the Wind arrived six years after As For Me and My House, Sinclair Ross’s Prairie-based depression trigger, and it has the same message as its predecessor:…

  • CanLit Canon Review #9: Hugh MacLennan’s Two Solitudes

    CanLit Canon Review #9: Hugh MacLennan’s Two Solitudes

    In an attempt to make himself a better Canadian, Craig MacBride is reading and reviewing the books that shaped this country. Two Solitudes, Hugh MacLennan’s 1945 masterpiece, sets out to do nothing less than explain Quebec to the rest of Canada and harmonize the dominion for future citizens. MacLennan attempts this with a generations-spanning soap…

  • CanLit Canon Review #8: Sinclair Ross’s As For Me and My House

    CanLit Canon Review #8: Sinclair Ross’s As For Me and My House

    In an attempt to make himself a better Canadian, Craig MacBride is reading and reviewing the books that shaped this country. As For Me and My House, published in 1941, is a beautifully moody novel about weather and a terrible marriage. The book is written as a series of diary entries over 13 months during…

  • CanLit Canon Review #7: Morley Callaghan’s Such Is My Beloved

    CanLit Canon Review #7: Morley Callaghan’s Such Is My Beloved

    In an attempt to make himself a better Canadian, Craig MacBride is reading and reviewing the books that shaped this country. Morley Callaghan’s fourth novel, Such Is My Beloved, was published in 1934, and it’s the first of the books in the canon that feels modern. There’s a Chinese restaurant, a completely un-CanLit lack of…

  • CanLit Canon Review #6: Harold Innis’s The Fur Trade in Canada

    CanLit Canon Review #6: Harold Innis’s The Fur Trade in Canada

    In an attempt to make himself a better Canadian, Craig MacBride is reading and reviewing the books that shaped this country. Harold Innis’s The Fur Trade in Canada, published in 1930, is an indispensable record of the fur trade and early European-Aboriginal relations, but it is also a brutal and exhausting test of endurance. You…

  • CanLit Canon Review #5: Mazo de la Roche’s Jalna

    CanLit Canon Review #5: Mazo de la Roche’s Jalna

    In an attempt to make himself a better Canadian, Craig MacBride is reading and reviewing the books that shaped this country. No one talks about Mazo de la Roche anymore, but her 16-part series, which chronicled the doings of the Whiteoak family, was popular in its time. So popular, in fact, that a neighbourhood and…

  • CanLit Canon Review #2: Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables

    CanLit Canon Review #2: Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables

    In an attempt to make himself a better Canadian, Craig MacBride is reading and reviewing the books that have shaped this country. From its very first sentence, which is 148 words long and covers, in part, the evolution of a local stream, Anne of Green Gables is a charming novel, but in an excruciatingly bland…