Celebrating the 2021 Trillium Book Award
Event Details
Celebrating finalists for the 2021 Trillium Book Award, Ontario’s leading award for literature, awarded by Ontario Creates. Moderated by Deborah Dundas, Books Editor for the Toronto Star.
Books featured:
- Cascade by Craig Davidson (ebook / hardcover)
- Seven by Farzana Doctor (ebook / paperback)
- As Far As You Know by A. F. Moritz (ebook / paperback)
Cascade
Knopf Canada
Reminiscent of Stephen King’s brilliantly cinematic short stories that went on to inspire films such as The Shawshank Redemption and Stand by Me, here’s a collection crackling with Craig Davidson’s superb craft and kinetic energy: in the visceral, crystalline, steel-tipped prose; in the psychological perspicacity; and in the endearing humour.
Set in in the Niagara Falls of Davidson’s imagination known as “Cataract City,” the superb stories of Cascade shine a shimmering light on this slightly seedy, slightly magical, slightly haunted place. The six gems in this collection each illuminate familial relationships in a singular way: A mother and her infant son fight to survive a car-crash in a remote wintry landscape outside of town. Fraternal twins at a juvenile detention center reach a dangerous crisis point in their entwined lives. A pregnant social worker grapples with the prospect of parenthood as a custody case takes a dire turn. A hard-boiled ex-firefighter goes after a serial arsonist with a flair for the theatrical even as his own troubled sister is drawn towards the flames. These are just some of the unforgettable characters animating this stellar collection of tales–Davidson’s first in 15 years, since Rust and Bone, which inspired a Golden Globe-nominated film.
Seven
Dundurn Press
A rich, soulfully written novel about inheritance and resistance that tests the balance between modern and traditional customs.
When Sharifa accompanies her husband on a marriage-saving trip to India, she thinks that she’s going to research her great-great-grandfather, a wealthy business leader and philanthropist. What captures her imagination is not his rags-to-riches story, but the mystery of his four wives, missing from the family lore. She ends up excavating much more than she had imagined.
Sharifa’s trip coincides with a time of unrest within her insular and conservative religious community, and there is no escaping its politics. A group of feminists is speaking out against khatna, an age-old ritual they insist is female genital cutting. Sharifa’s two favourite cousins are on opposite sides of the debate and she seeks a middle ground. As the issue heats up, Sharifa discovers an unexpected truth and is forced to take a position.
As Far As You Know
House of Anansi Press
From one of the defining poets of his generation, a new collection that plumbs the depth of beauty, history, responsibility, and love.
As Far As You Know, acclaimed poet A. F. Moritz’s twentieth collection of poems, begins with two sections entitled “Terrorism” and “Poetry.” The book unfolds in six movements, yet it revolves around and agonizes over the struggle between these two catalyzing concepts, in all the forms they might take, eventually arguing they are the unavoidable conditions and quandaries of human life.
Written and organized chronologically around before and after the poet’s serious illness and heart surgery in 2014, these gorgeously unguarded poems plumb and deepen the reader’s understanding of Moritz’s primary and ongoing obsessions: beauty, impermanence, history, social conscience and responsibility, and, always and most urgently, love. For all its necessary engagement with worry, sorrow, and fragility, As Far As You Know sings a final insistent chorus to what it loves: “You will live.”
