Name the Canadian Novel Flashcards
The protagonist is Piscine Molitor Patel, an Indian Tamil boy from Pondicherry who survives 227 days after a shipwreck while stranded on a lifeboat in the Pacific Ocean with a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker.
Life of Pi, Yann Martel
The novel’s primary characters are Bassam and George, lifelong friends living in wartorn Beirut. The novel traces the different paths that the two follow as they face the difficult choice of whether to stay in Beirut and get involved in organized crime or to leave Lebanon and build a new life in another country.
De Niro’s Game, Rawi Hage
Narrated by Dunstable (later Dunstan) Ramsay, who grows up in Deptford, a fictional town in southwestern Ontario. After WWI, he becomes a teacher and serves for decades at a college. The epistolary novel takes the form of a letter he writes to the headmaster of Colborne College after his retirement. He feels ill used by an article about him in the school paper. He recalls how, as a boy, he ducked a snowball intended for him. It hit a pregnant woman instead, and she gave birth prematurely. This incident and related events deeply affected Ramsay’s life. He tells how he came to terms with his guilt.
Fifth Business, Robertson Davies (the first of the Deptford trilogy, followed by The Manticore and World of Wonders)
Set in an isolated farming community in Shuswap Country, British Columbia at the end of WWII, it is a coming of age story containing elements of magic realism. Fifteen-year-old Beth Weeks has to contend with her family’s struggle against poverty but also her increasingly paranoid and aggressive father whose behaviour leaves the family as outcasts in the community.
The Cure for Death by Lightning, Gail Anderson-Dargatz
The novel fictionalizes the lives of the immigrants who played a large role in the building of the city of Toronto, including the viaducts and water treatment plants, in the early 1900s. The protagonist is the “searcher,” Patrick Lewis.
In the Skin of a Lion, Michael Ondaatjie
The novel centres on Saul, a First Nations boy who survives the Indian residential school system and grows up to become a star ice hockey player.
Indian Horse, Richard Wagamese
The story is set in a dystopian future in which most people have lost the ability to dream, with catastrophic psychological results. Indigenous people, who can still dream, are hunted for their marrow to create a serum to treat others. Frenchie, the protagonist, tries his best to avoid the Recruiters who are capturing Indigenous people to extract their bone marrow. Along the way north to safety, he falls in with a group lead by an older man, Miigwans.
The Marrow Thieves, Cherie Dimaline
In the book, the author chronicles her experiences as a CBC Radio journalist. The novel is set at a radio station in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories.
Late Nights on Air, Elizabeth Hay
The novel is set in a small religious Mennonite town called East Village. The narrator is Nomi Nickel, a 16-year-old who dreams of hanging out with Lou Reed in the “real” East Village of New York City. Her compulsive questioning brings her into conflict with the town’s various authorities, most notably Hans Rosenfeldt, the sanctimonious church pastor.
A Complicated Kindness, Miriam Toews
The novel chronicles Canada’s internment and persecution of its citizens of Japanese descent during WWII from the perspective of a young child, Naomi Nakane.
Obasan, Joy Kogawa
Published in the U.S. as Someone Knows My Name, the novel tells the story of Aminata, a young girl abducted from her village in Mali and sold into slavery as a child; she ends up helping the British and the Abolitionist movement.
The Book of Negros, Lawrence Hill
Beginning in Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia in the late 19th century, the novel follows four generations of the Piper family through the battlefields of World War, ending in New York City.
Fall on Your Knees, Ann-Marie MacDonald
The story of young Brian O’Connal growing up in the 1930s on the Saskatchewan prairies. Broken into four parts covering different times in young Brian’s life, the novel shows Brian struggling to come to terms with issues of life and death.
Who Has Seen the Wind, W.O. Mitchell
The darkly comic story takes place in Oregon and California in 1851. The narrator, Eli, and his brother Charlie are assassins tasked with killing Hermann Kermit Warm, an ingenious prospector who has been accused of stealing from their fearsome boss, the Commodore.
The Sisters Brothers, Patrick deWitt
The story takes place in the poor neighbourhood of Saint-Henri in Montreal in 1940. Florentine Lacasse, a young waitress at the “Five and Ten” restaurant who dreams of a better life and is helping her parents get by, falls in love with Jean Lévesque, an ambitious machinist-electrician.
The Tin Flute, Gabrielle Roy
The novel opens in the present day, with successful orthodontist Alexander MacDonald visiting his elderly older brother Calum in Toronto, Ontario. The novel explores the emotional bonds of family through clan history dating back to 1779, flashbacks to their childhood in Cape Breton Island and young adulthood spent in the mines of Northern Ontario, and present-day interactions between the two brothers and a sister. Though written primarily in English, Scottish Gaelic and French are used in dialogue and songs.
No Great Mischief, Alistair MacLeod
A bildungsroman, the story follows the early life of the title character, chronicling his escape from slavery and his subsequent adventures, including his career as an illustrator of marine specimens.
Washington Black, Esi Edugyan
Set in a near-future New England, in the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian state resembling a theonomy that overthrows the United States government, the novel focuses on the character of Offred.
The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood
The novel follows three generations of a Canadian family, but centres around the lives of an immigrant Bavarian wood carver’s grandchildren in the early 1900s in the fictional town of Shoneval, Ontario, exploring the devastation of World War I, and the building of the Vimy Memorial in France
The Stone Carvers, Jane Urquhart
A sequence of stories set in the fictional town of Mariposa, on the shore of Lake Wissanotti (based on the author’s experiences in Orillia, Ontario). One of the most enduring classics of Canadian humorous literature.
Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, Stephen Leacock
Alice Munro’s first collection of short stories. The title of the main story is the English translation provided for the ballet Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice.
Dance of the Happy Shades, Alice Munro
The story is relayed through the eyes of Lisamarie Hill, whose brother, Jimmy, has gone missing at sea under questionable circumstances. Lisamarie possesses’ supernatural abilities, the ability to see and to communicate with other worldly beings.
Monkey Beach, Eden Robinson
Set in the fictitious town of Manawaka, Manitoba, parallel narratives set in the past and the present-day (early 1960s) tell the story of Hagar Currie Shipley. In the present-day narrative, 90-year-old Hagar is struggling against being put in a nursing home, which she sees as a symbol of death.
The Stone Angel, Margaret Laurence
A short story cycle that chronicles the life of Del Jordan, growing up first on the outskirts, and later in the centre, of the small, southern Ontario town of Jubilee.
Lives of Girls and Women, Alice Munro