Book Mark: Amazon.ca First Novel Finalists

The finalists for the 2012 Amazon.ca First Novel award were announced this week. This award  "recognizes the outstanding achievement of a Canadian first-time novelist. Since 1976, the First Novel Award has launched the careers of some of Canada's most beloved novelists, including Michael Ondaatje, Joan Barfoot, Joy Kogawa, W.P. Kinsella, Nino Ricci, Rohinton Mistry, Anne Michaels, André Alexis, Michael Redhill, Mary Lawson, Colin McAdam, Joseph Boyden, Joan Thomas, and David Bezmozgis."

Not a bad list of authors!

Winner to be announced April 24, 2013.


Y by Marjorie Celona
This is the story of Shannon, a newborn baby dumped at the doors of the YMCA, swaddled in a dirty grey sweatshirt with nothing but a Swiss Army knife. She is found moments later by a man who catches a mere glimpse of her troubled mother as she disappears from view. All three lives are forever changed by the single decision.

Bounced between foster homes, Shannon endures neglect and abuse but then finds stability and love in the home of Miranda, a kind single mother who refuses to let anything ever go to waste. But as Shannon grows, so do the questions inside her. Where is she from? Who is her true family? Why would they abandon her on the day she was born?

The answers lie in the heartbreaking tale of Yula, Shannon's mother, a girl herself and one with a desperate fate. Yula spends her days caring for her bitter widowed father and her spirited toddler Eugene until the day she meets Harrison, a man who will protect her but also a man with a dark past and stories yet to be revealed. Soon they are expecting a daughter but as Yula goes into labour, she and Harrison are caught in a tragic series of events that will destroy their family and test their limits of compassion and sacrifice.


People Park by Pasha Malla
It's the Silver Jubilee of People Park, an urban experiment conceived by a radical mayor and zealously policed by the testosterone-powered New Fraternal League of Men. To celebrate, the insular island city has engaged the illustrationist Raven, who promises to deliver the most astonishing spectacle its residents have ever seen. As the entire island comes together for the event, we meet an unforgettable cross-section of its inhabitants, from activists to nihilists, art stars to athletes, families to inveterate loners. Soon, however, what has promised to be a triumph of civic harmony begins to reveal its shadow side. And when Raven's illustration exceeds even the most extreme of expectations, the island is plunged into a series of unnatural disasters that force people to confront what they are really made of.


Malarky by Anakana Schofield
Our Woman will not be sunk by what life’s about to serve her. She's caught her son doing unmentionable things out by the barn. She's been accosted by Red the Twit, who claims to have done things with Our Woman’s husband that could frankly have gone without mentioning. And now her son’s gone and joined the army, and Our Woman has found a young fella to do unmentionable things with herself, just so she might understand it all. This is the story of an Irish mother forced to look grief in the eye, and of a wife come face-to-face with the mad agony of longing.



Ru by Kim Thúy
Ru. In Vietnamese it means lullaby; in French it is a small stream, but also signifies a flow--of tears, blood, money. In vignettes of exquisite clarity, sharp observation and sly wit, we are carried along on an unforgettable journey from a palatial residence in Saigon to a crowded and muddy Malaysian refugee camp, and onward to a new life in Quebec. There, the young girl feels the embrace of a new community, and revels in the chance to be part of the American Dream. As an adult, the waters become rough again: now a mother of two sons, she must learn to shape her love around the younger boy's autism.


The Rest Is Silence by Scott Fotheringham
In the backwoods of Nova Scotia, a man has decided to slowly simplify his life and withdraw his presence from the world. He builds a cabin, plants a garden. He befriends the few people he can reach within biking distance. He strikes up a relationship with a beautiful Huron-Wendat woman afflicted with wanderlust and who may be as damaged an individual as himself. In fits and starts, he begins to recount a story to his new friends, a tale of youthful passions, of idealism and rebellion, of love and of science. There is a reason for the man?s self-enforced exile, one that has implications far beyond the confines of the forest. As news reports trickle in of a brewing environmental catastrophe on a global scale, the unsettling nature of his confession becomes clear. And the world will never be the same again.