The 111 Greatest Works of Canadian Literature

Stephen Leacock gets compared to Mark Twain all the time, which means people like me have to keep pointing out how different he is. We have to keep pointing to Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town and showing.... Critique • Quotes • Text • At the movies • Buy

Stephen Leacock's Arcadian Adventures With the Idle Rich hardly ever gets discussed without being compared to Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town. The two are seen as companion pieces, Sunshine Sketches being.... Critique • Quotes • Text • Buy

Strange Fugitive is a strange novel for Morley Callaghan. It was his first and, judging by it at the time, you might have predicted Callaghan would become another James M. Cain (The Postman Always Rings Twice, Mildred Pierce).... Critique • Quotes • Buy

Such Is My Beloved is the first of three similarly themed novels Morley Callaghan wrote during the 1930s, the other two being They Shall Inherit the Earth and More Joy in Heaven. And unusual novels they are for that era.... Critique • Quotes • Buy

Arguably the greatest Canadian novel at the time of its re-publication in 1968 in its restored form, Cabbagetown has since been read all over the world (though its popularity does seem to have fallen off recently.). And it.... Critique • Quotes • Buy

Some writers mythologize, raising everyday life to levels of cosmic significance, finding awful natural cycles in happenstance, wisdom in emotional upheaval. Others de-mythologize, undercutting pretension, revealing.... Critique • Quotes • Buy

A funny thing happened when I read Morley Callaghan's Stories recently. It was my second or third reading for most of these stories, and I saw this time how very old-fashioned they were. But that's not what.... Critique • Quotes • Buy

Several times during readings of The Stone Angel I have been so impressed by Margaret Laurence's complete commitment to the character, the elderly Hagar Shipley who relives her entire life in memory while on the lam.... Critique • Quotes • At the movies • Buy

I can see how this novel's liberal use of crude, four-letter words—presented not with shocking effect but as mundane, even romantic, language—might have appealed in the striving-to-be-liberated 1960s and 1970s. But.... Critique • Quotes • Buy

How does Les Belles-Soeurs maintain its international popularity as a progressive play several decades after first hitting Quebec theatre? In 1968, Michel Tremblay's drama was recognized as game-changing.... Critique • Quotes • Buy

Photos of Margaret Atwood on covers of her old poetry books tend to give her a certain poetic look: intensely introspective, almost cross-eyed with sincerity, possibly crazed but intelligently so, a sixties-era Sylvia Plath.... Critique • Quotes • Buy

Write what you know, they tell beginning writers. And even veteran, successful authors tend to stick to this guideline. Which is why we get so many novels about people trying to write novels. It's also one of the reasons so.... Critique • Quotes • At the movies • Buy

If you're well-versed in science fiction—or speculative fiction as it's often called—and you approach The Handmaid's Tale as an example of that genre, you may be disappointed. The world of Margaret.... Critique • Quotes • At the movies • Buy

Let's see. Margaret Atwood writes her prize-winning novel The Blind Assassin about an elderly woman writing her memoirs about her sisters, one of whom has written a novel called The Blind Assassin, which recounts her trysts.... Critique • Quotes • Buy