Reviewed by Aaron Kreuter
Caught, Lisa Moore’s latest novel, is about a 25-year-old prison escapee attempting to smuggle millions of dollars of marijuana into Canada. As anyone who is familiar with Moore will attest from the above description alone, this is a new direction for the author, whose breathtaking and emotional short stories and novels have been delighting and moving readers in Canada and beyond for over a decade. (Certain moments in her work have stayed with me as vividly as my own most formative memories.)
The novel, which came out last month, is the latest in Moore’s recent literary success. In October 2012 a volume of selected short fiction came out, containing the best stories from her earlier two collections, Degrees of Nakedness and Open, as well as new work. Then, this past March, Moore’s second novel, February, won CBC’s Canada Reads competition (click here for our review of February). The difference between these two books is stark: where February was an exploration of grief and of a family dealing with past tragedy, Caught is an adventure story and a crime drama, and is by far the most plot-oriented of anything Moore has done before.
A goat and a moose are working together this May, as Toronto theatre company One Little Goat presents the English-language world premiere of the play The Charge of the Expormidable Moose, by Quebec poet-playwright Claude Gauvreau. Widely considered to be Gauvreau’s masterpiece, the playful and provocative play (whose original French title is La charge de l’orignal épormyable) revolves around a poet who is mocked and envied by his fellow housemates — or are they fellow inmates?
The Best Place on Earth, Ayelet Tsabari’s debut collection of short stories, brings readers directly into the messy, human heart of life in Israel. Tsabari — an Israeli of Yemeni descent now living in Canada — tackles a wide number of issues, from the different social stratas of Tel Aviv to living in a country that is constantly at war, to the varied ways that Israelis of different ages, origins, and genders learn to deal with the daily realities of violence, segregation, and death.
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