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On the Shelf: Our Must-Read Books for March
This month’s lit picks include a haunting immigrant’s tale, a stunningly original (not to mention fictional) autobiography and an exhilarating return to the land of Oz.
Gone With the Mind (Little, Brown and Company)
By Mark Leyner
By Mark Leyner
Photo Credit: Little, Brown and Company
One of the most acclaimed (yet still oddly underrated) voices in American post-modern literature returns after a four-year hiatus with a characteristically absurdist but unusually personal “autobiography.” Alternately hilarious and heartfelt this meta-fictional effort centres on the author himself as he gives a reading in a deserted mall food court — his only audience a smattering of Panda Express employees and his own mother.
With the sparsely populated gallery occasionally chiming in with a question or two, Leyner bares his one-of-a-kind mind — exposing his own life, deeply held secrets, views on the modern world, a few thoughts on video games and in the most touchingly sincere segment, his relationship with the woman who gave birth to him.
What Lies Between Us (St. Martin’s Press)
By Nayomi Munaweera
By Nayomi Munaweera
Photo Credit: St. Martin's Press
With her debut novel, the award-winning Island of a Thousand Mirrors, Nayomi Munaweera marked herself as one of the literary scene’s most promising chroniclers of the immigrant experience, even drawing comparisons to the elite likes of Jhumpa Lahiri.
Now, the young Sri Lankan-born, California-raised author puts her keen eye and invigorating prose to work with another such tale, taking readers into the tortured headspace of a young Sri Lankan girl forced to start over in America after a life-shattering tragedy. Remaking herself in a foreign land, she seems to have put the past behind her. But as she grows into a woman, the tragedy that befell her all those years ago silently stalks her psyche, waiting to pounce and undermine the new life that she’s built, compelling her to commit a truly unspeakable act.
The Association of Small Bombs (Viking)
By Karan Mahajan
By Karan Mahajan
Photo Credit: Viking
Hailed as a nuanced, poignant examination of the emotional devastation wrought by terrorist bombinings — on both the victims and the bombers themselves — Karan Majahan’s (Family Planning) latest novel follows Mansoor, a young man who picks up a lifetime of “physical and psychological scars” after he and his friends are felled by a “small” (i.e. little publicized) bombing in a Delhi market. Simultaneously, Majahan weaves the entirely separate tale of Shockie, a deeply conflicted bomb maker who sacrifices everything to free his country from oppression.
Wreck and Order (Random House Canada)
By Hannah Tennant-Moore
By Hannah Tennant-Moore
Photo Credit: Random House Canada
Drowning in a stalled career, an abusive relationship and an endless spiral of aggressively self-destructive life choices, restless young newspaperwoman Elsie decides to leave herself behind and take off on a globe-spanning trip of self-discovery. Making her way from Paris to Sri Lanka, she voraciously consumes new experiences and perspectives as she takes in heretofore-unimaginable sights and meets an eclectic array of people from around the world. Alas, before she can find her way forward, Elsie will need to confront the past she left behind and the self she’s intent on running from.
Yellow Brick War (HarperCollins)
By Danielle Paige
By Danielle Paige
Photo Credit: HarperCollins
Paige unveils the third novel in her acclaimed Dorothy Must Die series, which reimagines The Wonderful World of Oz through a delightfully twisted, funny and violent lens. It centres on Kansas teen Amy Gumm, who catches her own tornado to Oz to find that Dorothy has installed herself as a brutal dictator, with her former sunny companions Tin Man, Lion and Scarecrow serving as her vicious enforcers. After crossing paths with Oz’s various Witches, this snarky, disaffected teenager finds her true calling as the woman who’s destined to kill Dorothy.
But as the action picks back up in Yellow Brick War, Amy has let her enemy slip through her fingers, leaving a trail of dead friends in her wake and putting not just Oz, but Kansas in Dorothy’s unforgiving path. Now it’s up to her to “join the Witches, fight for Oz, save Kansas, and stop Dorothy once and for all.” If you’re looking to catch up on the whole epic, funny, violent saga to date, pick up the previous two books, Dorothy Must Die and The Wicked Will Rise, as well.
Main Image Photo Credit: www.telegraph.co.uk
Matthew Currie
Author
A long-standing entertainment journalist, Currie is a graduate of the Professional Writing program at Toronto’s York University. He has spent the past number of years working as a freelancer for ANOKHI and for diverse publications such as Sharp, TV Week, CAA’s Westworld and BC Business. Currie ...
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