(Douglas & McIntyre) (Alejandra Aguirre/Vintage Canada) Something Fierce by Carmen Aguirre looks at coming of age during a tumultuous time. Miriam Toews: 5 books that changed my life.The ends of her hair were frozen because she hadn't been able to find a blow-dryer that morning.' She was wearing a red wool coat and moon boots. I was eight and Trudie was about thirty-five.

Troubled boy, but that's no wonder considering he used to be The Snowmobile Suit Killer. Says he's got a kid in Pansy, a small town south of here. She and I were standing in this farmyard watching Carson and his dad chop heads off chickens. What it's about: Toews' award-winning novel is an engaging read about growing up in East Village, Manitoba, a small town whose population is Mennonite: 'the most embarrassing sub-sect of people to belong to if you're a teenager.' This look at teenage rage, despair and hope - through the eyes of a troubled teen narrator named Nomi - takes readers across a gamut of human emotions, including sadness, hilarity and optimism.įrom the book: 'One of my recurring memories of my mother, Trudie Nickel, has to do with the killing of fowl. Miriam Toews' novel A Complicated Kindness won Canada Reads in 2006. But right now, I was still just four.'Ĭea Sunrise Person on the relief and terror of finishing her latest memoir Mom said I could have a pair one day, probably when I was five. They had tiny rainbows on them, and they were the most beautiful things I'd ever seen. The summer before, one of the visitors' daughters had shown me something called underwear.

I set it down beside the stove and pulled my clothes on: turtleneck, sweater, cords and leather moccasins. Wrapped in one of my grandfather's old wool shirts, it smelled like smoke and pine needles. Her tale of copious drugs, free love and family is a compelling read.įrom the book: 'I lifted the bearskin and reached for the heavy rock. within the freewheeling, counterculture environment of the late 1960s and early 1970s is both shocking and heartbreaking.

What it's about: Cea Sunrise Person's eye-opening account of growing up in B.C. Cea Sunrise Person's North of Normal looks an unconventional life in the Canadian wilderness.

The glass castle a memoir