Content area
Full Text
IT'S A FALL FICTION list without an Atwood or Munro, but the season brings plenty to gladden readers' hearts: a fat Shields novel, the breaking of a long fictional silence by Richler, a fresh Jane Urquahart, whose last book, Away, set up permanent camp on bestseller lists, and a new Brian Moore. There's also a rich and varied stack of titles from rising writers, and a range of newly discovered ones-the fare of small presses that recharges and revitalizes Canadian writing.
NOVELS
From the heavy hitters, come tales of three guys. Carol Shields, who garnered a Pulitzer Prize and Governor General's Award for The Stone Diaries, follows a young floral designer from the 1970s to the millennium, charting society's changing expectations of men in Larry's Party (Random House, $31 cl., Sept.). Mordecai Richler's Barney's Version (Knopf, $32.95 cl., Sept.) is a first-person narration by 67-year-old Barney Panofsky, an ornery trash-TV executive, thrice married and on trial for the murder of his best friend. Jane Urquhart's The Underpainter (M&S, $24.99, cl., Sept.) tells the story of Austin Fraser, a 75-year-old American minimalist painter peeling back the layers of his past. The Underpinter is also slated for fall release in Britain, France, and Germany.
Irish-born novelist Brian Moore sets a tale of passion and intrigue, The Magician's Wife (Knopf, $32.95 cl., Sept.), in the court of Napoleon III and the deserts of Algeria. Another exotic tale comes from Nick Bantock, who moves to HarperCollins with his second title this year, The Forgetting Room ($28.50 cl., Sept.), the illustrated diary of a lonely man bequeathed a home in Spain.
HarperCollins is undertaking a major promotional campaign for fiction this fall, launching four books by up-and-coming authors. Included in this promising quartet are Marilyn Bowering, Lawrence Hill, Helen Humphreys, and Cordelia Strube. Bowering's Visible Worlds ($28 cl., Aug.), a story of twin brothers, encompasses two world wars, Depression-era Montreal and Korea, and germ warfare. Hill's Any Known Blood ($28 cl., Aug.) follows five generations in a black family from the slavery days in Virginia to suburban Ontario. Poet Helen Humphreys moves into fiction with Leaving Earth ($24 cl., July), a story of daredevil aviatrixes over Toronto in the 1930s. And Dr. Kalbfleish and the Chicken Restaurant ($20 pa.,...