What are you doing with your extra hour today? I’m using mine to start this blog post!

I took a break from Reading Bingo this month to catch up on some CanLit. I finished 14 books in October – including all six Scotiabank Giller Prize finalists, with eight days to spare before the big event and one day to spare before the Between the Pages event featuring all the authors. (I was lucky to have some actual vacation time – as opposed to the more frequent notional type, where I intend to take time off and then give in to my always-expanding inbox and just end up working anyway.)

Tough call on the Giller this year! Usually there’s one book that I feel is far and away the best. (Usually it doesn’t win.) This year I was really impressed by three of them, and am still waffling between giving them 4 and 5 stars.

Here’s my take on all the contenders (in the order I read them, which was completely random):

Tell, by Francis Itani
(Published August 18, 2014 by HarperCollins Canada, 288 pages)
4 stars

I think of Tell as a “quiet” book – quietly beautiful. There’s no huge drama here, but an intimate portrait of a handful of people navigating post-war life in small-town Ontario after the First World War. I was swept up in the time and place, and felt for the characters as they grappled with their troubles.

The Betrayers, by David Bezmozgis
(Published August 26, 2014 by HarperCollins Canada, 304 pages)
4 stars

I read The Betrayers immediately following Tell, and it felt a lot more explosive after that one. There’s a front-page scandal, and a family in crisis, and enemies reunited, and controversial Israeli politics… and, of course, betrayals on multiple fronts. Based on the title, that’s not a spoiler, so then the question becomes, will there be forgiveness? (Neat factoid: Adam was in the same Grade 6 class as Bezmozgis!)

Us Conductors, by Sean Michaels
(Published April 8, 2014 by Random House Canada, 368 pages)
3 stars

This one I liked, but didn’t love. Us Conductors is the story of Lev Termen, and his inventions, romances, music, espionage and time in the Gulag. He led quite an interesting life in the ’20s and ’30s, is best known for inventing the theremin, a completely weird and eerie musical instrument. (I didn’t know what the heck it was either, so I went YouTubing. Thanks to the interwebs, we can see Lev himself showing off his instrument, or hear Clara Rockmore – the world’s most renowned thereminist and object of Termen’s affections – playing it, or watch a young Johnny Carson having some fun with one.)

All My Puny Sorrows, by Miriam Toews
(Published April 15, 2014 by Knopf Canada, 336 pages)
5 stars

The predominant theme and story in AMPS is suicide – it’s heavy, but also nuanced so that it’s not just plain depressing beginning to end. Sometimes it’s dark, and sometimes it’s hopeful and sometimes it’s mournful and sometimes it’s even funny.

Toews’s voice is vibrant and genuine as she shows us a family that loves each other desperately, yet must let each other go.

The Girl Who Was Saturday Night, by Heather O’Neill
(Published April 25, 2014 by HarperCollins Canada, 416 pages)
4 stars

I’m going to hold this up forever as Exhibit A of why I shouldn’t give up on a book I don’t like right away. I was apprehensive about reading this one before I even opened it. I attended one of O’Neill’s readings earlier this year, and decided at the time that I didn’t like the sounds of it and it wasn’t for me. But here it is on the Giller shortlist, so I gave it a chance. The first part of the book confirmed my fears. As I was reading I was thinking I would rate it 1 star and wondering how I was going to get through. But surprise surprise, it got better and better as it went, and I ended up really liking it!! Set in Montreal around the time of the 1995 referendum, the book centres on 19-year old twins Nouschka and Nicholas Tremblay. They come off a little creepy at the start of the book, which was part of the turn-off. But, as I read my way through I became hooked by Nouschka’s story, as she both separates from and pulls closer to her family, which may be among the wackiest I’ve ever met in a novel.

The Ever After of Ashwin Rao, by Padma Viswanathan
(Published March 25, 2014 by Random House Canada, 384 pages)
2 stars

I was hoping for more out of a story about the aftermath of the 1985 Air India bombing that killed 329 people – mostly Canadians – over the Atlantic Ocean. I suppose it didn’t help that I really didn’t like the protagonist Ashwin, though I don’t think we are necessarily meant to like him. The bigger issue was that I found the structure too cumbersome. Ashwin is a psychotherapist, whose sister and niece and nephew children were on the fatal flight. But the novel isn’t about them. Bear with me while I try to explain… It’s about Ashwin’s return to Vancouver for the 2004 trial, and the book that he wants to write about how those who were left behind have gotten on for the last two decades. This is how he meets a man who lost his wife and son, and through that man, a family friend who shares his remembrances of the two families together and his helping his friend after the tragedy, and the friend’s daughter. It’s the family friend and his daughter who are the most interesting characters in the book, and I think I would have preferred a tighter book focusing on them and their perspectives. The novel does reflect on the nature of tragedy and how many degrees of friends and family it touches, and that aspect kept me engaged. The book was okay, just disappointing given my expectations for it.

So, overall, I think I like Tell and All My Puny Sorrows best of all. As to predicting who will win… I have no clue. Maybe The Girl Who Was Saturday Night? Seems like it might be the type of book a prize jury might favour.

We’ll know for sure on November 10! The prize gala will be broadcast on CBC at 9 p.m., and live streamed at cbc.ca/books. Rick Mercer, one of my favourite celebrities, will now be hosting (seeing as how the previous face of arts and culture at CBC finds himself in a bit of trouble these days, to put it mildly).