King Leary - Paul Quarrington

Manages to turn hockey, a topic so mundane and familiar to Canadians that we can smell it in our sweat, into a metaphor for magic. As a character King Leary skates alongside other great Canadian literary figures (Duddy Kravtiz, Anne of Green Gables)  and as a novel King Leary should body check a few stodgy works that are taught in classrooms. There are some tried and true concepts here - the small town boy who only knows hockey, the rich business man who ruthlessly operates the team with only profit in mind, the bitter and alcoholic sports writer, the destined to die in a hotel room player  - that Quarrington weaves into something new and wonderful. A classic.

Remainder - Tom McCarthy

Moves through the world in supreme control, a remarkable feat for a first novel, with hardly a misused word. It builds to the only ending that makes sense, a satisfying conclusion to a treatise on memory, identity and the need to control the world around us that reads like a novel.

Tokyo, My Everest - Gabrielle Bauer

The issue about reading a story about something similar to what you went through is the tendency to draw comparisons to your own experiences. Often, because the subject matter is so familiar, the story comes up lacking, and not in any particular deficiency in the story, but because your experience is different and more real.  This was somewhat the case with Tokyo, My Everest, the story of a 30-something Canadian woman who moves to Tokyo to teach English and figure out what to do with her life. 

Her experiences are typical to the newbie in Japan - getting to know the subway system, overcoming the language barrier, dealing with non-Japanese who treat the country as a party palace.  The author is one of those people who come to Japan to find the 'real' Japan - kimonos and temples and tea ceremonies - the kind of person I tried to avoid in my own time in Japan. Living in a big city, riding the subway and eating convenience store food heated in a microwave has the same claim to legitimacy as does hiking Mt. Fuji or watching Noh. I always bristled at this idea of a 'real' version of a country (Do Japanese come to Canada in search of the real Canada, with images of snowy tundras and beavers in their minds?)

Curious about Japanese men, the author finally finds one that meets her specifications. The only problem is that he's cloaked himself in secrecy as well as a rigid schedule that he never wants to veer from, which causes friction in their relationship that eventually leads to its demise. Heart-broken, the author leaves Tokyo, having been there for less than year.