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From Atlantic Books Today 99 spring 2024

With warm weather on the horizon, it might be time to indulge in some new books for the coming summer. If so, look no further than these recently published books of fiction by Atlantic Canadian authors and publishers.

Critically acclaimed author Carol Bruneau has a new collection of short stories out and both Michele Hébert and Katerina Bakolias have debut novels that place them firmly in the “should read” list. Across different genres, all three books give the reader a window into the warm, and sometimes eccentric lives, of ordinary people.

Cross the threshold

In Threshold, Bruneau’s collection of fifteen short stories, half of the stories were written pre-pandemic and half mid-pandemic. A few pieces of poetic flash fiction serve as a “kind of border” between the different times and tales, says Bruneau. Bruneau’s stories are detailed and deep, each one offering enough raw material for a novel. It is especially interesting to read her stories set in the time of the pandemic, a time of unprecedented change that we are all still digesting.

With casual references to people grabbing masks from their pockets, or characters obsessing about their neighbours while locked down and isolated, Bruneau’s stories offer the reader an opportunity to look back on how the pandemic restrictions affected individual lives.

In Bruneau’s new collection, the healing power of nature is a blessing, allowing her characters to reconnect with themselves or each other. In one story a newly widowed woman books a special catered meal on a beach to try to reconnect with the world and her place in it, and in another a young man whose life has been completely disrupted by the lockdowns is brought back to earth by a near drowning.

In the last story in the collection, “Flight Path,” an older married couple who are growing estranged find that their treks to view migrating herons bring them together in love and companionship. After a difficult chat with painful recriminations, the woman’s husband reaches for her hand and says, “We’ll see if they are there in the morning, okay.” The reader feels the balm of being connected to nature, and each other.

“It’s like ‘spirit’ is embedded in nature. I really believe that,” says Bruneau. “We have to recognize how therapeutic it is, and how it saves us, and also, how we have to save it.”

A book with magic

Michele Hébert’s debut novel, Every Little Thing She Does is Magic, is a beautifully crafted coming-of age story about a young woman’s journey towards the acceptance of her family. The novel is upbeat with a focus on trust and love and a surprising narrative twist that is skillfully woven into the story.

Kitty comes from a family that believes they have been cursed with bad luck from an ancestral witch. The family home is preserved in the decor of 1987, the year Kitty’s father died. And the bedroom of Kitty’s Aunt Nerida, who drowned as a young teen, has been maintained like a shrine to the 1970s.

When Kitty finds herself back in her family home as a young adult, she sneaks into the preserved room and discovers Nerida’s tarot cards, cool clothes, and a cache of mixed music tapes. These items help Kitty heal, along with the guidance of the lively spirit of the dead Nerida, who writes letters and leaves tarot cards on the floor to guide her.

Magic, spirits, and fate are important themes in the novel, and so is music. Every chapter title in the novel comes from the Magical Mixtape, a list of songs included at the back of the book. “I hope that people will actually listen to the songs” says Hébert, because not only will Gen X recognize the titles, but readers will also find messages in the songs that hint at where the story is going.

A journalist and social worker, this is Hébert’s first novel, but not her first book. In 2007, she published Enriched by Catastrophe: Social Work and Social Conflict after the Halifax Explosion.

Writing a novel is a “different process altogether” says Hébert, but the planning that she did for this novel is helping her now as she works on a literary memoir.

A luscious love story

Katerina Bakolias, a busy actor, screenwriter, producer, and playwright, is now the author of an excellent novel aimed at younger adults. Luscious Love is the story of a young Greek Canadian girl named Mina, and the challenges she experiences with her first job and first love.

Mina is from a loving, slightly hectic home with doting parents and high-achieving siblings. She doesn’t feel as charismatic or athletic as her siblings, but she is loved and loves herself. What she really wants is to get a part-time job at Luscious Lingerie so that she can take the first steps to making her own way in the world.

The story begins with her picking out her outfit for the first day at work: black leggings, a black cami and a cropped black knit cardigan, “Comfy, practical, and cute, she thought with a smile.” But later, when her mother questions her choice, she wonders if she should change into a sweater that covers her stomach.

In Luscious Love the fat shaming that exists in our society is part of Mina’s life and it is portrayed in a deft, non-didactic manner. Mina feels like she is never allowed to forget that her body is “imperfect” and this sentence – “She placed a hand on her stomach and squeezed” – will strike a chord with many readers.

Bakolias says that “body image is close to my heart’ and she has created a confident person in Mina, and one that will offer comfort and strength to other people struggling to feel good about their bodies. Mina has a strong sense of self-worth, and her experience of dysmorphia does not actually hinder her ambition in work or love.

As Mina settles into her job at the large chain store, she is offered a chance to be a model for the underwear and have her image displayed in the stores. This is an interesting dilemma (and a good discussion topic for young readers) because Mina has become increasingly uncomfortable with the industry and the effect it has on young women. She does not want to be the token representation of a “big girl” from another culture and decides against it. Her girlfriend doesn’t at first understand her reluctance and urges her to do it.

Part of Mina’s well-rounded character includes her attraction to girls, and in this contemporary novel particularly for readers from 13 to 18 years, being a lesbian is not an issue. Her parents and friends are accepting and supportive.

Mina learns about herself, how to communicate her needs and when to take a stand, but the challenges she faces are not related to her body size or dating preference. She is a fully formed character, not defined simply by her sexuality or her body type. Bakolias, who graduated from Dalhousie University’s Fountain School of Performing Arts, says that when she creates a character, she sees them with her actor’s mind, “right in front of me, fully formed.”

“I feel a strong urge to move way from telling traumatic queer stories,” says Bakolias, who was approached by Formac Lorimer Publishing after someone from the company saw her play ’Til Death Do us Part, a farce produced by Neptune Theatre in 2022.

They told her they were looking for queer authors that could write a lighthearted book for young adults and she was happy to comply, writing this funny, thoughtful tale of a confident teen making her way in the world.