Fall preview 2011: Canadian fiction

In the July/August issue, Q&Q looks ahead at the fall season’s biggest books.

NOVELS

One of the most anticipated releases of the fall season is surely the new novel from internationally acclaimed author Michael Ondaatje, his first since 2007 Governor General’s Literary Award winner Divisadero. Set in the early 1950s, The Cat’s Table (McClelland & Stewart, $32 cl., Sept.) tells the story of an 11-year-old boy crossing the Indian Ocean on a liner bound for England, and the mysterious prisoner shackled on board. • Also from M&S is Guy Vanderhaeghe’s first novel in eight years. Set in the late 19th-century Canadian and American West, A Good Man ($32.99 cl., Sept.) is the third book in a loose trilogy that also includes The Last Crossing (2003) and The Englishman’s Boy, which won the 1996 Governor General’s Literary Award. • A third GG winner has a new novel out this season: David Gilmour, who won in 2005 for his previous novel, A Perfect Night to Go to China. Gilmour returns with The Perfect Order of Things (Thomas Allen Publishers, $26.95 cl., Sept.), the story of a man who revisits traumatic and life-changing incidents from his past.

Marina Endicott follows up her Scotiabank Giller Prize–shortlisted 2008 novel Good to a Fault with The Little Shadows (Doubleday Canada, $32.95 cl., Sept.), about three sisters who become vaudeville singers following the death of their father. • Acclaimed novelist Helen Humphreys returns with an historical novel set in France during the Napoleonic period. The Reinvention of Love (HarperCollins Canada, $29.99 cl., Sept.) is about a French journalist whose affair with Victor Hugo’s wife causes a scandal (as it might be expected to do).

Brian Francis’s debut novel, Fruit, was a runner-up in the 2009 edition of CBC’s battle of the books, Canada Reads. His second novel, Natural Order (Doubleday Canada, $29.95 cl., Aug.), tells the story of a mother who is forced to confront the secrets she has kept about her son when her carefully constructed life is overturned by a startling revelation. • Kevin Chong returns to fiction with his first novel in a decade. Beauty Plus Pity (Arsenal Pulp Press, $17.95 pa., Sept.) follows an Asian-Canadian slacker in Vancouver whose incipient modelling career is derailed by the death of his father and the sudden departure of his fiancée.

Requiem (HarperCollins Canada, $32.95 cl., Sept.), the third novel from Frances Itani, is about a Japanese-Canadian who embarks upon a cross-country journey of discovery following the death of his wife. • Anita Rau Badami follows her best-selling novels Tamarind Mem and The Hero’s Walk with Tell It to the Trees (Knopf Canada, $32 cl., Sept.), about the Dharma family – the authoritarian Vikram, the gourmand Suman, and the old storyteller Akka. When the Dharmas’ tenant, Anu, turns up dead on their doorstep, the family’s long-buried secrets begin to boil over. • Gayla Reid returns with her first novel since 2002’s Closer Apart. Set during the Spanish Civil War, Come from Afar (Cormorant Books, $32 cl., Aug.) tells the story of an Australian nurse who falls into a relationship with a Canadian soldier from the International Brigade.

Haitian expat Dany Laferrière is back with his third novel in translation in three years. The Return (Douglas & McIntyre, $22.95 pa., Aug.) tells the story of a 23-year-old Haitian named Dany who flees Baby Doc Duvalier’s repressive regime and relocates to Montreal. Thirty-three years later, Dany learns of his father’s death in New York City, and plots a return to his native country. David Homel translates. • Another Montreal resident, poet Sina Queyras, has a novel out this fall, the author’s first. Autobiography of Childhood (Coach House Books, $20.95 pa., Oct.) is about one day in the lives of five siblings haunted by the death of a brother years before. • Infrared (McArthur & Company, $29.95 cl., Sept.), the new novel by Nancy Huston, is about a photographer who travels to Tuscany with her father and stepmother. Employing internal dialogues with the photographer’s mental doppelgänger, Huston opens up her hero for exposure and provides an intimate picture of her interior life.

CanLit mainstay David Helwig returns with a novella, his first since 2007’s Smuggling Donkeys. Killing McGee (Oberon, $38.95 cl., $18.95 pa., Oct.) tells the story of a professor’s dual obsessions with the assassination of D’Arcy McGee and the disappearance of one of his students. • Toronto-based poet Dani Couture returns with her first novel, a surreal and iconoclastic take on that perennial CanLit staple: the family drama. Algoma (Invisible Publishing, $19.95 pa., Oct.) tells the story of a family attempting to cope with the aftermath of a young child falling through the ice and drowning. • Shari Lapeña also has a novel about a perennial CanLit concern: raising money to allow one time to write poetry. Happiness Economics (Brindle & Glass, $19.95 pa., Sept.) tells the story of a stalled poet who takes a job writing advertising copy to start a poetry foundation.

Jamaican-born novelist, poet, and non-fiction author Olive Senior returns to long-form fiction with Dancing Lessons (Cormorant, $22 pa., Aug.), about a woman looking back on her life after a hurricane destroys her home. • Memoirist Frances Greenslade (A Pilgrim in Ireland, By the Secret Ladder) has a debut novel out this August. Shelter (Random House Canada, $29.95 cl.) is a coming of age story about two sisters searching for their mother, who abandoned them after their father was killed in a logging accident.

Not one, but two novels this season extend the burgeoning CanLit focus on towns that have been/are about to be flooded (after Johanna Skibsrud’s The Sentimentalists, Anne Michaels’ The Winter Vault, and Michael V. Smith’s Progress). Tristan Hughes’s Eye Lake (Coach House, $19.95 pa., Oct.) is about the town of Crooked River, Ontario. Named for a river that was diverted to make way for a mine, the town harbours secrets that surface when the river reclaims its original course. • And in September, Goose Lane Editions will publish Riel Nason’s The Town that Drowned ($19.95 pa.), about the suspicions, secrets, and emotions that flare up when the township of Haverton is scheduled to be flooded to allow for the construction of a massive dam.

Edward Riche follows up his Thomas Head Raddall Award winner The Nine Planets with Easy to Like (House of Anansi Press, $29.95 cl., Sept.), a satire about a screenwriter and oenophile who dreams of travelling to Paris, but is trapped in Canada by an expired passport and a growing Hollywood scandal. Relocating to Toronto, he bluffs his way into the upper echelons of the CBC. • Former president and CEO of Penguin Canada, David Davidar was forced out of his position under a cloud of scandal after accusations of sexual harassment. Davidar’s new novel, Ithaca (M&S, $29.99 cl., Oct.), is, perhaps not coincidentally, about the rise and fall of a publishing star.

Canadian literary icon Michel Tremblay returns with a new novel, the first in a trilogy. Set in 1913, Crossing the Continent (Talonbooks, $18.95 pa., Oct.) takes the author’s characters out of Quebec for the first time, to tell the backstory of the people who populate his Chroniques du Plateau-Mont-Royal series. Long-time Tremblay collaborator Sheila Fischman translates.

A resident of St. John’s, Newfoundland, lately one of the most fertile spots for Canadian writing, Michelle Butler Hallett crafts genre-busting stories and novels that frequently experiment with gender and perspective. Her new novel, Deluded Your Sailors (Creative Book Publishing, $21.95 pa., Sept.), focuses on the culture industry from the perspective of Nichole Wright, who makes a discovery that puts a government-funded tourism project in jeopardy, and a shape-shifting minister named Elias Winslow. • Another Newfoundland native, Kate Story, has a novel out with Creative this season. The follow-up to 2008’s Blasted, Wrecked Upon This Shore ($21.95 pa., Sept.) tells the story of Pearl Lewis, an emotionally damaged, charismatic woman who is seen at different stages in her life.

In 1972, Christina Parr returns to her hometown of Parr’s Landing, a place she fled years earlier. The dirty secret of Parr’s Landing? A 300-year-old vampire resides in the caves of the remote mining town. Christina learns why she should have stayed away in Michael Rowe’s Enter, Night (ChiZine Publications, $17.95 pa., Oct.). • English literature professor Janey Erlickson struggles to make headway in her academic career while caring for a tyrannical toddler in Sue Sorensen’s comic novel A Large Harmonium (Coteau Books, $21 pa., Sept.). • Paul Brenner, a Vancouver lawyer, dines with his son, Daniel, one Friday evening. The next day, Brenner receives word that his son has been murdered. Hold Me Now (Freehand Books, $21.95 pa., Oct.), the first novel from Stephen Gauer, examines a father’s grief and a lawyer’s faith in the legal system.

SHORT FICTION

Anyone who has ever wondered what might transpire if the author of Bigfoot’s autobiography were to illustrate a story collection by Canada’s reigning postmodern ironist can stop wondering. October sees the publication of Highly Inappropriate Tales for Young People (Random House Canada, $24 cl.), the first collaboration between author Douglas Coupland and well-known illustrator Graham Roumieu.

D.W. Wilson currently lives in London, England, but is a native of B.C.’s Kootenay Valley. The winner of the inaugural Man Booker Prize Scholarship from the University of East Anglia, Wilson’s debut collection, Once You Break a Knuckle (Hamish Hamilton Canada, $32 cl., Sept.), is a suite of stories about good people doing bad things.

Novelist Anne DeGrace has her first collection of short stories on tap for September. Flying with Amelia (McArthur & Company, $29.95 cl.) spans the 20th century and crosses vast swathes of territory. Wireless telegraphy, German POWs in Manitoba, the Great Depression, and the FLQ crisis all crop up in her stories. • David Whitton’s story “Twilight of the Gods” was included in the 2010 sci-fi anthology Darwin’s Bastards. The story also appears in Whitton’s first solo collection, The Reverse Cowgirl (Freehand, $21.95 pa., Oct.), which sports the most sexually suggestive title for a collection of CanLit stories since Pasha Malla’s The Withdrawal Method.

Toronto writer Rebecca Rosenblum follows up her Metcalf-Rooke Award–winning debut collection Once (a Q&Q book of the year for 2009) with The Big Dream (Biblioasis, $19.95 pa., Sept.), a collection of linked stories about the lives of workers at Dream, Inc., a lifestyle-magazine publisher. • The Maladjusted (Thistledown Press, $18.95 pa., Sept.), Toronto writer Derek Hayes’ debut collection, focuses on people who run afoul of the dictates of polite society. • Also from Thistledown, Britt Holmström’s Leaving Berlin ($18.95 pa., Sept.) examines contemporary women in both Canadian and European settings.

The fine print: Q&Q’s fall preview covers books published between July 1 and Dec. 31, 2011. All information (titles, prices, publication dates, etc.) was supplied by publishers and may have been tentative at Q&Q’s press time. • Titles that have appeared in previous previews do not appear here.

David Davidar launches new publishing company

According to MobyLives, former Penguin Canada president David Davidar is starting his own publishing house. Based out of Dehli, India, Aleph Book Company is a partnership with major Indian publisher and distributor Rupa Publications.

Davidar left Penguin a year ago after being asked to leave the company, following charges of sexual harassment brought against him by a former employee.

At the time, Davidar claimed he was quitting Penguin to focus on writing his third novel. Ithaca (McClelland & Stewart) follows the “rise and fall of a publishing star.” The book is scheduled for release in October.

M&S to publish new David Davidar novel

Yes, you read that headline right. McClelland & Stewart president Doug Pepper has announced the acquisition of a new novel by ousted Penguin Canada president David Davidar, entitled Ithaca. From the press release:

Set in the international world of book publishing and his most ambitious novel to date, the book is scheduled for publication in Fall 2011.

“We’re thrilled to be publishing Ithaca,” Pepper said. “With this book David turns his keenly observant and passionate eye on a subject he knows well, giving us a rich, layered, and poignant novel about the publishing industry at a time of its greatest change in a century. Honest, witty, and edgy, the book’s message is ultimately hopeful, about the power of great story-telling and how it has endured and, despite the cataclysmic changes of the last several years, will continue to endure.”

Mike Bryan appointed president of Penguin Canada

[THIS POST HAS BEEN UPDATED]

Mike Bryan has been appointed the new president of Penguin Canada, following the ouster of former president David Davidar last month.

Bryan is a Penguin veteran of nearly 30 years. Like Davidar, he joins Penguin Canada after a stint as CEO and president of Penguin India, a title Bryan has held since 2007.

Unlike his predecessor, however, Bryan joins Penguin Canada without significant editorial experience. Prior to joining Penguin India he worked as the international sales and marketing director for Penguin U.K.

Davidar was asked to leave the company on June 8 following a lawsuit brought against him and Penguin by former rights and contracts director Lisa Rundle, who alleged that she was sexually harassed by Davidar and fired after voicing her concerns. The $523,000 suit was settled out of court on Tuesday. It was also revealed on Wednesday that Rundle will rejoin the company in the near future.

A relative unknown in Canadian publishing, Bryan’s appointment may disappoint some in the industry who were hoping that a Canadian would take over the top job. However, Penguin says it has created a new Penguin Canada Board that will be overseen by a Canadian. From the Penguin press release:

In the coming weeks Penguin Canada expects to appoint a Canadian with senior experience in the media and publishing industries to the position of Chairman of a newly formed Penguin Canada Board, which will have responsibility for the company’s overall strategy. The Penguin Canada board will include John Makinson, Allan Reynolds (CEO of Pearson Canada) and David Shanks. The new Chairman will work closely with Mike Bryan and the Penguin Canada executive team, and with David Shanks.

Keep watching Q&Q for more details.

Penguin Canada ready to announce new head following out-of-court settlement

Penguin Canada will announce a new company president on Wednesday after reaching an out-of-court settlement in a sexual harassment lawsuit involving former president David Davidar. The announcement will end weeks of speculation about who will replace Davidar at the helm of the troubled firm and turn the page on a regrettable chapter in the company’s history.

The out-of-court settlement was reached on Tuesday afternoon between the three parties involved in the $523,000 suit: Davidar, Penguin Canada, and former staffer Lisa Rundle, who alleged that she was sexually harassed by Davidar and later fired by the company after voicing her concerns.

From The Globe and Mail:

“We can now advise that all allegations have been addressed and all matters resolved to the satisfaction of all parties,” Peter Downard, lawyer to former Penguin executive David Davidar, wrote in an e-mail. “None of the parties will be commenting further to the media.”

Penguin spokesman Yvonne Hunter confirmed the news. “Everything has been settled,” she said.

For Q&Q‘s past coverage of the scandal, see here, here, here, and here.

More on the sexual mores of Canadian publishing

Author Stacey May Fowles has established herself as a trenchant observer of the sexual mores of Canadian publishing. Last week, in her column with Masthead.com, Fowles offered her take on the Davidar scandal, arguing that publishing breeds a workplace environment that is “uniquely permissive.” In a follow-up piece posted online at The Walrus (where she works as the magazine’s circulation manager), Fowles goes even further, detailing several instances of harassment she experienced first-hand while working in an industry that she describes as “complex and dangerously flawed.”

Fowles’ piece, a response to Russell Smith’s Globe and Mail column about sexual politics in the perilous trade, is a scathing account of an industry that not only tacitly tolerates instances of harassment but seems to consider it part of the job. From The Walrus:

What Smith missed in his column is that for some of those publishing “hotties,” sexuality is a tool used in pursuit of respect — and there is a deep sadness that sets in with the realization that so few really care about your manuscript or your theories or what you studied at university, but instead are deeply interested in how well you “entertain.”

There is also the subsequent shame that you participated at all. That you fell for and dressed up for the momentary pleasure that attention brings. Kissing your idols in elevators makes for a great martini-induced anecdote, but it also brings on a realization that this publishing culture, despite the fact that it is overwhelmingly populated by women, is still defined and governed by men. This is the lie of the patriarchy­­ — that even though our workplaces are staffed by women, our books authored by women, our bylines, titles, and accolades given to women, we still function under old rule.

You may ask why not just slap the ass-grabbing offender in the face at the party populated by everyone you work with or for? I think that question is asked and answered. Publishing is world of relationships, of bridges built and never deliberately burned. Because it’s unclear “who works for who,” if an author gets a little filthy during cocktail hour, he tends to fall more in the category of pervert than abuser of power. God forbid someone accuses you, the receiver of unwanted advances, of being difficult to work with. Under the threat of “you’ll never work in this town again,” we learn to live with it, become amused by it, enjoy it as cliché and archetypal. We even get a little elitist thrill that we are more enlightened than most because we think we understand it.

But as I grow older and perhaps more jaded the lie wears thin. I have long-since learned the eye-rolling, strategic avoiding, and placating that gets you through the shift. What else is the solution when the only coping mechanisms seem to be laugh off the lechery or to leave the industry for good (like one anonymous blogger did)? Or, in Russell Smith’s exceptional case, to write a Globe and Mail column about refusing to participate, however impossible it may seem. Because I have more perspective now, I wonder if I am not complicit because I write fervently about sex and sexuality, because I speak the language of innuendo, because I roll eyes and fail to slap faces. Am I not still nurturing an environment that is difficult for women ten years my junior who are just starting out?

Andrew Phillips appointed head of Penguin International

The Bookseller is reporting that Andrew Phillips, the deputy CEO of Dorling Kindersley, has been appointed the new head of Penguin International, filling a vacancy left by the ouster of David Davidar. Phillips, who will be based in Delhi, will oversee Penguin’s operations in developing markets in India, Africa, and the Middle East.

From The Bookseller:

Phillips joined DK in 2003 as managing director of international publishing and licensing, moving up to the deputy c.e.o. role last year. He previously worked in entertainment software company Electronic Arts and at McGraw-Hill.

Penguin Group chairman and c.e.o. John Makinson said he was “absolutely delighted” that Phillips had agreed to take on the role. “He has a wealth of international experience and has enjoyed a very successful track record at DK. He will become one of Penguin’s four regional ceos around the world.”

Presumably, the four CEOs referred to by Makinson are Penguin U.K. CEO Peter Field, Penguin U.S. CEO David Shanks, Penguin Australia CEO Gabrielle Coyne, and Phillips himself. Penguin has yet to name Davidar’s successor as president of Penguin Canada.

Blog post about sexual harrassment in publishing resonates with industry

An anonymous book and culture blogger has responded to the sexual harassment controversy involving former Penguin Canada President David Davidar with a posting called What it Feels Like for a Girl, about her own experiences at an unnamed Canadian publishing company.  She argues that industry culture often prevents women from speaking out when situations occur.

I need to write this post, because it turns out a lot of women are silenced in publishing, by the small nature of the industry, and by the fact that most of the execs are men. I’m not in the industry any more, and I’m not going to name names.

The blog has been making the re-tweet rounds in publishing circles. One reader linked to it saying, “I really feel like any woman who works in publishing should read this and share this.” In a follow-up post, the anonymous blogger says she has been humbled by the response – over 500 hits in one day – many originating from the desks of multinational publishers worldwide. The blogger told Q&Q some of the hits came from Random House New York, HarperCollins New York, Simon & Shuster U.S., and the CBC.

Portrait of David Davidar as a young man

While researching the ongoing David Davidar sexual harassment scandal, Q&Q came across an archival newspaper column written by one of his former mentors, the late Indian poet and columnist Dom Moraes. The piece, written in 2002, is a reminiscence of Davidar’s early days working as an associate editor for a Mumbai literary magazine. We quote it here because it provides a not-irrelevant, pre-scandal glimpse into Davidar’s character:

[David] was a tall, coltish, bespectacled young man, curiously lovable. While Dhiren [another editor at the magazine] had abstained from most of the pleasures of the world, David was — at least then — very susceptible to them. He drank a lot and liked to fall in love. He was paradoxically a devout Christian. At that time he lived in the YMCA in Colaba, not far from me. He would often drop in for Sunday lunch. I discovered that he usually stopped at church before this, to attend the morning service.

[...]

After this David became an associate editor of Gentleman, together with Harish Mehta. The two young men invented a monthly feature. They took turns every month to interview a beautiful film starlet or model over an expensive, often candlelit dinner, paid for by the office. David’s first such dinner, with a then famous model, caused him to tell me enthusiastically that he loved her. I was not unused to these confessions. I suggested that he should declare his emotions to her, not me, and should start by asking her to a meal that he paid for himself.

Later David came to tell me the lady had accepted his invitation to dinner. He was to pick her up the following evening. I advised him to be particularly careful about the impression he made on her father, and to take her flowers. He said my ideas in these matters were unoriginal. It was Easter. In the patisserie of a hotel, he had seen a life-size Easter bunny made of chocolate. It cost a lot and with a lavish dinner would exhaust his month’s salary, but it was worth it. As to her father, he expected to have a man-to-man talk with him over a drink.

This rendezvous was not a success. Through nerves, he arrived far too early, carrying his gigantic gift with difficulty. The reaction of the family had been one of amusement rather than awe. While the girl got ready, the father rather grumpily offered David a drink from his last bottle of Scotch. In those days a bottle of Scotch was much prized by its owner. But the girl took time to dress, David’s nervousness increased and by the time she appeared the bottle was empty. The father was by then no longer grumpy, but positively hostile.

Later requests for a date were firmly turned down. Soon after this David left Bombay. I missed our long talks about literature, and his youthful presence. He wanted to be a writer and showed me his poetry. When he returned from America he told me he wanted to write a long novel about his clan in Kerala. This has now been published, a decade after he first mentioned it to me, and has been praised. He is already the CEO of Penguin India, but I think he will be more pleased with his book than with his position, and I am pleased for him.

Toronto Star stakes out Davidar home

Things just keep getting worse for ex-Penguin Canada president David Davidar. In a surprisingly tabloid-y move, the Toronto Star has staked out Davidar’s Deer Park-area house in an attempt to get further comment on the sexual harassment scandal currently engulfing him. There isn’t much new in the piece, but the Star did manage to get Davidar’s wife to answer the door:

“There’s so much I want to say,” Davidar’s wife, Rachna, tells the Star, shaking her head. “So much, but I’ve been asked to zip it.”

The home in Deer Park, southeast of Forest Hill, is quiet apart from the sound of Davidar talking into his phone. No sound of a TV or radio, which might be normal for a couple that’s made their livelihood in books.

“We’ll get through this together,” says Rachna, who comes from a prominent book-selling family in New Delhi and managed McNally Robinson’s former bookstore in Don Mills. They’ve been together for 15 years.

“He can’t talk,” she says, gently. “Please don’t ask him.”