Great reads from a great year The best of 2010

Fiction

Annabel

By Kathleen Winter

"In this remarkably lucid and forthright story, we follow the fortunes of an endearingly earnest hermaphrodite, born in a remote fishing community in Labrador in the late '60s."

-- Debbie Patterson

Baldur's Song

By David Arnason

"In this bold and stirring novel, a young boy from Gimli finds himself in Winnipeg during its boomtown days at the turn of the 19th century."

-- Jonathan Ball

Curiosity

By Joan Thomas

"Thomas's new novel... is a precise reconstruction of the social and intellectual world of early 19th-century England that provides both a fascinating view of the early origins of the theory of evolution and a new way of looking at the 19th-century social novel."

-- Bob Armstrong

Freedom

By Jonathan Franzen

"Franzen lives up to everything that has been written and said about him. This novel... is a big, bulky quilt of social and psychological realism."

-- Morley Walker

The House of

Special Purpose

By John Boyne

"A richly textured, bittersweet tale of love, loss and intrigue at St. Petersburg's Winter Palace in the dying days of Czarist Russia."

-- Bev Sandell Greenberg

The

Imperfectionists

By Tom Rachman

"The characters in this bright and breezy first novel are striving for perfection even though they work for a newspaper."

-- Duncan McMonagle

The Line

By Olga Grushin

"Hope seizes the imaginations of members of a Soviet-era family in this Kafkaesque novel with consequences that shatter their grim, pre-planned existence."

-- Harriet Zaidman

Mr. Shakespeare's Bastard

By Richard B. Wright

"Through a 1650s female narrator, the acclaimed author of Clara Callan suggests his account of promiscuous young Will could be true. Wright's at his storytelling best in this entertaining romp."

-- Dave Williamson

The Murderer's Daughters

By Randy Susan Meyers

"Even as... it shifts slightly towards melodrama, it still manages to make a profound impact, tenderly and unforgettably evoking the desperation, guilt and grief that cling to those whose families are violently and irreparably torn apart."

-- Sharon Chisvin

Room

By Emma Donoghue

"Irish-born Donoghue's writing is compellingly subversive. Room is well-crafted, if often difficult to read, because of the actuality of the subject matter."

-- Liz Hopkins

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

By David Mitchell

"The amount of research that must have gone into this meticulous, wide-ranging work of historical fiction is staggering, but nowhere does Mitchell... bludgeon the reader with it."

-- Jill Wilson

The Twin

By Gerbrand Bakker

"A great novel about a man who doesn't know himself, in part because he had a projection of himself, the twin who died.

-- Rory Runnells

Under Heaven

By Guy Gavriel Kay

"Like the rest of his fantasy-history oeuvre, Under Heaven is an engrossing read, filled with well-drawn characters who live in a richly detailed world."

-- Rebecca Walberg

Non-fiction

Breakfast at the Exit Café

By Wayne Grady and Merilyn Simonds

"This is travel writing that aspires to being travel literature, and largely succeeds."

-- Douglas J. Johnston

The Cigar Box Banjo

By Paul Quarrington

"Self-effacing and humble, and never maudlin or self-pitying, the dying (and now deceased) Quarrington peppers his pages with wonderful anecdotes of his musical coming of age, and the trials, tricks and trauma that come with being a travelling band in a broad country, depending on drunken audiences and cantankerous bar-owners for affirmation and sustenance."

-- Ted St. Godard

Cleopatra

By Stacy Schiff

"Schiff's impeccable research and balanced approach to one of history's most notorious women makes this excellent read for lovers of ancient history and those who want a corrective to the glamorous oversimplifications of Hollywood."

-- Julie Kentner

Curtains

By Tom Jokinen

"Why death and its aftermath? Is there a topic with more mystery, secret procedures, or promise of something for everyone?"

-- Ron Robinson

The Gun

By C.J. Chivers

"The AK-47 rifle, the Kalashnikov, is so simple that even a child can use it -- and children do. This is the gripping but chilling tale of 'the most abundant firearms on earth.'"

-- Duncan McMonagle

Hitch-22

By Christopher Hitchens

"In this wittily urbane and entertaining memoir, Hitchens comes across here largely as he does in all his books and magazine articles -- fearsomely cerebral, ironic, encyclopedic and self-confident."

-- Morley Walker

Invisible Chains

By Benjamin Perrin

"It's impossible not to be moved by the gut-wrenching yet true stories of human slavery recounted by Perrin."

-- Brenlee Carrington

Life

By Keith Richards, with James Fox

"Keef has turned some of his famous riffs into rants in his autobiography, titled simply Life, and he shows a certain knack for it."

-- Chris Smith

Peter Gzowski

By R.B. Fleming

"This book... will generate debate about the true legacy of this driven, talented and troubled man with a golden mind and feet of clay."

-- Terry MacLeod

They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children

By Roméo Dallaire

"A stirring and thought-provoking exposé on a global phenomenon -- the use of child soldiers in combat."

-- Bev Sandell Greenberg

Voodoo Histories

By David Aaronovitch

"Orwell Prize-winning British journalist David Aaronovitch revels in the absurdities conspiracy theories proclaim as truth and cringes at the credulity of their overheated adherents."

-- Ian Stewart

War

By Sebastian Junger

"A riveting book. Junger's story of the physical terrain of warfare is dramatic, funny at times, and heartbreaking."

-- George MacLean

The Trouble with Billionaires

By Linda McQuaig and Neil Brooks

"In the end, McQuaig and Brooks have provided the intellectual heft to justify that old street-corner cry of the left: Make the rich pay."

-- Don Benham

Poetry

Pigeon

By Karen Solie

"Winner of the 2010 Griffin Poetry Prize, Pat Lowther Memorial Award and Trillium Award, Karen Solie's third collection alights with stories of residence, high school reunions and ecological bewilderment. An essential new year's read that challenges us to reach deep into our personal stores of hope."

-- Jennifer Still

Lookout

By John Steffler

"After nearly three decades in Newfoundland, the Ontario-born Steffler has acquired the status of familiar come-from-away. This confers some advantages on a poet with a naturalist's eye for re-examining official histories. "

-- Ariel Gordon

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition December 26, 2010 D10