100 books like Arcanum 17

In this book, W.G. Sebald tells the stories of four Germans who, like the author, left their native land to live abroad. Sebald mixes family memories with stream-of-consciousness musings on history and culture. He inserts unexpected elements into the text, including a found diary written by his Great-Uncle Adelwarth, a gay man who was out of the closet way before it was safe.

Sebald sprinkles into the narrative black and white period photos that have a sort of deadpan, documentary humor that perfectly matches the tone of his prose.

Manuel Puig (1932–1990) was an Argentine novelist best known for writing The Kiss of the Spider Woman, made into a great movie with William Hurt and Raul Julia. This book, my first recommendation, is about a tangled love affair.

Puig tells the story by collaging together letters the characters write to each other, items in advice for the lovelorn columns, obituaries he invented, and a whole host of other texts. The reader has to put all the clues together like a detective solving a mystery. The book is beautifully translated into English by Suzanne Jill Levine. 

Eva Saulitis’ gorgeous book is a meditation on how humanity has wounded nature and how those wounds manifested in her own body as she lived with breast cancer till the end of her truncated life. Widely published as both a poet and a marine biologist who studied orca whales, Eva Saulitis spins together lyrical phrasing with her deep knowledge of science.

The language is stunning, even more remarkable when the reader remembers that she is recording her thoughts when she knows they will soon come to an inevitable end. Here’s an example of her beautiful writing when Saulitis recalls her childhood by the Great Lakes: “Lake Erie could be untamed, wild, a shape-shifter. Midwinter, it froze into a sastrugi-chiseled white expanse, the shoreline berg-choked.”

The abbey of St.-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups and its immediate surroundings is so much a part of this mystery novel that it almost becomes a character in its own right. Louise Penny has woven a complex plot in the tradition of Agatha Christie (isolated location, every inhabitant a suspect), and has infused the narrative with her own trademark attention to character development. Even those readers who are unfamiliar with Chief Inspector Gamache and his side-kick, Inspector Beauvoir will quickly come to care about their relationship and their futures. 

I am a great fan of Louise Penny’s Gamache series, and this book is one of my favourites. I have lost count of the number of times I’ve read it.

Canadians have long worried about their national identity. Indeed, some have considered whether or not there even is one.

Poulter, in her innovative and stimulating book, examines an early attempt in the mid-nineteenth century to create an imagined Canadian identity. Wishing to distance themselves from a quintessential “British” identity, second-generation Montreal Anglophones were searching for a new way to identify. They saw themselves as “native Canadians”.

To solidify this identity, they pursued, as Poulter explained, “national attributes, or visual icons, that came to be recognized at home and abroad as distinctly “Canadian.’” It meant, in practice, taking up propriate costumes and sports such as snowshoeing, tobogganing, winter hunting, and lacrosse. All of these activities – undertaken in sartorially correct attire – had previously been the preserve of the Indigenous and French Canadians. Here, was an Englishness reimagined on a frozen landscape.

By imposing perceived British attributes of order, discipline, and… show more.

I love the genesis of this book — a high school writing workshop for newcomers to Quebec, Canada. And I love that within its pages, students from around the world — the Philippines, Uruguay, Pakistan, China, Moldova Iran, South Korea, United Arab Emirates, Israel, and Venezuela — come together to share their personal experiences of seeking peace and security in a new country. Students share the pain and loss of being forced to leave their homes, families, friends, and way of life behind and reflect on their changing identities with strength and vulnerability. Illustrated with expressive portraits by Rogè, the collection powerfully conveys the uncertainty these young immigrants face and the cautious hope they have for the future. 

That’s right, a cookbook. Julian Armstrong was the long-time food editor for The Montreal Gazette, Quebec’s largest English-language newspaper. I lean heavily on this book to re-connect with my French heritage. What I love about A Taste of Quebec is its economy – one page, a short description, a list of ingredients with measurements, and a small insert telling you where the recipe originated and a little about that region. That’s it, on to the next page. Unlike online recipes – which can be convenient – there are no ads or long narratives about the author’s personal and complicated relationship with fennel. 

If, like the charming heroine of this laugh-out-loud comic, you are obsessed with murder mysteries and true-crime tales, you’re sure to be delighted by this winking pastiche of the detective novel. Set in the (very fictional and completely absurd) Hawaiian Quarter of Trois-Rivieres, Quebec, The Pineapples of Wrath follows Marie-Plum Porter, bartender at a tiki lounge and intrepid amateur gumshoe, as she investigates the mysterious death of a local limbo champion. Not only is this book full to the brim with kitschy jokes and clever allusions, it also manages to be a totally satisfying mystery that kept me guessing all the way to the last page!

I must have read this book at least half a dozen times over the years. Trevanian was the author of The Eiger Sanction, which became a film starring Clint Eastwood and served as my introduction to Trevanian.

Set in Montreal, this character-driven novel centres around a world-weary detective named LaPointe and the characters on his beat. Close to retirement, Lapointe finds himself on the trail of a killer. Will he catch him before his own past catches up with him? It’s a great story.

Louise Penny has hooked me again with another great installment in the Inspector Gamache series. I was so excited when I opened the book and found I would be returning to Three Pines for a new murder and an old story line Penny has been dangling in front of me since book one.

Both are resolved in this book (I think, but you never know) and the end is more than satisfying. There's still a lot of unfinished business in that little town and this incredible cast of characters just keeps me coming back for more. Moreover, (I remind my husband every time I start a new book in the series), I would run away with Armand Gamache if given even the slightest chance.