100 books like Who Has Seen the Wind

"Hunger stared down from the smokeless chimneys, and started up from the filthy street that had no offal, among its refuse, of anything to eat." In these few short words Charles Dickens artfully summed up the experience – and landscapes – of abject urban poverty. Set in Paris and London during the period of the first French Revolution, it is perhaps more convoluted and less effective in terms of characterization than his best novels, but it pulls no punches. Although it’s a historical novel, and a romance at that, it’s as close as we can get to feeling what it must have been like to be hungry at that moment in which our modern world – and its social problems – was made.

Michael Faber is one of my favorite writers of all time, and the same author of Under the Skin, another wonderful book with a female protagonist you’ll hate yourself for loving. Faber’s range as a storyteller is incredible, and along with his mastery of horror and science fiction, he shows that he can put together a Victorian epic that is gorgeously written, with a main character, Sugar, who is a complicated character—a sex worker by trade who sometimes makes bad choices but is admirable in how she has to navigate the world of pompous, detestable men to survive. 

This compelling family saga set on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia was published in 1996 and explores the lives of the complicated Piper family in the early 20th century.

My late mother was from Glace Bay, a mining town on Cape Breton, and I remember she was quite excited when she heard about Ms. MacDonald’s drama, and promptly bought a copy. She told me she couldn’t get beyond the first few chapters because it was far too filthy for her taste. Naturally, I then had to read the whole novel to find out just how controversial the book was!

A colleague (Thanks, Rob) recommended this to me because it deals with Newfoundland (my home) and with the romance and ambition of Premier Joseph Smallwood who led Newfoundland to join Canada. I recall Premier Smallwood arriving in my community to preside over a bridge opening. I, age nine, scampered through the crowd and stopped dead in front of a man in a black wool overcoat. I looked up: black fedora; black horn-rimmed glasses. Shocked at almost slamming into the premier, I ran. Only one thought occurred: he looked so small in that heavy coat. The Colony of Unrequited Dreams tells of this small man’s relentless quest for leadership: in the absence of roads, he campaigned by walking the railroad tracks in the dead of winter, ending up skin and bones and darn near dead. My road to my roots started with this reading. 

One of my absolute favourite storytellers, Guy Vanderhaege can transport the reader into his imagined world with the first sentence.

This historical prairie fiction, the fully conceived characters and storyline, and that important rural farm setting makes this book a favourite that I have often re-read.

The complicated dark and sometimes comedic entanglements of family, the disconnects and reconnections because of mistruths, misunderstandings, lost opportunities, and redemption are woven in an intriguing, believable fabric that will break a reader’s heart.

Diverse characters who feel like friends; a picturesque town that will have you checking Google maps for your next road trip; a murder; an unexpected love story; what is not to love about this book?

This is my favorite read of the year. I still envision the characters months after reading, as if I visited “Beautiful” on a wild adventure to solve a mystery and met an eclectic bunch of new travel mates along the way. The ending will surprise you in more ways than one. An easy, solid 5+ stars for this one.

In this cozy mystery Mable and Violet are fast friends and have odd adventures. I think everyone needs a partner in crime, so to speak. This is a series; each book has a different theme, which I like. This story is set in a theatre, a one-act play competition in small town Saskatchewan, Canada. From my experience in little theatre odd things do happen. Like in my writing, this story has humour, intrigue, and enduring friendship. The added bonus, a theatre critic who has it coming. I like figuring out who had the biggest axe to grind and what motives each character is hiding.

You’re fifteen years old, living unhappily with your feckless parents and unstable older sister in a small town in Montana. And then your family implodes: your parents are arrested for bank robbery and your sister flees to parts unknown. As troubling as the premise is, Canada becomes even darker and more ominous as young Dell Parsons travels alone to Saskatchewan to live with erstwhile family friends, but in fact enters a whole new world of intrigue and violence. Dell is a stoic character, and you desperately want to see his life take a turn for the better. What you get instead is a case study in resiliency and survival. Ford’s prose is powerful; every word counts, every sentence pulls you deeper into the story.

Since discovering details of my personal genealogy, and learning that I am Metis, I have become more interested in learning about the history of the Metis people of Canada. During my research, I came upon this book which I found to be an enjoyable mix of fiction and history based around the battle between the Metis people of the prairies and the Canadian government. I particularly enjoyed how the author showed the strengths and weaknesses of real historical figures, Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont, through the eyes of strong female characters.

Many French Canadians are the descendants of the King's Daughters (Filles du Roi) of this era. Many also are the descendants of mixed French and Algonquian marriages. Wikipedia…The Métis (/meɪˈtiː(s)/; French: [metis]) are Indigenous peoples in the three Prairie Provinces (Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta), as well as parts of Ontario, British Columbia, the Northwest Territories, and the Northern United States.

I’ll Be Watching is a verse novel that evokes place and character in tight, specific moments. It’s a page-turner that tells a harrowing story of children in 1941 surviving on their own through the brutal winter in a small Prairie town. Nuanced and impressionistic, moments are layered to create a world of childhood without a supportive adult net. I love the restraint and the specificity of Porter’s writing. She has focussed on childhood, during the war, in a very ordinary, very unlikely location and written a thriller.