Canada Reads for Everyone: Accessible Follow-ups to this Year’s Contenders

After Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic, try Cora Siré’s Behold Things Beautiful (Signature Editions)

Booktoker Tasnim Geedi defended Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic, a twisty and creepy novel set in a dilapidated mansion near a mining town in Mexico. While not overtly horror like Mexican Gothic, Behold Things Beautiful also borrows from the Latin American writing tradition of stunning magical realism. Like Mexican Gothic, it also features true terror (wartime), family tension (a dying mother), and a bold heroine in Alma Alvarez; a perfect foil to Mexican Gothic’s Noemí Taboada.

After Michael Christie’s Greenwood, try Nina Munteanu’s A Diary in the Age of Water (Inanna Publications)

Spanning the same centuries of time that take place in Michael Christie’s Greenwood, the eponymous diary in A Diary in the Age of Water charts 20 years in the life of Lynna, a single mother working for the Toronto branch of an international utility that controls all of the water access. Her life is read through the eyes of Kyo, who centuries later lives in a post-apocalyptic society among the dying Boreal Forest. Together, four generations of women as observers and actors in the climate crisis-turned-disaster mirror well the generations of Greenwoods in Christie’s novel, championed by actor/director Keegan Connor Tracy.

After Dimitri Nasrallah’s Hotline (Véhicule Press), try Shashi Bhat’s The Family Took Shape (Cormorant Books)

Gurdeep Pandher, Yukon’s own Bhangra dancer, brought his signature positivity to debate on behalf of ALU-favourite Dimitri Nasrallah’s Hotline (Véhicule Press), leading to a tense tie between it and graphic memoir Ducks on day three of the competition. If you also loved the moving immigrant story of Muna and her son Omar making ends meet in Montreal in Hotline, try The Family Took Shape, which is also a novel about an immigrant family helmed by a single mother trying to keep it all together while preserving their cultural traditions in their new Canadian home.

After Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven, try Waubgeshig Rice’s Moon of the Crusted Snow (ECW Press)

Itself longlisted for Canada Reads 2023, Moon of the Crusted Snow is the perfect followup to Station Eleven, with matching gripping plot and stunning prose that Michael Greyeyes referenced in the debates. In Rice’s novel, a small Anishnaabe community in a post-apocalyptic era prepares for the looming winter, when the arrival of a stranger precipitates more newcomers to their remote home. The newcomers threaten the group’s way of life in a way that will be familiar to fans of Station Eleven, but still in a way that is entirely unique, and borrows from the Anishnaabe language and storytelling tradition.

After Kate Beaton’s Ducks, try Clem and Olivier Martini’s Bitter Medicine (Freehand Books)

Much of the Canada Reads conversation surrounding Ducks – championed by Mattea Roach – was about how the graphic medium allowed for the heavy topics being discussed to be more accessible to readers. Bitter Medicine is twice accessible – both in its frank detailing of mental illness and in its accessible epub format, which allows for print-disabled readers to access both Clem Martini’s text and Olivier’s accompanying drawings. This family memoir of Olivier and the older Martini brother, Ben’s diagnoses of schizophrenia tackles the stigmas of mental illness while not shying away from its many realities.

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What will you read next after this year’s Canada Reads? Let us know on socials @alllitupcanada.