New Canadian Library and other Canadian Lit Challenge discussion

Comments and quotes here.

This book was a real disappointment. It is the author's first book and it shows. He couldn't figure out what genre it was - a farce, a ghost story, a murder mystery. It was an uncomfortable mixture of everything.

Rosemarie wrote: "This book was a real disappointment. It is the author's first book and it shows. He couldn't figure out what genre it was - a farce, a ghost story, a murder mystery. It was an uncomfortable mixture..."

Would you read others by him?

I read another book of his a few years ago, Spit Delaney's Island, and quite enjoyed it. The plot was not as bizarre as in this book and the characters were generally more "normal". It has been a while since I read it, but I was not prepared for the weirdness of The Invention of the World.

Rosemarie wrote: "I read another book of his a few years ago, Spit Delaney's Island, and quite enjoyed it. The plot was not as bizarre as in this book and the characters were generally more "normal". It has been a w..."

It is always disappointing to read a book and enjoy it and then go to an earlier novel by the same author and dislike it. However, I find it more disappointing to enjoy a debut novel and over time see the author seemingly run out of steam and the quality of the novels diminish. We readers get so much out of the books we love that I guess we can be demanding. Must be a lot of stress to authors and I can understand how they can get writer's block.