The relationship between a mother and her child is a rocky phenomenon that can be difficult for some authors to capture. Genevieve Scott’s debut novel, Catch my Drift (Goose Lane, 2018), is a wonderfully realistic story of a complex family, and at the heart is mother and daughter, Lorna and Cara. As a millennial feminist, I’m pleased with even one unique female main character, so to read a novel with two female protagonists—women I was instantly devoted to—was a treat. Lorna’s social awkwardness and ambition, juxtaposed with Cara’s anxiety and longing to fit in, was perfectly told in this story. And while the two characters are like oil and water, I found them both utterly relatable and endearing in their own ways.Continue Reading Catch My Drift by Genevieve Scott

In 1956, Enman Greene takes his twelve-year-old daughter Penelope out for lunch at a Halifax fish ’n’ chip shop. She believes it’s for her birthday, but Enman has actually brought her there to reveal a secret: the truth about Penelope’s mother.

Once Enman begins his story, A Circle on the Surface (Vagrant Press, forthcoming in 2018), the fifth novel by Nova Scotia author Carol Bruneau, sweeps back to 1943 and the fictional Nova Scotia town of Barrein. It’s a time of great uncertainty, not only because of the war that looms over the lives of the town’s inhabitants, but because of the turmoil brewing between Enman and his new wife Una.

Una and Enman have moved to Barrein to care for Enman’s elderly mother. Una doesn’t like small-town living, however, nor does she like being caregiver to her mother-in-law, a role which has been thrust upon her largely by default. To escape her growing unhappiness, she spends much of her time wandering the beaches alone, where she encounters a mysterious stranger.Continue Reading A Circle on the Surface by Carol Bruneau

I’d forgotten Judy Blume’s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret is about religion. What I remember from the book, what most readers likely remember, is that eleven-year-old Margaret desperately wanted her period. For anyone who has had a period—for one year, ten years, forty years—that plot line is so off-the-charts bizarre it’s unforgettable. But the reason Blume’s book was passed around the school yard in the 1970s was not so much that Margaret wanted her period but that she and her friends actually talked about periods, as well as boys, bras, puberty and sex. Few people, youth or adults, spoke openly about such topics, very few about menstruation.

Almost fifty years later, Margaret is still in print and still touted by some as the guide to puberty. So how far have we progressed in terms of open discussion of periods? How much has changed in terms of books we can share, books that start conversations, answer questions, portray common experiences? Not far and not much, I say. Or I did say—until Gush.

Continue Reading Gush, edited by Rosanna Deerchild, Ariel Gordon & Tanis MacDonald