Parallel Lies by Stella Duffy

Like a nesting set of Russian dolls, there are layers upon layers of pretense in this tart thriller set in Hollywood. British-born Penny narrates the story of her work as personal assistant - and lover - to Russian-born screen idol Yana Ivanova. For the sake of public appearances, Yana is married to a man, Jimmy, and the three of them live together in not-so-perfect harmony in a lovely mansion. A series of mysterious letters threatens to topple their house of cards. Penny and Yana must sort it out before their happiness is destroyed, no matter the cost.

Duffy's writing style is conversational and witty. Penny treads carefully around another actor, Melissa, who seems to be trying to seduce her into a three-way with her ex, Mike - who also just happens to be the leading man opposite Yana in a new film: "Easily bored, his blonde siren, she needs constant change, weather-vane girl, vain girl, glorious girl." Yana pushes Penny into the situation, in order to maintain the smokescreen around their relationship, but neither is happy about it. "She was pissed off and jealous. I was sorry she was pissed off and happy she was jealous."

Sex, drugs, lies and murder and up to a quick and entertaining read.

The Lover's Dictionary by David Levithan

Not a dictionary, but a novel written in a series of vignettes documenting the feelings and day-to-day negotiations of a romantic adult relationship. Each diary-like entry is a prose poem titled alphabetically with a noun, verb or adjective: aberrant, abstain, abstraction, abyss, acronym, adamant, etc.

The tale is shaped around the consequences of an infidelity. It is told in first person without names, nor very many clues about the gender of either partner, an ambiguity which reinforces the universal nature of the subject. Levithan even references Jeanette Winterson's famously non-gender-specific novel, Written on the Body in the poem 'blemish, n.' In my interpretation of the text, however, I kept seeing two men. This may be because I know the author is gay and his previous books have had gay central characters. (This is also his first clearly adult novel after a string of successful YA titles.)

Here's an excerpt from the poem 'woo, v': "I told you that it was ridiculous to pay thirty dollars for a dozen roses on Valentine's Day. I forbade you to do it. So that day, when I went to pay for lunch, what did I find? In my wallet, thirty singles, each with roses printed on it."

Not every scene is so sweet, of course. It's a candid examination of the nature of human partnerships. It is absolutely charming.

Readalikes on the subject of love with a similarly unusual format (albeit different tones): The Incident Report by Martha Baillie; The End of the Alphabet by CS Richardson; Watercolor Women, Opaque Men by Ana Castillo; Anthropology by Dan Rhodes; The Beauty of the Husband by Anne Carson.

Pretty Monsters by Kelly Link

Kelly Link demonstrates her versatile and fertile imagination in this amazing collection. There are corpses playing tricks, an entire village in a handbag, ghosts kept on ribbons as pets... all kinds of delicious weirdness. It was a good choice to have each of the nine stories performed by a different author in the Recorded Books edition (13 hours). What the tales have in common are just the right details to bring the settings and characters vividly into focus, a sense of the macabre and a fantastical twist at the end. Great fun!

Readalikes: Black Juice and Red Spikes by Margo Lanagan; Swamplandia by Karen Russell.

Blink & Caution by Tim Wynne-Jones

Blink was only trying to steal some breakfast from a fancy Toronto hotel when he accidently witnesses a high-stakes hoax. Caution was fed up with ill-treatment from her former lover/pimp/pornographer and steals a huge wad of his cash. Chance brings the two homeless teens together and soon they have each other's backs. They are going to need all of their wits because they are in way over their heads... and that's not even counting the tragedies that sent them to the streets initially.

This is Tim Wynne-Jones' most adrenalin-fueled novel yet. The two teens are also really interesting individuals. I appreciated the subtle ways their characteristics were revealed: Caution's mixed Aboriginal ancestry, for example. She has her father's grey English eyes and comes from Wahnapitae in northern Ontario; her cousin (on her mother's side) has a broad, brown face and answers the door in moccasins.

The chapters alternate between Blink's story - told in second person - and Caution's, which is in third. Flashbacks are in italics, so it is always easy to orient oneself. Believable dialogue helps to move the action along quickly. I'd recommend this to anyone looking for a smart thriller. Grade 8 - up.

Lullabies for Little Criminals by Heather O'Neill

If this book was just being published now instead of five years ago, I wonder if it would have been promoted as YA instead of adult. It's a coming-of-age story with mature themes in the voice of an appealing young narrator named Baby. Baby's parents were both just 15 years old when she was born and her mother died soon afterwards. Her father is a drug addict and mentally unstable, so Baby spends a lot of time on the streets in the red light district of Montreal. As if her life weren't already difficult enough, Baby gets a crush on a jealous pimp who happens to like his girls young.

Miriam McDonald narrates the audiobook (Harper Audio; 9 hours) with an appropriately matter-of-fact delivery, in the way Baby herself avoids being too deeply affected by the tragedy of her situation. Audiobooks with long tracks can be really annoying because when I stop partway through a track, I have to re-listen from the beginning of the track when I get back to the book. (My player doesn't have fast-forwarding within tracks.) For some reason, Canadian titles are especially bad in this regard and Lullabies for Little Criminals is a case in point, with tracks about 20-25 minutes long. I started listening to the final CD and had to stop at the 25 minute point, even though the track wasn't yet over. Thinking that it must be near the end, I switched to track 2 when I was ready to listen again, only to hear "thank you for listening etc." So I started again from the beginning. After about 50 minutes, I managed to drop my player and it fell apart. Luckily, it still worked once I had reassembled it. Unfortunately, I had to start all over again from the beginning of the CD in order to hear how the story ended. I gave up and got a copy of the book instead so that I could read the final 15 pages.

The paper edition had a note from the author at the end, talking about Baby: "The main character is twelve for a good chunk of the book. Twelve is a beautiful and striking age. It's when kids start talking big and thinking about how they could make it on their own: just like angels right before they are cast out of heaven. They have such innocent and dangerous ideas."

I think it is this newness to the world that makes teen characters like Baby so very appealing; they remind me what it was like to experience everything for the first time.

Grade 10- up. Readalikes: Blink & Caution by Tim Wynne-Jones (which I'm going to blog about next); Rose of No Man's Land by Michelle Tea; Broken China by Lori Aurelia Williams; Saint Iggy by KL Going.

Burn by Alma Fullerton

Casey and her mom, Libby, used to travel around the world together; they were like two peas in a pod. Libby McCall is still famous, but it's been six years since she's recorded anything new. Six years ago, Casey's grandmother died and it was time for Casey to start school anyway and Libby met John, who runs a restaurant not  too far from Toronto, and then Casey's little sister Ginny was born. Ginny has autism, so she needs everything to be routine. Between the restaurant business and Ginny's special needs, travelling is out of the question... until Libby takes off on her own. Casey starts sending up smoke signal prayers to her mother, hoping that she will come back, and the fires get bigger and bigger...

As with her previous novels, Alma Fullerton has written Burn in a series of poems, a format which makes Casey's shifting emotional states immediately present. The child hardly gets a break, so be prepared with kleenex.

Readalikes: The Same Stuff as Stars by Katherine Paterson (for another girl taking charge after being dumped by her mother); Al Capone Does My Shirts by Gennifer Choldenko (for another sibling with autism); Hold Me Tight by Lorie Ann Grover (for another girl's hard luck story in verse).

Fatty Legs by Christy Jordan-Fenton and Margaret Pokiak-Fenton

"My name is Olemaun Pokiak - that's OO-lee-mawn - but some of my classmates used to call me 'Fatty Legs.' They called me that because a wicked nun forced me to wear a pair of red stockings that made my legs look enormous. But I put an end to it. How? Well, I am going to let you in on a secret that I have kept for more than 60 years: the secret of how I made those stockings disappear."

This is the opening paragraph in a true story about residential schooling written by Christy Jordan-Fenton with her mother-in-law, Margaret Pokiak-Fenton.

When Olemaun begged her parents to send her to school so that she could learn to read, her parents tried to discourage her. She had no idea of the hardships she would face at residential school. She was born into an Inuvialuit family and spent her early years on Banks Island next to the Arctic Ocean. In 1944, at 8 years of age, Olemaun made the 5-day journey to Aklavik, on the Northwest Territories mainland, where her father sold his furs and stocked up on yearly supplies at the Hudson Bay Company. At Aklavik, there was also a Catholic school run by Belgian nuns and that is where Olemaun became known as Margaret. It was two years before she saw her parents again.

The nuns are described as crows and ravens doing a poor job of looking after little wrens who have been snatched from their nests. The children are forced to work very hard - cleaning, hauling wood, gardening, sewing, doing laundry and working in the hospital next door - but Margaret does learn reading and math. Her resourcefulness and strong spirit give this book an uplifting tone. Full-colour artwork by Liz Amini-Holmes and black-and-white photos from Margaret Pokiak-Fenton's own collection as well as archival materials nicely illustrate this moving account.

Grade 4-up. Readalikes suitable for children: My Name Is Seepeetza by Shirley Sterling and Goodbye Buffalo Bay by Larry Loyie are two more autobiographical accounts of Aboriginal experiences in residential schools. For more for this same age group about Inuit life and culture: Arctic Adventures by Raquel Rivera and Jirina Marton; Curse of the Shaman by Michael Kusugak.