Kay’s Lucky Coin Variety is a bittersweet coming-of-age debut novel set in the Korean community in Toronto in the 1980s. Told through the eyes of a rebellious young girl, this critically-acclaimed book vividly captures the struggles of families caught between two cultures. Family secrets, forbidden loves, domestic assaults—Mary discovers that life is much more complicated than she had ever imagined.
What the judges said . . .
She’s called Mary now, but her Korean name is Yu-Rhee. Outwardly, she’s obedient. Inside, she’s plotting her escape from her parents’ convenience store. Ann Y.K. Choi’s debut novel is a vivid depiction of two generations clashing and caring for each other on a dangerous street corner in 1980s Toronto. Mary is determined to evade her fate, which means making some risky choices. Kay's Lucky Coin Variety is unsentimental, bracing and beautifully balanced, a story that reveals the true costs of shifting between two names and two cultures.
After his father undergoes brain surgery and slips into a coma, Howard Akler begins to reflect on the complicated texture of consciousness. During the long months that follow, Akler confronts the unknowable nature of another person’s life, as well as the struggles within his own unpredictable mind.
What the judges said . . .
Men of Action is an insightful and heartbreaking exploration of consciousness, familial relationships, and the sense of self. As he and his family stand a restless vigil through his father's post-operative coma, Howard Akler explores and reorganizes the past, present, and future of his relationship with his father. Immensely relatable, this collection of essays delves fearlessly into loss, grief, and the understanding that often the moments in which we choose to be completely still are when we take the most important actions.
From the 1840s until WW2, waves of newcomers who migrated to Toronto landed in ‘The Ward.’ This area, considered by the city to be a slum and bulldozed in the 1950s, was a working class enclave bounded by College, Queen, University and Yonge streets that housed bootleggers, Chinese bachelors, workers from nearby Eaton’s garment factories, and peddlers.
What the judges said . . .
The Ward shines a light on one of Toronto's most historically significant and most forgotten neighbourhoods. Instead of a straight history, the book's editors opted to present the Ward through multiple short essays, each with its own unique point of view. The result is a fascinating and varied look at an area that once concurrently defined the city and acted as its biggest shame. As a result of the Ward's eventual razing, there are few artifacts left to teach newer generations about this important part of Toronto's history. This book helps correct that.
Harriet is 11 going on 30. Determined, resourceful, and a little reckless, Harriet tries to navigate the clueless adults around her, and attempts to fathom her complicated feelings for her brother Irwin, who suffers from hydrocephalus. On the other hand, Irwin’s love for Harriet is not conflicted at all. But Irwin himself must untangle the web of the human heart.
What the judges said . . .
Driven by the wry and wrenching voice of eleven-year-old Harriet, Cordelia Strube’s On the Shores of Darkness, There is Light, pitches us full-tilt into the heart of human relationships. In spite of hapless adults failing her on every front, Harriet charts her own course with the materials at hand. Like her scavenged-object art projects, her sensibility manifests the collision of absurdity, pain, and resilience in her own family portrait. This singularly moving novel faces both the depths and the heights without flinching.
In Marnie Woodrow’s second novel, two lively girls who meet aboard a roller coaster in 1909 and a modern-day woman who grieves the loss of a partner with whom she was not in love. Heyday is a double-barreled story about nostalgia, the soul’s quest for pleasure and the power of love to endure through lifetimes.
What the judges said . . .
Marnie Woodrow's Heyday performs double duty as a lesson on a forgotten piece of Toronto history and a genuinely touching love story. Set mainly in the now-lost Hanlan's Point amusement park of the early 20th century, Heyday tells of a taboo affair between two young girls, Bette and Freddy, who meet on a roller coaster. This main plot is paralleled by a second story line of a modern-day woman grieving the loss of her wife. Heyday entertains and informs, while being simultaneously both heart-warming and heart-breaking.
2016年多伦多图书奖入围作品:
Howard Akler for his memoir "Men of Action" published by Coach House Books
Ann Y.K. Choi for her novel "Kay's Lucky Coin Variety" published by Simon & Schuster Canada
Editors John Lorinc, Michael McClelland, Ellen Scheinberg and Tatum Taylor for "The Ward: The Life and Loss of Toronto's First Immigrant Neighbourhood" published by Coach House Books
Cordelia Strube for her novel "On the Shores of Darkness, There is Light" published by ECW Press
Marnie Woodrow for her novel "Heyday" published by Tightrope Books
(Source: City of Toronto and Toronto Public Library) |