Winnipeg

A vital book on a vital issue
Suzette Mayr's accomplished fourth novel, Monoceros, tells the tale of a tormented gay teenager who takes his own life

by Quentin Mills-Fenn

With her fourth novel, Monoceros (Coach House Books), Suzette Mayr tackles gay teen bullying and suicide. It's an accomplished and sensitive take on a vital issue. It should be very widely read.

Prismatic Publics: Innovative Canadian Women's Poetry and Poetics (Coach House, 407 pages, $30) is the first anthology to exclusively showcase Canadian avant-garde women poets.

This is surprising considering the significant influence of the writers collected here and the four-decade time span in which some of them have been publishing.

Susan Holbrook claims that Joy is So Exhausting, at least according to the title of her new collection of poems (Coach House Books). I don't know about that. When I finished the book, I was exhilarated.

These are poems about things such as motherhood, breakups and chocolate. The results are clever and dizzying. One poem blenderizes a guide to writing essays by Constance Rooke with notes written by her home-inspection consultant, leavened with excerpts from Leaves of Grass.

Readers, take note. This tasty novel is neither about a food, nor a flavouring.

In fact, Limone, a.k.a Lemon, is the moniker of its smart-mouthed, world-weary Toronto 16-year-old protagonist.

At first glance, she's a brasher version of Nomi Nickel, the rebellious Mennonite teen in Winnipegger Miriam Toews' Governor General's Award winner, A Complicated Kindness.

However, unlike Nomi, history-obsessed Lemon eschews sex, drugs, booze and cigarettes, railing instead against the injustices of the world rather than the confines of her religion.