novel

The Steve Machine is a novel that toys with our notion of reality. A kind of fictionalized biography of Toronto video artist Steve Reinke, it is a faithful meditation on his art that nevertheless skews some of the key details of his life (in particular, the fictional 'Steve' is here diagnosed as HIV positive, which the real-life Reinke is not).

The harbinger-of-November rain and gloom that are never far away in Vancouver provide a perfect setting for reading Beth Follett's Tell It Slant. This debut novel depicts grandly intemperate emotional states —obsessive love, profound despondence —through delightfully stylized and dreamily poetic sentences. It is thoroughly contemporary, yet recalls the narcotic aspects of Romanticism. A velvet cover embossed with gilt letters would serve it well.