Ashoona: A historical novel about a teenage girl from Pangnirtung in the 1930s

I stumbled across this book at the Yellowknife Public Library, purely by accident, and am still surprised I’d never heard of it. Or am I?

How to Start a Charter Airline: The novels of Susan Haley, formerly of Tulita, NWT

It’s refreshing to read a novel set in the North that doesn’t emphasize the “remoteness” or “harsh winters,” but rather the warmth to be found there.

Arctic Smoke: A weird punk mystery of a book I barely scraped through

I’ve become something of a scholar of novels written by people who’ve spent time in the Arctic. Not recommending this one.

Booze and sex collide in this warm, gritty novel of AA in Yellowknife

Whoa! This book isn’t just about alcoholism: it’s about promiscuity, and the forces that drive it, and that’s something we just don’t talk about.

Tatsea, a novel, takes us deep into 18th century Tlicho life

A historical novel imagines two eighteenth century lovers forced into exile in and around present day Whati.

A former CBC-er wrote a novel about a classical musician’s escape to Iqaluit

In Joe Fiorito’s 2002 novel, a concert pianist runs away from the Toronto cultural scene and into the arms of a not-even-thinly disguised Bryan Pearson.

Sanaaq, the first Inuit novel

I enjoyed Mitiarjuk Nappaaluk's sketches of life in Arctic Quebec in the years and months before the first white men come to stay for good. The book also confounded me a little. Is it comedy? Tragedy? I have no way of knowing.

A short review of an extremely good novel set in Kamchatka

It’s not the North I had in mind when I started this blog, but I have to recommend this amazing work of fiction set in Russia’s Kamchatka peninsula.

Whatever you do, do not read Arctic: A Novel, by Finn Schultz-Lorentzen

Let the public rest assured: when a forty-plus-year-old novel is totally forgotten and remains obscure and hard to find, there’s a reason for that.

Consumption: A medical redemption wrapped in the epic tale of TB in the North

Somehow this book didn’t make a strong impression the first time I read it. Re-reading it, I was struck by its scale and scope, and completely drawn into the hopes and fates of its many characters. And it doesn’t get any better than that.