The Loved and the Lost (1951)

"He wanted to go; but to strut out with an air of offended dignity would be to cheapen her. Nothing they could say could destroy his faith in her, and it was like the night when he had been in the Café St. Antoine talking with Elton Wagstaffe and he had known he was called upon to be always with her, even while she was being viciously misunderstood."

Jim McAlpine, the protagonist of Morley Callaghan's Governor General's Award winning The Loved and the Lost, is a man divided against himself. He's a writer who comes from humble beginnings and has high social aspirations, aspirations that might be realized through a relationship with wealthy Catherine Carver, but whose heart and humanity are touched by working class Peggy Sanderson. Rumours abound about Peggy, rumours regarding her relationships with local black musicians, and McAlpine becomes consumed by the need to "save" her before the prejudices of the rest of world destroy her.

Peggy's actions, which are more innocent than she's given credit for, insipre hatred from every corner. White men, whose advances she consistently turns down, resent her and assume that she's having affairs with black men. Black men fear that she's going to draw trouble their way. White and black women alike loathe her. McAlpine is the only one who seems toto see the good in her, though even his affection is ultimately conditional, a discovery which devastates him.

Callaghan unfolds the story in a straight-forward and unfussy way. He confronts issues of race directly, but never allows the story to become preachy. Ultimately, The Loved and the Lost is a memorable novel both for the complex way that it explores its subject and for the sinister undercurrent that runs through the text, just below the surface. There's something rather alarming about the way that McAlpine tries to insinuate himself into Peggy's life. He plots to slip under her radar, to wear down her resistance, to force himself into her life even as she makes it clear that she does not desire her presence. McAlpine clearly sees himself as the (increasingly tragic) hero of the story, but the novel itself is more clear-sighted where he is concerned. It's a fascinating portrayal that practically demands a second reading and The Loved and the Lost is a novel that is definitely worth returning to.

The Talented Miss Highsmith (2010)

"The 'truth' of Pat's life... is misrepresented by the long lines of dates and hours, the crisp lists of appointments and appearances, the solid sense of case histories completed, that make chronological biography such convential reading - and such conventional comfort, too. Except in her aspirations, Pat Highsmith was never a conventional woman - and was never, ever a conventional writer."

If there is one thing that Joan Schenkar's comprehensive biography of Patricia Highsmith isn't, it's "conventional." Schenkar unfolds the facts of Highsmith's life in a non-chronological fashion, organizing the facets of the writer's life into sections and jumping back and forth in time as it suits her (though there is also an appendix which reiterates the information in chronology order). This works not only to bring a tight focus to every aspect of Highsmith's life, it also somewhat unsettles the reader by making it difficult to find your footing, a feeling that puts you perfectly in the mood to read about Highsmith, whose fiction is rooted so deeply in the dark and the sinister.

Schenkar spends a fair bit of time examining Highsmith's complicated romantic entanglements with many women and a few men, but The Talented Miss Highsmith never becomes a gossip book by virtue of the fact that Schenkar is constantly tying Highsmith's love life back to her work. Her relationships - often dramatic and inspiring violent thoughts - did not just feed her work, but were so essential to her ability to work that her writing sometimes suffered for lack of a relationship to help give shape to her life. The picture Schenkar paints is of a woman drawn to nastiness who has more than a little in common with her protagonists, most of whom have murder on their minds. It's a very dark portrait though, at its core, there is also a deep appreciation for the work that made Highsmith famous.

Schenkar does an excellent job at examining how Highsmith's works came into being and, without being overbearing in doing so, makes a solid case that European readers (who embraced Highsmith's work) recognized something that somehow escaped North American readers, who mostly relegated her to the arena of genre writers instead of literary talents. This is not to say that The Talented Miss Highsmith is blindly adoring of its subject - Schenkar maintains objectivity and is frank about the shortcomings of several of Highsmith's works, particularly the later ones - but simply that it belies the notion that so-called suspense writing is somehow a lesser form of fiction. I can't imagine someone finishing this biography without feeling inspired to seek out some of Highsmith's fiction, which is perhaps the highest compliment you can give to a biography of a writer. With its engaging style and fascinating subject, The Talented Miss Highsmith is a book you won't be able to put down and that you'll want to start reading again the moment you finish it.

Unless (2002)

"Probably you will dismiss this as a crank letter from one of those women who go around begging to be offended, but you must understand that I am trying to protect Norah, and her two younger sisters, Christine and Natalie, who want only to be allowed to be fully human."

With her final novel, Unless, Carol Shields does something rather brilliant. She sets the story up as if it will be a typical domestic drama and then, gradually, allows it to become more metatextual as it begins to explore the way that "domestic dramas" are marginalized as "lesser" forms of fiction and how this is merely an extension of other ways in which women's voices/interests/points of view have been shunted to the side throughout history. It is, at times, an angry novel, a story about feeling that you are without a place in the world around you, that you are completely lacking in subjectivity - or, at least, subjectivity that is recognized and acknowledged by those around you.

Unless centres on Reta Winters, a novelist of "light" fiction working on her second book. She is also working on the fourth book of translation for her friend, a noted feminist and writer. She is also struggling to understand why her eldest daughter has dropped out of the family and university in order to sit on a street corner all day, every day with a cardboard sign around her neck which reads "Goodness." Reta's need to understand ultimately drives the novel she's writing and it becomes more and more about female subjectivity and the need to make one's voice heard. During the course of Unless this need is also expressed through letters that Reta writes in response to articles and books she's read which she feels dismiss the female experience, and through Reta's frustrating relationship with her editor who seems incapable of hearing her and is determined to impose his own (male-centric) vision on her novel.

Shields has an easy, engaging prose style that brings the reader deeply into league with Reta. Her struggles, though personal, are also universal and very relatable and Shields is able to explore the novel's larger themes in a way which taps into the anger that comes naturally from the feeling that you're being ignored without ever going over the edge and becoming strident or whiny. The only criticism I have of the novel is that the story seems to wrap up rather quickly and tidily and that's really only a minor qualm. All in all, Unless is a moving and very thought provoking work from a writer who was still very much at the top of her game.

Candide (1759)

"It is impossible that things should be other than they are; for everything is right."

Ever the optimist, Candide goes into the world believing that everything will work out in the end because everything that happens is supposed to happen. His faith will be tested time and again as he and the people around him endure many hardships and eventually he will become disillusioned with his former philosophy - though one wonders if he might have been able to retain some shred of optimism if only his beloved Cunegonde had not been rendered so very ugly.

In telling the story, Voltaire folds in many elements of historical fact, including the Seven Years' War and the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, and moves the plot along at a quick place. Over the course of thirty short chapters Candide is exiled from his home in Westphalia, recruited into military service that nearly kills him, nearly drowns en route to Lisbon where he survives an earthquake, is arrested for heresy and sentenced to be tortured and killed, escapes to Buenos Aires, finds El Dorado and leaves with a fortune (most of which will end up being lost), returns to Europe via England, and finally settles in Turkey. He is also continuously losing people in his life to death only to have those people show up again later, revealing that their injuries were not quite life threatening.

Many terrible things happen in Candide and through them Voltaire casts a critical eye on the governments of Europe, lightly veiling this element behind a sharply rendered parody of a romantic adventure story. The result was that the book was largely denounced at the time of its publication, though it still became an undisputed best seller. Today it is Voltaire's most widely read work and is frequently included in lists of books that make up the Western canon. It's an amusing (and quick) read that remains engaging after some 250 years, an enduring classic that is likely to be read for as long as human beings remain a literate species. Candide may be slight in size, but it's impact has certainly been great.