Name the Canadian Novel

Question 1

The protagonist is Piscine Molitor Patel, an Indian Tamil boy from Pondicherry who survives 227 days after a shipwreck while stranded on a lifeboat in the Pacific Ocean with a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker.

Answer 1

Life of Pi, Yann Martel

Question 2

The novel’s primary characters are Bassam and George, lifelong friends living in wartorn Beirut. The novel traces the different paths that the two follow as they face the difficult choice of whether to stay in Beirut and get involved in organized crime or to leave Lebanon and build a new life in another country.

Answer 2

De Niro’s Game, Rawi Hage

Question 3

Narrated by Dunstable (later Dunstan) Ramsay, who grows up in Deptford, a fictional town in southwestern Ontario. After WWI, he becomes a teacher and serves for decades at a college. The epistolary novel takes the form of a letter he writes to the headmaster of Colborne College after his retirement. He feels ill used by an article about him in the school paper. He recalls how, as a boy, he ducked a snowball intended for him. It hit a pregnant woman instead, and she gave birth prematurely. This incident and related events deeply affected Ramsay’s life. He tells how he came to terms with his guilt.

Answer 3

Fifth Business, Robertson Davies (the first of the Deptford trilogy, followed by The Manticore and World of Wonders)

Question 4

Set in an isolated farming community in Shuswap Country, British Columbia at the end of WWII, it is a coming of age story containing elements of magic realism. Fifteen-year-old Beth Weeks has to contend with her family’s struggle against poverty but also her increasingly paranoid and aggressive father whose behaviour leaves the family as outcasts in the community.

Answer 4

The Cure for Death by Lightning, Gail Anderson-Dargatz

Question 5

The novel fictionalizes the lives of the immigrants who played a large role in the building of the city of Toronto, including the viaducts and water treatment plants, in the early 1900s. The protagonist is the “searcher,” Patrick Lewis.

Answer 5

In the Skin of a Lion, Michael Ondaatjie

Question 6

The novel centres on Saul, a First Nations boy who survives the Indian residential school system and grows up to become a star ice hockey player.

Answer 6

Indian Horse, Richard Wagamese

Question 7

The story is set in a dystopian future in which most people have lost the ability to dream, with catastrophic psychological results. Indigenous people, who can still dream, are hunted for their marrow to create a serum to treat others. Frenchie, the protagonist, tries his best to avoid the Recruiters who are capturing Indigenous people to extract their bone marrow. Along the way north to safety, he falls in with a group lead by an older man, Miigwans.

Answer 7

The Marrow Thieves, Cherie Dimaline

Question 8

In the book, the author chronicles her experiences as a CBC Radio journalist. The novel is set at a radio station in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories.

Answer 8

Late Nights on Air, Elizabeth Hay

Question 9

The novel is set in a small religious Mennonite town called East Village. The narrator is Nomi Nickel, a 16-year-old who dreams of hanging out with Lou Reed in the “real” East Village of New York City. Her compulsive questioning brings her into conflict with the town’s various authorities, most notably Hans Rosenfeldt, the sanctimonious church pastor.

Answer 9

A Complicated Kindness, Miriam Toews

Question 10

The novel chronicles Canada’s internment and persecution of its citizens of Japanese descent during WWII from the perspective of a young child, Naomi Nakane.

Answer 10

Obasan, Joy Kogawa

Question 11

Published in the U.S. as Someone Knows My Name, the novel tells the story of Aminata, a young girl abducted from her village in Mali and sold into slavery as a child; she ends up helping the British and the Abolitionist movement.

Answer 11

The Book of Negros, Lawrence Hill

Question 12

Beginning in Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia in the late 19th century, the novel follows four generations of the Piper family through the battlefields of World War, ending in New York City.

Answer 12

Fall on Your Knees, Ann-Marie MacDonald

Question 13

The story of young Brian O’Connal growing up in the 1930s on the Saskatchewan prairies. Broken into four parts covering different times in young Brian’s life, the novel shows Brian struggling to come to terms with issues of life and death.

Answer 13

Who Has Seen the Wind, W.O. Mitchell

Question 14

The darkly comic story takes place in Oregon and California in 1851. The narrator, Eli, and his brother Charlie are assassins tasked with killing Hermann Kermit Warm, an ingenious prospector who has been accused of stealing from their fearsome boss, the Commodore.

Answer 14

The Sisters Brothers, Patrick deWitt

Question 15

The story takes place in the poor neighbourhood of Saint-Henri in Montreal in 1940. Florentine Lacasse, a young waitress at the “Five and Ten” restaurant who dreams of a better life and is helping her parents get by, falls in love with Jean Lévesque, an ambitious machinist-electrician.

Answer 15

The Tin Flute, Gabrielle Roy

Question 16

The novel opens in the present day, with successful orthodontist Alexander MacDonald visiting his elderly older brother Calum in Toronto, Ontario. The novel explores the emotional bonds of family through clan history dating back to 1779, flashbacks to their childhood in Cape Breton Island and young adulthood spent in the mines of Northern Ontario, and present-day interactions between the two brothers and a sister. Though written primarily in English, Scottish Gaelic and French are used in dialogue and songs.

Answer 16

No Great Mischief, Alistair MacLeod

Question 17

A bildungsroman, the story follows the early life of the title character, chronicling his escape from slavery and his subsequent adventures, including his career as an illustrator of marine specimens.

Answer 17

Washington Black, Esi Edugyan

Question 18

Set in a near-future New England, in the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian state resembling a theonomy that overthrows the United States government, the novel focuses on the character of Offred.

Answer 18

The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood

Question 19

The novel follows three generations of a Canadian family, but centres around the lives of an immigrant Bavarian wood carver’s grandchildren in the early 1900s in the fictional town of Shoneval, Ontario, exploring the devastation of World War I, and the building of the Vimy Memorial in France

Answer 19

The Stone Carvers, Jane Urquhart

Question 20

A sequence of stories set in the fictional town of Mariposa, on the shore of Lake Wissanotti (based on the author’s experiences in Orillia, Ontario). One of the most enduring classics of Canadian humorous literature.

Answer 20

Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, Stephen Leacock

Question 21

Alice Munro’s first collection of short stories. The title of the main story is the English translation provided for the ballet Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice.

Answer 21

Dance of the Happy Shades, Alice Munro

Question 22

The story is relayed through the eyes of Lisamarie Hill, whose brother, Jimmy, has gone missing at sea under questionable circumstances. Lisamarie possesses’ supernatural abilities, the ability to see and to communicate with other worldly beings.

Answer 22

Monkey Beach, Eden Robinson

Question 23

Set in the fictitious town of Manawaka, Manitoba, parallel narratives set in the past and the present-day (early 1960s) tell the story of Hagar Currie Shipley. In the present-day narrative, 90-year-old Hagar is struggling against being put in a nursing home, which she sees as a symbol of death.

Answer 23

The Stone Angel, Margaret Laurence

Question 24

A short story cycle that chronicles the life of Del Jordan, growing up first on the outskirts, and later in the centre, of the small, southern Ontario town of Jubilee.

Answer 24

Lives of Girls and Women, Alice Munro

Question 25

The protagonist of the novel is Morag Gunn, a fiercely independent writer who grew up in Manawaka, Manitoba. Morag has a difficult relationship with her daughter Pique and her Métis lover Jules Tonnerre, and struggles to maintain her independence.

Answer 25

The Diviners, Margaret Laurence

Question 26

Set in the Canadian province of Quebec, the story of 17th-century Mohawk saint Kateri Tekakwitha is interwoven with a love triangle between an unnamed anglophone Canadian folklorist; his Native wife, Edith, who has committed suicide; and his best friend, the mystical F, a Member of Parliament and a leader in the Quebec separatist movement.

Answer 26

Beautiful Losers, Leonard Cohen

Question 27

Alberta is a university professor who would like to trade her two boyfriends for a baby but no husband; Lionel is forty and still sells televisions for a patronizing boss; Eli and his log cabin stand in the way of a profitable dam project. These three—and others—are coming to the Blackfoot reservation for the Sun Dance and there they will encounter four Indian elders and their companion, the trickster Coyote.

Answer 27

Green Grass, Running Water, Thomas King

Question 28

The novel revolves around the twelve-year-old protagonist named Baby, who lives with her father Jules, who has a worsening heroin addiction. The two move frequently, to various places around Montreal, where they junkies, bums, pimps, and abused children.

Answer 28

Lullabies for Little Criminals, Heather O’Neill

Question 29

The book follows four people brought together at an Italian villa during the Italian Campaign of WWII: an unrecognisably burned man, his Canadian Army nurse, a Sikh British Army sapper, and a Canadian thief. The story occurs during the North African Campaign and centres on the incremental revelations of the burned man’s actions prior to his injuries,

Answer 29

The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje

Question 30

The story fictionalizes the notorious 1843 murders of Thomas Kinnear and his housekeeper Nancy Montgomery in Canada West. Two servants of the Kinnear household, Marks and McDermott, were convicted of the crime. McDermott was hanged and Marks was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Answer 30

Alias Grace, Margaret Atwood

Question 31

In the novel, the controversial painter Elaine Risley, vividly reflects on her childhood and teenage years. Her strongest memories are of Cordelia, who was the leader of a trio of girls who were both very cruel and very kind to her.

Answer 31

Cat’s Eye, Margaret Atwood

Question 32

A collection of short stories revolving around the protagonist Rose, who grows up in a small town, abused by her father, and living in an impoverished home. She wins a scholarship to attend university. Her marriage fails and the final stories have her returning home.

Answer 32

Who Do You Think You Are? (also published as The Beggar Maid), Alice Munro

Question 33

The satirical novel focuses on the young life of a poor Jewish boy raised in Montreal, Quebec. As a child, he learns from his grandfather that “a man without land is nobody.”

Answer 33

The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, Mordecai Richler

Question 34

The book consists of 12 stories covering different ages in people’s lives, ranging from teenage romance to the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. Among the more often-quoted stories in this work are “Sam, Soren and Ed” and “The Expatriates’ Party”

Answer 34

Man Descending, Guy Vanderhaeghe

Question 35

The first novel to win the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, and the Hugo Award, the novel follows Henry Case, a washed-up computer hacker who is hired for one last job, which brings him up against a powerful artificial intelligence.

Answer 35

Neuromancer, William Gibson

Question 36

The story tells of a lonely librarian in northern Ontario who enters into a sexual relationship with a bear. It won the Governor General’s Literary Award in 1976 although it has been called “the most controversial novel ever written in Canada.”

Answer 36

Bear, Marian Engel

Question 37

Carl McKelvey, a “white trash male” as he describes himself, returns to the town after a three-year absence in the hope that he can live with his daughter again, and maybe even renew his relationship with his ex-wife, Chrissy. He carries deep in his heart his guilt of having driven his car into a tree, killing his mother many years ago.

Answer 37

Elizabeth and After, Matt Cohen

Question 38

A framed narrative of three friends—Dag, Claire, and the narrator, Andy—are living together in the Coachella Valley in southern California circa 1990.

Answer 38

Generation X, Douglas Coupland

Question 39

The story follows a Catholic priest named Duncan MacAskill who became so successful at resolving potential church scandals quickly and quietly that he had to accept a position at a remote parish on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia to give himself a low profile.

Answer 39

The Bishop’s Man, Linden MacIntyre

Question 40

The story of a woman in her thirties living in rural Ontario during the 1930s and is written in epistolary form, utilizing letters and journal entries. She is raped, gets an abortion, and falls in love with a married man.

Answer 40

Clara Callan, Richard B. Wright

Question 41

A work of historical fiction, the novel presents a fictionalized portrayal of real-life Newfoundland politician Joey Smallwood, the political leader who brought the province into Canadian Confederation in 1949. A major literary device in the novel is the intertwining of his life, since childhood, with (fictional) journalist Sheilagh Fielding.

Answer 41

The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, Wayne Johnston

Question 42

The story is written as if it is an autobiography by the title character. His version of events may be viewed as that of two unreliable narrators, in that his recollections are told from varying mental states and then posthumously edited by his son. Underlying the story of his three marriages is the mysterious disappearance of his friend Boogie.

Answer 42

Barney’s Version, Mordecai Richler

Question 43

At nineteen, Mary Boulton has just become a widow—and her husband’s killer. As bloodhounds track her frantic race toward the mountains, she is tormented by mad visions and by the knowledge that her two ruthless brothers-in-law are in pursuit, determined to avenge their younger brother’s death.

Answer 43

The Outlander, Gil Adamson

Question 44

The book explores the strange and unconventional everyday life of the main character, Ethan Jarlewski, and his team of video game programmers.

Answer 44

jPod, Douglas Coupland

Question 45

The novel begins with a girl named Marie living with her mother in Vancouver, Canada. The year is 1991, and the addition to their household of a Chinese refugee fleeing the post-Tiananmen Square crackdown, Ai-Ming, is the catalyst that sets the rest of the plot into motion.

Answer 45

Do Not Say We Have Nothing, Madeleine Thien

Question 46

The fictional autobiography of Daisy Goodwill Flett, a seemingly ordinary woman whose life is marked by death and loss from the beginning, when her mother dies during childbirth. Through marriage and motherhood, Daisy struggles to find contentment, never truly understanding her life’s purpose.

Answer 46

Stone Diaries, Carol Shields

Question 47

The fable-like novel tells the story of a group of dogs, kennelled at a veterinary clinic in Toronto, who are suddenly gifted by the gods with human consciousness and language.

Answer 47

Fifteen Dogs, André Alexis

Question 48

The novel follows Robert Ross, a nineteen-year-old Canadian who enlists in World War I after the death of his beloved older sister. He kills two fellow officers in an attempt to save hundreds of horses from slaughter.

Answer 48

The Wars, Timothy Findley

Question 49

The novel’s plot revolves around the life and times of the fictional character Paul Tallard and this character’s struggles in reconciling the differences between his English and French Canadian identities.

Answer 49

Two Solitudes, Hugh MacLennan

Question 50

The novel focuses on a lone character called Snowman, who finds himself in a bleak situation with only creatures called Crakers to keep him company. The reader learns of his past, as a boy called Jimmy, and of genetic experimentation and pharmaceutical engineering that occurred under the purview of Jimmy’s peer, Glenn.

Answer 50

Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood

Question 51

The novel takes place in what was to become Canada in the early 17th century and is narrated by a Huron warrior named Bird, a young Iroquois girl named Snow Falls, and a French Jesuit missionary named Christophe.

Answer 51

The Orenda, Joseph Boyden

Question 52

This novel follows the journey of two young Cree men, Xavier and Elijah, who volunteer for World War I and become snipers during the conflict.

Answer 52

Three Day Road, Joseph Boyden

Question 53

As an old woman, Iris Chase recalls the events and relationships of her youth and middle age, including her unhappy marriage to Toronto businessman Richard Griffen. The book includes a novel within a novel, a roman à clef attributed to her sister but published by Iris. It is about Alex Thomas, a politically radical author of pulp science fiction who has an ambiguous relationship with the sisters. That embedded story itself contains a third tale, a science fiction story from which the novel takes its title.

Answer 53

The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood

Question 54

A “guide” to settler life for British subjects considering coming to Canada, first published in London in 1852. The work is part memoir, part novelization of the author’s experiences, and is structured as a chronological series of sketches.

Answer 54

Roughing It in the Bush, Susanna Moodie

Question 55

The novel takes place in a unnamed small, rural Canadian community that is compared to the Biblical city of Nineveh. The main characters are James (who kills his mother, “The Old Lady”), his sister Greta, and his brother William. Often considered Canada’s first modernist novel.

Answer 55

The Double Hook, Sheila Watson

Question 56

The novel recounts the tumultuous relationship of the Von Reisen sisters, Elfrieda and Yolandi, the only children of an intellectual, free-spirited family from a conservative Mennonite community. Elfrieda is a gifted, beautiful, happily married, and much celebrated concert pianist, who suffers from acute depression and suicidal tendencies.

Answer 56

All My Puny Sorrows, Miriam Toews

Question 57

An adventure story that takes place in northern Manitoba and southwestern North West Territories in 1935; a coming of age tale of two boys in their late teens, one a white boy who has recently lost his parents, the other a Cree boy from a tribe living nearby. The boys embark on a mission to relieve the starvation of a neighbouring village, occupied by the Chipewyans, but become trapped above the tree line during winter.

Answer 57

Lost in the Barrens, Farley Mowat (The sequel to Lost in the Barrens is The Curse of the Viking Grave.)

Question 58

The story of an Irish immigrant to Montreal, unfulfilled in his career, and his difficult relationship with his wife Veronica.

Answer 58

The Luck of Ginger Coffey, Brian Moore

Question 59

The book’s dual narrative centers around Sidney “Sid” Griffiths, a journeyman jazz bassist. Griffiths’ friend and bandmate, Hieronymus “Hiero” Falk, is caught on the wrong side of 1939 Nazi ideology, and is essentially lost to history. Some of his music does survive, however, and half a century later, fans of Falk discover his forgotten story.

Answer 59

Half-Blood Blues, Esi Edugyan

Question 60

Set in the late 19th century, the novel recounts the adventures of Anne Shirley, an 11-year-old orphan girl, who is mistakenly sent to two middle-aged siblings; Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert, originally intending to adopt a boy to help them on their farm in the fictional town of Avonlea on Prince Edward Island.

Answer 60

Anne of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery

Question 61

Ray is an Iowa farmer who is obsessed with American baseball, specifically the plight of his hero, Shoeless Joe Jackson, and the Black Sox Scandal of the 1919 World Series. When he hears a voice telling him to build a baseball field in the midst of his corn crop in order to give his hero a chance at redemption, he does so and the field becomes a conduit to the spirits of baseball legends. Soon, Ray is off on a cross-country trip to ease the pain of another hero, the reclusive writer J.D. Salinger. (Adapted as the 1989 movie Field of Dreams.)

Answer 61

Shoeless Joe, W.P. Kinsella