Review: All the Quiet Places, by Brian Thomas Isaace

All the Quiet Places by Brian Thomas Isaac My rating: 2 of 5 stars Brian Thomas Isaac’s debut novel comes with a long list of awards and almosts: Finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction Longlisted for the 2022 Scotiabank Giller Prize A National Bestseller Winner of the 2022 Indigenous Voices Awards’ Published Prose in English Prize Shortlisted for the 2022 Amazon Canada First Novel Award Longlisted for CBC Canada Reads 2022 An…

Review: The Book of Secrets, by M.G. Vassanji

The Book of Secrets by M.G. Vassanji My rating: 3 of 5 stars Vassanji’s novel, The Book of Secrets, which was the recipient of the first Giller Prize, is a complex saga revolving around a diary kept by an Assistant District Commissioner in the fictitious town of Kikono, situated near the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro, set around the time of WWI. The diary isn’t so much a book of secrets. Rather, it is the secrets…