Listeners shares the perfect Canadian alternatives to classic reads
In The Next Chapter feature called "If you liked that, you'll love this...," columnists match an international book to a Canadian alternative. The Next Chapter put the call to listeners to make their own suggestions, and two delivered!
Want to submit an idea? Check out the details here.
If you liked The Ministry of Utmost Happiness...
Anjula Gogia has been a bookseller for about 20 years. She is currently the events coordinator for Another Story Bookshop, in Toronto, Ont. She says that if you liked Arundhati Roy's The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, you'll love Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Canadian writer Madeleine Thien.
"Both books are sprawling multi-generational sagas that look at love, hope and redemption in the face of political trauma and political violence. And I think the essential question in both of these books is, 'What is forgotten in these histories? How do we not forget, how do we remember and how do we love and how do we move forward?'"
If you liked Don Quixote...
Listener Dick Bourgeois Doyle of Ottawa, Ont., says if you liked Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, you'll love Barney's Version by Mordecai Richler.
"I know the similarities might not be glaring at first. Richard's hero Barney smoked cigars, drank lots of scotch and was kind of sleazy, so he doesn't really evoke the image of Don Quixote, the noble, virtuous knight, but both men and both their stories are really being driven by an impossible dream around the love of a woman.
"Quixote, of course, dedicated himself to the ethereal Dulcinea, who may not have existed, and Barney all the way through his book is trying to win back his third wife Miriam, which readers will recognize right away, isn't going to happen. I thought that Barney's best friend Boogie Moscovitch was kind of like Sancho Ponza. Both men are sidekicks that act as foils of the protagonist. They do it by going back and forth between saying common sense stuff and silly stuff. I'm kind of glad neither Cervantes or Mordecai Richler are around to debate me on the point."
Anjula Gogia and Dick Bourgeois Doyle's comments have been edited and condensed.