It’s fitting that the foreword to The Toronto Book of the Dead is written by Shawn Micallef, as anyone familiar with Micallef’s books and Toronto Star column can attest to his absolute love of Toronto and its stories. Adam Bunch shares a similar glee at nerding out over Toronto’s history, in this book, a history of stories related to death.

Stories include: the horrific botching of Toronto’s first execution (the city had no professional executioner, so a fellow prisoner volunteered for the deed); the mysterious fate of Peggy Pompadour, an escaped slave, and her family (check out artist Camille Turner’s work for a deeper dive into this story); the refusal of French colonizers for their dead to be honoured with Indigenous burial rites; and many more.

The cover is fantastic, and to be honest, made me expect a collection of horror stories, somewhat of a haunted Toronto walk led by horror writer Andrew Pyper. The reality is a bit more fact-based, a lot more dry and a lot less scary. Bunch is a good writer and clearly very much interested in his subject matter. It’s a great book for history buffs, Toronto buffs, and tourism professionals looking for a quirky tale to keep in their back pocket for tourists. Or perhaps horror writers looking for inspiration for their next Toronto-themed novel?

The stories themselves are fairly introductory; the book’s strength is in breadth rather than depth. History buffs will likely learn little new about people and time periods they’ve already studied, but they may be entertained by the range of other stories covered. Reading the book feels somewhat like taking a tour of Toronto, with a very knowledgeable tour guide who knows the more somber parts of the city’s past.

This book wasn’t quite for me, though that’s likely more because of my own expectations than the quality of the book itself. I can imagine myself nerding out over this book years ago, when I was fairly new to Toronto and eager to devour all knowledge about the city, or when I was a university student and just generally nerding out about all things historical. So I can imagine it appealing to other readers; it just didn’t quite hold my interest.

+

Thank you to Dundurn Press for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

The Shoe of the Roof is a thought-provoking read about faith and the thin line between madness and reality. It begins with med student Thomas Rosanoff’s plan to win back his girlfriend. His girlfriend’s brother Sebastian is confined to a psychiatric institution because he believes he is the son of God, and Thomas decides that if he cures Sebastian, his girlfriend will fall back in love with him.

How does one go about convincing someone that he isn’t actually Jesus? Thomas’ hypothesis is that if he introduces Sebastian to two other men who claim to be Jesus, they will sort out among themselves that three Jesuses can’t exist all at once, and so at least two of them will have to cure themselves of their delusion.

It makes an odd kind of sense, and as I learn from one of the characters in the book, there’s precedence for this kind of cure, as it worked in the past for two women who both believed they were the Virgin Mary (the older one eventually acquiesced to the younger one’s claim). However, things don’t quite go as planned, and Thomas ends up with all three men claiming to be Jesus — Sebastian, a screaming patient named Eli and a homeless man who did street magic — living in his apartment. Things escalate further when Thomas’ father, a psychiatrist who conducted psychiatric experiments on Thomas as a child, gets involved with a much more heavy-handed approach at a cure.

The title is taken from an anecdote cited in the book, where a person claims to have had an out of body experience, and mentions seeing a shoe on the roof, which doctors realize wasn’t at all visible from the vantage point of their physical body. It is this interplay of faith and reality that makes Shoe on the Roof so powerful a read. We know none of the three men claiming to be Jesus actually are Jesus, but that doesn’t automatically mean they should all be dismissed as madmen. The ethics of Thomas’ experiment are questionable, but it’s nothing compared to the cruelty of his father’s cure.

Thomas’ approach is to reason with all three men, for example, arguing that Eli couldn’t be Jesus because he was born in Connecticut, which wasn’t at all mentioned in the Bible. (The way the three men prove him wrong on this is probably the funniest part of the novel.) It’s an approach that in turn allows us to hear the men’s perspectives, and why they’re convinced that they are Jesus. I admit that my Catholic background played some part in my reading of this book, as a part of me wondered if any of the men (likely the street magician) would end up being, if not Jesus himself, at least a Jesus figure who opens Thomas’ eyes to the possibility of faith.

While this didn’t quite happen, I think Ferguson’s more secular take actually formed a much more compelling argument than I had expected. It’s not so much that their belief in their being Jesus is harmless as that it is actually harm reducing. There’s a heartbreaking moment where one of the men observes that without this delusion, the others would be left with nothing to live for. Ultimately, we almost want them to have the freedom to hold on to this delusion, if indeed their madness is so much more compelling than their reality.

This becomes especially true with Thomas’ father comes on board, and deploys torture techniques (starvation, sleep deprivation, videos with disturbing content on loop) to get the three men to recant their claim. His assertion that behaviour will lead to belief has merit, but his methods are seriously messed up, and these chapters are actually difficult to read as I wanted nothing more than for Thomas to break the men free.

The flashbacks about Thomas’ childhood are equally disturbing, and I can’t believe his father wasn’t arrested for how he treated his child. There’s a memory that teases at the edges of Thomas’ mind, of a piece of choral music that he feels is linked to his mother but isn’t quite sure how. The moment where he learns the truth is utterly heartbreaking.

Overall, this is a powerful and compelling book that forces you to reconsider what madness is, and how a insidious a ‘cure’ can be.

+

Thank you to Simon and Schuster Canada for an advance reading copy in exchange for an honest review.

36 Questions is such a fun YA romance! Bad boy Paul and overachiever Hildy are paired up in a psychology experiment to determine if asking a series of 36 probing questions can make romance blossom between complete strangers. I remember reading about this type of experiment in the New York Times a couple of years ago, and being intrigued at the possibility. Both this novel and the New York Times article are inspired by an experiment conducted by psychologist Arthur Aron in the 1980s, and if you’re interested in trying it out for yourself, the NYT also printed out the full list of 36 questions. The idea of course is to create a sense of intimacy, however artificial. Asking 36 personal questions cuts right through all the awkward first date chatter and reveals the inner workings of a potential partner. The final part, where you have to stare into your partner’s eyes for a full four minutes, just enforces this sense of connection.

The realist in me thinks all this intimacy is artificial, that you may ‘know’ your partner for an hour and possibly even develop feelings for them, but that will all dissipate once you return to the ‘real world’ and go about your everyday tasks. The romantic in me just fell head over heels in love with the sparks flying between Paul and Hildy in this book. There’s a Filipino word ‘kilig‘ that I use when any English equivalent (‘giddy feels’?) just isn’t enough, and it perfectly encapsulates what I felt when reading Paul and Hildy’s banter.

The book is told in a non-traditional narrative style. Most of the book is just the dialogue between Paul and Hildy as they ask each other the 36 questions, evade the questions that get a bit too personal, and gradually allow themselves to open up to each other. I love the rapid-fire pace this allows eschewing any extraneous narration and integrating any additional details (e.g. the characters’ looks) seamlessly into the dialogue. A flying fish (really) switches up the pace a bit and gives Paul and Hildy a bit of a real-life break before they pick up their conversation and IM their responses. This gives us a glimpse into their lives beyond the questions, in particular Hildy’s family problems and the reason she tries so hard to maintain a perfect facade. Paul’s troubled family life isn’t much of a surprise, but Grant orchestrates some delightfully cheesy scenes at a diner from Paul’s childhood.

36 Questions is romantic comedy at its best. It unironically believes in love and earnestly professes the possibility of finding love through a psychology experiment. The characters have real problems — Hildy is dealing with major guilt about her family and Paul is dealing with major trust issues — and both characters do bond genuinely over emotional connection, but this all feels secondary to the sparkly repartee and hilarious antics (see: flying fish) that just propel Paul and Hildy towards their happily ever after. The final copy of the book will include illustrations (mostly in Paul’s notes to Hildy), and the descriptions alone made me squee, so I’m really excited to see how they turn out.

+

Thank you to Hachette Book Group Canada for an advance reading copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.