Back in July, with the publication date of my new novel on the horizon, like a tiny, fragile boat on a big sea, I was already labouring on the next one when I found myself asking the novelist’s existential question: Why am I writing these?
The war in Ukraine was entering its seventeenth month. Canada’s economy and social fabric were showing signs of fraying, with slowing productivity and random stabbings on subways. And the weather was getting more erratic and destructive, with deaths resulting from fires and floods.
I had just started reading what some were calling a “non-fiction novel,” Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future. I assume the oxymoronic description arose because the book crams lots of facts and science in between plotting and character development. At first I wasn’t enjoying it too...
Daniel Goodwin is an award-winning poet and novelist from Ottawa.