Rachel Gerry

Martha Baillie recalls childhood days at Loon Island, north of Toronto: the way she’d wake up early in the morning, scurry into her parents’ bedroom, and jump onto her father’s lap, desperate to be tickled. The same game terrified her sister, Christina, who experienced their father’s teasing as an assault, one that provoked a deep sense of…

Andrew F. Sullivan’s The Marigold features a brief epigraph attributed to Rob Ford: “Everything is fine.” Those three words would be a lot more convincing coming from Jane Jacobs or perhaps even Drake, but coming from the late Toronto mayor, they smack of comedy, irony, and foreboding. Unfolding in the near future, this portrait of a municipal dystopia centres on climate-ravaged…

In the opening of “Sandman,” the fifth story in Kim Fu’s Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century, Kelly, a chronic insomniac, receives a visit from the title character. He appears at her bedside in the dead of night to dump copious amounts of sand into her mouth. Kelly lies still as a deluge of dust swells through her…

Zul Premji’s Malaria Memoirs begins in much the same way as Primo Levi’s classic The Periodic Table: deep within a childhood world of family relationships. Perhaps especially for a scientist, those early days of self-discovery influence one’s personal folklore in ways that can hardly be classified. For both Levi and…