New Neighbours

Stretching west between destination shopping emporia at Yonge Street and the grubby storefronts of Parkdale, Toronto’s Queen Street exerts a perennial attraction for writers, who use its contrasts for their explorations of urban life. Two new books—Confidence, a collection of short stories from consummate prose stylist Russell Smith, and Too Much on the Inside, by newcomer novelist Danila Botha—take on this neighbourhood in all its complex, contradictory and rapidly changing character.

Russell Smith, who has won a following through his Globe and Mail column as well as his books, hardly needs introduction. His early novels How Insensitive and Noise attracted attention for their urban emphasis, upsetting stolid pretensions about what counted as CanLit. The semi-pornographic Diana: A Diary in the Second Person anticipated Fifty Shades of...