One by One

Katherena Vermette returns with The Circle, the final instalment of her Stranger trilogy. With twenty-one points of view, each in focus only once in the book, it’s easy to make a prediction: The Circle won’t achieve the commercial success of The Break, Vermette’s novel from 2016, or even that of The Strangers, from 2021. But for readers who love a text in a unique form, one that actively works to defy genre divides, this is Vermette’s most exciting novel to date.

A recap of the first two-thirds of the trilogy helps to explain where The Circle begins. In The Break, Phoenix Stranger, a young, unhoused Métis girl in Winnipeg’s North End, violently rapes Emily Traverse with a beer bottle, because she thinks Emily is romantically interested in the father of her unborn child. The Strangers sees Phoenix imprisoned for the assault and follows...