For Michael V. Smith, the answer is a resounding yes … and he explores that in his new book, Soundtrack: A Lyric Memoir. It’s a collection of poems about snapshots in his life, each named after a different song or album. He dives into growing up gay during the AIDS crisis, finding his first love and coming of age on the dance floor. The book celebrates music and memory, and is a deeply personal look into the songs that send us back in time. This week, Michael tells Mattea Roach about the albums that made him, reading old journal entries and what it really means to be a man.  

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• Music, sex and finding the soundtrack to queer joy  
• Reliving the soundtrack of the 2000s  

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This week, Bookends is celebrating libraries with a special Canada Reads event at the Hamilton Public Library. 

Morgann Book truly lives up to her name. As one of Canada’s biggest book influencers, she shares her love of literature with millions of followers … and she’s taking that to the next level as a contestant on this year’s Canada Reads. Morgann is championing It’s Different This Time, the debut novel by Joss Richard. It’s a second chance romance about two former roommates with some very unresolved feelings, and it draws from Joss’s own experiences as a TV producer in LA. Joss and Morgann joined Mattea on-stage to talk about exes, preparing for Canada Reads and why there are so many chefs in romance novels. 

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• Fans asked for another happy ending — Carley Fortune delivered 
• All I want for Christmas … is a fake boyfriend?

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In Tara Gereaux’s new novel, Wild People Quiet, a Métis woman works tirelessly to hide her identity for years … until everything starts to come crashing down. It’s the early 1900s when Florence realizes she can pass as white. Longing for a comfortable life free of discrimination, she decides to leave her entire family and culture behind. Decades later, her carefully constructed facade is challenged by a group of Métis farmhands who come through town, and she begins to wonder if her rigid, lonely life was worth it after all. This week, Tara joins Mattea to talk about Florence’s complexity, life for Métis people in the mid-20th century and exploring the beauty of beadwork in the novel.  

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• In the Caribbean, secret lives come at a cost  
• What would it take to become the first Cherokee astronaut?

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What does family mean to two motherless daughters? That question is at the centre of Kin, a new work of historical fiction by Tayari Jones. It’s about the bond between two girls in the American South as they end up on starkly different paths, and a deeply human look into life for Black Americans on the brink of the civil rights movement. You might know Tayari from her novel An American Marriage, which won the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2019. Until Kin, Tayari called herself a “committed” contemporary novelist. But when those two characters from the 1950s came to her, she had no choice but to write a historical novel that ended up on Oprah’s list. 

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• Strip club … or culture hub?
• An opera singer gives voice to the Grenadian revolution

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Toronto’s most infamous women’s prison was meant to rehabilitate women … but its real history tells a much darker story. Heather Marshall dives headfirst into the Mercer Reformatory in her latest novel, Liberty Street. The book follows Emily Radcliffe, a 1960s journalist who goes undercover to expose the prison’s harsh conditions and abuse of inmates. Over 30 years later, after the prison’s closing, a detective revisits one of the its sinister mysteries … and these intertwining narratives tell a story of female resilience and strength. This week, Heather tells Mattea Roach about the history of the prison, the real journalists that inspired the story and what it means to be an “incorrigible” woman. 

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• Who was the woman Kafka loved?
• Emma Donoghue boards a train destined for disaster

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If you had to tell a story to stay alive … what story would you tell? Jeanette Winterson’s new book, One Aladdin Two Lamps, is a nonfiction exploration of storytelling, culture, politics and the things that make us human. It’s based on the One Thousand and One Nights, the famous collection of Middle Eastern folk tales home to characters like Aladdin, Sinbad and Ali Baba. At the centre of it all is Scheherazade, a woman who tells a vengeful Sultan stories for 1001 nights to stop him from executing her. Like Scheherazade, Jeanette sees storytelling as a means of survival. In the book, she uses those tales to muse on the way that stories shape our identities and our lives … and how they’re a tool to better ourselves and the world around us. 

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• Zadie Smith never thought she’d tell this story
• Ian McEwan has hope for humanity — here’s why

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What does it mean to come of age in a place where violence is a daily fact of life? Ashraf Zaghal’s debut novel, Seven Heavens Away, is about a Palestinian teen named Aziz. Like any teen, he’s growing up, working part-time and learning how to navigate love and loss … but he’s also living through escalating violence and unrest in Jerusalem. When Aziz's friend is killed, he grapples with grief and an uncertain future. While his involvement in Palestinian resistance efforts grows, he also starts to harbour feelings for a Jewish girl named Dafna. This week, Ashraf tells Mattea about being a teenager living through constant tragedy, the role of religion in the story and how it felt to return to Palestine while writing the novel.

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• What happens to fiction in times of war?  
• V.V. Ganeshananthan: Exploring the complexity of Sri Lanka's civil war in her prize-winning novel, Brotherless Night

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What happens behind the closed doors of a strip club? Pole dancing, booming basslines … and in Nic Stone’s new novel, the chilling mystery of a missing exotic dancer. In Boom Town, the manager of a fictional Atlanta strip club sets out to find a missing dancer named Charm. The book offers a shadowy taste of Atlanta’s notorious adult entertainment scene … but it’s also a look into the lives of the regular women who live and dance in the city. This week, Nic joins Mattea Roach to talk about growing up in Atlanta, why strip clubs are cultural epicentres and writing her first novel for adults.  

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• Pitbull, Scarface and a whale walk into a book
• Here’s what you have wrong about teen moms 

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Can you inherit fury? Kagiso Lesego Molope’s new novel, We Inherit The Fire, follows a mother and daughter at the end of apartheid in South Africa. Kewame is a famous freedom fighter who is haunted by the trauma of apartheid and her time as a political prisoner. Her daughter Kelelo is a regular teenager who resists being defined by her mother’s heroics … but is struggling to connect with her mother at home. The two voices intertwine to tell a story about memory, history and the ways we inherit resilience and pain. This week, Kagiso tells Mattea about her own youth in South Africa, writing about motherhood and how Nelson Mandela’s grandchildren informed her characters. 

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• An opera singer gives voice to the Grenadian revolution
• What would it take to become the first Cherokee astronaut?

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What do you know about Appalachia? Fancy Gap is the debut novel by Zak Jones, and it challenges the preconceptions we might have about the region. The story follows three generations of an Appalachian family as they navigate poverty, illness, extreme religion … and the eternal struggle of finding one’s place in the world. There’s no better person to tell the story than Zak, who grew up in the region and has deep connections to its culture. This week, Zak joins Mattea to talk about his upbringing, how religion shapes the culture and why you might be wrong about Appalachia.

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• Meth and murder in rural America  
• Ocean Vuong finds beauty in a fast food shift  

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When Chris Kraus became fixated on a murder case in a Minnesotan town, she decided to try her hand at a true crime novel ... but the project soon evolved into something much bigger. The Four Spent The Day Together weaves together the stories of an impulsive murder carried out by three teens, a marriage torn apart by addiction and the reality of life in working class America. Much like Chris’s hit novel I Love Dick, the story and its protagonist draw heavily from her own life experiences. This week, Chris tells Mattea Roach about her interest in the crime, how addiction can shape a relationship and why she’s finally exploring her childhood in fiction.

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• When young men murder, what can we learn?
• Buffoon or genius? What makes a cult leader?

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