Joan Barfoot: 8 books

Gwen Stone's life takes an abrupt nosedive when Edgar, her husband of twenty years, decides he isn't suited to marriage and leaves her for freedom and the cliché of a shiny new red convertible. But Edgar's own life takes a considerably worse nosedive when he and his new car are mowed down at a level...

From the author of the Scotiabank Giller Prize finalist Luck and the Man Booker Prize nominated Critical Injuries From three very different points of view, Joan Barfoot creates three very different lives, through them examining the interdependence and ties, resentments and affections that both bind...

What sort of woman sees an ad for a prison penpal and sets out to correspond with a convict she knows nothing of? It seems an unlikely number of women do exactly that in real life. In fiction, one of them is Jane Smith, an unusually withdrawn but otherwise unremarkable library clerk, who is propelled,...

From the author of the Scotiabank Giller Prize finalist 'Luck' and the Man Booker Prize nominated 'Critical Injuries'. In this Books in Canada First Novel Award-winning novel, Joan Barfoot examines the life of a woman named Abra. From her middle-class childhood in the 1950s throughout high school graduation,...

One old woman crouches in a hedge, spying on a long-ago married lover. The other is the recent widow of a lifelong philanderer. Charlotte and Claudia have had quite different lives, one a single career social worker, the other a married career mother, but they've been friends since their youth, with...

Susannah is a journalist who considers herself something of a war correspondent from the front lines of domestic distress. Teddy, an ex-lover, is an artist and a protester on behalf of causes of peace — and the man Susannah chooses to father the child she wants. That turns out to be Lizzie, now...

From the author of the Scotiabank Giller Prize finalist Luck and the Man Booker Prize nominated Critical Injuries When Lila boards a flight to London for her first major trip with her married lover Tom, it’s with anticipation of, finally, a couple of free-spirited weeks away from the demands of...

From the author of the Scotiabank Giller Prize finalist Luck comes the Man Booker Prize nominated Critical Injuries. How could a celebratory trip to the ice cream store with her husband Lyle turn out so badly? Isla, long divorced from her criminal first husband, is shot by a confused youth named Roddy...