Bill Krangle, Chair of the Toronto Book Awards Committee comments on the selection. "With over 70 wonderfully diverse submissions to review-covering everything from fiction to non-fiction, from short-stories to children's books-jurors faced the daunting, yet enviable, task of identifying Toronto's best. In the end, the jurors believe that this year's short-listed books not only evoke Toronto through exceptional observation, they also represent remarkable literary achievements in their own right."
Doctor Bloom's Story
Don Coles (Alfred A. Knopf Canada)
"Doctor Bloom's Story is a novel with a strong sense of location, set primarily at Yonge and Eglinton in Toronto. It starts off like a memoir with Dr. Bloom's arrival in Canada. It then shifts to more of a moral dilemma when he suspects that a young woman in his writing class is being abused by her husband. Her husband ends up coming to him for medical advice and this is where his ethical struggle begins. The author's poetic style is revealed many times in the novel with his description and detail. It was a pleasure to read."
Down to This: Squalor and Splendour in a Big-city Shantytown
Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall (Random House Canada)
"Down to This is a trenchant chronicle of everyday life in Tent City, a 27-acre shantytown sprawled along the east end of Lakeshore Boulevard, where Bishop-Stall lived for 10 months prior to its eventual demolition. By turns hysterically funny and miserably tragic, Down to This is an unflinching account of survival on Toronto's margins, and a remarkably affecting ode to a lost city and the people who called it home."
The Heiress vs. The Establishment: Mrs. Campbell's Campaign for Legal Justice
Constance Backhouse and Nancy L. Backhouse (UBC Press)
"A little-known woman's fight for justice through the courts is given historical recovery in this seductive and revelatory account. Framed by Mrs. Campbell's own words, and backed by nuanced research by the authors, The Heiress vs. The Establishment is a compelling story of a journey for justice during a period in Toronto-and Canada's- recent history that is as compelling as it is captivating."
Muriella Pent
Russell Smith (Doubleday Canada)
"Smith has exceptionally fine instincts as a writer of satire... he reminds one of the early Kingsley Amis. Some of the more memorable scenes linger in the mind long after the book is put down. Toronto's Wychwood Park enclave of upper middle-class snobbery is beautifully detailed as is the city's current arts scene."
Natasha and Other Stories
David Bezmozgis (HarperCollins Publishers)
"Recounting the tale of Mark Berman and his family in a series of beautifully crafted short stories, David Bezmozgis's first book is a remarkable portrait of coming of age and immigrant life within a Russian Jewish community in Toronto. Bezmozgis has created a work that, while touching and sympathetic, is both free from sentimentality and incredibly enjoyable."
