In the middle of 2021, sixty Canadian books arrived at my house in Aotearoa. It was my sister’s loving and creative way of recognizing a certain birthday that because of distance we couldn’t celebrate together. Later I learned she had shopped in second hand bookstores over a period of months and gradually mailed a series of little packages to my daughter’s home in Kirikiriroa. In between lock downs, the books traveled together like a bunch of bewildered tourists in the trunk of her car, and then in a train of small wagons and tricycles up the path to the back door. Sixty books is a lot of books; more than you’d imagine.

Reading Canadian novels helps me stay connected to the people, history and landscapes of my birth country. But more than that, they reach a place in me that is core to who I am, a familiar comfort, an intimate knowing, like the kind shared by a glance or raised eyebrow across a room. Only four of the 60 books my sister chose for me were ones I had previously read which is a remarkable feat, but also a testament to the vast quantity of good Canadian writing. Now my bookshelf is a true library, which means it contains more books I haven’t read than those I have – a place of promise. My past bookshelves have been the opposite – repositories only for books I have already read and want to read again. All of Alice Munro and Margaret Atwood, Jane Urquhart, Donna Morrisey, Anne Michaels, Thomas King ……

Since my birthday I have read 10 books. More incredible new work by Mary Lawson, beautiful stories of Vancouver’s Chinatown by Wayson Choy, the fantastic characters and storytelling of Richard Van Camp and Richard Wagamese who gently inspire me to re-imagine the lives of the First Nations people I grew up alongside in Alberta. The ragged history of Canada’s colonization brought darkly alive by Michael Crummey’s River Thieves, and David Adams Richards’ epic River of the Brokenhearted; and a wholesome gang of eccentric folk in Yellowknife brought alive by Elizabeth Hay.

There will be some books I don’t finish I guess; others might end up in the Kihikihi second hand bookshop. And I will need to rely on my wondrous little Te Kawa book club to guide me towards other writing so I don’t start getting a false sense of where I am in the world. But this tremendous gift is a grand reminder of the value of stories, of books and writing, and how they both reflect and create who we are and where we live.

Thanks Clare xx