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Tiny lights for travellers

"When her marriage suddenly ends, and a diary documenting her beloved grandfather's escape from Nazi-occupied Netherlands in the summer of 1942 is discovered, Naomi K. Lewis decides to retrace his journey to learn about her family history. Despite suffering from extreme disorientation and a lifetime of anxiety, she travels alone for the first time. Moving from Amsterdam to Lyon--relying on the marvels of GPS--she discovers family secrets and her own narrative as a second-generation Jewish Canadian. With vulnerability, humour, and wisdom, Lewis's memoir asks tough questions about her identity as a secular Jew, the accuracy of family stories, and the impact of the Holocaust on subsequent generations. How do immigrants weave their sense of identity into their chosen countries? Must we be able to locate ourselves within family and cultural geography to belong?"--Why couldn't I occupy the world as those model-looking women did, with their flowing hair, pulling their tiny bright suitcases as if to say, I just arrived from elsewhere, and I already belong here, and this sidewalk belongs to me? When her marriage suddenly ends, and a diary documenting her beloved Opa's escape from Nazi-occupied Netherlands in the summer of 1942 is discovered, Naomi Lewis decides to retrace his journey to freedom. Travelling alone from Amsterdam to Lyon, she discovers family secrets and her own narrative as a second-generation Jewish Canadian. With vulnerability, humour, and wisdom, Lewis's memoir asks tough questions about her identity as a secular Jew, the accuracy of family stories, and the impact of the Holocaust on subsequent generations.

I know who you remind me of : stories

Disappearing in reverse : a novel(la)

"Disappearing in Reverse follows a young woman through the challenges of unreconciled loss. Five years prior to the opening scene, the narrator's cousin, Devin, contracts an infection and dies. Everyone believes this story, until her photo appears on the internet with the caption "she is not dead." Convinced that Devin blames her for the infection, the unnamed protagonists embarks on a trip across Western Canada in search of her confidante. She is driven by guilt and grief while negotiating her bisexuality. The protagonist's sense of self unravels as her adventures progress and her past threatens to eclipse her present. True to the picaresque genre, this episodic series of scenes woven together by highways and memories features a revolving cast of side characters. Our protagonist is joined by an ice cream loving corpse, a car thief, and a group of Calgarian hippies, among others. Along the way she steals identities, learns how to fake cooking skills and drink coffee, and how to disappear in plain sight. A novel(la)s, Disappearing in Reverse, is a concise, women-centric narrative that crosses genres and defies easy categorisation. The term 'novel(la)' denotes a literary space, where this form of writing is met and assessed on its own terms--a place where male-centric expectations falter, and where audacious female characters thrive."--Devin died five years ago. She got an infection, lost her arm, and died. How can Devin be in a picture posted online today? This picture of Devin, alive when she should not be alive, triggers of a journey of grief and discovery as the young woman convinced that she caused Devin's death sets out to discover whether Devin may actually be alive, and whether she can be forgiven. Along the way she steals identities, picking up and discarding the people she may or may not be as she struggles with her guilt, and to come to terms with her own bisexuality. As her sense of self unravels, she meets Calgary hippies, a car thief, and an ice cream loving corpse. Disappearing in Reverse is a mystery, a road novel, and a coming of age story. Blending past and present, the self and the other, it crosses genres and defies categorization to be met and addressed on its own terms. Fearless and vulnerable, unabashed and wounded, this is a story of the liminal places where expectations falter and the unexpected thrives.