26 must-read fiction books like My Face in the Light by Martha Schabas

Cover of My Face in the Light by Martha Schabas

My Face in the Light

By: Martha Schabas

3.51

Format: 312 pages, Hardcover

A GLOBE AND MAIL BEST BOOK OF 2022 LONGLISTED FOR THE 2022 TORONTO BOOK AWARD "My mother is …

If you liked the fiction plot in My Face in the Light by Martha Schabas , here is a list of 26 books like this:

1. Scarborough

By: Catherine Hernandez

4.19

Format: 208 pages,

Scarborough is a low-income, culturally diverse neighborhood east of Toronto, the fourth largest ci… read more

Similar categories in Catherine Hernandez's Scarborough book and Martha Schabas's My Face in the Light

Cover of Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein

2. Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World

By: Naomi Klein

4.22

Format: 416 pages, Hardcover

What if you woke up one morning and found you’d acquired another self―a double who was almost you a… read more

Similar categories in Naomi Klein's Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World book and Martha Schabas's My Face in the Light

"Our role here on earth is not simply to maximize the advantage in our lives. It’s to maximize (protect, regenerate) all of life. We are here not just to make sure we as individuals survive, but to ma…"

-Naomi Klein, Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World

"A state of shock is what happens to us- individually or as a society- when we experience a sudden and unprecedented event for which we do not yet have adequate explanation. At its essence, a shock is…"

-Naomi Klein, Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World

Cover of Run Towards the Danger: Confrontations with a Body of Memory by Sarah Polley

3. Run Towards the Danger: Confrontations with a Body of Memory

By: Sarah Polley

4.32

Format: 272 pages, Hardcover

Oscar-nominated screenwriter, director, and actor Sarah Polley's Run Towards the Danger explores me… read more

Similar categories in Sarah Polley's Run Towards the Danger: Confrontations with a Body of Memory book and Martha Schabas's My Face in the Light

  • canada
"His love was all around the edges, but sometimes it was hard for both of us to see, I think."

-Sarah Polley, Run Towards the Danger: Confrontations with a Body of Memory

"The past was affecting how I moved through the world, while present life was affecting how the past moved through me."

-Sarah Polley, Run Towards the Danger: Confrontations with a Body of Memory

"The past and present, I have come to realize, are in constant dialogue, acting upon one another in a kind of reciprocal pressure dance."

-Sarah Polley, Run Towards the Danger: Confrontations with a Body of Memory

"It can seem perplexing from the outside, this pull that many women experience to make things better for those who have hurt us. The impulse to smooth things over the keep ourselves safe..."

-Sarah Polley, Run Towards the Danger: Confrontations with a Body of Memory

Cover of If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English by Noor Naga

4. If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English

By: Noor Naga

3.92

Format: 186 pages, Paperback

In the aftermath of the Arab Spring, an Egyptian American woman and a man from the village of Shobr… read more

Similar categories in Noor Naga's If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English book and Martha Schabas's My Face in the Light

  • fiction
  • canada
Cover of Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein

5. Study for Obedience

By: Sarah Bernstein

3.05

Format: 192 pages, Hardcover

A haunting, compressed masterwork from an extraordinary new voice in Canadian fiction. A young w… read more

Similar categories in Sarah Bernstein's Study for Obedience book and Martha Schabas's My Face in the Light

  • fiction
  • canada
"I try always to be good."

-Sarah Bernstein, Study for Obedience

"How, I wondered, might a person, a people, take root, roots and rootlessness, the preservation of what little remains of the past, such were thoughts that blew through me on any given morning, standi…"

-Sarah Bernstein, Study for Obedience

"In taking a side, I thought uneasily, perhaps I ought to take the long view, the survival of the species as a whole. That was my problem, I thought, I was always thinking at the level of the individu…"

-Sarah Bernstein, Study for Obedience

"I had hoped that here in the country I would experience the turn of the seasons differently, with less apprehension, I might come to see the form and plan of the world. Not to frame it within systems…"

-Sarah Bernstein, Study for Obedience

Cover of Learned by Heart by Emma Donoghue

6. Learned by Heart

By: Emma Donoghue

3.51

Format: 336 pages, Hardcover

Eliza and Lister have never been this wide-awake in their lives, and the Slope, with its curtains d… read more

Similar categories in Emma Donoghue's Learned by Heart book and Martha Schabas's My Face in the Light

  • fiction
Cover of The Hero of This Book by Elizabeth McCracken

7. The Hero of This Book

By: Elizabeth McCracken

3.77

Format: 192 pages, Hardcover

A taut, groundbreaking new novel from bestselling and award-winning author Elizabeth McCracken, abo… read more

Similar categories in Elizabeth McCracken's The Hero of This Book book and Martha Schabas's My Face in the Light

  • fiction
"As for me, I don't think writing is that hard, as long as you're comfortable with failure on every single level."

-Elizabeth McCracken, The Hero of This Book

"My mother's favorite cats were male and nervous and needed her. "Come to Mommy," my mother would say to one of them. "Yes, I love you, too." "You are not that cat's mother," I said, sitting on the so…"

-Elizabeth McCracken, The Hero of This Book

"I've always hated the notion, in life or in fiction, that the human personality is a puzzle to be solved, that we are a single flashback away from understanding why this person is cruel to her childr…"

-Elizabeth McCracken, The Hero of This Book

Cover of The Future by Catherine Leroux

8. The Future

By: Catherine Leroux

3.32

Format: 288 pages, Paperback

In an alternate history in which the French never surrendered Detroit, children protect their own k… read more

Similar categories in Catherine Leroux's The Future book and Martha Schabas's My Face in the Light

  • fiction
  • canada
"It'll come back," Ulysses says again. "This place isn't made for disappearing, it's a place for resurrection."

-Catherine Leroux, The Future

"The exact opposite of the huge car factories she imagines as the city's womb, a uterus that makes automobiles the way others make promises, or laws."

-Catherine Leroux, The Future

Cover of Hotline by Dimitri Nasrallah

9. Hotline

By: Dimitri Nasrallah

4.15

Format: 280 pages, Paperback

A vivid love letter to the 1980s and one woman’s struggle to overcome the challenges of immigration… read more

Similar categories in Dimitri Nasrallah's Hotline book and Martha Schabas's My Face in the Light

  • fiction
  • canada
"Here i am on my own, because of him, maybe free from a life that was turning into a prison, but cast away like a bad-luck omen too. Now I must give myself to others to survive. The world has judged t…"

-Dimitri Nasrallah, Hotline

Cover of The Fake by Zoe Whittall

10. The Fake

By: Zoe Whittall

3.44

Format: 208 pages, Hardcover

A con artist can make you feel like the luckiest person on earth just to be in their presence. But … read more

Similar categories in Zoe Whittall's The Fake book and Martha Schabas's My Face in the Light

  • fiction
  • canada
"There are worse things than telling a lie."

-Zoe Whittall, The Fake

Cover of Astra by Cedar Bowers

11. Astra

By: Cedar Bowers

4.21

Format: 286 pages, Paperback

If you could see yourself as others saw you, would you be any closer to the truth of who you really… read more

Similar categories in Cedar Bowers's Astra book and Martha Schabas's My Face in the Light

  • fiction
  • canada
Cover of Fayne: A Novel by Ann-Marie MacDonald

12. Fayne: A Novel

By: Ann-Marie MacDonald

4.26

Format: 736 pages, Hardcover

A beloved writer returns with a tale of science, magyk, love and identity. In the late nineteent… read more

Similar categories in Ann-Marie MacDonald's Fayne: A Novel book and Martha Schabas's My Face in the Light

  • fiction
  • canada
"Byrn speaks and I understand him without effort, his words as clear as spring water. / Ask a favour of the plover, he says. Borrow her eyes. / Then I am flying through the air, and the flying is his …"

-Ann-Marie MacDonald, Fayne: A Novel

Cover of Snow Road Station by Elizabeth Hay

13. Snow Road Station

By: Elizabeth Hay

3.77

Format: 240 pages, Hardcover

From the Giller Prize-winning author comes a novel, witty and wise, about thwarted ambition, unreal… read more

Similar categories in Elizabeth Hay's Snow Road Station book and Martha Schabas's My Face in the Light

  • fiction
  • canada
Cover of Son of Elsewhere: A Memoir in Pieces by Elamin Abdelmahmoud

14. Son of Elsewhere: A Memoir in Pieces

By: Elamin Abdelmahmoud

4.21

Format: 288 pages, Paperback

An enlightening and deliciously witty collection of essays on Blackness, faith, pop culture, and th… read more

Similar categories in Elamin Abdelmahmoud's Son of Elsewhere: A Memoir in Pieces book and Martha Schabas's My Face in the Light

  • canada
"I am a student of migration stories. I am pulled toward accounts of lives rearranged by the journey from one place to another."

-Elamin Abdelmahmoud, Son of Elsewhere: A Memoir in Pieces

"We do things out of fear and we do things out of love and no one tells you what happens when you act from both places at once."

-Elamin Abdelmahmoud, Son of Elsewhere: A Memoir in Pieces

"It is a profound, transformative gift to have someone see you as you’d like to be seen, even if you don’t see yourself that way."

-Elamin Abdelmahmoud, Son of Elsewhere: A Memoir in Pieces

"Love is a practice, a trail you carve out by traveling the same path over and over and over until it becomes familiar, until it lights the way home."

-Elamin Abdelmahmoud, Son of Elsewhere: A Memoir in Pieces

Cover of We Have Always Been Here: A Queer Muslim Memoir by Samra Habib

15. We Have Always Been Here: A Queer Muslim Memoir

By: Samra Habib

4.16

Format: 220 pages, Kindle Edition

CANADA READS 2020 WINNER SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2020 EDNA STAEBLER AWARD FOR CREATIVE NON-FICTION NA… read more

Similar categories in Samra Habib's We Have Always Been Here: A Queer Muslim Memoir book and Martha Schabas's My Face in the Light

  • canada
"Being surrounded by people who fuel you is intentional."

-Samra Habib, We Have Always Been Here: A Queer Muslim Memoir

"For me, a wedding was an act of necessity, not a fairy tale."

-Samra Habib, We Have Always Been Here: A Queer Muslim Memoir

"The joy of discovery is one of the biggest pleasures you'll ever know."

-Samra Habib, We Have Always Been Here: A Queer Muslim Memoir

"Closure, for me, would mean accepting my circumstances rather than trying to alter them to serve me best."

-Samra Habib, We Have Always Been Here: A Queer Muslim Memoir

Cover of And Then She Fell by Alicia Elliott

16. And Then She Fell

By: Alicia Elliott

3.90

Format: 368 pages, Hardcover

A mind-bending, razor-sharp look at motherhood and mental health that follows a young Indigenous wo… read more

Similar categories in Alicia Elliott's And Then She Fell book and Martha Schabas's My Face in the Light

  • fiction
  • canada
"Nothing I do is done solely for me. Everything is done to elevate Steve or Dawn, in some way. I'm an afterthought in my own life."

-Alicia Elliott, And Then She Fell

"A part of me wants to cry at this small request, because I know what that longing is like, what it means. I won't be there forever, but I will be there for her. For her sister. For her mother. I'll b…"

-Alicia Elliott, And Then She Fell

Cover of Pure Colour by Sheila Heti

17. Pure Colour

By: Sheila Heti

3.46

Format: 224 pages, Hardcover

Pure Colour is a galaxy of a novel: explosive, celestially bright, huge, and streaked with beauty. … read more

Similar categories in Sheila Heti's Pure Colour book and Martha Schabas's My Face in the Light

  • fiction
  • canada
"And what opens one heart opens many."

-Sheila Heti, Pure Colour

"The body becomes a woman and it cannot turn back."

-Sheila Heti, Pure Colour

"And a glimpse into one heart is a glimpse into many."

-Sheila Heti, Pure Colour

"Why did it seem like the only way to live-was to disobey?"

-Sheila Heti, Pure Colour

Cover of The Sleeping Car Porter by Suzette Mayr

18. The Sleeping Car Porter

By: Suzette Mayr

3.46

Format: 216 pages, Paperback

When a mudslide strands a train, Baxter, a queer Black sleeping car porter, must contend with the p… read more

Similar categories in Suzette Mayr's The Sleeping Car Porter book and Martha Schabas's My Face in the Light

  • fiction
  • canada
"Desperate feelings can swivel into loathing."

-Suzette Mayr, The Sleeping Car Porter

Cover of We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies by Tsering Yangzom Lama

19. We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies

By: Tsering Yangzom Lama

4.08

Format: 368 pages, Hardcover

In the wake of China's invasion of Tibet throughout the 1950s, Lhamo and her younger sister, Tenkyi… read more

Similar categories in Tsering Yangzom Lama's We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies book and Martha Schabas's My Face in the Light

  • fiction
  • canada
Cover of Daughters of the Deer by Danielle Daniel

20. Daughters of the Deer

By: Danielle Daniel

4.40

Format: 327 pages, Paperback

In this haunting, groundbreaking, historical novel, Danielle Daniel imagines the lives of her ances… read more

Similar categories in Danielle Daniel's Daughters of the Deer book and Martha Schabas's My Face in the Light

  • fiction
  • canada
Cover of The Story of Us by Catherine  Hernandez

21. The Story of Us

By: Catherine Hernandez

4.19

Format: 304 pages, Kindle Edition

From the author of Canada Reads finalist Scarborough, a stunning new novel about the unbreakable bo… read more

Similar categories in Catherine Hernandez's The Story of Us book and Martha Schabas's My Face in the Light

  • fiction
  • canada
Cover of Behind You by Catherine  Hernandez

22. Behind You

By: Catherine Hernandez

4.04

Format: 309 pages, Kindle Edition

As terror grips a city, a young girl faces danger closer to home and chilling memories that last a … read more

Similar categories in Catherine Hernandez's Behind You book and Martha Schabas's My Face in the Light

  • fiction
  • canada
Cover of Cold by Drew Hayden Taylor

23. Cold

By: Drew Hayden Taylor

3.80

Format: 320 pages, Kindle Edition

INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLERA tragic plane crash that leaves two women stranded and fighting for the… read more

Similar categories in Drew Hayden Taylor's Cold book and Martha Schabas's My Face in the Light

  • fiction
  • canada
Cover of A Minor Chorus by Billy-Ray Belcourt

24. A Minor Chorus

By: Billy-Ray Belcourt

4.08

Format: 176 pages, Paperback

In Northern Alberta, a queer Indigenous doctoral student steps away from his dissertation to write … read more

Similar categories in Billy-Ray Belcourt's A Minor Chorus book and Martha Schabas's My Face in the Light

  • fiction
  • canada
Cover of Binge: 60 stories to make your brain feel different by Douglas Coupland

25. Binge: 60 stories to make your brain feel different

By: Douglas Coupland

4.00

Format: 272 pages, Hardcover

The first new work of fiction since 2013 from one of Canada's most successful, idiosyncratic and wo… read more

Similar categories in Douglas Coupland's Binge: 60 stories to make your brain feel different book and Martha Schabas's My Face in the Light

  • fiction
  • canada
Cover of Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century by Kim Fu

26. Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century

By: Kim Fu

3.86

Format: 232 pages, Paperback

In the twelve unforgettable tales of Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century, the strange is made… read more

Similar categories in Kim Fu's Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century book and Martha Schabas's My Face in the Light

  • fiction
  • canada
"Just imagine it: no longer feeling guilty for everything you have and don't deserve, for an unjust world bent in your favor, paying the piper at last. Wasn't it worth it, after all? My head on a pike…"

-Kim Fu, Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century

"My wife and I are that other kind of rich: the misers among you, in our quaint three-bedroom house in the suburbs, unrenovated since the 1990s, one modest hatchback car between us, our big-box store …"

-Kim Fu, Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century

Cover of A Great Country by Shilpi Somaya Gowda

27. A Great Country

By: Shilpi Somaya Gowda

3.92

Format: 256 pages, Hardcover

From the New York Times bestselling author, a novel in the tradition of Celeste Ng's Little Fires E… read more

Similar categories in Shilpi Somaya Gowda's A Great Country book and Martha Schabas's My Face in the Light

  • fiction
  • canada
Cover of In Tongues by Thomas Grattan

28. In Tongues

By: Thomas Grattan

4.04

Format: 288 pages, Hardcover

A young gay man upends the lives of a powerful art-world couple in this steamy novel of self-discov… read more

Similar categories in Thomas Grattan's In Tongues book and Martha Schabas's My Face in the Light

  • fiction
Cover of Prairie Edge by Conor Kerr

29. Prairie Edge

By: Conor Kerr

4.15

Format: 224 pages, Kindle Edition

The Giller Prize-longlisted author of Avenue of Champions returns with a frenetic, propulsive crime… read more

Similar categories in Conor Kerr's Prairie Edge book and Martha Schabas's My Face in the Light

  • fiction
  • canada
Cover of What We Both Know by Fawn Parker

30. What We Both Know

By: Fawn Parker

3.17

Format: 248 pages, Paperback

For readers of My Dark Vanessa, a mesmerizing, disturbing, and thoroughly compelling novel about o… read more

Similar categories in Fawn Parker's What We Both Know book and Martha Schabas's My Face in the Light

  • fiction
  • canada
Cover of My Face in the Light by Martha Schabas

31. My Face in the Light

By: Martha Schabas

3.51

Format: 312 pages, Hardcover

A GLOBE AND MAIL BEST BOOK OF 2022 LONGLISTED FOR THE 2022 TORONTO BOOK AWARD "My mother is … read more

Similar categories in Martha Schabas's My Face in the Light book and Martha Schabas's My Face in the Light

  • fiction
  • canada

26 best-selling canada books like My Face in the Light by Martha Schabas

Transform Your Habits

Run Towards the Danger: Confrontations with a Body of Memory

Sarah Polley

4.32

Transform Your Habits

If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English

Noor Naga

3.92

Transform Your Habits

Study for Obedience

Sarah Bernstein

3.05

Transform Your Habits

The Future

Catherine Leroux

3.32

View all the books

17 must-read fiction books like A Minor Chorus by Billy-Ray Belcourt

Transform Your Habits

If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English

Noor Naga

3.92

Transform Your Habits

The Future

Catherine Leroux

3.32

Transform Your Habits

Jonny Appleseed

Joshua Whitehead

3.95

Transform Your Habits

The Sleeping Car Porter

Suzette Mayr

3.46

View all the books

Never miss a story from us, get weekly updates in your inbox.