What We’re Reading in March

Zed contributors review new favourites, including Scott Oakes’ memoir, Olga Tokarczuk’s health-resort horror story and Ian Rankin’s new Rebus thriller / BY Zed Staff / February 28th, 2025

March may be roaring in like a lion, but Zed contributors hardly noticed because they had their noses buried in some great books. Get out your TBR lists and get ready to add some engrossing titles, including a heartbreaking memoir, For the Love of a Son, from Hockey Night in Canada commentator Scott Oakes about his son’s accidental heroin overdose and how he is honouring Bruce’s memory by creating residential treatment centres in Winnipeg.

Fiction is represented by some heavy hitters: Ian Rankin’s new John Rebus thriller, Midnight and Blue; Polish Nobel Laureate by Olga Tokarczuk’s  spellbinding health horror story, The Empusium; and Pulitzer Prize finalist Adam Haslett’s tender examination of family and forgiveness, Mothers and Sons.

Obsessive Book Buyers: Zoomer editors have carefully curated our book coverage to ensure you find the perfect read. We may earn a commission on books you buy by clicking on the cover image.

Sweet Fury

by Sash Bischoff

Home Base: New York

Author’s Take: “I was interested in seeing, in the aftermath of the MeToo movement, what is the meaning of justice? How far is too far? What happens when things go too far? Can we ever know what really happened?”

Favourite Lines: “He stands and walks to the balcony, and slides the door open to a shimmering rush of rain. He steps out, and it bears down on him in great cold sheets, sluicing the pinkish blood down the length of his body and onto the terrace below.”

Review: Sash Bischoff has a thing for F. Scott Fitzgerald, which the actor and theatre director acknowledges in her debut novel, Sweet Fury, promising “fans will find a number of Easter eggs.” But even those unfamiliar with Fitzgerald’s oeuvre will be able to follow along as Bischoff – like her literary hero, a Princeton University alum – briskly unspools a very twisty tale. Superstar actress Lila Crayne is determined to bring Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night to the big screen, albeit with a feminist bent. To do so, she must convince her beau, a bankable if seemingly misogynistic director, to head the production while exploring her own repressed trauma to better inhabit a pivotal role. That is the storyline, but Bischoff’s characters are grappling with complex forces – crooked gender dynamics, predatory campus culture, intimate partner violence, sexual assault and repressed memories – and absolutely no one, not even characters Crayne and her Fitzgerald-obsessed therapist, Jonah Gabriel, are exactly as advertised. Sweet Fury’s byzantine finale strains plausibility, but the journey sure is fun. — K.H. 

Read the full article here.