Below you’ll find reviews, profiles and interviews related to Emancipation Day.
“Because of its cultural and geographic proximity to Detroit, Windsor is one of the only places in Canada where a story like this one – involving race riots, segregated parks and hospitals, whites-only marching bands – can be told.”
–Emily M. Keeler, Globe and Mail, Monday, August 26, 2013, p. L5. To read the full profile, click here.
“Grady’s novel reads with the velvety tempo of the jazz music of its day. Like a deft conductor, he seamlessly brings in his main characters’ voices in alternating chapters throughout the novel.”
–Alanna Glassman, Chatelaine Magazine, September 2013, p. 121. To read the full page, click here.
Two short reviews from Goodreads readers:
“One of the most devastating final sentences of any book I ever read.”
“I look forward to watching Canada fall in love with this novel.”
For more comments on Goodreads, click here.
“Grady’s fourteen books to date have all been non-fiction, mostly about science and nature. It takes a careful writer to make science clear and engaging to the layperson, and here Grady uses his skills to keep his prose quiet, spacious and neat, showing us how his characters navigate racial politics without telling us what to think about it.”
–Denise Balkissoon, Toronto Globe & Mail, August 9, 2013. To download a pdf of the full review, click here.
“Those (myself included) whose genealogy searches have turned up racially different ancestors may be surprised at how this novel’s profound theme of racial identity dredges up feelings that are more than skin deep.”
–Marcia Kaye, The Toronto Star, Friday, August 9, 2013. To read the full review, click here.
“Though Grady portrays the complexities of race and racial politics, there’s nothing overtly didactic here. It’s a novel of ideas that succeeds precisely because it’s also a good story [with] a brilliant sucker punch of an ending.”
–Douglas J. Johnston, Winnipeg Free Press, August 3, 2013. To download a pdf of the full review click here.
“Facts, the saying goes, are often stranger than fiction. And if there’s anyone who can attest to whether that adage rings true, it’s certainly Wayne Grady.”
–Adrian Lee, Canadian Press, August 1, 2013. To download a pdf of the full review, click here.
“Emancipation Day, Grady’s debut novel, is a startling book, one that will likely be celebrated come awards season, but one that is impossible to discuss at length without revealing its ending.”
–Mark Medley, National Post, August 1, 2013. To download a pdf of the full review, click here.
“There is no doubt Grady has tackled a powerful theme. In the novel Grady mentions a Sinclair Lewis novel, Kingsblood Royal, as an example of a work dealing with this question of racial identity and the havoc it can produce. It’s a theme also evident in Mark Twain’s Pudd’nhead Wilson, Philip Roth’s The Human Stain and the movie Imitation of Life. It still haunts American life.”
–Philip Marchand, National Post, July 26, 2013. To download a pdf of the full review, click here.