Graham Greene is one of those talented authors who has a remarkable ability to combine literary entertainment with moral and political commentary. That is to say, he wrote books that were popular, accessible, and fun to read, while simultaneously making generations of readers think critically about the world in which we all live and about our personal interactions with each other. Sometimes, when you read a Graham Greene novel you don’t even know that you’re doing that, you just read and relax and have a great time, but at the end of his books you feel somehow intellectually enriched.

This week’s book was written in the mid 1960s by one of my favourite authors and is my second-favourite book by him. While it might not top of the list of yours truly, it is probably his best-known work. The book is Slaughterhouse Five or The Children’s Crusade, A Duty Dance With Death. The author is, of course, Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

A 2004 Giller Prize finalist, this book is no slouch on the Canadian literary scene nor is—or rather
was—its author. The book? Galveston by Paul Quarrington. Published by Vintage
Canada, a division of Random House Canada.

The novel follows the strange and sometimes savage lives of a small group of