A Tale for the Time Being

The story of Elaine Risley who returns to Toronto for a retrospective of her art. Engulfed by vivid images of the past, she reminisces about a trio of girls who initiated her into the fierce politics of childhood and its secret world of friendship, longing, and betrayal. Elaine must come to terms with her own identity as a daughter, a lover, and artist, and woman - but above all she must seek release from her haunting memories

Elfrieda, a world-renowned pianist, glamorous, wealthy, happily married: she wants to die. Yolandi, divorced, broke, sleeping with the wrong men as she tries to find true love: she desperately wants to keep her older sister alive. Yoli is a beguiling mess, wickedly funny even as she stumbles through life struggling to keep her teenage kids and mother happy, her exes from hating her, her sister from killing herself and her own heart from breaking.

Kogawa's semi-autobiographical novel follows the story of Naomi Nakane, a schoolteacher who takes a trip down memory lane as she looks through old family documents. She remembers in detail her life before and during the internment of Japanese-Canadians and her relationship with her aunt (Obasan). Along the way, she manages to solve a family mystery.

Disillusioned with a marriage that has been severely tested by illness and exhausted by the demands of care-giving, Kat returns to her childhood home with her husband and young son in order to help her aging parents prepare to leave. As she sorts through her parents' belongings, Kat finds in her grandmother's tattered carpet bag a clue to a decades-old family mystery involving the disappearance of her grandfather, John.

Bridget Murphy, almost eighteen, has gone to Halifax from industrial Cape Breton, had her baby, and given it up for adoption. She’s apathetic, the doctors decide, so they transfer her to the psych ward of the children’s hospital. Sent home for Christmas, Bridget faces domestic uproar. Bridget’s boozy friends, her whining ex-boyfriend, and the family chaos make up a “strange heaven” in which her apathy starts to lift.

When the beautiful Chisako and her lover are found murdered in a park, members of the small Ontario community must finally acknowledge certain inescapable truths. Set in the 1970s, The Electrical Field reaches deep into the past to explore the dire legacy of the internment of Japanese-Canadians during the war.