HarperCollinS CaNADA, 2020 | IN PRINT | ISBN: 9781443462648
Hazzley is at loose ends, even three years after the death of her husband. When her longtime friend Cassandra, café owner, suggests that she start up a conversation group. Four people turn up for the first meeting: Gwen, recently widowed, finds herself pet-sitting a cantankerous parrot; Chiyo, a forty-year-old fitness instructor, has cared for her unyielding but gossip-loving mother through the final days of her life; Addie, pre-emptively grieving a close friend who is seriously ill; and Tom, an antique dealer and amateur poet who, deprived of home baking since becoming a widower, comes to the first meeting hoping cake will be served. They are soon joined by Allam, a Syrian refugee with his own story to tell.
These six strangers are learning that new beginnings are always possible. This moving, funny and deeply empathic new novel reminds us that life, with all its twists and turns, never loses its capacity to surprise.
“Itani's company is Always Worth Keeping but this new set of characters is grieving in surprising and diverse and sometimes embarrassing ways, and doing it so wholeheartedly and experimentally, that I jumped into the group of them for good and keeps. This is a book that brings comfort and joy.” — Linda Spalding, Governor General’s Award-winning author of The Purchase
HARPERCOLLINS CANADA, 2004 | IN PRINT | ISBN: 9780006393788
Winner of 2005 Canadian Authors Association Jubilee Award for Best Collection of Stories; Winner of 2005 Ottawa Book Award for Fiction. Several stories broadcast over CBC Anthology & CBC Between the Covers; in anthologies: Journey Prize Anthology, Penguin Anthology of Stories by Canadian Women, Coming Attractions, CBC Canadian Literary Awards Stories 1979-1999, and in various journals and magazines such as Walrus, Queen’s Quarterly, Saturday Night, Prairie Schooner, Toronto Life, Ottawa Citizen, etc.
“She is so convincing a storyteller that it would be possible to believe she not only witnessed every scene she writes, but experiences them at the deepest levels. Her ability to get under the skin of her characters is astonishing….This collection is a banquet of words and emotions, sure to whet the appetite for more from this perceptive, gifted writer.” — Books in Canada
HARPERCOLLINS CANADA, 1998 | IN PRINT | ISBN: 9780006392507
Itani expands her controlof the short story medium, with her novel, Leaning, Leaning Over Water, a series of connected short stories. The stories begin after the father has moved his family to a rural area on the Quebec side of the Ottawa River, where he has taken a job painting fleur-de-lis on tin trays in a nearby factory. For the children this means they grow up in delightful wilderness surrounded by people and customs which are completely new, but leaves their English speaking, non-swimming mother in isolation. The family is cut off from much of the world, but there is much of the world around them. They learn of their individuality through the cultural differences they find between themselves and their nearest neighbours, the Roman Catholic family down the way. They learn about sex and despair first hand through the few adults around them. And they are constantly exposed to life and death, and miracles through their constant contact with the river itself.
#1 Book of the Year, Ottawa Capital City; A Times of London Book Club Choice; published internationally and in translation
“Leaning, Leaning Over Water … stand[s] its own in the company of some of Canada’s finest short story collections.” — Quill & Quire
“It’s no easy brief, writing about a 20th-century Canadian childhood. Looking over your left shoulder, you have a long, distinguished company of predecessors, stretching from Stephen Leacock through Margaret Laurence, Alice Munro …. Itani is clearly one to watch.” — Guardian
ORCA BOOKS, 2014 | IN PRINT | ISBN: 9781554698912
Illustrated by Geneviève Després, Published internationally
“[Itani] depicts children’s frustrations well, and knows how to draw a story to its natural conclusion using good pacing and easy vocabulary. She gets to the truth about friendship with grace and simplicity…The illustrations are wonderful and the text insightful. Parents, teachers and librarians will want to add this delightful book about friendship to their reading lists.” — Quill & Quire
"… colours are warm—fiery oranges, crimson reds, and creamy yellows. The combination of good writing and illustration make Best Friend Trouble a good choice for summer reading, ideal for those long hot afternoons when nobody seems able to get along." — Montreal Review of Books
HarperCollinS CaNADA, 2003 | IN PRINT | ISBN: 9781554684786
Elegantly written and profoundly moving, Frances Itani’s debut novel is a tale of virtuosity and power. Set on the eve of the Great War, Deafening spans two continents and the lives of a young deaf woman and her beloved husband.
#1 National Bestseller; Winner of a 2004 Commonwealth Award; Shortlisted for the 2005 IMPAC Dublin International Literary Award; Winner of the 2003 Drummer General's Award for Fiction; Shortlisted for 2004 CBA (Canadian Booksellers Association) Author of the Year and Fiction Book of the Year; Book Sense Summer Paperback Pick for 2005; Winner of 2007 Kingston Reads Award; Selected for 2006 CBC's Canada Reads (English and French); Shortlisted for the 2005 William Saroyan International Literary Award; Named 2004-05 Book of the Year, Grant MacEwan University; Chosen for 2015 Tri-County Reads (Hastings, Prince Edward, Northumberland Counties); published internationally and in translation 17 languages.
"Some books just demand the adjective 'wonderful.' This is one of them." — The Times (London)
“Brilliantly lucid and masterfully sustained . . . Deafening has the integrity of an achieved artistic vision, the kind of power that is generally associated with the gracious, crystalline prose of Grace Paley, the flagrantly good, good lines of Robert Lowell and W.H. Auden's poetry.” — Kaye Gibbons
HarperCollinS CaNADA, 2014 | IN PRINT | ISBN: 9780802123368
In 1919, only months after the end of the Great War, Kenan, a young soldier who has returned from the war damaged and disfigured, confines himself to his small house on the Bay of Quinte. His wife, Tress, attempting to adjust to the trauma that overwhelms her husband and which has changed their marriage, seeks advice from her Aunt Maggie. Maggie, who has her own sorrows, finds joy in her friendship with a local widow and in the Choral Society started by Lukas, a Music Director who has moved to the town from an unknown place in war-torn Europe. As the decade draws to a close and the lives of these characters become more entwined, each of them must decide what to share and what to hide.
National Bestseller (Maclean's); Shortlisted for 2014 Scotiabank Giller Prize, published internationally.
“Every word feels simple, right, and natural in Frances Itani’s Tell. You’re slowly immersed in the mystery: Who gave up a baby for adoption, and why? Itani peels back time to show us Kenan, a damaged and disfigured WWI soldier readjusting to life in Ontario, and his marriage to Tress. Itani inhabits many voices with ease, pathos and humour. Her choice of details expertly builds our understanding of her characters’ times, foibles and moral choices, and she connects them in a hugely satisfying ending. Tell is a treasure: serious with humorous moments, potent and controlled, subtle yet deeply moving." — Scotiabank Giller Prize Jury
"Gravely beautiful …. Itani's characters survive by telling stories; they bear witness. As do we all." — The New York Times
HarperCollinS CaNADA, 2017 | IN PRINT | ISBN: 9781443447805
At the end of Tell, a baby is adopted by a young Deseronto couple. Eighteen years on, the baby, Hanora, now a young woman, is told about her adoption. As a second world war looms, Hanora is determined to uncover the mysteries of her identity.
“Ottawa-based author Frances Itani once again captures the imaginations and hearts of readers with That’s My Baby, a poignant story of love and sacrifice . . . . This is yet another unforgettable novel from a Canadian literary icon."
— Winnipeg Free Press
"Music and the memories they're tied to are integral to Frances Itani’s new book, bringing us back to her characters from the critically acclaimed Deafening and Tell .... A fantastic book!” — Alan Neal – CBC interview with Frances Itani
HarperCollinS CaNADA, 2011 | IN PRINT | ISBN: 9781443406901
Bin Okuma, a celebrated visual artist, has recently and quite suddenly lost his wife, Lena. He and his son Greg are left to deal with the shock. But Greg has returned to his studies on the east coast, and Bin finds himself alone. His deep grief draws him into memories he has avoided for much of his life: the uprooting of his Japanese Canadian family from the west coast of British Columbia during the Second World War. Now, he sets out to drive across the country, to revisit the places that have shaped him, to find his First Father who has been lost to him. Years ago, his father made a fateful decision that severed the bonds of his family. Running from grief, Bin must ask himself whether he really wants to find his father or whether his bitterness will separate them forever.
Named by Washington Post in 2012 as one of the top 50 fiction titles in U.S.A; 2012 nomination for Forest of Reading Evergreen Award; 2015 Selection for One Book One Burlington; 2017 Selection for One Book One Mississauga; published internationally and in translation.
"Remarkable … Requiem delicately probes the complex adjustments we make to live with our sorrows....[A] perfectly modulated novel." — The Washington Post
“This is surely Itani’s greatest novel, although calling Requiem a novel does not do it justice. Requiem is a great work of literature from a determined author at the peak of her powers.” — Ottawa Citizen
HARPERCOLLINS CANADA, 2007 | IN PRINT | ISBN: 9781443402521
Georgina Danforth Witley shares her birthday—April 21, 1926—with Queen Elizabeth II, a coincidence that has led to an invitation to a special 80th-birthday lunch at Buckingham Palace. While she should be on her way to London, Georgie lies injured in a ravine not far from her own house, the result of a car accident en route to the airport. Desperately hopeful that someone will find her, Georgie relies on her strength, her family memories, her no-nonsense wit and a recitation of the names of the bones in her body—a long-forgotten exercise from childhood that reminds her she is still very much alive.Frances Itani brings us a novel that is charming and deeply felt, by turns fanciful and profound. Insightful and beautifully written, Remembering the Bones considers what a life is worth and reminds us that even the most ordinary of lives is extraordinary.
National Bestseller (Maclean's); Chatelaine Book Club Selection; Edmonton Journal Bestseller; Denver Post Editor's Choice; Shortlisted for Commonwealth Prize for Best Book (Canada & Caribbean); Nominated for IMPAC Dublin International Literary Award; published internationally and in translation.
“Frances Itani doles out lucidity, empathy and poetry in crackling equal measures.” — Observer (London)
“Itani exposes the richness and depth beneath the surface of one ordinary life." — The New Yorker
BRICK BOOKS | IN PRINT | ISBN: 9780919626409
Illustrated by Molly Lamb Bobak (First published 1988 / reissued 2014 by Brick Books)
Frances Itani’s third book of poetry consists of two deeply moving elegiac sequences commemorating the deaths of a sister and friend. In chaste and determinedly unsentimental language, Itani takes us through the crises all must face, ignoring none of their turbulence or anguish, yet leaving us with a renewed sense of humanity. In these two sequences, she accomplishes inspiring acts of homage and remembrance.
“Itani’s subdued grief and the poems it has produced are certainly worth listening to.” — Canadian Literature
“… wholly elegiac book — poems addressed to a sister and a friend who died within a year of each other….Molly Lamb Bobak’s bunches of flowers, so like the ragged bouquets one sees sometimes in the village churchyards, and reproduced in grey tones, are almost perfectly appropriate illustrations.” — George Woodcock, The Ottawa Citizen
GRASS ROOTS PRESS, 2011 | IN PRINT | ISBN: 9781926583365
For Adult Learners – Grass Roots Press (Good Reads series, in partnership with ABC Life Literacy Canada)
Novellas by bestselling Canadian authors. The Good Reads authors have a special talent - the ability to tell a great story using clear language.
GRASS ROOTS PRESS, 2012 | IN PRINT | ISBN: 9781926583815
For Adult Learners – Grass Roots Press (Good Reads series, in partnership with ABC Life Literacy Canada)
Novellas by bestselling Canadian authors. The Good Reads authors have a special talent - the ability to tell a great story using clear language.