Every year Scotiabank hands out the Giller prize, which is the top literary prize in Canada. It’s like the Grammys of book writing. Or is that a Juno? Then what the heck is a Gemini award? Anyway. It’s a huge deal to those of us who love fiction novels. Especially Canadian fiction novels.

Here’s our 3 favourite novels that have been shortlisted for the Giller prize.

Us Conductors, by Sean Michaels (Not the wrestler)

Us Conductors is a story of espionage, music and true love. What’s not to love there? It is a fictional account of the life of Lev Termen, inventor of the Theremin. The Theremin is an electronic instrument known for it’s ethereal sounds and this novel is a lot like that instrument – mysterious, haunting and beautiful. Yeah that’s right, we can get poetic with our reviews too.

The Betrayers by David Bezmozgis

Sure, there’s a lot of politics involved in this novel, but at it’s heart is a struggle with moral superiority and who doesn’t relate to that? Don’t act like you’ve never scoffed at someone eating their dinner on the TTC during rush hour. We all have it in us. It also helps that this novel happens to be relevant due to currents events happening in Russia and Ukraine.

All My Puny Sorrows By Miriam Toews

This one is sad, and we mean like, heartbreakingly sad. it’s also strangely funny, which is the charm of any Miriam Toews novel. The best takeaway from this novel is that these ups and downs are what makes us human and it should be normal to experience and more importantly, live through them. Sorry for getting so serious there, the other week we saw someone totally eat it on a bike that got caught in the streetcar rails and the cyclist got up, dusted himself off and moved on. Once we were done laughing, it was inspiring to see someone continue on like nothing happened. That’s kind of a metaphor for this novel, we think.