“If you look at our prize-winning literature, you would think we are humourless, violent and pathetic.” So says Ben McNally, an influential Toronto bookseller whose voice—think James Taylor after a bottle of Xanax–belies the sting of his zingers. He has a point: lasting romance, if not dead in contemporary literary novels, certainly isn’t winning any prizes these days. Sex, death, violence and depravity, yes, but true happily-ever-afterness? Dodo bird. “Conflict is where it’s at,” McNally laments before hanging up.

A review of winners of the Giller, Canada’s top prize for literature, shows that not a single winning book has a happy ending for a romantic couple since its inception in 1994. It is much the same for the Governor General’s Literary Awards. Since 1936, the winners of the award have been showered in superlatives—2007 winner Divisadero, by Michael Ondaatje, is replete with “tenderness, compassion and grace”—yet hardly any of the winning titles end with the ultimate culmination of tenderness, compassion or grace.

Continue…