It didn’t win any prizes; no awards; didn’t make many, if any, long or short lists; but David Gilmour’s The Perfect Order of Things is a great novel. The best I read last year. In fact, I think it’s one of the best Canadian novels ever written. Deceptively easy to read, the book’s 300-odd pages are not only crowded with elegantly crafted sentences, they collectively capture and convey levels of insight and depths of experience one typically finds only in great Russian novels. Perfect Order leaves you invigorated; filled with admiration for the life fully lived. It makes you want to get out there and show the world who’s boss.

David Gilmour was in Ottawa recently to attend the Ottawa International Writers Festival.