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2024 Foreword Finalist

https://www.forewordreviews.com/awards/books/satellite-image/

Satellite Image is a Finalist! March 2025.

The Ottawa Review of Books, Oct. 14, 2024, by Jerry Levy

"...a work that might very well be looked upon as a master class in how to write a mystery novel." Jerry Levy.

"Satellite Image is a true page-turner, one that keeps readers guessing and on edge throughout. Overall, a remarkable and compelling read." Jerry Levy.

DavinaReads:

"Satellite Image hit the spot....when I did end up closing the book that unease continued to follow me because that nervous feeling was memorable and applicable to my surroundings."

Elyse Friedman Blurb

"Michelle Berry has crafted a super-creepy, anxiety-filled tale that will dash any urbanite's fantasy of escaping to the tranquil countryside."

River Street Writes, Hollay Ghadery

"Berry's writing is like nothing I can recall reading....she is able to bring us intothe lives and minds of the characters while also maintaining an objective, cinematic distance that gave me space to speculate freely myself."

EVERYTHING TURNS AWAY

That Shakespearean Rag, by Steven Beattie:

“The Things We Carry: Michelle Berry examines the confluence of personal and geopolitical trauma in Everything Turns Away."

The internecine plot is tricky and it is to Berry’s credit that she manages to keep all the novel’s plates spinning briskly without any of them crashing to the ground.... Berry is too good a writer....

49th Shelf:

The Bookseller: David Worsley, Words Worth Books (Waterloo, ON)

The Pick: Everything Turns Away, by Michelle Berry

Wow! Everything Turns Away is a  thrill, full of mess and disquiet, a quick little read that will stay in my head for a long time.
 With fully human, complex and faltering characters, this one is a snack best savoured.
 The novel has shades of A.M Homes or Lydia Millett, but Michelle Berry has put together a great tune of her own here.
 One of my favourites of the year.
*

Quill & Quire:

Stacey May Fowles

“Berry’s skilled, unforgiving rendering of these flawed characters, along with her propelling prose, is exactly what makes the novel so compulsively readable…. With more depth than your standard thriller, Everything Turns Away rejects platitudes in the face of deep uncertainty to instead assert a painfully honest analysis of human behaviour.”

Toronto Star:

Robert J. Wiersema

“Everything Turns Away is an impressive mystery with strong thriller elements, and well worth reading on that level alone. Where Berry excels, though, is with her attention to each character…. Everything Turns Away is also a powerful examination of guilt and shame, of attempts to dodge responsibility and remorse for doing so. It’s a novel of secrets and lies, of dramatic revelations and sudden, life-altering epiphanies…. It’s also wickedly funny; there is a scene, early in the novel, which has the slapstick imperatives of a classic Chaplin short (there’s voyeurism, an unfortunate compost accident, and an incident of hot way), which also forms one of the significant elements of the novel’s central mysteries. It’s that sort of blending — weaving humour, desire, guilt, compost, Monday night drunkenness, and more to create a taut, compelling mystery  —  that best demonstrates Berry’s considerable skills, all delivered with a skill and acumen that more than justifies its publication by a literary small press.”

Re: Books

Rebecca Eckler

“Everything Turns Away is a gripping thriller about how matters outside the home can transform the lives inside it if left unattended.”

The Winnipeg Free Press:

"Berry’s writing is thoughtful and compelling — she’s especially skilled at crafting stream-of-consciousness narratives for the main characters, rife with the tiniest details and non sequiturs that permeate our daily thoughts . . . Everything Turns Away is a study of the psychological and emotional effects of an epic disaster like 9/11, and how these effects are vastly different for everyone. It’s also a study of marriage and relationships, how the people we think we know the best can reveal themselves to be strangers — how in our most vulnerable states we sometimes do not even know ourselves, and how when we are hurting, we hurt each other.” 

THE PRISONER AND THE CHAPLAIN

Globe and Mail

“Because this is a novel, we as readers get to be psychologically promiscuous. We know Larry’s truth to a degree we cruelly cannot know another person in real life. This is what haunts both men: the mystery of other people, and the ways we remain mysterious even to ourselves.” 

Metro News

“A tightly paced, story conversation set in a prison death row, with one heck of a twist ending.” 

INTERFERENCE

Publishers Weekly

“Berry plays literary voyeur, peeling back the polite veneer of middle class to expose a chaotic underbelly. Weaving myriad narratives into an impressive whole, the book submits that a community is actually an arena of unfocused fear.” 

THIS BOOK WILL NOT SAVE YOUR LIFE 

Moira Dann, The Globe and Mail, 2011

“a well-executed story that goes from quirky (intriguing off-centre family; blackly funny, even) to murky.... The story is well-paced (even with the necessary repetition of its Rashomon-style narrative) and the characters are unforgettable.... Michelle Berry is a talent.... her willingness to navigate such challenging darkness is admirable.”  

Winnipeg Free Press, 2010

“Ontario novelist and short-story writer Michelle Berry's fourth novel is a thoughtful study of a dysfunctional family in mid-1980s Toronto.... trust her. She knows more than you think she does.” 

Quill and Quire, 2010

“Berry is a fine writer.... (this novel) has obvious parallels to Sapphire’s novel Push.” 

Jessica Grant, "Come, Thou Tortoise"

"Heart-stopping, breathtaking, this book will not save your life, but you will never for a moment regret having your heart stopped and your breath taken. This is a story about magic – and about what happens to a family when magic goes missing, costumes no longer fit, and love disappears backstage. Michelle Berry is the best kind of magician, the kind who rather than save your life reminds you why life is worth living. A magnificent feat. " 

I STILL DON'T EVEN KNOW YOU 

Patricia Dawn Robertson, The Toronto Star

"This dismal yet delightful collection is a great distraction if you'd like to either shake off, or embrace, your post-winter despondency. Berry's brand of Dirty Realism is pungent, angst-ridden, florid and desperate. In other words, it's wretchedly perfect."

Uptown Magazine

"Berry’s characters learn things, even if it’s something they didn’t want to know, even if it’s only about themselves. It could be something about the lengths you might go to reject your family and social circle. Maybe a long-suppressed desire for human connection. Or perhaps it’s realizing that some people just don’t want to be parents. A rock-solid collection."

Globe and Mail

"… a compelling look at the mysteries of human beings … skillfully and sensitively constructed…the most hauntingly beautiful stories … All the stories in this book have such emotional depth that they can be reread numerous times. Berry makes the strange ordinary and vice versa. Her perception and compassion are immense; flawed characters are treated with respect and an obvious desire for comprehension. I Still Don’t Even Know You combines style and substance for a richly rewarding experience. " 

Winnipeg Free Press

"Berry is able to shift perspectives, seemingly effortlessly, and capture the essence of each character, whether male or female, young or old, wealthy or not. The "normal" ones marry people of their own social status and follow the rules. Despite feeling that they are missing something crucially important, the characters are incapable of defying others' expectations.

Berry has a gift for evoking the exact mood of each story. Whether her characters are embittered, eccentric, desperate, conventional, creative or practical, her phrasing subtly shapes each story's unique atmosphere and set of circumstances.

Her ability to travel across decades, genders and ages is impressive. She grasps the heart of the matter and shapes each story's events accordingly." 

BLIND CRESCENT 

Globe and Mail

"But while the five families living on Blind Crescent inhabit a typically soulless world, their creator forgives them trespasses that a more cynical writer would not. The result is a bittersweet mystery that's refreshingly sympathetic.... Berry's pen pokes but refuses to break skin,  because she knows her people are suffering enough." 

Quill & Quire

"Berry has a way of taking the seemingly obvious  —  stereotypical 

characters, familiar storylines  —  and subverting it. She's a minor master of 

tone, lulling the reader with humour that ranges from subtle irony to broad 

farce (including a wickedly gross scene involving a spanking and a soiled 

diaper). She'll then shift on a dime, uncovering a hidden layer of gentle 

sweetness or smacking the reader with a seemingly innocent situation's 

underlying horror." 

BLUR 

Daily Mirror, four stars

“What a cool read.  Michelle Berry might have called her debut novel Blur but she writes with cunning clarity.  Using sun-drenched Tinseltown as a piercing backdrop, Berry has created an ultra-stylish and ultra-pacy noir thriller that beautifully deconstructs the old Hollywood notions of celebrity and identity.  It could easily become a cult classic because it’s a moody murder mystery perfectly in tune with the beginning of the 21st century.”

Peterborough Evening Telegraph, four stars

“A smart and sassy story about life and death in Hollywood.”

Quill & Quire

“High-pulp authors from Raymond Chandler to Robert Ferrigno to the newest sensation, Bruce Wagner, have taken the beautiful horror or Los Angeles -- its sheen, its viciousness, its generations of celebrity skin -- and from it derived memorable pop fiction. It takes nerve to try to join that clique of writers on the sunny side of noir, but Blur is risky business from the get-go; it invites comparisons to a long line of Sunset Boulevard standards… Berry's style is to die for -- it's cool and confident, with a kind of wary watchfulness that echoes her protagonist's personality.”

Sunday Independent

“Ms. Berry’s fiction style is crisp, pointed, poignant and comic by turn. Some lovely writing, lots of passages where you find yourself thinking ‘I wish I had written that.’”

South Wales Argus

“Hip, cool and written in the present tense, Blur focuses not so much on the stars but on the little people who are dying to hit the top…A good read with a substantial twist in the tale."

Publishing News

“This could almost be a private eye novel, and first-time author Berry has fun with notions of identity, truth, love – by implication, the myths of Hollywood itself.  Her prose is direct, clipped and to the point, creating a non-nonsense impression entirely suitable to the material…Recommended as a summer read.”

Flare

“A funny and suspenseful Hollywood whodunit sure to spice up any armchair evening.”

The Globe and Mail

“Berry’s prose has an austere, bleached quality, as if all extraneous material has been sizzled away.  What’s left is deadpan and allusive and often pretty damned funny…When Berry leaves a door tantalizingly open at the end of Blur, it feels right, because in this story the questions are more compelling, and more to the point, than answers could be.”

Literary Review

“Sexy, moody, snugly fashioned fiction which leaves you guessing at the end whether you’ve got it right. Infinitely seductive.”

Calgary Herald

“Berry has combined the plotting of Sunset Boulevard and the understated style of Elmore Leonard and come up with a convincing Hollywood Babylon…It’s a tough act to pull off, setting a noir-style novel in a California cess-pool. After all, the literary and cinematic precedents are formidable:  Raymond Chandler, James Cain, James Ellroy’s L.A. Confidential and the films of Robert Towne – particularly Chinatown and the Two Jakes.  But Berry manages it with panache, imparting a suitably gritty feel to her take on L.A.”

Times-Colonist

“Berry’s novel is a snappy, engaging one that provides entertainment both in its content and its lively prose.”

The Vancouver Sun

“Berry skilfully keeps you guessing – and more importantly, keeps you caring – right to the finish.”

The Hamilton Spectator

“[Berry’s] witty commentary on 21st-century life arouses both thought and laughter in the reader. In addition, the psychology of each character becomes paramount to the plot instead of simply existing to explain motive.  Blur is simultaneously an enjoyable read and an interesting literary experiment.  Berry’s tale of greed, betrayal and murder merges old with new.”

WHAT WE ALL WANT

Daily Mirror

“What We All Want is more than a nod in the direction of master storytellers Anne Tyler and Terry McMillan…Taking a leaf out of their books by nailing characters dead-on, creating pitch perfect dialogue and effortlessly telling a big-hearted, perfectly paced story, Berry turns the potentially schmaltzy into a profound contemplation of secrets and lies. What we should all want is more of Michelle Berry.”

Observor

“What most of us want is a cracking good read which is simultaneously unsettling and reassuring, able to tackle the dark side of our lives without leaving us disconsolate.  We don’t always get what we want, of course, but some books, like Michelle Berry’s new novel, give more than a hint of it.”

TLS

“As a black joke about life beyond the far side of despair, What We All Want is skilfully told; well shaped, exact, and easy with itself.”

Margaret Forster

“I loved What We All Want.  It manages that rare thing, combining the tragic with the comic without turning it into farce, and the weird with the mundane without the whole thing becoming ridiculous.  There’s real tension there as the story sits on the brink of being utterly pathetic and yet at the same time pulls back to end up full of promise and hope for the future – a skilled performance, needing great control.  I admire the restraint shown in the use of it. The dialogue fairly crackles – some wonder.  Fully witty exchanges and the whole thing sprints along… It’s quite extraordinary the way, with such subject matter, this novel isn’t the least depressing but instead positively entertaining yet never without it retaining its dignity and compassion.”

Reuters

“What We All Want is deceptively simple, written with straightforward sentences and replete with dialogue. The strangest part about the novel, which deals with some of the oddest characters you could ever meet, is that it all seems uncannily normal. It’s a testament to Berry’s writing and her ability to tap into the sometimes surreal episodes people encounter in suburbia.  There are some knee-slapping, darkly comical episodes in the novel, including ones relating to dead bodies.”

Winnipeg Free Press

“Berry’s use of wit and extremes make even the most bizarre behaviour appear amusing.”

The Glasgow Herald

"Similar in some aspects to the TV series Six Feet Under, Michelle Berry's What We All Want, first published in Canada in 2001, concerns an eccentric family of three grown-up children. When their mother, an alcoholic, dies, Hilary -- who has lived with her till the end, and who has covered the floor with pebbles and dolls -- coerces her brothers and her only admirer, Dick Mortimer, an undertaker, to bury their mother in the garden. Less satirical than Waugh, Berry's characters and situations are beautifully drawn…Death comes to us all; perhaps it's as well to prepare in the company of writers such as these." 

The Globe and Mail

“Berry has grown into a writing style that is uniquely hers:  a kind of literary pointilism which is simple and tight at first glance, but more complicated and layered when you stand back from it.”

The Edmonton Journal

“The novel culminates in an illegal funeral in the backyard of the Mount house.  Madness and sweetness ensue, and we are left with just the right mixture of hope and hopelessness…What We All Want is a satisfying portrait of a family, a town, a society in crisis.  What we want is for the Mounts to succeed, to live good lives.  The same things we want for ourselves and our own brothers and sisters and daughters and sons.”

London Free Press

“If you liked the bizarre goings-on in Barbara Gowdy’s Mister Sandman or the offbeat characters in Lynn Coady’s Strange Heaven and Play the Monster Blind, you will savour Michelle Berry’s first novel, What We All Want….Berry is a skilled writer and her powers of observation remain intact as she explores a suburban world filled with the familiar, as well as the grotesque.  Her darkly humorous angle of vision lightens the novel’s tone and gives the characters a singular appeal…. Berry’s prose is refreshingly spare in this novel, her themes implicit rather than announced.”

Exit Toronto Women's Newspaper

“Michelle Berry is full of creative energy.  She also has an engaging sense of humor, which she directs with care, keeping it submerged and controlled so that it never breaks through the stage direction of her prose…The story is well structured, and ends with a rising comic element of completely winning eccentricity.”

Montreal Gazette

“In What We All Want, Berry seems to recognize, as her strange story unfolds, that sometimes happiness is a more interesting and complicated outcome than despair.  Sometimes things do get better – if only for a moment or two.  What We All Want has its moment, and Berry makes the most of it.”

Quill & Quire

“Her characters’ quirks and habits make them the kind of folks an Anne Tyler fan would embrace.  It’s clear, however, that this is a writer who is spreading her wings.”

Calgary Herald

“In the gallery of eccentric novels, this new work from Michelle Berry holds a determined place. A quick and compelling read, What We All Want is a quirky exploration of the bizarre condiments of family life, and how death brings together the different pieces of one family puzzle in a strange rearrangement of that institution’s terrible failures…Best of all are the parts of the novel engaged with the mortician’s trade, the actual physical details that describe the body’s last rites. These are simply fascinating.”

National Post

“Berry’s fine writing shows that she understands that the space between the words can be important and that what is implied speaks volumes.”

NOW Magazine

“Berry uses a spare and direct style to convey her characters’ dilemmas.  Hilary feels lonely, Thomas guilty, Billy useless.  And she has a way of letting the situation speak for itself, without cluttering things up with intricate or adjective-heavy wordplay…This is a really good first novel.”

Vancouver Sun

“This book sustains an intent and courageous gaze into real, unglamorous, unspectacular death. Rebecca Mount, bald and wizened with jaundice, is somebody’s dead mother, and you feel it that way.”

Elm Street

“Berry’s mastery of dialogue and her subtle evocation of sight and smell make her darkly comic trip inside the looking glass as easy as tucking away that extra slice of Christmas cake.”

Toronto Life

“Her spare, sparkly dialogue and eye for the perfect, telling detail make the novel richly visual.”

FFWD

“What We All Want is an endearing and amusing novel that is bizarre while remaining credible.”

Eye

“Starting with a gathering of three siblings for their mother Becka’s funeral, What We All Want is one of those deceptively simple novels that grows ever more complex as you dive beneath the surface.”

Toronto Star

“The characters in Michelle Berry’s first novel resemble guests on a Jerry Springer show in one respect – you’ll be sure to feel better about your own life after meeting them.”

Calgary Straight

“This book is a good read that delivers more than unremittingly grim social commentary.  Its cynicism is infused with hope; social realism butts up against the grotesque, making the fiction vital and playful.”

MARGARET LIVES IN THE BASEMENT

The Toronto Star

"A second story collection at once disconcerting and enticing…Michelle Berry's second collection of short stories in three years is distinguished by its quirky perspective on the everyday lives of not-so common characters and the calculated precision of its prose… Readers who relish the position of literary voyeur will delight in the remote voice and cool style of these stories… In Berry's hand, ordinary circumstances are rendered as extraordinary, unsettling events and the reader must beware.  Although "nothing seems to be different than before.  Nothing has changed…Nothing seems out of place…," the world has reshaped itself in the brief span of 200 pages."

Quarry Magazine

"Like a young Flannery O'Connor, Berry has the uncanny ability to present characters who effectively demonstrate the constant battle between the better angels and ugly little demons of our nature.  Balancing humour and darkness, Berry explores the tragic limitations of individuals…The Verdict: funny, true, tragic and ultimately endearing."

The Georgia Straight

"…shot through with suspense, tightly wound and written…Berry's prose is terse and swift, full of killer one-liners and acerbic observations.  The stories…are set in Any Canadian City, but driven by people who are more than commonly desperate, people for whom eye contact is painful.  All Berry's characters have lost something: wives, sons, minds, sisters, bathing suits, trust, hope.  Their attempts to recover and sort out what went wrong, and how to fix things, don't work out – at least not in the way you'd expect… Berry deftly, repeatedly, shows just how clueless and creepy we can be…"

Quill & Quire

"[S]ubterranean murkiness there is, but the stories in Michelle Berry's second collection are rather more flammable, forged in the brilliance of summer heatwaves.  These 11 stories stick to the skin, and not always pleasantly, as characters sweat and strip down… Berry graphically evokes smells, walls smeared with tobacco smoke, corpses in the woodshed.  But while we may be repelled, we read on, in the grip of the characters' discordant realities and expectations… For such a young writer, still in her 20s, Berry shows remarkable control of her medium, walking a fine line between the comic and tragic.  Her ear for dialogue is uncommonly good; these seem as much one-act plays as stories – motel Ionesco, Albee under the apple tree."

Beach Metro News

"With her latest collection of short stories…Michelle Berry has joined the ranks of Mavis Gallant, Alice Munro and Margaret Atwood.  The eleven well-crafted stories…explore that core of human existence: the relationship between men and women, their natural pair bonding urge…"

The Leader Post

"…stylish and witty…a good ear for dialogue that brings her characters to life…engaging and provocative"

Chosen for the Coles/Smithbooks Made in Canada series

April 1998:  "Eleven short stories of shining innocence, tinged with an unexpected shadow of darkness.  Witty one moment, wrenching the next – splendid prose from a hot new writer."

Front & Centre Magazine

"Throughout the eleven stories, Michelle Berry demonstrates an astute comprehension of what it is what draws people together and rips them apart.  Strangeness is seldom so thoughtfully summoned."

The Ottawa Citizen

“moments of quiet brilliance"

HOW TO GET THERE FROM HERE 

Paragraph: The Canadian Fiction Review

"[L]ike viewing your own image in an x-ray machine.  It is the world of the familiar turned inside out, all the hidden illnesses and weaknesses revealed to the naked eye… Berry offers up the realm of the ordinary for readers, but it is the ordinary transformed into the unsettling… It is the elusive nature of…escape that the collection's title reflects.  Each of Berry's characters longs to be somewhere else… Perhaps the most startling and disturbing revelation of Berry's lies in her depiction of the interaction between people. There is no unmediated contact here; instead, human contact is filtered through memory, the media, or just plain fantasy, leaving Berry's characters adrift in a sea of shallow sound bites and immaterial daydreams… The first collection of stories from Berry is quiet, but has a lingering presence."

Quill & Quire

"There is a fin-de-siecle jitteriness to the characters, whether they are the woman in a supermarket who does two gay men a kind turn while a sort of moral meltdown goes on around them, a cop who loses control of a situation, or a jogger who is temporarily unhinged by something she sees on a trail in the encroaching darkness.  This is clear, finely muscled prose… Small, beautifully wrought tales about moments, each pregnant with meaning…"

The Toronto Star

"a shocking subtlety that stays with the reader as a sort of afterglow…the subtlety with which Berry is capable of communicating is startling and stimulating"

The Globe and Mail

"an uncommon gift for narrative"

Black Cat 115

"a penchant for crafting alluring stories from what I'll call down-time.  Her fiction sneaks up on you.  The stories, which centre on simple, plausible characters, seem to rise out of moments when we least expect fiction to be born: in line at the grocery store, the morning after a party, at home with a cold watching Donahue, driving to visit a sister, running through a park.  The reader gets the sense that something is about to happen, or that something did happen, but the prelude or aftermath (down-time) suddenly intervenes and proves more interesting… [D]oes this make for good fiction?  Absolutely."