• QSPELL/Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction

"Foran brilliantly conveys the terror of post-Tiananmen China."

— Maclean's
 

"Foran has written a sophisticated novel, engaged with some of the central thematic obsessions of our time.... The prose is engagingly quick-witted, and the story very much grounded in event and behaviour."

— Quill and Quire
 

"What makes Butterfly Lovers such a delightful discovery is...Foran's clear, vigorous and completely unaffected prose. Butterfly Lovers is a joy to read. At times funny, at times elegiac, its descriptions bring Montreal and Beijing to life with photographic clarity. Foran's dialogue buzzes with authenticity. And the characters he sketches—the Indian immigrant who owns the failing corner store across the street from David's Montreal flat, the Chinese maid who cleans his Beijing apartment—are vivid, witty and touching. Foran brings to his fiction all his skills as a reporter and travel writer: a keen eye and ear, a passionate curiosity about human motivation, and an instinct for exploring the incongruities sparked when cultures interact. Butterfly Lovers will take its place among the best Canadian novels and new Canadian novelists."

— Edmonton Journal
 

"... an eloquently written, emotionally haunted novel. Charles Foran paints vivid pictures of Montreal and China. David's yearning—for the things he used to have, and for the things he never had—is palpable and poignantly rendered. This novel delves into the murky waters of identity, and Foran successfully weaves together the search for personal meaning with the quest for cultural identity.... This book is at once meaty and ethereal. Foran's style here is pure storytelling.... Foran's language is luminescent, his dialogue deft, his narrative neat. Though the voices in this novel are disparate and often at odds with each other, Foran manages to bring them together beautifully, illuminating their search for identity."

— Halifax NOW / The Coast
 

"...a page-turner—it demands of the reader the loyalty deserved by a friend in desperate need..."

— The Montreal Gazette