• Smithbooks' Books in Canada First Novel Award (finalist)

Critical Acclaim

"Foran writes with conviction and authority about the 'tragedies that befall ordinary, unexceptional people,' about the human need to imagine lives beyond our own, histories beyond the textbooks, and about the power of love to move through the past and into the future."

— The Globe and Mail
 

"...eloquent and insightful... Kitchen Music is a mystery of sorts, ... about disappearance and absence, people living shakily salvaged lives, harbouring losses.... The book's spell is cumulative. Foran evokes a dozen vivid voices, moving in and out of stories, many of them gripping."

— Quill & Quire
 

"It is difficult to believe that this is Charles Foran's first novel. The characters are assured, the narrative so intricately woven, the language so deft, the underlying intelligence so ambitiously probing that a reader feels at once in the hands of an accomplished storyteller.... The narratives weave in and out, never missing a beat, the part the past plays in the present and future building like the subtlest of crescendos.... Foran has written a profoundly modern book."

— The Montreal Gazette
 

"Kitchen Music succeeds wonderfully in capturing the complexity of human relationships...Foran plots their difficult journey of discovery like a supple piece of music, describing the tragic histories that unite and divide them emotionally with a surprising degree of tenderness and precision.... A powerful and delicately structured novel."

— The Vancouver Sun
 

"Kitchen Music has big ambitions, as much through the interweaving of the two major stories as through the abundance of themes. But the rigorous construction organizes this rich mixture and makes the reading of it all the more captivating...."

— Le Devoir
 

"...I have to admit that I was troubled by the beauty of this book for days.... once opened, there is no way to ever close it, to stop listening, even after the apges end."

— The Ottawa X Press