This is a lovely book. It tells about loss: the grief of losing a spouse, and the displacement experienced by people, especially seniors and other marginalized people, when communities are redeveloped and gentrified. Cho Sum has lived in the Chinatown/Kensington area of Toronto for many years but speaks little English. When her husband dies suddenly, she is grieving and lonely. She starts walking through the neighbourhood collecting cans and bottles, partly for the money; mostly for something to do. On her walks, she notices more and more businesses closing and new developments opening. Her way of life is disappearing. The writing is poetic and beautiful. I felt like I was seeing things through Cho Sum's eyes and frame of reference.

The book includes wonderful ink drawings by Daniel Innes. They show the community and how it is changing and add a lot to the text. I only wish they had been interspersed through the text rather than all appearing together at the end of the book. ( )

Set in Toronto’s Chinatown, Denison Avenue by Christina Wong is a moving tale about loss and grief, loneliness, and of aging in a society that doesn’t respect elders as well as the negative effects of gentrification on culture and tradition. The story moves in a quiet almost gentle pace as we accompany the protagonist, Wong Cho Sum, an older Chinese woman as she tries to deal with her grief after the death of her beloved husband in a hit+and-run accident. She fills her days wandering the streets of Chinatown collecting bottles and cans partly for the money and partly to keep moving as a distraction from her loss and loneliness. And, as the years pass, she notices the changes in the neighbourhood and how the things that made it unique are replaced with the characterless but expensive trappings that accompany gentrification.

Wong’s prose is beautiful, often lyrical, softly and quietly meandering with Wong Cho Sum’s travels and thoughts. It should be noted that Denison Avenue is described as a graphic novel but, at least on the reading app I used, the story and amazing line drawings by Daniel Inness are separate, drawings appearing in the frontispiece and after the story. A truly unique reading experience, one that I will not easily forget.

Thanks to Netgalley and ECW Press for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review ( )