Each year's Giller Prize gives a signal about emerging directions in Canada's fiction. The 2013 list says our best writing is exploring darker disquieting spaces.

The 2011 and 2012 Giller nominees showed Canadians exploring the world beyond our borders with deep sensitivity and broad themes -- especially in such novels as Edugyan's "Half Blood Blues," Ondaatje's "Cat's Table," and Ferguson's "419." In 2013, it is not so much different geographic space that is the focus (though "The Crooked Maid" is set in Vienna and "Caught" includes scenes in Latin America;) instead, these books occupy unsettling social/psychological territory where crime, violence, murder and child abuse are found. In each book there are also indelible characters trying to maintain their core of personal integrity as they live in this dark world. There are also complex interpersonal relationships playing out in each of the works -- some are sexual, as in several of Coady's best stories in "Hellgoing," some are between siblings as in Bock and in Vyleta, and some are between friends as in "Caught" and "Cataract City." What makes each of these books memorable is the depth and texturing with which character development is achieved, within the context of compelling story-telling.

For me, two of the novels stand out particularly strongly -- Dennis Bock's "Going Home Again," and Craig Davidson's "Cataract City." Both handle relationships with great sensitivity, provide excellent writing and speak to basic human themes of betrayal, retribution and the meaning of home.

Dan Vyleta's "Crooked Maid" does convey powerfully the grim tragedy of wartime and postwar Vienna, with the suffering that its people endured. But its sprawling scope limits for me the insights into characters that it provides. Lisa Moore's "Caught" is also a fine book with a dramatic plot line. But its main characters do not perhaps ever confront the dilemmas in which they are "caught" -- from destroyed relations with a daughter for the lead policeman to broken trust that hurts the ties between the two drug-running friends. Lynn Coady's refreshing short stories are also striking, but too puzzling in their wide diversity to have as much impact as the Giller novels nominated.

Both Bock and Davidson combine for me the insight into character and the authenticity of emotion that count in a novel's excellence, provide a new window on a distinct time or place, and relate powerfully to broader human concerns.

Dennis Bock's novel is a meditation on what home is, what it means, and how important it is to go back to in fundamental social and philosophic terms. The central character, Charlie Bellerose, is facing the destruction of his domestic world in Madrid, returns to his former home of Toronto, then must face the challenge of distance from his loved 12-year old daughter Ava -- and new connections with his older brother who is dealing with his own marital crisis. Bock provides a subtle and introspective excavation of Charlie's life over 25 years, in the framework of building plot tension -- and in a context of sensitive treatment of changing sexual relationships. The result is a fine emotionally-moving book.

"Cataract City" is more plot-driven, compulsive in its tension and suspense, and shaped by the uncertainty of the changing ties amongst its key figures -- especially the two boyhood friends, one of whom (Owen) becomes a policeman while the other (Duncan) tries to escape failing factory employment through crime. Both of these men emerge, though, as fully realized figures, indelible in their personalities and complex in their thoughts and emotions. What is especially striking about the book, beyond its broad human themes of betrayal and retribution, is the grim portrait it provides of a working class under economic pressure in the recent years of manufacturing crisis in central Canada. The greater insecurity of employment and the uncertainties for young people show in a narrative that also reveals how crime can become attractive and violence increase. It would be dramatic to see this novel win the Giller because it would represent a shout-out for help from those communities now the victims of Canada's de-industrializing bias.

Will this happen? Davidson has written a powerful, driving book, impossible to put down, with a gut energy that reaches out and grabs you. I certainly think this is the book that should win, with a searing authenticity and a shining insight into a working-class world that Canadian literature has too often ignored. But will it prove too raw and unconventional a choice? Can we truly expect dog-racing and bare-knuckle boxing to penetrate the posh setting of 2013 Giller Night? This is not a bottom-up vision from somewhere abroad like Nigeria or Germany -- this is the toughness of life in decline in industrial Ontario. Will the judges underline Duncan's drive to change his world? I certainly hope so.