Category: Reviews
Finding the Perfect Home
What makes a house a home? Review of Open House by Jane Christmas.
Moral Hazards
Moral Hazards by Tim Martin (self-published Friesen Press, April 2020), 354 pages. Reviewed by Roberta Walker Moral Hazards is the kind of book that will keep you awake at night, […]
The Glass Hotel
The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel, HarperCollins 2020 (320 pages). Reviewed by Mark Sampson What is a Ponzi scheme, at its essence? We usually describe it as a […]
Gathering Places
Photographer Vincenzo Pietropaolo and author Mark Frutkin have collaborated on a book that is a reminder of what Italians must miss during the Coronavirus shut-down of public places: Where Angels […]
Palestinian Literature
The drones placed an explosive device on the roof of the house, hovered upwards, to about four metres above, and paused with their robot arms dangling like wet, dead spider […]
Allan Jones Ascends his Cliff
Sonia Tilson reviews Beyond Vision by Allan Jones (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2018, 311 pages, hardcover). In this extraordinary autobiography, Beyond Vision (McGill-Queen’s University Press 2018), Allan Jones describes how he […]
Catherine Cooper and Home
Catherine Cooper, The Western Home: Stories for Home on the Range, Pedlar Press: St John’s, 2014, paper. Catherine Cooper, White Elephant, Freehand Books: Calgary, 2016, paper. Reviewed by Debra Martens […]
Local Lit: Amos Oz
I finished reading last week the memoir by Amos Oz, A Tale of Love and Darkness (Vintage paperback 2005 translated by Nicholas de Lange), a whacking 517 pages of rather […]
Art of Leaving
Canadian Writers Abroad‘s quest for Canadian authors living in Israel found an Israeli Canadian author now living and teaching in Canada, who also teaches at Tel Aviv University, and who […]
French Exit
“All good things must end,” said Frances Price. (Chapter 1, French Exit) Review of French Exit by Patrick deWitt (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018.)Reviewed by Jane Christmas There is something about […]
Ties that Bind: Washington Black
“That was how it began: me and Big Kit, watching the dead go free.” Finding the ties that bind: Review of Washington Black by Esi Edugyan, published by Patrick Crean Editions, […]
![Dwindrim~enwiki at English Wikipedia. (Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons.) [CC BY-SA 1.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/1.0) or CC BY-SA 1.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/1.0)], via Wikimedia Commons](https://canadianwritersabroad.files.wordpress.com/2018/10/1200px-dwalbertawildrose.jpg?w=375&h=250&crop=1)
Tell Us A Story
“Where we did spend time was out on the land, a remarkable land, a beautiful land, a land not seen to this day by the most adventurous of Europeans, whether […]
War, Music, Love
Eva Salomon’s War by Gabriella Goliger (Bink Books 2018; review copy). Reviewed by Debra Martens The first person narrator of this absorbing historical novel is Eva Salomon, who is writing […]
Refuge
More than one character seeks refuge in Merilyn Simonds’s wonderful novel, Refuge (ECW Press 2018 review copy) — about aging, memory, lies, the stories we tell ourselves and others, and […]
Kibbutznik Pick
Canadian Writers Abroad has been searching for a Canadian author in Israel or Palestine. The weather here is getting warm, and so too is the search. Found: a Canadian author […]
The Art of Frances Itani: Review of That’s My Baby
Review of That’s My Baby by Frances Itani, HarperCollins Canada, 2017, hardcover, 345 pages. Reviewed by Debra Martens. Are artists more accessible to authors as characters because artists, as do […]
The Fascinating Fragments of Durga Chew-Bose
Naomi Guttman reviews Too Much and Not the Mood by Durga Chew-Bose, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, NYC, 2017, 221 pages. Review by Naomi Guttman In publishing a book of creative […]
Madeleine Thien in Palestine
Madeleine Thien’s essay, “The Land in Winter,” about her visit to the occupied territory in the West Bank and to Israel, appears in the collection Kingdom of Olives and Ash: […]
Closing 150 with Granta
The literary journal Granta published a special issue on Canada (Autumn 2017) edited by Catherine Leroux and Madeleine Thien. Single-handedly Thien has done more to promote Canadian Literature outside of […]
Mount’s Story
Nick Mount, Arrival: The Story of CanLit (Anansi 2017), 448 pages. Reviewed by Mark Sampson It’s perhaps no accident that the title of Nick Mount’s survey of the so-called “boom […]
