Category: Reviews
Prismatic Identities
A review of Clark Blaise’s This Time, That Place: Selected Stories by Mark Sampson With a career as long and varied as Clark Blaise’s, it would be virtually impossible to […]
Damages
The Damages by Genevieve Scott (Verve Books, 2024)Reviewed by Jane Christmas I don’t think I’ve ever come across a character for whom I initially felt sympathy only to retract it, […]
Speaking Silver
Louise Ells reviews Lásko by Catherine Cooper, Freehand Books 2023. “What are the things that only you can use to say thank you to life?” –Cooper, Lásko, page 156. The […]
The Heart of a Stranger
Eleanor Proudfoot reviews Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein (Knopf Canada/Penguin RandomHouse, 2023) Reading Study for Obedience (Knopf Canada) made me understand how the label “weird” – while somewhat unimaginative […]
In Pursuit of Revenge
Review of Chenneville (HarperCollins/Wm Morrow, 2023), by Paulette Jiles Reviewed by Debra Martens Governor-General award winning poet (for Celestial Navigation in 1985), memoirist (Cousins, 1992) and novelist, Missouri-born Paulette Jiles […]
Mandel’s Multibook
Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel (HarperCollins Perennial), Reviewed by Debra Martens The rules for the novel game have changed. Consistent point of view? Out. Chronology with increasingly […]
Good Jokes, Bad Choices: Monica Heisey Review
Eleanor Proudfoot reviews Really Good, Actually by Monica Heisey (HarperCollinsCanada, 2023) Really Good, Actually was… really good, actually! While the title reflects the self deluding protestations of a woman whose […]
Collapse of a Country
Collapse of a Country: A Diplomat’s Memoir of South Sudan, by Nicholas Coghlan (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2017) Reviewed by Douglas Scott Proudfoot My former colleague, Nick Coghlan, was in the […]
A Ballooning Story
Review of The Aerialists by Katie Munnik (The Borough Press, HarperCollins 2022). Reviewed by Debra Martens. The recent shooting down of four balloons in North American skies has made balloons […]
Homesickness
Homesickness, by Colin Barrett. Penguin Random House UK, 2022, 215 pages. Reviewed by Jane Christmas The word homesickness automatically conjures the usual definition of longing for home, but pull apart […]
Hogtown: Sampson Reviews City of Pigs
André Forget, In the City of Pigs (Dundurn Press, 2022)Reviewed by Mark Sampson In his earnest, episodic debut novel, In the City of Pigs, André Forget attempts to braid the […]
For the Love of Birds
Jane Christmas Reviews Woman, Watching (ECW 2022) by Merilyn Simonds Don’t be fooled by the cardinal and binoculars on the cover. This is more than a bird book. In fact, […]
Eliza Reid’s Extraordinary Women
Secrets of the Sprakkar by Eliza Reid (Simon and Schuster 2022, hardcover, 288 pages)Reviewed by Isabel Huggan I suspect that many readers, after finishing Eliza Reid’s engaging and accomplished study […]
Coming Up For Air
Sarah Leipciger’s first novel, The Mountain Can Wait (Tinder Press, 2015) was at the time, in London, compared to another novel set in the same part of British Columbia, Freya […]
The Longer War
A Gradual Ruin by Robert Hilles (Doubleday 2004), reviewed by Debra Martens When the Second World War ended in 1945, serving soldiers got to go home and live happily ever […]
Kim Echlin
Kim Echlin’s novel, Speak Silence, draws on the testimonies of the Muslim women of Foča.
Mary Lawson’s Solace
Review of A Town Called Solace, Alfred A. Knopf Canada (a division of Penguin Random House Canada) 2021, hardcover, 288 pages.Reviewed by Debra Martens. Crow Lake has its ponds, Road […]
Jessica Lee’s Two Trees
Tim Martin reviews Two Trees Make a Forest
Mythologizing Magdalena
Nick Coghlan reviews Magdalena — River of Dreams by Wade Davis
Finding the Perfect Home
What makes a house a home? Review of Open House by Jane Christmas.
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 For this […]
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 […]
Ties that Bind: Washington Black
Book Review by Barbara Sibbald
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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 […]
Canadian Writers Abroad 