Category: Reviews
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, […]
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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 […]
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 […]
Lost: Mum
In the migrations caused by war or persecution, family members are sometimes separated, adding to grief and loss. One finds it hard, then, to imagine that a mother would voluntarily […]
da costa
“Place tends to occupy an important role in my books. The Scent of a Lie is strongly rooted in place, and in my view, the Caima River, the Freita hills […]
Now Comes
In Vienna, she feels shadowed by history, time marching on. -from “Fréhel Takes Her Leave” by Sarah Bernstein Review of Now Comes the Lightning, by Sarah Bernstein (Pedlar Press, St. […]
My My, Drainie
Review of My Jerusalem: Secular Adventures in the Holy City (Doubleday 1994), paperback 287 pages. Reviewed by Debra Martens Bronwyn Drainie spent two years in Jerusalem (1991-1993) with Patrick Martin, […]
