The All + Flesh By Brandi Bird Toronto: House of Anansi, 2023 $16.99 / 9781487011826 Reviewed by Linda Rogers * We are all changed. Plague and pestilence have left many of us in a state of grief, our innocence lost, experience teaching us the perils of hubris. As usual, prayer translates to poetry as our…
Read more 1894 Notes on grief
Catalogue d’oiseaux By Aaron Tucker Toronto: Book*hug Press, 2021 $20.00 / 9781771666947 Reviewed by Harold Rhenisch * Catalogue d’oiseaux is a long poem that portrays a pair of lovers in their forties remaking themselves into a couple, despite distance threatening to divide them. It is the rhythmic rocking of a body in isolation, two bodies…
Read more 1890 Love in the Quantum Age
Quality Time By Suzannah Showler Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2023 $24.95 / 9780771003684 Reviewed by Bill Paul * Quality Time is a romantic comedy about a young couple madly in love and living in Toronto during Rob Ford’s era as mayor. Lydie and Nico (short for Nicolas) are discovering the myriad pleasures and worries that…
Read more 1887 Truly madly deeply
Landscapes By Christine Lai Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 2023 $29.95 / 9780385684248 Reviewed by Jessica Poon * Landscapes by Vancouver’s Christine Lai is an ambitious, atmospheric debut novel, told artfully and often through art. The protagonist, Penelope, is dreading a reunion with Julian, her former love interest and rapist from twenty-two years ago, who is also…
Read more 1886 Artfully, maddeningly told fiction
False CreekBy Jane Munro Madeira Park, BC: Harbour Publishing, 2022$19.95 / 9781990776090 Reviewed by Jodi Lundgren * I happened to open False Creek after a few days’ immersion in Milton’s Renaissance epic, Paradise Lost, and was unexpectedly struck by continuities between the two works. No, Munro’s book is not a narrative poem, much less an…
Read more 1885 Poetic ‘intelligence, curiosity, wonderment, and humility’
Boy in the Blue Hammock By Darren Groth Gibsons, BC: Nightwood Editions, 2022 $22.95 / 9780889714267 Reviewed by Jeff Stychin * If you’ve ever walked alone at sunset to a summit view of the place you reside and reminisced about your travels and experiences, imagine adding an ethereal mist with shimmering silvers and golds to…
Read more 1884 Dog and Boy
Reckoning By Patrick Friesen Vancouver, BC: Anvil Press, 2023 $18.00 / 9781772142167 Reviewed by Al Rempel * Patrick Friesen’s latest book, Reckoning, is a masterfully crafted, single long poem that ranges across all three senses of reckoning, weaving new themes together with familiar themes to those who have read his previous work. Reckoning: to calculate…
Read more 1879 What a wonder
Derelict Bicycles By Dale Tracy Vancouver, BC: Anvil Press, 2022 $18.00 / 9781772141986 Reviewed by Harold Rhenisch * If you’ve been looking for a new book of poems that bends reality, your search is over. Derelict Bicycles is a perspective-bending book. Sometimes it’s like looking at consciousness inside out, such as in “Stomach End of…
Read more 1871 ‘Heralding the future’
You Have Been Referred: My Life in Applied Anthropology by Michael Robinson Calgary: Bayeux Arts, 2021 $21.95 / 9781988440705 Reviewed by Kirsten Bell * Many of my anthropological brethren jealously guard the boundaries of the discipline. Although there is no formal registration process for anthropologists, the standard view within most professional associations is that a…
Read more 1869 Fascinating life, flawed memoir
Tides of the Sovereign By Kate Gateley Victoria: FriesenPress, 2022 $37.99 / 9781039126572 Reviewed by Myshara Herbert-McMyn * Kate Gateley’s debut novel Tides of the Sovereign is a tale a millennium in the making. Julia and Domhnall are fated lovers kept apart lifetime after lifetime when they’re cursed by the infamous Child of Rome: Cassius…
Read more 1866 Magic, curses, and prophecies
Sentient Stones by Susan McCaslin Salt Spring Island, BC: Raven Chapbooks, 2023 $20.00 / 9781778160332 Wild Kin By Marlene Grand Maître Salt Spring Island, BC: Raven Chapbooks, 2023 $20.00 / 9781778160325 Green Islands: Poems from the Great Bear Rainforest By Ian Thomas Salt Spring Island, BC: Raven Chapbooks, 2023 $22.95 / 9781778160318 …
Read more 1864 Three takes on spirituality and nature
Naked Defiance: A Comedy of Menace by Patrik Sampler Vancouver, BC: New Star Books, 2023 $19.00 / 9781554202003 Reviewed by Steven Brown * A Comedy of Menace is the subtitle of this fine novel. Although it can be looked at as menacing comedy, there’s a lot else going on. Naked Defiance is also an arcane…
Read more 1862 ‘Part of the spectacle’
Emily Carr: Life & Work by Lisa Baldissera, with an introduction by Sara Angel Toronto: Art Canada Institute, 2021 $40.00 / 9781487102326 Reviewed by Valerie Green * Most people in Victoria, throughout British Columbia and across Canada are of course familiar with the works of artist/writer Emily Carr. Her artwork is acclaimed both nationally and…
Read more 1838 ‘The woman behind the art’
KWANDUR by Cole Pauls Wolfville, NS: Conundrum Press, 2022 $25.00 / 9781772620771 Reviewed by Jeff Stychin * KWANDUR is one of the truest forms of expression and stylistic artwork portrayal that I’ve come across since reading his comic Pizza Punks, which is also a must-read. Cole Pauls is a Champagne and Aishihik citizen and Tahltan…
Read more 1829 Tundra Wizard’s personal stories
Art + DIY Electronics by Garnet Hertz Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, May 30, 2023 $45.00 / 9780262044936 (paperback) Reviewed by Thomas Girard * Dr. Garnet Hertz new book on DIY culture – Art + DIY Electronics – is a refreshing change from typical academic texts. It has the heft, but without the intimidation of…
Read more 1827 Sold on the human text
Welcome Trevor and Brett by Richard Mackie * On behalf of the Board of the Ormsby Literary Society and our Advisory Board I’d like to welcome Trevor Marc Hughes and Brett Josef Grubisic as interim editors of The British Columbia Review for the year May 1, 2023 to May 1, 2024. The position was made possible…
Read more 1813 Welcome Trevor and Brett
Who Has Seen the Wind by W.O. Mitchell, illustrations by William Kurelek, 75th anniversary edition Calgary: Freehand Books, 2022 (first published by Macmillan of Canada, 1947) $44.95 / 9781990601125 Reviewed by Amy Whitmore * A pre-schooler knocks on a minister’s door in search of God’s help in seeking revenge. Another pre-schooler navigates town with his…
Read more 1801 It’s what boys do
Ron Thom, Architect: The Life of a Creative Modernist by Adele Weder Vancouver: Greystone Books, 2022 $37.95 / 9781771643221 Reviewed by Rhodri Windsor-Liscombe * Ron Thom, reflecting in the early 1980s on his work as a creator of living and lived-in spaces averred, “any form of design or expression is locked in time. Whether it…
Read more 1790 Thom’s modernist masterpieces
Rare Merit: Women in Photography in Canada, 1840-1940 by Colleen Skidmore Vancouver: UBC Press, 2022 $39.95 / 9780774867054 Reviewed by Maria Tippett * Anyone who ever doubted the presence of female photographers in Canada from the middle of the nineteenth century ought to read Rare Merit: Women in Photography in Canada, 1840-1940. Colleen Skidmore begins…
Read more 1772 Daguerreotype to Kodak
E.J. Hughes: Canadian War Artist by Robert Amos Victoria: TouchWood Editions, 2022 $35.00 / 9781771513852 Reviewed by Peter Clarke * Few artists have been so quintessentially identified with the West Coast as E.J. Hughes. At the time of his death in 2007 he had long been known as a reclusive figure living at Shawnigan Lake…
Read more 1760 E.J. Hughes: the formative years