Bloom Where You Are Planted: 50 Conversations with Inspiring British Columbians by Beka Shane Denter Victoria: Heritage House Publishing, 2022 $39.95 / 9781772034295 Reviewed by Valerie Green * This book by Beka Shane Denter is an inspirational collection of interviews in the form of Q&As with photographs, of a group of fifty (forty-nine women and…
Read more 1935 United through art
Wrack Line by M.W. Jaeggle Regina: University of Regina Press, 2023 $19.95 /9780889779532 Reviewed by Joe Enns * Wrack Line, M.W. Jaeggle’s debut book of poetry, examines life in consideration of transitions and liminal distances “as crucial as the space / between prayer beads.” Jaeggle uses the wrack line—the area of seashore where organic material and…
Read more 1934 Isolation, grief, poetics, birdsong
Highway of Tears: A True Story of Racism, Indifference and the Pursuit of Justice for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls by Jessica McDiarmid Toronto: Penguin Random House Canada [Doubleday Canada], 2020 $21.00 / 9780385687577 Reviewed by David Milward * Missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls (MMIWG) remains a grave crisis in Canada….
Read more 1933 Calling a spade a spade
Once Upon an Effing Time by Buffy Cram Madeira Park: Douglas & McIntyre, 2023 $24.95 / 9781771623605 Reviewed by Carellin Brooks * The title of Buffy Cram’s Once Upon an Effing Time hints at its contents: a child’s fairy tale, if not exactly by the book. This version is closer to the classical Brothers Grimm…
Read more 1932 A ‘rollicking, heart-stopping, fraught, and hopeful’ debut
The Geography of Belonging: A Love Story of Horses & Africa by Oriane Lee Johnston Cortes Island: Salmonberrry Arts and Publishing, 2023 $25.00 / 9781777149222 Reviewed by Isabel Nanton * A wise person once posited that one of the many pleasures of reading memoir is identifying parallels with our own lives. If that holds true,…
Read more 1931 Take your own country with you
The Matryoshka Memoirs: A Story of Ukrainian Forced Labour, the Leica Camera Factory, and Nazi Resistance by Sasha Colby Toronto: ECW Press, 2023 $24.95 / 9781770417359 Reviewed by Theresa Kishkan * More than 3 decades ago, on a family camping trip, I bought a set of matryoshka dolls in an art gallery in Wells, BC….
Read more 1930 From one generation to another
Stillwater by Darcy Friesen Hossack New Westminster: Tidewater Press, 2023 $22.95 / 9781990160202 Reviewed by Candace Fertile * Darcy Friesen Hossack’s debut novel, Stillwater, plays on her own Mennonite and Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) background. The main character, Lizzy, a teenage girl with aspirations of a medical career, is forced to move with her family to…
Read more 1929 Perseverance in a closed community
The Five-Bottle Bar: A Simple Guide to Stylish Cocktails by Jessica Schacht Victoria: Touchwood Editions, 2022 $28.00 / 9781771513760 Reviewed by Rebecca Coleman * Have you been out for drinks lately? At some of my favorite cocktail bars, drinks are now in the $20 to $25 range, and even at chains, you’re looking at between…
Read more 1928 DIY cocktails
After That by Lorna Crozier Toronto, Ontario: McClelland & Stewart, 2023 $22.95 / 9780771004285 Reviewed by Mary Ann Moore * Language was Lorna Crozier’s consolation when her partner of forty years, Patrick Lane, was ill with “strange symptoms, which side-stepped any diagnosis.” The result was Through the Garden: A Memoir (with Cats). After Lane died…
Read more 1926 Bereavement, ‘impeccably expressed’
I Only Read Murder by Ian Ferguson and Will Ferguson Toronto: HarperCollins Canada, 2023 $24.99 / 9781443470766 Reviewed by Jessica Poon * I Only Read Murder is a zippy whodunit by Victoria’s Ian Ferguson and Calgary’s Will Ferguson with plentiful red herrings, comedic zingers, and miscommunication. If you’re looking for fun escapism with a satirical…
Read more 1925 Murder-mystery, where comedy prevails
Stedfast by Ali Blythe Fredricton, NB: Goose Lane/ Icehouse Poetry, 2023 $19.95 / 9781773103051 Safety Razor by Emily Osborne Guelph, ON: Gordon Hill Press, 2023 $20.00 / 9781774220856 Reviewed by Joe Enns * Two BC poets use different poetic techniques to connect their lived experience to the ancient and eternal. Stedfast, Ali Blythe’s third poetry…
Read more 1924 The lived, the eternal, the ancient
The Fierce: The Untold Story of the Teenager Who Took on the Worst War Criminal Living in America by Judy Piercey Cheltenham, UK: The History Press, 2023 £20.05 / 9781803991153 Reviewed by Peter Hay * The Holocaust was not a single event, confined to a singular city or country, nor was it caused by one…
Read more 1923 A complex path to justice
Stikine Odyssey: From Adventure to Activism with The Great River by Peter Rowlands Altona: Friesen Press, 2023 $24.49 / 9781775238348 Reviewed by Trevor Marc Hughes * What is it that draws adventurers to the Stikine River? For me, in 2012, it was a desire to see this beautiful, and integral, landscape in northern British Columbia…
Read more 1922 Irresistible Stikine
Time to Wonder – Volume 2. A Kid’s Guide to BC’s Regional Museums: Vancouver Island, Salt Spring, Alert Bay, and Haida Gwaii by S. Lesley Buxton and Sue Harper Victoria: Rocky Mountain Books, 2022 $22.00 / 9781771605069 Reviewed by Valerie Green * In view of the recent closure of Point Ellice House and Gardens in…
Read more 1921 Treasures from the past
Story Lines: How Words Shape Our World by J. Edward Chamberlin Madeira Park: Douglas & McIntyre, 2023 $26.95 / 9781771623513 Reviewed by Gary Geddes * Stories not only keep us alive, but also help us make sense of the world and our place in it. From creation stories and cave drawings to the epic poems…
Read more 1920 A word for the wise
Girlfriend on Mars By Deborah Willis Toronto: Hamish Hamilton, 2023 $34.00 / 9780670069583 Reviewed by Theo Dombrowski * With a nod and wink, Vancouver’s Deborah Willis titles her story about a preposterously engineered mission to terraform Mars Girlfriend on Mars. The wonderfully lightweight word “Girlfriend” plays with the discrepancy between the gravity of a real…
Read more 1919 Mars, mirth, metadata
Artists and Their Autobiographies from Today to the Renaissance and Back: Symptoms of Sincerity by Charles Reeve New York: Routledge, 2023 $128.00 (USD) / 9780367221324 Reviewed by John O’Brian * In 1968, Andy Warhol was shot in his New York studio. Valerie Solanas fired twice from close range at his chest with a handgun, and…
Read more 1918 Seeing lives behind the art
New Millennium Boyz By Alex Kazemi New York: Permuted Press, 2023 $37 / 9781637583913 Reviewed by Daniel Gawthrop * In some ways, Brad Seela is a typical seventeen-year-old white boy coasting through an apathetic life in the suburban North America of 1999: bored with school, indifferent about the future, disillusioned with his yuppie parents, susceptible…
Read more 1917 Teenage wasteland, Y2K bromance
Reuniting with Strangers By Jennilee Austria-Bonifacio Madeira Park: Douglas & McIntyre, 2023 $22.95 / 9781771623582 Reviewed by Valerie Green * Jennilee Austria-Bonifacio has written an engaging novel that tells the stories of the reunification of Filipino caregiver families over one Canadian winter. She has done this in an engaging and most unique way; not simply…
Read more 1916 Migratory Filipinos scraping by in Osoyoos, Sarnia, and Iqaluit
Laundering the Dragon–Black Renminbi By John D’Eathe Vancouver: Adagio Media, 2021 $17.99 / 9781999433918 Reviewed by Valerie Green * John D’Eathe has written what is described as “a contemporary melodramatic novel” set in recent times about a current day problem in the powerful, international financial business world. D’Eathe begins his book with an…
Read more 1915 Money laundering and melodrama