Ghost Forest by Pik-Shuen Fung Toronto: Penguin Random House Canada (McClelland and Stewart), 2021 $22.00 / 9780771096488 Reviewed by Michelle Ha * “How do you grieve, if your family doesn’t talk about feelings?” This is a question that I feel like many children of immigrants can relate to, and most may have asked themselves as…
Read more 1589 The empty spaces of love
Damages: Selected Stories 1982-2012 by Keath Fraser, with an introduction by John Metcalf Windsor, ON: Biblioasis, 2021 $22.99 / 9781771962933 Reviewed by Bill Paul * Last year marked the publication of Keath Fraser’s highly anticipated collection of short stories, Damages: Selected Stories, 1982-2012, with an introduction by John Metcalf. The fiction collected in this volume…
Read more 1584 The mighty Fraser
Because of Nothing at All by Paul Sunga Fredericton: Goose Lane Editions, 2022 $24.95 / 9781773102467 Reviewed by W.H. New * On first glance, I thought that the title of Paul Sunga’s new novel, Because of Nothing at All, seemed awkward, but I soon changed my mind. Because the moment you start reading, it’s clear…
Read more 1580 Because matters
Art for Art’s Sake by Maria Tippett Cambridge, UK: Pegasus Publishers (Vanguard Press), 2022 $16.99 / 9781800164130 Reviewed by Ginny Ratsoy * This nonet of stories is unified, as the title suggests, by a focus on visual art — unsurprising given that Tippett is a renowned art historian. The book’s title is sometimes straight up…
Read more 1579 Swindles, scandal, affluence
They Don’t Pay Me To Say No: my life in film and television props by Dean Goodine Victoria: FriesenPress Publishing, 2022 $24.99 / 9781039144316 Reviewed by Valerie Green * If you were asked what a “property master” does for a living, you would most likely assume the job was connected to real estate in some…
Read more 1578 Guns N’ Poses
Falling Hour by Geoffrey D. Morrison Toronto: Coach House Books, forthcoming February 2023 $22.95 / 9781552454466. To pre-order, click here Reviewed by Danial Neil * From the very beginning of this novel, there is a sense of something significant at work, an epic, perhaps, or something quite different, but equally triumphant. The table is set…
Read more 1577 Meet Hugh Delgarno
My Indian Summer by Joseph Kakwinokanasum New Westminster: Tidewater Press, 2022 $22.95 / 9781990160127 Reviewed by Brett Grubisic * With chapters that share titles with huge seventies radio hits by the likes of ABBA, Kenny Rogers, Nick Gilder, and Captain & Tennille, My Indian Summer appears to point readers in the direction of a wholly…
Read more 1575 The Red Rock chronicles
The Dating Plan by Sara Desai Toronto: Penguin Random House Canada (Berkley), 2021 $22.00 / 9780593100585 Reviewed by Myshara Herbert-McMyn * A software engineer and her brother’s childhood best friend, Daisy and Liam, have a complex history of attraction and heartbreak. When they run into each other after years spent pursuing their own lives and…
Read more 1573 A pick-me-up romance
Larder by Rhona McAdam Qualicum Beach: Caitlin Press, 2022 $20.00 / 9781773860831 Reviewed by Heidi Greco * Although Canada may be a very big country, its literary community is relatively small. And if you narrow that group further to the community of poets – or, further yet, to BC poets – as a reviewer (and…
Read more 1572 Food for the soul
Test Piece by Sheryda Warrener Toronto: Coach House Books, 2022 $22.95 / 9781552454497 Reviewed by Michael Turner * Back in the 1990s there existed a tension in Vancouver poetry between language-oriented writers, mostly those associated with the Kootenay School of Writing (KSW), and practitioners of spoken word, some of whom could be found sharing stages…
Read more 1570 A rare and necessary book
Atacama by Carmen Rodríguez Halifax and Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing (Roseway), 2021 $22.00 / 9781773634777 Reviewed by Alma Lee * In the north of Chile in the early 1920s, in a small mining town called Tacna, strikes are taking place in response to crushing control by the military and wealthy fascistic oligarchs. Atacama is a historical…
Read more 1568 Lucía and Manuel
All I Stole from You by Ava Bellows Toronto: HarperCollins Canada (Harper Perennial), 2022 $23.99 / 9781443466806 Reviewed by Candace Fertile * The “you” of the title in Ava Bellows’ debut novel, All I Stole from You, is Ingrid, wife of Rob, with whom Maggie, the narrator, has an affair. Right off the bat, relationships…
Read more 1566 A particular kind of life
Lady Jail (The Émile Cinq-Mars Thrillers Book 9) by John Farrow London, UK: Severn House (Canongate Books), 2021 £20.99/ $28.99 (U.S.) / 9780727890733 Reviewed by Bill Paul * Imagine you’re a writer of crime fiction living in Québec and you give a reading of your work at a women’s prison 80 kilometres north of Montréal….
Read more 1565 Émile Cinq-Mars no. 9
How to Love Your Neighbor by Sophie Sullivan New York: Macmillan (St. Martin’s Griffin Press), 2022, distributed by Raincoast Books $22.99 / 9781250624185 Reviewed by Zoe McKenna * In How to Love Your Neighbour, Sophie Sullivan uses classic genre tropes to create a unique and heartwarming story about home renovation and falling in love. How…
Read more 1563 The surfer next door
We Want What We Want by Alix Ohlin Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 2021 $22.95 / 9781487004897 Reviewed by Laurie Ricou * In “FMK”, the eighth of the thirteen stories in this collection, Sonia accompanies her partner Cat, a hospice nurse, to a funeral for someone she does not know. There she drags six-year-old Jake…
Read more 1561 Teased into speculation
Ticket to Ride (Volume 4 of the Jason Davey Mysteries) by Winona Kent Winona Kent and St Ives, UK: Blue Devil Books, 2022 $19.99 / 9781777329433 Reviewed by Valerie Green * I must admit that I was not expecting to enjoy Winona Kent’s book Ticket to Ride as much as I did. A story about…
Read more 1560 Return of Figgis Green
Junie by Chelene Knight Toronto: Book*hug Press, 2022 $23.00 / 9781771667685 Reviewed by Brett Josef Grubisic * Strangers to Vancouver or its history before the city’s breakneck condo-ization might wonder about “the Village,” the comfortable place June-Anne Lancaster—the protagonist of Chelene Knight’s appealing first novel — affectionately sees as her hometown. In the vicinity of Main…
Read more 1559 Coming of age in Hogan’s Alley
Kuroko a play by Tetsuro Shigematsu Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2020 $18.95 / 9781772012699 Reviewed by Jessica Poon * I wouldn’t liken making fun of Tolstoy to a sport, but it is, surely, a reliable source of amusement, which likely sounds disrespectful; therein lies the amusement. All that to say, when Tolstoy wrote “All happy families are…
Read more 1557 Better than real life
An Accidental Odyssey by kc dyer Toronto: Penguin Random House Canada (Berkley), 2021 $22.00 / 9780593102060 Reviewed by Zoe McKenna * Though Homer’s Odyssey is a staple of the literary canon and serves as a foundation for countless interpretations and revisions, kc dyer’s An Accidental Odyssey rejects all the predictability of this territory. Instead, An…
Read more 1550 Epic quest, new narrative
The Rooming House: The West Coast in the Seventies by Michael Kluckner Vancouver: Midtown Press, 2022 $19.95 / 9781988242460 Reviewed by Valerie Green * Michael Kluckner has skillfully managed to capture the free spirit, free love era of the late sixties and early seventies in this captivating story of lost youth trying to find their…
Read more 1546 Kitsilano flashback