Five Little Indians by Michelle Good Toronto: HarperCollins Canada (Harper Perennial), 2020 $22.99 / 9781443459181 Reviewed by Harper Campbell * Teaching and healing have always been important aspects to Indigenous writing in Canada. Look at any famous Indigenous author, whether that be Pauline Johnson or Richard Wagamese, and you’ll find that teaching and healing are central…
Read more 1309 The object of Indigenous writing
Ginny Ratsoy reviews two books: Lives of Girls and Women by Alice Munro Toronto: Penguin Modern Classics, 2021 (first published by McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1971) $19.95 / 9780735234659 * Who Do You Think You Are? Alice Munro Toronto: Penguin Modern Classics, 2021 (first published by Macmillan of Canada, 1978) $13.99 / 9780143181170 * …
Read more 1307 Alice Munro & the short story
Richard Wagamese Selected: What Comes from Spirit by Richard Wagamese, with an introduction by Drew Hayden Taylor Madeira Park: Douglas & McIntyre, 2021 $24.95 / 9781771622752 Reviewed by Paul Falardeau * When he died at 61, Richard Wagamese still had a lot to say, though he had already said so much. The Ojibwe author was…
Read more 1298 A tribute to Richard Wagamese
The Rebellious Tide by Eddy Boudel Tan Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2021 $21.99 / 9781459746879 Reviewed by Miranda Marini * In his sophomore novel, The Rebellious Tide, Eddy Boudel Tan immerses the reader into the complexities of the human condition evidenced through the characters’ interpersonal relationships as well as their struggles with identity, discrimination, and social…
Read more 1296 The father he had never met
Erase and Rewind by Meghan Bell Toronto: Book*hug Press, 2021 $20.00 / 9781771666787 Reviewed by Zoe McKenna * The debut short story collection from Vancouver-based writer Meghan Bell, Erase and Rewind, asks its women characters, and readers alike: what is “a narrative you can live with?” While Erase and Rewind is Bell’s first published collection,…
Read more 1294 Stories of purposeful ambiguity
Stung by William Deverell Toronto: ECW Press, 2021 $32.95 / 9781770415959 Reviewed by Alma Lee * A new book by William Deverell is always something to look forward to. One only needs to read the back cover blurbs of Stung to know it’s going to be a page-turner. The list of people who have given…
Read more 1293 The good cop of Garibaldi Island
The Day She Died by S.M Freedman Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2021 $18.99 / 9781459747401 Reviewed by Myshara Herbert-McMyn * The Day She Died tells Eve’s story through the broken pieces of her life as she attempts to rebuild after a terrible head injury. The story weaves through amnesia, a strange marriage, and a terrible shift…
Read more 1290 It pays to pay attention
Satellite Love by Genki Ferguson Toronto: Penguin Random House Canada (McClelland and Stewart), 2021 $24.95 / 9780771049873 Reviewed by Theo Dombrowski * Lou Reed’s well-known rock song of 1972, “Satellite of love,” a deliciously oddball piece, contains as one of its very few lines, “Things like that drive me out of my mind.” Those familiar…
Read more 1289 Margins, outskirts, outliers
Last Tide by Andy Zuliani Edmonton: NeWest Press, 2021 $21.95 / 97817744390344 Reviewed by Laurie Ricou * In July 2015, the New Yorker published a lengthy documentary piece, meticulously envisioning “The Really Big One,” describing the certain obliteration of the Northwest Coast by an enormous earthquake, and the resulting tsunami. Soon after, Johanna Wagstaffe’s podcast…
Read more 1277 Pre-traumatic stress syndrome
The French Baker’s War by Michael Whatling Vancouver: Mortal Coil Books, 2021 $21.99 / 9781777569921 Please order from your local independent bookstore. Also available in Canada through Amazon, Chapters-Indigo, KOBO, Smashwords, Ingram, LSC, Apple, Google, etc. Reviewed by Valerie Green * Michael Whatling has written a deeply moving Second World War story in The French…
Read more 1272 Pâtisserie to page-turner
Light on a Part of the Field by Kevin Holowack Edmonton: NeWest Press, 2021 $21.95 / 9781774390146 Reviewed by Brett Josef Grubisic * “We’re free,” Gayle announces midway through the first of eight sections in Edmontonian Kevin Holowack’s likeable debut novel. While Gayle’s speaking in earnest, her insight turns out to be naive and premature….
Read more 1268 Back in Salmon Arm
Dostoevsky at 200: The Novel in Modernity by Katherine Bowers and Kate Holland (editors) Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2021 $75.00 / 9781487508630 Reviewed by Sheldon Goldfarb * Read The Brothers Karamazov, people say. It will teach you the meaning of life. The reviewer has heard this sort of thing before, and read Nietzsche and…
Read more 1266 Talking of Raskolnikovs
No Man’s Land by John Vigna Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2021 $22.95 / 9781551528663 Reviewed by Carol Matthews * I really don’t like violence in fiction — surely there is enough of it in the world around us — but I was drawn into John Vigna’s No Man’s Land because of the powerful beauty of…
Read more 1265 Broken from the beginning
Philip Roth, A Counterlife by Ira Nadel Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2021 $29.95 (U.S.) / 9780199846108 Reviewed by Grahame Ware * In a recent issue of the London Review of Books, James Wolcott gives us some background on an unusual event in publishing: the simultaneous appearance of two major biographies of an…
Read more 1263 Ira Nadel: triumph of the also-ran
Five Ways to Disappear by R.M. Greenaway (Book 6 in the BC Blues Crime Series) Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2021 $19.99 / 9781459741560 Reviewed by Ginny Ratsoy * As one predisposed to mysteries on the cosy end of the genre spectrum (particularly during a seemingly interminable plague) I shrunk from the first chapter of this police…
Read more 1261 BC blues plague reading
Charity by Keath Fraser Windsor, ON: Biblioasis, 2021 $17.95 / 9781771963800 Reviewed by Theo Dombrowski * Who would express grief at a beloved’s death by simply saying, “and oh/ The difference to me?” William Wordsworth would, and does, in a short, tragic ballad. Is it just coincidence that Vancouver author Keath Fraser concludes his novella…
Read more 1260 A subtle sequence of allusions
Something Drastic by Luke Inglis Surrey: Now or Never Publishing, 2020 $19.95 / 9781989689080 Reviewed by Heather Graham * In terms of action, Something Drastic is a novel that will not disappoint: six murders, five deaths by misadventure, eco-terrorism, wolf attacks, encounters with Sasquatch. Then there’s the biggest action of all: the apocalypse, the end…
Read more 1259 Hell-bent on self-destruction
Permanent Tourists by Genni Gunn Winnipeg: Signature Editions, 2020 $19.95 / 9781773240800 Reviewed by Zoe McKenna * The final page of Permanent Tourists closes with an “ocean of ghosts,” an image simultaneously elusive and evocative. This exploration of emotion without the assumption of clear resolution underlines the entirety of Genni Gunn’s third short story collection…
Read more 1258 Tourists in our own lives
Radium Girl by Sofi Papamarko Hamilton, ON: Wolsak & Wynn, 2021 $20.00 / 9781989496268 Reviewed by Myshara Herbert-McMyn * Sofi Papamarko’s Radium Girl is a striking collection of stories that will widen your perspective and haunt your thoughts. Every story contains rich characters that demand your attention and make you listen to them. The loneliness…
Read more 1250 Ghost girls & glow-in-the-dark
handwringers by Sarah Mintz Regina: Radiant Press, 2021 $22.00 / 9781989274477 Reviewed by Brett Josef Grubisic * A slim volume with a quirky but striking cover, handwringers resists categorization. For example, is Sarah Mintz, its Victoria-based author, writing fiction, non-fiction, or both? Or, is she intending to refuse these categories as irrelevant or unnecessary? “A…
Read more 1245 Running riot with Sarah Mintz