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
My Two-Faced Luck by Brett Josef Grubisic Surrey: Now or Never Publishing, 2021 $19.95 / 9781989689271 Reviewed by Geoffrey D. Morrison * In My Two-Faced Luck, Brett Josef Grubisic concludes his River Bend Trilogy with a novel that movingly fulfills the promise of its unique and ambitious premise. As with the other River Bend books,…
Read more 1234 A matter of thwarted desire
In Singing, He Composed a Song by Jeremy Stewart Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2021 (Brave & Brilliant Series) $19.99 / 9781773852201 Reviewed by Jeff Stychin * Have you ever woken up in a haze or dream-like state? Or wondered how long spans of time have seemingly disappeared from memory? In Singing, He Composed a…
Read more 1231 Coming of age in Prince George
Through the Gate by Kay Jordan Victoria: Kay Publishing, 2020 $18.89 / 9781999227906 Reviewed by Valerie Green * In her book Through the Gate, Kay Jordan has created a story that will undoubtedly inspire young students to enjoy history in a fun way. Rather than give her young readers dates and a myriad of names…
Read more 1229 Downstairs drama at Craigdarroch
One London Day by C.C. Humphreys Two Hats Creative, 2021 $20.00 / 9781989988046 For paperback see here; for ebook see here; for audiobook (read by the author) see here. Reviewed by Alma Lee * Chris Humphreys writes and lives on Salt Spring Island. An actor, playwright, and novelist, he has published 20 books — historical…
Read more 1226 Severin and the Russian escort
The Comic by Stan Rogal Montréal: Guernica Editions, 2020 $20.00 / 9781771834827 Reviewed by Peter Babiak * The Comic is a novel about a sad sack of a college English teacher, Mark Nowakowski, who runs up against surreal Kafkaesque forces when he breaches the unwritten rules on linguistic expression that have become hot-button issues in…
Read more 1224 No laughing matter
Goth Girls of Banff by John O’Neill Edmonton: NeWest Press, 2020 $19.95 / 9781988732954 Reviewed by Myshara Herbert-McMyn * The author of a novel and four poetry collections, John O’Neill is a former high-school Dramatic Arts and English teacher who now lives and writes in Toronto. His Goth Girls of Banff presents short stories about…
Read more 1220 Gothic mountain fiction
INTERVIEW: Lesley Krueger with The British Columbia Review Born and brought up in Vancouver, Lesley Krueger is a novelist and screenwriter. She is the author of seven books, including the critically acclaimed novels, The Corner Garden (2003) and Mad Richard (2017). As a filmmaker, she has worked as a screenwriter, script doctor, story editor, and co-producer…
Read more 1217 Interview with Lesley Krueger
Sunday Drive to Gun Club Road by Marion Quednau Gibsons: Nightwood Editions, 2021 $21.95 / 9780889713987 Reviewed by Kathy Mezei * The short story is a quirky form; it has certain novelistic features—characters, narrators, setting, plots (necessarily curtailed) and certain poetic features—brevity, emotional shock or surprise, intensity of language, but it marches staunchly to the…
Read more 1211 Resisting the conventions