The Unbroken Hearts Club by Brooke Carter Victoria: Orca Books, 2019 $9.95 / 9781459820616 Reviewed by Zoe McKenna * In The Unbroken Hearts Club, Brooke Carter highlights the healing power of community and art in the face of grief and loss. Brooke Carter is the author of several novels for young adults, including the Runecaster…
Read more #907 An all-encompassing loss
Panegyric by Logan Macnair Surrey: Now or Never Publishing, 2020 $19.95 / 9781988098975 Reviewed by Eryn Holbrook * “Do you know who I am?” asks an unidentified inquirer in the opening lines of Panegyric, the first novel by BC-based writer, Logan Macnair. The question, we soon learn, is addressed to the book’s narrator, Larry Mann: a struggling…
Read more #903 Contemplating Montblanc
Primary Obsessions by Charles Demers Maderia Park: Douglas and McIntyre, 2020 $18.95 / 9781771622561 Reviewed by Paul Headrick * For authors working in the private detective genre, one of the challenges is to contrive a reason for the protagonist not to go to the police — not when important evidence turns up, not even when…
Read more #902 Demers’ therapeutic thriller
Travellers May Still Return by Michael Kenyon Saskatoon: Thistledown Press, 2019 $20.00 / 9781771871877 Reviewed by William New * Two things to know: (1) Michael Kenyon is a poet as well as a fiction writer, with another eleven remarkable books to his name, and (2) when this new book was in progress it was referred…
Read more #901 Evolving Story
The Runaway Bride by Jody Hedlund Grand Rapids, Michigan: Bethany House Publishers, 2020 $15.99 (U.S.) / 9780764232961 Reviewed by Valerie Green * Jody Hedlund’s book The Runaway Bride tells the story of Arabella Lawrence who arrives in Victoria in September 1862 aboard the S.S. Tynemouth. Over the years, I have conducted a great deal of…
Read more #898 Back to the brideships
The Certainties by Aislinn Hunter Toronto: Penguin Random House (Knopf Canada), 2020 $29.95 / 9780735276871 Reviewed by Theo Dombrowski * Editor’s note: The West Coast Book Prize Society announced on April 8, 2021, that The Certainties, by by Aislinn Hunter, has been shortlisted for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize in the 2021 BC and Yukon Book…
Read more #892 The potency of the mundane
Here the Dark by David Bergen Windsor, ON: Biblioasis, 2020 $21.99 / 9781771963213 Reviewed by William New * Editor’s note: David Bergen’s Here the Dark is one of 11 books in the Scotiabank Giller Prize 2020 longlist, announced on September 8, 2020. * Subtitled “a novella and stories,” David Bergen’s Here the Dark brings together…
Read more #891 Dealing with the dark
All That Belongs by Dora Dueck Winnipeg: Turnstone Press, 2019 $19.00 / 9780888016812 Reviewed by Valerie Green * Dora Dueck’s book All That Belongs published by Turnstone Press in 2019 is set in Alberta and Manitoba. It tells the story of Catherine, a retired archivist who, on her last day of work, found memories from…
Read more #889 Mennonite roots and shrubs
Rue Des Rosiers by Rhea Tregebov Regina: Coteau Books, 2019 Distributed by and available from Wolsak and Wynn $24.95 / 9781550506990 Reviewed by Paul Headrick * On March 12, 2020, Rhea Tregebov’s Rue Des Rosiers was one of five books shortlisted for the 2020 Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize of the BC and Yukon Book Prizes. Winners…
Read more #885 Crossing Rue Des Rosiers
Death of a Doppelganger by Rod Deakin-Drown New Westminster: Silverbow Publishing, 2019 $23.95 / 9781774030714 Reviewed by Ben Matthews * Rod Deakin-Drown’s Death of a Doppelganger is a classic noir mystery set in modern-day Vancouver. It begins with a murder that happens just before we meet the protagonist, Count Jason Kereso. Kereso is a private…
Read more #879 Murder on the Sun Tower
Rolling Thunder by A.J. Devlin Edmonton: NeWest Press, 2020 $18.95 / 9781988732862 Reviewed by Caileigh Broatch * In 2018 A.J. Devlin’s first novel, Cobra Clutch, won the Best First Canadian Crime Novel at the 2019 Arthur Ellis Awards in Toronto. The mystery novel was jam-packed with pro wrestlers and scuzzy bikers. “Hammerhead” Jed Ounstead, night…
Read more #878 The return of Hammerhead Jed
MEMOIR: Writing My Father by Meg Stainsby * After twenty years of carting it around unopened, I unpacked a stale cardboard box stuffed with crackly, yellowed sheets of typescript — some still clinging to their carbons, all faint and fusty — and began a solitary trek across a forty-year expanse of written terrain that my…
Read more #876 Stainsby’s carbons and files
Potlatch Blanket for a China Man by Mei-Li Lee Victoria: Printorium Bookworks, 2019 $19.95 / 9780991808410 Reviewed by May Q. Wong For a complete list of BC booksellers that stock this book see here. It is also available from Amazon. * Mei-Li Lee draws the reader into her novel through a potlatch ceremony, where a…
Read more #874 Keeping company at Fort Hope
Lost Boys by Darci Bysouth Saskatoon: Thistledown Press, 2019 $20.00 / 9781771871754 Reviewed by William New * The most striking of the eighteen stories collected in Darci Bysouth’s first book read like those moments in our lives that we may want to forget about but never can. They keep coming back to irritate us —…
Read more #871 Memory’s lasting irritants
Best Canadian Stories 2019 by Caroline Adderson (editor) Windsor, Ontario: Biblioasis, 2019 $22.95 / 9781771963275 Reviewed by Marion Quednau * Reading the stories in this anthology reminded me of something the late American writer, Jim Harrison, once said: “But a man can stop his car, get out: he can dive in a lake and swim…
Read more #869 Canadian short stories 2019
Beautiful Untrue Things: Forging Oscar Wilde’s Extraordinary Afterlife by Gregory Mackie Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019 $60.00 / 9781487502904 Reviewed by Brittany Reid * There has long been a fascination with the unusual lives of authors, leading to the proliferation of a popular and academic genre known as literary biography. Literary biographies are intended…
Read more #865 Channelling Oscar Wilde
A Match Made for Murder: A Lane Winslow Mystery by Iona Whishaw Victoria: TouchWood Editions, 2020 $16.95 / 9781771513265 Reviewed by Jennifer Chutter * Reading Iona Whishaw’s A Match Made for Murder, Book 7 in her Lane Winslow series, was like being invited to a party where the host had promised me I would have…
Read more #861 Anatomy of a bestseller
SHORT STORY: A Modest Silence by Jennifer Moss For an audio version, see here * A modest silence is a woman’s crown — Euripides, Andromache We are the stories we tell, and we are compelled to create stories to understand ourselves. — Susan Gregory, et al., “Rewrite Your Life,” Psychology Today (May 2, 2016) We…
Read more #853 A Modest Silence
Decision Point: An Impossible Choice by Donalda Reid Vancouver: Off the Mountain Publishing, 2019 [price to come] / 9780978472412 Reviewed by Zoe McKenna * We’re often warned that those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it. This sentiment motivates Donalda Reid’s newest novel, Decision Point. Reid is the author of several books,…
Read more #850 Choosing the safest option
The Ballad of Samuel Hewitt by Nick Tooke Erin, ON: Porcupine’s Quill, 2020 $19.95 / 9780889844278 Reviewed by Ginny Ratsoy * Add Nick Tooke’s The Ballad of Samuel Hewitt to what I am calling the BC Interior anti-Western (as in Old Hollywood Western movie) novel with roaming “heroes” emanating from the hardscrabble and hostile interior…
Read more #846 Ashcroft drought and hunger