Beautiful Communions by Des Kennedy Vancouver: Ronsdale Press, 2018 $18.95 / 9781553805328 Reviewed by Cherie Thiessen First published Aug. 16, 2018 * Ginger wants to get back the family home from the disgraced church of The Congregation of the Great Convergence. Ginger’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Dustin Flynn, gave their mansion to the sect in their…
Read more #345 Lovers and other shenanigans
Atomic Road Vancouver: Anvil Press, 2018 by Grant Buday, with a foreword by John O’Brian $20 / 9781772141139 Reviewed by Dustin Cole First published Jul. 9, 2018 * So it was all coming down, The future collapsing like a rotten house. – from Atomic Road. Recently I perused the Anvil Press website to see if…
Read more #339 Missiles, murder & emasculation
Through Different Eyes by Karen Charleson Winnipeg: Signature Editions, 2017 $19.95 / 9781773240060 Reviewed by Paul Headrick First published July 3, 2018 * Through Different Eyes focuses on three women living in Kitsum, a remote First Nations fishing village on Vancouver Island’s west coast. Lonely sixteen-year-old Brenda Joe longs to fit in with the…
Read more #335 Kitsum on Hesquiat Harbour
First published June 20, 2018. In Valhalla’s Shadow by W.D. Valgardson (Douglas & McIntyre, $32) In Norse mythology, Asgard was the dwelling place of the gods, located in another dimension, possibly the sky or a different planet. It was divided into at least twelve realms; Valhalla being one. Valhalla was the home of Odin and…
Read more #325 Valgardson’s Gothic Valhalla
The Plague by Kevin Chong Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2018 $19.95 / 9781551527185 Reviewed by Michael Kluckner First published June 6, 2018 * A 1947 modernist novel by an existentialist French philosopher set in a dusty Algerian town? This sounds like an improbable inspiration for a story about glittering 21st-century Vancouver, but Kevin Chong manages…
Read more #317 Channeling Camus
Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese Madeira Park: Douglas & McIntyre, 2018 $21.95 / 9781771621908 Reviewed by Eldon Yellowhorn First published May 28, 2018 * First published by Douglas & McIntyre in 2012, this special edition of Richard Wagamese’s novel Indian Horse has been released to coincide with the appearance of the motion picture Indian Horse…
Read more #310 The Third Solitude
First published May 6, 2018. Seaweed under Fire by Stanley Evans Victoria: Ekstasis Editions, 2017. $25.95 / 9781771711920 Reviewed by Phyllis Reeve * A hiker and his dog find a corpse in Beacon Hill Park. Two cops find another corpse in an Italian restaurant. Before long our provincial capital is littered with more dead bodies…
Read more #299 Seaweed’s nonchalant tough love
First published May 4, 2018. The Two of Us by Kathy Page Windsor, Ontario: Biblioasis, 2016. $19.95 / 9781771960991 Reviewed by Paul Headrick Kathy Page’s fiction has often been the bridesmaid, not the bride. After she was longlisted for the Giller Prize in 2014 for her story collection, Paradise & Elsewhere, Page was longlisted…
Read more #297 From Gallant to Kafka
First published April 25, 2018. The Promise of Water by Judy LeBlanc (Oolichan: 2017) 978-0-88982-320-4 $19.95 tp Review by Caroline Woodward * Judy LeBlanc’s debut collection evokes a tangible sense of place—Vancouver Island—where the sweet fragrance of cedar mingles with the murky odours of damp mould and stale cigarette smoke can be washed away by…
Read more #293 Emotional time bombs
MEMOIR: Endpiece: Recalling New Orphic by Margrith Schraner First published April 13, 2018 * Here Margrith Schraner recalls her twenty years as Associate Editor of The New Orphic Review of Vancouver and Nelson. “I now conceive of ‘Endpiece’ as a caboose—a railway wagon attached to the end of a train. The lights at the back…
Read more #286 New Orphic Review bookend
From Oral to Written: A Celebration of Indigenous Literature in Canada, 1980-2010 by Tomson Highway Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2017 $29.95 / 9781772011166 Reviewed by Deanna Reder First published March 30, 2018 * Eminent Cree author Tomson Highway’s From Oral to Written, released by Talonbooks in 2017, is beautifully flawed, inspiring the reader with tremendous lists of…
Read more #277 The new turf of Indigenous Lit
The Plague by Kevin Chong Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2018 $19.95 / 9781551527185 Reviewed by Joan Givner First published March 21, 2018 * A classic French text invigorates a new tale of rats overtaking Vancouver. Joan Givner compares Kevin Chong’s The Plague, set in Vancouver, with Albert Camus’ work of the same name published seventy years…
Read more #269 A plague on our houses
The heroism of the outsider: Alan Twigg interviews Ernest Hekkanen and Margrith Schraner First published February 11, 2018 * Novelist Bill Gaston once dubbed Ernest Hekkanen Canadian literature’s “most resolute maverick.” For twenty years he and his long-time partner Margrith Schraner resolutely published a lively and sophisticated literary periodical, New Orphic Review, without any government…
Read more #246 The heroism of the outsider
First published Jan. 19, 2018. A Queer Love Story: The Letters of Jane Rule and Rick Bébout by Marilyn R. Schuster (editor) Vancouver: UBC Press, 2017. $39.95 / 9780774835459 Reviewed by Patricia Demers * Reading a collection of letters can be something of a guilty pleasure. Marilyn Schuster’s edition of the letters of Jane Rule…
Read more #235 Dancing on paper
Brother Toronto: Penguin Random House (McClelland & Stewart), 2017 by David Chariandy $25 hc ISBN 978-0-7710-2290-6 reviewed by Cherie Thiessen First published October 23, 2017 * The only author nominated for both the Giller and Rogers Writers Trust Fiction awards in 2017 is David Chariandy, whose second novel, Brother, concerns two siblings growing up in…
Read more #187 Brother, where art thou?
ESSAY: Kipling on Vancouver Island by John F. Bosher First published October 11, 2017 * Rudyard Kipling’s first visit to the Pacific coast of British Columbia was in 1889 in the course of his journey from India via Japan and the U.S.A. to London with every intention of making a literary name for himself. He…
Read more #178 Kipling on Vancouver Island
Useless Things: Redacted A novella. By Charles Tidler Victoria: Ekstasis Editions $19.95 / 9781771712002 Reviewed by John Moore First published October 4, 2017 * Jazz riffs from a leaky lifeboat. Last seen nine years ago in Charles Tidler’s novel, Going to New Orleans (Anvil Press 2004), the itinerant, deranged horn-player named Lewis King is now pursuing…
Read more #176 Sexual treachery vs. friendship
Making Room: Forty Years of Room Magazine by Meghan Bell (editor) and curated by the Growing Room Collective: Meghan Bell, Terri Brandmueller, Candace Fertile, Taryn Hubbard, Chelene Knight, Lindsay Glauser Kwan, Cara Lang, Alissa McArthur, Navneet Nagra, Bonnie Nish, Rachel Thompson, Kayi Wong, and Lisa Xing Halfmoon Bay: Caitlin Press, 2017 $24.95 / 9781987915402 Reviewed…
Read more #168 Forty years of making room
The White Angel by John MacLachlan Gray Madeira Park: Douglas & McIntyre, 2017 $29.95 / 9781771621465 Reviewed by Ginny Ratsoy First published Sept. 8, 2017 * The challenges of writing historical fiction are manifold. Writers must capture both the exterior (surface and sociological details of a time they know only through research) and the interior…
Read more #167 Janet Smith & Wong Foon Sing
First published August 30, 2017 REVIEW: The Most Dangerous Thing by Leanne Lieberman Victoria: Orca Book Publishers, 2017 $14.95 9781459811843 Reviewed by Carol Anne Shaw Sixteen-year-old Sydney lives in and out of the Fog — a word she uses to describe the smothering depression and anxiety that so often takes hold of her. But she’s trying;…
Read more #161 Loving in a fog