The Box in the Closet: A Memoir by Jayne Doxtater West Vancouver: The Self-Publishing Agency, 2021 $23.95 / 9781777642013 Reviewed by Margot Fedoruk * The Box in the Closet: A Story of Hope Is love enough to keep two people together when your partner’s needs surpass your own? This is one of the questions Jayne…
Read more 1456 Butterflies and affirmation
Overcoming the Neutral Zone Trap: Hockey’s Agents of Change by Cheryl A. MacDonald and Jonathon R.J. Edwards (editors) Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2021 $34.99 / 9781772125795 Reviewed by Daniel Gawthrop * To anyone who watches the game with a critical eye, it should not come as news that the mainstream hockey establishment suffers from…
Read more 1441 Oh, the good new hockey game
Duct-taped Roses by Billeh Nickerson Toronto: Book*hug Press, 2021 $20.00 / 9781771666909 Reviewed by Grace Lau * Lovers, friends, family: We are all we have Duct-taped Roses, Billeh Nickerson’s sixth book (note to self: must read the other five) is divided into five parts, each one a vivid meditation on a theme in his life….
Read more 1402 Lovers, friends, family
Heroines Revisited by Lincoln Clarkes Vancouver: Anvil Press, 2021 (revised edition; first published 2002) $48.00 / 9781772140712 Reviewed by Lani Russwurm * Lincoln Clarkes started his “Heroines Project” in the late 1990s when he began photographing women who use drugs on the streets of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. It took about five years and resulted in…
Read more 1397 Portraits of East Vancouver
Return: Why We Go Back to Where We Come From by Kamal Al-Solaylee Toronto: HarperCollins Canada, 2021 $32.99 / 9781443456159 Reviewed by Theo Dombrowski * Some books take their readers across vast distances; some through sweeps of time. One of the most remarkable effects of Return, by journalist and author Kamal Al-Solaylee, currently Director of the School…
Read more 1393 Yearning for a house in the hills
All the Rage: A Partial Memoir in Two Acts and a Prologue by Brad Fraser Toronto: Penguin Random House (Doubleday Canada), 2021 $34.00 / 9780385696371 Reviewed by Brett Josef Grubisic * One of the recurring delights of All the Rage is a multi-faceted storytelling technique that reserves a little something for everybody. Whether Brad Fraser…
Read more 1304 Blunt portraits & candid memoir
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
Mute Swan: Poems for Maria Queen of the World by Lesley-Anne Evans Toronto: The St. Thomas Poetry Series, 2021 $20.00 / 9781928095071 Reviewed by Cole Klassen * Mary and the swan: feminine symbols too often detached from reality 34 years ago, Lesley-Anne Evans was excommunicated from her fundamentalist evangelical church for being engaged to a…
Read more 1284 A voice for the mute swan
This Is My Real Name: A Stripper’s Memoir by Cid V. Brunet Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2021 $22.95 / 9781551528588 Reviewed by Linda Rogers * Strippers never have real names, because no one expects to remember them, the “Boys” of the Raj, the dogs of infamy, all of them othered by the entitled children of…
Read more 1248 A master’s course in endurance
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
Care Of: Letters, Connections, and Cures by Ivan Coyote Toronto: Penguin Random House (McClelland & Stewart), 2021 $25.00 / 9780771051722 Reviewed by Carol Matthews * One day in March, 2020, Ivan Coyote received an email telling them that the next day’s roadshows had been cancelled. A few days later, they learned that most of their…
Read more 1207 Coyote’s Covid correspondence
A History of My Brief Body: A Memoir by Billy-Ray Belcourt Toronto: Penguin Random House (Hamish Hamilton), 2020 $25.00 / 9780735237780 Reviewed by David Milward * The term Two-Spirit is used in many contemporary Indigenous communities to describe Indigenous persons whose personalities and spirits may have both feminine and masculine aspects. Many Indigenous people suggest…
Read more 1144 Belcourt’s Two-Spirit journey
Burning the Night by Glen Huser Edmonton: NeWest Press, 2021 $19.95 / 9781774390115 Reviewed by Brett Josef Grubisic * A novel with history on its mind, Burning the Night opens confidently as an attractive series of images and striking narrative portions: fictional Yarrow, Alberta in post-war Canada; an inquisitive, artistic youth residing in a house…
Read more 1123 Roots & effects of obsession
it was never going to be okay by jaye simpson Gibsons: Nightwood Editions, 2020 $18.95 / 9780889713826 Reviewed by Harper Campbell * it was never going to be okay is the first book of poetry by jaye simpson, “an Oji-Cree Saulteaux Indigiqueer writer and activist from the Sapotaweyak Cree Nation, with Scottish and French settler…
Read more 1100 Trauma, neglect, and erasure
Outside In: A Political Memoir by Libby Davies Toronto: Between The Lines, 2019 $26.95 / 9781771134453 Reviewed by Alex Netherton * Libby Davies’ Outside In is an extraordinary political memoir that chronicles and reflects upon her life and political career first as an urban activist and then eventually as the Deputy Leader of the NDP…
Read more 1096 A master of urban politics
Stardust: memoir and essays by an astronomer who became a psychiatrist by Jaime Smith Vancouver: Granville Island Publishing, 2021 $19.95 / 9781989467305 Reviewed by Sheldon Goldfarb * Editor’s note: Jaime Smith’s new book Stardust, reviewed here by Sheldon Goldfarb, contains Smith’s essays and his previously-published memoir Foxtrot: Notes from the Bear Cave, reviewed here by Peter Ward in…
Read more 1088 Music, extinction, and stardust
Love After the End: An Anthology of Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction by Joshua Whitehead (editor) Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2020 $21.95 / 9781551528113 Reviewed by Harper Campbell * Joshua Whitehead’s new edited anthology, Love After the End: An Anthology of Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction, comes on the heels of anthologies like Walking the…
Read more 1045 An Indigenous sci-fi moment
My Life as a Potter: Stories and Techniques by Mary Fox Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2020 $44.95 / 97815501179385 Reviewed by Maria Tippett * Part I of Mary Fox’s lavishly illustrated My Life as a Potter: Stories and Techniques charts the artist’s career beginning with the hand-built figurative sculptures she fashioned out of found clay…
Read more 1042 A culture of coastal pottery
Blood Sport by Tash McAdam Victoria: Orca Books, 2020 $10.95 / 9781459824362 Reviewed by Carol Anne Shaw * Vancouver author Tash McAdam has written a little gem in Blood Sport. Part of the Orca Soundings series — short, high-interest novels targeted at teen readers — this novel is a fast-paced and exciting read. It is…
Read more 1010 A trans tale of triumph
The Walking Boy by Lydia Kwa Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2019 (first published by Key Porter Books, 2005) $19.95 / 9781551527635 Reviewed by Paul Falardeau * “To transmit the strange” is a fine goal to be set before a writer. One with the talents of Lydia Kwa might find in it the chance to do…
Read more #957 Transmission of the Queer