Linda Rogers reviews two books: The Collected Poetry of Carol Shields by Carol Shields and Nora Foster Stovel (editor), with a foreword by Jan Zwicky Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2021 $34.95 / 9780228008873 * Witchcraft Therapy by Mandi Em Toronto: Simon & Schuster Canada, 2021 $21.95 / 9781507215838 * Disclaimer: I do not…
Read more 1271 Kitchen windows & witches
Scofflaw by Garry Thomas Morse Vancouver: Anvil Press, 2021 $18.00 / 9781772141726 Reviewed by Danny Peart * Scofflaw has been described as a long poem, a playful exploration of Indigenous-Settler relations and globalized pressures. The long poem is divided into 14 poems, to give us a breather in between, in a paperback edition of 72…
Read more 1270 Scofflaw & the corn-fed media
Lost Kootenays: A History in Pictures by Greg Nesteroff and Eric Brighton Lunenburg, NS: MacIntyre Purcell Publishing, 2021 $29.95 / 9781772761641 Reviewed by Ron Verzuh Editor’s note: the full photo captions below are taken directly from Lost Kootenays. * Kootenay Home: A prize collection of historic images shares the Kootenays’ rugged past Growing up in…
Read more 1269 A choice Kootenay collection
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
ESSAY: An “Odd-Man” at Government House, Victoria by Robert Ratcliffe Taylor * For most people, reading another person’s diary is a furtive and shameful act. For historians, however, studying the private journal of a long-dead person can be a valuable and exciting, if occasionally puzzling, endeavour. In 1870, Robert Colston was both the official government…
Read more 1267 Footman at Government House
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
Destination Hikes In and Around Southwestern British Columbia: swimming holes, mountain peaks, waterfalls and more by Stephen Hui, with a foreword by Cecilia Point Vancouver: Greystone Books, 2021 $24.95 / 9781771645300 Reviewed by Ron Dart * I have before me a few first edition books (collectors’ items I assume) that were pioneering guide books in…
Read more 1264 Affirming the trekking tradition
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
Idiolect by P.W. Bridgman Victoria: Ekstasis Editions, 2021 $24.95 / 9781771714280 Reviewed by Philip Resnick * I have largely refrained from doing book reviews since my retirement from UBC, having paid my dues in this regard on more than one occasion during my years in academia. If I decided to make an exception in this…
Read more 1262 Poetry from a special place
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
Exporting Virtue? China’s International Human Rights Activism in the Age of Xi Zinping by Pitman B. Potter Vancouver: UBC Press, 2021 $32.95 / 9780774865562 Reviewed by Larry Hannant * With the resolution of the three-year saga of the 3 Ms (the two Michaels and Meng), British Columbians might be thinking they’ll get a break from…
Read more 1257 China’s human rights orthodoxies
Resistance: Righteous Rage in the Age of #MeToo by Sue Goyette (editor) Regina: University of Regina Press, 2021 $24.95 / 9780889778016 Reviewed by Linda Rogers * They say our first toy is language, Joyce’s baby tuckoo arranging the universe in a sound poem, later a song, a novel. We are not only amused but also…
Read more 1256 Poems of innocence & endurance
Queen Victoria: This Thorny Crown by Michael Ledger-Lomas Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. (Spiritual Lives Series). $40.00 (U.S.) / 9780198753551 Reviewed by Simon Devereaux * This compact, densely written volume fills a surprisingly large gap in the vast biographical literature on Queen Victoria. The Victorian age is well-known for its public religiosity. It was manifest…
Read more 1255 Victoria’s religion of the heart
INTERVIEW: Matt Rader with The Ormsby Review Matt Rader is the author of five volumes of poetry, including Visual Inspection (2019) — reviewed previously by Paul Falardeau –– as well as a collection of stories and a book of non-fiction. He teaches Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia Okanagan (UBCO) and lives in Kelowna….
Read more 1254 Interview with Matt Rader
Shadow Life by Hiromi Goto, illustrated by Ann Xu New York: First Second Books (Macmillan), 2021. Distributed by Raincoast Books. Please order from your local independent bookstore $24.99 (U.S.) / 9781626723566 Reviewed by Carol Matthews * Vancouver poet and novelist Hiromi-Goto’s graphic novel Shadow Life, brilliantly illustrated by Ann Xu, is a vollendungsroman, a story…
Read more 1253 Running away in old age
Joseph William McKay: A Métis Business Leader in Colonial British Columbia by Greg N. Fraser Victoria: Heritage House, 2021 $22.95 / 9781772033403 Reviewed by John R. Hinde * By coincidence, Greg N. Fraser’s biography, Joseph William McKay: A Métis Business Leader in Colonial British Columbia, arrived on my desk the same day that the Tk’emlups…
Read more 1252 J.W. McKay & the Métis mystery