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
Dual Citizens by Alix Ohlin Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 2019 $22.95 / 9781487004866 Reviewed by Ginny Ratsoy * Sororal bonds are complex: a pair of sisters may know each other better than anyone else does; they may see themselves reflected in the other to the extent that they expect the sister to think and…
Read more #800 Prisms of sisterhood
Clinging to Bone by Garry Gottfriedson Vancouver: Ronsdale Press, 2019 $17.95 / 9781553805625 Reviewed by Heather Simeney MacLeod * Garry Gottfriedson is from the Secwépemc (previously Shuswap) Nation. He was born, raised and continues to reside in Kamloops. He studied under Allen Ginsberg, Anne Waldman, and Marianne Faithful at the distinguished Naropa Institute in Boulder,…
Read more #797 Secwépemc land and language
Drafts of Dracula by Bram Stoker, edited and annotated by Robert Eighteen-Bisang and Elizabeth Miller, with a foreword by Dacre Stoker Victoria: Tellwell Talent, 2019 [price varies] / 9780228814290 Order from your local indie bookstore or: $30.95 / 9780228814306 hardbound @ Chapters/Indigo $20.91 / 9780228814290 paperbound @ Chapters/Indigo $9.95 / 9780228814313 ebook @ www.amazon.ca Reviewed…
Read more #787 The everlasting Bram Stoker
Viaticum by Natelle Fitzgerald Surrey: Now Or Never Publishing, 2019 $19.95 / 9781988098876 Reviewed by Cassidy Jean with Ginny Ratsoy * Natelle Fitzgerald’s Viaticum has been seven years in the making, according to her acknowledgments page, and from this reader’s perspective, this debut work of literary fiction does not disappoint. “Viaticum,” of Latin etymology, can…
Read more #784 Buying time at Annika’s Café
Agency by William Gibson Toronto: Penguin Random House Canada (Berkley Books), 2020 $37.00 / 9781101986936 Reviewed by John Belshaw * Fully articulated alternative histories have been around for at least a century. In addition to attempts on the part of scholarly historians to change up the past, there are plenty of storylines in fiction that…
Read more #773 Past imperfect
Bawaajigan: Stories of Power by Nathan Niigan Noodin Adler and Christine Miskonoodinkwe Smith (editors) Toronto: Exile Editions, 2019 $21.95 / 9781550968415 Reviewed by Savana Alphonse with Rebecca Fredrickson * Bawaajigan: Stories of Power is a collection of short stories written by seventeen Indigenous authors from Turtle Island, today known as Canada. The stories here serve…
Read more #772 Echoes of spirits dreaming
Lampedusa by Steven Price Toronto: Penguin Random House (McClelland & Stewart), 2019 $32.00 / 9780771071683 Reviewed by Ginny Ratsoy * From its jacket photo, which rivets the eye to the top of a stunning gilded inner courtyard in Rome, even as that sky is blocked from the reader, to the epilogue and to the narrative…
Read more #771 A tale of rubble and splendour
The Wild Heavens by Sarah Louise Butler Madeira Park: Douglas & McIntyre, 2020 $22.95 / 9781771622585 Reviewed by Ginny Ratsoy * From chickadees to lynxes, cedars to lichen, rubber boas to salmon, the other-than human world permeates Sarah Louise Butler’s The Wild Heavens. In this stimulating debut, the natural world is more than a backdrop;…
Read more #768 A tale of a winter’s day
Gatecrasher by Susan Buis Picton, Ontario: Invisible Publishing, 2019 $17.95 / 9781988784267 Reviewed by Christopher Levenson * We do not have to wait long with Susan Buis’s first volume, Gatecrasher, to realize that we are in the presence of a formidably original poetic talent. Take the first four lines of the first poem, “Arrowslit:” Quarry…
Read more #753 Pungency and plate glass
They Call Me George: The Untold Story of Black Train Porters and the Birth of Modern Canada by Cecil Foster Windsor, ON: Biblioasis, 2019 $22.95 / 9781771962612 Reviewed by John Douglas Belshaw * For Black History Month Canada (February 1- 20, 2020) we present John Belshaw’s review of Cecil Foster’s They Call Me George: The…
Read more #732 Race and rails
Return to Spinners Inlet by Don Hunter Victoria: TouchWood Editions, 2019 $22.00 / 9781771513081 Reviewed by Ginny Ratsoy * Although this collection of linked short stories is set in 2019, it evoked nostalgia in this reader. I was not surprised that its prequel, Spinner’s Inlet, was published in 1989 — which at once seems like…
Read more #729 When an inlet is an island
Jacintha by Lorraine Davies Toronto: Dundurn, 2019 $21.99 / 9781459744554 Reviewed by Moira Laidlaw with Ginny Ratsoy * Lorraine Davies’ Jacintha is a novel of secrets, mistakes, and forgiveness. It tells the story of Richard Wilson, a professor of English Literature at the University of British Columbia. After a traumatic landslide destroys his house and…
Read more #726 Beware the Shakespeare seminar
The Vegetable Museum by Michelle Mulder Victoria: Orca Books, 2019 $10.95 / 9781459816794 Reviewed by George M. Johnson * Michelle Mulder cultivates rich soil (sorry I couldn’t resist that) in her middle-grade novel about 13 year-old Chloë Becher, forced to move from Montreal to Victoria with her Dad when her parents separate. Initially she finds…
Read more #724 Postwar gardening therapy
A Deceptive Devotion: A Lane Winslow Mystery by Iona Whishaw Victoria: Touchwood Editions, 2019 $16.95 / 9781771513005 Reviewed by Kim Naqvi * “He doesn’t seem like the romantic type. I mean, he’s kind of old.” “The world is full of mysteries, Constable.” Clever dialogue, and an ear for human flight and fumbles, places Iona Whishaw’s…
Read more #694 My name is Lane Winslow
The Brightest Thing by Ruth Daniell Halfmoon Bay: Caitlin Press, 2019 $18.00 / 9781987915907 Reviewed by Myshara Herbert-McMyn * New from Ruth Daniell of Kelowna is The Brightest Thing, a book that tells the journey of a nameless young woman through four sections of beautifully written poetry structured around fairy tales. Fairy tales, of course,…
Read more #662 A young woman’s journey
11 Weeks: The Real-Time Chronicling of a Breakup. A True Story by Roo Phelps Independently Published (Amazon Digital Services), 2018 $23.15 / 9781791550363 Reviewed by Myshara Herbert-McMyn with Ginny Ratsoy * A fourth-generation Canadian broadcaster with family roots in Winnipeg, Vancouver, and Courtenay, Roo Phelps has self-published her memoir 11 Weeks: The Real-Time Chronicling of a…
Read more #640 Heartbreak in the Okanagan
Whatever Gets You Through: Twelve Survivors on Life after Sexual Assault by Stacey May Fowles and Jen Sookfong Lee (editors), with a foreword by Jessica Valenti Vancouver: Greystone Books, 2019 $22.95 / 9781771643733 Reviewed by Kimberly Webster and Chris Montoya * This book will piss you off. Who wants to be the perfect — or…
Read more #606 Whatever gets you through
Sodom Road Exit by Amber Dawn Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2018 $21.95 / 9781551527161 Reviewed by Ben Matthews * There is a moment in Amber Dawn’s Sodom Road Exit when a character reads a letter that she is so certain is a breakup letter, that it becomes one. The words on the page, the love…
Read more #602 Second chance at Crystal Beach
Collapsible by Tim Conley Vancouver: New Star Books, 2019 $18.00 / 9781554201518 Reviewed by Myshara Herbert-McMyn with Ginny Ratsoy * The author of several previous books of poetry, Tim Conley teaches twentieth-century literature at Brock University, specializing in modernists such as Joyce and Beckett, as well as “experimental novelists and avant-garde poets,” according to his…
Read more #594 Talking feet & werewolf expertise