Run the Bead by Dustin Cole Berlin: Soyos Books, 2023 $18.99 (USD) / 9780645795851 Reviewed by Theo Dombrowski * Early in Dustin Cole’s sophomore novel, Run the Bead, the Vancouver author briefly draws attention to a minor character who writes science fiction under the pseudonym R.F. Hale. Much later, the author has his protagonist scan…
Read more ‘Audacious? Yes. Dizzying? A little, yes.’
Grazie by Lucia Frangione Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2023 $21.95 / 9781772015089 Reviewed by Candace Fertile * Lucia Frangione’s debut novel, Grazie, captures how loss devastates the main character, Graziana or Grazie, who has mostly given up on life, even though she has a seven-year-old daughter, Hazel. The child desperately needs someone to notice and take care…
Read more From Alberta to Italy, in recovery
Gorgeous Gruesome Faces by Linda Cheng New York: MacMillan/Roaring Brook Press, 2023 $26.99 / 9781250864994 Reviewed by Zoe McKenna * All that glitters is likelier ghoul than gold in Linda Cheng’s K-pop-inspired debut novel, Gorgeous Gruesome Faces. Cheng was born in Taiwan, though much of her adolescence was spent moving between different cultures and continents….
Read more 1975 Ghoulish K-pop teen horror!!
Attention students in Graduate Liberal Studies at Simon Fraser University! * Since 2018, students in the Graduate Liberal Studies programme at Simon Fraser University have contributed numerous essays, memoirs, poems, and book reviews to The British Columbia Review. We at the BC Review are delighted to maintain a productive collaboration with the GLS community, as…
Read more 1970 Calling Graduate Liberal Studies
White Riot: The 1907 Anti-Asian Riots in Vancouver by Henry Tsang Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2023 $32.95 / 9781551529196 Reviewed by Ron Verzuh * Many British Columbians will have heard of the Vancouver anti-Asian riots of 1907. It was a brutal historic event that revealed deep-seated public prejudices fueled by paranoia about the province being…
Read more 1965 The shame of 1907
Uncontrolled Flight by Frances Peck Edmonton: NeWest Press, 2023 $25.95 / 9781774390757 Reviewed by Caileigh Broatch * Frances Peck has once again written a story that will grip British Columbian’s fears and hearts. Her debut novel, The Broken Places, envisioned fall-out from the big earthquake predicted to hit the Vancouver area. Uncontrolled Flight’s catalyst is…
Read more 1964 Literary thriller, ‘by all accounts … thrilling’
Don’t Call It Hair Metal: Art in the Excess of ‘80s Rock by Sean Kelly Toronto: ECW Press, 2023 $26.95 / 9781770416437 Reviewed by Catherine Owen * Sometimes a book comes along that is simply a dream to read and review. Don’t Call It Hair Metal is one of those reveries: fiercely well-written, nostalgic, energetic,…
Read more 1955 Reaching for 1980s rock’s roots
East Side Story: Growing Up at the PNE by Nick Marino Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2023 $21.95 / 9781551529332 (paperback) Reviewed by Sheldon Goldfarb * When I moved to Vancouver in August 1985, Nick Marino, aged 17, was working his last summer at the PNE. To me the PNE (the Pacific National Exhibition) was some distant…
Read more 1980s East Van nostalgia
Nimrods: A Fake-Punk, Self-Hurt Anti-Memoir by Kawika Guillermo Durham: Duke University Press, 2023 $25.95 / 9781478024927 Reviewed by Logan Macnair * Given that his complicated relationship with his father serves as the catalyst for much of the book’s content, it seems fitting that author Kawika Guillermo begins Nimrods with a reflection of his own experiences…
Read more 1948 ‘Anti-memoir’ meditates on fatherhood, perseverance
The Drowning Woman by Robyn Harding Toronto: Grand Central Publishing, 2023 $28.00 / 9781538726761 Reviewed by Jessica Poon * The Drowning Woman by Robyn Harding is disturbing, juicy, riveting, and true to Harding’s previous work—the perfect nocturnal accompaniment to guarantee sleeplessness, but the fun kind. In terms of scandalizing secrets, think Big Little Lies, only…
Read more 1936 Thriller with monstrous, ‘unequivocally irredeemable’ men
Once Upon an Effing Time by Buffy Cram Madeira Park: Douglas & McIntyre, 2023 $24.95 / 9781771623605 Reviewed by Carellin Brooks * The title of Buffy Cram’s Once Upon an Effing Time hints at its contents: a child’s fairy tale, if not exactly by the book. This version is closer to the classical Brothers Grimm…
Read more 1932 A ‘rollicking, heart-stopping, fraught, and hopeful’ debut
Class Warrior: The Selected Works of E.T. Kingsley by Benjamin Isitt and Ravi Malhotra (eds.) Athabasca: Athabasca University Press, 2022 $34.95 / 9781778290046 Reviewed by Ron Verzuh * Chances are you’ve never heard of Eugene Thornton (E.T.) Kingsley. Chances are also good that if you had heard of him you might not like him or…
Read more 1927 Impossiblist Maverick
Girlfriend on Mars By Deborah Willis Toronto: Hamish Hamilton, 2023 $34.00 / 9780670069583 Reviewed by Theo Dombrowski * With a nod and wink, Vancouver’s Deborah Willis titles her story about a preposterously engineered mission to terraform Mars Girlfriend on Mars. The wonderfully lightweight word “Girlfriend” plays with the discrepancy between the gravity of a real…
Read more 1919 Mars, mirth, metadata
New Millennium Boyz By Alex Kazemi New York: Permuted Press, 2023 $37 / 9781637583913 Reviewed by Daniel Gawthrop * In some ways, Brad Seela is a typical seventeen-year-old white boy coasting through an apathetic life in the suburban North America of 1999: bored with school, indifferent about the future, disillusioned with his yuppie parents, susceptible…
Read more 1917 Teenage wasteland, Y2K bromance
Laundering the Dragon–Black Renminbi By John D’Eathe Vancouver: Adagio Media, 2021 $17.99 / 9781999433918 Reviewed by Valerie Green * John D’Eathe has written what is described as “a contemporary melodramatic novel” set in recent times about a current day problem in the powerful, international financial business world. D’Eathe begins his book with an…
Read more 1915 Money laundering and melodrama
Bookworm By Robin Yeatman Toronto: HarperCollins Publishers, 2023 $23.99 / 9780063273009 Reviewed by Candace Fertile * It’s hard to understand why Victoria, the bookworm in Robin Yeatman’s debut novel, marries Eric. She doesn’t seem to have known him well before joining her life to his and is utterly miserable with him. Victoria spends most of…
Read more 1909 Regimented and tedious in Montreal
Tell Me Pleasant Things about Immortality By Lindsay Wong Toronto: Penguin Canada, 2023 $32.95 / 9780735242364 Reviewed by Theo Dombrowski * Probably the West’s most iconic piece of short fiction begins with a shock: an office clerk wakes up one morning to discover that he has been inexplicably transformed into “vermin” (usually taken to be…
Read more 1889 Wealth, family, and the ‘spectrum of female suffering’
False CreekBy Jane Munro Madeira Park, BC: Harbour Publishing, 2022$19.95 / 9781990776090 Reviewed by Jodi Lundgren * I happened to open False Creek after a few days’ immersion in Milton’s Renaissance epic, Paradise Lost, and was unexpectedly struck by continuities between the two works. No, Munro’s book is not a narrative poem, much less an…
Read more 1885 Poetic ‘intelligence, curiosity, wonderment, and humility’
Voices from Bridge River: The Bridge River Hydroelectric Projects, the People Who Built Them, and the Lives They Touched by BC Hydro Power Pioneers with Kerry Gold Vancouver: Figure 1 Publishing, 2022 $29.95 / 9781773271071 Reviewed by Ron Verzuh * With her caustic wit and outspoken opinions, local newspaper publisher Ma [Margaret] Murray put BC’s…
Read more 1874 Bridge River Gold
Exploring Vancouver: Ten tours of the City and its Buildings (Fifth Edition) by Harold Kalman and Robin Ward Madeira Park, BC: Harbour Publishing, 2023 $29.95 / 9781990776274 Reviewed by Rhodri Windsor-Liscombe * Exploring Vancouver has evolved alongside the city. Once a series of First Nations settlements amidst a stupendous maritime setting, it became a lumber…
Read more 1858 ‘Obscure as much as to reveal’