Red Dust and Cicada Songs by Mary Bomford Qualicum Beach: Caitlin Press, 2022 $26.00 / 9781773860916 Reviewed by Isabel Nanton * African memoirs continue to enjoy a reading vogue with Mary Bomford’s account of her five-years working as a young “idealistic CUSO volunteer” teacher in newly-independent Zambia offering another insightful perspective. Chilliwack-raised in a large…
Read more 1900 Learning more than she could teach
Scream Therapy: A Punk Journey Through Mental Health by Jason Schreurs Powell River: Flex Your Head Press, 2023 $25 / 9781738921409 Reviewed by Catherine Owen * I almost met Jason Schreurs in 2012 when he was in Kamloops at a journalism conference and I was there to do what? A poetry reading, visit an ex’s…
Read more 1899 Shouting into a dented microphone
Time and The Place By Will Goede Oakville, ON: Rock’s Mills Press, 2023 $25 / 9781772442816 Reviewed by Joe Enns * Life in general can be depressing if you live long enough or think about it too much. In Will Goede’s novel Time and The Place, the main character, Junior, references the Latin tempus edax…
Read more 1898 Being and nothingness on a farm
Once upon a Time in the West: Essays on the Politics of Thought and Imagination by Jan Zwicky Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023 $29.95 / 9780228017097 Reviewed by Ron Dart * I lived for a couple of years in the young 1970s in northern Norway and Switzerland. I spent time in Norway with the mountain…
Read more 1897 Cultivating contemplation
Boomerangst By George M. Johnson Kamloops, BC: Pavilion Theatre, June 5-17, 2023 Reviewed by Wendy Weseen * I’m not a Boomer. I was cheated of that by being born a year before the end of WWII, not quite belonging to the age group that boomed at the war’s end and has been spoken of with…
Read more 1896 An Age of Aquarius eco-comedy
Exit Strategies By Paul Cresey Calgary, AB: Freehand Books, 2023 $22.95 / 9781990601316 Reviewed by Zoe McKenna * Paul Cresey’s Exit Strategies is the type of debut that arrives like a foreshock—a book that shakes things up just enough to know that something big is just around the corner. Exit Strategies collects 18…
Read more 1895 A ‘foreshock’ of a literary debut
The All + Flesh By Brandi Bird Toronto: House of Anansi, 2023 $16.99 / 9781487011826 Reviewed by Linda Rogers * We are all changed. Plague and pestilence have left many of us in a state of grief, our innocence lost, experience teaching us the perils of hubris. As usual, prayer translates to poetry as our…
Read more 1894 Notes on grief
Mr. Mindbomb: Eco-Hero and Greenpeace Co-Founder Bob Hunter – A Life in Stories edited by Bobbi Hunter Victoria: Rocky Mountain Books, 2023 $30 / 9781771606240 Reviewed by Ron Verzuh * “A Life in Stories,” explains the subtitle, but it might also have been called a love story, one carefully selected and edited by Bob Hunter’s…
Read more 1893 Not just an environmental love story
Drawing Botany Home: A Rooted Life by Lyn Baldwin Victoria: Rocky Mountain Books, 2023 $30.00 / 9781771605922 Reviewed by Nina Shoroplova * Lyn Baldwin, PhD, has lived a life at the “confluence of choice and change.” As have most of us. But as a botanist, an ecologist, and a philosopher, especially about her own life…
Read more 1892 ‘Plant aware, nature aware’
Instructions for a Flood: Reflections on Story, Geography and Connection by Adrienne Fitzpatrick Qualicum Beach: Caitlin Press, 2023 $24.00 / 9781773861128 Reviewed by Catherine Owen * Gentle memories. That’s the descriptor that first flowed over me at the close of reading this short, pared set of reflections on land, water, Indigeneity, history, time, people and…
Read more 1891 ‘Standing in the river’
Catalogue d’oiseaux By Aaron Tucker Toronto: Book*hug Press, 2021 $20.00 / 9781771666947 Reviewed by Harold Rhenisch * Catalogue d’oiseaux is a long poem that portrays a pair of lovers in their forties remaking themselves into a couple, despite distance threatening to divide them. It is the rhythmic rocking of a body in isolation, two bodies…
Read more 1890 Love in the Quantum Age
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’
A Shattered Calm By Bruce F.B. Hall Victoria: FriesenPress, 2023 $24.32 / 9781039134836 Reviewed by Valerie Green * Bruce F.B. Hall retired early to travel, to sail, and to become a storyteller while using a wide range of his own experiences to become an author of note. A Shattered Calm, Hall’s self-published debut novel, is…
Read more 1888 A ‘particularly spellbinding’ thriller
Quality Time By Suzannah Showler Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2023 $24.95 / 9780771003684 Reviewed by Bill Paul * Quality Time is a romantic comedy about a young couple madly in love and living in Toronto during Rob Ford’s era as mayor. Lydie and Nico (short for Nicolas) are discovering the myriad pleasures and worries that…
Read more 1887 Truly madly deeply
Landscapes By Christine Lai Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 2023 $29.95 / 9780385684248 Reviewed by Jessica Poon * Landscapes by Vancouver’s Christine Lai is an ambitious, atmospheric debut novel, told artfully and often through art. The protagonist, Penelope, is dreading a reunion with Julian, her former love interest and rapist from twenty-two years ago, who is also…
Read more 1886 Artfully, maddeningly told fiction
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’
Boy in the Blue Hammock By Darren Groth Gibsons, BC: Nightwood Editions, 2022 $22.95 / 9780889714267 Reviewed by Jeff Stychin * If you’ve ever walked alone at sunset to a summit view of the place you reside and reminisced about your travels and experiences, imagine adding an ethereal mist with shimmering silvers and golds to…
Read more 1884 Dog and Boy
Troll By Logan Macnair Vancouver: Now Or Never Press, 2023 19.95 / 9781989689479 Reviewed by Jessica Poon * I used to work in an indie bookstore that would not stock Jordan Peterson’s books. At the time, I was miraculously ignorant about Peterson’s existence; life was 3.5% better. When I realized why my former boss staunchly…
Read more 1883 Like ‘signing a waiver to having your blood pressure raised’
The Malevolent Seven By Sebastien de Castell London: Jo Fletcher Books, 2023 $35.00 / 9781529422771 Reviewed by Sheldon Goldfarb * Full disclosure: Sebastien de Castell is a friend of mine. We met at a writer’s group several years ago just after he published his first novel, Traitor’s Blade, a swashbuckling, sword-fighting fantasy. I read it then,…
Read more 1882 Blood magic, rat mages, and righteousness
The Wild By Owen Laukkanen Toronto: Underlined, 2021 $13.99 / 9780593179741 Reviewed by C.L. Shoemaker * YA fiction by mystery writer and Vancouver resident Owen Laukkanen, The Wild is a third-person dive into the thoughts and ideas of Dawn, a seventeen-year-old drug addict living with a drug dealer twice her age. When Dawn comes home…
Read more 1881 Grief, detox, murder, and wilderness tips